Pro-Life Is Not Single-Issue

Or, why using a pro-life criteria as a single-issue voting guide is acceptable and responsible in the American Republic.

A fellow-student of my wife’s at her well-known Christian school wrote a note stating her belief that Obama is a better Christian and will be a better President than McCain. It was discouraging to read.

This makes the second person who I’d've thought would be able to see beyond the incessant, sycophantic cheerleading by the MSM and the carefully tailored lies of the Obama campaign to the real depth of his deception and would not support him for that.

I guess an audacious hope in change for the sake of hope or something similar really is something for which people yearn to such an extent they are willing to kneel at the baals of our culture and join the thronging hordes chasing the dream of socialism.

I thought I had one more generation before America had it’s watershed moment of decision over communism.

We can’t choose our situations or the perils which will beset our life, we can only do our best in the situations with which we are faced. As when Frodo faced with despair his imminent doom:

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil.

But to the subject at hand:

This student, writing in her note, commented that she had people in her life who would not vote for Obama under any circumstances due to his support of Abortion. She considered this view too narrow and not a careful approach to the broader issues at hand.

She further commented, as noted earlier, that per her reading of Proverbs, Obama was living his Christian witness on the campaign to an extent she’d not seen elsewhere.

Two questions: Is a single-issue pro-life position too narrow a view and is Obama living a Christian witness on the campaign trail?

The abortion battle which divides much of our society so drastically is so divisive and drastic because it is so very important, and those who have considered it at all either believe it is extremely important for many reasons beyond those just on it’s face or they are decieved.

Suitable to the depth of the issue (not the complexity, abortion is not complex: the baby is either dead or alive), there are a plethora of positions on abortion, all along the continuum from “No, not ever” to “The more dead the merrier, the later the better”. I can understand and sympathize with those who have honestly experienced a “for the life of the mother” situation and have their ideas formed that way. But were my wife in that position (though the percentage chances of that are incredibly miniscule), I would only allow myself the position that it is an accepted risk and part of life that we go through, and that were it necessary for me or my wife to give up our lives for the sake of our child, that is the correct thing to do. Pragmatically, it is the measuring of potential: my child has greater potential than I. Theologically, Jesus died for me, God’s child, I can die for my child. Being a man it is easy to dismiss my argument as being ill-considered and shallow and prone to revisiting when I’m actually faced with that. But the truth is there, and I could not live with another decision.

Most average people believe the lies that abortion is intended only for rare cases of parental abuse, rape, incest, and the like, and therefore support it for those reasons. Some people recognize it for it’s inherent racism: whole generations of black and other minority children cut down like so much government-subsidized and unwanted wheat.

The real militants take it is a watershed for womens rights, making motherhood as much a choice as fatherhood.

Only the cold-killers go all the way: Abortion anytime, anywhere, for any purpose. Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in the Illinois Legislature AFTER it was ammended to included the obligatory protections for cases of rape and incest at his request. This is not a case of one random vote against, it is a case of him realizing the political expediency of something (support for such an obviously good piece of legislation) and then changing his mind for the sake of his personal belief that children are only to be kept when they’re wanted.

Obama further supported and defended a hospital which was found to be condoning the practice of leaving unwanted babies delivered during botched abortions unattended in storage closets until they died.

Obama is for, and this is not a debatable or arguable issue, the allowable killing of babies who have survived the horrifics of an abortion and are living outside of their mother.

Right now we call this murder.

What kind of man believes this is good? What kind of president would that man be who believe such a thing?

Human dignity was a term this student used to describe the totality of Obama’s ideas. His ideals were better for human dignity.

If we as a society believe it’s OK to kill babies AFTER they’re born, have we ANY acceptable or reasonable perception of human dignity?

A man who would not work to save a baby does not understand the magnificence and wonder of human life. A man who does not understand these basic aspects of human dignity has no dignity himself.

It is not a small view or a narrow perception to believe that one who does not support the protection of human life, especially that of the weakest and most innocent among us, is not a fit man to be president.

Is Obama living a “Christian” witness on the campaign trail?

He denies that children are a blessing from the Lord. Or if believes that, he doesn’t want that blessing.

He finds it necessary to lie about his past and about his views and opinions on issues. He was not raised in the middle class but by his extremely successful bank president grandmother. Nothing against him or his grandmother for that. I would not think less of him, were he to only not seek to hide it and lie about it.

He claims that it was deregulation which allowed the banking failures when it was his direct actions and work which contributed towards the protection of Fannie and Freddie from scrutiny and increased regulation at the hands of the Bush administration and John McCain years ago which may have averted this crisis we are now experiencing.

He claims that taking a position on the beginning of human life is “above his pay grade”, again failing to stand up, as a Christian man ought to have done, in protection of the innocent and unborn among us and denying that his actions, speaking much louder than his words, show that he believes human life begins when the parents decides they want the child and not a moment sooner.

He associates with people who support the disruption of society and killing of people in terrorist acts and who when given opportunity to recant, say they did not do enough.

He spends 20 years in the pews of a church which has more in common ideologically with Marxism than Christianity as Jesus modeled it.

This is not hidden fact or obfuscated information. It is all readily available to those who would listen.

I am not to judge because I will be judged with the same measure I have measured with, but I can observe based on the evidence before me and draw conclusions.

I just don’t understand.

CA Homeschool Ruling News

The president of the Pacific Justice Institute says Friday’s decision from a state appellate court that found California permits home schooling should withstand future legal challenges.

Friday’s 3-to-0 decision from the Second District Court of Appeal reversed a never-enforced ruling in February that severely restricted home schooling in the state. The February ruling said parents must have a teaching credential to home school their children.

OneNewsNow.com

Priorities Of Preservation

There is a push today to limit human suffering, to prevent any pain from occurring at all. This cringing drive is so rabid that a father sues his daughters’ school when she is stung by a bee on the school yard. There are schools refusing to allow recess, there are schools sanitizing their play equipment, removing anything which may remotely cause any risk. The schools don’t have a choice, the parents will sue them out of existence if their children encounter the slightest discomfort.

This issue here is contained in the fundamental difference in perspective cause by a proper understanding of mans inherent value before a creator God. A humanist will not

Compare this to the lifestyle lived by many Christians seeking to save the soul and the mind. In God’s design the body is temporary, it dies, but the soul is immortal, it is freed from the body by death and lives forever. To a Christian, more important than the body is the soul. A Christian may be called to give up their life, literally or figuratively, to save peoples’ souls. A Christian does not discount the value of a body. You find Christians at the forefront of most of the humanitarian efforts around the world, seeking to protect the bodies of millions of human lives, regardless of whether or not those being protected are Christian or not. The Christian seeks to preserve the body because under God we are all equally valuable, and because the body is the corporeal home of a soul which either needs saving or has a life to live and purposes yet to accomplish.

The world seeks to preserve the body, while summarily dismissing the mind, allowing anything whatsoever to creep its way into the receptive, untrained recesses. And even then they desire to allow anything we want to be used on our body, so long as we do the choosing. We can choose abortion, we can choose drugs, we can choose tattoos, just so long as we do the choosing. It is a matter of control. God is God, He holds choice in His hands. He allows us to choose all the time, but there are many times He chooses for us,for His glory, for our good. Mankind does not want God to choose for us. All of nature are God’s tools, and He wields Nature for the furthering of His plans. As we seek to limit the influence of God over our lives we will find Nature rising up and thwarting our plans, exerting His control over us.

I love butterflies. I have lots of experience with butterflies. I worked over the course of 2 or 3 consecutive summers for a local butterfly farm in my home town. We bred and raised monarch butterflies and sold them for weddings funerals, graduations, research, etc… There is a crucial stage of every butterflies development when the caterpillar has grown to the right maturity level it crawls to the underside of the leaf in the wild or our special rearing containers in the lab and in a weird jerking dance encloses itself in a chrysalis. The caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis, a fundamental change in it’s very nature and emerges and beautiful and brilliant butterfly. The escape from the chrysalis is one of the most important passages in its brief life. Without this struggle the butterfly will die. With the metamorphosis complete the chrysalis turns transparent and the orange and black wings are scrunched against the body in the little space left by the bulging abdomen of the butterfly. The butterfly braces itself against the chrysalis wall and pushes until the skin of the chrysalis breaks at the butterflies shoulders. The butterfly pulls itself with great difficulty out of the chrysalis shell and hangs from it, pumping its wings slowly it pushes the fluids from it’s distended abdomen into its wings, inflating them slowly until they are stiff and straight.

If the butterfly were to fall too easily out of the chrysalis, it would not have the strength to pump its wings full of the fluid. The stunted wings would hang limply in a bundle at the doomed insects side and it will die. There is not an option here. The butterfly either engages in an intense and painful struggle or it dies.

We as humans need pain and need struggles to grow many times. Pain and discomfort serve many purposes and there is no way I can explore all of them here. Pain can mean we’re human and we live in a physical world. It is a sensation, a feeling. A bee sting means that we offended a bee and he is willing to give his life in order to offend us a little. Pain can be a warning. A hot stove burns us and we are careful not to put out hands there again. Pain can be growth. The aches and pains of childhood as our bodies stretch to new and unfamiliar heights are not bad, but merely a sign that we’ll not be looking quite so far up at the rest of the world very much longer. Pain is not bad, it is an indicator, a sign.

And yet, in spite of the necessity and normalcy, the elite of our culture push for protection of the body. Control.

The Christian perspective is different. The soul and the mind are more important because they exist eternally. The body is just a temporary home.

Obama Pro Post-Birth Abortion

A friend’s status on Facebook spotted by American Texan caught my attention.

Now that we know who the two main options are in the United States presidential election, we need to know where they stand. This election will be, for conservatives, very much a lesser of two evils election.

I’m not one who likes to use that phrase, and I did not believe the GW Bush was a lesser evil in his elections. But given two people with very obvious track records, we are now faced with such a choice: between liberal McCain and socialist/communist Obama.

This gives conservatives a distinct disadvantage in this election: Democrats and Liberals and old hippies and young communists in the college systems of America have their perfect candidate and will be excited and mobilized easily. We have a lesser of two evils and will be dragging out feet. Thank you Mr. Medved.

Obama is pro post-birth abortion

Search google for “Obama post-birth abortion” and you see the details.

Two Conservatives lay out the details: Obama has voted repeatedly and consistently against so-called “born alive infant protection” acts which state that any homo sapien who is outside of the mother and alive is afforded all the protections of any other normal human.

Even the extremely liberal Senator Boxer from California has stated that such provisions do nothing to limit the rights defined by Roe v Wade and supports such measures.

If the stated purpose of regular and common abortion is to protect the health of the woman, then Obama is pro-murder and infanticide, not just abortion. By voting “present” and “no” in such votes, he has stated rather clearly his intention to support all forms of killing the innocent and weak among us for no greater purpose than convenience.

He has said he’d support such provisions when they include language specifying they do not infringe on the “rights” defined in Roe v Wade, but such provisions have also been before him to vote, and he has again voted “present” and refused to support them.

He wants to have his cake and eat it too, he supports one position  verbally but in action and application he has made his true intent and heart known very clearly.

For more information see Laura Echevarria’s list of Obama quotes on abortion.

Color Purple Daughter Breaks Into Real Freedom

In the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom, the daughter of rabidly militant feminist and author of The Color Purple has written an article which we all ought to read: How My Mother’s Radical Views Tore Us Apart.

Rebecca writes:

(M)y mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life.

She then goes on to catalog the results of the well-intentioned but terrible results of feminism in her family and between her and her mother.

Her mother has essentially disowned her because she chose to have a child, and found that child to be so much more than she’d been told.

Rebecca has found that freedom is not found in a lack of entanglements, but in choosing to base ones life on what is truly valuable.

Dead Sexy

In a previous article, Priorities Of Preservation, I discussed the importance Christianity puts on the entirety of an person: body, mind, and spirit.

While the world, in a misguided and myopic view constrained by sin, only really cares for the preservation of the body. And through ignorance, loses the whole person.

In a report released last week which most have already heard of or commented on, it was noted that 1/4 of the US Teenage Female population is infected with one of several Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

The immediate cry was that Abstinence Education must be completely abandoned and further explanation of the ins and outs of safe sex be taught to every child.

I find those making that argument to be their own worst enemies, and I am determined to sit and watch them tear themselves apart trying to make sense of what they’ve said.

Better have a good belt to hold these sides in. The problem is, this is no laughing matter: peoples lives are at stake.
At the blog dbTechno (”Providing Science And Technology News Since 1996″) under the headline “Teens Having Sex, Getting STD’s Due To Lack Of Knowledge” (strongly caution) there is a small picture of three bikini-clad young women shaking their derrières before the camera. This was the picture Google had selected on it’s news aggregator to highlight the several articles on this topic this morning.

In our sexified culture it is considered “emancipated” for a woman to be so “comfortable” with her sexuality that she feels willing to flaunt her body either scantily clothed or free of clothes before the whole world.

I don’t think that it is a sign of a healthy self-image that women are willing and even choose to clothe themselves that way.

I am not for arbitrary requirements in clothing, but it is saddening that, younger and younger, we are compelling out daughters and sisters to choose between frumpy and scandalous.

Removing their modesty with bits of lycra and spandex.

Revealing their bodies for the eyes of all the world.

And then we worry that too many of them are having sex.

I think a healthy self image will result in true self-worth, where the woman will not feel compelled to dress “sexy” to get the approval and acceptance of others.

When a woman is dressing revealingly they are revealing their insecurity, not their assuredness.

The Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board this morning published an article titled “Abstinence-Only Education Needs To Go” (no scandalous images here) in which they completely demolish their own claims, twice.

First, early in the article they lay claim to the moral high ground:

From here, it would be easy to play the blame game. But that would be unproductive. It doesn’t matter if you’re the pro-sex education or abstinence-only type, the statistics speak for themselves, and what matters most is that something be done to make our children more sexually responsible and safe.

And then, in the very next paragraph:

Let’s start with re-tooling the failed abstinence-only approach backed by the Bush administration. Let’s teach teenagers about contraceptives and other precautions that could help protect them if they are sexually active.

Yes, lets avoid the blame game, and lets look at the facts. The Bush Administration has indeed backed and supported an abstinence-only education approach, because no one who practices abstinence contracts an STD, no one. It make sense to back a winner. But how many education programs has the Bush Administrations policy actually affected? Good question.

I would be willing to bet that with state policy, and NEA policy, and DoE policy, there is precious little abstinence-only education going on in the public schools of America.

The article then goes on to make an astounding statement. I very nearly cheered, at work, when I read this:

Abstinence teaching has its merits. It not only promotes a sure-proof defense against STDs and unwanted pregnancies, but also the idea that sexual activity requires a high level of maturity and understanding. An adolescent who engages in “protected” sex prematurely may not run the risk of physical infections, but could be exposed to long-term emotional and psychological damage.

And then gets to the…

BOTTOM LINE: Place more emphasis on contraceptives and STDs in sex-education classes.

And they reached that how?

With this simple caveat they have attempted to justify their entire tortured argument, and by extension, rationalize their continued support for the torture of young minds and bodies with illness both physical and psychological:

Like it or not, half of the teenage girls in this country are already sexually active, according to the study. Something has to be done to make them wiser in their choices, or we soon could have an even bigger public health crisis on our hands.

Do they not see the cruel irony?

Because we’re a bunch hapless, helpless dolts who’ve bought the lie that children are capable of making their own informed decisions regarding sex and mature relationships.

Because we’re a bunch of laissez-faire non-present parental units who feel no particular responsibility to counter the culture’s claims that boys are animals and girls are meat.

Because we’re a bunch of lazy do-gooders who value intentions over actions and outcomes and are willing to allow our children to do whatever they please so long as it makes them feel good.

We will complete ignore what we already know to be true: that premature involvement in adult relationships, emotional and physical, will not only harm the body but will also damage the mind.

So long as we tell enough of them to use condoms, we are perfectly willing to let them hop into bed with any yahoo or floozy who comes along.

Yea, that’s advanced society and parental love for you.

See also:

The Condom Conspiracy: Sex, Lies, STIs and Teenage Girls - the evangelical outpost

While we have Planned Parenthood and sex educators claiming that condoms can “offer effective protection against most serious sexually transmitted infections” the report finds there’s no scientific basis for that claim.

STD Data Comes As No Surprise, Area Teenagers Say - Laura Sessions Stepp and Katherine Shaver in the Washington Post

The Marrow girls offered several reasons why teenagers have sex.

“It’s to fit in, peer pressure,” Christine said, noting that virgins are often mocked. Also, “sex sells on TV.”

Khadijah chimed in that some young girls found their inspiration in the popular R&B singer Rihanna, whose latest album is titled “Good Girl Gone Bad.”

But Christina suggested something closer to home. “Write this down,” she said. “Bad parenting.”

Homeschool Girls Singing The National Anthem

I’ve been a bit lax of late, so here’s some ear candy. The Cactus Cuties…

Beautiful sound.

99 Balloons

Hat tip to MomLoveBeingAtHome:

Where Government Has No Business

In the Colorado Springs Gazette, an opinion article points out that, regardless of individual positions on embryonic stem cell research and cloning, we should agree the government should not sponsor ANY scientific research.

The central government of the United States has no business funding radical medical experiments, whether or not the president deems them morally correct. It’s not the government’s duty.

Highly recommend this article. The free, unregulated market provides support to those who deserve, need, or work hard for the support, and denies support to those who do not try or whose ideas have no merit.

Government handouts always create an atmosphere of expectation and dependence. The government is not only poorly equipped for accurate and fair judgment of proposals for grants, it is significantly more prone to scamming and cheating in spreading its copious amounts of money.

Look no further than the times when altruism and human goodness should have most triumphed: natural and national disasters. The cleanup after hurricane Katrina was as much a disaster as the hurricane itself, with longer lasting damage continuing even today.

Take all grants and pork out of the government pot. Deny congress and any government authority the ability to give money to anybody for any reason beyond payment for services rendered. Then take the largess which will be left over from that and return it to the people who’ve paid for the privilege of living in this great nation. With the extra money suddenly available there can be nothing but good as they choose the destination for their additional retained earnings.

Millions of individual moral agents are deciding the destination of their own money is vastly more efficient and entirely superior to one vast immoral one spreading its unearned largess to the noisiest mouths.

Beyond the fiscal and governmental arguments, there are inescapable moral arguments in this issue:

While the attempt to obtain embryonic-like stem cells for the purpose of establishing cell lines without destroying embryos is, in principle, morally laudable, any procedure that places at risk the health and life of a human embryo for purposes that do not directly benefit the embryo is morally unacceptable.
~Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

Thursday Linky Goodness

Hillary telling the truth is more dangerous than Honest Abe telling a lie. So Deitrich Bonhoeffer would argue:

“It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to tell a lie.”

Miguel Guanipa over at American Thinker uses this statement of Bonhoeffer’s to argue that Hillary’s habits of untruth make her moments of truth less than pristine and likely coldly calculated attempts to manipulate based on truth which supports her. Not based on her support of the truth.

A “falling away is worse than a falling down”. In other words, when a person who regularly speaks the truth utters a lie, he is merely suffering from a temporary lapse of judgment. In all likelihood he will be tempted and have recurrent lapses like these throughout his life; but the general direction in which he conducts his life will be one disposed towards honesty; he has merely “fallen down”.

On the other hand, when someone who is a chronic liar speaks the truth, it is not necessarily a sign of improvement, but a calculated attempt — by one who has mastered the art deceit — to manipulate the truth for his or her own purposes,. This act, which on its face may look like a valiant attempt at reformation, denotes instead a singularly pernicious kind of wickedness.

The Liar and the Bulldog apparently clean their YouTube channels of less than positive comments. From Verum Serum.

Hugh Hewitt asks if it would kill Time, or Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, or any on the Left to give a “well done” to the American Military and it’s members.

With thanks to WC:

…And the Velvet Hammer:

*shudder*To think there are people who think this is good.