Look On the Right Side

Tom Tancredo for Governor

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:58:00 +0000

Tom Tancredo is clearly the best candidate for Governor of Colorado, but some of my very conservative, less conservative, and generally Republican friends have gotten stuck on some misinformation which keeps them locked into supporting Republican candidate Dan Maes.

I've expressed my view on voting for principles over party before, in The Folly of the "Big Tent." Basically, political parties give your principles voice and strength only so long as your party actually follows those principles. If they've stopped following your principles, then voting third party is the ONLY way to make your voice heard, even if it means "losing" the election cycle by causing your preferred party to lose. Next time around, the party will be smarter about what positions they take, and considering how humdrum support for the GOP was from its own "base" in 2006 and 2008, contrasted against how strong many of the GOP candidates are this time around, this pretty much proves my point. I.e. by not voting GOP, conservatives "fixed" the GOP (to an extent).

The fact that Tom Tancredo is a "third party" candidate (nevermind that he's polling three times higher than the Republican candidate for governor) should not scare people off. The American Constitution Party is a party that has always stood for values the GOP has always said it stood for (during election time anyway). The fact is, none of us really know what Dan Maes believes, because we know for a fact he's lied (if you doubt this, see below), and so we're never sure if what he says he believes is really what he believes. This is especially clear since his statements on abortion, gun control, immigration policy, etc. have changed over time.

There are two major sticking points keeping Dan Maes supporters from giving up on him and turning to Tom Tancredo, despite the fact that Maes is unlikely to get more than 10% of the vote, in the final tally. Those are 1) partisan/factional investment in the candidate you supported from the beginning, and 2) distrust of Tom Tancredo. I'm going to try to defuse both of these reasons.

Many Republican voters believe in a principle of "always vote Republican." Talk-show host Mike Rosen is the biggest pusher of this concept, which of course I disagree with. Compounding this is this year's Tea Party movement, and its many passionate supporters (who I generally agree with), who believe the Tea Party "made" Dan Maes, and so if Maes loses, so does the Tea Party. The problem with this is that the candidate who the GOP nominated, and who the Tea Party pushed, is NOT the same candidate we thought he was when we supported him. This can be seen by comparing his contradictory statements on the issues, examining his squirrelly campaign spending and hidden books, and understanding his falsified or exaggerated resume. It can be further illustrated by the fact that most of Maes' most vehement critics are his former supporters, including some who volunteered for him (particularly campaign treasurers!), or worked on his staff.

Whether his side or the police chief's side is correct, with regard to his brief record as a police officer in Kansas, it's clear that Maes was not the "Serpico" law-enforcing star he made himself out to be. At best, he worked undercover in a non-dangerous relationship with small time crooks. At worst, he was collaborating with organized crime and tipped them off to a police investigation. I've read the relevant documents on Talking Points Memo and I can establish no "proof" one way or another. Maes also claimed to be a successful businessman, which also appears to have been an exaggeration or falsification. He had good years and he had bad years. And no one is quite sure how he's paying for his house in Evergreen, which brings us to Freda Poundstone...

Freda Poundstone says she gave Dan Maes $300+/- cash because he asked her to help him pay his mortgage, which was behind. Many Maes supporters suggest that Freda Poundstone is a longtime politician, and a Tancredo supporter (though she was earlier a strong Maes supporter), and therefore her word cannot be trusted. Here's my refutation: No one has to believe Freda's account in order to know that Maes lied to all of us. Dan Maes himself admitted he received a substantial sum of money in cash (around $300) from Freda. Whether you believe Freda is telling the truth or not, Maes acknowledged she gave him money, which means either he was lying to us about being a successful businessman, and instead he needed help with his mortgage, or he accepted an illegal cash donation and then didn't report it on his campaign finance filings -- a double illegality. Take your pick -- Maes is either a liar, or a crook. Ironically, he looks better if Freda is telling the truth!

I, personally, was a Dan Maes supporter until after the primary. I voted for him, and I didn't switch automatically when Tom Tancredo entered the race. Once I concluded Dan Maes had lied to me (and especially once he appointed Tambor Williams as his running mate -- someone who I like personally, but whose position on abortion differs from mine), I could only start to believe at least some of the many other charges of resume falsification and financial irregularity were true also. I know Dan Maes lied to me, so I don't trust him, and I don't understand how anyone else still can!

The other objection is some people don't trust Tom Tancredo, and think he's a closet liberal. I laughed the first time I heard this. I got concerned when I saw some of the charges made by Maes supporters about Tancredo, and I looked into them. Some of these charges didn't make me happy. But overall, Tom Tancredo's record is consistently -- even stunningly! -- conservative. I have no worries that Tancredo is a "tax and spend" liberal, as some of these people charge. I was right the first time -- the charge is laughable.

Everyone who's been around Colorado politics for long knows that Tom Tancredo and Bob Schaffer were our most conservative representatives in Washington DC for many years -- they generally voted the same -- and until Doug Lamborn got to Congress Tancredo probably had Colorado's most conservative voting record ever! The National Taxpayer's Union measures fiscally conservative votes in Congress, and rates Congressmen on their votes. Tancredo's worst rating ever was in 2008, when he got 77% from NTU (which still ranked him as the 51st most conservative member of Congress!). In his 10 years in DC, Tancredo was ranked for 5 years as one of the top 5 MOST conservative Congressmen in the whole House of Representatives (i.e. in 2001 he was ranked 3rd out of 435!). Colorado's local affiliate of the NTU is the Colorado Union of Taxpayers (CUT). In 1977-78, when Tancredo was in the legislature, he rated 100% with CUT. He was always in the top 15 most fiscally conservative legislators, and many of those other legislators who have earned top rankings from CUT over the years are supporters of Tom Tancredo. At least 2 members of CUT's board of directors are listed on Tom's endorsement page. I can find no CUT board members on Dan Maes' endorsement list. The charge that Tancredo isn't conservative enough is silly. A few bad choices (which only dropped him to 77% with the NTU) cannot outweigh his years of fiscally conservative leadership.

Lastly, some question Tancredo's ethics for having presented us with a confusing range of political choices this year. First he was in, then he was out, then he was in again... Many fault him for not winning through the Republican primary, but I believe I understand what happened. He was not being "underhanded" as many charge. He was doing what he felt was the best choice at each moment. I'm no close friend of Tom's, though I did get to spend some very revealing personal time with him in Philadelphia in 2000, which made me really like and trust him. But I've had occasion to speak with him in private at different times, and it's only reinforced my feelings of trust in him. With that insight as a guide, here is what I believe happened, to explain his seemingly odd behavior:

Tancredo didn't want either Scott McInnis or Maes as Governor (he apparently picked up things about Maes early on that others like me didn't recognize -- either that he wasn't qualified or had serious problems in his background). Tancredo figured he and Josh Penry would split the conservative vote (Penry was the conservative "golden child" back then, though his luster has been tarnished by his own behavior during the 2010 campaign), so Tancredo dropped out to avoid being a spoiler. Shortly afterward (to my memory), Penry was also talked into leaving. Having no better choices, Tancredo backed a qualified but not-so-conservative McInnis after getting certain promises from him, because he figured he was better than an unqualified Maes. McInnis pressured him to attack third parties to prevent defections (i.e. a well-publicized article where Tancredo said the Tea Party shouldn't mount a third-party challenger), and Tancredo went along because he hadn't considered third parties viable. Then the plagiarism scandal hit McInnis hard, and it looked like Maes might pull off the nomination. Tancredo offered to rejoin the Republican primary, but since most of us still trusted Maes, no one listened. And so Tancredo went to the Constitution Party. In the end, Tancredo may have been the only one who saw all this coming, and I believe he decided unselfishly at every point.

Tancredo helped found the Independence Institute -- one of the nation's foremost watchdogs on fiscal and civil liberties issues -- and served as its president. Tom Tancredo is a reliable fiscal conservative, and has been his whole career in politics. One reason GOP insiders don't like him is he often refused to "play ball" when the President or GOP leadership asked him to vote for Republican-sponsored spending packages. Tancredo is also more trustworthy than Maes on issues protecting a Right to Life for the unborn, because both Tancredo and his running mate have endorsed Amendment 62, the Personhood Amendment.

We need Tom Tancredo's kind of leadership at the State Capitol. I urge all conservatives and all Republicans to vote for him, and not Dan Maes.

Don't Be That Guy!

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:13:00 +0000

When pro-life candidates who support the Personhood of the unborn child are pressed by the media or their own constituents to defend their beliefs, there's a temptation to go deer-in-the-headlights and back away from solid, principled positions.

DON'T BE THAT GUY!

When you take a principled position on any controversial issue, your political opponents and media gossiphounds are going to make it sound like an extreme position. "Why would you hold such an extreme position?!" they ask. There are two reactions, of course.

You could back away and say I don't hold that position -- distance yourself from the issue. And this is typical candidate behavior, isn't it? But what it does is leave the media and the general public with the conclusion that it WAS an extreme position (or you wouldn't have backed away, right?) and YOU once held it!

DON'T BE THAT GUY (or GAL)!

What's worse, many of your supporters probably support you because you once held that position. What are they to think when you back away? You've not only compromised on the principle which was their reason for supporting you, but you've also, by implication, called THEM extreme for holding the position you've backed away from!

DON'T BE THAT GUY!

The best reaction is to calmly and reasonably explain to the voter, or the media, why it's NOT an extreme position.

Ronald Reagan didn't back away or "run to the center" when challenged with tough questions about dearly held principles. He stuck to his guns, explained why the position was mainstream common sense, rather than extreme. And more often than not the public came to view his position as mainstream!

The Planned Parenthood Action Fund has recently illustrated this, in a fundraising letter. Referring to Tea Party nominees for the U.S. Senate, they charge, "They want to outlaw all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. Friend, their position was considered fringe and their candidates ludicrous just a few months ago. Now, they're mainstream." (ht Jill Stanek)

Planned Parenthood is simply recognizing the changing playing field. Five years ago, only a few pro-life activists knew what Personhood meant, and a majority of Americans supported a "right to choose." Two years ago, more than 50% of Americans (including women) identified themselves in polls as pro-life. Today, a broad range of voters and mainstream political candidates around the country are saying "I support the Personhood of the unborn child, and I believe abortion should be banned!" Pro-Life Personhood is now a mainstream political movement.

Because it's such a new concept, candidates who aren't carefully educated in how to respond to tough questions about rape/incest exceptions or birth control are tempted to run away from the issue, even if they once espoused it.

DON'T BE THAT GUY (or GAL)!

Colorado's U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck made this mistake recently. I'm still not 100% convinced he's changed his mind about anything (his campaign spokesman correctly explained his position to 9news.com recently, saying, "Buck believes life 'begins at conception,' so birth control methods that don't impact that (i.e. condoms, some forms of the pill) are fine with him. Others that would keep a fertilized egg from implanting like hormone-based birth control methods, some other forms of the pill, IUDs, RU-486 and what's known as the morning-after pill, are not supported by him." (Source: E-mail from Buck spokesman Owen Loftus to 9NEWS, Aug. 26)).

But the press said he'd changed his mind about supporting Colorado's Amendment 62 (the Personhood Amendment) and the best he could do was clarify that he supports Personhood in concept but hasn't taken a position on any state ballot initiatives. By not jumping on the accusation full-force, Buck allowed some voters to believe he's changed his mind, whether he really did or not. It's not helping with supporters, and it's not helping with moderates or independents, either, because whether or not he still holds that supposedly "extreme" position, everybody knows he once did.

Buck (or his campaign) blinked when he should have stood firm.

DON'T BE THAT GUY!

Simple talking points on Personhood:
1) Arguing for the Personhood of the unborn child is not extreme. Arguing for the continued deaths of 4,000 unborn children every day is extreme!

2) If abortion is murder (i.e. kills an unborn human individual with his/her own unique DNA), as I believe it is, then why would I support an exception just because that child was conceived as part of a rape? You can't punish an innocent Person for a crime committed against somebody else. The inalienable Right to Life for an innocent Person, as guaranteed in the Constitution (the 5th and 14th Amendments, and the Declaration of Independence too) applies, no matter the circumstances.

3) Only 1% of abortions are for rape or incest -- it's extremely rare. Almost every mom who has an abortion is traumatized or depressed by the experience. Adding an abortion to the crime of rape doesn't "comfort" the victim -- it only adds another trauma on top of the first. In cases of incest or date rape, the abortion often serves to shield the criminal from prosecution by covering up the crime. This allows the rapist (the child's father or relative) to continue an incestuous relationship instead of exposing the criminal.

4) No form of birth control would be affected unless it actually has the potential to kill a developing child after conception. If a candidate (or even a voter) believes that life begins at conception, and that all human life should be protected, then they should not have a problem with this. The amendment deals only with living human Persons, not with sperm or eggs before fertilization. Therefore, it cannot logically or legally affect anything other than an abortifacient form of birth control, whether that drug acts as an abortifacient as its primary purpose or has that effect as a secondary side effect. This would affect some forms of birth control, but if a form of birth control is properly called a "contraceptive" (i.e. meaning it acts by preventing conception) then it would not be affected.

5) In Vitro Fertilization would not be banned, but "surplus" embryos (developing human children) could not be "disposed of" -- they would have to be cared for and adopted out through programs such as the Snowflake Children.

I know this isn't something your typical candidate training prepared you for. I even know this may not be the "focus of your campaign." I know politicians have a gut instinct to run away when a voter or reporter accuses you of being extreme because you're 100% pro-life.

DON'T BE THAT GUY (or GAL)!

Being 100% pro-life, supporting Personhood, opposing abortion even in cases of rape or incest or for health** reasons is NOT extreme! It has become a mainstream position, and it is the position increasingly held by voters across the United States! Every month that passes and every year that passes, more Americans are coming to hold this very same principle as their own.

I work as a part-time political consultant and campaign consultant on a contract basis. I am happy to offer my time for 20 minutes free to any pro-Personhood candidate in any state who needs help on messaging for these issues. I'd also be glad to contract my time for $35/hr to anyone who needs more assistance in running or preparing a pro-life campaign (I'll work with anybody who pledges to support Personhood in their campaign). If you want to meet in person, or would like for me to speak at an event or engagement, let me know and we can make arrangements for time/travel, etc. Contact me via e-mail with your contact information: Coloconservative (at) aol.com (please put "Personhood Question" in the subject line).

Please also consider donating money to support candidates who hold a principled pro-life position (i.e. pro-Personhood), through my political website: ColoradoConservative.org.

Ed Hanks is a former speechwriter for the Governor of Colorado, a former Press Secretary in the Colorado House of Representatives, and has also served as a campaign consultant and constituent contact director.

**A note on "life of the mother exceptions": Many pro-lifers get stuck on the “life of the mother” exception, because it’s the most compelling of the “hard cases” exceptions some regulations are meant to address (how many times have we heard politicians recite the line, "I oppose abortion except for rape, incest, and the life of the mother"?). But we need not fall victim even to the life of the mother objection. The Personhood movement cares deeply about the lives of both, mother and child, especially since if the mother dies before the baby comes to term, the child will obviously die too. However, that doesn’t mean we need a “life of the mother exception” in law. Instead, the anti-abortion statute should be absolute. The life of the mother is saved by a doctor trying to save both lives (and thereby “do no harm”), not by a doctor trying to kill one patient in order to save the other. It’s the same concept as separating cojoined twins. The goal should always be to preserve both lives. This is not always possible, because of relative viability, and so sometimes one of the patients dies. The measure of crime or not is intent. If ever the doctor attempts to kill one patient, rather than save him/her, that’s where it becomes homicide. -- Ed Hanks

Analysis of GOP Primary Results

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:32:00 +0000

With the final results for the GOP August 10 Primary mostly totaled, we can look back and see how the election went in terms of pro-life, pro-Personhood candidates.

Overall, I see it as a big win for Personhood, despite a few unfortunate setbacks.

In two key primary races the pro-Personhood candidate lost. In the 3rd Congressional District Bob McConnell was one of the first candidates to return the Colorado Right to Life survey, and he affirmed support for Personhood. His opponent didn’t, hasn’t endorsed Personhood, and seems embarrassed by the whole “pro-life” aspect of the campaign, though he claims to be pro-life. But Scott Tipton won, and pro-lifers need to reach out to him and insist that he publicly support Personhood. Tipton’s already lost a race to Democrat John Salazar once, and he will need the support of the pro-life community to win. He’s got work to do, and he can start by publicly endorsing Amendment 62.

In the 6th State Senate District, in southwestern Colorado, there was an important race for State Senate between pro-Personhood Dean Boehler and pro-abortion Ellen Roberts. It looked like Boehler was going to win, but then liberal special interests spent more than $40,000 in 527 money attacking him and promoting his opponent. Plus his opponent outspent him with her own funds. These special interests included groups connected with the pro-Obamacare, pro-abortion Colorado Medical Society. Ellen Roberts is the most pro-abortion Republican in the Legislature today, and so the pro-abortion medical interests will win no matter who wins this race. It’s best if the pro-abort winner is “their pro-abort” (i.e. a Democrat) not “our pro-abort” (a Republican), because that will make it easier to put a pro-lifer into that seat in 4 years.

Also, in Denver’s moderate southwest State Senate district, pro-Personhood CJ Garbo lost to a moderate Republican whose views we don’t know.

But everywhere else, pro-Personhood candidates prevailed over their opponents in hotly contested primaries.

The biggest victory for Personhood today was Ken Buck, for U.S. Senate. Opponent Jane Norton had endorsed Personhood, and generally had a pro-life record, but on her website she endorsed abortion in cases of rape and incest, which is a stand entirely opposed to the concept of Personhood. Ken Buck endorsed Personhood early on, and has been a reliable voice in favor of protecting all life at the beginning of its biological development.

Americans United for Life – a pro-compromise, establishment pro-life group – had endorsed Jane Norton. That was the first endorsement of any candidate that organization had made in four decades. Why did they endorse her? Because of Colorado Right to Life and the Personhood movement! AUL realized that if the winner of the primary for the U.S. Senate was a candidate who supported the Personhood strategy, instead of their compromised regulation strategy, it would be the beginning of the end for their control over the regulatory process. Why would they make this their first endorsement ever, in any state in all of history? Why prefer a candidate with exceptions over a candidate who would protect the life of the unborn from conception forward -- NO exceptions? Ironically, Americans United for Life endorsed Jane Norton specifically because she wasn't 100% pro-life! This was a key race for them – for all the marbles – and they lost. Personhood won.

Another key victory was in the Governor’s race, where we now know there will be two candidates on the November ballot who support Personhood – Dan Maes and Tom Tancredo. Scott McInnis had endorsed Personhood, and even told me in person that if a Personhood bill crossed his desk he would sign it, but there were always doubts on our side if he was serious, or just putting us on. Now we don’t have to worry about it. I’ve spoken with Dan Maes about Personhood myself, after some comments he made that caused us to doubt, and I came away assured that he was serious – he will support Personhood.

As for Tom Tancredo, who I’m betting will stay in the race until the end, his best chance for victory was Dan Maes winning. If McInnis had won, he would probably have been forced out and replaced by a “safe” Republican with lots of money or name recognition, or both. Such a candidate could be relied upon to get a large percentage of the vote. As it is, there are a lot of Republicans who don’t think Dan Maes can win (I disagree), and so those voters will go to Tancredo. Ever since Tancredo first entered the race I have encouraged a “40% solution.” It’s possible Tancredo could get as little as 10% of the vote, and that could allow Dan Maes to win the Governor’s race with only 46% of the vote (split 46-44). But I don’t think that’s realistic. Dan Maes is either going to prove himself and be a strong candidate, or he’ll slip up and be a weak one. Either way, I believe Tancredo will get at least 15-20% of the vote. This means the path to victory is getting 40% or more of the vote. The winner would get 41%, holding Hickenlooper to 40%, with the spoiler getting 19%. It remains to be seen whether the winner might be Tancredo or Maes, but the requirement for either to win must be to hold Hickenlooper to 40%. That’s possible ONLY if both Maes and Tancredo spend their time talking about conservative principles and beating up on Hickenlooper, not on each other. If they fight each other, they’re just trading conservative votes with each other – the winner will have to expand the number of conservative voters by talking about principles and common sense.

Despite his claims, Ryan Frazier, the winner of the 7th Congressional District primary, is not pro-life. He says he’s personally pro-life, but the government should stay out. It’s worth extending an offer to talk, and see if he’s willing to make a solid commitment for Personhood, but it will be difficult to trust any such commitment.

Nevertheless, three of the seven candidates for districts in Congress are on record as supporting Personhood – Cory Gardner, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman – and there’s a chance either Tipton or Frazier may join with us later.

In the State House, a critical primary in a three way race was won by pro-Personhood Chris Holbert, who just barely beat a pro-abortion opponent with lots of money. He’s in a safe district, and his election in November is pretty much assured.

Another State House primary was won by pro-Personhood Ray Scott over his opponent who was widely believed to be pretending to be conservative, and who refused to sign on with Personhood.

In the State Senate, two Personhood candidates defeated their opponents. Kevin Grantham in Pueblo and Canon City won against a pro-abortion opponent. And in Pueblo itself Vera Ortegon won easily against her opponent who supported Personhood but who also had rape & incest exceptions.

Overall, 11 out of 19 Republicans running for the State Senate this year are pro-Personhood, and there may be more we don’t know about, or who will sign on later.

And in the House 17 out of 65 candidates are on record as supporting Personhood, but probably twice that actually do, and just haven’t gone on record.

Compared to just 2 years ago, there are probably twice as many candidates for the Legislature who are supporting Personhood and most of the Republicans at the top of the ticket (Senate, Governor, Congress) are supporting Personhood now whereas very few did so just 2 years ago.

The whole game has changed with regard to Personhood. With these key Republican figures supporting Personhood, it’s likely Amendment 62 will also do much better at the ballot box in November.

As a final note, as of Wednesday morning, please say a prayer for Georgia. The runoff for Governor of Georgia remains too close to call. Georgia Right to Life is a pro-Personhood ally, and they endorsed four of the five candidates for Governor in Georgia as pro-life, which to them means pro-Personhood. Karen Handel was the only Republican candidate who didn’t support Personhood, and she was one of two candidates in the August 10 Runoff. Handel also gave $1.2 million to Planned Parenthood as a county commissioner, and now claims she “had to” because they were supposedly the only vendor for womens’ health care. Her opponent, Nathan Deal, is pro-Personhood, and he has some ethics issues dogging him, but he remains the only candidate in the runoff who is pro-life.

The Folly of the "Big Tent"

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:06:00 +0000

Here's my response to a blogger who was pushing for the "Big Tent" for the Republican Party. It was the typical argument -- we can't win without the support of whole bunches of people who don't normally vote for the GOP, we can make more progress by building coalitions than by dividing into little groups, etc. It made alot of sense, of course, but also missed a critical dynamic in party and election politics.

I was discussing abortion politics, but the same argument could be made in favor of fiscally conservative politics, etc. But fiscally conservative politics cannot make up for offending and getting rid of moral conservatives. Bob Schaffer tried that in 2008 (stupidly, since he lost many Christian supporters while liberals remembered he had always been pro-life - he lost votes from his base without picking up any on the other side, which is the same problem the GOP in general faces), and Schaffer fell on his face.

My response:

I used to believe in a "big tent," but I've since learned its folly. Without principles, we get nowhere. Reagan didn't offer us a big tent -- he offered us principles, which were broadly appealing and which inspired those who might not otherwise agree with him to vote for him.

There was once a "big tent" party -- the Whigs -- which tried to appeal to northerners and southerners alike by not taking strong stands on controversial issues like slavery. Do you know what happened to them? Probably not, because unless you study the history of the period no one even remembers who they were. In actuality, they split into two parties.

Did both parties lose? Did both of these "third parties" devastate themselves by shedding the big tent, leaving their major party behind, and dividing over matters of misguided principles?

No. One of those parties -- the Republican Party -- came to dominate the politics of the next several decades. For 70 years, in fact, and for a great portion of the century afterward, too.

They stood on a major principle -- opposition to slavery -- which held such a broad appeal that they succeeded where the wishy-washy "big tent" party failed.

The Republican Party today has the opportunity to stand on another major, unifying principle which could inspire them to victory. They could pledge to ban abortion and recognize the Personhood of the unborn child so he or she is not considered property like the slaves.

The Republican Party will succeed or die on this principle. Any attempts to remove the pro-life principle from the platform (which is what "big tent" means, in almost all cases), will destroy the party so that a half-century from today the Republican Party will be as well known as the Whigs are today.

Those "divisive" Christian Conservatives are the base of the Republican Party (and, from what I've found, the base of the Tea Party conservatives too) -- they've handed victory to the GOP in 5 of the last 8 presidential elections, but they're feeling ignored and betrayed. The Republicans can take them or leave them. If they leave them, they will energize another party and make them victorious instead.

Personhood Works, Regulations Don't

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:19:00 +0000

This is a more coherent recap & expansion on my earlier blog post on regulations, and why they undermine the Personhood of the unborn child -- "How We Compromise Ourselves."

I do not question the well-meaning intentions of those legislators who support, or even write, compromise legislation which tries to put limits on abortion in circumstances where a total abortion ban is not realistically possible. We can argue later about which is more "politically realistic" (I think Personhood is, still). But the fact that I believe in the good intentions of the pro-life regulators does not mean that I don't care whether they stop pushing regulations -- I do! -- or that I approve of what they're doing -- I don't! -- or that I will always continue to support regulation-minded legislators if they continue to ignore warnings about the unintended consequences of what they do.

I think the main thing “pro-life regulators” need to understand is that, whether or not Personhood is "practical" in a legal sense (which is the main objection of those pro-lifers who oppose the Personhood strategy, including Archbishop Charles Chaput and Clarke Forsythe of AUL), our primary problem as pro-lifers is that we've been making the wrong argument -- one which won't "change peoples' hearts" (which everybody agrees is the goal).

The regulations may teach some people about the Right to Life, but more often (esp. for wishy-washy or "moderate" citizens, who are the ones we need to convince in order to succeed in passing legislation or electing legislators) regulations only suggest a "moderate" solution exists for what they are led to believe is a policy question -- where do you draw the line?

Let me restate that.

Regulations clearly “suggest” to a citizen observer that there’s a policy question, to which there are “extreme” solutions (to right or left) and “moderate” solutions. Typical American citizens being who they are, almost all of the people in this category (i.e. the moderate, middle-of-the-road people who don’t often think about policy issues, but when they do they try to find a middle ground, striving never to seem “extreme”) will seek the middle ground – the moderate way – and won’t see the larger implications of the issue at hand.

The argument pro-lifers need to make -- and Personhood makes this argument 100% of the time, while regulations may succeed in making it only 30% of the time -- is that there is an actual Right to Life which is inalienable as a principle, and may not be violated for any reason. That message comes through with Personhood, and it's making progress.

I’ll restate that too.

Personhood “suggests” to a citizen observer that abortion is most certainly NOT a policy question with a spectrum of possible solutions, but is rather a question of principles. Two principles, as it happens – either pro-life or pro-abortion. When the abortion “question” is posed as a principle, and not as a policy question, Americans are actually more likely to choose life instead of death.

Polls show something like 80-90% of Americans believe “there is a God,” even if most of them may not call themselves Christian or correctly follow the teachings of the true God. Believing in God suggests an absolute moral standard, and when the abortion question is measured against an absolute moral standard, very few Americans want to be caught on the wrong, or immoral, side. Since they’re forced to choose between a principle of “abortion is right and moral” versus “abortion is always wrong” one option stands out as more correct and more moral than the other.

That’s the “practical” reason why pro-lifers must reject regulations and embrace the Personhood strategy. The Personhood strategy accomplishes what we want to accomplish – a changing of hearts and minds in society – whereas regulations are far less effective in accomplishing the change we want.

Our message always gets muddled when we're talking about regulations, because every regulation inherently denies there is a Right to Life (if there were an inalienable, inviolable Right to Life, then there's nothing to regulate!).

Consider this line from the text of Roe v. Wade: "Endnote 54: When Texas urges that a fetus is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment protection as a person, it faces a dilemma. Neither in Texas nor in any other State are all abortions prohibited. Despite broad proscription, an exception always exists. The exception contained in Art. 1196, for an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother, is typical. But if the fetus is a person who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law, and if the mother's condition is the sole determinant, does not the Texas exception appear to be out of line with the Amendment's command?"

The US Supreme Court in 1972/73 didn't simply lay a roadmap for pro-lifers by noting that if you establish Personhood in law, you can protect the unborn as Persons. They also highlighted the logical error in the "pro-life with exceptions" mentality.

The key point is this: The Supreme Court logically concluded that because Texas had an exception to their anti-abortion statute*, Texas could not simultaneously argue that an unborn child was a Person under their law, because the two concepts – a regulation vs. a principle – are contradictory. The regulation always denies the principle, so if there exists a regulation, then the principle must not be the law of the land. It’s simple logic.

Ed Hanks

* A note on "life of the mother exceptions": Many pro-lifers get stuck on the “life of the mother” exception, because it’s the most compelling of the “hard cases” exceptions some regulations are meant to address (how many times have we heard politicians recite the line, "I oppose abortion except for rape, incest, and the life of the mother"?). But we need not fall victim even to the life of the mother objection. The Personhood movement cares deeply about the lives of both, mother and child, especially since if the mother dies before the baby comes to term, the child will obviously die too. However, that doesn’t mean we need a “life of the mother exception” in law. Instead, the anti-abortion statute should be absolute. The life of the mother is saved by a doctor trying to save both lives (and thereby “do no harm”), not by a doctor trying to kill one patient in order to save the other. It’s the same concept as separating cojoined twins. The goal should always be to preserve both lives. This is not always possible, because of relative viability, and so sometimes one of the patients dies. The measure of crime or not is intent. If ever the doctor attempts to kill one patient, rather than save him/her, that’s where it becomes homicide.

My Reply to Westword's "Screw the Abortion Debate"

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Westword commentator J. David McSwane wrote a humor piece meant to mock the Personhood movement. I had to throw in my comments, which are below his comments and the link to his article.

It's interesting to note that I actually agree with him on one thing -- Personhood folk scouring the streets for your signature are working to set forth a series of events that will alter the course of human history!

"Screw the abortion debate: Here's why a personhood amendment could mean armageddon"
(briefly excerpted, then linked, to Westword - Denver's hyper-liberal alternative paper)
by J. David McSwane

Personhood USA, a national pro-life group, is gathering signatures in Colorado (again) to secure a spot on the ballot for a voter initiative to redefine the start of a person's life as the first point of biological development.

Weird, right? You have no idea.

Most people think abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade is the greatest thing at stake if the amendment makes the grade. But this effort jeopardizes far more than that: It actually threatens to alter time and space as we think we know it. We could very well be spiraling toward the apocalypse.

What the religious folk scouring the streets for your signature don't realize is they're toying with a force far greater than any divisive abortion debate. They are, in fact, working to set forth a series of events that will alter the course of human history.

To read the rest of his story, go here: http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/03/screw_the_abortion_debate_here.php

My Comment:

You know, David, at my church our pastor actually teaches this -- that we're really 9 months older than we thought we were. And it's had some mind-blowing, conception-changing (excuse the pun!) effects. We start thinking of the living, moving, developing baby inside as something more -- something, well... something living, moving and developing!

We start thinking of our unborn children as our grandfathers and forefathers thought of them -- as a cherished member of the family, just one we can't talk to yet (except through the womb membranes -- you know scientists say unborn children learn, don't you, in relation to the degree their mothers read to them or play music for them in the womb?).

What's more, we KNOW the world won't blow up when we suddenly realize there are more people among us than we thought. Why? Because it's happened before. When the Census circulators in 1860 took their survey, they undercounted black people as only 3/5 of a person, because that's what the law said they were (and the Supreme Court affirmed this, just like Roe v. Wade) -- it wasn't until the Constitutional Amendments of 1865 that black people were granted Personhood under the law.

So there's precedent! Not only do we know that the world won't blow up, but we know that human and civil rights movements eventually prevail if people stop thinking just about what the law says, and more about right and wrong and what the law SHOULD say in order to conform to what's right!

How We Compromise Ourselves: A Warning To Pro-Lifers

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:09:00 +0000

The author is a former political speechwriter and press secretary with much experience in politics and the reading and analysis of legislation, and also operated a political correspondence office at the Capitol where he read every letter addressed to the Governor for a number of years -- a very helpful education in learning how people think and why...

For many years now, I have warned against “compromised incrementalism” – the mistaken belief that we “move the ball forward” or “save some babies now so that others may be saved later” by pushing for compromise legislation.

This legislation may be framed as great legislation by well-meaning Christian legislators, but it may have unintended consequences of devastating proportions!

I first spoke out publicly about this in December of 2006, with a column published in WorldNetDaily.com – A Growing Split in the Pro-Life Community (which, coincidentally, was the starting point and first post of this blog). In short, I pointed out that the idea of a law requiring abortionists to administer anesthesia so an aborted baby would not feel pain is heinously perverted in its implications.

Since then, the anti-compromise faction of the pro-life movement (now recognized largely as the Personhood Movement, with proposals for Personhood Amendments now active in 40 states) has persevered, educated, and brought a growing number of pro-lifers to recognize a shift in our perceived mission – a return to emphasis on the Right to Life, rather than merely trying to place curbs and cautions on the institution of legalized abortion.

Are they a majority of pro-lifers now? It wouldn’t surprise me. I've met and spoken with dozens of recent converts -- people who once supported compromised regulations (as did I) but have forever changed their minds, and will refuse to ever support one again. I know of several legislators (from other states than my own, sadly) who have made this conversion themselves. Alabama's Judge Roy Moore has, also, and who better to understand the legal argument from a Christian perspective?!

But pro-life leadership and pro-life legislators are slow to recognize the sea change. Many of them either fully support, or give lip service to, the Personhood movement, and to Personhood Amendments, while their hearts and minds still believe Personhood is too forward-thinking, and they want to remain in their comfortable world of political compromise legislation.

They fail to realize that by supporting compromise legislation, they do two things:

1) They undermine the public perception of a Right to Life – they instead build a perception that there are “good” abortions and “bad” abortions and that proper regulation will end the abuses and socially-negative consequences of more gruesome abortion procedures while “compassionately” leaving those forms of abortion which our society finds necessary and useful.

Average Americans, being average Americans, are always seeking the middle ground, and this political debate allows them to participate in a process of finding it, while no one who’s not an activist on one side or the other of the issue realizes that this is fundamentally a question of principle – one side is right, the other is wrong, and it’s the public duty to find it!

Constantly pushing for compromise legislation prevents the general public from ever having to really deal with the principle in question, and keeps most from realizing the argument is about principle at all!

2) According to Dr. Charles Rice, a legal professor at Notre Dame University, laws such as parental notification laws, “abortion-ultrasound” laws, late-term abortion bans, etc. actually build a legal framework to protect the institution of abortion. They establish a legal status, by implication, for abortion – a judge looks at a law which puts legal limits on abortion, and the obvious legal/logical implication is that unless the specified limits apply in a situation, then abortion is clearly legal!

Dr. Rice believes that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, many of these “pro-life” laws on the books today would become the enabling language for pro-aborts and judges to prove that abortion is legal in those states.

Imagine that – pro-abortion liberals refusing to repeal a “pro-life” parental notification law because it establishes in law that abortion is legal so long as a parent agrees to the minor child’s abortion!

Any time you argue in law that “…abortion is illegal unless you do this…” you are simultaneously leaving the assumption that “…if you do this, then abortion IS legal…” These types of law are called “and then you can kill the baby” laws. “If the mother views an ultrasound of her unborn baby, and signs a release stating she’s seen it, then she can kill her baby.” “If a minor child has the approval or her parent, guardian, or a judge, then she can kill her baby.”

Laws such as abortion-ultrasound laws automatically imply that a woman has a right to decide to kill her own living, moving, growing unborn child if she so chooses!!!

The more of these laws that exist on the books – “pro-life” laws which end with “and then you can kill the baby” - the stronger the case for legal abortion is. You cannot regulate something that’s not legal – that’s a legal truism. If it’s not legal, there’s no reason to regulate it, therefore if it’s regulated under the law it is by definition legal.

Pro-life legislators are unwittingly writing the death sentences for millions of babies by writing legislation intended to "save some babies" because they don't think we can realistically save the rest!

Plus, all this time, while we argue about where to draw the line between legal abortions and illegal abortions, we’re failing to teach the general public that all abortions kill an innocent child, and therefore abortion is always wrong.

Recognition of the Personhood of the unborn child is not just our best option, and not just our final goal. It is the ONLY answer, and must be our ONLY goal. Supporting compromised legislation, at best, is one step forward, two steps back -- it undermines a public belief in the Right to Life. It makes our job so much harder when we try to convince society that our Right to Life is God-given and inalienable.

Why don't these laws automatically shock us? Why do we fail to recognize the unintended consequences?

Our problem is this. We have become so comfortable with abortion – just as one generation of Germans was comfortable with “solving” the Jewish “problem” and many generations of Americans were comfortable with the “peculiar institution” of slavery – we’ve ceased to think of abortion as comparable to the Holocaust or slavery.

Yes, our intellectual mind makes the comparison, but our emotional reactions are different, because we’re so “close” to the problem. We know it's legal, so we feel powerless to say it's murder (just as Christians in Germany failed to recognize that legalized extermination was murder).

We fail to be properly "shocked" at how bad legal language is. It seems to us that "of course we must acknowledge it's legal, because it IS!" By writing ANYTHING into law which states or leaves a legal implication that abortion is legal only builds the foundations of legalized abortion.

To show ourselves what's really going on -- in order to feel properly "shocked" -- it’s necessary to compare abortion to other evils of history, or else we won’t realize how wicked our “pro-life” laws may actually be. Replace unborn child, in the language, with Jew, or replace abortion with extermination by gassing. Replace the regulation of abortion with the regulation of anything else which we know in our hearts is wrong, wrong, WRONG! Then we will see...

Do we want pro-life legislators signing their names and reputations to bills which say you can only perform an abortion in the first trimester? This is the moral equivalent of passing a law saying slavery is prohibited in Maine, but slavery is a legally protected institution in Texas. Congressmen, in the 1850s, actually passed compromised laws like this – what do we think of those legislators today? Do we consider them anti-slavery, or does history judge them as having perpetuated the institution of slavery? In case you’re wondering, the judgment of history upon these men is not favorable.

So, as an exercise, I’ve substituted the language of an actual proposed Colorado law – one strongly backed by Colorado’s pro-life legislators – with language which purports to “protect” Jews in Nazi Germany. See what you think. Would you sign your name to this law? Would you vote for it? Would you really be willing to “save some Jews” by affirmatively underscoring a legal status for killing others???

A Modest Proposal…

Please note before reading: This “proposed law” is a work of political satire, and is meant to be read as a warning to Christian and pro-life legislators and their supporters that they may be playing into the hands of the enemy because of the wording they use in their proposed legislation.

No ill will toward Jews or "well-meaning but compromised" legislators is meant by this – certainly, just the opposite.

The majority of the text is unimportant, or has irrelevant scope, and so is not included here.

A Bill for an Act
Concerning the Protection of Jews from Unreasonable Death
Making an appropriation in connection therewith

Bill Summary

The bill creates a new statutory part that addresses the fatal consequences of persecution upon Jewish residents in the state and includes the following crimes:

- Murder of an adult Jew
- Voluntary manslaughter of an adult Jew

An adult Jew is defined as 16 years or older. The bill describes acts that do not constitute crimes under the new part.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the Third Reich

….

Part 5 – Protection of Jews Act

Acts not an offense [this is where the law specifies its scope, and what it does NOT prohibit]: This part 5 shall not apply to:

a) Acts that cause the death of an adult Jew if those acts are committed during a legal extermination procedure to which a Nazi magistrate has signed a notice of intent, or a person authorized by law to exterminate Jews;
b) Acts committed by one Jew against another Jew;
c) Acts that are committed pursuant to usual and customary standards of extermination in an authorized, controlled facility designed for that purpose;

Definitions. As used in this Part 5, unless the context otherwise requires, “Adult Jew” means a Jew whose stage of development has reached or surpassed sixteen years since birth, such that he or she may contribute, voluntarily or involuntarily, to the State.

Murder of an Adult Jew. A person who causes the death of an adult Jew, without lawful justification, is guilty of Murder of an Adult Jew if he or she: …

…

Voluntary manslaughter of an Adult Jew. A person who causes the death of an adult Jew, without lawful justification, is guilty of Voluntary Manslaughter of an Adult Jew if he or she…

Etc. etc. etc.
…

THE END
(there! you've "saved some Jews!")

Note: This “proposed legislation” is very closely modeled on an actual “pro-life” bill proposed as law in Colorado – HB 10-1261 – by well-meaning (but misled) pro-life legislators.

I have highlighted passages that should shock any moral person – examples of how this law acknowledges and supports the legality of other forms of evil, even while stopping others. Every highlighted passage above – the ones meant to shock a reasonable, moral human being – has its equivalent in the proposed “pro-life” bill, which was meant to enact a “fetal homicide” provision into state law (note that not all fetal homicide or other incremental legislation is compromised - it depends how it's worded).

Please note, specifically, that the part under "definitions" in this law sets an age limit to the law, meaning that even though the law prohibits the murder of Jews above age 16, it specifically does not prohibit murder of Jews of less than 16 years. The actual proposed law in Colorado has equivalent language, basically saying the fetal homicide is not considered fetal homicide before 16 weeks of development, which inherently places less value (i.e. less humanity) upon an unborn child of 15 weeks than is acknowledged for older children. Placing relative value upon one life versus another is inherently wicked -- these lives are seen as equal in God's eyes, and government has no right to determine relative value in contradiction to God's law.

No More Freedom of the Press?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:26:00 +0000

Unfortunately, much of my "blogging" these days takes place on Facebook (under Ed Hanks), and so it doesn't appear here. But every once in a while a fascinating discussion comes along which deserves to be here too. Here's one about Obama and Freedom of the Press, along with some commentary, and my response.

I then posted a link to an article about how the White House Communications Director was "explaining" (bragging) that Obama's press office "controlled" the media. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113347

Now, as a former Speechwriter and Press Secretary, I'm very well aware that this is the ideal goal of any press secretary -- to "control" what the media says about their candidate or official. But I felt this went a step too far.

A man named David Guenthner, a former reporter and longtime PR professional who's currently Director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, responded. I hope he doesn't mind my hijacking his words -- they WERE posted on MY Facebook page, so I feel entitled. Besides, in the thread of comments I ended up agreeing with him, to a large degree, and he posted that he agreed with me. So this is more education than debate, fueled by two PR hands...

David's Comment:

This is much ado about very little. What's discussed as "control" in the headline and the quote is actually message discipline. If you're in a prominent enough position where you have reporters dedicated to covering you (e.g., president or governor), it is your job to put your guy and your story of the day in the news to the greatest extent possible. Limiting access and the number of people authorized to speak on behalf of the administration or the campaign is an appropriate tactic -- and can be effective unless it is overused.

My Response:

David, you're a PR professional, and so you know what you're talking about. I've been a PR professional too, and I understand exactly what you mean, and I agree so far as that goes.

But Obama has crossed a line, and camped out there, where no one before has had the nerve or disregard of press freedom to camp. Clinton did use this tactic to great effect at times, but only for limited projects or periods of time. The press wouldn't let him get away with it. The fact that Helen Thomas (of ALL people!) identified and expressed shock at the Obama Administration's behavior is a sign that it's not business as usual -- not normal political hardball, but a crossing of the Rubicon -- because it's become policy.

Obama's Administration has determined that anyone who doesn't cooperate gets locked out. The press is already half-willing to let this happen. They're addicted. If they don't have that constant hourly news-feed, they can't feed the people. So they're at Obama's mercy, to a point. Obama's feeling his way with this, and if we allow him to get away with it, there is a serious possibility it could morph into a de facto loss of freedom of the press. State control of the mass media, even if there's no way they can control alternative or web media.

But just wait... Obama's reputed to be working on ways to control web media, too! And conservative radio! And if he has those, he's got mass media AND alternative media under state control. Very dangerous, even if it seems "natural" to trained media professionals like you and me who've become inured to hardball politics.

...

Then, David posted this thoughtful link to a Newsbusters story:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-philbin/2009/10/21/morning-joe-fox-feud-administration-really-playing-rest-media

A great exchange, all around!

EDIT (additional thoughts from me, on this point):

I'm reminded of how things have changed in the Senate, with regard to court appointments.

Time was, the President's nominees to the federal bench, Supreme Court or otherwise, received 100 out of 100 votes. To see otherwise was an exception to the rule.

The way they were to be judged was on the basis of whether they were qualified. Whether or not the senator agreed with the nominee on political issues was NOT to be the basis for determining a yes or no vote. That just wasn't done, as the court was meant to be non-factional and non-partisan (though that was a polite fiction, starting even from the early days of the Republic).

With the most obvious exception of Felix Frankfurter, I believe, in FDR's time, this was the way the Senate operated up until about Pres. Reagan's time (if there are previous signal examples, I'm not aware of them). It was then, with nominees like Bork and Thomas, when the Democrats first inserted political aims into the nomination process, and they've kept it up ever since (and the Republicans have joined in, after the fact, though to hear the media talk the Republicans started it).

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I don't think the non-partisan process did Republicans any good. Look at O'Connor, and the fact that 90% of GOP appointees to the federal bench are pro-abortion, and not very conservative in any respect. I believe judges should be chosen not because they are "qualified" (i.e. can apply precedent and follow process -- that's a system that has ill served champions of justice and truth), but because they have the courage to choose rightly what will serve justice. But that's beside the point for this discussion.

I mention this example here simply because it's analogous -- this was "standard ethical practice" in government, up until someone was willing to violate the process and insert politics into a supposedly non-political system. Obama has now taken this same step in his relationship to the news media. "Pay to Play" so to speak.

State of the Library Today

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:43:00 +0000

When did libraries change?

When I was a kid, the librarians would talk sternly to a kid if they made a peep, and so they didn't. Kids were expected to be in a small "kid's corner" of the library, and if they came out they were ushered back in so they didn't bother the patrons.

And patrons would look sternly at parents who didn't control their kids, and parents back then actually cared whether their kids were bothering people, so they disciplined the kids and the kids remained quiet.

Today, the parents don't care who their kids bother, and they wander throughout the whole library, and the librarians blissfully remain without regard for what kids do because who can control kids? But the librarians look like they want to talk sternly to the adults if they don't push their chairs in or if your cellphone buzzes.

Discipline the adults for cellphones. Ignore the kids if they scream.

This is why Librarians for Obama bumper stickers are redundant -- they share the exact same worldview and perverted vision for society.

The Lesser of Two Evils

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:42:00 +0000

If someone, say, in Denver (Democrat territory) votes for a Republican, have they "wasted their vote"? That can't be our definition -- voting for someone who has no chance of winning -- or a republic instead becomes a tyranny of the majority. We waste our vote anytime we vote for someone who believes things that we know to be unconscionable, simply because "the other guy" is more unconscionable. The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Who Passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:36:00 +0000

In that same issue of the Front Range Rampart, I published a surprising expose' about the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- things that I looked up in the Congressional Record and saw with my own eyes that directly contradicted everything my professors and high school teachers had taught about that legislation!

• In 1964, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, 258-177 in the House, and 67-33 in the Senate. The House passed the Civil Rights Act 290-130, and the Senate passed it 73-27. [I think where I was going here is to prove that at least some Republicans voted for it, since there were more votes than the total number of Democrats -- the next facts, though, emphasize just how FEW of the votes were from Democrats!]

• 48 % – nearly half – of the total votes in favor of the Act in the House were from Republicans

• More than a third of the Democrats voted “no” – a far higher proportion than for Republicans

• Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen was the driving force behind successful passage.

• Approximately 80 % of Republicans in each house voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act

• Approximately 75 % of the total votes against the Civil Rights Act in both houses were cast by Democrats

• Nearly 100 House Democrats voted against the Act

• Some supporters of interest:
Rep. Don Rumsfeld (R-IL)
Rep. Bob Dole (R-KS)
Rep. Gerald Ford (R-MI)
Rep. Robert Taft Jr. (R-OH)
Sen. Gordon Allott (R-CO)
Sen. Peter Dominick (R-CO)

Interview With a Black Republican - Arniter Jamison (2005)

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:53:00 +0000

Today on Facebook, I posted a quote -- part of a pro-life campaign for the month of March. I just placed the quote for today in my "status" on Facebook. And people from both sides (I have alot of conservative and alot of liberal activists as "friends" on Facebook) started bickering about it. It caused a little bit of a firestorm.

The quote was this: Abortion has affected the Black community more than slavery itself. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the Black vote will be insignificant. -Abort73

Now, I thought that was a little strong when I first saw it. But I thought about it. The Right to Life is more important than the Right to Freedom -- without life, you have neither. Black slaves in America had a positive population growth even after the slave trade ended, which means that more Blacks were being born in America than were dying. Considering that 50 million Americans have died since 1967 from abortion, and most of those were Black, it becomes an easy realization -- American Blacks have been more deeply impacted by abortion than by slavery.

So, as part of my response to the firestorm (I'm exaggerating -- most of the feedback was in favor of the quote, from pro-lifers, but some people challenged my right to speak on the issue (that's what liberals do -- I respect your right to state your opinion, but I don't think you should say things like that!)) I'm going to reprint here an interview I published in my newspaper, The Front Range Rampart. By some coincidence, this issue of the newspaper was published exactly 4 years ago -- March 4, 2005.

Arniter Jamison is a longtime friend of mine and my wife's. My wife is Black, and we became members of the Colorado Black Republican Forum (CBRF). Arniter Jamison is a strong woman who once marched in civil rights events with CORE and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and who today pursues the same basic mission of freedom and liberty and equality as Communications Director for the Colorado Black Republican Forum.

Interview: Arniter Jamison

Communications Director, Colorado Black Republicans
(reprinted from the March 4, 2005 edition of the Front Range Rampart)

by Ed Hanks

As a child, Arniter Jamison grew up in the South – a girl with dark skin in a world controlled by whites. But you couldn’t keep her spirit down. She was there, standing up for herself and her people, at diner counters in segregated St. Louis. And today she’s still standing up for herself and her people… as a Republican activist and PR director for the Colorado Black Republicans.

“I believe in the foundational principles of the Republican Party,” she says, “which is a platform for righteousness. I believe that the public policy and platform of the Republican Party offers the best opportunity for my people to overcome the socioeconomic handicaps that have been perpetrated on them over the years. And I believe in the Republican foundational position of creating an environment that develops and allows people to become the best that they can be.”

“That environment, I believe, is best not only for my people but for all American people.”

Jamison’s parents were Republicans, like most blacks were back then. Her mother was a nurse. Her father fought with General Patton’s “Red Ball Express” in World War II, and later in Korea and Vietnam. “My Dad used to explain to his daughter that she was not a Democrat. That there was no way she could be black and be a Democrat!”

But that wasn’t the direction black youth were moving. The popular perception was that Democrats were for the poor people, and for minorities. Jamison says President Roosevelt’s New Deal had begun the change, from 80 or 90 percent black registration as Republicans, to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, which wedded black culture to the Democrats.

“As a child I was a civil rights activist. As a very young, young, young girl, I joined the Congress of Racial Equality which you all call CORE. And I sat in restaurant sit-ins and got thrown out. And I marched in the protest marches.”

“That’s when the blacks switched,” she said. “The younger ones. The older ones still maintained because they understood the history of the relationship between the Republicans and the black community.”

She went on to describe two histories of both political parties, one which is taught as Gospel truth today, and the other which was obscured in her day, and is almost buried today – contradicted by the media and in most history texts and classrooms.

In what Jamison says was not a racist move, but a purely political calculation, some Republicans in the 1960s reached out to southern Democrats – the “Dixiecrats.” It won the Presidency for Richard Nixon in 1968. But she says except for that, the Republican Party has always been the obvious place for African-Americans, though that wasn’t always clear back then. “Democrats did good job of painting all Republicans as racists.”

She added, with obvious bitterness, “The Democrats are very good at using emotional issues to get an emotional response from black people. They use intimidation and fear, which is what they’ve always done, even during the 19th century. They used intimidation and fear to control and intimidate black people.”

Historically, Jamison says Republicans – not Democrats – have been the friend of black Americans. The anti-slavery movement was almost exclusively Republican – was, in fact, a major reason the Party came to exist – and was deeply rooted in the principles of the Party. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. “When blacks were freed, they became Republicans.”

Jamison herself graduated from Lincoln University – named after the president – one of many land grant colleges founded by Republicans. “All those colleges and universities were started by white Republicans. Most of them are named after white Republicans, because of the financials and insistence on creating them.”

“Republicans were responsible for Affirmative Action. Republicans were responsible for implementing the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]. Kennedy never implemented it – Nixon did.”

And when, in 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, Jamison says it only happened because of the dogged efforts of Republicans. “It was the Republicans who pushed the law through, and insisted on it. And Democrats fought it.”

Jamison’s claim is contrary to everything students are taught in public school, but it is only necessary to go to the source – the 1964 Congressional Records – to look it up. Some very interesting findings from those records can be found on page 12 [of the Front Range Rampart - posted here - basically, it was Republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act, and most of the votes against it were from Democrat congressmen].

And, while Jamison was emphatic about the helpful nature of the Republican Party in the fight for civil rights, she did not shy away from the dark, largely hidden history of the Democrats – the party that had usually opposed those Republican efforts.

“Most of the intimidation, and the Ku Klux Klan, which was an auxiliary of the Democratic Party – it was a terrorist arm of the Democratic Party – their job was to intimidate Republicans. Period. I know you don’t read about that!” she said. But it is a verifiable fact of history, proven by investigations and primary historical sources, such as the Ku Klux Klan membership oath.

“The blacks who were not Republicans did not receive the intimidation, and they were told, literally that if they’d change and vote Democrat, they’d let them live.”

Today’s Democrat Party is not the same one it was in the 1880s or 1930s, any more than today’s Republican Party is the same as it was in the 1960s. But Jamison says she can still identify vestiges of old Democrat Party thinking. “Now instead of using a rope, instead of physical control, they now use mental and emotional control. They use the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons and the Maxine Waters, and people of that ilk that keep that emotional fear permeating within the black community.”

And, instead of seeing a Democrat Party focused on improving public education, Jamison sees more than just benign neglect in the operation of the public schools liberals have created. She sees a dim reflection of southern Democrat policies prohibiting black children from reading. “Now what they do is they just don’t teach them to read, and it brings about the same result.”

But Jamison’s awareness of the true history of civil rights came only after she began to recognize problems with Democrat philosophy on her own. She remained a Democrat through the ‘60s and ‘70s. In 1976, she worked closely with Wellington Webb on Jimmy Carter’s presidential run. Soon after, she became disenchanted.

Jamison was impressed by Carter’s ideas to require able-bodied welfare recipients to find work or go to school. “I read his welfare program, and it was excellent. And I had sense enough to understand that as black people, we could never be independent as long as we were dependent. And I saw that proposal as an opportunity for uneducated blacks to get an education.”

“They crucified him,” she said. “The Democrats, not the Republicans. The Democrats crucified him because of his welfare reform. A lot of which you see being instituted today [2005] – he was way ahead of his time.”

“When I saw that, and then when the Democrats came up with this philosophy of the disadvantaged, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said. “You cannot teach people dependency, inadequacy and failure and expect for them to grow up successful, determined and self-sufficient. And that’s when I started seeing through the Democratic Party, and that’s when I became a Republican.”

She uses a well-known analogy. “You can either feed a man a fish, or you can teach him how to fish. And if you can teach him how to fish, then he becomes an independent, self-sufficient person. The Democrats’ policy is to feed you, so that you become dependent on them. And once you become dependent on a person, then that person becomes your father or your god, take your choice. And when you couple that with a lack of education, or inadequate, incomplete education, then you see how easy it is to control.”

Further, Jamison believes the public school system perpetuates dependency. “They teach children to rely on the government and tell children they have a right to feel good, and take away their bond with parents… de-educating, re-educating, and alienating the children from their parents’ values system.” She sees today’s public schools replacing the parents’ values with atheistic values, which only cements the childrens’ dependence on government and alienation from parents. “That’s why you see children in the streets killing each other, and having babies out of wedlock, and illicit sex.”

Jamison says she had been trusting the mainstream media and educational systems to guide her outlook on life, just as they do for most people. Gradually she came to recognize fundamental problems with liberal thought. “I got it.”

She found protection for all people from dependency and inadequate education in Republican philosophy. “Ronald Reagan was the first Republican candidate that I actually got out and worked for. And I had to fight with all my friends and relatives. Besides my Dad and Mom – they were so happy.”

And she says today’s Democrat Party isn’t recognizable as the party she and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. belonged to when she was young. There was no animosity against Christianity back then. There was a common morality for all Americans. “Even when people did wrong, they knew they were doing wrong. There was a choice… They understood there was a God. When our society lost that, and the Democratic Party embraced the immoral and amoral segment of our society, and began to promote the values of that segment of our society. That’s where it became impossible to be a Democrat anymore.”

Jamison sees a bright future ahead for black Americans, but there is a choice that must be made – a break with the past. “Until black people are allowed to be totally different, and unique and individualistic, we will never be free.”

And to acquire that freedom, Jamison says blacks must unbind themselves from the prejudice of mainstream media culture. She holds out a copy of Black Enterprise. “They don’t talk about the people that you read about in this magazine -- the black people who are extremely successful. We have black people who are heads of major corporations.” She names a few – AOL, Hewlett Packard, American Express, etc. “You don’t hear about the successful black people like Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas. For some reason the culture, the media, have chosen to deify the lowest common denominator.”

And Jamison suggests that Affirmative Action has begun to work against the interests of black Americans. Its original, noble goal was to require that qualified candidates be evaluated on a level playing field. “The Democrats got in control, and they made it a quota system. And that’s where they destroyed it.”

“We have a much higher educated black population, so we have a much better chance of being able to compete for jobs on a fair and equitable basis. We don’t want people looking at us and saying, ‘Oh you just got that job because you were black.’ Who needs that? That’s the stigma.”

What would she most like to see change in the Republican Party? “White Republicans have adopted the definition of what a black person is – the definition that the Democrats have assigned to us… They do not see us [black Republicans] as being distinct and different from the average black Democrat.” Because of this, some Republicans assume black Republicans are more liberal in their outlook. “We’re the most conservative Republicans in the Republican Party!” Jamison says. “We’re pro-gun, we’re anti-abortion, we’re anti-gay marriage, we’re pro-school choice, we are voucher-pro. We also believe in faith-based initiatives. We don’t believe in quota systems for education systems, job systems or anything else. We believe in affirmative recruiting.”

About gun rights, she explains, “During the Reconstruction, and during ‘Jim Crow laws,’ we had the same gun control laws that they’re trying to put in place now, which meant blacks couldn’t own guns. And because blacks could not own guns, when the Ku Klux Klan came to intimidate them, they had no way of defending themselves. So the right to arms is a very strong plank for black Republicans.”

“One of my missions is to encourage, motivate, and revive white Republicans. Because I believe a lot of white Republicans have become ‘at ease in Zion.’ They have become comfortable because they are right. And they think that because they are right, they shouldn’t have to fight. And it’s not true. They’re playing tennis on the 40 yard line, and the Democrats are playing football.”

Summing up her political and philosophical journey, Jamison describes a journey of faith in God and one’s own abilities. “Democrats had a more aggressive plan for bringing equality to all people. I didn’t know that equality meant you’re as equal as I allow you to be. Whereas Republicans say, ‘Hey, Jack. God gave you the same brain he gave me, the same muscles, the same intuition. Just like I get out there and get it for myself, you get out there and get it for yourself. That’s equality.”

On Gay Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:40:00 +0000

A friend asked me to explain why conservatives and Christians oppose gay marriage. This is my response (I led into the discussion by asking how she felt about illegal immigration and illegal aliens):

On immigration -- No, I can't blame anybody either. They're following the money, and the lifestyle. Before he became President, G. W. Bush said (paraphrased) "If someone is willing to swim a river and cross a desert to get here, that's someone I want working in Texas." I have alot of respect for those people, actually. But the fact is they're breaking the law. Besides that, it's a mutually abusive system -- they abuse our laws and make it rich while employers abuse them and make it rich. We have laws about how employers must treat workers, and yet the businesspeople and the politicians who cater to them are willing to look the other way so we can have cheap labor and cheap products. Once you start breaking the law, the corruption just spreads.

But consider the citizenship issue. You said you're against breaking the law, and you don't think it's fair that they get benefits and handouts just because they're here, even though they're not citizens (I'm adding to what you said, but this sounds like where you were heading). They're getting the benefits of citizenship without meeting the legal or realistic definition.

What does citizenship mean? What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? It means you can vote, you get services, you're not going to be thrown out, etc. There are advantages to being a citizen. But what does US citizenship mean if we were to declare everybody in Mexico, or everybody in the world, a US citizen? If everybody is declared a citizen, or even if everybody gets the same benefits as citizens without being citizens, then what does the word "citizen" really mean? It doesn't mean anything anymore. You might as well not be a citizen.

And this leads into the marriage question.

First off, there's not a single civilization anywhere that has ever recognized marriage between same sex couples. In fact, in almost every society homosexuality has been frowned upon and even considered illegal. Homosexuality was considered illegal in the US until just the last few decades -- it was a punishable criminal offense in some states when you and I were in high school! And the American Psychological Association considered it a form of mental illness and sexual deviancy up until after we graduated too (pretty sure on that -- not 100% certain). I don't think this is a sign of "progress" and modernity, so much as it is a breaking down of moral standards and their replacement by anything goes, I'm okay, you're okay fuzzy thinking and political correctness. It's not a sign of moral progress on the level of, say, the ending of slavery or segregation. Many blacks are grossly offended that their civil rights struggle is being used to promote the gay marriage agenda. In fact, it was black men and women who voted for Obama who put the California anti-gay-marriage initiative over the top in November. Ironically, the Democrat get-out-the-vote effort is what made Proposition 8 pass!

Gays will talk about how homosexuality was rampant in Greek and Roman culture, and maybe elsewhere, but even in Greek and Roman culture gay people were actually looked down upon (even gay emperors were made fun of) and the behavior may have been tolerated, but never officially recognized as okay (somewhat like where we are today in the US).

So, besides homosexuality being condemned in the Bible, it's not necessary to break out the Bible to show how being gay has not been approved of through history, because even pagan cultures opposed it. I'm not going to base my position on the Bible much, though to clarify God's definition of inappropriate sexual behavior extends to any sex outside of a male-female marriage, including pre-marital sex and affairs. I think the Christian position against homosexuality gets too much attention and focus, perhaps because affairs are so socially acceptable these days and the church doesn't want to touch it.

Secondly, consider the definition of marriage. Marriage, by any definition in any culture, has always meant a man and a woman. Man-woman couples have always been eligible for special tax breaks, for health plans at cheaper rates, for adopting children (adopting into gay couple households is really not fair to the child, because it confuses the kids and those kids lack balanced role models), etc. Plus, you can inherit money and legally it's considered a special relationship.

Just like illegal aliens, gays do not meet the "definition" of marriage, but they want the same rights and benefits as married male-female couples. They want to adopt kids, they want to get tax breaks, they want to have special benefits at work, such as the medical plans meant for families (at tremendous cost to the businesses -- there was a gay-rights organization that proposed to extend their medical plans to gay couples, and then shortly after they revoked it because they couldn't afford it!). I've actually seen and heard cohabiting male-female couples say "Hey, that's not fair -- we don't get those benefits, and yet gay couples do?"

Most homosexuals, when asked, say they don't really want to get married -- they just want to live with each other, just like most male-female couples do (and there's nothing stopping them, by existing law -- happens all the time). What they really WANT from the legalization of gay marriage is public acceptance and official acknowledgement of their behavior as "normal" and positive. They want gay sex to be "normal and positive" in the same way that men and women who have affairs want that to be considered "normal and positive" -- so they can avoid feelings of guilt, and feel like everybody else is doing it, why not me.

And, in countries where gay marriage is practiced, we've seen this is so -- people don't get married. A significant number of gays get married, but certainly not a huge proportion of the gay population. So most gays don't get married, even after legalization. However, what starts to happen is that men and women don't get married either! There's no point. Living together is just as good, and has fewer consequences, in their eyes, because there's nothing special about marriage. I have a friend from the Netherlands, and her wedding here in the US was the first wedding she'd ever been to in her life! She was 25 or so, and none of her friends, and none of the adults in her life, had ever had a wedding in those 25 years.

Thirdly, of course, homosexual marriage does not meet the spiritual definition of marriage under Christian rules (or the rules of most other religions). God does not approve of anything other than a male-female bonding. He doesn't bless those couples, because they're not living according to the social rules He carefully set up. To me, and many people, a marriage is less a legal status than it is a spiritual bonding, meant to be something special and blessed by God.

Beyond all this, there are actual court cases brought by other "deviant" groups who are now seeking legal recognition for them to get married, or at least not to be prosecuted because they argue if the standard is no longer a man and a woman legally having sex or legally getting married, then they should be allowed to legally have sex their way or get married their way, too. These groups want to use the breakdown of traditional marriage and traditional sex to force society to accept polygamy, bestiality (one man sued because he wanted to marry his dog, or something), and even sex with children (there's a group called NAMBLA -- the Man Boy Love Association -- which seeks legal recognition for a 40 year old man to have sex with a 6 year old boy).

On the one hand, redefining marriage to mean any kind of marriage breaks down the understanding of what "marriage" means, and makes the act of marriage pointless and meaningless. On the second hand, if we drop the historical, thousands-of-years-old standard of male-female marriage, then the sky's the limit as far as what becomes acceptable. If male-female is no longer the standard, what new, arbitrary definition of where to draw the line between "can marry" and "can't marry" should we set? What CAN we set, because once that firm definition goes away, there really are no moral boundaries left that will stand up to scrutiny.

Hype - Starring Barack Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:11:00 +0000

Citizens United strikes again - one of my favorite conservative watchdog groups has produced another expose on an enemy of freedom. This time, Barack Obama.

The movie "Hype" is an exhaustive and effective piece of anti-Obama documentary research which is ahead of its time (in that not much research has been done until now!).

I'm pleased and flattered to be able to say that I was able to be present for the "World Premiere" of Hype this Sunday afternoon (the producer admitted he'd never even seen it on the big screen before then)! I must wholeheartedly thank our friend Jill Stanek (pro-life nurse and blogger -- see her incredible story!) for gaining access for me and my wife to see this! Also, thank you to the people who hosted the Premiere, which included Citizens United, and elements of the Colorado Republican Party (officially or not).

Now, first let me say I'm not exactly John McCain's fanboy. In fact, I'm supporting Alan Keyes, rather than stoop so low as to vote for a man who 1) admits on live TV that he believes human life begins at conception, but 2) is still defiantly supporting taxpayer funding for embryonic stem cell research which will kill already-conceived human beings! Why should conservatives vote for him? Out of fear? Please.

I hesitate to criticize the candidate likely supported by Citizens United, except that I'm not so certain they support him... Check out "Surprisingly Liberal", by Citizens United!

For these reasons and others, I agree with WorldNetDaily.com editor Joseph Farah, who believes McCain may be a greater danger to the conservative movement than Barack Obama. Obama could be the Clinton or the Carter of the day, who is unable to accomplish the worst of his agenda, all the while energizing the conservative base to put up a Reaganesque figure to oppose him in four years.

But that's beside the point -- back to the review...

The movie made light of Obama's "rock star" qualities -- his embarrassing celebrity popularity, upon which he's ridden much of his way along the path to the Democrat nomination for president. One laugh line in the show was a clip of Stephen Colbert telling Larry King about the power of Obama's passing the "Hope Bong" around.

But Hype was more than mere hype, itself. It mixed studious and damning research with a parade of white and Black conservative leaders explaining who Obama is, and analyzing where he's "coming from," both as a Black man and a socialist-leaning hyper-liberal. Featured guests included Jill Stanek, who told about her experience with Obama's opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (he was the only Democrat in the whole Illinois State Senate to oppose it, and even Hillary Clinton, Ed Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted for it in the US Senate!). Other figures we know and respect include Ken Blackwell, Shelby Steele, Dick Morris and Jerome Corsi among many others.

The movie hit many points. Obama is an elitist, who lives in a million-dollar mansion. He sounds like he's for the little guy, and for reform, but his record is just the opposite. He's in the pocket of liberal special interests. He's a lazy dilettante who would rather make political points than get the job done. In other words, he's a typical politician. Ho hum -- good information, but nothing new.

But then it gets into the more exciting points which might surprise many Democrats and Republicans alike!

Foreign policy, of course, is key in this day and age. Biden can't hide this man's deficiencies on this. The movie pointed out Obama's gaffes, such as Katie Couric making him look like a fool for refusing to support the "Surge" in Iraq even after it proved its worth (if Obama can make Couric look like a pro-war heckler...). Obama's statements that he would meet with all America's most hateful enemies were foolish, which seems even more clear after they deconstruct his excuse that Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did the same thing (the movie examines how each of the cited presidential summits were of entirely a different character than what Obama proposes, and reminds us that Kennedy admitted Khrushchev "manhandled" him because he wasn't prepared for their meeting!).

And we all know about Obama's connections with some of the wide-eyed radicals of the anti-American, anti-white, anti-Christian religious sectors: Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Fleger, Louis Farrakhan, etc. Not new news, but startling, nonetheless, for a "mainstream" presidential candidate! The movie details these connections, and Obama's hypocrisy.

But perhaps more shocking were some of the associations Obama has had over the years. He's hired a known corruption figure to do his fundraising, whose dirty career even landed him in jail. Bill Ayers is apparently a close associate of Obama's who once upon a time worked with the anarchist Weather Underground (the "Weathermen") terrorist group. There are other connections which a wise politician would have carefully avoided, but Obama's ties to them are clear, and he even seems to have a hard time admitting they're not ordinary.

But we've dealt with corrupt politicians before. What sets Obama apart from, say, Bill Clinton (yes, even Bill Clinton!) is the extremity of his politics and the passion with which he pursues! The movie explains one of his early jobs was as a radical grassroots organizer, and how he used radical, socialistic and even anarchist handbooks on which to model his early political efforts. He's unapologetically followed some of the most ridiculously anti-freedom trains of thought in American politics, and many of his Democrat colleagues rightly think him crazy, and left-of-left.

The worst of the examples given is the one we started with. Obama's unwillingness to compromise on his support for abortion even so far as to allow a living human baby to live! Obama's opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act represents a horrifying belief that the abortionist should be allowed to chase an innocent human baby around on the operating table with a knife!!!

Obama tries to cover for his sins, and even to use faux-Christian gestures to fool evangelicals and mainstreamers into supporting him. But he is no "mean" (average) politician. He is a dangerous anti-American socialist who would try to impose the most sweeping anti-Freedom measures we've ever seen proposed. A frightening man, to be sure. And that's even without delving into conspiracy theories.

This movie, Hype, is worth seeing, and worth showing your friends! It's long, but that's because there's lots to say. We do not want this man as our next president. It would be a disaster. But still....

Is that reason enough to "vote for the lesser of two evils" -- for the least worse of two possible disasters? My feeling -- No. For lots of reasons.

Cast a principled vote which will empower the conservative movement by sending a message to future parties and future leaders. Otherwise we are just asking to be ignored.

Watch the movie, though! Be not fearful, but be informed!

Two Examples of Idiocy & Manipulation

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:59:00 +0000

Like most Americans, I get angry when I feel manipulated.

The first point is mild. We expect politicians to lie, and so it's no surprise to me the game Sen. McCain is playing with conservative Christian voters. He's announced (not for the first time) he's strongly considering asking a pro-abortion politician to be his running mate (various names we hear -- Lieberman, Tom Ridge, etc.). If he's "straight talking", then he's just stupid. He's got a good chance of fooling many conservative pro-lifers into voting for him if he keeps pretending to be pro-life. But it's just an act, and despite the fact that many pro-lifers seriously want to be duped so they'll be able to vote for him, there are others who just won't suspend their disbelief and will stay home on election day (or better yet, who will choose a real pro-life candidate to vote for, like Alan Keyes!). But if he names a pro-abortion running mate, the mask is off, and many Christians won't even be able to pretend McCain is pro-life. If he's lucky, most will simply believe that he is pro-life, and that he needed to add "balance" to the ticket by choosing a pro-abortion running mate. Idiocy (on the Christians' part, for believing him)!

But I have a strong suspicion Mr. Straight Talk is playing a clever, cynical game with pro-lifers. He wants to upset them, to get them riled up, so they'll raise a ruckus and demand that he choose a pro-life running mate. When he does, finally, announce an "acceptable" pro-life congressman as his real running mate (it would, as I said, be stupid to do otherwise), his announcement will surely be met with rapturous glee from the Christians who made demands of him. They will feel empowered! They will feel listened to. They will be so relieved that McCain has "proved" his dedication to pro-life ideals by choosing a pro-life fifth wheel for his campaign that these Christian conservatives will gladly cast their vote for him in November. After all, he's pro-life, with a pro-life running mate, right? Idiocy!

In the end, it doesn't matter who McCain chooses to run with him. McCain may oppose torture in war, but he's still for torture in the womb. He still favors taxpayer funding (yes, you!) for ghastly medical experiments on helpless, captive human beings (where have we heard of that before?). No varnish can cover up the rot of evil in McCain's heart.

...

The second point of idiocy and manipulation that's been in the news the last couple days is the pretense that there's "no terrorism" inside the United States. That's been the Bush Administration mantra for some time now. And for the most part, I agree with him. But the doublespeak language the US law enforcement community uses is wearing thin.

Two days ago, a man died in Denver of cyanide poisoning. He had a pound of cyanide in his room -- enough, we're told, to kill 100 people! What was he doing with that much cyanide in his room? "We don't know," supposedly. But what we do know is that "foul play is not suspected" and "we have no reason to believe this was a murder or a suicide". Furthermore, "this was not related to terrorism in any way." Idiocy!

The guy's name was Abdulrahman! That's not exactly played up in most news reports. But what are we supposed to think when a Muslim man dies (accidentally) in his hotel room with 100 pounds of deadly cyanide in his room?!

We are not stupid. Neither are the law enforcement professionals. But they think we're stupid, and that we'll believe them when they lie to us, saying this wasn't terrorism or foul play. Come on!

There's a long history of this sort of propaganda. An Egyptian, Islamic, cab driver goes to the airport and starts shooting white people. "It wasn't terrorism -- he was just crazy." Two Muslim freaks start shooting individuals in Virginia and Maryland at long range -- the famous Washington snipers -- but "it wasn't terrorism". They were just serial killers. Sure. Who just happened to believe Allah sent Muhammad as his prophet. Idiocy!

The Evolution of a Christian - Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:23:00 +0000

Perhaps because Evolution was my firmest remaining grasp upon a belief in non-spiritual, non-supernatural origins, I sought to learn more about it. In fact, I began learning more about all of science. I have always found these things fascinating, but had never really taken time to learn the details and concepts of the scientific study of the universe.

Ironically, this new passion led me, again, in the last direction I expected…

As I learned more about the concepts behind Evolution, I certainly understood that these complicated processes would take time. Then, as I understood better, I realized that the complexity of it all would take even more time to develop into what we see today.

The concept itself did not bother me. We know mutations happen occasionally, and it was conceivable that a succession of such incremental changes could add up to be more than pocket change over millions of years. Probability brings up the “reality” that even if something has a billion-in-one chance, it’s still possible. Given enough years, enough chance happenings, enough changes could occur…

I worried not, because I knew that not only did pretty much every scientist believe in Evolution (and who am I to doubt a scientist?), but many concepts of Evolution were observable (which a willing mind translates to “provable”). We could see moths and fruit flies “evolve,” and scientists had “created” amino acids in a test tube. We had this long string of skeletons “showing” human Evolution in all its steps… It all seemed plausible.

Much later, I was reminded that these things we can observe are not Evolution, per se – they are natural selection, which is but a small part of the whole Evolutionary theory, and is the least controversial part of it. It’s the skin on the outside of the controversy, yet it’s often used to shield the big, mushy center of the theory. The fact remains, we do not see one species morphing into a distinctly different species in the course of our observations. I also did not realize (refused to believe) that scientists had faked or used lots of imagination in presenting us with some of those skeletons along the Evolutionary ladder to humanity.

Eventually, each detail about Evolution I discovered added another rather large component of required time – more and more millions of years. No, it’s not impossible for two mutations to happen right after one another, but it’s increasingly unlikely that three, or four, of five positive, survivable mutation/adaptations will happen in a sequence that takes less than a few thousand years. Multiply that by all the different things that need to change for an organism to truly improve itself – including many changes which really must be accomplished in the exact same generation, because one potentially positive improvement, absent its synergistic second or third positive improvement, actually becomes a liability to the organism – a reason to be excluded from the gene pool by natural selection.

Naturally, increasing complexity of structures of life results incontrovertibly into increasing numbers of years. I doubted, but did not let go. I kept the faith. After all, we’ve got millions and billions of years to play with, right?

Then, two things happened which argued against each other, but in concert argued against Evolution. The Genome Project was gradually uncovering the deeply complex components of life, starting with the easiest organisms to study. What they found was incredible – an irreducible complexity within even the simplest of organisms. Now, I began to realize that the time I might have expected it would take life to evolve was growing vastly longer.

At the same time, astronomers were coming back with new observations which indicated that the galaxy and universe were actually younger – by a factor of a billion years or more! – than they’d originally thought. And galactic origins are inextricably linked with human origins – they each had to have come from somewhere, and each would have to take a long, long time without a creator.

While, logically, I could not conclude from the vastness of googleplex probability that Evolution was impossible, I was forced to conclude, as a reasonable person, that Evolution was seeming more and more improbable.

(to be concluded next… )

The Evolution of a Christian - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:37:00 +0000

The Evolution of a Christian
Part II

Strangely, my journey back to Christianity was prompted by two of the most unexpected things – my distrust of faith, and an expanded study of the principles and science which support evolution.

First, in a supreme irony, my adherence to reason and logic undermined my atheism. I gradually realized, to my horror, that atheism is not founded in logic. Owing to my limited knowledge of the Universe, I realized that I did not – could not – have enough information to conclude that God doesn’t exist. No one does. To believe God does not exist, in spite of the impossibility of proof, one way or another, is irrational.

I was startled and shocked to realize the truth – Atheism is a Faith!

That shifted me toward the fuzziness of agnosticism which, frankly, bothered me. I’ve never been a fuzzy person.

I’ve always – even as an atheist – believed in absolute truth, and I always considered myself a “good person.” Why? Well, because I did “good” things – because I was nice to people, because I wanted people not to suffer, because I didn’t hate people or do mean things. But what’s “good?”

I had reasoned through this long before I had addressed that little rationalization about God I had made 13 years earlier. Whether or not God exists, absolute truth and absolute standards must exist – somewhere, somehow – for good to exist. Because in a relative universe there can be no reference point for what’s good or not.

Without absolute truth, one cannot be a moral person, because true morality doesn’t exist in a relativistic worldview. There, morality depends not on fixed references, but on what “seems right” to each person. Each person’s “morality” would be relative to everyone else’s morality, like persons each drifting in the current of a swiftly moving river. In the end, it doesn’t matter which person is furthest from the waterfall – they will all go over the precipice, because none of them is moored to anything that doesn’t move with them.

Relativism can be (and has been) used to justify the Holocaust, slavery, religious wars in Ireland or Bosnia, and countless other travesties and atrocities of history. Is someone, then, more moral if, rather than personally killing Jews, they only make the trains run on time which carry Jews to be slaughtered? Is that moral? Or are they guilty because they didn’t stand up for what was right?

Ironically, most young people who would consider themselves “relativists” would agree that the Holocaust was “wrong” (their words), and that those who stood by and let the crimes continue were not avatars of moral principle. In fact, I’ve found that most relativists are only relative on some things, and that they will admit fixed truth in other things (slavery, Holocaust), thereby undermining not only their own adherence to relativism, but also their own claims to some kind of subjective, relativistic morality.

And therefore, because long before I had recognized these glaring inconsistencies in the relativist argument, I rejected all that, and thankfully my devotion to that fixed principle – absolute truth, absolute right & wrong – never wavered.

On the other hand, even as my doubts about God seemed to waver, I still had my rock – my science – to hold on to. I still knew that God probably didn’t exist, because evolution explained everything about how we got here, and I firmly believed it was rationally and scientifically probable. A Godless universe could have produced us, through an endless succession of progressive mutations, and so why should I believe God might have had any hand in that, whatsoever?

Perhaps because evolution was my firmest remaining grasp upon a belief in non-spiritual, non-supernatural origins, I sought to learn more about it. In fact, I began learning more about all of science. I have always found these things fascinating, but had never really taken time to learn the details and concepts of the scientific study of the universe.

Ironically, this new passion led me, again, in the last direction I expected…

...

(to be continued….)

The Evolution of a Christian - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:10:00 +0000

I've been meaning to post, here, the story of my journey from Christianity to atheism... and back again. And the story of my journey from belief in creationism to evolution... and back again.

This will probably be in 3 parts, though sometimes these "3 part posts" turn into 4 and 5 posts. Oh well. It's a story worth telling, no matter how long it takes.

The Evolution of a Christian
Part I

I was raised in a Christian home. But I had some experiences, like many people have, which soured me on “the church” – things like insincerity, hypocrisy and unChristian behavior among the church population.

When I attended public school, my reverence for God was replaced by reverence to what seemed a much more relevant universal power – science.

Science replaced, in my mind, all the meaning and mystery of Christianity in a way that was more tangible to a young, questing mind. It was based on principles I could know through reason and logic, which really didn’t rely upon faith.

Reason, logic and science became my “gods,” but because those beliefs are “philosophies,” and not “religion,” I considered myself an atheist.

After all, evolution explained how we got here, and was “provable,” so there was no need for God. A God who isn’t needed – who isn’t necessary – is irrelevant. So why would God exist? I concluded that, therefore, He must not exist. A rationalization, perhaps, but one I was comfortable with.

Throughout high school and college, the glories of science and reason were only reinforced, along with the good dose of contempt for God and Christianity which normally prevails in intellectual circles.

After all, it was the Church that had always opposed science and stood in the way of progress and learning. If they opposed those things in which I most believed, then I was naturally even more in conflict with Christianity.

I was an atheist for 13 years.

Strangely, my journey back to Christianity was prompted by two of the most unexpected things – my distrust of faith, and an expanded study of the principles and science which support evolution.

...

(to be continued...)

How to become a Christian

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:58:00 +0000

Here is a little something I posted on a rather secular/liberal (mostly European) forum where I sometimes post. One of the posters announced he had just become a Christian. Reactions were mixed -- no name calling, but alot of embarrassed silence. Someone sincerely asked what's required to be saved, so I answered in two parts (combined here):

Evangelical Christians generally will say something like (off the top of my head)...

1) Recognize that you're a sinner (i.e. that you aren't morally perfect).

2) Repent (be sincerely sorry) of your sins.

3) Acknowledge Jesus Christ as the son of God and savior of Christians (i.e. humble yourself).

4) Accept the free gift of Grace (absolute forgiveness) provided by Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross (humbling, again).

There are more watered down versions of this, but this is the more conventional/orthodox view. Pretty simple, all of them, when you think about it.

So then the same person asked what happens to people who haven't heard the Gospel (in isolated lands), and then: "if someone is a very good, charitable, person, the "model Christian" but just not Christian, do they still go to hell?"

I answered:

Second question first... According to the Bible, that's a matter of pride, which is one of the worst sins. Someone can think they can earn their way to Heaven, but that's a rejection of Biblical statements, as well as a rejection of the free gift of Grace -- "I don't need you, Jesus, I'll make it there on my own by doing what you say but without really acknowledging your authority." Hubris.

As for those in far off lands (who are dwindling in number, now), there are various beliefs. But my opinion is that there is an inherent, God-given sense of morality in every person. Though there's also an inherent sense of rebellion, by dint of the free will we have as human beings. Those who've never heard the Gospel, but who sincerely follow their moral senses anyway may possibly be saved. I don't know.

But, once heard, if someone rejects the most compelling story in history -- the idea that God so loved the people He'd created, and wished well for them, that He humbled Himself and came to Earth in the flesh to not only learn to empathize with humans, but also to be an unblemished, living sacrifice (a world-spanning equivalent to the sacrifices of an unblemished animal that were required for salvation in the Old Testament)... If, even then, a person cannot be humble enough to say thank you, then what do you think?

I'm hoping to post my testimony here, soon. Just need to get it written first.

Ed

A Time for Choosing

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:21:00 +0000

A discussion in another forum brought me to seek out and listen to Ronald Reagan's 1964 speech A Time For Choosing: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4770988975023965161&q=%22A+time+for+choosing%22&total=6&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

It was Reagan's attempt to put a burner under Goldwater's lead balloon of a campaign. Goldwater clearly deserved to do better, but it wasn't within his capabilities to really demonstrate that to anyone. Reagan had the skills to tickle peoples' minds, though, and here, and in many later years, we got to see him put these very themes to work -- themes espoused by few other visionaries than Goldwater and Reagan.

If you've never watched or listened to the speech, it's definitely worth hearing how clear his thinking was, even back then. If you skip the first couple of minutes, you'll miss Reagan's railing against Johnson for his national debt! The one, brief, and unfortunately ironic uncomfortable spot.

I'd be curious to hear what you think!

Ed

World War Five?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:53:00 +0000

When the War on Terror was first declared, many knowledgable military people referred to it as "World War IV" (World War III having been the long hot/cold struggle of the Cold War).

Each of the World Wars the United States has been involved in were necessary, "just" wars. We won World War I, World War II, World War III, and we're trying very hard to win World War IV, though "loyalty issues" back home are making this more of a struggle than it should be.

And, just to establish -- Iraq is a just and necessary part of the War on Terror. They were clearly our enemies, we had every reason to believe they still had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and they had proven willing to use terrorism against the United States (if you doubt this, see specific citations in a previous post).

We should have won in Iraq some time ago, but domestic opposition sufficiently delayed and obstructed the US military effort to have caused delays which eventually turned into a tug of war with what would otherwise have been a lackluster enemy.

But, largely because of the troubles back home, the War on Terror in mid-2007 seems like it could potentially spiral out of control due to a variety of worrisome geopolitical considerations.

First, if you think most of the major powers of the world do anything for altruistic reasons, or because they respect some theoretical international law as sacred, quit kidding yourself. The US and Britain, with a scattered few other examples, are the only countries which have ever done that, and even those exceptions are inconsistent.

Consider that France, Germany (pre-Merkel) and Russia all opposed the United States action against Iraq not because they preferred an international response. They did so because they profited from having Saddam Hussein in power AND -- of key importance -- they saw an opportunity to use the situation to weaken the United States' position on the world stage, and thereby improve their own power standing.

If you doubt this, notice that anytime the US wished to force anybody -- Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc. -- into compliance with international conventions, key countries like Russia, France, China, etc. all dragged their feet and did anything they could to stymie the US efforts. These countries -- some call them "friends" -- enjoy seeing the US squirm.

Because the US has been obstructed (by these powers and by liberals at home) from winning in Iraq, a certain confluence of worrisome factors has come to be:

1) Sunni, Shia and al-Qaeda terrorists have us hopping from foot to foot in parts of Iraq.

2) They are being aided by Iran (and probably Syria), and Iran's nuclear ambitions threaten to draw either the US or Israel or both into either a limited or massive airstrike which will open a broader war with Iran.

3) As realistically described in the World Tribune Monday, unrest in Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Iran could escalate to a multi-front Arab-Israeli war this summer between a nuclear-armed Israel and a potentially nuclear-armed Iran and its surrogates in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

4) Any war involving Israel would certainly draw the majority of the Middle East, including the United States and allied troops in Iraq (and Afghanistan) into a regional conflict with nuclear potential (although the nuclear aspect isn't especially likely until/unless a capable country becomes desperate).

5) Even the Iranian aid to terrorists against US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has the potential to blow up into a regional conflict involving war between the US and Iran and possibly including Syria and Israel.

I am a student of history, and in my opinion the most fascinating period of modern history is the 1930s -- just prior to the conflagration of World War II, when the scene was being set with countless contributing factors feeding on each other and driving the world inexorably to war.

The mood today, in mid-2007, feels much like the late 1930s must have felt.

And that's just World War Four! But, just like World War II started with regional conflicts in China, Spain & Finland, today's conflict in the Middle East could easily widen into a broader, literally worldwide war. In fact, it's almost certain, once a regional conflict develops, that these countries will take whatever opportunities they have. Or, they may just wait for other players to exhaust us, then reap the benefits against us later.

Competing superpowers -- the US, Russia, China -- must watch for advantage. They wait and scheme so that opportunities arise, and the time is right to strike and achieve dominance over their enemies.

As has become quite clear in recent years, both Russia and China consider the United States to be a rival, at best. An enemy, at worst. We stand in the way of their geopolitical aspirations, and they want out of the box they were left in after the Cold War.

Both Russia and China, our nuclear-armed rivals, have been employing proxies and "gaming" other conflicts to undermine the US' world situation.

The Middle East is rife with examples, from Chinese arms sales to Iran (recently confirmed in a Bill Gertz article in the Washington Times) to Russian arms shipments to Fatah (the Palestinian Authority, which ironically is our more MODERATE enemy in the Mideast!).

But China and Russia have both been playing for time with North Korea, drawing out US negotiations with Kim Jong Il to tie us down there, too.

And China and Russia have been actively encouraging Hugo Chavez, in Venezuela, in his demagoguery against the US. Major Russian arms sales to Venezuela make them a regional player in the American hemisphere, and they will likely have support from radicalized populations nearby as well as from Cuba and other frightened governments who are nevertheless happy to feel some form of status in being associated with him.

If any of these conflicts outside of Iraq go hot, there is an opportunity presented to Russia and China where they must decide if it's "their hour" or not. Likely, they will wait to see how things go, play an aloof, two-faced game, and if they see the United States in a particularly vulnerable position, then they will feel compelled by geopolitical realities to strike.

As in World War II, "interested" countries in tense situations are likely to decide that their best interests are served by military conflict on their terms.

Ironically, the stupid Democrat assaults upon the Bush Administration for the past several years -- claiming that we can't afford to be tied down in Iraq because there are more important conflicts to be ready for -- have become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Now we DO have other major conflicts looming, and because of what I believe qualifies as treason in the ranks of the "loyal opposition" in the USA, the United States may be poised to be in a fight for its very existance in a World War V that will pit the US against the World.

Pray hard.

Ed

Incrementalism Incrementally Fails Unborn Children

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 03:36:00 +0000

Jill Stanek's article in WorldNetDaily made me mad, so I wrote a not-so-well written, rambling reply which I hope still makes sense:

Incrementalists try to maintain some moral ground even as they undermine it, and partly they do this by unfairly denegrating the intelligence or sensibilities of their opponents, who they mischaracterize as unrealistic purists.

You've mischaracterized the "purist" (we call it "uncompromised") position. We do not oppose all incrementalism -- if a law prevents some abortions without compromising with abortionists and lending some credence to their legal standing or public support, then we support those laws.

A law which says "abortion clinics must abide by these regulations before they're allowed to perform abortions" is evil because it says "abortion is okay if...". But a law which says "all clinics where medical procedures are performed must abide by these regulations" then that's okay!

If you have a law which accedes, in part, to the arguments of the abortionists, then we oppose it, and so should you. Parental notification is fine if carefully crafted -- basically, "you must inform the parent that an abortion is scheduled". But if you include the parent in the "approval" process (i.e. a parental CONSENT law), then you've just added one or two parents to the pro-abortion camp, because they feel guilty and will in the future defend their decision to support their daughter's abortion. That's a loss for pro-life causes.

Any law which makes some abortions illegal, but which say "it is okay to kill the baby if..." is evil. It's not pro-life at all. Not only do the people who vote for it support those abortions (rape, incest, etc.) in a legal sense, but by arguing in favor of these laws they lend credence to the arguments of the other side that SOME abortions are okay.

Yes, Michael New (I think it is, from Heritage) published a study "proving" (through the use of debatable evidence and predictive assumptions with that scattered data) a 10-15% decrease in abortions "as a result of" incremental legislation. This is the basis of incrementalists' claim that "incrementalism is working." But we cannot logically use his study to establish that incrementalism will eventually result in 40% or 80% reductions in abortion. There's no logical basis to make that assumption, though we may WANT to make that leap in logic.

In fact, I believe incremental legislation is guaranteed to have diminishing returns, because advocates of that legislation split the difference -- they compromise with abortionists to arrive at a poorly defined "point at which abortion is permissible." In fact, I believe it's natural to assume that incremental laws will have a 10% to 20% effect. Maybe as high as 30%.

But that lack of moral clarity is bound to have a push-back effect, where as we approach a 20% "success" rate with incremental legislation, a 40% or 80% reduction becomes all the more impossible. At that rate, with that strategy, a 100% end to abortion becomes totally impossible.

Arriving at "personhood" -- the Human Life Amendment -- becomes harder every time one of these compromised incremental laws is passed, because in the minds of the public you're splitting the difference. You're saying some abortions are worse than others, so most people subconsciously see a corrolary to that -- that some abortions are better than others! Some abortions are permissible -- so much so, that even the pro-lifers aren't arguing that they're as serious as the others.

Splitting differences on abortion denies the moral power of the personhood argument. If a baby at any stage of development is a person, then it's always wrong to kill them. Always!

But if we go out there and say "abortion is bad, but partial birth abortion is the worst!" then it's not very far, morally, from saying, "it's wrong to kill even a handicapped child, but these people even want to kill healthy children!" -- it's establishing a value difference between handicapped and "healthy" children. It's wrong -- it's arguing on the basis of secular, amoral logic, rather than on the basis of absolute, non-relative truth.

The public WILL accept non-relative truth if it's properly framed! People are hard-wired to acknowledge moral standards. Your average high school student will say abortion is okay most of the time, but not at full term -- they see a value difference between a 1st and 3rd trimester baby, because secular society tells them there is one (and many pro-lifers tell them so, too, by arguing that ending some abortions is more important than others!). But if you ask that same student when slavery is okay, they'll say "slavery is NEVER okay -- that's a human being, you can't enslave them!" That's the power of moral clarity which we must enlist for the abortion fight.

Only the establishment of the concept of universal freedom for all persons did slavery disappear in this country. Only with the establishment of personhood in the mind of the American public will abortion 100% disappear.

Incrementalists think they'll compromise and split the difference for now, and then later -- "when we're near our goal" -- they'll switch to a no-compromise personhood strategy that will achieve the full victory. But when (if!) that day comes, abortionists and even the general public will say "but wait, didn't you say 10 years ago that it was okay to abort rape babies, so long as we didn't abort other babies?"

Until we change strategies, pro-life resources are working at cross purposes, with some resources directed toward a policy -- incrementalism -- that does not have the power to totally end abortion at any time.

The time to make that change is now, not 10 or 20 years from now, because no matter when we make the choice to switch to a new strategy, we're going to have to start from the very beginning, convincing the American public we were wrong back when we said some abortions were worse than others.

Ed

Partial Birth Abortion Ruling

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Wed, 16 May 2007 04:26:00 +0000

News Flash!:
7 of 9 US Supreme Court Justices UPHOLD Roe v. Wade!

I've not had alot of time to write recently, but just so I can help get this out there, here's a preview of what may become a "feature-length" column soon -- either here, or on WorldNetDaily.com .

The US Supreme Court's upholding of the Partial Birth Abortion "ban" is NOT a victory for pro-lifers who want to actually end abortion.

It's only a victory for "pro-lifers" who want to FEEL GOOD about what's being done to end abortion, regardless of the truth.

In fact, it's a resounding defeat not just for those of us who hold that a child is a human life from the moment of conception, but also for those more "moderate" souls who only oppose 1) late term abortions or 2) abortion as birth control.

The ruling, signed by 5 justices, 4 of whom are renowned in Republican circles as "pro-life heroes," specifically upholds both -- abortion as birth control, and late term abortions -- as a "right".

In fact, two justices -- Scalia and Thomas -- were disturbed enough by the ruling to issue a "reservation" against the ruling (which they nevertheless signed on to, failing to stand on principle by dissociating themselves with this pro-abortion ruling in its entirety), specifically noting that they did not believe Roe v. Wade was based on Constitutional principles.

By issuing their reservation, Scalia and Thomas separated themselves philosophically from the other 7 Justices (including both of Bush's appointments) who had no problem affirming easily-available late term abortions as a "Constitutional right."

In fact, the ruling itself notes that the Partial Birth Abortion ban in question is Constitutional ONLY because it "does not on its face impose a substantial obstacle" to a late term abortion.

That specific language, by the way -- the "substantial obstacle" part -- is derived directly from "pro-life" Justice Alito's prior ruling as a District Court Judge that a Nebraska Partial Birth Abortion ban WAS unconstitutional BECAUSE it imposed a substantial obstacle to a woman's "right" to a late term abortion.

More later... This is a tragic ruling.

It's also tragic that so many pro-life leaders are telling pro-life activists that this is some kind of significant victory for our side.

The fact is, besides the fact that 7 of 9 US Supreme Court Justices just telegraphed that they would rule to UPHOLD Roe v. Wade, this will not save the life of even one unborn baby. The ruling itself notes that there are other commonly used means to abort late-term babies (and recommends that they be used!).

Ed

Pragmatism is Bankrupt

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 05:41:00 +0000

A post I made on the Life Training Institute blog (www.lti-blog.blogspot.com), where I am trying to convince a set of pro-lifers who are dedicated to "compromised incrementalism" that we need to change our pro-life strategy -- aiming for success, rather than compromise:

If there existed a law (or proposed legislation) that made 95% of abortions illegal without affirming a "right" to abortion 5% of the time, I would be for it -- that is an uncompromising win for us.

But those examples are hard to find.

What we do see -- compromised incrementalism -- is a bill that makes 95% of abortions illegal while also explicitly defending 5% of abortions. In these cases, I think pro-lifers do ourselves no favors by supporting it. Why?

Because any bill that favors or otherwise upholds a "right" to 5% of abortions is arguing against the principle of a right to life.

Principle doesn't use percentages. Any departure from 0% or 100% is compromise, and it reduces our arguments to 100% pragmatism, 0% principle.

Arguing on the terms of our opponents -- as if there is some line to be drawn, some abstract judgment of when it's okay to kill a baby and when it's not -- is detrimental to our overall cause of getting rid of all abortions, because we're admitting there ARE lines to be drawn. Pragmatism wholly rejects the principle -- they are fundamentally inconsistent strategies. In order to regain the principle, we actually have to convince the voters and citizens we've been talking to that we were wrong when we supported a bill that favored 5% of abortions. We would be rightly accused of hypocrisy.

Would you support a law which said slavery should be legal in New Jersey, but in no other state of the union? If you're a pragmatist, you'll ask "that depends -- is this 1800 or 2000? -- does this increase or reduce slavery?" The response would dictate your answer.

But if you are relying upon moral authority -- principle -- then you would consider the law absurd. Slavery should be legal nowhere under any circumstances, no matter where it is or is not already legal.

I strongly believe that the more we rely on pragmatism to "curtail" abortions when and where we can, we postpone the day when we can achieve our goal and implement the principle of no abortions anytime anywhere, because we then have to undo the damage we did when we talked someone into voting for the 95% solution by saying "it's okay, because it allows for an exception in 5% of the cases."

Ed

In Memory - Ronald Reagan

noreply@blogger.com (Ed) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 03:25:00 +0000

I know I'm a couple days late. Laura Ingrahm had her beautiful tribute 2 days ago. But to commemorate the birthday of Ronald Reagan, which was this week, I want to re-post a tribute that I wrote in his honor 2 years ago, in my old newspaper, The Front Range Rampart:

On the occasion of Ronald Reagan’s birthday, it is worth reflecting on the enormous positive impact this remarkable President and man had on the United States and the world.

The issue on which most Americans agree – the praise that even liberals will allow – is that Reagan made us proud to be Americans again. After the dark days of Vietnam and Jimmy Carter’s stagflation, Reagan brought us a new day, filled with vitality and optimism.

Renewing the American spirit was the immediate benefit of the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. But Americans have much more than that to be thankful for. Reagan strengthened America’s military, to the point of staring down the Soviets and ultimately bringing an end to a long, tense, and costly Cold War confrontation.

Reagan gave hope to the forces of freedom around the world – from Latin American citizens, almost all of whom would have the right to vote for their leaders by the time Reagan left office, to Soviet dissidents who would tap out coded messages about Reagan’s speeches on their jail cell bars.

And Reagan lastingly changed – perhaps forever – the environment in Washington. No longer would government grow simply because it always had and no one knew another way. He inspired and gave voice to those Republicans who understood that the People are more important than the Government. Great things followed from this change in thinking, from the Contract With America to some – a few – of President Bush’s proposals today.

Reagan introduced a new paradigm into government policy – one that has struggled to be heard since, but which is unlikely to go away. In the stead of a history of fiscally moderate Republicans – leaders who would spend less, but not a little – Reagan introduced into practice the concept of fiscal conservatism.

Fiscal conservatives, who were first forcefully, if not as ably, led by Barry Goldwater, were energized by Reagan’s leadership. He dared to suggest that government was doing too much, rather than not enough, was spending more than it should, and even that there were government programs that were perpetuating the social problems they were ostensibly meant to solve.

America is a better place today because of Ronald Reagan and the vision that he gave us for America – the bright, shining city on a hill that we can all aspire to, and which we still have hopes of approaching.