A year and a half ago, before the war, before the Howard Dean phenomenon (remember him?), I wrote the following:
...it would make a lot of sense if the Democrats ran someone who was truly moderate on the Dems' signature issues. Let's say the candidate supported a ban on partial-birth abortion and sex-selection abortions, plus he favored parental consent for minors, but was "pro-choice" under other circumstances. He might strongly affirm the second amendment, but say that cheap handguns have no place in our society; he'd favor expanding IRA accounts but would leave Social Security alone; he would favor raising taxes on the "most fortunate Americans" but not "working Americans"; etc.The candidate I'm describing would stand a strong chance of winning in the general election. A charismatic, truly moderate Democrat would give Republicans a lot of trouble in 2004, but it won't happen because of the primary process. In order to get the nomination in the first place, a candidate has to convince his own party that he represents them. The people who vote in primaries are the ones who would walk through fire to support their party, and the Democratic faithful are probably going to remain enraged until those primaries happen in 14 months. They can't believe that they've been trounced by the barely articulate boob in the White House, and they're going to want an old-fashioned tax-and-spend big-government social liberal as their candidate, or the closest thing they can find. They aren't hungry enough for victory to swallow their principles, as they were for Bill Clinton in 1992 and '96. Given all that, they have to run a pro-abortion liberal next time around. Count on it.
They've ended up with not only a pro-abortion liberal, but a pro-abortion liberal Catholic at that! One who can't make any headway even when things go bad for the president. One who has started to sound like a Republican about national security -- maybe not quite like Jesse Helms, but a lot like John McCain.
Kerry's latest pitch to sound like a Republican on national security is today's report that he wants to increase the Armed Forces by 40,000 people, by cutting back on some arms projects.
40,000? The Armed Forces need 400,000, or more, to really have the kind of manpower they need for even medium-size engagements like Iraq. The National Guard is not intended for the kind of heavy use they've been getting over there. And what if North Korea starts acting up?
Funny thing is - I don't think *anyone* is going to actually believe that Kerry will have some kind of positive impact on the US Military in terms of strength or capabilities. If he was elected, he would start building ballistic missiles capable of delivering the Clinton Biography to China or countermeasures for his wife's private jet.
What are you blathering about?
Who is pro-abortion? Perhaps, the Chinese government may be described as "pro-abortion" in some sense.
John Kerry, like a majority of Americans, supports a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. To call that "pro-abortion" does your fellow (whacko) Conservatives a grave injustice. That is, petty name-calling only serves to discredit your own side.
Hmmm... so, strike that "whacko" comment on my part.
At any rate, it is a lot more logical to apply common sense and practical considerations in order to choose between competing policy preferences, rather than to follow very narrow interpretations of archaic religious text.
God gave you a brain. Use it.
In conclusion, don't vote for Bush.
Kerry has made every effort, with every vote to never limit the availability of abortion in the US. It is not a stretch to call politicians like that "Pro-abortion" when the abortion industry/lobby is such a driving force in their campaigns and has a financial stake in the availability of abortion.
So there I go using my brain. And unless Bush appears on national TV and strangles a puppy between now and November, I will be voting for him.
One question for you:
What makes you think the Bible is archaic? What is the Christians are correct?
It's always interesting when someone hostile to Catholic Light's hosts visits. Just in case you come back, Dave:
No one has the right to directly kill an innocent human being, no matter how inconvenient their location. Please don't try to argue that that's a "religious" perspective, since biology makes quite clear that the unborn child is a separate human being. Don't like that truth? Don't have to. But the law in a civilized socity must respect it.
"Pro-abortion" is accurate terminology, because killing another person is not the kind of thing civilized societies leave to peoples' private judgment. If one favors denying unborn human beings equal protection of the law (a flat-out violation of the same 14th Amendment that legal-abortion partisans are always citing), then one thinks that's the better policy. The whole "personally opposed but" view is comparable to being personally opposed to extermination of Jews or Rwandan Hutus or East Timorese Christians "but."
Innocent human beings' right to live can never be left up to the whims of "individual consciences" or of "communities." Unfortunately, the law in the US probably won't reflect the reality for a long time. But many of us haven't forgotten that it must, and we'll keep working until it does.
It is this rigid type of thinking that holds us back as a species.
First off, I don't believe abortion is murder. The way I see it, the fetus is not yet a human life. It is completely biologically dependent on the mother and there is little or no neurological activity.
Second, even if it *is* the taking of a life, I still support it. An individual has an absolute right to do anything s/he wants to his/her own body. Call me libertarian, but that's what I believe. I mean, who are you to dictate what other people can and cannot do with their very own bodies?
For those of you who hate abortion, just don't have one. Why not let God judge these alleged horrible sinners? Judge not, my friends.
Second, even if it *is* the taking of a life, I still support it. An individual has an absolute right to do anything s/he wants to his/her own body. Call me libertarian, but that's what I believe. I mean, who are you to dictate what other people can and cannot do with their very own bodies?
If, as we say, a fetus is an unborn human life, then the mother having an abortion isn't just doing something with her own body: she's killing someone else's body.
Ultimately, your philophy is that of the slaver: that one person can own another person's body and life.
The only "rigidity" expressed here so far, Dave, is your refusal to acknowledge biological and rational fact. The unborn child is a separate biological human being from the moment of conception. The degree of his or her development is irrelavant to his or her humanity.
Dependence upon another person is also irrelavant. Infants, children, the mentally handicapped, and infirm are also intimately dependent upon other human beings to stay alive.
We human beings did not choose a form of reproduction that involves two sexes, impregnation of one sex by the other, and the first nine months of each human being's life lived inside another human being's life. But that's what we are, and a civilized society protects each member of the community at all stages of development.
No one has the right to kill a human being, regardless of their plans or convenience, during those first nine months, any more than during the rest of one's life. Rather, the rest of us are obliged to support and help those in crisis pregnancies.
All of the above information can be determined by reason and by physical scientific inquiry. There's nothing "religious" about it, so comments about "sinners" and "judgment" are irrelevant.
One word needs clarification in my second-to-last paragraph. No one has the right to *murder* another human being. It is entirely just for soldiers or law enforcement officers duly representing a government to render aggressors unable to harm the common good. That may involve their death as a double effect.
An unborn child, contrary to a more recent line of pro-abortion thinking, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered an "aggressor." He or she did not choose to arrive in his mother's womb, and his or her mere presence is not "aggression." It's called biology--the way new human beings come into existence.
The "autonomy" of another human being in no way can take precedence over the life of one who is intimately dependent. Hubert Humphrey was the one who said, a society's justice is measured by how we treat people at the beginning and end of life. We begin inside each others' bodies, and that's the natural order.
Again, nothing religious about it.
I describe John Kerry as pro-abortion because he has not only voted to protect the so-called "right" to an abortion, he also wants the government to pay for it. He has also voted to fund foreign organizations that perform abortions.
If you don't favor any legal restrictions on an action, and you want to see that action performed with public money at home and around the world, I think it's fair to say that you are in favor of that action. Thus: "pro-abortion."
Hey guys I'm really edified by your little band of faithful catholics....maybe Dave will see the Light....isn't it amazing how consistent liberals are in their irrational hysteria about Bush and all that he represents to them (meaning the rest of us)....not that I'm ecstatic about having to vote for him again but if re-elected he would be the President to nominate the future justice(s) who will overturn Roe.....that alone is enough reason to vote for him however distasteful that might be. We're not gonna get that from the "Catholic" candidate so I guess we gotta go with the evangelical....strange bedfellows indeed.
As St. Augustine may have said, better to be ruled by a wise pagan than a foolish Christian.