Attending as I did, a Jesuit prep school, so long ago that the Jebbies were still actually Catholic and God's Marines, we learned a concept called "Human Respect" in our moral theology classes.
"Human respect" is a near occasion of sin and a major one. Because of our fallen nature (Adam, Eve, the apple and all that), we are subject to concupiscence nor a tendency to sin. It is a consequence of the Original Sin shared by all but, I believe, two humans who have not been with us for about 2,000 years. When you add human respect (giving a da*m what ANYONE else thinks of us as individuals) to concupiscense, the combination leads to a wide variety of evils and quite easily so.
If I compromise on abortion to please Kansas58 or Mitt Romney or John McCain or Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker or Kathleen the Death Queen Sebelius and to show them or others like them what a swell and reasonable guy I really am (Can I have a job or a contract?), I am demonstrating the evil of caring what such slime may think. Even if I take a compromising path to please the late Mother Teresa, I am still sinning by caving to human respect.
It is NOT easy to be a moral absolutist. All of us fall short of that noble status if we even try and those who suck up to the likes of Romney do not even try.
It is a lot easier to be judgmental and many try and succeed at it. You need to know what is right and what is wrong and how to distinguish between them and then the courage to be honest in one's assessment and willing to communicate the judgment to the judged.
I will defer to your obviously superior and more extensive experience in being a horse's ass or, in more polite terms, the east end of a westbound horse.
Real decision time. 1) The key word is simultaneously. Suppose one enemy is manned by Obozo and the Bill Ayres Five and the other by Mittens and the Wall Street Five. I take out the mosquito pest that is Romney to clear the distractions and kill his stockbrokers. I look into the Obozo nest and find Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn. They are the ones with CRAZY eyes. The rest will surrender when Ayres and Dohrn go down for the count and I can then decide whether those others died in combat, died escaping or had a successful murder/suicide pact. They aren't going home. And BTW, moral and every other kind of cowardice is a RINO trademark and nothing to do with principled people. hat's why the Romney nest goes down first. You cannot trust the weaselly little bastards any farther than you can throw the Taj Mahal with one pinkie finger.
2) I help them all by calling 911 and then see what I can do about the arterial bleeding. The old man is like me and has heart trouble like me. I would understand being ignored to save the child. So should he. There is nothing I can personally do for him. Try to help him and the child dies. There is also nothing I can do for the woman and I don't how I would know she had internal bleeding much less what to do about it. Again, cowardice, moral or otherwise, is RINO disease. That is your department.
3) Given the previous 2 answers, you probably hallucinate that 3) is my Waterloo. Not really. We automatically act to defund any and all abortion mills, abortionists, PP, NARAL, whomever, all the time. No compromise. How many third trimester abortions do you imagine take place each year? Let us theorize $3000 per abortion. To get to $3 million would require 1000 third trimester abortions per year and that would just be the gross revenue. It would probably take 3,000 such abortions to take a net of $3 million away. While you are working that east end of the westbound horse off to stop those third trimester abortions, there are about 1.4 million OTHER abortions going on without your resistance. It is our enemies who are shamed by their trimester abortions. Are you trying to make them look good by getting rid of just the most obvious barbarities? Aren't you playing into the old "blob of tissues" claims of the enemies and of The Enemy? You capitalize and SHOUT your surrender to the zeitgeist by saying WE CAN'T SAVE ALL THE BABIES! Well, you better be prepared to try, mister! Or stop posing as something you are not but merely THINK you are. When you are busy sitting around the old campfire with Planned BVarrenhood and NARAL, holding hands, singing Kumbaya and "finding common ground," they will still be slaughtering 1.4 million babies per year and you will be looking for a gold watch and a 50-year pin from the whores at the NRLC.
AND, I don't know what God you worship but mine says in no uncertain terms: Thou Shalt not Murder It was in all the Bibles. You would be surprised, apparently, at just how "judgmental" (libspeak for rational) God really is. There is something in Scripture to the effect that the murderer is to be taken from anywhere, even God's altar, and put to death. Again, as to human respect, if I don't care what you think at all, what makes you hallucinate that I care what you imagine God's opinions are? And you call me arrogant?
As to your last sentence, see all of the foregoing as to human respect.
And finally, need I remind you, there is a you and there is a me but there is no "we" as to any of these matters. At least as things stand.
Fantastic summation.
BTW, check the main page, it seems the severely conservative GOP paid blacks to vote and just got caught doing it.
I’m staggered by your wisdom on “human respect”.
You named the enemy (concupiscence) nailed the narcissist and ended the debate.
Anything of further argument will be from but “a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is. heard. no. more.”
Thanks Big Elk, you’re the best! Geeeez. And Catholic too! Things really are looking up around here!
Rita
Thanks for the ping. Fortifying!!!!!