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ALAN KEYES: That Pro-Life Schtick

Constitution Breaking News Announcement Keywords: CONSTITUTION TRUTH
Source: Alan Keyes
Published: January 13, 1999 Author: ALAN KEYES
Posted on 01/14/2000 22:06:12 PST by Askel5

Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. Before I go any further though, I will say one thing: Since I have been back and forth to Harvard a couple of times in the intervening years … because my son is actually expressing an interest in going [to Harvard] I wouldn't want anybody to take it that way for fear they might actually want to go there. Because at moment I think they're at the very risk of their eternal life, they very well are. If you've been there lately, it's not really a joke, so I hope you all won't hold [the Harvard degree] too much against me. I've been doing my level best over the years since I graduated to recover from the experience. I think I've done rather well, all thing considered.

I earned the ambassadorial title during my Reagan years. I kind of feel like I come this evening into this gathering as something of an ambassador.

But what I wish to represent to you might seem a little odd because what I want to represent to you is your country. And, I want to come to you as an ambassador pleading on behalf of your country so that you understand the real significance of the Pro-Life Cause to America.

I look around myself sometimes in the public landscape – in all areas and walks of life – it doesn't matter whether it's public policy, the media, whatever. When folks talk about the Pro-Life Issue, they have a tendency to do it as if they were talking about – oh, I don't know – Taxes or Social Security or Trade and we all know that there are people who have their axes to grind on this thing and that thing and the other things and you kind of pay attention to them because that's their particular schtick and we'll see what happens to it.

And we have a tendency to think of the Pro-Life Cause in that way. Even people who are part of it will sometimes act as if or think as if this is some Special Interest Constituency and therefore we operate in the way that people do in this society when they are pleading a Special Case in which they have an Interest.

All right. If I do nothing else this evening, I hope I'll be able to establish in some little way, that it is not the case. That, in fact, the cause that we gather together here tonight to support is one that is not only vital -- in that we care enough to wish to save the Individual Lives of those infants in the womb – it is once on which depends the Life and Future of our Republic … the Life and Future of our Society.

I don't think that it's at all hard to prove that. The logic is clear. It's simple. It is based upon historic facts that no one denies. And yet, very often today we seem to turn our back on it because, I guess, for a great many people it's more convenient to try to forget who we are than to remember who we are at a time that we would do so to our shame.

The facts are clear. We are a nation founded on a clear and simple premise. The fact that it is clear and simple, however, doesn't mean that it was easy to arrive at … easy to perceive … easy to apply to human circumstances and affairs. It was not.

And, in fact, in all the thousands of years of human history before this nation was founded, this particular insight had certainly been around but it had never been expressed in a form that actually led to and transformed political institutions and society.

But we are different. And in our case--I believe very much by the providence of God Almighty—we live in a country where this special insight was, in fact, applied in a way that has born great and so far lasting Truth. And the insight is quite simple. We start with the recognition that there is, in fact a Creator God. [We then] understand that that Creator takes an interest in human affairs, in human justice and is, in fact, the foundation by His Will of the right understanding of human justice and social affairs.

And that understanding is such that each and every human being stands in the sight of that Creator God almighty equal to every other human being in their moral worth and dignity. An equality that is not based upon human power or human assertion, upon human constitutions or human attitudes and judgment but instead rest upon the will of our Almighty God. Determined by His hand, His rules, by His Choice and not our own.

Of course there will be those – particularly those folks in the media (and anybody who knows me even a little bit knows that I have a kind of running battle with the American media. I actually think that, by and large, anyone of conscience would have a running battle with the media.)

But in this context … whenever I say this, somebody out there […] asks some question which implies that what I have just said to you, that simple logic I've just outlined, that premise – that rights come from God – "this is Alan Keyes standing there articulating his particular sectarian religious belief."

Now it is very true that every word I just spoke to you is real consistent with my Roman Catholic heart and my Roman Catholic faith. But it's also very true that every word I just spoke to you is not just a reflection of my heart and my faith, it is the American heart and the American faith.

This is articulated very clinically when this Nation began. In the great documents that our Founders used to justify their willingness even to go to war in order to assert their independence. I think we ought to take that very seriously because – at least in those days, I don't know about now, I think we're kind of … we've gotten really careless about wars these days, as some events, I think, even in recent times have proven.

And we go to war maybe without understanding what we ought to understand. Every time you go to war, you know -- a people like ourselves -- even if that war is conducted by others, even when it's conducted by a means where you're flying high up in the air and dropping bombs on people you don't even see and folks die as a result …

I hope we still understand that each and every one of us who has an opportunity to participate as part of the sovereign body of the people in this country: we are responsible for every life that is taken by America in war.

And we had better be awfully sure that what we're doing has a solid moral ground or we will stand before God bearing the stain and weight of every life taken in injustice that we did not oppose.

And I think that it's why our founders, being that they were – many of them, most of them, almost all of them, in fact – people of conscience and faith, felt that before you risked war, you better justify what you're doing in moral terms. You've got to state the moral premises and the moral principles that inform your heart.

And that's what they did in our Declaration of Independence. It's a statement of the moral justification of that assertion of independence at the risk of war. And, in doing what they did, they set forth the basic moral principles that then informed the later deliberations that led to our Constitution and are the practical foundation of our liberty.

And so those words in the Declaration of Independence – "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" -- are the basic premise of everything that, as a people, we claim to hold dear. Self-government and rights and due process and liberty and all these other unique hallmarks of the American way of life, they rest on that premise and that premise alone.

Try as they might, the intellectuals of our time who have real problems with some aspects of that premise … they want to come up with some substitute for it. They've written big fat tomes and books in which they try to do so. And the sad truth of it is that every attempt has failed. And no attempt has been put in a form that can in any way shape or move the Conscience or the Heart. And that is always the challenge of Statesmanship, whatever your Abstract Theories.

So here we are, a people whose very identity is defined in terms of that moral principle which says that our rights come from God.

All right, that's clear. I frankly don't see how anybody try and refute that. That's based on facts known to all. Based on words that we can all go look at and read that are pretty unequivocal in their meaning too.

I had a lady come up to me after I had gone through this logic the other night at a speech in New Hampshire and she says that she can refute what I said. (Because I invited anybody who could do so to refute me.) And she purported to refute me by arguing that it didn't apply until after the children were born. And I looked at her and I said, "Well, I beg to differ with you because I, at least, can read the document and the Declaration of Independence doesn't say we're all born equal."

The founders could have said that, by the way. They had read philosophers who, in fact formulated it that way … as Rousseau did, among others. But, that's not what they said. Being conscious of that formulation, they, in fact, rejected it. And instead they ascribed that Moment of our Rights not to our Birth but to our Creation. And by doing so, they took that ascription of rights out of the hands of human beings ... out of the reach of human power and human choice and put it squarely in the hands of God, who is solely responsible for that Creation.

So that's the first premise. Now … now comes the second step in this clear and simple logic. We claim our rights based on the existence and authority of the Creator God. Let's think for a moment: What happens to our rights and to our claims to rights if we deny the Existence or reject the Authority of the Creator?

I think that's pretty clear, don't you? Is there some way that the house stands when the foundation has been knocked out from under it? Last time I looked, that was kind of difficult. Doesn't work that way.

No. If we are standing on ground that requires the authority of God and we reject and deny the authority of God, then we have no ground to stand on when we claim our freedom. All the talk of rights, all the talk of liberties, all the talk of this or that champion of the cause of human dignity is all hogwash once you have rejected the fundamental premise of all: which is that God exists and that His Authority commands the Respect of Human Beings and Human [Dignity].

But I what I say there, again, I just want to remind you … that's not just Alan Keyes expressing his Roman Catholic heart, influenced as it might be by reading Aquinas and others that were pretty clear on the logical points that are involved in things like this. No, it's not that at all. Alan Keyes is just a plain old American fellow who has managed every now and again to take a look back at our heritage and he finds there, written in fairly clear language, pretty much acceptable to everybody, everything that I've just said.

That's why I don't understand, then, how it is that we can be so nonchalant, some of us, about the implications of decisions and public policies in our courts and in our laws that obviously, overtly, clearly and explicitly rip up, throw aside and reject the tenets that I just described.

[We go on with this sort of Shadow Planned Living], we go to the polls, we vote, we pretend with the Congress and the whole business. And yet, once we have turned our back on that fundamental Moral Principle, it is indeed a shadow play without substance, a form without substance, a body that moves when the soul has fled .

And I'm sad to tell you this. For the time being, this is exactly what our nation is. And I know it's a harsh thing to say but I think we ought to realize that when our Holy Father, for instance, talks of the Culture of Death* he's talking precisely about us.

He's talking about, among other things, our country. Our country, it's body politic, animated as it was by this life-giving principle that [sourced] our rights and our liberties in the living will of God. Our country now is dead because we have rejected that principle of equal rights.

And the period that we're in right now? We're finally deciding whether it's going to stay dead long enough for the corpse to rot and stink up the place. And I say that quite literally. Don't fool yourselves. The stench is already rising.

We are, right now, the greatest power on the face of the earth: the most successful economy, the greatest military power, the greatest leader. Nobody can challenge us. I hear our hubristic leaders talk about this all the time, strutting in their pride. But that means we have power for good or ill. And if we use that power for ill it is nothing to be proud of.

So what can we say? What can we say then? I can remember talking to folks whom I know who went to the most recent Women's Conference that the United Nations sponsored. And what did they find there but that the United States was in the league and twisting the arms and forcing the votes of countries that reject the heinous practice of abortion … threatening them: "We will cut off your aid! We will not give you the support of this great country the United States unless you march lockstep with us down the pathway of the Culture of Death!"

Already that power which we represent is being abused to spread the Shadow of Evil throughout the world.

And that ought to sadden us deeply. After all, we have in the course of this century—we Americans—have made many sacrifices in order to beat back the Shadow of that very evil. Crosses stand row upon row in cemeteries in far-flung places around the world. Under them lie those who were our forebears, our spouses, our brothers, our sisters, our aunts, our uncles, our grandfathers. And all ... they sacrificed their lives so that we would stand on the front line of that justice which we understood on the basis of this heritage we now reject.

What do you think becomes of the struggle against that Shadow in the next century?

I know we've been through all this hoopla now in which we have celebrated the coming of the millennium. I've got to tell you there's something totally representative about what we just went through on January 1st because – as you all know, as far as the millennium is concerned – it's a false start. I feel, meaning no particular offence and implying, of course no political bias whatsoever, one would have to argue that it's kind of appropriate that one would make a false start during the Clinton presidency. But, we know the millennium doesn't really start until next January. We all do know this, right? We call this the 20th century because the year 2000 is included within it. Wouldn't make much sense if it was.

But we go through all this hoopla, we are celebrating the coming of the New Millennium. Ask yourself, what actually is going to happen in that millennium? I was reading about it today a little bit. We have the latest episode of animal cloning. Have you heard about this, where they've cloned the monkeys now? They're getting closer and closer to our human beings here. And, I don't know what you think of that but I do know that it implies … sure, it implies a kind of knowledge, it implies a kind of new power.

Many of the things that our Science offers us now have placed us on the threshold of powers that not only reach to powers over the body but powers -- in one regard -- over our very nature itself. As we confront the responsibility of those powers, what does it imply? Well, it could imply great good. Or, it could imply great and tragic evil.

And we confront the question, then, as the power grows, will the Conscience grow? Will the basis and ability to make right moral judgment grow? If it does, then that power may be both used and constrained responsibly. If it does not, then that power will be abused. And again, its Unlimited Abuse would destroy our very Humanity.

The century ahead of us may indeed be the great and glorious and bright century they all predict or else it may be a century that casts even the atrocities of the 20th century into the shade and makes them seem just the dress rehearsal. That is the kind of power we are now moving toward.

And the question that faces us as a people is that faces us as a people is: As we enter that century, are we going to be once again the nation that battles the Shadow of Evil or are we going to be the powerful Nation that Casts It?

And it is not a joke. Because when we were good, we were enormously powerful by God's will for good but if we go bad, we will go very, very bad.

And I have to tell you. I know that some people don't like this … "Oh don't get all gloomy on us Alan … be optimistic!!" (I have heard this from certain colleagues in my present line of work that criticize people like me for this.)

I don’t find it particularly optimistic to lie to yourself about the challenges that we face. As a matter of fact, I think that in reality, if you're walking toward a deep pit and nobody tells you about it, that's rather a pessimistic situation. I think I'd be very grateful for the guy who said, "Wait a minute! There's a pit there … don't fall into it!" Thank you for that "optimistic suggestion."

Well there is a pit. It's a pit dug by our own abandonment of principle. It's a pit dug by our own judges and our own courts and our own law. It's a pit dug because we have ripped the heart out of American Truth and American Justice and American Liberty.

And we will not restore that heart … we will not restore that heart until we have returned to our allegiance to the fundamental premise that made the heart of America beat with strength and right and righteousness … that principle which understands that our rights come from God and we cannot take them away from our posterity in the womb, not by the mother's choice or any other human choice.

And if that's true. If all that's true ...
Then what is at stake in the Pro-Life cause?

It's the fate of our nation and the fate of all the goodness that it might do in world ahead of us, in the years ahead of us. That fight is exemplified, I think, by the children in the womb. [The fight for] generations yet unborn, our posterity: The ones -- though we have forgotten it -– who are, in the Constitution, put on an equal level with ourselves. It's great and culminating purpose to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Please remember that if somebody ever tells you that the unborn aren't mentioned in the Constitution. They're right there. And they're put in a position that is in Utter Contradiction with the notion that there can be ANY right to abortion whatsoever. How can such a right be compatible with securing the blessings of liberty for our posterity? I don't see how that works.

To secure the blessings of liberty by killing the posterity?
It's a very interesting thought.
I guess you're Liberating them from Life.

It doesn't work. And as it doesn't work, [it's a wrong kind of liberty to uphold] and the cause in which we gather here today … the cause that reaches the lives of those individual children … YES … is a cause that therefore touches upon the future in a direct way: in the voices that will not be heard, the work that will not be done, the strong hearts that will not stand up to be counted for justice in any way, the songs unsung, the poems unwritten, the beauty of God's mind that shall ever be locked away in secret from us because we killed those who would have been the messengers.

In that way we kill our future. But more directly, we kill the future of our country and our liberty by destroying that moral foundation without which it cannot survive. What is at stake, therefore, in our Pro-Life Cause, is the future of our nation but also the future of everything good that our nation has brought and will bring to this world.

It's not a small thing. Not a special interest. Not a petty cause. We come together in the general hope that we may save that Hope that our nation is supposed to represent.

Now I think, in this regard, that as a people who stand in the tradition of faith -- a tradition of faith that, among other things, enjoins us to a labor of love in this world -- the Pro-Life Cause is, in a very special way one of the works of Mercy that God enjoins upon us.

Our Lord tells a story of the Good Samaritan. And in doing so, He introduced a Moral Revolution into a world that, until He spoke, had seen only the glory of Pride and Strength and Power and not the glory of Love and Mercy and Compassion.

But He told us that it was our responsibility not just to do the bidding of those who have the strength to make us do it but rather to Respond and to be governed by the plight of those helpless and lying in the ditch, mugged by the circumstances of life. Get down off our high horse and to lift them out of the ditch into which they have been cast by evil and circumstance.

Now I know that very often we interpret that story as if the only thing were supposed to think about there is the body and the feeding of the body and the clothing. And it is told in that metaphor -- right? -- he's been mugged, his clothes have been taken away, his body is mangled. But we know it's true that man does not live by bread alone. But, in truth, the greatest mercy is the mercy that leads souls to salvation, the mercy that turns the heart away from darkness to the light of God's Truth.

I think in a very literal sense our nation is like that wayfarer who's been mugged and thrown into the ditch. The interesting thing being, of course, that the concept that you've been robbed means you had something and it was taken away from you.

Our nation had truth.

It had, perhaps, the central and most powerful and most important truth: that God Is and that His Will Governs. And that He cares enough to respect our life and to establish by His hand our dignity and by His mercy our rights. And yet, in the course of the last decades, by stealth and by open denial, we have been robbed of that Truth.

Literally, now, our nation lies mugged and bleeding in the ditch. Bleeds from a hundred places in the hallways of our schools where children devoid of moral sense take one another's lives, it bleeds from a thousand places in the streets of our cities where minds blasted by materialism put more value on Money and Things than they do upon Life. It lies bleeding as well in a million and in tens of millions of places … in all those abortion clinics and in all those young lives snuffed out because we have substituted Human Choice for God's Choice and accepted the Lie that We determine the Dignity of All. Our nation lies mugged and bleeding in the ditch.

And I think that it is indeed our obligation of Love … whatever may be our own hope for salvation … to turn aside from our past and to try as best we can to help this nation reclothe itself in Truth, heal the wounds inflicted by those Lies so that it may rise again and walk the path of decency and justice that God in His providence seems to have marked out for us.

To me, that is the real significance of the Pro-Life cause for our country and for the world in which our country may still do so much good. Motivated by that understanding, then, I hope we'll realize that we have to show a dedication to this work that goes beyond every possibility of the usual success.

I often get that question these days because people think that everything in life should be based on some Stupid Calculation or other. And so they keep wondering "Oh, how can you can keep doing this and speaking out … why, this, … you'll be defeated here and mangled there and destroyed in the other place!"

Everyone is [pulling long faces] at you, though ... colleagues who won't be quite as comfortable with you if you're outspoken. The family that won't be quite as friendly with you if you're outspoken. The friends, the community, the neighbors, the this or that who will turn away from you because: "Well … we just don't want to … we don’t want to be bothered with that … we want to have a more POSITIVE and HOPEFUL environment than you bring with all your Gloomy Talk"

Justice.

In some way or another, each and every one of us faces the choice between the Truth and our Ease, the Truth and our Convenience, being witnesses for that Truth or going along with this world's ways.

And I believe that of all that is at stake, we are each of us called upon – just as our forebears were – the ones who died on the battlefields and marched in the marches and did all that they could to move this nation and its place in the world toward greater Justice and Dignity for All, we are called now to be Soldiers on the Front Lines of This Struggle for Renewed Dignity.

We are called to do it in our businesses and our families and our work and in our neighborhoods and in our politics and in our religious places … from every platform that we can lay hold off we are called upon to be Witnesses to this Truth!

I can't be sure … I can't be sure how in some temporal sense that turns out.

You win some. You lose some.

You want to know the truth? (It's a truth that in a very personal way in recent times, I've been by the grace of God discovering every day …)

There is a kind of Peace, a kind of Hope, a kind of Certainty that comes from walking through the darkness by the light of God's will that you get no other way.

I believe with all my heart that it leads to that place of Light and Peace where we may not win the plaudits of the world but where we will hear the One Voice of Approval, where we will see the One Smiling Face …

Favor and Mercy that will last not for a moment--it will last not as human fame lasts, even for an age of Man--but will last Forever, because it is God's Word and God's Voice and God's Favor and God's Smiling Face that welcomes us to our eternal home to be there as we have been here … grateful servants of His Truth.

No problem ... (except with my fonts, it seems)

6 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:23:15 PST by Askel5
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It was a great night ... my pastor (who I adore and will miss very much when he retires this summer) was there! Took the opportunity to hit up one of the Catholic station's prime talking heads and hand him a book on the CHD. Told him "the girl who gave him the red book" would be making an appointment to see him shortly. =)

And, I got to drive Dr. Keyes' van back to the rental lot for him. Talk about your grateful servants, er, campaign workers! S'wonderful Life!!

7 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:26:16 PST by Askel5
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God bless this precious soul who has such a diamond-shining mind and heart!

IMHO, just his speaking of the Truth has a resounding power and effect that can and will change the course of this nation's future, whether or not he achieves the office of the Presidency.

8 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:27:29 PST by TEXOKIE
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Well, I'm not one of the adamantly pro life people, but I do think there should be a lot less of abortions. The current policy is callous. I also respect Dr. Keyes very much, I will read this tomorrow.

What are the itallicized remarks at the beginning of the speech ?

9 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:29:32 PST by Leper Messiah
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Well, quite naturally, all the typos and homonyms are rising to the surface as I type ... Once it's "out the box" I'll clean it up and repost. =)

Do take care!

10 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:35:27 PST by Askel5
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It's just the intro part of his address I somewhat missed as I cut through the kitchen -- Col. Mustard fashion -- to get to the other side of the room.

11 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:38:36 PST by Askel5
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Precisely!

12 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:41:12 PST by Askel5
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I have to admit....I liked it. I haven't felt like that since the first time I read the Declaration of Independence. God, I just pray he believes it.

13 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:41:47 PST by lovecraft
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I do think there should be a lot less of abortions

Think about it, though, Leper. How can you be MODERATELY against the right of ONLY WOMEN to decide which lives are Wanted and which lives may be killed?

It doesn't make any sense, I'm afraid.

I'm not impugning either your intelligence or your sensibilities but feel I must warn you that this sort of thinking is like quicksand for the conscience.

14 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:43:02 PST by Askel5
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Trust me ... the room was ALIVE, bathed in Truth!

With the exception of perhaps four or five bursts of sustained and thunderous applause, folks were TRANSFIXED. (One of the reasons, I'm sure, the crash in the kitchen stood out on my tape.)

15 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:45:46 PST by Askel5
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"KEYES WILL LEAVE PARTY IF NOMINEE CHOSES PRO-ABORTION RUNNING MATE"

This is probably the best thing that Keyes could do.  Pat Buchanan realized that the big money people in the GOP are never going to let a vocal anti-abortion Republican win the nomination or be selected as Vice Presidential running mate.  As a third party candidate or Independent, he would at least stand a chance of getting on the ballot in November.

I'm not sure, but I would not be surprised if the party leaders are secretly hoping that Keyes does leave the party.

For the record, I am a Republican, but my candidate for President this year is Harry Browne, who is not that far away from Keyes on many issues.  He doesn't stand much of a chance of winning either.  But, at least, he will be on the ballot for the general election.

Keyes should really consider bailing.  There is a truism in Presidential politics that Keyes is ignoring.

You can't win, if you aren't on the ballot.

16 Posted on 01/14/2000 22:56:14 PST by Action-America (jgaver@gurusinc.com)
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God, I just pray he believes it.

I believe he believes it. No one could write or speak such original thoughts unless he believed with every fiber of his being. He's not just a trained pony like Bush. This is why Keyes can sit with 5 liberal talking heads and win every round--because his ideas and words emanate from his own beliefs and his own pristinely disciplined mind.

17 Posted on 01/14/2000 23:23:57 PST by giotto
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Oh, I think the party's leaders are just like everyone else that's for Bush.

"Oh, he'd make a really nice Secretary of Health Education and Welfare ... pity he doesn't have more experience ... gosh, he's awfully smart and has some great ideas but He's so rigid! Perhaps more experience will teach him what it takes to be a WINNER."

Shameful, really, that it's come to this.

The Mutual Fund likes the 70 million dollar man.

The Democrats have shown they can see when someone's "sending a message" (as did President Bush and Bob Dole during impeachment) and will vote accordingly ... the "Clinton-fatigued" as well as some of those voters Gore is now desperately trying to shake from his shoe will find Bush a relief.

And we will have a matching Bush bookend with which to cap Bill's Big Adventure and the giant pit will just disappear again. Banks will know their customers and we'll feel good about the fact that abortions are down and we can safely harvest from human embryos purposefully farmed for research purposes, totipotent stem cells and assorted secrets sufficient to continue without so much fuss Hillary's "Reconstruction of Man"

18 Posted on 01/14/2000 23:26:59 PST by Askel5
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To me, the entire two-party system needs to change.

I'm fed up with Democrats and Republicans alike. You want to know why I think the apathy of the American Voter is caused? People are FED up with having to vote for a Politician! I want a leader dammit! I want someone to inspire me. I want to look upon our Presidency and be proud that we are doing the right thing in whatever we do. I want someone that's not got his name on the ballot only because of how much money he can raise I want a President not a fundraiser. I know we are human and that we will make mistakes. But I want this country to be just and honorable at least 90% of the time, instead of the coin toss its become.

The cause for a period of apathy in my life was because I realized the only TRUE option to me was choosing between the lesser of two evils. That should not be the only choice I am given for the leader of my country. Looking back at the Clinton/Dole election I was already disgusted that in the greatest country in the world...these are my only two choices for getting what I want. The system is gotta change.

I don't approve of the electoral college...everybody I talk to says their vote don't count...and you know what? it don't. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been lead to believe that the popular vote has no effect on the decision. Its up to the electoral college and a candidate can be nominated without taking the popular vote in that state. Somebody please tell me if this isn't true. If I've been duped, then I want to know about it. Point me to the info and I'll read it, I'd like to know of an accurate description of our current electoral process if someone will be kind enough to refresh this mind since I don't remember it being taught in any of my core classes at college. So much for higher education.

19 Posted on 01/14/2000 23:50:11 PST by lovecraft
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Hey, you! It was very nice seeing you last night. We've just returned to Iowa, after a morning in DC and afternoon in New Hampshire.

Thank you so much for transcribing the speech and posting... and you get some rest! LOL!

20 Posted on 01/15/2000 00:02:39 PST by Clinton's a liar
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I do think there should be a lot less of abortions Think about it, though, Leper. How can you be MODERATELY against the right of ONLY WOMEN to decide which lives are Wanted and which lives may be killed? It doesn't make any sense, I'm afraid. I'm not impugning either your intelligence or your sensibilities but feel I must warn you that this sort of thinking is like quicksand for the conscience.

The belief underlying the "pro-life" stance is that a zygote is a sentient person from the moment of conception. I personally would not only dispute this claim (sentience, when it occurs, does so between conception and birth) but suggest that people consider the implications.

Those who believe a zygote is a sentient human being often claim that it obviously is, and that common sense would reveal it so. Given that many people's "common sense" does not reveal it so, arguing that it's obvious accomplishes nothing.

According to Eccl. 11:5, "As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything."[RSV] If the spirit is present from the moment sperm meets egg, what is to be made of the above passage? After all, conception generally takes place outside the womb (fallopian tubes, usually), and it's not until weeks later than there are any bones to speak of.

Also, those who would regard a zygote as a human being are imparting full human stature to a cell or group of cells which nature regards(*) as relatively disposable. Even if there were no deliberate abortions, less than half of all human zygotes would develop into human babies. If nature regards zygotes as disposable, saying that a zygote is the equal of any other human being would imply that all human beings are disposable.

(*)Anthropomorphizing here, obviously. The key point is that it's natural for many zygotes to be conceived that will not result in live births.

If it's "obvious" that a zygote is a full-fledged human being, perhaps someone can explain how. I for one don't see it.

21 Posted on 01/15/2000 00:27:35 PST by supercat
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Trust me ... the room was ALIVE, bathed in Truth!

Well, it's obvious that my monitor is certainly dripping with pure, unadulterated, 200 proof truth right now.

It's obvious to me that Rush will need to relinquish his title to being "The Most Dangerous Man In America". And by his refusal to endorse Keyes, he has demonstrated that his Truth Detector is seriously Out Of Whack.

Keyes will never get elected to anything if he continues to distribute Truth at this concentration. America can't handle the Truth (to paraphrase Jack Nicholson). The Truth causes way too many inconveniences for the vast majority of American voters.

Too bad that we've forgotton the true definition of freedom: it's not the opportunity to do whatever one wants to do, it's the opportunity to choose to do what is right. Unfortunately, we live in a morally bankrupt nation that doesn't think that it can afford to do what's right.

Shall we start a pool on just how many years the United States of America has left?

22 Posted on 01/15/2000 00:46:01 PST by CubicleGuy
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First of all, I think the Pro-Life position is that From the Moment of Conception, it is a Human Life en route to full participation in all manner of existence that is life on earth.

I wouldn't worry too much about anthropomorphizing Nature either. Sometimes that's the only approach by which folks begin to apprehend that there is a Natural Law by which this Universe operates. I personally believe that every Human Life is entitled to a natural death. If Nature wishes to step in for whatever reason, She alone is entitled to take a life and call it a "Natural Death".

Second, you assume too much with your use of sentient. What do any of us remember of our lives in the womb? Precious little. Recovering coma victims cannot tell you where they were for days, weeks, months, years ... but they can recover with all or a great deal of their "consciousness".

I'm sure that the NIH -- given enough leeway -- would love to get their hands on the kinds of human research subjects that might afford them some further understanding of how to Manipulate the Consciousness which defines Human for you, but I'm hopeful they will not. I'm hopeful we can be content to be grateful for a recovery and strong enough to enduring the loss -- before our very eyes -- of even a part of a loved one.

Further, I don't care what your definition is. I've heard them all since hanging around here. Some need form, some need brain waves, some need a beating heart that races as the knife approaches. I even had one born-again Christian explain that it was when the child first took a breath that the Holy Spirit was in him.

Bogus. All of them. You are judging a Human Life that, barring interference from you will develop until he or she dies a natural death. To define a Human Being by its accidents of personality, Time or physics cannot be correct. Your definition does not align with the next, the next, the next or the next. Plus, I'm not so sure many of the handicapped children with whom I worked or lived would fit your definition of sentient. The State is more than happy to oblige what rationalizations of conscience you can make to excuse their concerted efforts to trim and perfect our population. I don't doubt that your sentient or jennyP's functioning brain will be used soon enough to start picking off the unfit among "the living" human beings.

I think Dr. Keyes does a great job of explaining that any equivocation on the sanctity and dignity of Human Life from the moment of creation is an abandonment of our Constitution. Our government has no interest anymore in abiding by the Constitution and, in fact, is actively subverting and perverting it both at home and around the world.

It is only in a complete rejection of the temptation to rationalize murder based on the sizing, weighing and sorting of Human life that will thwart this effort. That's just one reason, I suppose I can't fathom why anyone would work so hard to argue in favor of ANYONE'S "right" to decide FOR ANY REASON that a Human Life was Unwanted and therefore disposable. Particularly with the rejoinder "personally I'm against it BUT ... "

In any case, I doubt very seriously that the poetry of bones in Ecclesiastes was meant as some Clue that bones were a prerequisite to the marriage of a soul with a Human Life. I think, rather, the operative ends of that passage would be "As you do not know..." or perhaps "God who made Everything."

23 Posted on 01/15/2000 01:06:19 PST by Askel5
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America can't handle the Truth (to paraphrase Jack Nicholson). The Truth causes way too many inconveniences for the vast majority of American voters.

Never fear, CubicleGuy! He actually does reconnect the circuits necessary to handle the high voltage.

I've finally spent a couple days talking with a lot of the folks I'd read regularly on the evolutionISM threads. Trust me, far EASIER to stick to the Truth rather than reconcile the Bright Ideas of Extraordinary Animals who've but one lifespans's worth of responsibility, family and friends for which they feel accountable.

24 Posted on 01/15/2000 01:10:39 PST by Askel5
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Thank you, thank you, thank you.....question? Was he reading?

As I read, I visualized this guy standing up at the podium just carrying on a conversation...using those typical pause and then ask a suggestive question (I'm not making myself very clear here), but the cadence of saying something like, "and we can't have that...right?" and then taking right off in to either rebut by discounting it or establishing the firm logic supporting his position....the rise and fall and control cadence and posturing...it's almost as though you're there.

I feel so fortunate to have listened to him on radio/tv simucast, and then watched speeches he's made and interviews and debates....

I would ask everyone.....can you imagine any other candidate, yes, even Gary Bauer, who could present the pro-life message with an impact equal to this? I see McCain unable to read beyond the first couple of paragraphs...he would appear phony and pathetic; I won't say anything negative about GWB and his delivery.....just think back to the debates.

25 Posted on 01/15/2000 01:17:12 PST by Rowdee
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question? Was he reading?

As a matter of fact, Rowdee, he was NOT reading. Doubt very seriously he's ever even made a note.

Further to that "it's easier to just go with what's True" post of mine above, I'm confident Keyes can speak on any subject, at any time -- with very little or no additional preparation necessary. (Don't think he's ever revised a public statement based on what his "advisors" had to say either.)

It's a combination of extreme smarts and a message that is not "sent" but, rather, imparted directly from his heart.

(Sly dog, you knew better all the time ... you pictured him perfectly! Thanks for the question, though.)

26 Posted on 01/15/2000 01:31:43 PST by Askel5
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76 Posted on 01/16/2000 01:28:15 PST by Askel5
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It's a unique privilege that women have to bring forth life from their wombs.

But of course I never will have to go through labor, or get morning sickness, or take off work, or drop out of school, go to the bathroom every 1/2 hr...for 9 months. It's a huge physical demand on a woman's body. And your hysterics (excuse the pun) on abortion and totalitarianism aside, the entire issue of abortion has to take into account the fact that a woman has to carry this child around in her body for 9 months. And for the nutcases who don't believe that rape is a valid reason to abort, are the worst haters of humanity I can think of.

77 Posted on 01/16/2000 01:33:34 PST by garbanzo
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Yes, you won't have to do that.

I'm going to spare my mother for a change and resist talking about me except to say that -- despite my awful circumstances -- pregnancy was an E-Ticket. An extraordinary experience of Life that -- despite my circumstances and the very abrupt, painful and graphic end -- I hope to do it again someday. (That last bit, actually, might even make up for prior honesty on the forum.)

Without a doubt, the circumstances of my friends are not ideal. One other problem that pains me somewhat is the tendency for them to treat their daughters (in particular) as little adults and "friends" instead of sparing them the details of Dad or finances or worries. I believe strongly that children should have childhoods.

YET NOT ONE OF THEM would trade the experience for all the world. That's the thing. Inevitably, as Smokin' Joe explains to the slow: God Provides. That's how we've managed thus far without state-of-the-art birth control and Agenda-Ridden Scientists to yammer at us that we're breeding out of control and liable to squander precious resources on the feeding of unproductive human mouths.

Evil.

It doesn't sound like you have kids at all. While I'm not a big fan of career women who seem only to accessorize their lives with children, I am still a champion of women who do their damndest to rear their kids despite the fact they've been forced by the government's wholesale coercion to seek in the government the security that men (in a more "moralistic" society) once felt obligated to provide.

What's sick is the way so many fail to understand why they are where they are. I feel very strongly that women have been handed a most poisonous apple from the State. Even those who would never personally avail themselves of the Right to Determine the Death of their Child feel compelled somehow to vote with all the reflection and conscience of Pavlov's dog when it comes to the almighty "right".

Maybe they're too busy to realize that it is this very Right (as well as the chucking of female modesty in the Sexual Revolution) that has made them the de facto breadwinners, parents and family. I have been working in earnest on one woman I know who is dying to be at home with her kids and could afford it. (She's >< this close to working only during school hours.) She feels compelled to miss out on their childhood because she's just not certain that her husband might not drop her for a new model someday. She feels she must keep a hand in her career of choice in order to provide for her kids. It's happened to most of her friends, why not her?

And why shouldn't men treat women thus? The State, by defining their worth to women as a child support check ONLY, has likewise limited their obligation to women and children. It never ceases to amaze me how silly women can be. (Including myself, by the way.)

I'm not being silly on this issue, though. You're advocating an inequality of humans which only leads to further "burden" and "sacrifice" on the part of women who quite valiantly buck the System and make the right choice. Their rewards are REAL rewards, don't forget it. But the incredible stacking of the deck against them is because abortion IS A MEANS OF POPULATION CONTROL. It's not some humanitarian measure designed to FINALLY liberate women from the "horrors" of pregnancy.

Maybe, as an evolutionist, it's only NATURAL you are ready to start changing the essence of man, fixing stuff like the inequality of women's having to bear children. You recognize that (1) we certainly have the technology to produce WANTED children with WANTED characteristics on demand and (2) we have both the technology and the MindSet to accomplish a more HUMANITARIAN death process.

Well ... forgive me, garbanzo, I'm sure you're a great guy but you need to begin to realize that on the issue of Human Life, indeed, you are supporting, if not exactly lockstep with the likes of Hillary Clinton, Margaret Sanger, Peter Singer, the Chinese Government, the UN and a host of likewise totalitarian or ideological purveyors of death.

Just give it some thought and prove me wrong.

78 Posted on 01/16/2000 02:10:32 PST by Askel5
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About rape, by the way ... Mother Nature find it abhorrent as well. Very rarely do women conceive from rape.

Perhaps next time you run into one of those folks who was conceived out of rape or incest ... you might want to ask them their thoughts on a retroactive application of the punishment you wish to mete out on them for the sins of their father.

79 Posted on 01/16/2000 02:12:50 PST by Askel5
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All I'm saying is that if a woman wants a child it's a great thing. If a woman doesn't want a child then I don't see why the woman is somehow irrelevant to the decision over her body. Now if you don't believe a woman has ownership of her body then I'd put you in the anti-man category.

As for rape victims getting pregnant, the point is that it does happen and the vile nutcases who would force a woman into keeping a pregnancy against her will in such situationare the most anti-man people around.

Think about this - let's say a 12-year girl is raped and she becomes pregnant. Are you going to make that girl go school for the next nine months? Have to walk around pregnant and have people look at her funny just because some nutcase thinks he's standing on principle - you're just as bad the environmentalist wackos and their clamoring over snail darters.

80 Posted on 01/16/2000 02:33:35 PST by garbanzo
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All I'm saying is that if a woman wants a child it's a great thing. If a woman doesn't want a child then I don't see why the woman is somehow irrelevant to the decision over her body. Now if you don't believe a woman has ownership of her body then I'd put you in the anti-man category.

I do believe a woman has control of her own body. If she is not willing to give birth nine months later, she can forego sex. I am not anti-man, as a matter of fact but neither can I see a man standing up in court and pleading that he should not pay child support for that part of "the woman's body" which happened to turn into his child.

As for rape victims getting pregnant, the point is that it does happen and the vile nutcases who would force a woman into keeping a pregnancy against her will in such situationare the most anti-man people around.

Do you mean anti-woman? I don't understand "anti-man".

I'm not a vile nutcase. This is actually an interesting question that perplexes me too -- I wonder if we'll ever be totally exemption-free. I suppose I would fall into the camp of having the kid and giving it up for adoption as "making the best of a bad situation".

Think about this - let's say a 12-year girl is raped and she becomes pregnant. Are you going to make that girl go school for the next nine months? Have to walk around pregnant and have people look at her funny just because some nutcase thinks he's standing on principle - you're just as bad the environmentalist wackos and their clamoring over snail darters.

Well, now, here again, your PETA side is showing.

Believe it or not, garbanzo, no one's going to force the girl to go to school along with the young teens who are pregnant and WANT to keep their kids. Some teens (there's a story above, I think), actually understand better than their parents what's at stake and might actually choose to deliver the child. Places abound which take care of girls, support them, arrange adoptions. No woman or child who's made one mistake need compound it by making another.

Got a news flash for you, garbanzo: I don't give a damn about the snail darter. I'm not one of those who uses the environment or the horrors or pregnancy or over-population or global warming to crank society or a dam deal one way or another.

Like you and the rest of the evolutionists, I believe that species do go extinct. (In fact, I think its the one part of the THEORY that can be proven in no uncertain terms.)

Thanks, though, for reminding me to round out my arguments next time I have an evolution thread. I've been forgeting to add that we're making extinction a thing of the past ... just as Natural Selection become UNnatural and chance is removed from the picture.

Odd, isn't it?

81 Posted on 01/16/2000 02:54:40 PST by Askel5
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THREAD TWO

82 Posted on 01/16/2000 04:30:40 PST by Askel5
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Agreed. Still, it makes no difference to the argument.

83 Posted on 01/16/2000 07:43:07 PST by davide
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Do you mean anti-woman? I don't understand "anti-man"

Anti-man as in "misanthrope" or hater of humanity or Man's essential nature. One who sees humans and their happiness as dispensable qualities in pursuit of the greater goal.

As to your second point, my previous statements weren't completely directed at you since I don't really know your position on abortion in the case of rape, but rather at those who do believe that women should be forced to carry nonconsentual pregnancies - and there are a number on this list who think that.

I made this point on another abortion thread and I'll make here again - it seems as if there's this image of the carefree slut in the minds of pro-lifer that doesn't match up to reality - and the reality being that life is complex and women have abortions for many reasons and not just negligence. Married women who don't want or can't afford any more kids. Single women whose birth control fails. Etc. If people really want to reduce the abortion rate - I suggest you'd pool your money together and fund research into safe,effective, easy-to-use, and inexpensive birth control, because you're not going to end sexual activity.

84 Posted on 01/16/2000 09:37:36 PST by garbanzo
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Funny you should mention to garbonzo that he/she might ask one of those people which are the result of rape....

My daughter's goal was to be a school teach/coach...using her talents given her by the Creator, not a rapist nor myself.

Finding herself unable to deal hands on with working with children daily which don't receive the love and attention and direction provided from the "proper concept" of what constitutes good parents ....in other words, work with love deprived, or near abused children, she's redirected her life by going back to college to obtain a degree in Court Reporting....not for that occupation, but rather to use in the field of "Closed Captioning" television for hearing impaired...inspired from having an "Uncle" (no blood relation, but the brother of my late husband) who was a deaf mute.

Had I decided to take her life because of the "inconveniences" of bearing her, our world would be devoid of one who is a truly "compassionate" conservative.

85 Posted on 01/16/2000 11:23:10 PST by Rowdee
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...you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child...[Ecc 11:5] I don't necessarily take the position that the spirit of life is present at the exact moment of conception. But the fact that we don't know when this occurs is precisely why I don't believe that abortion is acceptable, because the Bible says that whatever is done in doubt is done in sin (Rom 14:23).

Is there not, though, a difference between where one should draw the line in deciding one's own actions, versus where one should draw it in judging others'?

After all, what we are talking about from a legal perspective is whether people who have or perform abortions should be punished as murderers, is that not correct? And is it not quite wrong to punish someone for murder without being certain of the accusation?

If the people in question have indeed committed murder, they'll be answerable for it on the Day of Judgement, regardless of whether they've been forced to answer for it here on earth.

86 Posted on 01/16/2000 14:42:35 PST by supercat
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Anti-man as in "misanthrope" or hater of humanity or Man's essential nature. One who sees humans and their happiness as dispensable qualities in pursuit of the greater goal.

What, you mean like the scientists or Supreme Court which would dispose of human lives farmed for the "greater goal" of solving pain and suffering of "living" humans and accelerating our transformation?

Frankly, it is Man's essential nature (particularly his ability to mistake his intellect, free will and reason as some indication he's a god and able to discern between Wanted and Unwanted human lives) that I do understand and do appreciate despite its pitfalls.

You, however, seem to have a fundamental disconnect and believe that "living" human beings are somehow possessed of the right to kill others based on the accidents of personality (age, skin, intellect, physical perfection) or their timing.

Shall we amend our Declaration of Independence, then, to mirror that of the United Nations that all men must be BORN to be equal?

Lots of folks on this forum have no problems with rationalizing a woman's right to decide to kill her child (despite at the same time arguing, as does JennyP, that a human life begins with brain function, or, at ten weeks)

That said, it looks like Rowdee might be your first stop in perhaps understanding that God's will is sometimes beyond our comprehension but, in abiding by His law, we can realize the full fruit of our human existence and avoid the pitfalls that undoubtedly shall come from continued ethically-neutral and morally ambivalent "self-determination" sans those self-evident truths enumerated on our Declaration of Independence (and founding of our human rights).

Completely false. Even nerds like me can get pregnant unexpectedly. It's a matter of taking responsibility for your actions like an adult or shirking them at the expensse of another. Plain and simple.

I still don't understand why you support the right of women to shirk their responsibilities (at the cost of a human life) but, evidently, see no problem with government ENFORCEMENT of the man's accountability.

87 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:18:37 PST by Askel5
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The two arguments: "Women will be forced to have babies" and "when does life begin" are two prime examples of gaging on a gnat and swallowing a camel. The vast majority (probably 99%) of women know they can get pregnant when they have sex. Abortion is by and large merely a birth control method. Pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex. There is no nobility in "saving" women from drudgery by killing their offspring. It didn't work for Susan Smith and it shouldn't work for the millions of women who try to "get out" of a bad situation by killing their children.

The whole "when does life begin" argument is not applicable. Close down the abortion clinics which CLEARLY violate the rights of the unborn and argue the rest later. It's like standing around debating how the fire started while the fire burns. Put out the fire, then worry about how it started.

88 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:40:04 PST by AppyPappy
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I don't think I've ever taken Elysian Fields or Desire past the Square without at least one person's crossing themselves before St. Louis Cathedral.

In my college days I used to ride public transit quite a bit in N.O. This was also before I became a Catholic. I used to wonder why so many would use the sign of the cross out of of what seemed like, nowhere. I'm so dense I never figured it out until one day I asked my future husbnad just why he crossed himself. Ah, Catholics, gotta love 'em! [g]

89 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:40:48 PST by Diva
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Can you point out for me where (besides Pro-Choice fear-mongering literature, perhaps) where anyone calls for the punishment of women who have abortions?

I don't understand why the outlawing of the taking of a human life (for which Armand Hammer's dad served prison time upon discovery of his son's botched abortion) should be twisted into some argument that the woman will be punished. I believe, instead, the practitioner of abortion always has been and will remain liable for the action.

Surely that is more just than the current system which protects (under SEALED court documents) the maiming and murdering of women simply because abortion clinics are invariably granted complete privacy by the courts. Far more women die or are harmed by abortion than liposuction each year. Why is it that the latter is the only topic fit for outrage over the abuse of women?

I'll be sure to flag you on a future "Lime 5" post. In the meantime, why not take a look at "Beyond Abortion" (linked above) so that you have a better idea the "malpractice proof" category into which both the unborn and "to-be-aborted" women fall.

90 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:53:48 PST by Askel5
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To be quite honest, it caught me by surprise as well -- particularly when once, riding bikes with an old New Orleanian Anglican friend of mine, he did it too!

91 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:58:47 PST by Askel5
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I am so proud to have had 12 years of the Dominican Education and influence. You "Aquinians", as the one who uses the name can testify, amaze me with your strong ability to proudly represent the very motto of "VERITAS".

I certainly can never find in myself the same ability as your wise, reasonable and succinct words to define such an intrinsic reality as LIFE & SOUL.

This "Dominican" and "Carmelite" influenced adult, knows that St. Thomas is proud of both of you, is influencing your capacity to explain...and that he prays that you each turn hearts to the plight of the children... on behalf of Jesus and His Mother...as I am and do!

92 Posted on 01/17/2000 11:21:35 PST by AKA Elena (AKA Elena@freerepublic.com)
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"OFF TOPIC": Interesting you bring up the Carmelites, by the way ... St. Therese is my patron and I used to spend a lot of summertime doing chores, sewing scapulars, Spanish dancing, playing cards and learning to read Spanish with an order of Carmelites who did the cooking and laundry at St. Thomas seminary in Houston!

Best regards.

93 Posted on 01/17/2000 11:40:12 PST by Askel5
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However what my original point is and was, is that a woman's body is involved in this - her body is not the ward of the state. The whole issue of abortion is who ultimately has the upper hand - the woman or the fetus. I'm constantly amazed at the fact that people don't think that the woman has any rights whatsoever over her own body when it comes to carrying a baby - especially if she failed to consent to activity which caused her pregnancy. In short, you're depriving a woman the right to her own body in favor of the fetus' right.

It would be like if I discovered a homeless man living in my basement and the government wouldn't let me kick him out because it would be too cruel. Even if I initially invited him in, or because of negligence (say failing to lock my doors) he simply moved in, the state would have no right to make me take care of him.

94 Posted on 01/17/2000 15:04:19 PST by garbanzo
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Well, all discussions of the State's rights to impose morality (or rather, amorality on us these days -- see OWK and I go round and round -- beginning with the question of legislating who can marry -- over here) I don't think there's ANYTHING that smacks of the State's ability to promulgate Morality and discern between male and female, privileged and underprivileged Wanted and Unwanted Human being BETTER than the female-only right to end an Unwanted Human Being's life (and right to dun the male SHOULD SHE DECIDE to keep the baby).

The propaganda -- fear-mongering, "injustice", utter selfishness and COMPLETE abrogation of the rights to which our posterity are clearly entitled in the Constititution -- obviously have hit a homer with you.

The fact that Roe v. Wade was based on a complete lie probably means nothing.

The fact that the case of conception by rape is so rare as to be negligible (given the extraordinary use of abortion as "birth control") does not dissuade you from making that fear-monger scenario the foundation of your compassionate stand on the right to kill.

The fact that men have to pay the piper (for, oh, 18 years or so) but women cannot endure nine months of pregnancy (which is not the horror story you make it out to be, by the way) does not seem to you in any way a clue that perhaps this "right" is not what it's cracked up to be.

The net result to women of abortion -- INCLUDING the horrors of abortion itself, her most-likely damaged womb if not court-sealed death, her degraded role in society and the utter degradation of her single-parent children -- is NEGATIVE doesn't move you.

Nor does the specter of our government's precedent-setting ACCORDING and WITHHOLDING of constitutional rights based on age, sex, wealth (in Minnesota welfare abortions are free!), or any other arbitrary criteria they deem fit doesn't bother you a bit.

Fine.

You'd think that, as an evolutionist, you'd realize that Man, despite his wondrous strides in Science and Technology still proves himself woefully primitive in his "global code of conduct" and probably is not yet actually to the point where he needs to be making the decisions as to Selecting who dies and who lives, forcing the eradication, if not extinction of the "dysgenic" and poor, and Planning Conception instead of allowing the Chance conception and birth which brought us to this glorious moment in Human History when we began to eat our own in earnest.

95 Posted on 01/17/2000 16:00:27 PST by Askel5
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I don’t find it particularly optimistic to lie to yourself about the challenges that we face. As a matter of fact, I think that in reality, if you're walking toward a deep pit and nobody tells you about it, that's rather a pessimistic situation. I think I'd be very grateful for the guy who said, "Wait a minute! There's a pit there … don't fall into it!" Thank you for that "optimistic suggestion."

I'm glad to hear Keyes was speaking without a script, though I did'nt think he was. to embrace Keyes is to reject matieralism, relativism, humanism, liberalism, ...

I can't quite come to the adamant pro life position, it certainly is not because I think it is OK. We will continue to have many abortions untill people change their attitudes, educate themselves, and once again embrace common sense.

96 Posted on 01/17/2000 16:04:58 PST by Leper Messiah
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Wanted and Unwanted Human being BETTER than the female-only right to end an Unwanted Human Being's life

If men could get pregnant I'd say the same thing. And the fact remains that some women do get pregnant from rape - the fact that you would dismiss these women's rights to move on with their lives strikes me as more horrible than abortion. But of course, like the totalitarians, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs and if a woman does get pregnant from rape hey, that's just her problem now isn't it, even if she has quit to work and explain to everyone she knows why she's pregnant or has to lie to everyone she knows. As I keep pointing out - the woman has some say over her body and how it will be used since she's a stakeholder in this as well as the fetus.

97 Posted on 01/17/2000 16:11:11 PST by garbanzo
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I'm sorry, garbanzo, we'll be talking at cross-purposes indefinitely if you're going to toe the line that -- by virtue of their plumbing -- women are somehow entitled to be treated different than men when it comes to bringing forth Human Life.

I think it's pretty obvious -- or it once was, anyway -- that women and men are different in many respects. I don't doubt for a minute that it was the unique privilege of (and undeniable physical commitment) that women made to pregnancy that once accounted for the female modesty that precluded women from engaging in the flower-to-the-flower-to-the-flower type sexual activity described by the King of Siam.

Just because "mores are changing" and feminists have told women that by wearing pants and whining to the courts for Title VII protection they can -- hey presto! -- become equal worker and get equal pay as men in the workplace doesn't mean that they REALLY ARE men in all respects.

I realize that, as an evolutionist, you don't see anything wrong with a little tinkering in order to hasten the evoling of male uteruses and female testicles in order to even things up but -- at this point -- dispensing constitutional rights based on sheer matters of physicality is wrong.

We are either human beings, CREATED equal and treated thus or we are not. To engage in the crass and indulgent argument that "poor women must be forced to protect and nurture the human life they brought into the world" and thereby condone the killing of that human life is WRONG.

Listen ... I actually am one of those women who enjoys the social niceties that gentleman (like my dad or brother-in-law or male relatives and friends) bestow on women. That regard is a reflection, I think, of woman's unique responsibility and actual strength (not weakness) in bearing and rearing the children which are our future.

That sort of regard is cool. It's like leaving to the men the things that men are good at -- like voting out of reason rather than want -- and placing on the shoulders of men the responsibilities and duties -- like armed combat -- that are their forte.

To so abandon, however, the idea that we still are fundamental equals as human beings and thus bestow Constitutional Right (complete with agit-prop defenses) is simply WRONG. THAT belittles women. That is not a right but simply a leading down the garden path into the maw of a government which -- having dispensed rights differently to and women and removed them entirely from the unborn, is only free to continue in such a fashion and further delineate the lines between which human beings are to be held accountable and which are not and -- worst of all -- which humans may be kept (at a penalty) or considered Unwanted and freely killed with no consequence.

Until we can actually agree that all human beings are equal and, in their human essence, transcend what accidents of personality their sex, race, age, etc. may attend, I don't think we have any further to go with this discussion.

Regards.

98 Posted on 01/17/2000 16:52:14 PST by Askel5
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Oh, I think you'll get there. I can't see you operating forever in the vaporlock that is a completely conflicted conscience.

Absolutely extemporaneous ... he is a statesman. Pity we are being forced to choose among a bunch of Comus queen politicians whose names were written on the ballot at least four years ago.

99 Posted on 01/17/2000 16:54:15 PST by Askel5
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As I said before, if men were capable of getting pregnant I'd say the same thing. However nature doesn't work that way and we can only look at the case of women. Now nowhere have I argued for an unrestricted right of women only to kill - I have argued for a woman's right to self-determination and that she at very least should have a say in whether or not she wants to be pregnant - largely because she bears the consequence. The fact that you consider pregnancy to be no big deal doesn't bind every other human female on the planet to that same conclusion. It is a big deal to many.

100 Posted on 01/17/2000 20:31:57 PST by garbanzo
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> The fact that you consider pregnancy to be no big deal doesn't bind every other human female on the planet to that same conclusion<

The fact that you think some lives are no big deal in comparison with the inconvenience of pregnancy, and it can be pretty incovenient at times as I well know, doesn't even come close to out weighing the right to life of the child in the womb. The child in the womb is a human being with the same right to life that you enjoy, or should be. When those who support abortion rights argue that some are more equal than others to this right I always wonder how old they are. If the they were born before or after Roe v Wade. How many of those pro-abortionists who were born before the 70s would be with us today if only their mothers had been given the power to choose.

101 Posted on 01/18/2000 03:23:16 PST by Diva
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Again, I think the disconnect here is your "ethically-neutral" background in evolution which places a far greater weight on the biological components components and "natural" urges of a human rather than -- like me -- looks at human essense as something men, women, the aged, the unborn, children, disabled, mentally feeble and startingly brilliant share alike.

You're looking only at what you see as my "misogynist" female take ... as if, somehow, I'm taking my better position to "judge" just how awful cramps or pregnancy were and imposing my shrill, shrewish judgment on others. Perhaps you think it's a holier-than-thou thing (assuming you've picked up on choices I've made in the past).

Neither is correct. I'm just as cognizant and compassionate as you. HOWEVER ... I do not see any reason why HUMAN rights should be accorded on the basis of ACCIDENTS OF PERSONALITY.

This is a philosophical term with which you may not be familiar. It means that, just because I am a woman or have brown hair or am missing an arm or a chunk of my intellect doesn't NOT mean I am in any way less a human being than you.

Just because you are looking at it ONLY from the perspective of cutting the woman a break and cannot seem to see that you are degrading her ability to -- like a man -- be accountable for her behavior or -- like a truly compassionate human being -- have equal regard for ALL HUMAN LIFE, does not mean that your position is Good while mine is both Authoritarian, Mean and Shortsighted.

It's because I do hold mankind in such esteem that I would (1) respect the sanctity of ALL human life and (2) refuse outright to differentiate between the essence or "humaness" of one human being over another based on mere biological or intellectual criteria.

102 Posted on 01/18/2000 11:52:13 PST by Askel5
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After all, what we are talking about from a legal perspective is whether people who have or perform abortions should be punished as murderers, is that not correct?

  That wasn't my impression of this thread, but you are quite right in that the issue would inevitably come up:

Is there not, though, a difference between where one should draw the line in deciding one's own actions, versus where one should draw it in judging others'?

  Of course, but I don't believe abortion should fall into any such gray area of the law. It is a detestable practice, though the desensitization of our culture has numbed the conscience of most people to the point that abortion is considered a mere cosmetic surgical procedure, like having an unwanted mole removed. But once the common practice of abortion has been purged from our society and we regain some depth of compassion, I don't think many people would have a problem treating a case of abortion similar to other criminal cases involving the loss of human life.

103 Posted on 01/18/2000 15:56:03 PST by Egg
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Bump to the top for the next President of the United States of America.

104 Posted on 01/18/2000 16:08:15 PST by MnMark (AlanKeyes@President-Elect.y2k)
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If TRUTH will out ... =)

105 Posted on 01/18/2000 16:19:05 PST by Askel5
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Is there not, though, a difference between where one should draw the line in deciding one's own actions, versus where one should draw it in judging others'? Of course, but I don't believe abortion should fall into any such gray area of the law. It is a detestable practice, though the desensitization of our culture has numbed the conscience of most people to the point that abortion is considered a mere cosmetic surgical procedure, like having an unwanted mole removed. But once the common practice of abortion has been purged from our society and we regain some depth of compassion, I don't think many people would have a problem treating a case of abortion similar to other criminal cases involving the loss of human life.

The Bible doesn't seem to regard the death of an unborn fetus the same as other loss of human life (Exodus 22:23, which provides that one who strikes a woman so that she miscarries shall, if no other harm comes to her, pay such damages as her husband demands and the judges allow; if other harm comes to her, then eye for eye, limb for limb, etc.) While that does not mean people who commit abortion won't be viewed as murders on Judgement Day, it would seem an indication that earthy judges should not regard them as such.

106 Posted on 01/18/2000 16:25:42 PST by supercat
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  Your reference to Exodus should be in the context of an accidental death to the unborn child. This fits perfectly with your earlier quote from Ecclesiastes: 'Earthly' judges are to allow for the possibility that the accidental miscarriage did not result in the loss of the life of a human being. However, the Bible speaks of the spirit of the law much more so than the letter of the law. The fact that a woman would intentionally pay a 'physician' to poison/crush/dismember or vacuum out from her person what may indeed be a spirit-filled human being speaks of a rotten act of disdain for human life on behalf of all parties involved- including the apathetic.

[Side note: I found that in modern translations, what you quoted as miscarriage is actually translated "born prematurely"- a big difference! I would like to further look into this...]

107 Posted on 01/18/2000 16:52:03 PST by Egg
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108 Posted on 01/18/2000 17:00:58 PST by Askel5
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The fact that a woman would intentionally pay a 'physician' to poison/crush/dismember or vacuum out from her person what may indeed be a spirit-filled human being speaks of a rotten act of disdain for human life on behalf of all parties involved- including the apathetic.

True, but there's a big difference between saying that "X is morally wrong" and "the government should punish people who do X". Given that--to date--all attempts to prevent popular immoral activity by prohibiting it have not failed but usually made the problem worse (Prohibition I, Prohibition II, prostitution, etc.) I think it's reasonable to expect that the same would likely happen were abortion outlawed.

Like it or not, abortion has been around for millenia. There are so many ways mankind has invented there's no way to stop them all. Better to instead focus on the factors that make people think them necessary in the first place.

109 Posted on 01/18/2000 17:17:00 PST by supercat
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..there's a big difference between saying that "X is morally wrong" and "the government should punish people who do X".

  Your statement is a generalization which I have no problem with for some circumstances. I just don't think that it applies in the case of abortion.

Like it or not, abortion [murder, rape, incest, thievery, fraud, etc...] has been around for millenia. There are so many ways mankind has invented there's no way to stop them all.

  You seem to be privy to Biblical reasoning, so perhaps you will understand my spiritual interpretation of the following:

  Although it is a desired effect that a law would eliminate the practice of an outlawed activity, that end is not the sole or even chief aim of legislation. For instance, a law also affirms a standard of right and wrong, giving a society a sense of stability. It also gives us a compass by which we can gauge the direction our culture is going. This latter function was extremely important for the mechanics of our form of government in the minds of our founding fathers, for our system of government was designed to provide the maximum amount of freedom to a self-disciplined citizenry. Time and time again we were told by these men that our form of government would not work for an irreligious people- meaning a society which didn't take the necessary spiritual measures to keep itself under control. After all, if we really believe that we derive our rights from God, how can we break His Laws and expect to continue to receive such freedoms? The Bible is full of examples to the contrary, where a nation would rise only to fall by its own rebelliousness.

  Now, if we for the sake of this argument assume that the American culture started off as near perfect, we could see that the passing of laws would be almost superfluous. But as the culture became more and more unruly, the passing of laws concerning areas where people were the most troublesome would become necessary. By this time, people watching certain indicators such as laws and their violators, would see an area of their culture that needed attention. This is an opportunity for them to make an effort to mend that area of society that is the weak link in their freedom. How? Through Christianity: prayer, fasting, evangelizing, etc. If that people fail to act, then laws currently in place will be abused to the point of mockery, those laws will be modified in an effort to accomodate lawlessness and new even more restrictive laws will be passed in order to control the ravaging side-effects of such legalized behavior. This is why an irreligious people have no hope, for once their freedom starts to slip away due to the mass rebellion being practiced by themselves and their peers, their only recourse is government- the very organization stripping them of their freedom in an effort (ostensibly) to maintain stability and order! It becomes a downward spiral for them.

  That is my premise, let me give you an example or two. Homosexuality was a sin that just over a decade ago people would not be able to comprehend being tolerated by our culture. But it's here! Why? Because we've not addressed the core problems of homosexuality nor responded in a Biblical manner. Sodomy is still illegal in some states, but such laws are all but flaunted. Now we are left with the after-mess with which a culture attempting to reconcile homosexual perversion with the traditional heterosexual American lifestyle must contend. Another recent example is drug use. The public consensus just a short time ago was unquestionably in favor of the ban on drug use. Now we are witnessing the chipping away of that universal agreement. Many people favor the legalization of drugs based on the government's over-reaching attempts to enforce current drug laws! So what is the common reaction for an irreligious people? "Get rid of the ban on drug use!" How absurd! Yet, what other option do they have if they won't turn to Christ? Really none.

  Abortion is no different. We have a culture of people who feel that they must reserve the ability to rely on abortion as a form of birth-control. American society didn't deal with the problem of illicit sex on a spiritual level when it began to crop up, and now we are where we are. That is why I liked your last statement:
Better to instead focus on the factors that make people think them necessary in the first place.

  This gets closer to the core problem. Even if we started tomorrow to criminally charge those who participate in the abortion process, we will not have begun to address the fundamental spiritual problem. We would fill our jails, but not much more would be accomplished. I do maintain that the government reserves the right to outlaw such behavior, but the problem of abortion, as with any other sin, must be fought on both spiritual and earthly fronts (with an emphasis on the former).

110 Posted on 01/18/2000 22:05:07 PST by Egg
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Roe v. Wade didn't invent abortion and significant numbers of women had illegal abortions before Roe. To be clear I think Roe is bad law - the court created a Constitutional principle that seems to exist for nothing other than abortion - i.e the right to bodily self-determination.

Let me be clear about this - the central core of the abortion issue is that there are two, yes, two parties involved - one of which is making demands on the other party.In short, a woman isn't simply an incubator and to grant the state such power is not something I'm particular fond of. Personally, I tend to think that zygote has less rights than a child in it's ninth month of gestation.

Secondly, abortion laws are basically unenforcable. Of course no one says anything about arresting women who have abortions - and the gun-grabbers only want to register your guns. Askel5 brought up the point about unequal laws - there would be little more unequal than punishing party A for providing a service party b asked for - it isn't as if abortionists roam alleys looking for pregnant women to forcibly abort. After all we arrest both hooker and john, drug dealer and drug user, etc.

111 Posted on 01/19/2000 17:29:54 PST by garbanzo
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(I) a) The assertion "absolute truth exists" is made. The assertion is not self-contradictory. b) The assertion "absolute truth does not exist" is made. The assertion is a claim of absolute truth. It is therefore contradictory and self-refuting.

There is a difference between saying that a single underlying truth underlies everything, and saying that some truths are absolute. Likewise there is a difference between saying that no truths are absolute and saying that there is no single absolute truth underlying everything.

While I won't contradict your belief that an underlying absolute truth exists, your logic does not prove it.

V) a) The human soul feels, loves, thinks and wills. b) The human soul cannot be decomposed, it does not have parts. c) A dead body does not feel, love, think or will. d) Therefore, a dead body cannot be united with a soul. b) Therefore, a body cannot live without a soul.

Your logic does not follow here, and would appear to be contradicted by reality; some babies which were born without a functional brain had bodies that were alive and growing as long as their needs were supplied through the umbilical cord, yet in the absense of a brain it would appear highly unlikely that they could think, feel, love, or will.

That a body cannot live on its own without a soul is undisputed, but within the uterus it doesn't have to.

c) Therefore, the soul must co-exist throughout life with the body. d) Therefore, the soul must come into being when the body comes into being. e) The body comes into being at individuation.

This would seem to depend how one defines "body", would it not? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but many of the cells that are present in a person's body at birth will remain in the body in their current form until they die, but nowhere in anyone's body (other than a woman who has just conceived) is there a zygote.

f) Therefore, the soul must come into being at individuation. g) Individuation occurs at conception. h) Ensoulment occurs at conception.

Does a baby who is born with no identifiable brain have a soul? Would it have had one at conception?

i) Body and soul exist at conception. j) A living human is composed of body and soul. k) Therefore, a human being comes into being at conception.

Your second point V(b) does not follow from the previous points, nor do I accept it as a premise given the existence of real-world counter-examples. Thus, I do not except your proof of any points derived from it.

Perhaps you can provide an explanation of the soul which is not contradicted by (literally) brainless individuals?

112 Posted on 01/19/2000 21:24:42 PST by supercat
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In the end, though, this is a non-issue. If you're going to kill it, you'd better be pretty damn sure that its NOT human, and there is no evidence of that at all.

True, but if you're going to impose punishment upon someone for killing it, you'd better be sure that it was a human being, and that it did have a soul. And since--as you say--science can't tell that (esp. early on) I think you'd best live punishments up to the Creator.

113 Posted on 01/19/2000 21:30:58 PST by supercat
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..there's a big difference between saying that "X is morally wrong" and "the government should punish people who do X". Your statement is a generalization which I have no problem with for some circumstances. I just don't think that it applies in the case of abortion.

While there are some things which both are morally wrong and should be punishable by the government, the statement--that there is a huge difference between the two types of wrongfulness remains.

You seem to be privy to Biblical reasoning, so perhaps you will understand my spiritual interpretation of the following: Although it is a desired effect that a law would eliminate the practice of an outlawed activity, that end is not the sole or even chief aim of legislation. For instance, a law also affirms a standard of right and wrong, giving a society a sense of stability. It also gives us a compass by which we can gauge the direction our culture is going. This latter function was extremely important for the mechanics of our form of government in the minds of our founding fathers, for our system of government was designed to provide the maximum amount of freedom to a self-disciplined citizenry. Time and time again we were told by these men that our form of government would not work for an irreligious people- meaning a society which didn't take the necessary spiritual measures to keep itself under control. After all, if we really believe that we derive our rights from God, how can we break His Laws and expect to continue to receive such freedoms? The Bible is full of examples to the contrary, where a nation would rise only to fall by its own rebelliousness.

If you read the first few books of the bible (esp. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus) carefully, you'll notice that there's a distinction between what things are morally wrong, and what things should merit earthly punishments. For example, you'll notice that for a man [married or not] to sleep with a married woman [other than his wife] is punishable by death, but for a married man to sleep with an unmarried woman is not punishable. There's a good reason for this, IMHO, and it isn't that God doesn't find the latter objectionable. The reason is this:

If a man sleeps with another man's wife and she bears offspring about nine months later, this may disrupt that man's bloodline (since the child may or may not be a legitimate heir). Major crime. On the other hand, if a man sleeps with an unmarried woman (who also sleeps with other men) and she bears a child nine months later, the man risks disrupting his own blood line, but no one else's.

Now, if we for the sake of this argument assume that the American culture started off as near perfect, we could see that the passing of laws would be almost superfluous. But as the culture became more and more unruly, the passing of laws concerning areas where people were the most troublesome would become necessary.

The problem is that such laws almost never work. Rather than strengthening the moral fabric of society, they erode it by causing would-be lawbreakers to be more concerned about possible earthy punishments (and ways of avoiding them) than godly ones.

This is why an irreligious people have no hope, for once their freedom starts to slip away due to the mass rebellion being practiced by themselves and their peers, their only recourse is government- the very organization stripping them of their freedom in an effort (ostensibly) to maintain stability and order! It becomes a downward spiral for them.

I agree with you here, but would add that increased government in turn leads to increased rebellion.

That is my premise, let me give you an example or two. Homosexuality was a sin that just over a decade ago people would not be able to comprehend being tolerated by our culture. But it's here! Why? Because we've not addressed the core problems of homosexuality nor responded in a Biblical manner. Sodomy is still illegal in some states, but such laws are all but flaunted. Now we are left with the after-mess with which a culture attempting to reconcile homosexual perversion with the traditional heterosexual American lifestyle must contend.

Homosexuality is not a new phenomenon. While it's become much more visible over the last couple decades that doesn't mean it was all that much less common before. Even in states with anti-sodomy laws there was a general "don't ask/don't tell" attide in their enforcement.

Another recent example is drug use. The public consensus just a short time ago was unquestionably in favor of the ban on drug use. Now we are witnessing the chipping away of that universal agreement. Many people favor the legalization of drugs based on the government's over-reaching attempts to enforce current drug laws! So what is the common reaction for an irreligious people? "Get rid of the ban on drug use!" How absurd! Yet, what other option do they have if they won't turn to Christ? Really none.

Around 1918, the public consensus was unquestionably in favor of the ban on alcohol. By the early 1930's, the attide had reversed. Do you think Prohibition I was a good thing? If not, why is Prohibition II any better?

Most of the drugs available today were available during the 19th century. In fact, many of the great writers, artists, and scientists of the 19th century were drug users and/or addicts. While it's possible that they may have managed even greater achievements had they not used drugs, I think it's safe to say that we would be worse off today had we thrown them in jail for their drug use rather than letting them live their otherwise-productive lives.

That's not to say that drug use is a good thing; merely to say that the "cure" [drug war] is much worse than the disease.

Abortion is no different. We have a culture of people who feel that they must reserve the ability to rely on abortion as a form of birth-control. American society didn't deal with the problem of illicit sex on a spiritual level when it began to crop up, and now we are where we are. That is why I liked your last statement: Better to instead focus on the factors that make people think them necessary in the first place. This gets closer to the core problem. Even if we started tomorrow to criminally charge those who participate in the abortion process, we will not have begun to address the fundamental spiritual problem. We would fill our jails, but not much more would be accomplished. I do maintain that the government reserves the right to outlaw such behavior, but the problem of abortion, as with any other sin, must be fought on both spiritual and earthly fronts (with an emphasis on the former).

I think we have some agreement here. Where we differ is that I would argue that government-imposed laws are not only ineffective at creating moral standards, but are in fact dangerously counterproductive. If you tell someone "you should not do X because it's wrong and you'll spend all eternity paying for it" or even "you should not do X because you know it's wrong and you'll feel miserable about it afterwards", then they'll not do X. But if you tell them "you should not do X because if you're caught you'll go to jail" then they'll figure out how not to get caught.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

114 Posted on 01/19/2000 22:29:53 PST by supercat
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That doesn't necessarily follow. The state has the authority to outlaw the killing of what all acknowledge may very well be human. Even the Fed govt has the authority to protect the "right to life" in addition to liberty and property. The numerous cases in which the aborted have survived and now live productive lives should provide the evidence necessary. (There was a thread on that yesterday, I think.)

Besides, if you can get in trouble for nuking a parrot, you can certainly be punished for slicing up and disembowelling what is probably human.

115 Posted on 01/20/2000 06:20:51 PST by davide
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Well ... forgive me, garbanzo, I'm sure you're a great guy but you need to begin to realize that on the issue of Human Life, indeed, you are supporting, if not exactly lockstep with the likes of Hillary Clinton, Margaret Sanger, Peter Singer, the Chinese Government, the UN and a host of likewise totalitarian or ideological purveyors of death.

Askel5, I must first apologize...your name made me think of you as a man, for some reason. But your eloquent defense of women (and children) quickly dispelled that notion.

Thank you for posting Dr. Keyes speech. I pray that Keyes wins the election--I'm not too optimistic about his chances, but all of my hopes and dreams go with him.

Perhaps next time you run into one of those folks who was conceived out of rape or incest ... you might want to ask them their thoughts on a retroactive application of the punishment you wish to mete out on them for the sins of their father.

Excellent rebuttal to the rape argument. Nice touch with "retroactive", too.

116 Posted on 01/25/2000 11:53:42 PST by Pirate Pete (voltz@ovnet.com)
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Being new to this group you all are a breath of fresh air. Personally, I really like Dr. Keyes I just wish the man would shorten his answers to all questions. A Little eye opener......It doesn't help to pray for the man if you don't believe that God will answer prayer. I pray for Dr. Keyes because we need a new moral direction. For me, only God can do it! Not Alan, not you, not me but God and that is why we all should pray for Dr. Keyes as well as contribute to his campaign.

117 Posted on 01/25/2000 12:25:26 PST by newconvert (keyes for president)
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Nice touch with "retroactive", too.

Picked it up from the Ambassador, actually.

Best regards.

118 Posted on 01/25/2000 15:08:37 PST by Askel5
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Tell me over here.

119 Posted on 01/30/2000 01:43:29 PST by Askel5
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Keyes is the best, of course.

But we no longer elect statesmen who can spark a conscience or stir a soul ... it's a Serbian "now that we're in it, we've got to win it, lesser of two evils" mentality.

And folks CHEER it!

120 Posted on 05/02/2000 00:13:04 PDT by Askel5
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121 Posted on 05/02/2000 00:37:14 PDT by Askel5
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I think I can show you that from what I take to be your libertarian outlook on these things, you should not have a problem with the pro-life position. I realise it is hard to convince anyone of these things, and especially to convince someone of one's own whole outlook. I won't try to do that second of those. For the rest, if it convinces you then great, if not I tried. The key thing here is duty. Talking about ownership or control or a competing of rights, is not to the point in my opinion. The question is does pregnacy create duties for the woman. Now, you say it is different because a man can just walk away. But the fact is, he can't - not legally. If he fathers a child he has created duties for himself. When a man and a woman create a child, both of them have done something that creates duties. Now, our modern rights generation sometimes has a problem wrapping their heads around that "duty? DUTY? Me?" Yessir. But libertarians should be able to understand them and what can make them right and just. Every libertarian acknowledges the fact that contracts create duties, and not just rights. You can't make a contract, then after part of it has been fufilled, perhaps the part that pleases you, walk away from it and not do your part. You engage in part of it, you have engaged yourself, we tend to say, to perform the other part. Well, conception, while not entirely like that to be sure and involving far greater matters, is something like that in the usual case. You create duties for yourself, and so does any woman, or any man. The reason for those duties is a natural one - the new human being created is helpless, entirely dependent on you both for everything. Your child. Not "a" child, mystically beamed down from the starship enterprise - yours, as in you did this. And you have duties with respect to it, man or woman. The state will not leave alone any man who abandons a child. It won't listen to him talk about his control of his body when he goes off to Nevada and won't pay child support. It'll go right after him, and garnish wages if he won't do his duty. And if he avoids that too, they will get physical with him. He can't walk away from his duties any more and a mother ought to. Any more than someone who lets a counterparty fufill half a contract and then walks away without doing his part, can plead his independence and self-ownership against the counterparty he stiffed. You see, what the state is doing now is trying to tell people the activities they engaged in, the duties they contracted by doing so, aren't what they really and naturally are. It could and sometimes does do the same thing, unjustly, in other respects - it tells everyone who contracts to do this they don't have to, and just sticks it to the counterparty. In this case, the stuck counterparty is a child, abandoned by the responsible parents in the worst possible way. There is no more natural justice in this, even from a libertarian point of view, than there is in a socialist exclaiming that all debtors should stiff all creditors, because property is theft or whatever the slogan of the day is. It is the same kind of denial of duties. When that is the issue, libertarians are the first to recognize that attacking the principle that such duties ought to be performed, is in reality attacking the ends people aimed at in the activities in the first place, and its real effect will be to destroy those ends. But in the case of the duties created by parenthood, that means the family, and raising up a new generation. Which is, on its face, what many of those furthering this present anti-life policy openly affirm. It frankly started as population control and eugenics, and has replaced the second of those, though not the first, with attacks on the family as a social institution. The state does not create any of these duties. People create them by their own acts, overwhelmingly by their own free acts fully aware of what they are doing, and the duties it will give rise to. The state no more creates these duties than it creates the terms two parties agree to in some contract. The duties are there, made by the nature of the thing done. The state only says, if you do the things that creates the duties, then acknowledge and perform those duties. It does not require doing the first at all. There is no tyranny in this, from a libertarian perspective. I am a conservative and my own view of all these things is a bit different from all that. But one place libertarians and conservatives agree, and that sets us apart from some other more left schools of thought, is we both believe in real duties. We may differ about where exactly they are or come from, but we acknowledge the principle that a man or woman's acts can create duties on his or her part, that it would be unjust of them not to perform. I claim, and I see no consistent argument against the claim, that conceiving a child is such an act. None of the arguments I have ever heard against that view ever seem to acknowledge that basic principle - acts create duties, and that parents have duties to children, fathers as well as mothers. Every argument against this always amounts to "I have no duties, only rights", or "nothing I do can mean I have duties". We don't accept that in any other area of life, at all. We don't accept it from fathers forced to pay child support, from debtors forced to repay debts, from property owners force to avoid negligence, from anyone required to fufill any duty that has resulted from their own free acts. There is no reason we should not treat the duties of parenthood the same way. In fact, the reverse - it is vastly more important to treat these duties seriously, because they are the first and most important of all human duties, about the first and most awesome of human responsibilities. If you don't want the duty of motherhood, don't get pregnant. If you don't want the obligation of a debt, don't borrow. If you don't want to provide for your sons and daughters, don't sire them. If you do any of the first, then deal with the consequences. The truth is there is nothing more ennobling and invigorating, nothing more alive, than to accept such responsibilities freely and bear them as honors. But to shirk them is unjust, and the more innocent those injured by that injustice the worse the act. For what it is worth.

122 Posted on 05/02/2000 03:10:54 PDT by JasonC (jasoncawley@msn.com)
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I have to say that this is an interesting approach to the question. However, in general, libertarians tend not be fond of the concept of "duty" unless the duty is fairly well defined - after all in most of your dictatorships, citizens have various "duties" to the Supreme Leader, the State, etc.

I would suggest approaching from the concepts of contract law rather than an abstract concept of "duty". In terms of contract law, there would have to be specific agreement on a desired outcome. In many cases, there isn't any specific agreement on outcome (i.e. the goal of the sexual encounter in most cases is orgasm and not pregnancy - you may have a justifiably moral objection to that - but that's the essential fact of the matter in many if not most cases) - consequentially it's difficult to argue that one has a contractual agreement if no such agreement has even been made by either of the parties.

Which brings up the question of how does contract law deal with side effects - to what extent is are the parties responsible for side effects - which is what I think the question you want to ask. I would argue that there isn't an automatic responsibility for side effects even if the possible side effects are well known to both parties.

123 Posted on 05/02/2000 19:25:59 PDT by garbanzo
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"As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything."

I Like mine better. It is older.

As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child,' even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.

Amazing comparison. It is as if the first one was written by a pro-choice person, and the second by pro-life. Insidious bastards, aren't they?

124 Posted on 06/18/2000 22:58:33 PDT by James Gunn
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I am so pleased you made that point.

Without a doubt, the deconstruction of our language is a ritual deicide of The Word.

125 Posted on 06/19/2000 07:53:49 PDT by Askel5
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