Musing 1

So now, we are being asked to buy Barack Obama’s loopy explanation that he had no idea his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, sometimes threw racist hate-filled tantrums in the pulpit.  Of course, Obama is lying through his teeth and even his most ardent supporters would have to be dumb as a box of rocks not to see it. 

But let’s play stupid for a moment and say that what he is claiming is true.  That means he is telling us that he is so oblivious to the world around him that he can be a member of a church for 20 years and not know about the bizarre antics of the preacher.  But at the same time, he wants us to believe that he is bright enough to run the most complex nation on earth with the world’s largest economy and most powerful military.

This guy needs to pick a lie and stick to it.   

Unfortunately, I think these kind of distractions are causing us to miss the most important issue of all.  There are many people who are certain that Obama is some sort of undercover Muslim and many more who think that Wright is a racist who hates America.  While those things may or may not be true, what is undeniably true is that both claim to be Christians when, in fact, they are both heretics.  And that, my friends, it is the real problem.   

Musing 2

Congress recently hauled in the leaders of the nation’s largest oil companies to discuss the skyrocketing price of gasoline.  You could characterize this hearing as a collection of dimwits who couldn’t run a lemonade stand “investigating” the practices of some of the world’s largest financial institutions. 

Interestingly, while these buffoons were grandstanding in front of the cameras about “obscene” profits in the oil industry, nothing was said about the fact that on every gallon of gas sold in the United States, the government makes several times what the oil companies make.  In other words, if “Big Oil” agreed to sell gasoline at no profit, that would not save nearly as much money as it would if Congress reduced the “obscene” taxes on gasoline.  Of course, we all know that’s not happening.  Getting between Congress and a taxpayer’s wallet is like getting between a hog and the slop bucket.  

But what I do want to know is this: when is Congress going to hold hearings on why Planned Parenthood – a multi-national non-profit corporation with about a billion dollars in assets – made more that 60 million dollars profit last year and is still getting over 300 million dollars a year in taxpayer money?  You can bet the family farm that Planned Parenthood’s return-on-investment percentage is significantly higher than Exxon’s and Mobil’s combined.  So why isn’t Congress getting their panties in a wad over those obscene profits?              

Musing 3 

Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, is being rotated over a low flame for saying that Barack Obama would not be where he is if he was not black.  The interesting thing is, no one came forward to argue whether she was right or not.  The statement alone was enough to brand her a racist, set-off the obligatory media floggings, and force her out of Hillary Clinton’s staff.   

There is a beautiful irony in this.  The intellectual disease of political correctness that currently infects American culture, was invented and unleashed by godless liberals exactly like Ferraro.  For years, these people have painted this image of conservatives and the Christian Right as neo-Nazis and the Republican convention as little more than a four-day Klan rally.  And now, like Frankenstein’s monster, this political correctness has turned on one of its masters.

Ferraro’s response was to look wounded on national television and moan about being unjustifiably castigated.  In the future, perhaps she should remember the saying, “If you’re going to swim with sharks, don’t bleed.”  Apparently, that advice is sometimes even appropriate for those who released the sharks in the first place.

As for me, all I can say about the Ferraro incident is, “Ya’ gotta’ love it!” 

Musing 4

Hillary (Rambo) Clinton continues to whine that the media is so infatuated with Obama that it is not treating her fairly.  For example, she claims that Obama’s “Pastor Disaster” got less media scrutiny than did her preposterous yarn about having to dodge a hail of sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia. 

My advice, Rambo, is to get over yourself.  No two people in American history have benefited more from the corruption and bias of the media than you and Slick Willy.  Sure, the media may be off the reservation right now, but we all know that if you figure out some way to steal the nomination, they’ll come slinking back.   

Musing 5

Speaking of Hillary, did you catch her ad against Obama in which she asked voters who they would want answering the White House phone at three in the morning if an international crisis had occurred?  It was pretty effective in drawing attention to Obama’s inexperience, but if she gets the nomination I think it could backfire in the general election.  First, if experience is the yardstick, wouldn’t McCain blow Hillary out of the water?  And second, the American people surely realize that if Hillary’s on the White House phone at 3am, it probably won’t be because of some international meltdown.  The most likely scenario will be that she is calling the local topless bars trying to get the name of the pole-dancer who took Bill home with her.        

Musing 6

Returning to Obama for a moment, he recently stated that if one of his teenage daughters got pregnant he would not want them to be “punished” with a child.  He even equated an unplanned child to a sexually transmitted disease.  The pro-life movement’s angry response to this is certainly understandable given that anyone with even a shred of human decency would be outraged at classifying children as “punishment.”  

This episode exemplifies the fact that Barack Obama is evil to his core and, as time goes on, the public is going to become increasingly aware of it.  However, it also brings up what I have always believed is a dirty little secret of contemporary American society. 

We long ago reached the point where science and technology made it impossible to deny the humanity of the unborn.  So the question becomes, why didn’t that settle the abortion debate once and for all? 

There are many explanations for that and one of them is as simple as it is ugly.  As we all know, whenever we start calling for a ban on abortion, a significant number of people will immediately want to talk about the need for exceptions in cases like rape, incest, fetal deformity, etcetera.  But this is a smokescreen that conceals the real agenda.  Sadly, because of the general moral collapse of our country, the most powerful interest in America today is self-interest.  And what the public really wants is for any legal prohibitions against abortion to have a “My Daughter” exception.  They just don’t have the guts to admit it so they camouflage it with phony compassion. 

Musing 7

Has anyone else noticed that (a) many, if not most, of the people being touted as John McCain’s potential running mate are pro-aborts and (b) McCain is saying nothing about what he would do to stop the slaughter of the unborn?   

I have said it before and I will say it again.  America’s politicians are never going to take the pro-life movement seriously until we set some new ground rules.  First, we have to make it clear to these people that we are going to be single-issue voters with a litmus test.  Second, they must also be told that we have no interest in what they “feel” or “think” or “believe” about abortion.  The only thing we want to know is what they intend to do to stop it.  And we are not going to settle for some meaningless political gibberish about “reducing the need for abortion” or “lowering the unwanted pregnancy rate” or “creating a culture of life,” etcetera.  That tap-dance has gone on long enough.

The time has come for us to understand that even the noblest rhetoric is no help for the unborn child whose skull is locked in the abortionist’s forceps.  That will only stop when we demand that pro-life votes must be earned through pro-life actions.  Until the unborn are safe, sending that message is the duty of every pro-lifer.

I have often observed that, when it comes to defending legalized abortion, the pro-choice mob has more tricks than a monkey on a hundred yards of grapevine.  Of course, this is probably a natural response given that the task they have chosen is to defend the indefensible. 

In any event, among their catalogue of rhetorical gymnastics, one of the most amazing is their contention that the unborn child is simply a part of the mother’s body.  They make this argument hoping that the public will conclude that, since society would never interfere with a woman’s decision to have her appendix out, it likewise has no place interfering with her decision to have an abortion.

The problem is, the underlying assumption supporting this argument is asinine even by the abortion lobby’s standards.  To assert that the unborn is part of the woman’s body is the same as saying that when a woman is pregnant she has 4 arms, 4 legs, 2 heads, 2 hearts, 2 brains, etc.   It also suggests that, if her child is a boy, for nine months of her life she has a penis.

Having said all that, for those of you who truly believe in this “baby as part of the woman” philosophy, I want to raise a serious issue.  I ask you to imagine a photo of conjoined (Siamese) twins and answer this simple question: Is that a picture of one person or two? 

Before you answer, understand that, from a biological standpoint, conjoined twins are far closer to being one person than is a mother and her unborn child.  Conjoined twins are always the same sex, always have the same DNA, are always the same blood type, always share at least one external body structure and often share several internal organs.  And as long as they are joined, if one dies they both die. 

But none of that is true about a mom and her unborn baby.  They are the same sex only about half the time, often don’t have the same blood type, never have the same DNA and do not share any external body parts or internal organs.  Moreover, it is not only possible for one to survive when the other one dies, it is common.

The point is, while it would be biologically incorrect to claim that conjoined twins are not two distinct individuals, even that argument would be more grounded in scientific reality than the claim that a mother and her unborn child are not two distinct individuals.  

The subject of conjoined twins also creates another analogy to the pro-life issue.  It is now common for doctors to perform surgery to separate conjoined twins.  In many of these cases, it is understood that the chances for both surviving is low.  However, no ethical surgeon would agree to intentionally kill one of the twins to increase the chances that the other one would survive.  In every case, the intent is to save both lives and every effort will be made to achieve that result.  It may be true that, prior to the surgery, it is accepted – even anticipated – that only one will survive.  But under no conditions would separation surgery be performed with that as its intended outcome. 

This is the principle that must be applied when the issue is whether abortion is acceptable in those extraordinarily rare instances in which pregnancy poses an immediate threat to the physical life of the mother.  From an ethical standpoint, we cannot say that it is ever acceptable to intentionally kill the baby to save the mother.  Instead, her physician should be required to do everything possible to save both mother and child.  If, as an unintended consequence of that effort, one or both fail to survive, that would be considered an unavoidable – thus permissible – outcome.  However, it is as morally indefensible to say that we will intentionally kill the baby to save the mother as it would be to say that we will intentionally kill the mother to save the baby. 

In the final analysis, the pure “no-exceptions” pro-life position is exactly the same as saying that operating on conjoined twins is never acceptable if the intent is to kill one of them.  In both cases, there are two distinct individuals involved and we must never cross the moral line where we argue that one innocent human being’s life can be snuffed-out for the benefit of another.

Oops, I forgot.  We already did that.  It’s called Roe vs. Wade. 

Today, there seems to be a lot of debate about what it means when someone says they are pro-life.  This is especially true for politicians.  For clarity’s sake, let’s define the term.  The pro-life position is that a new human life is created at the moment of fertilization and is, thus, entitled to the same legal protections as any other human being.

Given that, some abortion positions are pretty cut and dried.  For example, someone who supports a universal human life amendment to the constitution is pro-life, while someone who supports the Roe vs. Wade decision is not. 

Then there is the person who says that they are personally opposed to abortion and would never participate in one, but pro-choice when it comes to legality.  As amazing as it may seem, I have actually heard pro-lifers describe people who say this as pro-life.

In reality, this is the most insidious and despicable of all positions on abortion.  After all, there is no reason to oppose abortion other than the belief that it takes the life of a living human being.  So what the “personally opposed” crowd is saying is, "I agree that abortion is the intentional killing of a baby, but if other people want to do it I support their legal right to do so and it’s not my place to interfere."  That is not a pro-life position.  It’s like someone in 1860 saying, “I am personally opposed to slavery and I would never own one, but if someone else wants to own a few that’s their business.”   

Another stance often mischaracterized as pro-life is the “pro-life with exceptions” position.  You’ll hear people say things like, “I am pro-life, but I think there should be an exception when the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest” or “I am pro-life, but abortion should be legal when the baby is handicapped.”

It is a complete abandonment of the pro-life principle to say it should be permissible to kill selected categories of children.  When someone says they are pro-life but that abortion should be allowed in some circumstances, the question is whether they would support killing a five-year-old in those same circumstances.  If not, then it is clear that they don’t see born and unborn children as morally equal.  In other words, they do not subscribe to the most fundamental tenet of the pro-life position.

In the grimy world of politics, a new position is emerging to test the boundaries of what it means to be pro-life.  We are now hearing presidential candidates say that they are pro-life but that each individual state should be allowed to set its own policies regarding abortion.  Of course, the problem with that thinking is that the right to life is specifically listed in the U.S. Constitution.  The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that no person shall be deprived of his or her life without due process of law.  Even Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court justice who wrote Roe vs. Wade, said that if the personhood of the unborn was ever established the right to abortion evaporated. 

When a politician claims to be pro-life, he or she is asserting that the born and the unborn are both persons.  So the question becomes, how can they logically claim that only the born have a constitutional right to life?  And the answer is, they can’t. 

To understand how preposterous this is, imagine that a state legislature passed a law allowing parents of newborn children to take a few days to decide whether they are really prepared to start a family.  Under this new statute, if they decided they were not ready for this responsibility, they would be legally allowed to have a physician slit their child’s throat.  In that situation, how many of these “pro-life” politicians who are now saying that the federal government has no constitutional right to intervene on behalf of unborn children, would say that the federal government has no constitutional right to intervene on behalf of these born children?  Of course, the universal consensus would be that they not only have that right, they have the duty to do so.

The point is, when someone claims to be pro-life but says that abortion is a state matter, that is an unmistakable indicator that either (a) they do not truly believe that the born and unborn are both persons or (b) they are unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution. 

It may also be indicative of something the pro-life movement has done.  For 35 years we have hammered away at legalized abortion when, technically speaking, abortion is not the root problem.  In reality, it is only a symptom.  The disease is the absence of legal protection for the unborn. 

After all, if a woman who is not pregnant wanted to submit to abortion, we might find it bizarre and we would probably question her sanity, but in the final analysis it would probably not concern us any more than it would if she were getting a tattoo or body piercing.

So the problem is not that women have abortions, but that children die.  And that only occurs because our nation took away their right to life.  So maybe we need to talk a little less about stopping abortion and a little more about returning legal protection to the unborn.  Perhaps then, all these people claiming to be pro-life would know what being pro-life actually means.