Posted on 06/11/2012 9:17:17 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
"All officers of government in this country, in every branch, at every level, have as the first obligation of their sacred oath the protection of all innocent lives within their jurisdiction.
Should I be elected to the office of President of the United States, I will keep my oath.
Justice Blackmun, in Roe vs. Wade, admitted that “of course” the child in the womb is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, if they are a person.
Since it is self-evident that they are a person, my first act as President, after having sworn the oath, will be to publish a presidential finding to that effect.
My second act will be to ask for the resignation of anyone in the executive branch who will not act accordingly.
My third act will be to order the closing of every abortion facility in the country, as per the explicit, imperative requirement of the Supreme Law of the Land.
'No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.'
'No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'”
-- Tom Hoefling
I’m done with you. Obama supporters and others who support police states make me ill.
So now you will post something about him that you know is a lie, and you won't respond to anything refuting it?
Glad you’re having fun. I’ll be here all week. Try the liver and onions, the veal is two weeks old.
Now I know Drifty is just ONE Romney supporter, reluctant or not, under the guise of ABO. But it's so OBVIOUS that he knows his position requires some heavy self-deception.
He not only can't give a simple yes-or-no answer, he must respond with a devious premise, which is that voting third party is a vote for Obama, therefore if you don't vote for Romney, you're an "Obama supporter." Which means that driftdiver considers Jim Robinson an Obama supporter. :^(
That is, of course, a fallacy -- a vote for a third party is entirely NEUTRAL with zero impact on the outcome of the contest between Obama and Romney. Zilch.
A relevant question to ask driftdiver would be: How will you convince a Democrat that voting third party is a vote for Obama?
Driftdiver is here urging, cajoling, bullying, and shouting in his attempts to get me and everyone else to vote FOR Romney, yet when I state the obvious, that he must therefore be a Romney supporter and that Romney must be his candidate, he becomes very agitated. He refuses to claim Romney, tries to deny Romney. Yet he is planning to vote for him and wants me to vote for him.
That is a seriously screwed up picture.
On top of that, he's willing to label Reagan "pro abortion" because of the mostly anti-abortion bill he signed, but absolutly loses it when someone uses the same rationale and standards to point out that Romney is his candidate.
No, you’re done with me because you cannot answer my challenges.
Thank you for the nice things you said. Back at you.
I see a number of folks around here who support Mr. Romney, but only one person who is clearly out to lunch. And I'm not altogether sure whether the poster is a liar or just not able to handle the abstract thinking necessary to understand the flaw in his argument.
And in my view, some of the things said about Mr. Romney, though true in part, don't display the full truth about him.
As an example, Mr. Romney was clearly a public supporter of a general abortion license for some years, and claimed to have been a support of this license for many, many years before that.
But what often goes unmentioned is that Mr. Romney claims to have had a conversion experience, and claims to be pro-life, now.
When he made this claim during the last campaign, and post-dated it to about 2005, I was unable to suspend my disbelief. I said to myself, Self, it would be very nice if we won one with this guy, if he has really converted to the side of the angels (and the babies), but Self, I think it all seems to be a little too convenient. And I said further, Self, look, if he'd have “converted” in 2005, and toed a pro-life line to, say, 2012, and THEN run for president as a pro-life Republican, I'd be a lot more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Well, here I am in 2012, and he's been remarkably consistent in his public rhetoric for the last five years.
That shouldn't go unmentioned when discussing Mr. Romney's history on the question of abortion.
And yes, I've heard all about how he promoted abortion in RomneyCare AFTER his alleged conversion, but I've also read stuff from respected pro-lifers that seems to explain that. And you know what? I just don't want to get into the weeds about it. There IS some merit to the assertion that he was, after all, in Massachusetts, and there was lots of stuff that was going to happen whether he wanted it to happen or not.
I will give him this: since announcing for president in 2007, his rhetoric, at least, has been on the right side, and he has supported a lot of pro-lifers around the country.
Not much of a pro-life record.
But the effort deserves at least a mention when talking about Mr. Romney's position[s] on abortion. To do otherwise is to leave out important facts. That's no better than leaving out the context of Gov. Reagan's “pro-abortion” legislation.
As well, this paltry pro-life record is still a damned site better than, say, Rudy Giuliani's. Even if Mr. Romney is a half-hearted pro-lifer, or is merely mouthing the words, the candidacy of someone like Mr. Giuliani would have been far, far worse, in that he would have formally changed the Republican Party to a second pro-abort party.
Sometimes a fig leaf is better than nothing. In this case, if Mr. Romney turns out to be a poor pro-lifer, we will likely get to fight another day.
And think about the fact that we can actually debate the question. There actually IS a question about Mr. Romney and the issue of abortion.
There is no question about the anti-Christ and abortion.
To me, that is a striking and important difference often forgotten or ignored by the folks who won't vote for Romney.
So, I think the failing to embrace the entire truth of things cuts both ways, at least to some degree.
“I think those of us who reject Romney are doing it with our eyes wide open; I also think that many who are willing to vote for Romney are doing it with their eyes squeezed shut.”
I don't really agree with that. I think some folks rejecting Romney have their eyes open, and some folks willing to vote for them have their eyes closed, but I think the opposite is true, too.
I see a lot of folks who seem to minimize just how bad the Kenyan anti-Christ really is. If not quite closed, I think a lot of folks are at least squinting a good bit, and distorting somewhat what they're seeing.
In like manner, I think that folks are closing their eyes to some critical, fundamental differences between the two men: Obama hates America. Mr. Romney loves America.
The first of these statements vitiates nearly any other good intention.
The second covers a multitude of sins and flaws, at least imperfectly.
“I think a strategy of making whichever one wins as weak as possible is better than risking a landslide for Romney via ABO.”
I'd be truly, truly shocked if Mr. Romney garnered more than 55% of the vote, or gets more than 350 - 375 electoral votes. I think he may win solidly, but I'd be utterly shocked if he won in a true landslide, either percentage of the popular vote (60%) or electorally (at least 400 electoral votes).
The bottom line is that the anti-Christ would need to lose better than one out of four votes he received last time, and Mr. Romney would have to pick up all those votes, for Mr. Romney to approach 60%.
So, I don't share your concern. I'd love to share your concern. I just don't think it's realistic.
I don't expect great things from Mr. Romney. I expect a muddled, mixed record. Pretty good on fiscal matters, decent on right to life, decent on defense, he may try some measure of entitlement reform. I don't think we'll get much more. I think the economy will heal and might even boom. I think he'll keep his conservative fences mostly mended, if not highlighted, because it will be difficult to win re-election if, like President Bush I, he alienates his base by going back on his word.
I do expect horrific enormities from the anti-Christ. I have no doubt that he will get to appoint three or four more ultra-liberals to the Supreme Court, will do what he can not only to promote abortion, but to persecute severely those who stand opposed to abortion, will continue to sell out our military and our defense, and will spend us into penury.
Sometimes the devil I don't know may actually be better than the devil I already know because the devil I already know is so close to perfectly evil (to the degree that evil can be “perfected”).
sitetest
Even if one is foolish, or desperate, enough to take Romney at his word about his “pro-life conversion,” the fact is that to this day, on his website, he takes a judicial supremacist - ie anti-constitution, anti-republican - pro-choice democrat position on abortion.
He thinks that the supreme God-given, unalienable right can be determined by a vote of the people, and/or that states should be able to decide to kill babies if they want to.
In the modern political context, this is the position of Gerald R. Ford Republicans. In the historical, moral context this is identical to the position of Stephen A. Douglas Democrats.
Which of course is completely contrary to the founding principles of the Party of Lincoln, and also to the Reagan Republican pro-life plank that has been in the GOP platform since 1984, which recognizes the personhood of the child in the womb and their protection by the Fourteenth Amendment.
A few points:
-- Romney has championed the homosexual movement to a very large degree. For me, as a Christian who recalls the words Jesus had to say about folks who "cause little ones to stumble" and lead innocent children astray, Romney's actions of promoting homosexuality, his declaration (and recently, at that) that he believes gay couples should have the right to adopt children and start families, is AS HEINOUS as his abortion stance. I'm unusual in this, as most focus solely on abortion, but this has always been a key "anti-Christ factor" in Romney IMO, I suppose because I've seen the damage the gay movement has done to so many youths, and it is as tragic and evil and depraved as abortion.
-- I see a lot of folks who seem to minimize just how bad the Kenyan anti-Christ really is. I've certainly missed those posts. I can count on one hand with fingers left over the FReepers brave enough to point out the very real vulnerability of Obama in a second term.
On the contrary, I see folks maximizing the worst-case scenario and outright REFUSING to even consider the very possible liklihood of Obama being dominated and bulldozed by a Congress of newly empowered and fired-up conservatives backed up by a populace whose voting voice has said "We didn't want either one of you -- the only reason you're still there, Obama, is by a fluke." Narcissicst Obama would be severely weakened by that psychologically and politically. That is A VERY REAL POSSIBILITY that is not only overlooked by people who should be more pragmatic, but consideration of it is discouraged, ridiculed, and shunned. Shouted down, in fact.
Obama hates America. Mr. Romney loves America.
That would be scant comfort when you saw Romney's love of country inspiring him to advance (by refusing to veto, or signing bills to enact) the global warming agenda, the homosexual agenda affecting everything from your kids' schools to the military, and government control over your medical care -- on ALL THREE OF THOSE THINGS Romney's record is that of a liberal Democrat. Choosing to believe his claimed conversion over abortion I can see, but choosing to believe, if he even claimed it, conversion over those items, considering his record, would be gullible at best. His "love of America" is irrelevant in terms of the damage his embrace of this "multitude of sins" could do, especially when Republican conservatives were neutralized in their ability to fight it. At LEAST they could fight Obama; Romney they could only watch with the same horror as we all had watching our beloved Dubya SIGN the so-called Fairness Act.
Expecting Romney to be "pretty good on fiscal matters" is puzzling. His record certainly indicates the opposite, and Massachusetts ended up in terrible economic straights thanks to Romney's liberal "we can have crushing regulation and control in a free market" hokum. It's distressing to see how many Republicans equate "business experience" with "fiscally conservative." The reality is that many of the wealthiest executives and businessmen in the U.S. are extraordinarily liberal with ideas that would be fiscal disaster in government.
As for keeping his word out of concern of not winning re-election ... with all respect, sitetest, if Romney wins, the GOP, Romney, and every Republican (and Democrat) in the U.S. will know that indeed he could break any promise he wanted because INEVITABLY the policy of "Anybody But _________" (fill in the name of the latest Democrat liberal Anti-Christ -- in '07-08 it was Hillary; in '04 it was Gore) would "force" Republicans into voting for him because they would be saying then the same thing they are saying now: "We have no choice!"
No, Romney wouldn't have to worry much about keeping his word for fear of not being re-elected. Republicans would have proven quite soundly that the ONLY requirement for their vote is that the individual be a Republican.
Sitetest, god bless you. :^)
I'm not equating a kidney to a person, I'm equating a kidney to a womb. A person with terminal kidney disease is just as dependent on someone else's kidney as an unborn child is dependent on someone else's womb.
If you are prepared to use guns and cages to force someone to allow their unborn child to live, then how far of a leap is it to use guns and cages to force someone to give up their kidney to allow another person to live?
We need to turn the heart of the mother to her child, not threaten her with armed police and a soulless court system. We need to put an end to the lies and deceptions like "clump of cells."
Abortion is just one of the symptoms of a much larger, much more insidious disease of the soul - not only of the individual, but of society and culture as well. You can't heal a soul, or heal a culture, by establishing a police state that enforces monthly pregnancy tests.
I agree with much of what you're saying.
I just don't think a vote for you does anything to solve the problem.
It's a bit like saying, “Doctor, the patient is currently bleeding to death and, should we actually save him from bleeding to death, he also has cancer and if we don't do something about that, it may be terminal.”
And the doctor replies, “Okay! Let's eat ham sandwiches! That'll fix the problem!"
One thing doesn't follow the other. Voting for you doesn't prevent the worst possibility - re-election of the anti-Christ - from occurring. Neither does it repair the misunderstanding of constitutional principles held by nearly everyone in the United States.
sitetest
400+ posts on a vanity thread for your campaign pledge. You certainly spurred a wide-ranging discussion.
Reckon we can look forward to the daily or weekly
.... Tom Hoefling says.... thread?
“— Romney has championed the homosexual movement to a very large degree...”
As bad as Gov. Romney is, the anti-Christ is worse.
“On the contrary, I see folks maximizing the worst-case scenario and outright REFUSING to even consider the very possible liklihood of Obama being dominated and bulldozed by a Congress of newly empowered and fired-up conservatives...”
I've seen the original of this movie before. It was called “The Evil Clinton and Newt's Heroes of ‘94.” I don't expect the ending of this re-make to be different from that of the original.
I think the problem is that sometimes conservatives think people generally are more conservative than people generally are. What is more true is that most folks have mush for brains, and they are, politically, whatever floats through their mush-mired brains at any given time. So, the economy is bad, there's a Republican in the White House - elect a Democrat! It doesn't matter if he's a communist! Just do something, and do something different! Oh, the economy is bad and there's a Democrat in the White House - elect a Republican!
If Obama wins re-election, no one will stop him. He has all the big guns.
“Narcissicst Obama would be severely weakened by that psychologically and politically.”
Psychologically, narcissists aren't weakened by loss of support. That's part of why they're narcissists - they just don't give a damn what other folks think, except to the degree that they need to manipulate others.
“As for keeping his word out of concern of not winning re-election ... with all respect, sitetest, if Romney wins, the GOP, Romney, and every Republican (and Democrat) in the U.S. will know that indeed he could break any promise he wanted because INEVITABLY the policy of ‘Anybody But _________’...”
I disagree. I think that Romney will have the right chewing on his leg for his entire term. I think he's a smart and adaptable guy and is more than happy to cater to the folks who will vote for him. I think he can add and subtract, and if he's elected, he knows he can be president for four years if he doesn't piss off his base constituency.
Unlike some, I don't think that down deep, Gov. Romney is a liberal. Neither is he a conservative. He's a technocrat. He believes in engineered solutions. And truthfully, regarding fiscal matters, a little technocracy would go a long way, right now. Someone who knows how to get into the nuts and bolts of financial statements, who knows how to pare down a budget, who knows how to lay out a program and follow it through.
On the economic side, modest spending cuts combined with continuation of the Bush tax breaks and the demise of Obamacare, plus undoing some of the regulation of the last four years will go a long way to fixing things. That's a technocratic solution that Gov. Romney has already pretty much endorsed.
On the other hand, I think he understands that if he goes all haywire liberal on folks, he has no one to turn to on the left, and the right might very well abandon him.
This is especially true because next time out, he won't be running against the Kenyan anti-Christ but rather some more run-of-the-mill moron liberal Democrat. Perhaps Mrs. Clinton.
As bad as she is, she's not in the same class as the anti-Christ. I know a lot of Republicans who wouldn't object strenuously to electing Mrs. Clinton, especially, as seen through the haze of time, many credit Mr. Clinton with having been a good and successful president. Even I have to admit that in the short-term, after he got his hands slapped in 1994, he mostly took a hands-off approach to the economy (long-term matters are a different story) that allowed the country to prosper, relatively speaking, during his time in office. And let's face it, his worst crimes were not economic but were moral, political and cultural. The harm he did to the United States was more about the further debasement of the culture, not about the economy.
But most folks, as they would tell us, care more about the Dow Jones than Paula Jones.
So, if President Romney were, as president, to stop governing in a way that clearly distinguished him from a liberal Democrat, I think most folks would decide to go with the real thing (Hillary Clinton or whomever) and not the imitation. And I think he's smart enough to know this.
On the topic of whether or not he'd have the base of the party hostage, I will note this: Early in 2008, it looked like perhaps Rudy Giuliani might take the nomination. It also looked like Mrs. Clinton would take it on the Democrat side. I'd already made up my mind to vote third party in that eventuality.
The specter of a second Clinton presidency was not enough to persuade me to vote for a candidate that was anathema to me (and one far worse for us than Mitt Romney).
But if Mr. Giuliani had ultimately won the nomination and the choice was between him and the anti-Christ, I think I would have had to reconsider.
I think more than one or two folks agree with that sort of perspective.
sitetest
The Romney turds love that one...
Simple reading of RR’s biography pits that one to bed.
-- Winston Churchill
That's a very nice quote from Mr. Churchill.
I just don't think it applies.
Voting for you is not the way to “fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed.” You're just not the answer.
"...if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival."
We may come to that point sometime after a Romney presidency.
"There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
It is more likely that we will come to this worse case if the anti-Christ is re-elected.
I don't see that voting for you prevents this worst case from occurring. In fact, it could be argued that it increases slightly its possibility.
sitetest
Respectfully, the problem is that you don’t understand the abandonment of principle that support for Mr. Romney represents.
As scary as the prospect of another term for Obama is, the total abandonment of principle by those who call themselves conservatives is infinitely more dangerous to the future of the republic.
I respectfully request that you put this thread back in News/Activism.
Presumably then you are referring to Thompson’s “dependent violinist” analogy, which, coincidentally focuses on a shared kidney. Your response, like Thompson’s analogy, completely ignores the problem of causality.
In pregnancy, one or both parents are the direct volitional cause of the pregnancy.
But in the case of your kidney dependency, you appear to be describing a completely passive situation, in which the state tries to harvest your kidney for someone they think should have it. The two scenarios could not be more different.
Consider this revision to your analogy. You pick a fight with somebody minding their own business, and you give them a pair of kidney punches that literally destroys both their kidneys. Then you let them die. Is that homicide? Yes, a human being was killed. Did you do it by an act of volition? Clearly so. Was it justified? Not at all. Therefore, it qualifies legally as murder.
For the above reasons and more, the Thompson kidney analogy has been widely discredited among Christian and other conservative moral analysts. It treats the dependent person as an invading aggressor, when the reality is, that for most pregnancies, the mother’s own action in having sex is what has put the child in the position of living, only so that they may die.
What about the case of rape? There are analogies in the law for that scenario too. If I am walking by a pool and see a man drowning, and I know this is shocking, but true, the law does not hold me accountable if I just keep walking and let the man drown. That’s because the man’s death would have occurred whether I walked by or not. There is no active causal relationship to link me to that man’s death.
If however, I am already in the position of harboring and protecting someone, someone who is completely dependent on me to live, and I take an affirmative action which I am certain will result in the death of that person, I have the elements of murder once again. There has been a homicide, I voluntarily did what I knew would cause that death, and the killing was not justified. That’s murder.
So I go back to my earlier question. At what point in the dependency spectrum does the dependent person lose their right to defend their own life, or to have others act on their behalf in that defense? Because if you are going to defend a dependency theory of justifiable homicide, I don’t see how you can do that with any persuasive effect if you never bother to define the justification.
If you are prepared to use guns and cages to force someone to allow their unborn child to live, then how far of a leap is it to use guns and cages to force someone to give up their kidney to allow another person to live?
Well, this is a parade of horribles that is badly disconnected from the current practice of criminal law. We already use guns and cages to defend innocent human lives. Yes, even the lives of those who are totally dependent on their parents.
But your leap to kidney-harvesting is laughable. As I pointed out above, the law already distinguishes between cases where there is passive inaction between unrelated parties, versus those cases where an obligation of care exists and yet an affirmative action is taken to harm an innocent person. In the eyes of the law, causation and volition make all the difference. And these are old, old distinctions, going back to the roots of the common law. You may rely on them to be there for some time to come. Your organ-harvesting analogy fails.
We need to turn the heart of the mother to her child, not threaten her with armed police and a soulless court system. We need to put an end to the lies and deceptions like "clump of cells."
On this point we are closer to agreement. I agree we need to move the heart of the mother to a place where she respects and understands the new human life within her. No law can be effective without engaging the consciences of the people under it.
However, it remains an open question on how best to inform the conscience of the culture. Part of that process is certainly private, churches and other forums where moral learning occurs.
But the law is a teacher too. Most people know not to commit murder. Yet we have a law, so that those who do commit murder can be punished, and those who are tempted to it may learn from the example of others that it is wrong, and thus have an excuse not to do it themselves.
Abortion is just one of the symptoms of a much larger, much more insidious disease of the soul - not only of the individual, but of society and culture as well. You can't heal a soul, or heal a culture, by establishing a police state that enforces monthly pregnancy tests.
True, abortion is a symptom of a deeper malady. But unlike most other such symptoms, it is causing the death of our fellow humans at a breathtaking pace, and should receive special attention. It is an ongoing emergency and we need to stop it.
However, the question of how best to stop it is a proper question. The law gives responsible caregivers a benefit of the doubt. No one I know who wants to stop abortion is recommending abandoning that presumption of innocence. I’m not saying they aren’t out there. I just don’t know any.
Here, the law can take two forms. It can be prudential, in that it seeks to intervene before a crime can be committed, and it can be judicial, acting to punish those who have already violated the law. Murder laws are generally of the judicial kind; they punish after the fact. I see no reason why that would be different in the case of abortion.
Another dimension to this is where to put the emphasis in enforcement. All law enforcement is selective. Some don’t want to hear this, but it is how it works. It simply isn’t possible, for example, to track down and prosecute every jay-walker, or those who cross the street against the lights, etc. State’s attorneys offices focus on what they have the resources to handle.
Therefore, in some bright future where all abortion was illegal, prosecutors would have no choice but to focus on the supply side of the equation. If you barricade the killing fields, and criminalize the doctor who takes an innocent life for money, you shut down almost all abortion.
What about so-called coat-hanger abortions? Like murder in general, some evil deeds you will never be able to stop until after the fact. We have laws against murder, and murder still happens. That doesn’t mean we take the laws against murder off the books, and it doesn't mean we intrude on the parent's right to care for their own children. It only means we try harder.
That is the crux of it. FReepers' and conservatives' instincts are so repelled by Romney that even when they're here declaring that they plan to vote for Romney and are doing their best to convince others to vote for Romney, they are outraged to be described as Romney supporters, and become hugely offended when someone refers to Romney as "their guy."
There is something seriously screwed up with that picture. Fear of Obama is clouding many judgments.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
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