Posted on 03/06/2007 5:39:37 PM PST by markomalley
They are saying that the next GOP presidential candidate might very well be a pro-abortion Republican who promises not to push that issue and is strong on other issues.
They hope that pro-lifers will “be reasonable,” not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and go along quietly.
We won’t.
Republicans and Democrats in 1980 took radically different approaches to the right to life. Republicans wrote into their party platform that all abortions should be outlawed. Democrats wrote into their party platform that not only should abortion be legal, but families should be forced to pay for others’ abortions through their taxes.
Democratic leaders have been utterly committed to their party platform. But there’s a movement afoot for Republicans to shrug off this plank of the party platform altogether, and give a pro-abortion politician the reins of the party and, they hope, the White House.
In particular, Rudy Giuliani has become a favorite for president of conservative talk-show hosts, and pro-war and tough-on-crime Republicans. He’s also way ahead in polls like Newsweek’s, though it’s anyone guess what such polls mean so early in the process.
The way the pro-Rudy argument goes is this: For the past three decades, social conservatives have had the luxury of insisting on purity in the Republican Party. Their clout was such that any candidate had to undergo a “forced conversion” before running for national office. But 9/11 changed that. Now, extremist Islam and the war on terror are such all-consuming issues, and we can’t be so caught up with abortion anymore.
Since Giuliani is committed to the war on terror and is a great crisis manager with a track record rooting out the gangs of New York, we shouldn’t demand that he be pro-life, but instead we should be willing to make a deal.
Rudy’s deal: He’ll promise not to push the pro-abortion agenda, and he’ll nominate judges in the mold of Samuel Alito and John Roberts. Pro-lifers in the Republican Party in return would support him, but keep insisting that the party stay pro-life, and fight our fiercest pro-life battles at the state level, where they belong.
That seems like a good deal, at first blush. We’re well aware that “forced conversions” to the pro-life fold are far from the ideal. Think of the candidacy of Bob Dole in 1996. And it is true that the fight against judicial tyranny is an immense front in the battle for the right to life. Transforming the courts is a prerequisite to victory elsewhere.
But what dooms the deal from the start is the fact that it totally misunderstands what pro-lifers care about in the first place.
When they ask us to “be reasonable” and go along with a pro-abortion leader, they assume that there is something unreasonable about the pro-life position to start with.
We’re sorry, but we don’t see what is so unreasonable about the right to life. We’ve seen ultrasounds, we’ve named our babies in the womb, we’ve seen women destroyed by abortion. What looks supremely unreasonable to us is that we should trust a leader who not doesn’t only reject the right to life but even supports partial-birth abortion, which is more infanticide than abortion.
We also see the downside of Rudy’s deal. If pro-lifers went along, we’d soon find out that a pro-abortion Republican president would no longer preside over a pro-life party. The power a president exerts over his party’s character is nearly absolute. The party is changed in his image. He picks those who run it and, both directly and indirectly, those who enter it.
Thus, the Republicans in the 1980s became Reaganites. The Democrats in the 1990s took on the pragmatic Clintonite mold. Bush’s GOP is no different, as Ross Douthat points out in “It’s His Party” in the March Atlantic Monthly.
A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party. Parents know that, when we make significant exceptions to significant rules, those exceptions themselves become iron-clad rules to our children. It’s the same in a political party. A Republican Party led by Rudy Giuliani would be a party of contempt for the pro-life position, which is to say, contempt for the fundamental right on which all others depend.
Would a pro-abortion president give us a pro-life Supreme Court justice? Maybe he would in his first term. But we’ve seen in the Democratic Party how quickly and completely contempt for the right to life corrupts. Even if a President Giuliani did the right thing for a short time, it’s likely the party that accepted him would do the wrong thing for a long time.
Would his commitment to the war on terror be worth it? The United States has built the first abortion businesses in both Afghanistan and Iraq, ever. Shamefully, our taxes paid to build and operate a Baghdad abortion clinic that is said to get most of its customers because of the pervasive rape problem in that male-dominated society. And that happened under a pro-life president. What would a pro-abortion president do?
The bottom line: Republicans have made inroads into the Catholic vote for years because of the pro-life issue. If they put a pro-abortion politician up for president, the gains they’ve built for decades will vanish overnight.
Thanks for posting this article. Laura read this article on her show this past Tuesday, and I missed hearing who had written it so couldn't find the article. I do not dislike Rudy as a person, but this article expresses my feelings exactly. I will not vote for Rudy, and I do not believe he would win the nomination. When it comes to the Primary Election, those who are still in the race may be very different. And if the "top three" do end up being Rudy, McCain, and Romney, I believe Romney would win the nomination.
True. But that's my point. Logically, utility serves either an objectively good end or an apparently good end. But in either case, utility presupposes some end. Utility simply cannot be an end in itself. It presupposes an object or end. Therefore, "good" cannot be defined as simple utility.
Interestingly, your argument presupposes the fact that health is an objective good (even though you use scare quotes) and that running away from the police is objectively evil, because if these things are not true, your argument has no force.
Utility is the same, the ends are not.
That's true, and that's what distinguishes the morality of the two acts, one being good and one evil. That's what makes utility, considered absolutely, irrelevant to moral reasoning. What makes an act moral is the action itself, the circumstances surrounding the act, and the intention of the act. Again, if you claim that these acts are truly morally equivalent, then you undercut your argument above.
That's why the tools are only tools, and are beyond value judgment.
True. But human acts are not tools, except as they may represent a means to an end. And the acts in your example are not beyond value judgement because of the intention of the acts.
All acts are instrumental, and therefore are tools. Even unvoluntary acts, like sneezing or twitching, are instrumental, the first to respiratory, the second to muscular functioning. If somebody runs away with the money from the bank holdup, it serves his purpose [to get money]. To catch and punish him serves not his purpose, but ours. For him getting caught is not "a good". For us caching him is. That's why it is much better to use a framework in which the word "good" does not even enter. It does not have to be im-moral, just a-moral.
Goodness = utility. Good so far, but keep going.
Is the act of believing this truly good, or only instrumental for you? It must be the latter since "all acts are instrumental."
Since goodness reduces to simple utility, this belief is of use to you, but it may not be of use to others. So this belief has no objective utility or "goodness."
Your belief statement rises only to the level of a statement like, "I itch," a feeling of yours that's of no consequence to others. Neither is the statement a claim about objective reality. It's solipsistic.
If I itch, what the [insert an expletive] do I care about others, unless I were to use them as itching posts, in which case they would be good to my purpose? The whole idea of "truly good" is absurd. Whatever is considered "good" is socially, or otherwise, conditioned, and conditional. And it is not even subject to majority voting, for remember that muslims or confucians outnumber the westerners. What they see, or can see, as "truly good" does not always coincide with your worldview. No reason to abandon it, though. One could hold on, and defend, one's worldview on purely subjective, selfish grounds - and defend, and hold on, to it no less effectively.
More proof in the pudding.
The Yanar Mohammed Clinic in Baghdad, opened in 2004 in a renovated butcher shop, offers abortions free of charge paid for by US Tax Dollars.
This is another shining example of the brilliant policy of "nation-building" in Iraq.
I am disappointed, but no longer suprised. We need a pro-life commander-in-chief.
I am disappointed, but no longer suprised. We need a pro-life commander-in-chief.
Could you provide your source information because this is a new atrocity. It is getting quite difficult to keep track of all the abuses the government makes with our tax dollars.
This is a hostile website (feminist) and so there is a disclaimer on the article, but there's no indication they've changed the text of the article. I tried to confirm this as WashingtonPost.Com but couldn't find an archive pre-2006 (I'd actually appreciate it very much if someone knew how to find old 2004 Washington Post articles for confirmation).
I've also seen this referenced in Roman Catholic news releases like the Article above, and a related story on Lew Rockwell (though not regarding this particular clinic). I'll see if I can get confirmation through one of those sources.
Thank you.
Unless it was a joke we built a theme park there also. Abortion money and theme park money could and should be going to our troops like the ones in Walter Reed.
That would be a much better use of our overdrawn tax dollars.
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