For me, life issues. In part, because I see the state over and over again eroding what it means to be a person. That’s a political stance that comes out of my moral underpinnings, but is shaped no doubt on the anvil of the American individualist tradition.
It’s horrible to be killing babies, from a moral pov, because they are living beings.
Politically, what its saying is that the state can mandate who is a person worthy of life. As they also do in euthanasia cases, when personhood is legally stripped from someone. Eventually, it could, if unchecked become a cost/value ratio issue...you cost to much, the state strips you of personhood, and sends you down the tubes.
Guns is right up there with this for me, because guns were intended by the founders as an insurance policy against tyranny.
The PC I see as a threat to our American culture, because they tell you what to believe, and are quite totalitarian in what they accept as correct. And their POV counters much of what has traditionally been the bulwark of American society...the value of men, of individuals, of family and morality.
Anyway, this is how it works with me.
“Politically, what its saying is that the state can mandate who is a person worthy of life.”
Yes. I got into a big argument with someone the other day about it, and he finally got frustrated because I was intractable.
When I argue abortion, I take the word “baby” out of it, and use the word “life.” Once the pro-death crowd admits that whatever is growing inside of the woman is LIFE, I ask them to define when it’s okay in their view to destroy that life. That pins them down a little, because most of them don’t want to come out in favor of killing the unborn one 5 minutes before he or she is due to pop out into the world. However, to me, that 5-minutes-away from birth life is JUST as much a life (the SAME life, in fact) as the one that began 9 months earlier when the first two cells began to split and grow. If they don’t agree... ask them when THEY think it becomes a “life” - three months? Four? Six? -— and why. If you get them to admit it’s been a life all along, then ask them how taking life CANNOT be considered murder.
Anyway, sorry for jumping in in the middle of a discussion.
Knitting, You summed up my feelings perfectly.
Why the Pledge of Allegiance Matters—Speech by Tom McClintock
There is a reason behind the movement to strike the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance—and from our national customs, and our currency, and our public ceremonies. It has very little to do with atheism. It has a great deal to do with authoritarianism. The philosophy of the American Founding is unique among the nations of the world because of a bedrock principle that was given expression with words in the Declaration of Independence that are old and familiar, and yet not often pondered these days...
Why the Pledge of Allegiance Matters—Speech by Tom McClintock
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1649196/posts