Dear DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet,
"Please try to imagine your own interpretation were someone to speak to you that way, keeping in mind that you said it to someone who used much more polite language when addressing you."
If someone addresses me in such a manner, the first thing that I usually do is ask the question whether there is justification for it. In the past, on occasion, there has been. It happens to all of us.
In that case, the attitude displayed is not condescension or sarcasm, but merely that of an effort to WAKE UP and deal with reality, as it actually is, rather than how one wishes to see it at this moment in time.
As to the "respectful tone" of the poster, frankly, I found the poster's content deeply insulting and offensive. Not to me, but to the good folks I know throughout the pro-life movement.
"If pro-lifers worked to elect politicians who respected the constitution, rather than blowing them off because they didn't toe the whole moment of conception, no compromise line, that wouldn't be a problem."
This falsehood slanders all the hard work of all the folks in the pro-life movement who have worked their hearts out for even the most mildly pro-life candidate in a given election. The poster seems to miss the basic point that a fundamental strategic goal of the movement is the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and that only political candidates who respect the Constitution will be interested in trying to bring about such an outcome.
It is a slur against the entire movement.
Here is a deeper insult to the good people who work in the pro-life movement:
"It is your 'strategy' of dogmatism and rudely offending everyone who you even think veers even slightly away from your position that hasn't even been able to get rid of partial birth abortion."
This is a taunt. In and of itself, taunting is insulting and rude. But worse, it is a taunt false.
Whatever posters here say, this statement completely detached from reality. The only thing that keeps the partial birth abortion bans ALREADY PASSED INTO LAW AT THE STATE AND FEDERAL LEVELS is the raw power of the pro-abortion elites in this country, in this case, exercised through the black-robed monsters on the Supreme Court.
The poster's words are gratuitously offensive, rude, and untrue, toward the good and decent people who work every day in the pro-life movement. My own remarks have been mild in comparison.
"Your objection appears to be that Trinity_Tx allows posters on FreeRepublic to function as a snapshot of the pro-life movement."
That is one objection. The falsification of history is also an objection. Each is an objective evil.
"Why is that unreasonable?"
Because the assertions made by the poster are false and smear the good names of good people.
"They are certainly part of it, aren't they?"
I don't know who here might be an active part of the movement, and who isn't. I'm not talking about individuals who have strong views and occasionally express them. I'm talking about my friends who run crisis pregnancy aid centers, who regularly go down to the state capital to address our legislators, who make sure they're at the March each year in Washington.
And even folks like me, who are on the fringe of the movement, who organize events to raise money for pregnancy aid centers, who publicize the workings and events of the pro-life movement, who write to our congressmen and other leaders, who work for political campaigns. I know a lot of my pro-life friends who worked to elect pro-ABORTION Bob Ehlrich here in Maryland. Why? Because we recognized the need for COMPROMISE, and that he was a hair better for us than that witch Kathleen Kennedy Townshend.
The poster's remarks here mock and insult all my friends who worked for Gov. Ehrlich. Will you take after the poster for those ill-considered remarks??
It is a vicious falsehood to lay the blame for failure on these folks. It is a vicious insult. The poster has asserted these falsehoods and insults.
I also know that what folks say in the "safety" of an Internet forum, especially one that is ideologically driven, is not necessarily what folks say in the non-virtual world.
To take the rantings from anyone here at FR, on either side, and say that it is an example of a problem in the non-virtual world is kind of iffy to begin with. It is a form of believing everything one reads on the Internet.
But worse, to make the argument is to be co-opted by the pro-abortion side, itself. To make the argument is to accept the stereotype of the pro-abortion elites (and if you don't think our elites are nearly entirely in favor of legal abortion on demand, then you just aren't dealing with the reality of the situation) that pro-lifers are just mean, nasty, religious fanatics who want to punish innocent people for sex, and that pro-lifers' concern ends when the baby is born.
I've seen the pro-life movement from the inside out, and I know these assertions to be falsehoods. I know that although committing abortions is an extremely lucrative business, and helping women through crisis pregnancy without resort to abortion is not at all lucrative, there are, nonetheless, thousands more pregnancy aid and crisis pregnancy centers than there are abortuaries.
Why? Because millions of pro-life folks care. And do small things that add up to big things. Like hold a spaghetti dinner to raise a couple of hundred bucks for the local Gabriel Project. Or sell Life Savers after church to save some lives. Or donate diapers and baby formula, or an old computer or an old car, to help women through difficult pregnancies.
THAT'S the truth of the pro-life movement! Not the fun-house mirror image one might think one sees here at FR, or the absolute premeditated fraud one sees in the lamestream media.
The bottom line is that most folks who actually are practically involved on a regular basis in the pro-life movement are engaged in working with or helping or supporting women who are in crisis pregnancies.
It is a falsehood and a slur to say that these individuals have prevented pro-life legislation to become effective because of their intransigence or failure to compromise.
The lies and falsehoods spread about the pro-life movement might be easier to bear if it were not for the fact that often the pro-abortion folks merely project onto us what they themselves think, feel and DO.
It would be easier to bear the lie that we are all a bunch of raving lunatic mean and nasty fanatics if it were not for the fact that the raving lunatic mean and nasty fanatics are actually the greedy murdering pro-aborts.
Where I live, there have been a half a dozen or more incidents of serious crime against pro-life organizations in less than a year. My friend's pregnancy aid center was totally trashed, costing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. A nearby center was also trashed, we've had folks who've had their tires slashed, billboards defaced, you name it. It's bitterly ironic when they spraypaint "choice" on a building where the folks are committed to giving women a choice other than abortion.
You don't hear that too much in the lamestream media, do you? Rare is the story that talks about the hundreds of anti-life incidents that take place each year around the country.
But should a single lone nutcase go off and do something bad to the pro-aborts, it is evidence of how mean and nasty and fanatical the entire pro-life movement is.
Yes, I do object to generalizing from the comments here to the broader movement. Because 1) the comments here are distorted by the medium used to tend to make comments move to the extreme and 2) because the actual history of the movement doesn't reflect what is said here, and 3) because my personal knowledge of the movement testifies to the basic decency, honor, and goodness of the folks in the movement.
I have been mild in dealing with this poster. I gave the benefit of the doubt that he or she was just caught up in "FR frenzy" and either was unaware of the true history of the last 32 years, or had just let the rhetoric get away from himself or herself. I didn't take the more sinister view that the poster might be an anti-life troll just trying to rile up good and decent people.
Perhaps I was wrong...
sitetest
2 things:
1. Before you even posted to me, I made it clear I was not generalizing, but only talking about the ones who were holding back progress. You can deny that they alienate support, just as you deny, or justify, your own uncalled-for manner. We disagree.
2. But, I'll happily take everything back, and say I think there is no problem, and that the mandate for change is as strong as it can be, if you'll just give it a rest.
I guess I just disagree with that, sitetest.
This goes even deeper than the thrust of this thread - people refusing to vote for Condoleezza Rice because she isn't a hard-core pro-lifer (and potentially giving all of us a President Hillary Clinton in the process).
I've read threads on FreeRepublic with hard-core pro-lifers posting their refusal to condemn the killer of an abortion clinic doctor. Maybe the movement - referring to the entire movement here, not simply your circle of real-life friends and acquaintances - contains a broader range of attitudes than you believe it does. I don't think Trinity_Tx is mistaken for recognizing that, and I would hope you wouldn't take such personal offense to it.
Look around you on FR. There are a lot of people here who don't have the slightest intent of compromising on anything where this issue is concerned. Just because you don't know them personally doesn't mean they're not out there. Clearly, they are, and there are many of them.
There's your reality, right there.