Posted on 02/06/2007 10:43:27 AM PST by ElkGroveDan
“Murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes,” Rudy Giuliani once said. “But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.”
Good point, Rudy.
Now, what about a climate — not to mention a Republican presidential candidate — that not only tolerates, but allows unelected judges to legalize the practice of delivering a child until only its head remains within its mothers womb so the child can be killed by sucking out its brains?
What about a climate where same-sex couples are given the same legal status as married couples, whether the resulting arrangements are candidly called “same-sex marriages,” or are semantically papered-over with terms such as “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships”?
Apply the Giuliani Continuum to fundamental issues such as marriage and the right to life, and where does it lead?
Not where conservatives want America to be.
Rudy Giuliani’s observation about the “continuum” running from graffiti to murder was quoted in a piece in the winter edition of City Journal by Steven Malanga. The title of Malanga’s piece neatly encapsulates his argument: “Yes, Rudy is a Conservative — and an electable one at that.”
I believe Malanga is wrong on both counts. Rudy is neither conservative, nor electable — at least, not as a Republican presidential candidate.
As Malanga seems to define it, a politician dedicated to good police work and free-market economics qualifies as a conservative. “Far from being a liberal,” Malanga writes of Giuliani, “he ran New York with a conservative’s priorities: government exists above all to keep people safe in their homes and in the streets, he said, not to redistribute income, run a welfare state, or perform social engineering. The private economy, not government, creates opportunity, he argued; government should just deliver basic services well and then get out of the private sector’s way.”
But that’s not enough. While advocating law and order, self-reliance, and capitalism is laudable, it does not entitle a politician to a free pass for advocating other causes that are deeply destructive of American society.
While it is always wrong to take an innocent human life — whether on a New York sidewalk or in a mother’s womb — Giuliani is highly selective in applying this principle. In 1999, when he was pondering a run for the U.S. Senate, he was asked whether he supported banning partial-birth abortion. “No, I have not supported that,” he said, “and I don’t see my position on that changing.”
“I'm pro-gay rights,” he also said. Indeed, his position is so radical in this area that as New York City mayor he promoted a city ordinance that removed the distinctions in municipal law between married and unmarried couples, regardless of their gender.
“What it really is doing is preventing discrimination against people who have different sexual orientations, or make different preferences in which they want to lead their lives,” Giuliani said, explaining the ordinance to the New York Times. “Domestic partnerships not only affect gays and lesbians, but they also affect heterosexuals who choose to lead their lives in different ways.”
In other words, preserving a legal order that prefers traditional marriage and traditional families is “discrimination.”
Giuliani’s positions on abortion and marriage disqualify him as a conservative because they annihilate the link between the natural law and man-made laws. Indeed, they use man-made law to promote and protect acts that violate the natural law.
Given his argument that there is a “continuum” between graffiti and murder, you would think that Giuliani would understand the importance of the link between the natural law and the laws of New York City, let alone the laws of the United States. At the heart of Rudy’s “continuum” argument, is the realization that when society refuses to enforce a just law it teaches people to disrespect the moral principles underlying just laws.
The late Russell Kirk argued in The Conservative Mind that the first canon of conservatism is “[b]elief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. … True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.”
It is simply not justice to take the life of an unborn child. Nor is it justice to codify same-sex relationships so that, by design of the state itself, a child can be denied a mother or a father from birth, which is one thing legalized same-sex unions would do.
By advocating abortion on demand and same-sex unions, Rudy is doing something far more egregious than, say, defacing a New York subway train. He is defacing the institution that forms the foundation of human civilization.
That is not conservative.
Rudy will not win the Republican nomination because enough of the people who vote in Republican caucuses and primaries still respect life and marriage, and are not ready to give up on them — or on the Republican party as an agent for protecting them.
AFAIC it's no more unpleasant than "winning" with a RINO social ultra-liberal and avowed enemy of 2nd Amendment rights. Take away the R after his name and you have the typical NYC Democrat pol.
Your Hillary posts are the best! Thanks for the ping!
Since when do leftist Israeli foreign nationals get to vote in United States presidential primaries?
You got that right.
I will never understand that concept.
Not true. Bush's judicial appointments will have a major impact on social issues and so would Giuliani's, but on the opposite side of those issues.
I don't believe for one NY minute that Giuliani would appoint strict constructionist judges or Justices, who by definition are opposed to his radically liberal social policies and his strongly anti-2nd Amendment position.
Sure we can, and we always have. Laws against immoral acts such as murder, rape, theft, fraud, perjury, child abuse, etc, are the result of legislation enacted by people who were chosen at the ballot box. Laws against immoral acts such as abortion and homosexual marriage are just as legitimate as those I mentioned previously.
Lots of seminar sleeper-FReepers on these threads Phil
Thanks, I needed that ;D!
LOL! Do I sound Israeli?
Good point, clearly national security is the big kahuna.
I hope that Rudy denounces his pro abortion views. He used to be pro life - come back, Rudy!
Even worse - we will be DEAD!!!!!
Last night Geraldine Ferraro blasted Rudy on Hannity & Colmes calling him the "worst mayor ever" - proving that she is the stupidest person ever nominated to be vice president (except for John Edwards, of course). You cannot deny that Rudy was a great mayor who transformed the city. Having said that, his stance on the sanctity of life is very troubling. Ann Coulter repeated that "we are the party of life" - and although she praised Rudy, she said that he must change on this issue. She is correct. The stupid Gerry tried to explain that the Imam's invocation at the DNC retreat was not anti-American or anti-Semitic. But I digress . . . Hillary and the Demos must be stopped. Period.
Please see my #334 this thread. Thanks
We have had a pro-life President for 6 years now, guess what, abortion is still legal. I would love to look for a more conservative candidate, but he/she has to be able to win!!! So far Rudy seems to nudge them out in that race. A lot could change in the next year, and I am not cutting off my options, and to tell the truth, if Condi would run (I know, not likely), I would probably jump off the Rudy bandwagon, but for today its Gulliani08 for me.
No stretch. The problem is not the conflation of the two extremes. It is that a neighborhood that tolerates petty crimes establishes a criminal attitude and becomes a haven for criminals. A clean neighborhood where antigraffiti laws are enforced has too much police protection for the comfort of many local hoods and they leave or moderate. Enforcement is not nearly the onerous timewaster it might seem because it only has to be done vigorously for a short time and then the problem ceases to be so rife. A graffiti ridden neighborhood is a nasty looking neighborhood. Good people don't want to live there. Criminal people think it looks like home. Lack of enforcement of graffiti laws convinces youths that scofflaw is a legitimate and profitible attitude.
>> I love Newt but can you see Dem ads again horribly smearing the candidate.
Yes, I still remember the Gingrich that stole Christmas Time cover.
>>He might win some Southern votes for Rudy. That would be good;
Yes, that would be good, more important, Newt would keep Rudy “conservative” his advice would be a boon to any white house administration IMHO.
>>Santorum, Hunter might get some voters too.
Might…
>>Who knows?
This is the problem, isn’t it (Grin).
My dream scenario is that Zell Miller joins the Pubbies, and runs for Pres (I know, It’ll never happen, but I still think it would be cool.)
At his victory party in 1993 you couldn't move without bumping into an Orthodox Jew, and at his inauguration in 1994 they were front and center on the stage. He never would have allowed the anti-Semites to have the run of a neighborhood, as Dinkins did.
These two facts go together.
I'm not thinking of the TV stuff after 9/11, although that is valid too. I am thinking he is one of the best friends the Jews and Israel have had, and that that is why he deserves to be very much in the running to be our president when we deal with Iran, if it still hasn't been dealt with. I don't call this just "good conduct," the same as "every American's" opposition to Islamofascism. I call it excellent and honorable leadership, and urgently needed as we face an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism.
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