Posted on 09/28/2002 7:43:05 PM PDT by Askel5
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Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan, while sitting as the fortieth president of the United States, sent us this article shortly after the tenth anniversary of Roe v. Wade; we printed it with pride in our Spring, 1983 issue, and reprint it now, after Roe's twentieth anniversary, just as proudly. The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators— not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation's wars. Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the opinion "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a "right" so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born. Yet that is what the Court ruled. As an act of "raw judicial power" (to use Justice White's biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation. Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: ". . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life— the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life. Wesaw tragic proof of this truism last year when the Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of "Baby Doe" in Bloomington because the child had Down's Syndrome. Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after being nominated to head the largest department of our government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her world-famous mission of mercy, has said that "the greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children." Over the first two years of my Administration I have closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse the tide of abortion— efforts of Congressmen, Senators and citizens responding to an urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I have also seen the massive efforts of those who, under the banner of "freedom of choice," have so far blocked every effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand. Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade. At first, only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed. But the great majority of the American people have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect them to—any more than the public voice arose against slavery—until the issue is clearly framed and presented. What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives—the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant woman a mother? I have also said that anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn. The case against abortion does not rest here, however, for medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of these moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn child as a patient. Medical pioneers have made great breakthroughs in treating the unborn—for genetic problems, vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other medical conditions. Who can forget George Will's moving account of the little boy who underwent brain surgery six times during the nine weeks before he was born? Who is the patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can feel pain when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill rather than to cure? The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law— the same right we have. What more dramatic confirmation could we have of the real issue than the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana? The death of that tiny infant tore at the hearts of all Americans because the child was undeniably a live human being—one lying helpless before the eyes of the doctors and the eyes of the nation. The real issue for the courts was not whether Baby Doe was a human being. The real issue was whether to protect the life of a human being who had Down's Syndrome, who would probably be mentally handicapped, but who needed a routine surgical procedure to unblock his esophagus and allow him to eat. A doctor testified to the presiding judge that, even with his physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have a "non-existent" possibility for "a minimally adequate quality of life"—in other words, that retardation was the equivalent of a crime deserving the death penalty. The judge let Baby Doe starve and die, and the Indiana Supreme Court sanctioned his decision. Federal law does not allow federally-assisted hospitals to decide that Down's Syndrome infants are not worth treating, much less to decide to starve them to death. Accordingly, I have directed the Departments of Justice and HHS to apply civil rights regulations to protect handicapped newborns. All hospitals receiving federal funds must post notices which will clearly state that failure to feed handicapped babies is prohibited by federal law. The basic issue is whether to value and protect the lives of the handicapped, whether to recognize the sanctity of human life. This is the same basic issue that underlies the question of abortion. The 1981 Senate hearings on the beginning of human life brought out the basic issue more clearly than ever before. The many medical and scientific witnesses who testified disagreed on many things, but not on the scientific evidence that the unborn child is alive, is a distinct individual, or is a member of the human species. They did disagree over the value question, whether to give value to a human life at its early and most vulnerable stages of existence. Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value. Some have said that only those individuals with "consciousness of self" are human beings. One such writer has followed this deadly logic and concluded that "shocking as it may seem, a newly born infant is not a human being." A Nobel Prize winning scientist has suggested that if a handicapped child "were not declared fully human until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice." In other words, "quality control" to see if newly born human beings are up to snuff. Obviously, some influential people want to deny that every human life has intrinsic, sacred worth. They insist that a member of the human race must have certain qualities before they accord him or her status as a "human being." Events have borne out the editorial in a California medical journal which explained three years before Roe v. Wade that the social acceptance of abortion is a "defiance of the long-held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status." Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen needs to recognize that the real issue is whether to affirm and protect the sanctity of all human life, or to embrace a social ethic where some human lives are valued and others are not. As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the "quality of life" ethic. I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future. American was founded by men and women who shared a vision of the value of each and every individual. They stated this vision clearly from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using words that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one category of mankind— black people in America—could not be denied the inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The great champion of the sanctity of all human life in that day, Abraham Lincoln, gave us his assessment of the Declaration's purpose. Speaking of the framers of that noble document, he said: This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on. . . They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. He warned also of the danger we would face if we closed our eyes to the value of life in any category of human beings: I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? When Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the rights of life, liberty, and property to all human beings, he explained that all are "entitled to the protection of American law, because its divine spirit of equality declares that all men are created equal." He said the right guaranteed by the amendment would therefore apply to "any human being." Justice William Brennan, writing in another case decided only the year before Roe v. Wade, referred to our society as one that "strongly affirms the sanctity of life." Another William Brennan—not the Justice—has reminded us of the terrible consequences that can follow when a nation rejects the sanctity of life ethic: The cultural environment for a human holocaust is present whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect. As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue. The Congress has before it several measures that would enable our people to reaffirm the sanctity of human life, even the smallest and the youngest and the most defenseless. The Human Life Bill expressly recognizes the unborn as human beings and accordingly protects them as persons under our Constitution. This bill, first introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, provided the vehicle for the Senate hearings in 1981 which contributed so much to our understanding of the real issue of abortion. The Respect Human Life Act, just introduced in the 98th Congress, states in its first section that the policy of the United States is "to protect innocent life, both before and after birth." This bill, sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde and Senator Roger Jepsen, prohibits the federal government from performing abortions or assisting those who do so, except to save the life of the mother. It also addresses the pressing issue of infanticide which, as we have seen, flows inevitably from permissive abortion as another step in the denial of the inviolability of innocent human life. I have endorsed each of these measures, as well as the more difficult route of constitutional amendment, and I will give these initiatives my full support. Each of them, in different ways, attempts to reverse the tragic policy of abortion-on-demand imposed by the Supreme Court ten years ago. Each of them is a decisive way to affirm the sanctity of human life. We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain. But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the skin of a baby with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for hours? Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a Sunday special supplement on "The Dreaded Complication." The "dreaded complication" referred to in the article—the complication feared by doctors who perform abortions—is the survival of the child despite all the painful attacks during the abortion procedure. Some unborn children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme Court has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of abortion deserve our attention and protection? Is there any question that those who don't survive were living human beings before they were killed? Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now. As my Administration acts to stop infanticide, we will be fully aware of the real issue that underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth. Our society has, fortunately, become sensitive to the rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked that physical or mental handicaps of newborns are still used to justify their extinction. This Administration has a Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done perhaps more than any other American for handicapped children, by pioneering surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out on the value of their lives, and by working with them in the context of loving families. You will not find his former patients advocating the so-called "quality-of-life" ethic. I know that when the true issue of infanticide is placed before the American people, with all the facts openly aired, we will have no trouble deciding that a mentally or physically handicapped baby has the same intrinsic worth and right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey Supreme Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the sanctity of human life, "a child need not be perfect to have a worthwhile life." Whether we are talking about pain suffered by unborn children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide, we inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each of these issues is a potential rallying point for the sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation rally around any one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will see the importance of affirming this principle across the board. Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right to the heart of the matter: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other." The sanctity of innocent human life is a principle that Congress should proclaim at every opportunity. It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier "separate-but-equal" decision. I believe if the Supreme Court took another look at Roe v. Wade, and considered the real issue between the sanctity of life ethic and the quality of life ethic, it would change its mind once again. As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy. Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers. I recently spoke about a young pregnant woman named Victoria, who said, "In this society we save whales, we save timber wolves and bald eagles and Coke bottles. Yet, everyone wanted me to throw away my baby." She has been helped by Save-a-Life, a group in Dallas, which provides a way for unwed mothers to preserve the human life within them when they might otherwise be tempted to resort to abortion. I think also of House of His Creation in Catesville, Pennsylvania, where a loving couple has taken in almost 200 young women in the past ten years. They have seen, as a fact of life, that the girls are not better off having abortions than saving their babies. I am also reminded of the remarkable Rossow family of Ellington, Connecticut, who have opened their hearts and their home to nine handicapped adopted and foster children. The Adolescent Family Life Program, adopted by Congress at the request of Senator Jeremiah Denton, has opened new opportunities for unwed mothers to give their children life. We should not rest until our entire society echoes the tone of John Powell in the dedication of his book, Abortion: The Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying an unwanted child: "Please believe that you are not alone. There are many of us that truly love you, who want to stand at your side, and help in any way we can." And we can echo the always-practical woman of faith, Mother Teresa, when she says, "If you don't want the little child, that unborn child, give him to me." We have so many families in America seeking to adopt children that the slogan "every child a wanted child" is now the emptiest of all reasons to tolerate abortion. I have often said we need to join in prayer to bring protection to the unborn. Prayer and action are needed to uphold the sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be possible to accomplish our work, the work of saving lives, "without being a soul of prayer." The famous British Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, prayed with his small group of influential friends, the "Clapham Sect," for decades to see an end to slavery in the British empire. Wilberforce led that struggle in Parliament, unflaggingly, because he believed in the sanctity of human life. He saw the fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed slavery just before his death. Let his faith and perseverance be our guide. We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm Muggeridge says:. . . however low it flickers or fiercely burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened." Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.
Published by: The Human Life Foundation, Inc. |
I have always advocated linking such photos.
Additionally, where I've come across something gruesome -- such as a beheading I found posted while searching Google for FR articles one day -- I've alerted Jim in the past.
The question remains why IwoJima' "this guy" can be used like some cartoon character to flesh our her snide retort.
Could it be that that "soon to be dead body" represents a Husband and father that just by going to work is now just a name on a headstone? You can only see horror when it is a baby ripped from the womb and until that is stopped then all other expressions of horror are illegitimate. You are so unyielding in your sanctimony that you actually work in favor of the very forces you fight.
Askel, I wasn't using the man in the photo as though he were a cartoon character. I know he's real. What I was responding to was the suggestion you and another poster made that his death was somehow justified because abortion is legal in this country. And you know that.
If the AM wants to pull it, I'm fine with that. But don't suggest that it makes anything other than perfect sense, given the course of the conversation. It relates to something you yourself brought up.
Evidently, folks have gotten so used to seeing all the flying and burning dead bodies of a year ago on this forum, the images have lost their shock value and your "husband and father" can now be used as an illustration for cheap flamebait.
Your and Iwo's respect for life -- particularly "this guy's" is duly noted.
To be honest every post you make is flamebait, that is when intelligible. If you think your approach is an asset to the pro-life movement you are sadly mistaken.
I realize I'm supposed to draw some distinction between those whose loved ones Grieve for them and those whose would-be loved ones Killed them but I cannot.
I find each death a horrific and terrible crime. I suspect the Author of Life does too.
My sister can tell you that each funeral she's attended this past year was absolutely unique in all respects. It's their uniqueness, that the unborn are EXACTLY the same as the born who died on 9/11.
He who knows the numbers of hairs on our heads likely knows precisely what Potential, what children, what joys, what inventions, what love was lost in every human life killed in the womb.
We have become so desensitized to all that, it appears we can only appreciate the loss of innocent life once it looks and acts and is "more like us". That's always the way, though, isn't it? Else how could we be so cavalier about "collateral damage" or speak of "misting Muslims" simply because the patently secularized Arab radicals who perpetrated 9/11 claimed to be on some Holy War mission.
It did truly stun and anger me to see you use the image of some dead man as a punctuation mark on your stinkin flame.
This is precisely one of the reasons I always have argued that images of the dead unborn were not to be posted lightly. It appears an overdose of the images of the dead from 9/11 has ended up a lesson for all in how easily folks are desensitized and can even use such images for cheap Effect.
It will mean more to me that way.
Let's see 20,000,000 vs. 3,000. That is a tough one. Come to think of it, you're right, it shouldn't be a zero sum issue. There should be more outrage over the deaths of our nation's 20,000,000 most innocent who have been slaughtered in the womb.
Again, obviously you can't stand the fact that some cultures put value on self-sacrifice and bravery than other cutltures do. I have battled your form of racism for many, many years. To you, it is an embarassment that it the most decorated American fighting unit in the entire war was a JAPANESE unit, the 442 CRT.
Hah! First you imprison them and their famlies, take away all their private possessions (talk about blatant racism run rampant in the supposedly "democratic" United States) and than they have to show your all-white units how to fight! I won't mention the cover-up the white US Army spent over the next 50 years trying to hide the truth about the brave men of the 442nd. Some groups are heidonistic and others aren't: deal with it.
Well, we're even then, Askel. Because a lot of the things you say stun and anger me, too. Like stating that the Taliban was actually demonized - that in reality, they did good things - all the while slapping President Bush in the face, ridiculing him and judging his heart and motivation at your every opportunity.
Now you suggest that we "pray down destruction" on ourselves because we're just as guilty as Osama bin Laden. I respond with five little words and a photograph, apparently provoking your outrage.
At least I'm efficient.
[Raised eyebrows.] Well. It didn't take long for you to fling that word my way.
You assume a lot. Believe me when I tell you I am not a racist. (And before you even try to go there, neither was my father, FYI.) I'm just a little surprised to see someone in this forum celebrating the fiery death of American sailors.
Every time you post, you keep upping the ante. I'm going to give you a chance to stop hyperventilating - but believe this, also: I know something about Japanese military culture during the Pacific War, and I am fully prepared to discuss the "bravery and self-sacrifice" you hold so superior to that of Americans with you or anyone else who comes along. Trust me on that.
The point Dr. Keyes was making is that when you pray to God to bring down destruction on ANY AND ALL who would evidence the same lack of disregard for innocent human life as was brought home to us on September 11, 2001, you should be careful.
Unlike you, God may be CONSISTENT in his righteous anger over the wanton destruction of human life and hold EVERYONE accountable who -- like President Bush did a mere fortnight before 9/11 -- speak of human beings as "Excess" or highlight the Utilitarian Uses of "already been killed" innocent human lives.
We are not EVEN in the least, you smooth-brained banshee.
You, on the one hand, lap up and fling about propaganda with all the abandon of CNN and the New York Times' who have no problems dragging our Rangers through the dirt in prime time. You also engage in the cult of personality and the rabid nationalism necessary to use Clean Hands Death on innocent and guilty alike whenever some "regime" or "dictator" or "Hopeful Research" requires it.
I, on the other hand, place a consistent and respectful value on human life. As far as Self-Evident truths go, the right to life is Supreme for me. The rest come only when that right is secure for all.
This causes me to view each human life with dignity ... even President Bush's "excess" ones ... regardless of what stage of development or perfection that human life has achieved and whether or not his conception was Wanted, Planned, an Accident or the result of some diabolical intent to manufacture perfectly unique or inhumanly cloned human lives for use in Human Destructive Research.
I cannot sort between them like you.
This also causes me to have some objectivity where strangers are concerned. It is not for me to judge foreigners -- however decidedly different they may be -- as Subhumans simply for their religion, their poverty or the desperate circumstances under which they live wherein a cruel and certainly sometimes brutal regime like the Taliban is the "lesser of two evils".
I figure the Afghanistan people should have the option of choosing -- as do Americans in every election -- the "lesser of two evils" and I have no problems whatsoever pinpointing what telltale signs exist that may have led those people to that conclusion where the Taliban were concerned ... including their crackdown on homosexuality and their efforts to stop the production of opium by the old Evil Empire's friend the Northern Alliance which drug production our efforts have unfortunately ended up enabling once again.
Additionally, as one who has studied the conditioning tactics of both the revolution and the Interlock and whose thinking is not a product of propaganda (even if it's the sort of government lying we cheered upon the announcement of the Defense Departments Ministry of Truth in the wake of 9/11), I cannot help but take note of the propaganda on the Taliban which started on the left among Feminazi shrews well before it started on the right ... which right included our own decided support in the past for the Taliban as well as our training and funding of Osama and others.
It was in 1995 that I became curious as to why the concentration on the Taliban was so pervasive among radical leftist feminists ... bellwether babes that they are.
If I didn't think I'd be nuked on the spot, I'd be happy to post a thread detailing for you our own nation's flip-flop on the Taliban and -- in addition to citing the few instances of rationality evident in the regime -- treat you to our own pro-Taliban propaganda which, when it served our purposes, made them out to be far better folks than I would EVER do. Clearly, the truth lies somewhere in between our glorifying them and our demonizing them. I fail to see what's so hard to understand about that.
Perhaps if you and the other simpletons who have the leeway to hijack threads and throw around inflammatory and baseless accusations on a regular basis would get together and start a Salem Trial sort of thread on which to grill me, I would be within my rights to defend myself therein.
Give it some thought.
But be prepared, will you, to address the reason the subject came up at all: my belief that regardless how horrific the regime may be, the wickedness of the Taliban is not our affair and in no way should be used as a compelling foundation or belated excuse for our aggression.
France came to our aid in rebellion only after we had declared our independence and stated quite clearly the moral grounds on which we claimed the authority to declare our independence and the right to engage in bloodshed. We had no business excusing for a moment our actions as 'liberating' the Afghanistans who had neither declared their independence our sought our aid with an appeal to the Principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence.
By rights and all principles of human justice, all human war and bloodshed should meet these conditions.
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In the great documents that our Founders used to justify their willingness even to go to war in order to assert their independence. I think we ought to take that very seriously because – at least in those days, I don't know about now, I think we're kind of … we've gotten really careless about wars these days, as some events, I think, even in recent times have proven. And we go to war maybe without understanding what we ought to understand. Every time you go to war, you know -- a people like ourselves -- even if that war is conducted by others, even when it's conducted by a means where you're flying high up in the air and dropping bombs on people you don't even see and folks die as a result … I hope we still understand that each and every one of us who has an opportunity to participate as part of the sovereign body of the people in this country: we are responsible for every life that is taken by America in war. And we had better be awfully sure that what we're doing has a solid moral ground or we will stand before God bearing the stain and weight of every life taken in injustice that we did not oppose. And that's what they did in our Declaration of Independence. It's a statement of the moral justification of that assertion of independence at the risk of war. And, in doing what they did, they set forth the basic moral principles that then informed the later deliberations that led to our Constitution and are the practical foundation of our liberty. And so those words in the Declaration of Independence – "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" -- are the basic premise of everything that, as a people, we claim to hold dear. Self-government and rights and due process and liberty and all these other unique hallmarks of the American way of life, they rest on that premise and that premise alone. |
I am particularly uneasy about the chest-beating over our eradicating the Taliban and "Democratizing" Afghanistan because
and
I certainly hope that's not the case. I certainly hope that we'll not be foregoing the principles of our own national birth or our Christian heritage ...
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2309. The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good. |
For if we forego both our heritage as Americans and our morality as a Christian nation, I do not believe things will go well for us in the future.
I do not believe in an angry God who metes out punishment or uses evil to achieve a good, but I do believe it's true He would withdraw his special protections from us were we to abandon his Law as written in the consciences of every man.
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I remember I was at the UN years ago, representing the United States for Ronald Reagan. And one day, one weekend, I was out with my son. And, as usual, it was in the midst of one of those times we were always at war in the United Nations with some element or other of the Soviet bloc—this one or that one—at the time. And we were out and we walking along that plaza where they have all those different flags of the different countries and I was explaining to him what this one and that one was and we finally got to what was, at that point, the flag of the old Soviet Union. And he points up to it – he's very young—and he says, "Well whose flag is that?" And I said, "Well, that represents the bad guys," I said. And, obviously, I still believe that I was quite right about that. And then, we got to the American flag, which was quite close [and he asked] "if that's the bad guys, what does that one represent?" I said, "Well, that one represents the good guys – that's us." But, you know something my friends, if we keep going the way we're going, persisting in the path that we have persisted in … then we, the very country that more than once in this century has saved the world from the shadow of the worst evils will no longer be there in the 21st Century to save the world from the shadow of evil. And worse than that … we won't save the world from that shadow because we will be casting it. I frankly don't think that for American there will be a middle way. And that's the truth of it. And we are already at it. For we've had an administration that has aided and abetted and promoted and coerced the culture of death in every continent and toward every nation on the fact of the Earth already. Using our capital and our money and our clout they have forced other nations to take the same ungodly stance toward innocent life in the womb that they take now. So my friends, don't think that this is just some future that we are talking about. We are already far down the road toward the destruction of our republic, our conscience, our decency. The question isn't whether we will choose that road but whether we will turn back now before we pass the point of no return. |
Given President Bush's use of "Excess" human life on August 9, 2001, using Scripture as part of his address to the nation announcing the FACT that all men were no longer created equal but that some were fit only for the garbage, I will admit I believe our nation has passed that point of no return.
Ever hopeful, however.
Well, certainly not in volume.
| Kobyashi1942 said: "...talk about blatant racism run rampant in the supposedly "democratic" United States) and than they have to show your all-white units how to fight! I won't mention the cover-up the white US Army spent over the next 50 years trying to hide the truth about the brave men of the 442nd.". |
Are YOU really calling someone ELSE a racist? You have GOT to be kiddding! You need to check a mirror, bucko!
Yes, your post remains intact to that effect.
But the "white" business tells me a lot.
I'm an American. My race does not come into play when I'm discussing these things. It doesn't come into play for me at all. But if we're going to talk about Japanese military culture in 1942, I'm ready to go.
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