May 11th, 2008 11:16am
Pat Cunningham
John McCain is one of the millions of Americans who are generally opposed to abortion but want its legality maintained in cases of rape or incest.
Accordingly, McCain has advocated on several occasions that the Republican Party platform be changed from its current opposition to all abortions to a position allowing for certain exceptions.
But now that he’s the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Straight Talk is under BIG PRESSURE from the party’s hard-core anti-abortion wing to drop his plan to change the platform.
The squeeze in which McCain finds himself involves a few angles that might not occur to the casual observer. As I’ve said before in this forum and others, the stricter position against abortion is more logically consistent than the one that allows for exceptions. (My own pro-choice view involves numerous other factors and is not at issue here.)
The only good reason for a person to oppose abortion in general requires one to believe that it’s the taking of an innocent life. If it’s not the taking of an innocent life, it’s no different in an ethical sense than having your appendix removed.
(Granted, the decision on whether to bring a fetus to full term can involve complex emotions and considerations, but absent the homicide question, the ethics are not very problematical, and the government has no legitimate interest in the matter.)
So, the basic premise advanced by the so-called pro-life movement is that abortion is wrong because it’s tantamount to murder. If you don’t buy that argument, you have no valid reason to want abortion outlawed.
That makes it hypocritical to say you’re against abortion except in cases of rape or incest or the life of the mother.
How can a fetus in a case of rape or incest be less innocent than one produced in more acceptable circumstances? How can John McCain and those who agree with him deny that they’re logically and morally inconsistent on this score?
Indeed, one has to wonder if McCain has actually thought this matter through, or whether his opposition to abortion is an insincere political convenience for purposes of advancement in the Republican Party.
But their are lots of other hypocrites on this issue. Most pro-lifers shudder at the thought of a woman having to bring a fetus to full term in a case of rape or incest. And most politicians are loathe to buck majority sentiment in that regard. So much for the sincerity of their pro-life positions.
There’s another political question that arises here: If a fetus is a person, and abortion is the unwarranted killing of that innocent person, why don’t any of the pro-life politicians favor a law under which the mother would be charged with murder?
The answer, of course, is that taking such a position likely would be political suicide. Most Americans don’t want women who get abortions to be prosecuted as murderers.
Nor is there any consistency of logic in making an exception for an abortion to save the life of the mother. In his book “Papal Sin,” author Garry Wills argues: “If the fetus and the mother have equal status as persons, the natural and not the inflicted death should be preferred,” if you’re going to be morally and logically consistent about it.
Then, too, politicians should be required to square their anti-abortion positions with the belief among some folks — orthodox Catholics, for example — that the morning-after pill is an abortifacient. Are any of these pols willing to call for a ban on morning-after pills? Are they willing to call for murder charges against women who take such pills? If not, why not?
The politicians should be required to explain in detail their opinions on just when life starts and when, if ever, it’s permissible to end such life and what penalties should be imposed for violations of any limits that are enacted into law.
Questions like that would prompt the Republican pols, I’m sure, to squirm and dance and tie themselves into ideological knots.
May 10th, 2008 02:11pm
Pat Cunningham
Bob Herbert NAILS the Clintons — but good!
May 9th, 2008 10:08am
Pat Cunningham
For several decades now, Republican campaigners have figured that one sure way to win over the good, decent, God-fearing, hard-working, law-abiding, white-bread eating, heterosexual folks in Middle America is to link Democrats with that infamous sin city, San Francisco.
Anybody remember Jeane Kirkpatrick’s famous “San Francisco Democrats” SPEECH at the 1984 Republican Convention?
Well, 24 years later, the GOP elite are singing pretty much the same song. Witness the gratuitous mention of San Francisco (replete with footage of a cable car) in this new Republican ad against Barack Obama:
May 9th, 2008 09:14am
Pat Cunningham
Where will it all end?
Last night, I approvingly linked to a COLUMN by conservative pundit George Will. Now, I can’t help but link to THIS PIECE by the usually annoying Peggy Noonan.
God bless Hillary Clinton! She’s unwittingly inspiring uncharacteristic wisdom among America’s right-wing scribes.
Glory be!
May 9th, 2008 08:09am
Pat Cunningham
This is both funny and sad.
The lower ranks of the right-wing blogosphere — which excludes, of course, those notable conservative pundits who actually walk upright — have been busy of late passing among one another a phony quotation attributed to Barack Obama.
It reads: “My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.”
Oh, how the dimwits chortle at that one. They think they’ve caught that Harvard elitist at an embarrassing mistatement that betrays his fiendish designs.
What makes this matter truly funny is that the phony quotation was first jokingly peddled by a conservative Web site — and was aimed at John McCain (note the familiar salutation: “My friends”), not Barack Obama.
It’s all explained HERE.
The truth of the matter, however, may never reach the nether regions of the blogosphere. There will always be strange little creatures eager to believe the next bit of nonsense that comes along via e-mail or from the dark corners of the Internet and somehow mentally unable to check out the veracity of it.
Last year, the vogue among these folks was to impugn the patriotism of Iraq war critics in Congress with these words, falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
“Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”
Not only did Lincoln never utter such bilge, he was a war protester himself during his time as a member of Congress.
In fact, Lincoln’s criticisms of the Mexican War in 1848 greatly angered the pseudo-patriots of his time and cost him his seat in Congress.
Some things never change.
May 8th, 2008 09:44pm
Pat Cunningham
George Will, for all his vaunted brilliance, doesn’t often write columns that make good sense all the way through, which is why I don’t often link to him.
THIS COLUMN, however, has merit from beginning to end.
May 8th, 2008 12:15pm
Pat Cunningham
Excuse me for being more logical than emotional, but I’ve always had a greater affection for the U.S. Constitution than the American flag.
Don’t get me wrong. I respect the flag, and I think everyone should. But the flag doesn’t give us the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. The Constitution does.
So, why are we supposed to treat the flag with almost religious reverence, but nobody’s going to get upset if I carelessly throw a copy of the Constitution in the garbage?
The answer, I think, is that the flag is about emotion, while the Constitution is about complicated concepts.
The flag is great for raising goosebumps at patriotic parades, but it’s the Constitution that gives us the right to speak our minds, to embrace the religions of our choice, to be tried in courts of law by juries of our peers, and to enjoy our many other hard-won freedoms.
That’s why I think it’s wrong to say American warriors have fought and died for the flag. I’d rather think that they fought and died for the principles embodied in the Constitution.
Every nation has a flag. Only America has the U.S. Constitution.
Where can I get one of those Constitution lapel pins?
May 8th, 2008 10:59am
Pat Cunningham
HERE’s a tale of intrigue from inside your so-called liberal media.
May 8th, 2008 09:42am
Pat Cunningham
Freeport’s own Dan Balz, writing in today’s edition of the Washington Post, reported THIS about Hillary Clinton’s grim prospects of winning the Democratic presidential nomination:
“I sent a message to one of her most loyal supporters early Wednesday morning asking what are her realistic options? ‘She has only one option,’ he replied. ‘Gracefully exit and help unify the party to beat [John] McCain.’ How quickly, he was asked. ‘I would advise them to figure out how to do it as soon as this weekend,’ he replied.”
This is but one example of how the media narrative and the prevailing political winds have changed in the past two days from according a bit of lingering viability to Clinton’s candidacy to declaring her hopelessly out of the running.
Another sign is the cover of Time magazine (above), which hits newstands tomorrow.
And then there’s the abject desperation evident in Hillary’s REMARK yesterday that she enjoys greater support than Obama ”among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans…who had not completed college.”
Make what you will of that coded language, but it’s not the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear from a viable presidential candidate in the Democratic Party. She sounds like George Wallace, circa 1968.
She’s finished.
UPDATE: Pollster John Zogby WRITES that as many as 30 super-delegates will endorse Obama “probably today, but certainly within 48 hours.”
May 7th, 2008 09:12pm
Pat Cunningham
Impressed by Barack Obama’s ability to survive their endless harping on the Rev. Wright issue, America’s elite political pundits suddenly HAVE DECIDED that Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy is now hopeless.
I could have told them that six weeks ago. In fact, I, among others, did TELL THEM that.
POSTSCRIPT: For your viewing pleasure, here’s a video on this matter:
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