Excellent blog! Just one thing I would like to add. In my mind, establishing the onset of human life is ridiculously simple. A human zygote (fertilized egg) has no choice but to become a human baby. Unimpeded by outside factors, it will NEVER become anything but a human baby.
Thanks, Rick. Like the provocative title of your blog. Jesus was a Jew, after all.
DC,
But try to get judges who believe in judicial restraint on the US Supreme Court.
Why? Because John McCain thinks that we should allow the Democrats to continue filibustering highly qualified judicial nominees, as long as they are appointed by a Republican president.
"Democrats to continue filibustering highly qualified judicial nominees, "
Then it is about time the Republicans show some backbone, and pull the nuclear option. There is no reason for the majority party to sit by and be railroaded every time ted kennedy gets a wild hair up his ass.
South Dakota is introducing an Abortion ban for the state. This is good it will probably be challanged by all the pinko-leftwing-crazy groups and will wind up at the supreme court and hopefully Alito will already be confirmed.
What needs to happen is for more states to come up with the similar law and this thing could come to a real quick end.
Motor T,
I take it you were ... Motor T? You sound a lot like Mark. We have a lot of Marks here, and they are usually conservative firebrands.
Which means you fit right in.
Would love to see more states challenge some of this judicial craziness head on. I think people will be pleasantly surprised at the public reaction.
No DC, that was a 'nickname' I acquired and it stuck with me. My Initials are M.T. That I have had since 1964, My squad leader Smitty, and, JD our platoon sgt were going over the roster and when they came to my name .. JD says, ah Motor T.[sic] and it stuck ever since...
Since there are so many Mark's here, although I am senior and had the name first,long before they did, I will relinguish it to an old stand-by.
Now Motor-T is the transport, but when I was in we had Motor-Transport, but we walked everywhere we went 'cause both of them were broke.
Know what you mean, about both of the vehicles being broke. "Motor T" still brings a smile to my face.
Thanks for dropping in.
America is worse off. But not specifically worsened by abortion itself, but by the corrosive progressive ideas which surround it. Abortion is a consequence of "progressive" thinking and not a first cause in itself. In my view it's a response to a kind of supply and demand mixed up with eugenics, racism, broad amorphous leftism and cold secularism.
The Left, either intentionally or instinctively, builds structures of ideological timber around all their ideas. You have to batter through the entire framework before you can even begin to question the builders. Abortion is just one post in the entire ramshackle leftist hovel that passes today for an ideology and a worldly philosophy.
Abortion on demand is protected by unexamined and usually irrational ideas about the social consequences of a child's unwantedness, of crime, poverty, race, sex education and public health bureaucracies, bourgeois comforts, radical femminist groups, class narcissism and a host of other ideological defensive fortifications. Also, one of the cancerous effects of liberalism, the essentially Marxist presumption that all behavior is political, has enabled abortion to be absorbed into the dialogue of the political class.
Conservatives, including me, are further troubled by our own libertarian ideas (and how they connect with abortion), but alarmed that The West has gone from guilt culture to shame culture to post-shame culture where everything is sanitized of moral meaning if it's out in the open. We can never win this argument on moral grounds, because while Americans seems to take religion seriously, they no longer accept the natural prohibitions on certain kinds of conduct.
Once you begin to understand how Germany descended into group madness when its long and esteemed history of art and culture and religion hooked up with Teutonic mysticism, you can see the processes at work here. Leftism furnishes the voodoo, the lies, the distortions, the misinterpretations, the utilitarianism and the means. Unthinking and deceived people do the rest.
"Conservatives, including me, are further troubled by our own libertarian ideas (and how they connect with abortion), but alarmed that The West has gone from guilt culture to shame culture to post-shame culture where everything is sanitized of moral meaning if it's out in the open. We can never win this argument on moral grounds, because while Americans seems to take religion seriously, they no longer accept the natural prohibitions on certain kinds of conduct."
Extremely profound, Rhod.
You probably know that I agree with you, and that I see abortion as a very natural extension of the "radically unconstrained" post-modern man.
I don't disagree that abortion is part of the "timber" you describe, but ... as you can tell by the reactions of the Demos on the Senate Judiciary Committee and all the Leftist activist groups, abortion is as foundational to their belief system as prayer is to other kinds of believers.
And if you remove this timber, then all other ones start to slip and slide. Why? I don't fully understand it. I have some ideas. But it is clearly an article of faith for the left and it is one of the few things that keeps them united in national elections.
Okay, so every one's not confused ... like me.
Motor T ... that's Mark. Okay, I got it now, Mark. Like I said, you don't need to quantify your moniker here. You are Mark. But if I see "Motor T", I get it.
DC:
Maybe abortion, as a principle, is essential to The Left because it meets ALL the requirements for a lefty idea.
Lots of lefty ideas separate a little when you agitate them, but abortion contains all the necessary ingredients and remains stable no matter how you shake it.
It's convenient for the upper classes and expected of the lower class, white and black (although mostly black), moral in a New Age kind of way, can be bent into every socially conscious form imaginable, appeals to the young, is anti-conservative and anti-"Christian Right" (most important of all), and requires no discipline of the believer. Perfect.
Your seemingly-rhetorical question deserves an answer because some people still don't get it.
We're not better off with mass murder running rampant.
As Mark pointed out, the Court really didn't take abortion off the legislative table. The Constitution does not give the Supreme Court any legislative powers as Congress has "all legislative powers" (USC A1S1).
If a court declares something to be a right, its authority is only binding on the parties at suit.
I'm glad to see South Dakota (and many in South Carolina) recognize this. We need to stop mistakenly attributing authority to the Supreme Court that does not exist. Then we we will be at liberty to exercise and protect Constitutionally inscribed and God-given rights.
Eaglet,
Will be interesting to see how S.D's challenge goes. These are exciting times, and I think with one more good nominee we may have a chance to really take the Court back to its constitutional role.
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