Over at a little blog called Mole's Progressive Democrat, we read:
By lightseeker2 at 2008-10-21 |
And herein lies a sharp difference between the two political parties. To the Republican Party, the "health of the mother," "health care" and the related "health care crisis," "education," "farmers," "environment," "Joe six pack," "Joe the plumber," etc. are all rhetorical talking points, not real issues to be solved with real solutions.
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I would add "unborn" to this list of throwaway phrases. When you value the unborn with lip service and devalue poor childern's nurtitional, healthcare and educational needs, are you not living out the very essence of hypocracy?
This moral sloganeering defines for me the problem with our politics over the last 30 years. I blame the Republicans for setting us on this path. Howard Wolfson , reviewing Rick Perlstein's Nixonland puts it this way:
Perlstein correctly states that Nixon came "to power by using the anger, anxieties, and resentments produced by the cultural chaos of the 1960's," and defines Nixonland as the state of total political warfare over class and cultural conflicts.
Nixonland, the book, ends in 1972, but Nixonland, the place, endured, through the 70s and 80s, up until George W. Bush's re-election in 2004. Welfare queens, Willie Horton, Swiftboats; all Nixonland tactics, all designed to cleave Americans along racial and cultural lines. Perlstein writes, "What Richard Nixon left behind was the very terms of our national self-image: the notion that there are two kinds of Americans. On the one side the "Silent Majority"...On the other side are the "liberals."
The politics of Nixonland proved very successful for the Republicans, if not for America. Of the ten Presidential elections between 1968 and 2004, Republicans won 7. The only two term Democrat elected in that period was hamstrung for three-quarters of his Presidency by a Republican Congress. In Nixonland conservatives mostly set the agenda and framed the debate. When Bill Clinton famously declared "the era of big government is over" in 1996 he was conceding the obvious -- in fact it had ended at least a decade earlier.
More below the fold: |
| It is the abortion issue that as much , if not more than any other , has defined the politics of Nixonland for me. It is "respect life month" in my church and I am getting the abortion is evil sermons back to back. Additionally, my debaters have just finished debating the topic, "Resolved, it is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent persons." All of this set me to thinking about innocents, and women and mothers and abortion and rights and duties.
I want to briefly share the fruits of my thoughts. Both sides in this debate seem to argue against straw men. I am hearing in my church about people who abort their fetuses out of economic motivations or life style choices. In other words, they support "abortion on demand", out of pure selfishness.
From the Pro-choicers, the standard straw man is the evil cleric who , in conjunction with the rightwing proto-fascist, wishes to control women's bodies. Their motivations are basically a simple minded desire to return to the good old days of male centered families in a male centric world.
Of course, when we describe the two camps in this fashion, there is no middle ground to be found. Add the fact that the Democrats have long since joined the Republicans in finding it expedient to exploit this divide and this keystone of the culture wars becomes enthroned at the center or our politics. It doesn't belong there.
No one seriously believes that abortion is a joyous event. No one seriously supports abortion on demand as a cost cutting technique or as a way of avoiding troublesome limitations on your lifestyle. On the other hand, leaving aside the proto-fascists and their allies, there are good men and women who honestly believe that life must be protected at stages. When we put aside these straw men, the honest debate can begin.
Forget all the parsing of words, here is the hard truth as I see it. Sometimes, no matter what one does, an innocent will die. My debaters helped me see the flaw in the "respect life" argument. How do you honor life when , no matter what you choose, someone will die? A pregnant woman is told by her doctor that either he can save her or her baby, not both. How do we respect life then?
The dodge used in my religious tradition is the "double effect". If your intent is to save one life and another life is thereby lost, that is morally permissible, if tragic. To which I answer, an innocent is still dead, you had a pretty good idea that this would be the outcome, so who are we kidding? You have traded one life for another. You can't respect all the lives in that circumstance.
Under those conditions, who gets to decide who lives and dies? The state? It should be the woman, her doctor and any other advisors she sees fit to consult. To argue otherwise is to make women moral minors, incapable of managing their own souls. In the case of minors, clearly the parents should be involved.
What about the special case of abuse and incest? In these cases the state does have a proper role to play. As for rape, again, if the woman is a adult, she decides what to do. If the woman is a minor, then her parents or guardians should play a big role in making the decision.
I think a consensus along these rough lines has been building over the last 4 to 6 years, but going through the death throes of Nixonland has obscured this truth. Could this election finally bring some common sense to this area of public policy?
A clearly conflicted evangelical opined to a reporter yesterday ( I can't refind the article, sorry) that he was seriously thinking of voting Democratic for the first time in his life. The abortion issue still matters to him deeply, but all the other stuff ( undefined by him) is really hard to ignore.
Maybe even some Catholic clergy get it....
A Catholic Shift to Obama?
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting is by no means a Catholic commandment.
In an interview yesterday, Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said his fellow bishops have long insisted that "we're not a one-issue church," a view reflected in their 2007 document "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship."
"But that's not always what comes out," says Zavala, who is also bishop-president of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA. "What I believe, and what the church teaches, is that one abortion is too many. That's why I believe abortion is so important. But in light of this, there are many other issues we need to bring up, other issues we should consider, other issues that touch the reality of our lives."
Those issues, Bishop Zavala said, include racism, torture, genocide, immigration, war and the impact of the economic downturn "on the most vulnerable among us, the elderly, poor children, single mothers."
Welcome to my world. I respect life, I hate abortions, but I don't think a mandated solution from jaded sloganeers will ever resolve this matter. We can agree to disagree about abortion, we just can't make it the only issue we vote on.
Stay tuned.... |
