Problems are for Solving

BLOG and MABLOG
One of the reasons I respect Sarah Palin at this point is that her position is bracingly consistent. The “exceptions” concessions, far from acknowledging genuine exceptions to the principle, are actually concessions of the entire debate. Such concessions allow that in difficult circumstances we get to define who is and who is not a person. And once we have that authority, vested in our courts and legislatures, you can bet that the pressure to expand the jurisdiction will be unstoppable.

So here is the answer to the “rape and incest” objection. When a woman conceives as the result of a rape, there are three parties involved. There is the rapist, there is the woman, and there is the child. Two of these parties are innocent, and one of them is guilty. What kind of sense does it make to execute one of the innocent parties for the crime of his father?

A good post by Wilson defending a no exceptions position on abortion. Well worth the read.

Saving the Baby Can Save the Mother :: Desiring God
When we help a young, unmarried mother in the midst of a pregnancy crisis save her baby, by God’s grace, the baby can save the mother.

I recommend this post from Piper’s blog. It’s short and to the point. A good reminder that we’re in the rescue business as the Church.

HT: Isaac.

Canadian doctor warns Sarah Palin’s decision to have Down baby could reduce abortions | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times
Published reports in Canada say about 9 out of 10 women given a diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate the pregnancy through abortion.

I had planned to write a post today, starting a different track on abortion: that of what we can do to stop it while it’s legal.

But this article crossed my screen and it made me mad enough that I wanted you to see it. A woman choosing (yep, Sarah Palin chose to have that baby knowing its frailties) to have the baby is an inadequate choice. Because other people might see her and realize that it’s not the boogeyman the NARAL pundits make it out to be. Because other women might not abort so many children. Wow. That’s horrible. [/sarcasm]

The issue is the lives of these babies, and whether they get to have one or not. I can’t choose to end your life, and neither of us should be allowed to choose to end the life of another. Especially a defenseless child in the womb.

HT: TJ

I received a comment from someone on this post from the Coalition for Secular Government. They called the amendment I was touting in Colorado, “a monstrous evil.”

I found the contradiction ironic. Secular government coalition using the term “monstrous evil.” How do they know? What constitutes a monstrous evil? How do they know that this is evil?

I believe that the killing of defenseless people is murder, and therefore it is evil. Murder is a violation of God’s law (6th commandment, 5th for my Lutheran readers), and God says it’s wrong. Throughout God’s Word he elaborates on why and when killing is murder, and when it is not. And killing Jews because you don’t like them is murder (Hitler). Killing citizens because they might rise up against tyranny is wrong (Stalin). And killing your baby because he might change your life in a way you don’t like is murder (3,500 babies today, tomorrow and the next day).

And I can say this beyond doubt because I’m relying on a standard outside myself. This is evil. Life is good. End of argument.

For the Coalition for Secular government, defining good and evil is somewhat more complicated. Who gets to decide what is good and evil? Majority vote? Nine men and women in black robes? The Coalition for Secular Government?

You see, neither Hitler nor Stalin believed what they were doing was wrong. And they religiously attacked those who they hated, and used their power to kill.

People who do not love babies viciously attack the unborn and kill them. And other women are either fooled into believing their babies are not human or are lead to think they have no other options when in fact those options exist. To the tune of 1 baby murdered for every 3 babies born.

God created us to be worshiping beings. It’s written into our makeup as creatures created in His image. We were created to worship Him. homo adoranis. homo sapien is inadequate.

And that natural proclivity to worship is undeniable and inescapeable. Even the rebellious who turn their backs on God worship something. It may be a baseball team. It may be an ideal, even an ideal that is a good ideal like personal liberty. It may be personal peace and affluence. For everyone, there is something in your life that is worth more than anything else. Even if that something is yourself.

The Coalition for Secular Government worships secularism. They want to be freed from all reminders that they were created by a sovereign, loving, just, holy God. And they want to make laws with no foundation. And their false worship will drive them further from God as they try to bury His image into something unrecognizable. And Jesus Himself, in David’s Psalm 2 tells us that this will happen, even among the kings of the earth:

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”
(Psalms 2:1-3)

But they can’t. Because it’s inescapable. God exists. The next verse in Psalm 2 says He laughs at these efforts. His image in man exists. And so even they will use the term “monstrous evil,” even though they don’t have any way to define what is evil and what is good.

True religion involves turning to the creator and submitting to Him.

Sad thing is that you can’t. Not on your own at least. And that is why the loving, holy, sovereign God sent His own Son to become a man and to pay for the rebellion of people like you (and me!), and to bring into the world the power to turn from death and darkness and evil to a loving Son who takes us to the Father in forgiveness.

I know what is good and evil because Jesus came to divide the waters and to give evil people like me life for death and a heart of flesh for a heart of stone. May those at the Coalition for Secular Government turn to and honor King Jesus, and may each of us do this today and every day.

I’ve been writing quite a bit of late about politics, and especially about abortion. Every two years I long for a parliamentary system or a Godly king. I believe firmly in the republican form of government (representative democracy, not democracy despite what you hear in the evening news), but how it has become is saddening to me.

What is sad as well, is the level of rhetoric that is displayed in campaigns. American voters (or so the media and advertisers seem to think) don’t want to vote on issues. Not on character. Not on firm convictions of the person they’re voting for–convictions that will turn into actions when elected. Nope, we must be voting based on how we feel about the candidate, what the candidate’s family looks like, how good looking he/she is, where they buy their clothes, what goofy things the pastor says and his broad thoughts about “stuff” in general–because that’s what we’re told about. No specific solutions. No sound, hard principles that will be fought over and died upon.

Sarah Palin has, in her short time as the Vice Presidental choice of John McCain, taken quite a few knocks, especially in her comparison to Obama. One thing I truly respect about her is her true (not rhetorical, actual) convictions about party corruption:

Palin vs. Obama on Reform and Ethics (Cato-at-liberty)
In 2004, she joined a Democratic representative in filing an ethics complaint against Republican Attorney General Gregg Renkes over a trade deal. Renkes resigned.

As a Murkowski-appointee to the Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Palin went after fellow commissioner Randy Ruedrich, also chairman of the state GOP, charging him with doing political business on state time. That investigation led to his resignation and a $12,000 fine. Quick: name one member of Chicago’s Democratic machine that Barack Obama took down along his rapid ascent to the U.S. Senate. (emphasis mine)

I live in Illinois. Barack Obama is my senator. And Illinois politics, as most people are aware, are very corrupt. And Obama may talk a rhetoric of change, but he’s changed nothing. He asked a six term Washington insider to be his VP candidate. And talk is just talk.

And that’s why I’m not voting for McCain.

I really like Palin. I think I could probably vote for her. But she’s not running for President. John McCain is. And his proven record is that he does not care enough about the one thing I think is most important, the life of unborn Americans who are murdered by the thousands every single day.

He says he is pro-life. He says that human rights should be extended at conception. But his actions have shown otherwise. He has not voted only for judges who will sustain that belief. He has supported the experimentation on human embryos, nay even the taxpayer funding of such heinous acts. And he contributed to a PR bait and switch, wherein the Republican congress, instead of doing what they (in their platform**) believed they should: supported a constitutional amendment declaring the personhood of the unborn, the Congress outlawed a procedure called Partial-Birth-Abortion that placed, according to the majority opinion, no real restriction on abortion. He has voted to use taxpayer funds for Planned Parenthood.

So John McCain may have changed his mind. But I do not trust him. And so I cannot vote for him with a clear conscience, because as I said yesterday, there is only one most important issue, and that is the lives of the thousands of murdered children who die every day while the magistrate does nothing.

**”We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” p. 52, GOP Platform)

I recently read, via Isaac’s shared items, a post about the “myth of multitasking” and it started some thinking. The main thrust of the post is that we say we multitask, but really we’re just really quickly switching back from one thing to another, never really getting anything done

And I thought about that in terms of political incrementalism. Right now most people who are politically active are concerned about a broad base of issues. And there are many important issues out there: school choice, gun rights, abortion, the war, taxes ….

In the 1986 Action/Fantasy film Highlander, a group of “super-beings” has a lone calling of killing one another until there is only one left. “There can be only one!” is the cry as each one is killed, and only by cutting off the opponent’s head. And there can be only one–in that there can be only one thing that is most important.

Only one.

And I agree with Joshua that the choice isn’t even close, when it come to public policy #1: it’s abortion. Everything else is second by a country mile.

I also agree with Seth, that the battleground is not only, or even primarily, the political realm. And I will have more to say about that later on, but right now it’s major political season. The conventions just ended, and the national election is heating up. It’s less than two months away now.

And while “single issue voters” get dissed in the public eye sometimes, you can call me that. Though not really. I have lots of issues, just one that is a dealbreaker. You can’t want to kill babies. None. Not some, not most, not any. Not ones that come from the sin of the father, and not ones that belong to poor people. Nada. And if you’ve ever either helped support the killing of babies or you haven’t supported the end of the killing of babies you’re out. No vote from me. Doesn’t matter who all is on the ticket–I’ll write in “none of the above” if I have to.

There can be only one.

Some may accuse me of not being incremental in my thinking. I am very incremental in my thinking about the public sphere. Incremental in the sense that I think we take one thing at a time. Most of the people who might argue with my version of incrementalism should consider this: If you were a Russian at the time of Staln’s purges and were allowed to vote, would there be any issue to compare to saving the lives of those Stalin threatened daily? If you were living in Georgia, in the antebellum South, would there be any more important issue than the lack of equal treatment under the law to (watch the anachronism here) african-americans? If you were alive in Hitler’s German would there by any issue that even compared to the ongoing slaughter of the Jews?

Likewise there’s no better issue to start with than extending the rights of life and liberty to whom they divinely belong: every human being from conception to death. And if those rights are being denied by legalized murder, it is up to those who say they agree to act NOW and save those lives, by whatever legal means necessary until this scourge of legalized murder is driven from our land.

Colorado Voters Will Be Asked When ‘Personhood’ Begins – washingtonpost.com
A proposal to define a fertilized human egg as a person will land on Colorado’s ballot this November, marking the first time that the question of when life begins will go before voters anywhere in the nation.

The Human Life Amendment, also known as the personhood amendment, says the words “person” or “persons” in the state constitution should “include any human being from the moment of fertilization.” If voters agreed, legal experts say, it would give fertilized eggs the same legal rights and protections to which people are entitled.

Colorado voters will have the opportunity to do what ought to have been done a long time ago, declare constitutionally the personhood of the unborn.

The Post article is filled with bias (I’ll admit mine; will they?) in terminology. The issue is clear, and the Colorado voters will be able to actually decide: is a human embryo a human being who deserves all the rights of any other human, or is it (legally speaking for God already determines the answer to this question) merely a mass of biological tissue with no rights at all?

God’s Word says that the child is knit together in the womb, and that these embryos are humans, bearing His image. If the voters agree this will be a strategic step towards overturning the legalized holocaust of the unborn.

A comment I wrote on the last thread that I thought I’d elevate:

Abortion is still an issue because it is legalized murder. You believe that life begins at conception, then abortion ends that life. That is one reason why certain forms of birth control are avoided by my wife and me as well, because even the pill will occasionally end the life of a recently conceived embryo (baby).

You bring up several different issues, all of which are non-sequiters to the abortion is murder issue.

Abortion is a legalized holocaust of the unborn. Forty million babies have been legally slaughtered by a doctor and their own parents. Forty MILLION. Thousands of babies have died by the hands of a licensed doctor since this post was made.

And it needs to stop.

There are places in the world and there have been times past where a ruling class or those who rise up to rule decide that a class of persons has fewer human rights than others, and has carried out genocide against that class of persons. It happened recently in Rwanda, it happened in Stalin’s Russia, and it happens RIGHT NOW in the USA.

If my neighbor has a gun to my head, I really don’t think debates over whether his clothes match matter much, and likewise as long as this horrible atrocity continues in our nation I don’t think there is any other issue that compares in proportion.

And the only way it will stop is if we stop voting into office those who refuse to use that power to stop it.

Matthew 25 Network
mission statement
The Matthew 25 Network is a community of Christians – Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical – inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable.

The election of our public officials, and the politics they stand for, are a reflection of our core values. We believe that those elected to public office carry an important trust, as their decisions have a profound impact on our nation and our world.

We believe that people of faith should actively participate in the political process as an important avenue for social change. We are called by our faith to engage in the world as it is, while we seek after and hope for God’s Kingdom.

Therefore, while no elected official will be without flaw, we come together as individuals to support candidates for public office who share the values of the Matthew 25 Network: promoting life with dignity, caring for the least of these, strengthening and supporting families, stewardship of God’s Creation, working for peace and justice at home and abroad, and promoting the common good. (emphasis mine)

Sounds like something we can all get behind, right?

I want to call upon all Christians to actually vote in ways that will protect those who are most vulnerable: those children who our nation allows their own parents (with the help of licensed physicians, I might add) to murder while in the womb.

If you are a part of a church whose pastor is in the Matthew 25 Network, false shepherds who want to steal money from the rich in order to pay for, among other things, the murder of the unborn children of the poor, then you need to call on these leaders to repent.

May God have mercy on those who would lead so many astray.

For those who check the “recent comments” in the sidebar, you’ll note that there’s some more comments under a previous post where I link to an article from the State Policy Network with some minor editorial at the bottom.

And as I woke up this morning I found it ironic that there are so many people who are just fine with a bunch of white, rich lawyers deciding (and limiting the choices therein) on how a woman can bring a new life into the world, but who would argue with you tooth and nail that she should be allowed to murder that child legally.

FWIW, I’m not at all disappointed that there is open discussion of these issues on my blog. One of the reasons I started the recent series on the Bill of Rights is to openly deal with the state of liberty (or lack thereof) in our nation, and the more opposing discussion I can get, the better.

“…among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Ah but they didn’t really believe all that, did they?