Hard Right
Conservative Credo: Abortion, Conclusion
If the state is to protect life at any cost, doesn’t this imply a financial obligation to preserve the life of any child, no matter how deformed or hopeless, no matter what it takes? That means a considerable outlay of tax money, and in parallel cases, when the state assumes the burden, it also lays down the law. The routine justification for anti-smoking laws and seatbelt regulations is the cost imposed on the public. It does not take too much imagination to foresee the time when couples will have to submit to genetic screening if they wish to receive a permit to conceive. Couples who defied the law would be compelled to abort the illegal (and therefore rightless) child.
Abortion: Fetus Liberation Fronts
It is hard to see that much good has ever come from any of the various declarations of the rights of man. Such a declaration did not save the French from either Robespierre or Napoleon, and the constitution of the defunct USSR practically glows with liberal enthusiasm for human rights. For some strange reason, though, intelligent and well-meaning opponents of abortion have increasingly come to adopt the radical language of rights as their first line of offense, extending the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee on the protection of legal persons to the unborn and comparing the anti-abortion campaign with the abolitionist and civil rights movements.
Credo for Conservatives IV: More Abortion Debate
Two more Arguments, from God and from rationality.
GOD
Nature gives us the sort of answer she always gives–general rules and statistical averages to which there are exceptions. [Cf. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature III.12 ) From the Christian perspective nature is the tarnished mirror in which we can only glimpse, obscurely, the true reality. A face-to-face encounter with nature’s Creator is possible only to those who study his Word and participate in his sacraments. If there are sincere Christians who believe that the taking of innocent human life can be justified on any pragmatic grounds, they are mistaken, dreadfully mistaken, …
Conservative Credo IV: The Abortion Debate
The Abortion Debate
In the 20th century the most powerful and difficult transitions in human life have been turned into political war zones in which the different sides routinely invoke the power of government to establish and enforce their points of view. Few debates have been so heated as those involving the decision to terminate life. On the question of abortion, while both sides seem to speak the same language of individual rights, personal autonomy, and political responsibility, the terms are used in such diverse senses as to make translation from one dialect to another almost impossible. “Right conflicts with right, and might with might.” On both sides of the debate, there are continuums from moderate to radical, but it is still possible to sketch out general pro and anti abortion positions that represent something like the consensus of each side.
Hans Hoppe Welcomes You to his Fantasy Island
I have often observed that libertarian principles can corrupt the character even of good men. Whether that is the reason or simply personal vanity, but Hans Hoppe’s account (on VDARE) of the departure of Libertarians from the John Randolph Club, while it is filled with many intelligent and useful insights, is founded on an historical lie.
Conservative Credo IVb: Abortion
Life as Property
There are many ways of looking at human life; some emphasize the benevolence of the Creator; others our inheritance from and similarity to other primates. One approach favored by some liberals/libertarians is to treat life as property. But if the life of a child, born or unborn, is a property or possession, then to whom does it belong? Several answers can be given.
Credo for Conservatives IV: Abortion
Questions of life and death—abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, euthanasia, and suicide—form a fissure in the American political geography, dividing (typically) left from right, but also moral from immoral, and—all too often—sane from insane.
Rand Paul: Unprincipled Hero
Rand Paul is the epitome of the Tea Party movement. By all accounts he is a good man who believes what he is saying. Unfortunately, he does not know what he is saying. His knee-jerk repetition of libertarian platitudes, while it does not constitute anything like a coherent or principled political philosophy or ideology, will get him into trouble repeatedly. The Civil Rights Act was wrong, he opined the other day, because it interfered with property rights. Later he assured the press he would have voted it for it, nonethless, had he been in the Senate. He is not a racist, blah, blah, blah.
Dotting the I in Idiot, Crossing the T in Tyranny
On Sunday we were on our way to church, when I remembered that I had heard on the radio that the Illinois State Police were going to make a big push to arrest drivers who had committed the greatest crime against man and God known to the modern police, that is, they had failed to buckle up. I almost drove off the road in making a desperate attempt to appease the forces of public order while driving in six lanes of traffic. What a great laugh we would have had, as we died in a fiery crash.
Getting Real III: Bribability Without Liability
BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to be a lead story. Naturally it has engendered polemics over who is responsible and a broader discussion of whether offshore drilling should be continued or even increased. On these great issues that agitate NPR listeners and FOX watchers, I have nothing to say. I would, however, point to two little facts with which most people who follow the news are probably familiar. The first fact is that the Minerals Management Agency, which monitors offshore drilling and generates billions of dollars of federal revenue by partnering with companies like British Petroleum, granted BP a “categorical exclusion” from the routine environmental assessments required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
