Why Liberals Really Hate (and Fear) Sarah Palin

I often come to the Harold Washington Library in order to use the computers here. During my visits to the library, I often skim through the library's free monthly newsletter.

According to the most recent issue of that newsletter, feminist author Naomi Wolf will be appearing in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium here at the library on September 23 (at 6:00 p.m.) in order to discuss her latest book, which deals with personal and political issues in relation to the meaning of liberty.

During the course of abortion-related research which I've done in the past, Naomi Wolf's name has come up on a number of occasions. She considers herself to be a feminist (and many people concur). She considers herself to be "pro-choice" regarding abortion. But Ms. Wolf has occasionally irritated her fellow feminists by admitting that legal abortion has not necessarily been a great thing for America or for American women and families. She has even admitted that the deceptive rhetoric historically used to defend "abortion rights" has been simplistically oblivious to the realities pertaining to the humanity of unborn children.

(Here's a link, by the way, to a very insightful article which discusses Naomi Wolf's position on the subject of abortion. As for the statements made in the article about Norma McCorvey, the former "Roe" of Roe v. Wade, I'm not in a position to assess the legitimacy of those statements, but I would strongly suggest that people check out Norma's website, and the book promoted on that site. Regardless of where Norma stands on issues pertaining to legislation, it's clear that she is not proud of the role she played in making abortion legal. More significantly, she has repeatedly allied herself in recent years with prominent pro-life activists whose clearly stated goal is to reverse that tragic judicial decision and to make abortion illegal once again.)

How does Naomi Wolf define what it means to be a feminist? Here's one illuminating quote which I found online:

What is a feminist? You are a feminist if you believe:

• Women matter as much as men do.
• Women have the right to determine their lives.
• Women's experiences matter.
• Women have the right to tell the truth about their experiences.
• Women deserve more of whatever it is they are not getting enough of because they are women: respect, self-respect, education, safety, health, representation, money.
  -- Naomi Wolf, Fire With Fire

Notice that there's nothing in Wolf's list which would suggest that one cannot be a feminist unless one approves of legal abortion. In light of her own ambivalence about abortion in relation to morality, that is easy to understand.

But most of the feminists who dominate the Democratic party, and who are responsible for that party's platform pertaining to the abortion issue, would vehemently disagree with the idea that one can defend the unborn child's right to life without compromising one's belief in the equality of women. For years, liberal feminists have argued that legal abortion was an essential aspect of women's liberation. They have made it clear that they think that it would be impossible for women to be liberated in any other way.

Now Sarah Palin comes along in 2008 and demonstrates that it's possible to believe in certain aspects of the feminist agenda, and to have a very active political career characterized by high aspirations and the freedom to speak openly and aggressively about one's personal convictions, without buying into the idea that the freedom to murder one's progeny in utero is a prerequisite for "liberation".

Democrats have already gone to great lengths to try to discredit Ms. Palin, especially after seeing her electrifying performance at the Republican convention. During the next couple of months, it's likely that those attacks will only grow more intense. They will look for any and every excuse to imply that Palin is beneath contempt, and that she is certainly unqualified to serve the nation as the Vice President.

But don't be misled into thinking that those attacks will ever address the real reason for the Democrats' intense dislike for Sarah Palin. The real reason Sarah Palin drives liberals crazy is that she has achieved more in a short period of time --- in spite of her opposition to something which they consider to be essential to feminism --- than most abortion-promoting feminists (including Hillary Clinton) have managed to achieve.

In short, she is living proof that one of their cherished arguments in favor of legal abortion is based on false beliefs.

Sarah Palin is the second woman in history to receive the nomination of a major American political party for the second highest political office in the nation. Yet, she is staunchly opposed to legal abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with pro-lifers such as Sarah Palin or myself, it should be obvious from her example that being pro-life does not preclude the possibility that a woman can achieve great professional success. Like most of the other arguments associated with the so-called "pro-choice" movement over the years, that argument simply cannot withstand careful scrutiny or analysis.

Of course, that comes as no surprise to people familiar with the work of the members of an organization known as Feminists For Life. For decades, that group has argued that legalization of abortion actually represents capitulation to the values of a patriarchal society, instead of representing a renegotiation of the social contract in a manner which would insure that women would be treated as full equals without the need to negate or deny an essential aspect of what it means to be a woman. The members of Feminists For Life have gone to great lengths to document the fact that feminism was not always associated with legal abortion. Most of the earliest feminists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, strongly opposed abortion. (Quote from the preceding Wikipedia article: "In a view different from many modern feminists, Stanton, who supported birth control and likely used it herself, believed that abortion was infanticide, a position she discussed in Revolution.")

More than a few of the members of Feminists For Life could be described as liberals when it comes to issues other than the abortion issue. But that has not prevented them from being shut out of the Democratic party on account of their views. In spite of its ceaseless rhetoric about so-called "tolerance," most Democrats have been extremely intolerant of those who dared to challenge the party's predominant views regarding the alleged necessity of legal abortion.

What a shame. I firmly believe that women should be treated as equals. I also believe that unborn children have human rights which are in no way inferior to the rights enjoyed by men or by women. Promoting women's rights and promoting the right to life for unborn children are complementary goals. Those goals are by no means mutually exclusive.

A Step In The Right Direction

This link will take you to a story about a recent court decision which ought to warm the heart of any committed pro-lifer such as myself.

I particularly like the line, in the sixth paragraph, which refers to a "willful act of ideological blindness". That's exactly what it takes for a person to deny the incontestable scientific facts pertaining to fetal development. It is not a matter of religious dogma to acknowledge the humanity of the unborn child.

Sooner or later, the people of this nation are going to wake up to the manner in which liberals and Democrats have repeatedly practiced the art of obfuscation when discussing the issue of abortion. The bottom line is that the unborn child is a human being, and an innocent human being at that. It is a cold, heartless and unprincipled nation which denies the fundamental right to life to a large number of innocent human beings living within its borders and then rationalizes that denial using the flimsiest of excuses.

Barack Obama On Religion And Government

Recently, when expressing his views about the role religion ought to play in relation to the governance of this nation, Barack Obama stated that he believed that it was wrong to assert that moral values and religious convictions had no place in the public square. Up to that point, I strongly agreed with him. But then he went on to discuss his reasons for believing that abortion should remain legal. In my view, those reasons were unpersuasive.

He said, "Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason."

It might surprise Barack Obama, if he knew about my passionate commitment to the pro-life cause, to learn that I agree with that statement. Obama's error (which is strongly implied, but not clearly stated) is his belief that the pro-life agenda constitutes a "religion-specific value" (comparable, say, to a belief in the Holy Trinity or baptism by immersion), and that it is not "subject to argument, and amenable to reason".

If I honestly believed that his characterization of the pro-life position was an accurate characterization, and that the imposition of laws prohibiting abortion would amount to state endorsement of one sectarian religious belief in a manner which would come perilously close to establishing a theocracy or a state religion, then I would very likely be "pro-choice" myself, because I do believe that freedom of religion ought to be protected in this nation. But I think that the argument Barack is making against such laws is refutable nonsense. I've heard too many excellent arguments against abortion which were derived from reason --- not from scripture or any other type of religious revelation --- to buy into the idea which Obama is trying to sell us. Without in any way disavowing my own strong belief in Christ, I want to say that it is not necessary to believe in Christ, or even in God, in order to believe on the basis of rational arguments and scientific evidence that unborn children are human beings who possess the same fundamental and nonnegotiable rights as those which are possessed by all other human beings.

A good example, it seems to me, can be found in the story of the former abortionist known as Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Some people might think that's a bad example, because Nathanson is now a committed Catholic. But that wasn't always the case. He still identified himself as a Jewish atheist when he wrote his groundbreaking pro-life book Aborting America. As he was faced with more and more evidence which contradicted the beliefs he'd promoted during his early years as one of the founders of the pro-choice movement in America, he eventually concluded that he'd been actively involved in an egregious assault against human life and dignity. As he clearly stated in the book, it was reason (and scientific evidence from new sources such as ultrasound technology), not religious dogma, which persuaded him that he had erred in choosing to promote and practice abortion.

One of my criticisms of the pro-life movement pertains to the strategically unwise decisions, on the part of some pro-life leaders, which have helped to feed the myth that abortion is primarily a religious issue. I could go into greater detail, but suffice it to say that even if there is a legitimate time and place for saying the rosary (and I, being a non-Catholic, am inclined to think that there is not), a pro-life rally designed to change the minds of unbelievers in such a way that they will support anti-abortion legislation is not that time or place.

Belief in the right to life from conception until natural death is no more a matter of "religion-specific values" than belief in the right to freedom from slavery for all human beings. For easily explained reasons, religious leaders (such as Dr. Martin Luther King) have always been at the forefront of movements to expand the definition of who is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. That fact does not make such movements "religious" movements.

In some ways, Barack Obama is a very perceptive man. If he ever manages to get past his misconceptions about issues such as abortion, he might eventually have the makings of a great leader. For the time being, though, my vote will be given to McCain.

The Courage of John McCain

Few people question the idea that a man willing to risk death on the battlefield has a type of courage. But there are other types of courage as well. So I found this quotation interesting. I hope that you will give serious thought to the following words when you decide who to vote for during the upcoming presidential election in November.

Wisdom suggests that we should be willing to give an unborn child the same chance that our parents gave us, but it takes courage in this political climate to insist on the protection of unborn children who can't vote, have no voice, and can't reward you with support and donations. ... John McCain

Pro-Life Diversity

No one who has studied the history of the United States could fail to appreciate the diverse influences which have combined to make this nation what it is. That diversity of influences is one of the things which has made our nation great.

Unfortunately, the term "diversity" has taken on a different meaning in liberal circles in recent years. These days, liberals often use the term as a means of suggesting that there are no objective truths, and as a means of suggesting that competing value systems are all equally valid, even when there is no logical way that they can all be equally true.

"Multiculturalism" is another word which has similary been transformed by liberals in order to mean something quite different from the literal meaning of the word. The word is now used by some liberals in order to suggest that it is arrogant to say that some cultures are superior to other cultures.

In short, both terms have become code words designed to signify belief in moral and cultural relativism. Dare to suggest that Christianity is superior to a belief in Hinduism or in Wicca, and some will accuse you of lacking an adequate appreciation for diversity. Ditto, in some cases, if you dare to suggest that democracy is superior to monarchy or dictatorship or totalitarianism.

The issue, for such people, is not whether or not one belief is more or less true than another belief. Instead, such people have replaced a belief in objective truth with a system of belief in which the only real sin is to suggest that objective truth exists and that some people are objectively wrong.

Of course, there are a number of ironies here. One of those ironies is that if in fact the premise is correct, then it would be arrogant for a liberal who highly valued diversity and multiculturalism to claim to be superior in any way to a person who valued neither one of those things. If it's wrong to say that another person is wrong, then liberals have no basis for claiming that conservatives are wrong about anything.

Yet, in practice, that isn't the way that it works at all. Some of the most judgmental statements I've ever heard have come from the mouths, pens or computers of liberals who claim that it's wrong to be judgmental. (If you don't believe me, check out some of the blog posts which have been written during the past several days in response to news about the death of Jerry Falwell.)

Ironically, many of these same liberals fail to recognize and acknowledge real diversity where it exists. That's particularly true when it comes to the pro-life movement.

To hear pro-abortion or "pro-choice" liberals talk, one would think that the term pro-life is synonymous with "conservative Christian" or with "conservative Catholic". This characterization comes in mighty handy for liberals seeking to uphold the current status quo with regard to the legality of abortion. By ignoring the substantial diversity within the pro-life movement, they can speciously argue that laws limiting or forbidding abortion would constitute the imposition of religious doctrine on the general public.

In fact, pro-life people are not all Christians, nor are they all conservatives. There are pro-life people who identify themselves (or have identified themselves) as Jews (particularly Orthodox Jews), Mormons, Muslims, agnostics, Wiccans and even some atheists. There are pro-life libertarians (who deny that their general opposition to governmental imposition of moral beliefs is applicable to the abortion issue) and there are pro-life homosexuals. There are pro-life people in the Democratic party and there are pro-life people whose positions on other political issues could be described as liberal. There are many, many pro-life feminists. In short, it is utterly ridiculous to assume that all pro-life people are carbon copies of one another.

Admittedly, one of the reasons for the stereotypes aimed at the pro-life movement is that some pro-life people have done things to contribute to the stereotypes.

One of my complaints is that when some of the most active pro-life groups hold public events, they often do so in a way which enhances the perception that they are in favor of a theocratic government. For example, I've participated in pro-life protest marches in which many of the people in our group loudly recited the Hail Mary prayer, making it appear to passersby that every one of the people in our group was Catholic.

I would not describe myself as "anti-Catholic", in the sense that some people in this country have been (and may still be) anti-Catholic, but neither am I a Catholic. I happen to think that the official Catholic position on abortion is the correct one (which is why I have no problem standing shoulder to shoulder with Catholics on that issue), but I also think that Catholics are wrong about a number of important doctrinal issues, and I'm not afraid to say so.

In the unlikely event that the Pope issued a proclamation tomorrow saying that abortion was no longer a sin and that abortions actually ought to be encouraged, it would have no effect whatsoever on my own opinions on that subject. It would make me sad to see that the Catholic church had lost its spine (as many mainstream Protestant churches have done in recent years), but that is all, because my opinions about abortion have little to do with what the Catholic church says or doesn't say on that subject.

The problem with reciting the Hail Mary prayer (or any prayer) during public pro-life events is that it reinforces liberal stereotypes about the pro-life movement, inadvertently giving credence to the idea that pro-life people do in fact want to turn the U.S. into a Catholic or Christian theocracy. I've spent enough time with pro-life Catholics and Christians to believe that that is generally a false perception. but I can understand why unbelievers might incorrectly come to that conclusion after attending pro-life events in which leaders have unwisely spoken in such a manner as to suggest that pro-life politics and Christian beliefs are synonymous.

There is a time and a place for everything, including public prayers and public recitations of scriptures. In my opinion, political events focusing on the abortion issue are not the proper time or place for such things. The last thing we need to be doing, strategically speaking, is reinforcing public stereotypes which hinder the probability of our success in the political arena.

In order to accomplish our political objectives, we need to forge alliances with all pro-life people, even with those with whom we may have very strong disagreements on matters unrelated to abortion. If that means toning down the religious rhetoric so that pro-life people who disagree with us about religious matters will feel comfortable marching with us in opposition to abortion, then that's what it means.

(Whether or not such parades are politically effective is a separate subject which I will very likely discuss in another blog post.)

When I've tried to discuss this issue with some fellow pro-life people, they have often responded in such a way as to suggest that I am somehow ashamed of my faith in Christ. To the contrary. Anyone who's read this blog often knows that I am very upfront about sharing my faith. But when I am talking about the abortion issue, I generally try to deemphasize the religious aspects of my pro-life convictions, because I believe that one can make a strong case against legal abortion, regardless of whether or not one is a believer in Christ. In other words, while it certainly is true that the Christian scriptures offer a lot of evidence to the effect that abortion is wrong, it is not necessary to resort to quoting the scriptures or quoting the Pope in order to come up with persuasive and compelling arguments against legal abortion.

If I believed that the claims of pro-choice leaders were valid --- that is, if I believed that the only way to make a case against legal abortion was to resort to arguments which assumed that Christianity was true --- then I would be inclined to agree with those who thought that abortion should remain legal. After all, there is a legitimate distinction between that which is immoral and that which ought to be illegal.

I believe, for example, that it's morally wrong for a person to reject Christ as Savior. But that doesn't mean that I think that all non-Christians should be thrown into prison on account of their unbelief! Not only would such treatment be completely forbidden by the United States Constitution, but in addition, I would question the value of any so-called "conversion" which was due solely to coercion, not to persuasion. Going through the motions of acting like a Christian is not the same thing as being a Christian.

Fortunately, it is possible to make a strong case against legal abortion even if one does not accept the idea that Christianity is valid, just as it was possible to make a strong case in favor of civil rights for African Americans without resorting to religious arguments.

For example, Nat Hentoff is a liberal Jewish atheist (and lover of jazz) who writes for the Village Voice. He was once accepted as a member of the radical left, until he had the audacity to speak out against legal abortion. Then he discovered that many of his fellow liberals were hypocrites, inasmuch as they claimed to believe in civil liberties such as free speech, while doing everything they could to suppress the free speech rights of those who disagreed with them about abortion. If I were to write an article entitled "Pro-Choice Bigots" folks might say, "Well, that's what you would expect a conservative pro-life Christian to say." When Nat Hentoff writes about the hypocrisy of his fellow liberals when it comes to the subject of abortion, it really packs a punch.

As another example, Dr. Bernard Nathanson may be a Catholic now, but he was born a Jew. When he wrote his book Aborting America, he was a self-proclaimed atheist. I still consider that book to be one of the best books I ever read on the subject of abortion. His arguments against the practice were not based on Christian doctrines or scriptures. They were based on science and common sense. And that may be why the New York Times refused to review the book when it was first published. The liberals who dominated that newspaper were committed to a simplistic perception of reality which assumed that the only possible way to argue against abortion was to cite religious doctrines. Nathanson's arguments (none of which relied on religious doctrine or dogma) undercut their cherished assumptions and posed a real threat to their ideologies. His arguments were particularly powerful because of his background. He'd been one of the first people in America to perform legal abortions, and in fact, he had played a major role in making abortion legal. Yet, like Norma McCorvey (the "Roe" in Roe v. Wade), Dr. Nathanson later repented of his actions and became an outspoken opponent of legal abortion.

I am not in any way ashamed to identify myself as a Christian. But I think it's important for us to understand that there are reasons why abortion remains legal in the United States, and one of those reasons is that the abortion industry has successfully persuaded a lot of Americans that it would be unconstitutional to enact anti-abortion laws which, in their view, would violate the principle of the separation of church and state.

It is therefore in our best interest, politically, to do everything we can to refute that argument by offering ample evidence of the religious diversity within the pro-life movement.

Likewise, we need to emphasize the political diversity of the pro-life movement, so as to assure people that agreement with pro-life values and pursuit of pro-life goals does not necessarily need to imply support for everything which has ever been done or advocated by conservative politicians.

Most importantly, we need to identify our priorities when it comes to deciding who we ought to vote for. Personally, I tend to vote for Republicans, but my allegiance to the Republican party is not as strong as my allegiance to the pro-life cause. I became a Republican because of my perception that the Republican party was the pro-life party. If that perception were to change, even on a temporary basis, voting pro-life would be more important to me than voting for the Republican candidate.

Let's say, as one hypothetical example, that Rudy Giuliani (a pro-choice Republican) was running against Glenn Poshard (an Illinois Democrat who made it clear, when running for Illinois governor against George Ryan, that he was pro-life). In such a case, I'd vote for Poshard, provided that none of his other positions were so egregious that they cancelled out his pro-life views. But that seems unlikely, because I happen to believe that legal abortion (which has already taken some 49 million lives in the United States since 1973) is by far the most egregious assault on fundamental human rights which this country has ever known.

Unfortunately, as Nat Hentoff has made clear, the Democratic party is almost completely intolerant of pro-life Democrats such as Glenn Poshard and the late Bob Casey. So even though I am having difficulty getting excited about the current crop of Republican candidates for President, I am still far more likely to vote for a Republican than for a Democrat.

Alan Keyes for President

As I write this blog post, I'm listening to a streaming audio recording in which Dr. Alan Keyes is being interviewed by Janet Folger. Listening to that excellent recording, I am more convinced than ever that Alan Keyes is the most qualified man in America when it comes to the need for a principled President who embodies the values which have made our nation great.

I am not an advocate of theocracy. Neither is Dr. Keyes, in my opinion. But he understands, perhaps better than most politicians today, that there is a direct connection between a nation's moral values and the concept of inalienable human rights which so many Americans take for granted.

Mr. Keyes states, "There is no secular basis for maintaining this republic." I agree with that statement.

The concept of "inalienable rights" which are "endowed by the Creator" is intrinsically theistic. The founders of this nation did not invent those rights. Our founders merely acknowledged the existence of natural law rights which they believed had existed ever since the creation of Adam and Eve. In doing so, they laid the moral foundation for this nation.

None of this is to say that our nation is or ever has been perfect. But our imperfections have been attributable precisely to the fact that we have not always lived in a manner which was consistent with the principles upon which our nation was founded.

Slavery was radically inconsistent with those principles. Over time, more and more Americans began to recognize the discrepancy. Eventually, that growing recognition led to the great conflict which led to the abolition of slavery.

I believe that the same thing will ultimately happen in relation to the abortion issue.

Of course, there are some clear differences between the two issues, such as the fact that there was a very strong geographical component in the battle over slavery, whereas that is not so much the case with regard to abortion. Certainly, it seems unlikely that there would ever be a Civil War over the issue of abortion. Not one involving physical armies, at any rate. But there certainly is an ideological war going on, and there are a lot of philosophical parallels between the abortion issue and the slavery issue.

If those of us who value human life in all of its manifestations ever hope to win the war against abortion, we must have strong leaders. Not men and women who merely give lip service to the pro-life movement as a means of appeasing us and advancing their own personal agendas, but articulate and intelligent men and women who passionately believe in pro-life principles, even to the extent that they are willing to sacrifice their own political careers if that is what it takes in order to take a stand for the truth. In my opinion, Alan Keyes is that kind of man.

Mr. Keyes understands that human rights are ultimately derived from the natural law which God has placed in each person's heart. Without an understanding of the divine origin of human rights, our rights are in constant jeopardy, because they are subject to the whims and changing tides of public opinion.

In many cases, the inane arguments now being used to rationalize abortion could just as easily be used to deprive you and me of our God-given rights. That is something which concerns all Americans, not just women and not just physicians and not just judges. We cannot afford to stand on the sidelines.

I strongly encourage you to visit the web site for Mr. Keyes' organization Renew America, and I strongly encourage you to give serious thought to the issues he raises.

Speaking of Numbers

In a blog article, a liberal satellite radio personality named Cenk Uygur recently suggested that our outrage in response to unjust killings ought to be directly proportional to the total number of victims of such killings.

Cenk says that the number of people killed on Monday at Virginia Tech is tiny in comparison with the number of people who have been killed in Iraq since the war began. Therefore, he argues, we ought to be far more angered and disturbed by the war in Iraq than by the Virginia Tech killings. Based on the aforementioned premise, Cenk says that those who believe that the war in Iraq has been worthwhile are "adept at rationalization".

Cenk seems to be particularly adept at comparing apples to oranges and pretending that there aren't significant differences between two superficially similar situations.

The only person who could be legitimately described as an aggressor and a threat during the Virginia Tech incident was the criminal, Seung-Hui Cho (or Cho Seung-hui, as he has sometimes been called).

That's vastly different from the situation in Iraq, inasmuch as many of the people killed during the Iraq war (including those who were fighting U.S. troops on behalf of an evil tyrant named Saddam Hussein) were in the process of trying to to kill other human beings at the times of their deaths. It would seem to me to be more than a bit disingenuous for Mr. Uygur to compare the two situations. If I were the parent or sibling of one of the slain Virginia Tech students, I believe that I'd be more than a little bit offended by Mr. Uygur's apparent inability to tell the difference between an enemy combatant or a suicide bomber and an innocent college student who died solely because he or she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Some would also argue that using the Virginia Tech incident in order to score political points is a bit insensitive, considering that the families of many of the victims of that killing have not had adequate time in which to mourn their dead.

Nevertheless, regardless of how one feels about the timing or appropriateness of Cenk's argument, it is an interesting argument which raises equally interesting questions.

Cenk's argument is particular interesting because he goes beyond the literal numbers and argues that we should also consider the emotional impact of a death in a particular country by comparing how that death compares to the overall population of a given country.

Based on his premise, the death of a person in a country of 500 people would be twice as devastating to the residents of that country as the death of that same person in a country with a population of 1,000 people.

That premise is highly debatable. In real life, the emotional impact of a person's death has a lot more to do with how intimately involved people were with that particular person and how much they liked or disliked the person than with anything which can be measured numerically.

In real life, people sometimes develop close attachments to people who don't even live in their own countries. Conversely, they often fail to develop such attachments with their nearest neighbors.

Therefore, I frankly think that Cenk's idea of "emotional equivalency" is inane. He's trying to measure things which cannot be measured empirically, or which (at the very least) cannot be measured using his crude method of measurement.

Nevertheless, in this article, I'll discuss his idea in order to see how that idea is applicable to the topic of this article.

Since Cenk is apparently into numbers, I would like to suggest that he compare the total number of people killed by violence in Iraq since the war there began with the total number of unborn children killed by legal abortion in the United States ever since the war on the unborn began in January of 1973.

According to a statistics page on the National Right to Life site, the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973 is 48,589,993.

Some might object that the NRLC is a "biased" organization, but their carefully documented figures were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, neither of which could be accused of being biased in favor of the pro-life cause.

Historically, the Alan Guttmacher Institute has been the research arm of Planned Parenthood.
So if you have a problem with the statistics shown on the NRLC web site, take it up with the CDC, the Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood.

Cenk says that the war in Iraq can be blamed for an average of 85 deaths per day. Cenk further argues as follows:

In Iraq today, 85 people were killed or found dead. The United States is more than ten times as large as Iraq. The 85 dead among 26.7 million Iraqis is the equivalent of 955 killed in a population of 300 million Americans.

And this is an average day in Iraq. Some American politicians go around pretending that Iraq is just fine and that we are making lovely progress in that country. Imagine if there 955 people killed in open warfare in this country - everyday!

If Cenk's literal figure of 85 per day is correct, then the Iraq war has taken 31,025 human lifes per year, in an average year of 365 days per year.

Since the Iraq war has been going on for just slightly longer than 4 years, that would mean that the total number of fatalities from that war were slightly more than 124,100 people in all. Now, that figure seems a bit high to me, based on figures I've seen elsewhere (on liberal web sites, no less). But let's give Cenk the benefit of the doubt and assume that the high figure is correct.

A little bit of math (done in Excel) reveals that 124,100 is .26% of 48,589,993. One fourth of one percent, in other words.

Logically, if Uygur is correct in thinking that one's anger and outrage over unjust killings should be directly proportional to the total number of victims, then the American war against unborn children should make us approximately 400 times as angry as the war against Iraq.

But of course, we're still talking about literal numbers. Cenk says that we should also consider the number of deaths in proportion to the total population, in order to fully understand the emotional impact of such deaths.

If Cenk's premise is correct, the emotional impact of losing those 31,025 in Iraq is comparable to the emotional impact Americans would feel if we had lost an average of 955 people per day, or 348,575 people per year.

If 85 deaths in Iraq have the same devastating emotional impact as 955 deaths would have in the U.S. (as Mr. Uygur claims), then each death in Iraq is the emotional equivalent of roughly 11 deaths in the United States.

That would mean that it would take 4,324,764 deaths in Iraq for those deaths to have the same emotional impact in Iraq as 48,589,993 deaths in the United States, if indeed emotional value is something which can be calculated solely on the basis of the percentage each death represents in relation to the total population of a given country.

At a rate of 85 deaths per day (the literal number mentioned by Cenk Uygur in his article), it would take 50,880 days, or approximately 139 years, for the number of deaths in Iraq to equal 4,324,764 deaths.

Of course, that's assuming that Cenk's whole "emotional equivalency" theory is valid. And it's assuming that not one more abortion ever occurred in the United States during those 139 years. In reality, even though the annual abortion rates have gone down some, people are still aborting unborn children in this country at a rate which makes the rate of war-related deaths in Iraq seem ridiculously trivial in comparison. If the status quo regarding war-related deaths in Iraq and abortion related deaths in the U.S. were to both remain the same, Iraq would never catch up.

It also bears mentioning that one Wikipedia article says that the entire population of Iraq is 26,783,383. If the number of Iraqis killed during the Iraq war matched the number of unborn children killed in the U.S. since 1973, there would be no more Iraqis. With no more Iraqis, it would be a bit pointless to try to calculate the emotional impact of yet another death in relation to the overall population of Iraq, since the country would have no population.

In fact, it would take approximately 1.8 times the entire population of Iraq in order to equal the 48,589,993 unborn childen who have died in the U.S. as the result of legalized abortion. During the past 34 years, American abortionists have killed enough people to almost completely populate two countries the size of Iraq.

Any way you look at it, whether you buy into Cenk's "emotional equivalent" argument or not, the number of people who have actually been killed in Iraq since the war began is absurdly miniscule in comparison with the number of people killed legally in U.S. abortion clinics.

(Keep in mind, also, that the figures from the CDC and the Alan Guttmacher Institute don't even include the young women who were told that legal abortion was a "safe procedure", only to be severely injured or killed in those clinics due to poor sanitation and other manifestations of incompetence.)

Now, I know what you're probably thinking. You're thinking that I'm the one who's comparing apples to oranges. You're thinking that it isn't appropriate to compare the deaths of people who have already been born to the deaths of people who are still in utero. And that's understandable, because the only way that one could argue with any plausibility that it wasn't valid to compare the number of abortions to the number of deaths in Iraq or Virginia Tech would be to base your argument on the classic liberal claim to the effect that unborn children are not really human beings, or that they are, at the very least, merely "potential" human beings.

The latter phrase, by the way, amounts to linguistic sleight of hand. If an unborn child is in actuality a human being, then by definition, there's no need to add the qualifying word "potential" to the statement. If someone calls an unborn child a "potential human being", he's really saying that the unborn child isn't really a human being yet. So why not just say that? Because science has advanced quite a bit since abortion was legalized 34 years ago, and most pro-choice people now know that if they just flatly stated that unborn children weren't human beings or that unborn children were not biologically alive, they would sound like idiots.

Unborn children are indisputably members of the human species. (Just check their DNA if you don't believe me.) Unborn children are indisputably biological life forms from the moment of conception. Unborn children are not "potential" human beings who are "potentially" alive. They are not "potential" anything. They are what they are. They are human beings, and they are alive, until evil people decide that they are entitled to snuff out those human lives.

But some people say that it isn't enough to merely be human and alive. Such people claim that it's necessary to manifest certain traits (which unborn children ostensibly don't display) before one can lay claim to the right to life. That argument was advanced during the years prior to Roe v. Wade by a Stanford professor named Michael Tooley. His line of thinking led him to entitle that essay "In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide". Notice, particularly, the last two words in that title. If that doesn't send chills down your spine, it's because you have no spine.

When we start setting up a gauntlet of arbitrary conditions people must meet before they deserve to be given the same fundamental rights as other human beings, we open a Pandora's box which has the potential to lead to even greater evils than we have experienced thus far.

Of course, you can feel free to ignore sound principles of logic. That's your prerogative,

Feel free to believe the classic liberal claim that the unborn child is an undifferentiated "blob", and to ignore the contradictory evidence available to anyone who bothers to look at a 3D ultrasound image of an unborn child in utero.

Feel free to parrot the classic line to the effect that a woman has the right to "control her own body" and to conveniently ignore the fact that the body which is killed during an abortion is the body of a different human being, with his or her own gender and his or her own unique genetic code.

Feel free to ignore the ample scientific evidence cited by Dr. Thomas Verny in his book The Secret Life of The Unborn Child, in support of his claim that unborn children are capable of cognitive development, emotional development and even communication while they are still in the womb.

Feel free to ignore the fact that Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Jesse Jackson have all acknowledged that human life begins at conception, in spite of the fact that they all describe themselves as "pro choice".

Feel free to rationalize the killing of helpless unborn children by talking about how important legal abortion ostensibly is if we are to preserve gender equality and all of those other things which our society apparently values more highly than it values human life. And ask yourself if those same arguments would hold any water if one used them in order to rationalize the killing of newborn infants.

Feel free, as good and loyal liberals, to continue to parrot all of the classic pro-abortion arguments, despite the fact that most of those arguments wouldn't hold enough water to fill a thimble.

But don't expect me to be impressed by such stupid arguments. I regard legal abortion as America's holocaust --- a holocaust which has taken far more human lives than Hitler ever dreamed of taking.

Like it or not, it is primarily the Democratic party which has been responsible for the continuation of that holocaust.

George Bush is not perfect. The Republican party is not perfect. In some respects, both have been a real disappointment, especially for pro-life people such as myself. But at least the Republicans have given lip service to the idea that unborn children deserve protection, which is a lot more than most Democrats have done.

Could I find fault with the way Bush has handled the war in Iraq? Sure. After all, I'm hardly a big fan of war. When I was called before my local draft board shortly after graduating from high school in 1974, I successfully persuaded them to grant me official status as a conscientious objector. I based my arguments on the scriptures.

My views on war have become a little bit less extreme over the years, but only a little bit. I still regard war as a method of last resort. I still think that American leaders of both parties are far too quick to resort to warfare without adequately exploring all of the peaceful alternatives first.

But the bottom line is that the tragedy of war (in Iraq and elsewhere) pales in comparison with the tragedy of a practice which has taken nearly 50 million innocent human lives. I will never knowingly vote for someone who does not acknowledge that legal abortion is a national tragedy which must be opposed and brought to an end. If my only choice during the next national election is to vote for a pro-choice Democrat such as Barack Obama or a pro-choice pseudo-Republican such as Rudy Giuliani, I may just choose not to vote at all.

(Who would I vote for, if given the chance? Alan Keyes. So far, he's the only well-recognized person I know of who actually seems to have some integrity when it comes to the most important moral and ethical issues of the day.)

Cenk Uygur and his fellow liberal broadcasters describe themselves as "young Turks". In light of the fact that they side with the political party which promotes legal abortion, I think that nickname is particularly fitting.

After all, as one article at Wikipedia reveals, the original Young Turks are said to have been responsible for what has often been described as "the Armenian Holocaust", the "Great Calamity" or the "Armenian Massacre". Maybe it's just me, but I personally wouldn't have chosen to name my own group after such people, anymore than I would have called my group "the Hitler Youth" or "the Red Brigade".

But who knows? Maybe the sort of people who would describe themselves as liberals (thereby allying themselves with the defenders and perpetrators of legal abortion) have no problem with the idea of identifying with people who perpetrated evil acts against the Armenian people.

It bears mentioning that the original Young Turks were apparently Muslims and most of their Armenian victims seem to have been Christians. Make of that what you will, but I am personally inclined to suspect that Cenk Uygur's inexplicable admiration for the original Young Turks plays a role in terms of motivating him to speciously argue that killing Iraqi soldiers and fanatical suicide bombers during the course of a war designed to liberate that country from the evil tyranny of Saddam Hussein is morally equivalent to the acts of a madman who recently killed 32 innocent Virginia Tech students for no apparent reason other than his belief that they were rich and spoiled.

With Friends Like These

When I voted for President Bush during the 2000 election and the 2004 election, I did so in large part because he had paid lip service to the pro-life movement, whereas both Al Gore and John Kerry had openly paid homage to the abortion industry. To some extent, I knew that Bush's claims amounted to lip service, but I felt that even lip service was better than no service at all.

I passionately felt and still feel that abortion was and is the most important issue facing our nation. It wasn't that I didn't care about other issues. But public acceptance of an act which takes roughly a million innocent American human lives every year (and which took up to 1.5 million lives a year for many years) has got to qualify as a major national crisis.

It was clear, even during the 2000 election, that Bush was hardly the dream candidate I might have wished for. He seemed to want to take little baby steps in terms of moving the nation in a direction consistent with complete respect for all phases of human life. I would have much preferred an articulate and passionate pro-life spokesperson such as Alan Keyes, because Keyes really seemed to care about the unborn victims of abortion. But baby steps are better than no steps at all, and thanks to the inequitable way in which national primaries are held, I never got the chance to vote for Keyes when he was a candidate for President. So I took what I could get.

Sadly, with very few exceptions, Bush has consistently put the pro-life issue on the back burner in terms of his priorities. In that respect, he is not noticeably different from his father.

I realize that the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq were both important in Bush's mind, but even if he was right about both issues (and that's highly debatable in the case of Iraq), the fact of the matter is that the total number of people killed by both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined are miniscule compared with the numbers of people legally killed every year by abortionists in the United States during the past 30 plus years.

Considering the extent to which the abortion issue and the pro-life vote played a major role in putting Bush in office and keeping him there, the fact that Bush has done so little to advance the pro-life cause seems like a betrayal to me. In my opinion, the significant political losses Republicans experienced in 2006 are due not only to Bush's mishandling of the war in Iraq, but also to the fact that most pro-life Republicans found it very hard to get excited about a political party which had promised much but delivered very little (despite its simultaneous control of the Senate, the House and the Presidency) in terms of saving unborn children.

One of the saddest ironies when it comes to the abortion issue is the extent to which Republicans, who are often characterized as defenders of the unborn, have played a role in terms of aiding and abetting the defenders of legal abortion time and time again.

After all, it was Nixon, not Kennedy or Johnson, who appointed Harry Blackmun, the Chief Justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade.

Later, when Nixon resigned amidst the scandal of Watergate, his successor Gerald Ford appointed Justice John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court. According to this article, Stevens "joined a 2000 decision called Stenberg v. Carhart in which the court struck down a Nebraska law banning so-called 'partial-birth' abortions."

With "friends" like Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, the pro-life movement needed no enemies. (Admittedly, there was no pro-life movement when Nixon first came into power. It was partially on account of Nixon's appointment of Harry Blackmun that such a movement became necessary.)

Gerald Ford took office a year after Roe v. Wade was made into law. If Ford had had any pro-life principles at all, he would have expended a considerable amount of effort making sure that the next judicial appointment went to a man who recognized the stupidity of the Roe v. Wade decision. Say what you will about Nixon, but at least he can be excused to some extent by the possibility that he may not have realized that Harry Blackmun would vote to overturn the abortion laws of most of the states in the union. Gerald Ford had no such excuse.

Instead of doing his best to appoint a judge who would have helped to overthrow Roe v. Wade, Ford turned the entire appointment process over to Attorney General Edward Levi, whose primary criterion when selecting Stevens seems to have been that the two men were buddies from Chicago, where Stevens was serving as a federal appeals court judge and where Levi had been the president of the University of Chicago. (Those who now blame Donald Rumsfeld for much that has gone wrong in Iraq should also pause to consider that Rumsfeld's suggestions to Ford regarding Edward Levi played a significant role in Ford's choice of Levi and in Levi's subsequent choice of John Paul Stevens. It would appear that conservatives and liberals both have good reason to dislike Mr. Rumsfeld.)

Ford's choice of Levi was based on his desire for a person who was "nonpolitical". Apparently, he got what he wanted, in spades. Levi apparently cared more about personal friendships than he did about political principles, despite the fact that it was his job to insure that justice was done throughout the land. It isn't clear from what I've read whether Levi was pro-life himself or not, but if he was pro-life, then he was incompetent. He put his personal friendship with John Paul Stevens ahead of his job responsibilities.

According to MSNBC writer Tom Curry, Ford's most "profound" legacy was his appointment of John Paul Stevens. If appointing a man who helped to protect the status quo in terms of Roe v. Wade is Curry's idea of profundity, then Curry deserves to be in the pro-life hall of shame, along with Gerald Ford and our ostensibly pro-life president George W. Bush.

What does George W. Bush think of Gerald Ford? According to this article, Bush says Ford was a "great American". I beg to differ. Ford's legacy was to help insure that a bad judicial decision would remain in force for many years to come. And the fact that George W. Bush does not recognize that fact speaks volumes, it seems to me, about his level of intelligence and competence.

Am I sorry that I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004? No. As bad as he was and is, his opponents were many times worse. But I may begin to obstain from the voting process altogether if the Republican party cannot begin to get its act together and elect principled Presidential candidates who can be counted on to represent the values of the numerous pro-life people like myself who, more often than not, have played a decisive role in putting them into office.

I am beginning to agree with those who use terms such as "Republicrats" to suggest that there isn't a very significant difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party anymore. This was made especially apparent during the 2006 gubernatorial race in Illinois.

Rod Blagojevitch had made some reprehensible decisions while in office, such as his executive order forcing pharmacists to violate their own consciences, by dispensing what they regarded as pharmaceutical abortifacients, in order to keep their jobs. (So much for "choice". Apparently, pharmacists ought not to have freedom of choice regarding whether or not their hands are stained with innocent blood.)

Nevertheless, Blagojevitch won, because his opponent, Judy Baar Topinka, and her running mate, Joe Birkett, were indistinguishable from the Democrats in terms of their positions on the issues of abortion and gay marriage.

Birkett, who had previously claimed to be pro-life, based his unprincipled alliance with Topinka on his belief that she was the only Republican who could beat Blagojevitch. I thought at the time that that was a major miscalculation on his part, and the election results would seem to bear that out.

Joe seemed oblivious to the fact that the only way to beat an incumbent politician is to offer voters a significantly better alternative and then to appeal to one's political base in order to insure that people who recognize the superiority of that alternative come out to vote. Topinka lost because she was basically Blagojevitch in a skirt, notwithstanding her specious claims that she was a Republican.

Ironically, now that Birkett's 2006 running mate has lost, Birkett is trying to regain credibility with pro-life Republicans by claiming to back certain marginally pro-life measures pertaining to parental consent. Here's what I'd say to Joe if I saw him face to face:

"Sorry, Joe, but conservative voters such as myself aren't buying it. We don't easily get amnesia. We won't forget you unprincipled alliance with Topinka in 2006 for a long, long time to come. By all means, do the right thing and vote in support of pro-life legislation. But don't expect it to do you any good in the next election. That ship has sailed. You had a chance to do the right thing when it would have counted the most, but you blew it, buddy."

What happened in Illinois was heartbreaking, but hardly unique. More often than not, the small difference which does exist between the two major political parties these days is a matter of rhetoric, not a matter of substantive action.

Which is worse? To proclaim that one is pro-abortion and then to demonstrate that that is indeed the case, or to proclaim that one is pro-life and then do nothing to change the status quo regarding legal abortion?

Say what you will about the Democrats, but at least they are honest about their pathetic and immoral indifference to the intrinsic value of human life. That doesn't make me any more likely to vote for them, but it does make me feel that I have been cheated out of the opportunity to vote for candidates who share my own priorities, not just in word but in deed.

UPDATE: It bears mentioning that when it comes to the 2008 presidential elections, there are some big differences between John McCain (who has said clearly that human life begins at conception) and Barack Obama (who not only claimed that answering such a question was "above (his) pay grade," but also opposed Illinois laws designed to prevent infanticide). For me, the choice is clear. Even though I'm not convinced that the pro-life agenda is at the top of McCain's list of priorities, it is at least on that list. Barack Obama's election would be a huge setback for the pro-life cause.