This is the 2nd and final part of my analysis of an open letter from Anne Rice. Part 1 was posted yesterday.

Abortion

Anne Rice spends most of her letter covering this issue, and she starts with an assertion that, to me, shows a lack of consideration of the history of the issue.

I want to add here that I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of the life of the unborn. Deeply respecting those who disagree with me, I feel that if we are to find a solution to the horror of abortion, it will be through the Democratic Party.

Ms. Rice does touch on these historical issues lightly later on, and I’ll hit them more in-depth then, but even looking at how the abortion issue generally falls between the parties today, I don’t see this as making sense. What I hear from Democrats are things like John Kerry with this sentiment:

I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many. I can’t legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn’t share that article of faith. I believe that choice is a woman’s choice. It’s between a woman, God and her doctor. That’s why I support that. I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.

If one’s commitment to Christianity should be “absolute”, as Ms. Rice has said, there is a big problem with this statement, that is generally the line religious Democrats use when talking about abortion, and that is the canard about legislating one’s religious faith, or sometimes call ramming one’s religion down your throat. Civil rights are very much a moral issue, but does Sen. Kerry have the same problem with legislating that? No, he’s very willing to impose his view on KKK members, and rightly so. It’s right, it’s moral and it’s the law. Legislators all throughout our country’s history, and more so in our early history, based many of their decisions partly or mostly on their religious faith. This excuse is disingenuous.

Read the rest of this entry

The following is a repost of a blog post I wrote over a year ago (August 23rd & 24th, 2007) during the presidential primary season.  It was in response to an open letter by the author Anne Rice on her personal web site.  Ms. Rice is the author of the Vampire Lestat series of books, but, after returning to the Catholic church in 1998, stopped that project. 

I’ve searched her web site for the letter in question and cannot find a page that has it archived, although many of her other writings, going back to 1996, are on there.  It was copied and posted on other forums, including here, so you can read along at home.  (Warning: This is a link to the right-wing Free Republic web site.  If you fear cooties emanating from there, turn back now.)

I think the issues covered in this endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nominee are still relevant now, especially how it relates to Christians, how they can and should work through the political process, how Ms. Rice believes her choice of party advances that, and where I disagree with her. 

It was originally posted in 2 parts due to its length, and so it shall be this time. 

This is one of my longer posts, possibly the longest I’ve done on the blog. What happened was, I was reading an open letter from a Christian planning on voting a particular way, and as I read further and further into it, one objection after another kept coming to my mind, and one problem after another regarding the writer’s reasons kept getting in the way. Finally, I realized I’d have to just set aside some of my typical day-to-day blogging of the link-and-quick-comment type, and go in-depth into the problems I see with the author, and Christians in general, who vote Democratic for specifically Christian reasons, and especially regarding the social issues brought up in the letter. Pull up a cup of coffee and sit back.

Anne Rice is a Catholic author. I’ll admit to not being too well-read, but as a Protestant my knowledge of Catholic authors is even more limited. Therefore, I’m not sure how much Ms. Rice’s views are mainstream Catholic, although whether or not they are really isn’t the crux of this post. I do want to discuss the views she espouses, and espouses quite well as an author. That she is a Catholic and I am a Protestant has really no bearing on my criticism of her recent public letter dated August 10. I know Protestants who would agree with her on these issues, so this is not a denominational thing. She professes Christianity, as do I, and we have very similar goals, as far as I can tell, on the topics she discusses, and yet we’re voting differently. Ms. Rice wrote a lengthy letter to her readers on her main web site (no permalink so don’t know how long it’ll stay on the front page) about why she is endorsing Hillary Clinton for President. The reasons she lists for that endorsement, to me, run completely counter to her list of important issues and goals. If she is truly concerned about those goals, I don’t follow her endorsement, nor the endorsement of other of my friends and acquaintances of any Democrat in the current group. I want to address the inconsistencies I see in this post.

Ms. Rice starts out with her Christian and Catholic creds, which I respect and am willing to accept. She talks about how, while the separation of church and state is a good idea, the voter does not have that prohibition, and in fact must consider their vote based on their religion.

Conscience requires the Christian to vote as a Christian. Commitment to Christ is by its very nature absolute.

I agree wholeheartedly. But, she also correctly notes, we have only 2 political parties in this country. (She believes, as do I, that a vote for neither Democrat or Republican, whether it’s a non-vote or a vote for a 3rd party, is essentially a vote for one of the two major ones, no matter how you slice it.) In short:

To summarize, I believe in voting, I believe in voting for one of the two major parties, and I believe my vote must reflect my Christian beliefs.

Bearing all this in mind, I want to say quietly that as of this date, I am a Democrat, and that I support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.

And that last clause is where the disagreement begins.

Charitable Giving

The first paragraph of explanation deals with giving.

Though I deeply respect those who disagree with me, I believe, for a variety of reasons, that the Democratic Party best reflects the values I hold based on the Gospels. Those values are most intensely expressed for me in the Gospel of Matthew, but they are expressed in all the gospels. Those values involve feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and above all, loving ones neighbors and loving ones enemies. A great deal more could be said on this subject, but I feel that this is enough.

First of all, neither the religious right nor the religious left have a lock on charitable giving. At the same time, as was noted on this post regarding a study by Arthur Brooks, conservatives outgive liberals by quite a significant amount. How does this relate to how the political parties differ in their view of the government’s role in this? Ms. Rice, I believe, falls into a trap by simplistically equating the advocacy of government charity with Jesus’ admonition to the individual to be charitable. Democrats say the government should give more, so by her reckoning thy are more in line with her Christian view. However, it has always made me wonder how when Jesus tells me, personally, to be charitable, that somehow this means that I should also use the government to force my neighbor, under penalty of jail, to be “charitable”. I put “charitable” in quotes because when there’s force involved, there’s no real act of charity. How Democrat Christians get from point A to point Z on this boggles my mind. Another statistic from Brooks’ study brings this point home; People who believe the government does not have a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can’t take care of themselves are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

On top of this, the bureaucratic inefficiency filter that we’re all forced to funnel our “charitable” taxes through siphons money away from the needy, as does the massive fraud that goes on in a big government program that has little accountability.

Conservatives believe that forcibly taking money isn’t charity, and that it is not government’s role to rob from Peter to pay Paul, and that the way the government handles this creates dependency and causes further problems, like giving fathers a disincentive to stick around. Because of this, conservatives give more of their own money to local charities where the administrative costs are much lower. The Republican party, the current home of most conservative political ideas in this country, purports to support these goals, and while they don’t always follow those principles, they have done better at this than Democrats. An expanded role of government in the area of giving to the poor is not the best way for that to happen, and as a Christian I believe it’s not moral to force others to give when they don’t want to. Again, Jesus asks me to give; He didn’t ask me to force others to.

Ms. Rice, in ticking off a laundry list of values, seems to be falling for the framing of the issue that Democrats have put forth; welfare = caring. There are other ways to care, which can have much better results.

Part 2 tomorrow.

"Gee, I’ll vote to get some of that wealth spread to me."  Welcome to the 21st century.

From Chuck Asay:

Note: I’ve updated this post to more accurately reflect the context of Obama’s statement regarding his two daughters.

A rundown, at HotAir, of candidate Barack Obama’s positions and history on abortion, taxes, radical associations, foreign policy judgment, disdain for the heartland, use of the race card, and lack of accomplishments.

Of particular concern, and what I would argue is evidence of the consequences of our country having state-sponsored killing of over 40 million unborn children, since Roe v. Wade, is this video snippet. This candidate, my friends, is someone who would consider his own grandchildren to be a punishment upon his daughters if they had the unfortunate luck to have been conceived while his daughters were still teenagers.

When we don’t view the unborn child as a human being, then it’s not so difficult to see it as a “punishment”.

Unfortunately, I think too many Americans are buying in to the rhetoric that Obama dishes out, with regards to his views on abortion. They consider him to be “pro-choice”, rather than “pro-abortion” (after all, so they say, who in their right mind would call him pro-abortion?). They trump the argument that we cannot legislate morality (to which I argue that virtually every law we have is a legislation of morality). They trump the supposed fact that Obama would sign on to abortion restriction laws were they to include an exception for the life of the mother (to which I wonder why they ignore the FACT that abortion is legal throughout the entire 9 month term of the baby?). They trump the comparison of the thousands of dead, due to the war in Iraq, and ask how moral that decision was (to which I ask, if they want to do some comparisons, how do those thousands compare to the 40+ million abortions since 1973?).

Can anyone be called pro-abortion? What if:

• someone would consider his own grandchildren, still in the womb, to be a punishment on his daughters?
• someone would, as his first act as President, sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would “abolish bans on partial-birth abortion and parental notification laws nationwide while implementing tax-payer funded abortions” (quote via HotAir)?
• someone condemned the Supreme Court decision upholding a ban on partial birth abortions?
• someone considered that caring for an infant born alive, after an abortion, to be an undue burden on the original decision of the doctor, and mother of the child?
• someone stated, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, that “Throughout my career, I’ve been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.”?
• someone who, although he claims to be pro-choice, would strip funding from pro-life pregnancy crisis centers?

Yes, I’d call someone like that pro-abortion.

At the basis of much of the debate which goes on the subtext at which we worry was highlighted in a little book. Then Cardinal Ratzinger and philosopher Jurgen Habermas debated the following question:

Does the free secularized state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee? This question expresses a doubt about whether the democratic constitutional state can renew from its own resources the normative presuppositions of its existence, it also expresses the assumption that such a state is dependent on ethical traditions of a local nature.

I wrote of that here (check it out, a few interesting quotes from the book The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion are included). Herr Habermas (here I diverge from my Mr/Mrs/Ms nomenclature as a reference merely to his Deutsche origins) argues (of course) the affirmative and Fr Ratzinger the latter.

Fr Ratzinger notes that there are pathologies of religion which are quite dangerous. It is this in fact which the atheist apologists over emphasize often and key upon, most recently JA noted “zeal” as peculiar religious problem, setting aside for some reason that other ideological zeals have been at the root cause of most of the 20th centuries mass killings. However, this misses the point. The vast majority of both the faithful and the secular are quite non-violent. The question isn’t about the fringes, although those should not be ignored, but the central question is can society function without without religious ties binding it? Charles Taylor in the book A Secular Age noted the important and central role the church had in the softening and civilizing of our social behavior over the last 600 years. Compare for example ordinary behavior by the elite between the 15th century (War of the Roses) and the Elizabethan 100 years later and then to the Victorian in the 19th. They are like night and day. The conventional wisdom was that this was driven by the Enlightenment and the secular (reason-based) move. But that doesn’t pan out to a careful examination. There was no “enlightenment” occuring in the 15th century that gave rise to the vast differences seen in that period.

But the question of whether a large scale national enterprise can hold together its society in the absence of any faith is unresolved. The French reformers of the 19th century attempting to craft a brave new world thought that the rites and rituals of the religious world gave continuity and permanence to daily life that a purely materialist secular world could not. They attempted to craft similar rituals to replace them, but as Mark Twain noted when his wife attempted using off-color language that “she’d had the notes but didn’t make music.” That is, they tried to make rituals but they, much like Mr Obama with his “clinging to guns and God” remarks, didn’t have the connection to the common man that was need to make music (rite/rituals) that the common man wanted to hear.

The demographic crises in mainly secular Western Europe, which afflicts our (secular) subcultures in the States, is not affecting the non-secular societies world wide. One of the commonalities in secular points of view that might be important to this question is how the secular culture promotes a radical individualism … and how that individualism is not very conducive to the sacrifices and commitment required of marriage and family. Without marriage and family raised as a linchpin or centerpiece of ones society, the same demographic crises will occur. People will go their individual ways and eschew raising families. Birth rates will drop and a generation or two later … the Piper will have to be paid for that particular indulgence.

So, to focus the question a little further, I might restate Herr Habermas’ eloquent question as:

Can the free secularized state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee? This question expresses a doubt about whether the democratic constitutional state in the absence of religion eschew radical individualism and recall the necessary importance of stable marriage and family.

So if you disagree, and think that a secular society can in fact put family and children ahead of ego … tell me why and where are the clues that point to that notion.

About 25 years ago I owned a dog that, as time marched on, began experiencing the effects of aging. The dog, a Sheltie, got to the point where her walking was labored, resulting in muscle spasms. Consequently, we began discussing taking her in to the vet to be put down. My grandmother, bless her heart, objected to that course of action. Her reason?

We quietly chuckled at the absurdity of her concerns.

Now (HT: Doug) enter a British medical ethics “expert” who has recommended that people be

How is it that we’ve gone from the age-old notion of putting animals down, to that of putting humans down? Are we beginning to see a clear juxtaposition between the Judeo-Christian view of The Imago Dei, and that of naturalism, which sees us as nothing more than clothed apes?

The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be: Taking a Stand for True MasculinityBy Kevin McCullough / Harvest House Publishers* From radio commentator, syndicated columnist, and MuscleHead Revolution author comes a bold message for 21st-century men! McCullough probes the undermining of manhood over recent decades and speculates why both sexes are reluctant to address the problem. Citing God’s blueprint in Scripture, he challenges Christian men to behave with dignity, act with clarity, and lead with conviction! 224 pages, softcover from Harvest.

This morning I had the opportunity to chat with Kevin McCullough. His book is a wake up call to men (and women) everywhere that it’s time for men to start living the way that God has designed them. It’s both a very personal and immensely practical book and one that I heartily recommend to everyone. I’ll have a more complete review here soon.

Click on this link to hear the interview.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin McCullough for the link!

I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

Doug’s post below reminded me that I wanted to recycle a post from a few years ago (apologies to those who have read it already). I think it’s topical.

Jessica is the daughter of our friends. Every day, the school bus comes for Jessica, who happens to be the last child on the route. On this particular bus, the kids have assigned seating, and Jessica sits next to the same young boy–day after day. And, day after day, this young, frightened boy cried the whole trip. He was crying when the bus came to Jessica’s house, and he cried the rest of the way to school.

One day, Jessica decided to help the boy. She reached out her small hand, and gently laid it on his arm. The boy stopped crying. The mere touch of another, gentle soul was enough to comfort him. The next day came, the boy was crying. Jessica sat down, reached out, touched his arm, and he stopped crying. This pattern repeated the next few days. She did not have to say anything, her touch was all he needed.

And then, a few days later, something interesting happened. On this day, the boy stopped crying a few blocks before the bus reached Jessica’s house. He knew she would be getting on the bus soon and that was enough to comfort him. She still put her hand gently on his arm, of course. This pattern repeats to this day. The boy stops crying a few blocks before Jessica’s house.

I suppose he can sense where the bus is because of the curves in the road near her house. You see, the boy is blind. He can neither see Jessica, nor her house. He just senses when the bus is almost there.

Jessica’s actions on the bus do not surprise her parents. She has four siblings at home, including a newborn sister. Whenever one of her sisters, or her brother, is hurt, Jessica is there to comfort the child. Offering her gentle shoulder and heart for another’s comfort. That’s who Jessica is–comforter of the hurting. She is also one of the happiest children I have ever seen. There’s always a smile on her face.

Jessica turned five this past February. [She is now eight.] That, in itself, is a miracle. Jessica was born with hydrocephalus. While in her mother, the fluid built up in her tiny brain and damaged it. Jessica also has Down Syndrome. There are many things that Jessica will not be able to do in her life. To some, Jessica should never have been born. Some, having received the news of her condition, as her parents did, by amniocentesis, would have chosen to end the pregnancy, and her life. The reason, I suppose, is that she won’t have much quality of life. She’ll never be a productive member of society. She may not be able to take care of herself. Not much of a life in our modern society.

However, I know one little boy on a bus who knows that Jessica is nothing short of a gift from God.

Maybe the doctor mentioned in Doug’s post below needs to meet Jessica.

I love finding new-to-me words in everyday writing. Today’s word is psephology, as in the study of elections. Example: Keith Olberman is to psephology as Ptolemy was to astronomy. Many thanks to Jonah Goldberg for improving my vocabulary.

Ed Brayton, normally quite accurate in his reporting, titles a post of his, Another Palin Lie. Ed states,

And Stephen Foley, at The Independent, has an article titled, Sale of Alaska’s state jet on eBay revealed as a lie. From Foley’s article,

Yet, here are the lines from Sarah Palin’s speech, at the RNC, in which she references said plane:

That’s it. No other references to the sale of the jet was made in her speech. Astute observers will note that she does not state that the plane was sold on eBay, nor does she state that it was sold for a profit.

It ain’t there, fellas.

Do you think, just a thought here, that her intentions (at that point in the speech) were to emphasize her attitude towards wasteful spending, and not to give a detailed accounting report of how Alaska unloaded it’s luxury jet?

Did she imply, in her RNC speech, that she had actually sold the plane on eBay? Could be. Yet, did any intrepid journalists or Democratic party operatives, armed with the not-so-secret data of the plane’s actual sale, trap Palin by asking her for specific data on how the plane was sold? Are you kidding? That would mean actually trying to get to the truth of the matter.

Truth be told, we must rewrite Foley’s paragraph, from above, as follows:

Sarah Palin bolstered her reputation as a reformer – and got one of her biggest cheers in her Republican convention speech last week – when she said she had sold put the governor’s official jet on eBay as her first act on taking office in Alaska.

Words… just words.

Note: However, John McCain’s statement, referenced above, seems to be a different matter entirely. Maybe he should just let Sarah speak for herself.

It seems that some liberals are having a difficult time understanding what constitutes hypocrisy.

Consider the saga of Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, and this blog post at ABC News,

To begin with, I’m not aware of any prominent Republicans stating that “everybody else doesn’t have any values.” To be sure, persons with alternative political affiliations hold values of some sort.

Yet I wonder exactly what type of accountability Mr. Wray would hold Sarah Palin to? It seems to me that, in her public statement on the issue, she made it clear that her daughter was choosing life for her unborn baby, that her daughter was going to get married to the child’s father, that her daughter would have the full support of her and her husband, and that their full support was needed now that her daughter would learn about the reality of having made choices that fell outside the realm of “family values”. It further seems to me that, rather than displaying hypocrisy, Palin is being fully consistent with the family values she claims to have. Honesty, love, commitment, and responsibility.

If Sarah Palin wished to be a hypocrite, she would have counseled her daughter to have a secret abortion, in order to preserve the family image, thereby allowing her to attend college (if she so desired) without the punishment of having to take care of a child at the same time.

John McCain, after congratulating Barack Obama for his historic nomination, appears to have chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his pick for VP. (see CNN, FoxNews)

Palin, the Barracuda.

CHANGE… we can believe in.

In an essentially 50/50 race, this is an awesome, gutsy, risky, and potentially brilliant move. Can we say… Maverick?

Kind of makes you wonder what Hillary is thinking now, doesn’t it?

(image: McNamee/Getty)

In California, the First Amendment is subordinate to the whims of the judges.  The Associated Press reports:

California’s highest court on Monday barred doctors from invoking their religious beliefs as a reason to deny treatment to gays and lesbians, ruling that state law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination extends to the medical profession.

What "treatment" was denied?  How was care withheld, as the AP headline claims?

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state’s law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her. One of the doctors referred her to another fertility specialist without moral objections, and Benitez has since given birth to three children.

Nevertheless, Benitez in 2001 sued the Vista-based North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group. She and her lawyers successfully argued that a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation applies to doctors.

So what we’re really talking about here is an elective procedure, not "care" nor "treatment" of some condition.  And the doctors did everything up to the point where their religious convictions wouldn’t let them continue.  Even then, they instructed Benitez how to do it herself. 

A detail you won’t find here but is brought up in the WorldNetDaily coverage, the case was dismissed when it was originally brought, but liberal Californians can be certain that, no matter the obstacles, their Supreme Court can be counted on to come through. 

But don’t doctors have constitutional rights, too?  Well the California Medial Association used to think so, but they changed their tune "after receiving a barrage of criticism from the gay-rights community."  We have the bullying tactics of the "tolerant" Left connect with the political correctness of the medical community, with the result being a trampling of the Constitution. 

This is what passes for the imprudent "jurisprudence" we find on the Left Coast.  This almost calls for a Constitutional amendment, except we already have one and it doesn’t seem to be working. 

[tags]California Supreme Court,Constitution,homosexuality,First Amendment,religious rights,Douglas Fenton,Christine Brody,Guadalupe Benitez[/tags]