Arguing abortion
worldnetdaily.com
As anyone who has insisted on raising the issue of the right to life in the public arena knows, the pressure to keep silent on the issue can be intense, particularly from political allies who smell victory if we can just avoid certain uncomfortable topics. This siren song is being heard again these days, as G. W. Bush signals furiously that he will do whatever is necessary to avoid "risking" defeat for the party by being "judgmental" of his fellow citizens.
Bush Republicans are fooling themselves in their insistence that, if a few pro-life leaders would be silent, the Republican Party would have clear sailing to victory. It is not a few pro-life leaders who are keeping this issue on the table, any more than it was Lincoln who kept the issue of slavery before the nation in the years before the Civil War. Republicans yearning for comfortable victory can struggle with the fact all they like, but it is the Declaration of Independence that burdens this country with the abortion issue. The Declaration is our burden to carry -- and we will carry it to glory, or to perdition, but we cannot lay it down.
I know that many Americans, many Republicans, wish to do so. But they should look back at their own history, because they are placing themselves in the tradition of those who avoided facing up to the need for racial justice in this century, and of those who avoided the need to fight the institution of slavery in the 19th century.
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They cannot avoid this challenge, because I, with many just and decent people in this country, will continue to raise it. Even, or especially, at moments when political success or failure at the polls is supposedly at stake, we will continue to make the argument from principle. And we will make a better argument than the defenders of abortion, because we have the self-evident truth of the principle of human equality on our side. If our opponents disagree, they are welcome to join the debate and make their case. We will go before the American people, who will eventually decide the question in light of the Declaration principles that still form the conscience of this people.
Fateful time for America
worldnetdaily.com
It's time we saw what's coming. The Republican Party is in trouble. Many people in its leadership do not understand the depth of that trouble and if they don't wake up before it's too late, the party will, in this election, be destroyed. The Republican Party leadership now closing ranks around George W. Bush appears to believe that it can abandon our national moral principles. They are attempting to jettison the pro-life plank and place a pro-abortion nominee on the national ticket, believing that the Republican ground troops and the American people overall will still support the GOP because it is the 'lesser of evils.'
The correct word for this attitude is "presumption." The Republican Party backroom strategists are presuming that the party's conservative base will ultimately choose to seek political victory even at the expense of abandoning the deepest moral principles of American life. They may be surprised to find out just how stubborn a people of faith can be when its leaders attempt to lead it into sin.
I, for one, would rather merely watch the triumph of evil in sorrow than be implicated in helping bring about that triumph. There are millions of other Americans who understand that, whether as man or as citizen, our responsibility requires that we stand firm where God wants us to stand. If the Republican Party refuses to stand there, we will not join them in their abandonment of truth.
I know that fear of Al Gore is supposed to keep us on the reservation. We are told that if we only give-up a little bit of the truth and sacrifice a bit of principle we can get most of what we want. But the abandonment of principle will eventually receive its just recompense; the laws of nature and of a just God simply will not permit a people that has abandoned the discipline of justice to continue enjoying the blessings of liberty. The only thing that we will accomplish by voting for a squishy compromise that has abandoned the truth is to stand on the day after judgment on the wrong side of God's hand.
We must believe that if we find it in our hearts to stand firm we will find also a strength sufficient to move this nation in the right direction. There is no other solution. Putting a pro-abort on the ticket or weakening the pro-life plank in order to attract new voters to join the lukewarm Republican Party will not work. It will bring us instead the dual defeat of moral collapse and electoral disaster. And the only fruit of our willingness to "compromise" will be that, instead of being proud of upholding a standard that we trust will ultimately prevail, we'll just have to be ashamed of ourselves.
I'd rather stand for what's right -- even if that cause temporarily loses -- and wake-up the day after an election knowing that my soul is still in God's hands. That's an infinitely better course than to compromise what's right, lose anyway, and wake-up after an election having neither victory nor God's favor.
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We will succeed only if we make the powerbrokers around Bush understand that if they abandon the truth, then, when the smoke clears in November, many millions of voters they are counting on will have abandoned them. We must make clear to them that a Republican Party which abandons conservative principle will never again win a major election in this country. |
