Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, or Pro-Progress?

Abortion is an issue that every American political candidate is asked about at one point or another. I don’t understand this, because abortion is such a minor issue in a post-9/11 world where there are so many other, more important, issues.

Often times Liberals blame Conservatives for being pro-life along with pro-death penalty which would, by definition, contradict the stance of “pro-life.” But you have to think of pro-life, not in literal terms, but in reasonable terms. Let’s look at an example. How can you be pro-life and support the death penalty? Let’s break it down: if an unborn fetus has no choice whether he will be born or not, then the mother must make a decision. Generally, except in the case of the mother’s health, incest or, arguably, rape, the mother should choose to have the baby. Because the fetus, a living organism that would become a human being, has NO say whether he can live or not, makes it murder to kill him. Now lets look at the death penalty. The person to be put to death has lived life. By choice, that person has committed crimes (usually murder) to put himself in that situation. A jury of citizens was presented evidence that proved the crimes of this person and he was seen so evil that he had been sentenced to death to prevent any other murders that would likely happen were he not dead. How are these instances the same? A fetus has NO choice whether to live or not, whereas the person sentenced to death willingly committed crimes against the law and knowing that there is a death penalty. He chose to commit the crimes that would lead him to the position of death. To me, they are two totally different things.

Moving on. When it comes to abortion there is a stalemate. Many people in this country feel that abortion should be outlawed, while many others believe that it should be the mother’s choice. To quote Dinesh D’Souza, whom I’ve quoted before, “hard-liners are fools. Because they want to outlaw ALL abortions, they refuse to settle for stopping SOME abortions; the consequence is that they end up preventing NO abortions.” (Letters to a Young Conservative p.192) This, to me, makes a lot of sense. Why prefer a stalemate over progress? One presidential candidate who stands for this (whom I disagree with on almost ALL issues) is Rudy Giuliani. Unfortunately for him, he hasn’t figured out how to say this correctly and only gives the impression that he is a Liberal pro-choice Republican, which is certainly not true. But the question is why not work hard preventing SOME abortions by encouraging adoption and what not, then push legislation to ban it when abortion is close to nil? Being hard-headed only causes a stalemate and no progress. Not to mention, if you tell people what they can and cannot do, they only want to do the opposite of what they’re told; it’s human nature.

Does this mean that I support abortion? No. Does this make me pro-choice? Absolutely not. I believe that abortion is the wrong thing for a soon-to-be-mother to do. I believe that it is immoral and we should do everything we can to prevent it, but me hard-lining against abortion gets nothing done. We should hard-line for encouraging adoption over abortion, which would make remarkable progress and make another family, that can’t have children, happy.

Some people will say, “Abortion is the number one issue for many religious people, and these people would never vote for a person who thinks that way (about abortion).” My answer: Christians who make abortion the number one issue which determines who they will vote for are idiots. If a candidate came up to me and said, “I will do everything I can to win the war on terror. I will close the border. I will have a tax reform. I will cut government programs. I will encourage Charter schools for competition. I will encourage individual health policies over universal health care. blah blah blah.” then said, “I will NOT try to make a federal ban on abortion (because it can’t be done), but rather try to reduce the amount of abortions that occur.” These hard-line Christians would be fools to overlook that!

I am a Christian. I am a Conservative. I am pro-life for progress. I guess that make me Pro-Progress.

Contemplations over the Draft…

I’ve been thinking about the subject of the draft for some time now and I thought I’d share my views with those who would like to read.

I have mixed feelings about the draft. On one hand I think the draft would be a good idea. If instilled in times of peace AND war, it would ensure people that the country isn’t just implementing a draft because they need military personell for a war, but that the country just so happens to be in a war and we’re lucky enough to have the military that we need. Also, (now this is just a thought) what if one had to give military service in order to obtain a special benefit in the future, similar to obtaining a college degree?

In addition, if we had a draft now, the war in Iraq would less likely be the problem that it is. We wouldn’t need to authorize “troop surges,” we would just have the necessary troops needed to fight the fight. Why not…we had a draft throught WWII, Korea, and Vietnam? (Vietnam, arguably, destroyed the likely-hood of having a draft again, but had we kept it through peacetime, it might be acceptable to people).

On the other hand, we are the most powerful nation in the world; we’re able to figure out a way to fill our military with sufficient soldiers without implementing the draft. The United States is smart enough and rich enough to recruit enough people through benefits and incentives. The great thing about this country is that we find ways to be the most powerful nation in the world without having a draft. What other great power in the history of the civilized world pulled this off?

Historically remarkable…

On a side note, I believe that women should not be included in the draft…if they want to be in the military, they should enlist. Femenists would argue otherwise, but…what don’t they argue about?

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

College professors: the new Gnostics…

First, let’s define who Gnostics are, or were. Gnostics were a religious sect during early rise of Christianity, who claimed to have a secret knowledge about Jesus. They didn’t consider themselves anything other than Christians, but were looked down upon by the orthodox.

You may have heard of these people and their writings. These are the folks who created the Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Thomas, Infancy Gospel, and Gospel of Peter. These controversial texts contained themes that argued Judas as the hero for betraying Jesus and fulfilling prophesy, showed outrageous accounts of Jesus’ supposed conniving childhood, and random quotes that were said to be from Jesus in Thomas (similar to the Quran’s contents of Muhammad’s sayings).

The Gnostics believed that Jesus gave special knowledge to the disciples and left limited knowledge to the people by using parables. Well, we seemed to have figured out what the parables mean, but I guess that isn’t the “secret knowledge.” But I digress…Gnostics also felt that it didn’t matter what a person did to his body, because it was all about finding his “inner-self.” Consequently, there were Christian martyrs like St. Perpetua, dying for their faith, while Gnostics would sacrifice bulls to Roman gods one minute and go seeking their inner-self through “Christian” beliefs the next.

Obviously Orthodox prevailed and Gnosticism failed (if it didn’t and everyone became Gnostic, would it still be “secret knowledge,” which is the very foundation of Gnosticism to begin with?). Christianity may have been through a lot of problems, but today it’s certainly not the problem in the world. If anything, it helps keep the world a somewhat moral society. Now, I know you don’t have to be a Christian to be a moral person, but religion (Christianity included) certainly contributes to the morality that we see and retain today.

Now to my point: College professors are the new Gnostics. Ironically they call themselves agnostic (which means they have no knowledge and are seeking to figure out religious beliefs), but we all know what they really are – Liberals. These Liberals who call themselves agnostic, believe they contain a secret knowledge about humanity and politics that the rest of society doesn’t know because they’re too stupid. Granted, not all Liberals are secular, but in general they believe religion causes problems; especially for secular driven Liberal agendas. Although society is more secular than ever, Liberal college professors claim to stand up for some great cause for humanity against “right-wing-religious-fanatics.” The worst thing about it is that these Liberals are pretending to “teach” students; attempting to achieve liberalism and secularism worldwide. Luckily, there are some people who see through this, but there needs to be more legitimate instructors.

These professors just think they’re smarter than everyone else, but don’t let these Gnostic professors fool you. There are intelligent college graduates in the world that are Conservative. The thing is they pursue other endeavors like becoming businessmen or medical doctors or scientists. Perhaps I’ll be the exception. I want to be the teacher that teaches history and government from a legitimate angle, but if I have to be a right-wing fanatic in order to level-out the liberal education that students receive, then so be it.

David Cooper (C)