Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Truth and One Application

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Truth matters absolutely. The nature of truth requires that I value truth before my own preferences. Truths are true no matter that I ignore or disagree with them.

Here is a simple truth on a particular subject. Human life has intrinsic value and meaning. Its Creator and Designer has clearly expressed this truth, in both word and action. *

Here is a conclusion which I draw from that truth: if you are a supporter of legal abortion or Planned Parenthood, you are making a truth claim against the intrinsic value of all human beings.

You are claiming that human beings receive their value extrinsically; that we each are granted value from another party outside of ourselves. You are claiming that value is granted by an outside entity according its own standard.

You are a defender of the belief that some people are valuable, and that other people are not valuable. Which means that human lives are not valuable in themselves.

Indeed you are claiming that no human being is intrinsically valuable.

Not the unborn fetus, not you, not me, not anyone.

This won’t be news to those pro-abortion supporters who are honest or who rise above the virtue-signaling level of activism. They will say that  the unborn have no rights that we are bound to respect. Dred Scott meet Hillary Clinton.

And so, you and I are living in a world in which we each receive our value from something outside of ourselves. I have some limited power to assert that I matter; some people are better at convincing others of their value than other people are; some people have no power at all. Compare a charismatic sociopath to a disabled newborn–who wins?

One who negates the value given by the Creator of all things is in a difficult place when asked to justify human life in an objective way.

People who are thoughtful believers in Jesus Christ have a fundamental understanding that every single human being who was ever conceived has intrinsic and equal value. That value is not subjectively granted or acquired.

You who are pro-choice believe you’re virtuous because you care about the rights of women so much that you assert that they have an absolute right to societal approval and public funding of their abortions. Even while this right is exercised at the cost of many millions of human lives.

I believe it is virtuous to value the lives of all women and all unborn, that they all have intrinsic value, that they all have the right to life that has been given by their Creator; and that when we deprive any of that life, we violate an eternal law. We deny an eternal truth.

But let’s put aside the divine element for a second, as you would have it.

You pit one life against the other.  You must do that if you believe that value is conferred rather than already present. Whose rights win the contest? is your context. You believe in a zero-sum proposition: one has value or the other does, and we must choose. But what is your solution if both have equal value that we must honor?

And since there is no absolute or objective conferrer of value, who will we respect as worthy to grant worth to us? This is a question you cannot dismiss. Someone will come along and claim that right, and assert the power we’ve given him. We’ve seen that movie many times, and the results are always tragic, ugly, and anything but virtuous.

  • God stating that human beings have value:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13: 8-10

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. Psalm 127

“Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.” And all the people shall say, “Amen.”  Deut 27:25

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.  Psalm 139: 13

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:16

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2: 3-4

 

The Disposables

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There are two kinds of people. There are the people who are born, grow, live their lives, and die. For example me and you.

And there are the other people.

They are disposable. They are optional. They are possibilities that we do not want. They are not born. They are not given the opportunity to grow or live lives. But they do die.

Interesting science factoid: Scientists have yet to discover an intrinsic difference between the disposables and the other people. We have yet to find the difference, at any stage of development pre-birth, between a disposable human being, and you. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a demand for a genetic test to be used during pregnancy to determine whether you are carrying a real child or a disposable one.

Since our laws allow one unborn person of say, thirty weeks gestation to be called a person, nurtured, hoped for and loved; and another unborn person of thirty weeks gestation to be unwanted and extracted from the place of its sustenance in a manner designed to end its life, and discarded as waste (or sorted and sold); the age or developmental status of the person cannot be the determining factor.

“We have some young people in the audience who weren’t even born when Roe [versus Wade] was decided, and this is pretty important,” said Vice Presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D).

That was true. There are also those people who weren’t in the audience because they weren’t born.

The recent Democrat candidate for president unflinchingly declared that “unborn persons do not have Constitutional rights.” In theory, that jury is still out. In real life, it is undeniably true.

In 1973, the distinction between the two types of persons was legally recognized.  Since then, we have discovered disposable persons in huge numbers. We ought to be very thankful to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates for managing the enormous disposal issue so creatively.

 

I know what some of you are saying right now. That is not a person!!!!! (redundant punctuation included.) But arguments in support of assigning disposable status are, without exception: arbitrary, self-serving, agendized rationalizations which appeal to ludicrous internet scientism.

But since WordPress comment conversations have taught me the uselessness of arguing for the personhood of very young fetuses with people who raise this particular objection, I will, for the moment, allow  personhood status to be undetermined.

But perhaps you can tell me why it is a moral neutral to dispose of a living organism which will become a human being.

Not potentially, not maybe. This small organism will become a person every single time. It will not become anything else. If it survives, the result will be exactly the same kind of organism that you are now. A human being.

The determination of the moment of personhood is irrelevant.

 

A human being is created in the image of the Creator of all things. Our nation is founded upon an idea that all human beings possess inherent and equal rights. We dismiss the disposables’ rights just before we dismiss their lives.

We must do the former, or we must openly admit that we are arbitrary granters of human rights, and that we openly confer rights to some and deny rights to others. And that would make us unfair. Not nice people. Hypocritical. That’s just not us.

What are the real implications? If we are honest with ourselves, the answer is too plain. We kill people for preference sake. We balance our logic and our integrity on a knife’s edge of rationalization, and we maintain hyper-vigilance toward any idea which would give us even a gentle push.

 

 

Regressive Progressivism

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Progressivism, or liberalism, ironically has a habit of turning back the clock.

Liberalism used to be satisfied to take the political context back to the heyday of speaking truth to power, the 1960’s.  But then I see liberal friends applying the economic and political issues of the 1910’s, no matter how ill-fitting, at the mention of Walmart,  Monsanto or Big Oil, the latest versions of the monocled robber baron.

Now “progressivism” wants us to enjoy the politics of the Middle Ages.

Yesterday it turned the clock back before the U.S.Constitution, before the Declaration of Independence…before Magna Carta.

In the year 1215, Magna Carta established that no one, including the king, is above the law. Our founding documents derive many fundamental principles from that foundation, and some implications are that all men are created equal and that all persons deserve equal rights and protections from lawful governments.

People with enough political power are now above the law officially, for the first time since 1215. So goes equal rights and protections, intrinsic value, and lawful government.