but what turns off a portion of that majority are the more extreme positions held by some on issues like teaching creationism, banning abortion or bringing back institutional school prayer.
See, I don’t believe that banning abortions is extreme. In fact, protecting life is what we SHOULD be about. If we are not for the sanctity of life, then we are for nothing.
I understand your view on this, but you are in the minority here. Most people do believe that banning abortion is extreme, and if you cling to this as a non-negotiable qualification for political candidates, it will be a resounding loser every time.
Personally, I believe there is no “right” to abortion, but I also don’t thing the government should ban the practice. I also believe there should be a moratorium on using tax money to support or pay for abortions, as this would constitute forcing a large number of people to involuntarily support a practice they consider not only immoral, but an absolute sin.
I am posting an article that speaks to the subject of this thread.
“THE SOUL OF THE GOP
IT CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE BASE
Jonah Goldberg
Posted: 4:48 am
November 15, 2008”
(from the article)
“It should be noted that it’s also difficult to be fiscally conservative and socially conservative if you’ve jettisoned the conservative dogma of limited government. We saw this in spades as President Bush embraced “activist government” and ended up wildly increasing government spending over the last eight years.
That should serve as a warning to those, on the right and left, who’d like to see the GOP defenestrate millions of actual party members - e.g., social conservatives - in order to woo millions of largely nonexistent jackalopes (so-called moderate republicans). The GOP would simply cease to exist as a viable party without the support of social and religious conservatives. But not so the other way around.
We’ve seen what happens in this country when the passionately religious abandon love of limited government and instead embrace social liberalism and government activism. The results have been good, as in the abolition movement. And the results have been more mixed, like during the Progressive Movement.
The religious right is much more likely to stop being “right” than stop being religious. Secular conservatives and libertarians who passionately believe in limited government should be grateful indeed that most of today’s religious conservatives believe in it, too.”
but what turns off a portion of that majority are the more extreme positions held by some on issues like teaching creationism, banning abortion or bringing back institutional school prayer.
See, I don’t believe that banning abortions is extreme. In fact, protecting life is what we SHOULD be about. If we are not for the sanctity of life, then we are for nothing.
I understand your view on this, but you are in the minority here. Most people do believe that banning abortion is extreme, and if you cling to this as a non-negotiable qualification for political candidates, it will be a resounding loser every time.
Personally, I believe there is no “right” to abortion, but I also don’t thing the government should ban the practice. I also believe there should be a moratorium on using tax money to support or pay for abortions, as this would constitute forcing a large number of people to involuntarily support a practice they consider not only immoral, but an absolute sin.
Florida IT Guy,
Your position above is probably perfectly acceptable to the vast majority of Christians in this country. It also illuminates the successes of liberals to misconstrue the real substance of the issues that social conservatives raise. I doubt if there are many Christians that feel that the federal government should ban abortion outside of the legislative process. This would also be the case for the other issues you name above.
Christians simply want to have the right to pray in the public school systems if the majority of the administrators approve it. In other words, we want the freedom to conduct our lives in a manner that we feel glorifies our God without the federal government imposing their will against the local citizenry. Unfortunately the left has twisted this to mean that we want to impose our beliefs through the legal system on all citizens. This is just a pernicious lie.
As a vehemently anti-abortion conservative, I do not wish to outlaw abortion. Let me rephrase: I do wish it, but it is a politically untenable position, since the consequence would be the imprisonment or sanctioning of women and girls.
Instead, I would seek to overturn Roe v Wade on constitutional grounds, the intent being to place the issue squarely in the hands of the people and their legislators; exactly where it has belonged all along.
Roe artificially ensconces abortion into the constitution as a “right”, while completely ignoring the right of the fetus to his or her very life. No meaningful headway can be made against abortion legislatively while Roe stands. And I believe that without the false right afforded by Roe, the American people would come to a more sensible conclusion than unfettered abortion on demand. That sensible conclusion would be the first step toward ensconcing a culture of life to replace Roe’s culture of death.
For the record, my position is Fred Thompson’s position.
but what turns off a portion of that majority are the more extreme positions held by some on issues like teaching creationism, banning abortion or bringing back institutional school prayer.
See, I don’t believe that banning abortions is extreme. In fact, protecting life is what we SHOULD be about. If we are not for the sanctity of life, then we are for nothing.
I understand your view on this, but you are in the minority here. Most people do believe that banning abortion is extreme, and if you cling to this as a non-negotiable qualification for political candidates, it will be a resounding loser every time.
Personally, I believe there is no “right” to abortion, but I also don’t thing the government should ban the practice. I also believe there should be a moratorium on using tax money to support or pay for abortions, as this would constitute forcing a large number of people to involuntarily support a practice they consider not only immoral, but an absolute sin.
Well, the problem with the pro-abortion crowd is that they are usually also for:
1 - abortions without parental approval
2 - abortions end up being for convenience only
Most pro-lifers accept (not all) abortion if it can be shown absolutly that the mother’s life is at stake.
However, I have asked on this forum several times over the last year for someone to show me the statistics of how many abortions were actually performed to save the mother’s life. I found a site in England that offered some statistics in their country which showed that less than half of a percent were actually performed to save the life of the mother. That’s a pretty low number to justify killing the other 99.5%. Don’t you think?
Obama and his crowd wants total unfettered abortions.
but what turns off a portion of that majority are the more extreme positions held by some on issues like teaching creationism, banning abortion or bringing back institutional school prayer.
See, I don’t believe that banning abortions is extreme. In fact, protecting life is what we SHOULD be about. If we are not for the sanctity of life, then we are for nothing.
I understand your view on this, but you are in the minority here. Most people do believe that banning abortion is extreme, and if you cling to this as a non-negotiable qualification for political candidates, it will be a resounding loser every time.
Personally, I believe there is no “right” to abortion, but I also don’t thing the government should ban the practice. I also believe there should be a moratorium on using tax money to support or pay for abortions, as this would constitute forcing a large number of people to involuntarily support a practice they consider not only immoral, but an absolute sin.
Well, the problem with the pro-abortion crowd is that they are usually also for:
1 - abortions without parental approval
2 - abortions end up being for convenience only
Most pro-lifers accept (not all) abortion if it can be shown absolutly that the mother’s life is at stake.
However, I have asked on this forum several times over the last year for someone to show me the statistics of how many abortions were actually performed to save the mother’s life. I found a site in England that offered some statistics in their country which showed that less than half of a percent were actually performed to save the life of the mother. That’s a pretty low number to justify killing the other 99.5%. Don’t you think?
Obama and his crowd wants total unfettered abortions.
Republicans will need to be winning elections before they can ban abortion. And to win elections they’re going to have to shift towards the Pro-Choice position.
Florida, if you don’t like the pro-life movement, then defeat it. We’re not going to “go along” to get along. If we found that acceptable we’d have backed Clinton and Gore.
Of the “coalition” that comprises the political Right in this country, I think Christians in particular need to recognize first that their non-compromise issues are not ever going to dominate the fundamental positions of the group.
I think the hard core fiscal conservatives would do well to consider Jonah Goldberg’s warning. Barack Obama sapped some of the Christian base in this election by appealing to Christianity’s concern for the poor. In fact, having lived in both the northeast and the southeast, I can tell you that is the dominant difference between the message of northern Christianity vs. southern Christianity. In the north, the clergy talk about helping the poor; in the south, the clergy talk about abortion. Now, as an educated person, I know that giving people handouts is destructive and hence the opposite of charity, but not all Christians do. If libertarian pro-choice taxation absolutists gain the upper hand in the Republican Party, many Christians will see a very viable alternative in the collectivist rhetoric of the Democrats.
I’d be careful what you wish for.
Florida IT Guy - 15 November 2008 10:55 AM
They also need to realize nobody is trying to make them compromise personally on the things that are important to them, simply because a given candidate does not share their view on a particular non-compromise issue. Consider for a moment Nancy Pelosi or Dennis Kusinich. Both these individuals are far outside the mainstream, and neither could ever win national office. Most of the country looks at them and wonders how anyone could ever vote them into office. Christians need to realize some of the representatives they put into office are viewed in exactly the same way.
I don’t see great groundswells of popular support for Steve Forbes or Tom Tancredo either. Maybe the fiscal conservatives should compromise. Maybe the Minutemen should cease and desist turning all of the Hispanics into Democrats.
Florida IT Guy - 15 November 2008 10:55 AM
Personally, I believe the fundamentals of Conservatism are widely held among a significant majority of the country, but what turns off a portion of that majority are the more extreme positions held by some on issues like teaching creationism, banning abortion or bringing back institutional school prayer.
It is absolutely unfair to link together creationism and abortion, and it is a strawman to say that the Christian right wants to bring back “institutional school prayer.”
Overturning Roe vs. Wade and ending abortion on demand through the third trimester are legitimate issues by any standard. They are not extremist or unwarranted positions. And, for that matter, I dispute the idea that abortion in isolation is an electoral loser; it is a net electoral positive. You’ve got about 20 percent of the electorate--almost all of whom favor nanny state liberalism--who are militant pro-abortionists. The rest are either ambivalent or staunchly pro-life.
Furthermore, I don’t even think that a portion of Christians who believe creationism should replace science think it is a litmus test for policians, nor do I think that faction is very large. I think you see the MSM pimping every small town school board that makes an issue of it in order to drum up the impression that science is under seige and forward the liberal agenda through scare tactics that work on otherwise sensible people.
Finally, no Christian group wants to return to institutional school prayer, they want the converse—voluntary school prayer to be allowed; they want the Boy Scouts to be able to use a school building for free just like every other nonprofit is allowed to do, they want the Bible Club to be on the same footing as the GLBA Club. Why don’t libertarians spend the same amount of time decrying and worrying about the left wing demands for an extremist social agenda as they do the right wing requests for equality?
Abortion unless the mother’s life is at stake, IS WRONG
Homosexuality is an abomination.
I’m a Christian and a conservative.
The core issue is this.
In order for me and others like me to conduct our lives in the pursuit of life, liberty and the happiness, which is according to the Bible, THE GOVERNMENT MUST GET out of the way. PERIOD.
The Democrats and Republicans(about 80% of them) want government growth as fast as they can make it grow. They want to spend immorally and imorally sequester, “the fruits of my labor”.
They dont want me to depend on “the sweat of my brow” or to depend on my God.
They want my dependence to be on them.
Only when we can get back to a government like we had until approx. 1850, will we be able to then address these social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, etc. We Christians are being way to myopic. We need to get our heads up, take back control of the government and THEN we’ll have the freedom to effect changes in social issues.
-I notice that when it comes to abortion, it’s a “litmus test” issue, as in, we shouldn’t have a litmus test. Is the issue of tax cuts a litmus test FITGuy? What about illegal immigration?
-The flip side to “banning abortion” is abortion on demand, anytime for any reason. That’s where the law is now.
-No law that I have seen proposed has attempted to criminalize women procuring an abortion. That is a complete straw man argument.
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Florida IT Guy: Most people do believe that banning abortion is extreme, and if you cling to this as a non-negotiable qualification for political candidates, it will be a resounding loser every time.
That is a completely false statement. Close to half of Americans think abortion should be illegal except for cases of rape, incest or threat to the mother’s life. Reagan and Bush both were committed to the right to life and each won election to president twice. The Republican Party platform has been a pro-life platform since 1980.
-Both California and Florida, states that went for Obama, enacted bans on gay marriage. In Florida, it was with an impressive 62% of the vote. That means a substantial number of Obama-drones voted for it as well. If social conservatism was such a drag electorally, how did that happen?
See, I don’t believe that banning abortions is extreme. In fact, protecting life is what we SHOULD be about. If we are not for the sanctity of life, then we are for nothing.
The disconnect that many Americans see in the anti-abortion crowd’s argument is when they start talking about the “sanctity of life”, is that it seems to end when the child is out of the womb.
In my state there are over 9,000 kids waiting adoption and I live in a small state with a small population. Nationwide, the number is well over 120,000. Most are school aged, many have disabilities and are minorities.
When there are no more orphans, no more orphanages and all those kids have loving homes, I’ll start to believe the anti-abortionists cries about the “sanctity of life”.
In other words, put your money where your mouth is.
When there are no more orphans, no more orphanages and all those kids have loving homes, I’ll start to believe the anti-abortionists cries about the “sanctity of life”.
In other words, put your money where your mouth is.
You’re around, aren’t you?
Why aren’t you trying to solve it?
Or is your answer to kill 120,000 people with abortion?
The disconnect that many Americans see in the anti-abortion crowd’s argument is when they start talking about the “sanctity of life”, is that it seems to end when the child is out of the womb.
In my state there are over 9,000 kids waiting adoption and I live in a small state with a small population. Nationwide, the number is well over 120,000. Most are school aged, many have disabilities and are minorities.
When there are no more orphans, no more orphanages and all those kids have loving homes, I’ll start to believe the anti-abortionists cries about the “sanctity of life”.
In other words, put your money where your mouth is.
You contradicted yourself within your own post. If all support for children stops after they leave the womb, who’s paying for those orphanages? Who’s paying for the free public school system they use? Who’s paying for the roads, bridges and highways they use to get there? Who’s paying for the police forces that protect them? Who’s paying for the courts that try to make their fathers live up to their responsibilities? Who’s paying for Medicaid benefits and disability benefits that they get?
Why don’t you go down to one and take a poll of the kids there, ask them whether they’d rather be alive or be dead.
And yeah, those pro-life groups are just completely absent when it comes to issues of poverty, aren’t they?
Christians give more money to charities that provide for orphanages than the liberals who only spend other people’s money.
Who designed all the ridiculous regulations making it impossible to adopt a child? (Hint: it wasn’t the Christians)
Old School, you think that it is better to kill unborn children? What kind of solution is that?
Again, it is better to stand for the sanctity of life.
As far as the differences between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives or the religious right, I would rather be a defender and protector of unborn children than just an economic warrior and protector of low taxes.
As much as I believe in low taxes and limited government, I don’t think that as Christians, there is as much justification for that as there is for protecting the sanctity of life.
As much as I believe in low taxes and limited government, I don’t think that as Christians, there is as much justification for that as there is for protecting the sanctity of life.
Sure there is, radioman; both issues represent what is at essence human life: time. Breath after breath, heartbeat after heartbeat, time is what is granted, in individual measure, each human at their creation.
It is no more just to steal a man’s life’s-time spent acquiring wealth than to steal an unborn’s life’s time to spend as he or she sees fit.
