Excellent point about actions in the shadows getting ahead of official policy. It might seem obvious enough that it shouldn't need mention, but because it's never mentioned, its obviousness fades and needs to be reiterated.

Posted by: Dan | February 8, 2008 11:06 AM

How incredibly hypocritical of Humanists (Liberals, Progressives, Democrats) to decry "torture," and you do everything you can to keep the abortion mills slaughtering unborn and delivered children in such ghastly, ghoulish and demonic ways, and yet, you will not look at what YOU DO. But you condemn others for doing the same thing as you do.

Donny -- please. There are a whole lot of folks on the political right, mostly secular, who couldn't care less about abortion. On top of that, one of the top right-wing figures in my city is also a generous supporter of Planned Parenthood.

In addition, Colombia and Guatemela, two places that Beiler mentioned where torture is being practiced, already have bans on abortion.

So get your facts straight.

Posted by: Rick Nowlin | February 8, 2008 11:24 AM

This is why I believe that the issues of torture and abortion are seperate - although there is an author of an article on this site that believe they are more the same.

I believe that there are people that use this issue agaist Bush that if it were their child that was captured and having their lives threatened would hire the best person trained in torture to extract the info from the person in prison that has info about their whereabouts.

Yes - some personnel got out of hand and humiliated a few prisoners and took photos for the scrap books. But let remember that more people died at the hands of an American in Teddy's car than at A-G Prison in Iraq. (rim-shot)

Blessings -
.

Posted by: Moderatelad | February 8, 2008 11:42 AM

es - some personnel got out of hand and humiliated a few prisoners and took photos for the scrap books. But let remember that more people died at the hands of an American in Teddy's car than at A-G Prison in Iraq. (rim-shot)

1. False analogy--drunk driving and torture aren't related.

2. Probably not even true

Peace,

Posted by: Don | February 8, 2008 11:44 AM

I agree with Squeaky. Plus my query re. capital punishment refers to joekc's comment about ethical consistency; e.g., if one opposes abortion, is it consistent to support capital punishment?

D

Posted by: Don | February 8, 2008 12:00 PM

Don--
I don't think it is a consistent position at all, as life is life and should be preserved.

However, I think they would say it was consistent, as those who are sentenced to die have done something deserving of death, whereas a baby has done nothing. Which, I suppose, is why some people find it is easy to justify torture, especially of terrorist suspects, even though it brings us down to their level (and I would argue even below their level since we trumpet our freedom and civil rights and how much better we are than the terrorists).

The point is well-taken, though, as often it seems like the life of the unborn is more precious than the life of the child that is born (An attitude I have noticed states that it's the government's job to ensure an unborn child is born. But when the child is born, it is no longer the governments job to give that child any assistance whatsoever.) I wonder if it is because we value those who are innocent and "sinless" far more than those who are not, whether they be a criminal, a terrorist, or a child on welfare.

Posted by: squeaky | February 8, 2008 12:11 PM

I agree with Squeaky. Plus my query re. capital punishment refers to joekc's comment about ethical consistency; e.g., if one opposes abortion, is it consistent to support capital punishment?

D

Way to go Donny , excellent in regards to bringing attention to the focus list of topics spoken to here , what the left views as important.
Three different subjects . Interesting to see how others from the left and right perspectives view each one . That often causes dis repect from both sides . More important to understand as a church , and deal with it .

Your question about abortion and consistency with capital punisment Don is exactly what Donny did . What was your point then ?

I agree with Squeaky too that they are different issues , one is often brought up when the moral superiority rhetoric comes into play , like oh yeah well you believe in killing babies , well oh yeah , your mommy wears army booys , etc .

I believe they are three different distinct topics , but my Faith and understanding of priroities go with Donny .

Capital punishment , is meant as a means to stop murder from happeing again, a deterent . The way the courts hand out justice and the period of time it takes I would say the deterent is not much . Life in prisonemnt makes sense to me .
But comparing putting a Murderer in the Gas Chamber and an abortion makes no sense to me , or waterboarding . From what I understand waterboarding has been stopped anyway , part of the reason it had been done was that the victim believed he was going to dy , that of course has been revealed in public they would not actually die ,

However , Capital Punishemnt , torture , and abortion are three serious matters for Christians to weigh in on .

The topic was on torture , but gGod and poilitics appear to focus on left wing issues that have become political footballs in democratic political circles , and often leaves issues that all Christians should come together on dismissed from being discussed here,

In that frame of thought , Donny was right On !

Posted by: Mick | February 8, 2008 12:43 PM

Mick,
"But comparing putting a Murderer in the Gas Chamber and an abortion makes no sense to me , or waterboarding ."

Perhaps that is Don's point.

Donny and Joekc want to divert the conversation. don't fall into the trap (as I did).

Posted by: squeaky | February 8, 2008 12:54 PM

Canucklehead wrote:

3) Is Donny's implicit support of such M'vlsm more acceptable than the M'vlsm of the abortion rights crowd simply b/c the former doesn't involve death?

Lemme answer your question with another question: Forced to make the choice, would you rather be waterboarded or killed?

Wolverine

Posted by: Wolverine | February 8, 2008 3:10 PM

In asking that question, Wolverine, you are implying that torture is just fine as long as the person survives. Torture is NOT fine even when the person survives, and it in fact, is NEVER fine, no matter what the justification. And there was a time when that position was shared by the U.S. government, at least in word if not in deed.

Posted by: squeaky | February 8, 2008 3:36 PM

Abortion is evil as the destruction of helpless human life. Moreover, as has been proven, the unborn baby - the foetus, if you will - suffers pain and recoils from the instruments of abortion just as a victim recoils while tied up helpless before torturers who advance wielding their own instruments.

What goes on the mind of the torturer as he tortures, in that of the abortionist as he destroys?

Is there no cause to call these things evil as long as the person torturing or aborting has a disinterested, pragmatic attitude, with no pangs of conscience?

In the words of Martin Luther, is there no work that can't be dedicated to God, and therefore enjoyed? And if there is no realization of evil intent, but a motivation to do good, is there nothing that can't be seen as carrying out God's will?

Why is it that people can separate out different types of abuses and not think of them in just the same way, as unlawful moral violations of their fellow human beings?

I submit that practicing a consistent pro-life ethic can be from an entirely different motivation from, say, that believed in by the narrowly anti-abortion moral conservative.

In the case of the abortion issue,there is an anti-sex bias of Puritan origin which believes women ought to suffer the consequences of their immorality by being forced to bear the child - and that a strong dose of humiliation is in order to make it plain that immorality comes at a cost. The idea that a woman could avoid this just consequence of her immorality by simply "getting rid" of the evidence is anathema. She has lain in her bed - now she must make up for it by suffering.

Of course, you will note the strong preponderance of Pharisaic hypocrisy underlying this, just as it did when they brought the woman caught in adultery before Jesus demanding that she bear the consequences alone. The punishment sought by the religious conservatives then was draconian, to say the least. Jesus' answer was that they could not demand this sacrifice of hers unless they were willing to take it themselves - which they were not.

And men have never been willing to bear the responsibility to this day.

This thinking was overtly carried out in society until the sexual revolution of the sixties, with all its unintended consequences of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

But I know firsthand how pregnant girls were treated as pariahs of society and the condemnation of them and the self-loathing they often then internalised. Meanwhile, the boys were removed and absolved from the situation in every case, and adoption secrecy laws still shield these deadbeat dads from being revealed to the children they fathered, for those adult children are still seen as a shame - illegitimate life.

When someone says that the inequality of blacks can be squarely laid at an 80% illegitimacy rate, just what is really being conveyed by this? That 80% of blacks are illegitimate persons and the circumstances of their birth
make them somehow inferior to others not born that way?

The "bad seed" belief still permeates our thinking, not so easily exorcised after centuries of its currency. If two people were never meant to mate and their act is evil, then how can the product od evil be as good as one that is the product of good?

These are the subconscious presumptions that still inform society's attitudes and create continuing perceptions that cause barriers. You will not choose to hire or promote what you believe to be inferior and you may not even recognize why you have this feeling they are inferior. Nevertheless, as advertising manipulation proves, subliminal impulses are powerful predictors of behavior, and will continue to impact us until recognised and understood.

Additionally, if you label someone as illegitimate, or shame the mother, it produces a powerful incentive to
make sure that the object of embarrassment, the baby, is never born at all.All too often, unexamined policies with good intentions produce unintended consequences.

Moral conservatives often have internalised within themselves a strong sense of shame about sex. The very word pregnant is "embarrasada" in the language of until recently the most repressed nation and Christian religious tradition, Spain.

It is clear to me that many of those who are anti-abortion have never clearly thought through all the assumptions that inform the positions of religious conservatives.

That said, as the product of one of those teenage girls, and with sisters and brothers in the same circumstance, I strongly oppose abortion. And I deeply love the mother I found after so many years, and in no way condemn her choices, either for sex or not terminating pregnancy, else we would not exist.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | February 8, 2008 3:58 PM

Donny;

When I started trying to follow Jesus, I had to reexamine everything, including my apparently Liberal politics. Turns out that although I was raised as a Liberal intellectual Democrat by -- Shudder!-- academic parents! in fact my politics sprang pretty directly from my own reading of the Word, OT-- the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms-- and NT-- including the sayings of Chairman Jesus in His Prophetic office. I am opposed to abortion.

Posted by: Ted Voth Jr | February 8, 2008 4:15 PM

Rick, agree totally with your points. And it's implicit with the episode, not only were they observers, but that one of them may have been the sexual partner.

It ends with Jesus asking where her accusers are and saying that neither does he accuse her, explicity saying thereby (and for which the Pharisees really hated that authority) that God does not accuse her.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | February 8, 2008 4:24 PM

When I first started following Jesus I had to rethink everything including my apparently Liberal politics. Turns out that I got my politics from my own unsupervised childhood reading of the Word.

I didn't know any better so I read the Whole Thing; the OT-- the Law, the Prophets, and the 'Psalms'-- and the NT-- including Jesus in His Own Fulfilment of the Prophetic ministry. The whole book, Donny, is about loving the LORD our God with all our being, and about loving our neighbor as ourselves-- that is, Justice. Liberals call it 'social justice'; the LORD God of Israel, aka the Lord Jesus Christ just calls it Justice.

Of course I oppose abortion; I doubt there's a Christian who advocates it. So I was at a stand. The Democrats were for abortion, the Republicans said they were against it.

And there was the resolution of my quandary: the Republicans SAID they opposed it. But don't worry, Donny, they'll never DO anything about abortion or the causes of abortion. In the first place if they did anything about abortion and solved the problem, they wouldn't have that issue left to attract gullible voters.

And in the second place to actually do anything about abortion would cost money, tax money, and the rich folks who really OWN the Republican Party-- not the salt-of-the-earth types who VOTE Republican, Donny, but the sort of greedy exorbitantly rich people against whom God continually thunders in the Word, are absolutely opposed to spending any of their own money or any of our tax money on 'promoting the general welfare'. as the Constitution says. Remember that Jesus only got angry at one bunch of people, the Religious Right! That's somehting to think about!

Too many of my Christian sisters and brothers have been suckered and cynically used by ungodly politicians. Think, man; that's why God put that brain between your ears.

Posted by: Ted Voth Jr | February 8, 2008 4:35 PM

"In the case of the abortion issue,there is an anti-sex bias of Puritan origin which believes women ought to suffer the consequences of their immorality by being forced to bear the child"

I have never met anyone who believes this. There are those who think that a woman should take responsibility for her actions, and that a baby ought not suffer for the mistakes of a parent, but that is a radically different proposition.

"That 80% of blacks are illegitimate persons and the circumstances of their birth make them somehow inferior to others not born that way?"

I don't think that's the intention at all. But fatherlessness remains a problem. It is worse to grow up without a father than it is to grow up with one.

"Moral conservatives often have internalised within themselves a strong sense of shame about sex. The very word pregnant is "embarrasada" in the language of until recently the most repressed nation and Christian religious tradition, Spain"

The root of the word means burden or impediment. It refers to the literl physical state of pregnancy, not any emotional feeling of shame.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 8, 2008 4:58 PM

"Of course I oppose abortion; I doubt there's a Christian who advocates it."

If I believe that torture should be legal, would you say I advocate torture? I think you would.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 8, 2008 5:27 PM

"...to produce the maximum state of terror in the individual."

Analyzing it, you could logically argue that torture is tantamount to terrorism, thinking about it this way, just a different circumstance of it, more focussed on a single individual at a time, though sometimes it is applied in group settings too.

Unfortunately, once war starts, things can quickly deteriorate to the point where there are no moral limits recognized at all on either side, only technological limitations.

Perhaps with better and less-controlled communications, we are merely seeing the greater truth of what was better hidden from us in the past.

Certainly this is what history has taught us, with the increasing death rates of civilians escalating over the last century from 10% to 50%, to 70% and now 90% of casualties in the latest wars, despite the supposed discriminating accuracy of increasingly sophisticated and destructive methods of killing.

Perhaps terrorism has been made more palatable to individuals by the precedent of all nations' indiscriminate widescale firebombing of non-combatant civilian cities in World War II, the massive bombings in the Vietnam era and of course the still consciously avoided subject of the atomic bombings by ourselves of two non-military civilian city targets for testing purposes at the close of World War II.

Apparently, terrorism became just another tool in the arsenal of war, one that in its primitive forms is more attractive to a side at a technological disadvantage, while the more sophisticated technologically mechanized methods of slaughter (producing the terror effects of "shock and awe") are preferred by those with greater resources.

Does it work? Have our own people ever seen it as a preferential (or only) option? The victory of the Civil War which brought Reconstruction was overthrown through the admitted and overt terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan and its supporters - effectively ending any benefit to the sacrifice of the 600,000 war dead until the non-violence resistance a hundred years later of the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

It does appear to work better for the side that from a Christian standpoint decides initially to abandon morality in pursuit of it aims, even if there is some underlying legitimacy to its complaints - that is, if the aim is to maximize destruction and foment trouble, the most immoral methods are best at this.

It is thouroughly fatal to its cause for the side that seeks the higher moral ground to utilize it in a conflict, however, since it increases evil, not good.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | February 8, 2008 9:56 PM

"If you believe that torture should be legal, of course I would say that you advocate torture. "

And I would say the same about abortion.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 9, 2008 1:16 AM

I feel like ground zero is the rabbit hole we went down as a nation years ago, into some bizzarro world where the basics of what it means to be a Christian are so distorted I don't even recognize us anymore, if we can't stand up and simply say the truth that torture is wrong. I can't understand what there is to consider or debate about it. The Bible says forgive, turn the other cheek, walk a second mile. The Bible says the meek shall inherit. The Bible says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. The Bible says in humility, consider others better than yourself. The Bible says that nothing we do has any value without love. The Bible says let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And one more - God says Vengeance is mine. Just because the terrorists who set off this chain of events don't follow Christ doesn't mean we should throw Him out, too. Forget politics. Forget what ifs and logic problems and debate strategies. It's not hard. Torture is not a Christian thing. It's darkness in us.

Posted by: kimberly | February 9, 2008 2:00 PM

"The topic is not abortion. Many who think torture defensible oppose abortion rights, many oppose both , some defend both, and some think torture monstrous but think abortion should be legal."

And I think this is the issue. We should come to terms, as a nation, with how we treat human life. Right now, we cannot move forward with any sort of common ethic because we don't want to explore what that ethic might be. If you want this to transcend politics, and enter the moral sphere, your disinterest in this broader question is untenable.

At present, the question of what constitutes torture and when certain practices are acceptable has become political. Waterboarding is the cause du jour, largely, I suspect, because it can be tied to the Bush administration to some degree.

Is there some sort of moral imperative that we ban the practice of waterboarding? If so, it is entirely relevant to ask what that imperative would dictate about the unborn, especially since one of the major tenets of Sojourner's is that we ought to advance a consistent ethic of life.

Without that context, I have to wonder if the outrage directed at the practice isn't simply the beating of a hollow drum.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 9, 2008 8:53 PM

So Kevin, is it that you are willing to allow your opponents scope for abortion as long as they allow your political allies scope to torture?

It really sounds like this is your position.

Since most conservatives other than Christian conservatives have had little enthusiasm for acting in any practical way on lessening abortion, but yet dredge it up in direct mailing very emotionally to Christians every time there's an election as a hot button donation issue, are we therefore doomed to never be able to take moral opposition to any evil issue, at least in words, until they do act?

It's true that there's little that can be done when the administration stymies any laws it disagrees with by signing statements which amount to executive nullification, but still, we could at least speak out.

My own moral courage to speak out against any evil is not dependent on what some other person thinks or does not think about or whether they decide to agree with me first or not.

I am not responsible for whether other people have a consistent pro-life view before I can.

When I know what is right, I can't put the responsibility for my own moral failure to speak or act on others' doing or not doing so.

Morality is not determined by a majority vote - as Frederick Douglass observed, "The man who is right is a majority."

Anything else is relativism.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | February 9, 2008 9:11 PM

"So Kevin, is it that you are willing to allow your opponents scope for abortion as long as they allow your political allies scope to torture?

It really sounds like this is your position."

You are using the term "scope" in a peculiar way, so I am not entirely sure what you are suggesting.

"are we therefore doomed to never be able to take moral opposition to any evil issue, at least in words, until they do act?"

No. Where did I suggest anything of the sort? I am suggesting that we provided a framework to contend with all of these issues in a consistent manner.

"I am not responsible for whether other people have a consistent pro-life view before I can."

Fair enough. But surely you are aware that, amongst the two parties, one is more interested in ending waterboarding and the other more interested in ending abortion. Both sides have used each issue for political gain, but that's a separate issue.

This essentially forces us to create a hierarchy in terms of which moral problem we wish to eradicate. Whomever picks one issue is incentivized to downplay the importance of the other issue in some manner.

If we want to contend with these issues in the moral sphere, that doesn't work. As Jonabark says, it's either moral or it is not. It's either God's standard or it is not.

And if that which falls below God's standard ought to be remedied by way of a ban, then we must discern how God views the practice of inflicting pain or death on another human being. Once we discern that, then we can speak with moral clarity on the issue, rather than ranking moral issues.

If you want to discuss politics, then we can talk about whether conservatives really care about abortion anyway, and I can ask whether Democrats really care about waterboarding, and we can have all the political discussions entailed by these issues. Then, yes, we can treat the issues as completely separate.

But you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 9, 2008 11:16 PM

You want to make being against torture moot, relegate it to an issue only of concern to liberals, which they are not really sincere in opposing, just "using" it to "get" the administration with a "gotcha" for their own insincere political gain. After all, there's no way that liberals could have any "morals" (a common belief of conservatives) so they couldn't really oppose torture on moral grounds, only for political advantage, and thus to be dismissed as having any serious moral claims.

Making an argument in this way tries to make it implicit that a stance against torture's no more moral than one that's for it, possibly even less so. Since "conservatives" are said to be against abortion - unlike "liberals" - they are inherently more moral because they they can affirm they are moral absolutists. Therefore, their stance "for" torture will inherently have more moral weight than the "liberal" one against it - since "liberalism" is inherently relativistic and "conservatism" is not.

Arguments from "conservativism" inherently stand on a moral foundation, while "liberalism" has no foundation at all and therefore by its own nature has no moral authority to claim anything wrong. Therefore we can discount anything claimed to be wrong on the face of it, if only we can determine that a "liberal" is making the argument, since "liberals" can by definition have no standing to make any moral claims.

This self-referential and syllopsistic kind of analysis leads to its own gross moral inconsistencies and moral anomalies in practice, though. An example is Jim Dobson's response to the Tom Foley scandal, where the Florida Republican was attempting to develop homosexual relationships online with young former male congressional pages. Foley was also the congressional watchdog to supposedly protect youngsters from online sexual predators.

Dobson was completely blinded to the moral failure aspects of the scandal, completely "focussed" on what he called the insincere use of Foley's supposed moral failings by liberal opponents to hijack the elections.
To him, the inherent "good" of electing Republicans who hold to belief in an absolute morality was more important than their hypocritical failures in upholding it. Good Faith trumps bad works.

Initially, he claimed that "the boys" had been simply playing an unpleasant "prank" on the innocent Foley. That was beacuse in Dobson's moral universe, a Republican inherently has values that no political opponent could have. He argued that what was important about the matter was that it was being used by the enemies of conservatives to cause people not to vote Republican, which made any moral outrage merely underhanded political subterfuge and therefore of no genuine importance.

This is a lot like claiming the police shouldn't act on tips from criminals who turn each other in, because the motives of an informant in turning in another criminal for murder aren't pure but driven by jealousy. Somehow the immorality of wrongdoing is nullified if enemies who aren't moral are the agents of its being revealed.

This behavior was repeated in the case of the scandal regarding Ted Haggart, Colorado Springs megachurch pastor, then-head of the National Association of Evangelicals, a close Dobson confidante and conservative political ally. To recap, Rev. Haggart was revealed by a male prostitute in Denver to have been one of his clients, even supplying Haggart with methamphetamine.

Again, initially Dobson's response was to downplay the problem, because of the fact that it came from political opponents who inherently did not stand for morality, not to "focus" on the truth regardless of its source and intentions. In other words, the accusations had no standing regardless of their veracity because they were intended for political gain against the "godly" in the coming elections, which rendered the motivation of the revelation insincere and inherently irrelevant whatever its truth because of the accuser's own immorality.

This shows the moral hazard of subjugating truth to politics and power seeking. There's a reason Satan offered all those world kingdoms to Jesus - if only He would "bow down." And apparently he did have the power to offer them, and were Jesus to have come in our own time, the Washington Monument would have been in that tempting vision, too.

This is the sin of "my country, right or wrong" and "my party right or wrong" or any elevation of "my" above what's right.

I know that right is right and wrong is wrong regardless of the political, moral or religious background of the source. I won't let the affiliation of the person who reveals facts discount those facts, whatever the reason they may have or have not for revealing them.

The truth is not simply a convenient cudgel to wield or not depending on whose ox is going to be gored by it. We know that too often, moral outrage is simply a hypocritical vehicle of convenience to pillory opponents.

That does not mean that there is no truth or even that politics trumps truth (PC-left or PC-right) in a kind of good end justifies bad means reasoning, with the good being the triumph of my own side through fair means or foul.

Torture is wrong. Even if liberals are against it, whatever their reasons are, sincere or insincere, makes no difference.

In extremis, one might as well have dismissed those making a moral issue of 12 million innocents being vaporized in central Europe, not as a genuine moral outrage, but merely an insincere concern that was masking opposition to a political rival doing it, exposed for propaganda purposes, and thereby to be discounted. It is true that most people weren't concerned with the fate of Jewry until their own financial and geopolitical interests were threatened. Nevertheless right and wrong are never properly determined by pragmatic, selfish ends. It doesn't matter whether those revealing atrocities were or were not communist sympathisers, the atrocities are still atrocities.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | February 10, 2008 12:33 PM

Apologies to Rev. Ted Haggard wherever he is - and I do wish him well - for misspelling his name as "Haggart" in the previous post.

Posted by: Sojourner Truth | February 10, 2008 1:04 PM

"Why don't you just tell us if you are for or against waterboarding and why or why not instead of trying to confuse the issues. "

I don't think we should use waterboarding. However, my point stands that the waterboarding is simply a political gong. If we ban waterboarding, we'll have accomplished little.

Sojo doesn't do abortion related posts, but rather discusses torture in light of a call for Christians to move beyond abortion toward a consistent ethic of life. The very mission of this movement insinuates a marriage between the two.

Unless the "consistent ethic" rhetoric is simply a means of establishing a moral hierarchy between the two issues (and it well might be), it should be full pertinent to address these issues together.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 10, 2008 1:39 PM

"You want to make being against torture moot, relegate it to an issue only of concern to liberals, which they are not really sincere in opposing, just "using" it to "get" the administration with a "gotcha" for their own insincere political gain. After all, there's no way that liberals could have any "morals" "

For the record, the words you put in quotes were not used by me. Please don't do that. I don't want to make torture anything of the sort. You suggested that conservatives simply "dredge" up the abortion issue for political gain. I pointed out that this is an entirely different sphere of discussion, and that I could say the same thing of Democratic efforts on this issue.

I said nothing about liberals not having morals. You are trying to paint me into a corner.

"Making an argument in this way tries to make it implicit that a stance against torture's no more moral than one that's for it,"

That isn't even close to what I said. Are you actually reading my posts?

"possibly even less so. Since "conservatives" are said to be against abortion - unlike "liberals" - they are inherently more moral because they they can affirm they are moral absolutists."

No, I am saying that if we are going to claim moral authority, we should have a discussion about what is a moral absolute and consistently adhere to that standard. You seem resistant to this discussion. Why is that?

"This self-referential and syllopsistic kind of analysis leads to its own gross moral inconsistencies and moral anomalies in practice, though."

I think solipsistic is the word you are looking for, but making an argument that refers to your argument cannot, by definition, be an act of solipsism. Either way, I nowhere touted the virtue of the conservative cause.

I don't disagree with your assessment of Dobson's response to Haggard and Foley, but I am lost as to the relevance.

"We know that too often, moral outrage is simply a hypocritical vehicle of convenience to pillory opponents."

I agree, which is why we shouldn't separate and categorize issues. Sojourner's argues that one loses credibility when they oppose abortion, but take a lenient stance on torture. I argue that the opposite holds true as well.

Setting aside what Dobson thinks, would you at least agree with the above paragraph?

Posted by: kevin s. | February 10, 2008 2:18 PM

Abortion, a great moral failing, would sink to even greater degradation if, as torture is, it were funded by government, performed by government officials and performed against the will of the woman with her imprisoned and tied up.

The best we can say for abortion is that it is an evil of private enterprise and thus somewhat practically protected by the exercise of private discretion. The worst we can say of torture is that it is government-sponsored and compulsory.

We don't condemn even compulsive abortion by governments anymore, either, in certain countries that do that (along with routine torture) since they are such great business partners of ours and have stepped in to rescue our subprime-devastated economy with even more loans.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that passing laws is going to affect either abortion or torture practices. People are going to insist on doing it anyway without a change of heart, in back alleys as regards abortion. In the matter of torture, there are no laws that can be passed that an executive simply cannot disregard and assert not being bound by while exercising a commander-in-chief role, and there being no legal authority whatsoever that can restrain him from doing anything at all while he exercises that role. In a time of permanenet and endless war, there is therefore no competent legal authority beyond the president himself.

If ever there was a proof for the law being unable to save, just as the New Testament teaches, this is prima facie evidence of it. The law cannot regenerate moral imbeciles.

Posted by: N.M. Rod | February 10, 2008 4:56 PM

Passing laws that won't be enforced or obeyed simply brings the law into disrepute. For laws to be of effect, there has to be moral assent to them by the majority of the people they apply to. Laws govern only exceptions to their rule, otherwise enforcement would be practically meaningless, as in Prohibition. Hearts and minds are won, then law follows. It must derive from the consent of those governed by it.

In regards to abortion and torture, we have a situation where the majority of those practicing it do not recognise any authority to make them stop, and there is no sufficient authority to make them stop, until a sufficient majority of all of us together recognise what we do is inherently wrong.

Those of the politically conservative evangelical persuasion who belive "we can change laws faster than we can change minds" misunderstand both the limited nature of law and the greater power of moral force.

Posted by: N.M. Rod | February 10, 2008 6:46 PM

"Changing the law is part of changing the mind. This is particularly true of torture. Until someone says that waterboarding is torture, the majority of Americans will be indifferent to its practice."

You can't change the law in a democracy unless people want it changed. If they are indifferent, they won't want it changed, and it won't be changed.

"Someone" - a lot of someones - have pointed out that we torture, regardless of how we redefine language so it has no meaning, just as Orwell observed.

"However, the fact that the law will be disobeyed by some is no reason not to have the law."

We have a law against torture, pushed through against the wishes of the executive and others, largely at the behest of John McCain, who had to argue for its morality forcefully, and who is reviled to this day for it by the conservative talk radio megaphones.

It is meaningless, for the law passed by Congress has been rendered impotent by executive nullification and will not be enforced.

It's hopeful that whomever is the next President, McCain or a Democrat, won't be relying on those signing statements or the novel theories that support them.

However, that we have to wait for another person to sit in that executive position shows that we're no longer a nation willing to be governed by laws, but of men. We are reduced to waiting and hoping for an abitrary emperor more congenial to moral concerns, which is certainly a new paradigm for American politics.

Whether we have laws or not, appears irrelevant to overriding executive decisions mandating "enhanced interrogation methods."

Neither are we likely to have enforceable laws regarding "enhanced birth control methods," until people's hearts and minds are brought under conviction, and that applies equally to Presidents and voters.

Posted by: N.M. Rod | February 10, 2008 10:57 PM

Posted by: Tortured Logic | February 11, 2008 12:00 AM

'...gives his "blessings" to torture.'

No - but I believe that we need to define what is torture and what is not. Many of my sons friends are or have been in the military. Some have talked about what they went through so that they could understand what they might be put through in case they were captured and how to handle it. Even the UN can not come up with a definitive definition of torture. The Geneva guidlines are full of loop holes.

Whatever he is, he is not of Christ.

Another self proclained oracle of God?

Blessings -
.

Posted by: Moderatelad | February 11, 2008 8:39 AM

Donny is upset at the Democrats over abortion so he must really be angry with the Republicans but forgot to tell us. The majority Republican appointed U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed abortion as the law of the land again. The Republicans also made all the laws from 1994 to 2006. And they got elected telling us they would outlaw abortion.

A psychologist would tell Donny about "displaced anger"

Posted by: STeve | February 11, 2008 10:08 AM

Posted by: Joerg Schmidt | February 11, 2008 9:57 AM

I believe that you would have a lot of support on one of your issues from this site and it's authors. Not sure that you would have much support on the other issue - lip service at best.

That is why I believe that they are two different issues. The moment you put them together you delute their effectivness.

Blessings -
.

Posted by: moderatelad | February 11, 2008 10:20 AM

"Clarence Thomas"

Ask Anita Hill about whether or not he falls under the definition of "moral degenerate"

Posted by: squeaky | February 11, 2008 11:15 AM

Clarence Thomas was a mediocre supreme court nominee. There were better but they wanted someone to take the spot that way they could appear to honor the spirit of Marshall. I don't think any of us are perfect when it comes to sex but stuff about Thomas had been circulating for years and Anita Hill had the courage to point it out. She's a hero in my view.

p

Posted by: payshun | February 11, 2008 11:42 AM

"Ask Anita Hill about whether or not he falls under the definition of "moral degenerate""

Why, so she can say the same things she was trotted out to say? That woman spoke out of conviction about the same way Kennedy did, only she was more calculatedly dishonest about it. Thomas was a fine nominee, and is a fine judge.

Posted by: kevin s. | February 11, 2008 6:41 PM

Rod, I think it's called American Navel-Gazing at its best.

Or worst.

Posted by: I said it, I believe it, that oughta settle it | February 12, 2008 12:08 AM

I just don't think keeping us safe is God's top priority. I like my life and I'd like to keep it awhile. I hope I'm not killed or maimed in a terrorist act any time soon (or by a stray bullet in a drive-by, or getting hit by a bus...), but I would rather die knowing I lived a life striving to love my enemy as Christ commanded me than live on indefinitely knowing I'm responsible for the torture of anyone at all. And I am responsible; my comfortable midwestern US lifestyle is being protected by it as much as my life. That's just not ok with me.

Posted by: kimberly | February 12, 2008 4:50 PM