Thursday, August 21, 2008

Abortion Politics

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Obama too pro-choice to receive vote for president
by Andrew Dunn | Asheville Citizen-Times | August 21, 2008
As a Roman Catholic, it is unfathomable to even think about voting for Barack Obama. Not only is Obama the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, earning an A-plus from the likes of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, his record has proven his support for the heinous act of partial-birth abortion — a gruesome, torturous procedure where a scissorslike contraption punctures and collapses a third-trimester child’s skull. Sounds like something Dr. Mengele would have performed at Auschwitz.

ONLINE COMMENT TO LTE:

1. The writer wants to use the coercive power of government to impose his own peculiar moral and religious views on all others. This is the movement toward theocracy and it is antithetical to America's purpose and significance in world history.

2. His lurid descriptions of surgery are an appeal to emotion. It is intended to gain sympathy for a wider religion-based abortion ban movement. This movement must be opposed vigorously; as all such religious-based political tendencies must.

3. The writer also says,
Obama promised that if elected president he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would cancel every federal, state and local regulation on abortion, as well as abolish all restrictions on taxpayer-funded abortions.

This is precisely what should happen. I oppose interference in these matters by the federal government. This is not a constitutionally mandated function. These, and many more issues besides, should be resolved by the individual states. This can be achieved by "canceling every federal, state and local regulation on abortion" and beginning again where the founders left off: with extra-constitutional legislation originating in the sovereign and independent states.

If the "Freedom of Choice Act" does anything to reverse the loathsome encroachments of religionists into the domain of secular politics and governance in a pluralistic society, then I heartily support the Act.

FURTHER READING

Purpose-Driven Politics
by Kathleen Parker | August 20, 2008. At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.

More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics
Pew Research Center | August 21, 2008. Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters.

Religion vs. America
by Leonard Peikoff. "A specter is haunting America--the specter of religion..."

Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life
by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh | Coalition for Secular Government. Amendment 48, the ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the Colorado constitution, is profoundly anti-life. It would obliterate basic reproductive rights in Colorado based solely on the faith-based fiction that a fertilized egg is the moral equal of a born infant. The biological facts show just the opposite: that only the pregnant woman, and then the born infant, are persons with rights.

The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages
Andrew Bernstein | The Objective Standard | Winter 2006–2007

Offshore Drilling

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Offshore drilling: short-term fix, not a solution
by Benjamin Ossoff | Asheville Citizen-Times | August 20, 2008
. . . drilling off our shores is not a solution but a futile short-term action to no benefit.

ONLINE COMMENT TO LTE:

Straw man argument.

Offshore drilling is not intended to be a "solution." It is one of many means of increasing domestic oil supply. This is a positive value and the marketplace should be unleashed to pursue it. Increases in supply help to satisfy demand and lower prices.

If offshore drilling was indeed a "short-term action" with no prospect of any benefit to any parties, then a free market would take pains to avoid that and any other similar action.

FURTHER READING

Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil
by Alex Epstein. "With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First..."

Open ANWR Already!
by Jon Basil Utley | Reason Magazine | August 14, 2008. The media constantly repeat the claim that it would take a decade to get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into oil production and about as long for offshore continental oil to start flowing. Most accounts promote the views of extreme environmentalists to make the issue appear so hopeless that we must instead "change our way of life" rather than tap into proven oil reserves. In July, CNN repeatedly reported that offshore drilling would take "seven to 10 years" to get into production. Yet Brazil's Petrobras expects its new finds in extraordinarily deep waters to already be producing 100,000 barrels per day in just two years. What is wrong with American oil companies that they would take so long?...