From Iron Knee Political Irony:
I must admit that I wasn’t paying too much attention to the VP selection contest, and so when Clinton announced Tim Kaine as her VP pick, I didn’t know much about him. I know that people say he’s boring, or that he is too moderate. So I took some time today to investigate.
I might get some flak for this, but I have to say I like him and I think he is a very good choice. He is strongly principled without being an ideologue. He’s certainly an extremely likable person and wins the contest of the candidate with whom you would most like to have a beer, or even stretch it out to a long interesting dinner. He’s much more comfortable with himself while speaking than Clinton, which is good. He has humor and humility. I just feel like I can trust him, which is more than I can say for most politicians.
“He is strongly principled without being an ideologue.”
Oh yeah, he is STRONGLY principled alright. After all, he is a staunch pro-abortion Catholic. That makes about as much sense as a meat-eating vegetarian.
Thank you, T. Paine.
Your analogy might be even more useful with a touch of nuance.
For example, a strongly principled vegetarian might well be staunchly opposed to outlawing the eating of meat.
Pro-choice IS a principle, supporting LEGAL reproductive freedom. “Pro-abortion” is a misleading religious ideologue’s term that demonizes support of the legal right of pro-choice.
Anti-choice zealots have been working non-stop to impose illegal and extra-legal restrictions on women’s LEGAL right to choose.
Anti-choice zealots not only demonize legal choice, they have built the ideological foundation of propaganda that induces other fanatics to assassinate those they demonize. “Selling baby parts for profit” to name but one point.
So we have more murder and death in the name of religion. More suppression of women’s rights in the name of religion. It is the Sharia of the far Right. Sorry, the Catholic Church is not the law of the land.
And unlike the Pope, few of these “saints” have an issue with capital punishment, Bush’s torture and war crimes, or the gross economic injustices of global corporatist neo-liberalism. But you can bet your last trickle down buck that the same religious sort gets all rankled at being labeled pro-death, Pro-military aggression, pro-torture, or pro economic injustice.
It’s as if being “Pro-life” ends at birth. After that, you’re on your own, mom and kid. Don’t expect any help raising that child. Don’t expect us to support public health, public education and child care programs. Don’t expect us to support a livable wage to raise the child.
As many of them say about guns, “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.”
Burr, I appreciate your attempt to help me with my analogy. Respectfully, I think your revision falls short. Let me make another attempt. Let’s say Senator Kaine is serving in office in 1860. He has a summer home up in Maine. He absolutely thinks slavery shouldn’t be allowed in his summer home state of Maine, as he is personally against slavery. However, since he is a Senator from Virginia, and he doesn’t want to upset his constituents in his home state, he will consent to slavery being legal there. In the end, it is all about politics and not truly about someone’s life to the Honorable Senator Kaine. After all, just like Mr. Dubya proclaimed, slavery (like being “pro-choice”) is a principle and a legality during part of 19th century America.
Dubya, I am sure you are aware that just because something is legal does not necessarily make it right or moral. I refer you to pre-1860’s slavery and Jim Crow laws as an example.
I guess to some folks, the right to life of an innocent should be predicated on whether one can “afford” the child. Over 50 MILLION innocent lives have been eradicated since the egregious SCOTUS decision affirming Roe v. Wade in 1973. A huge percentage of those innocent lives were of black children. It seems that the Democrat party is STILL on the wrong side of history and what is moral 150 years after their support of slavery. The irony is that an overwhelming percentage of black Americans vote in support of that party. It is truly sad.
Thank you, T. Paine.
I’m always willing to help out an old friend when I can.
Your objection to Mr. Kaine is that he is a staunch Catholic who is also pro-choice. As he puts it, he is against abortion but still believes it to be a personal choice, not the business of government.
You suggest a that he is guilty of self-contradiction. I disagree.
The fact that you do not like his position does not make it internally inconsistent.
In fact, life is filled with such examples.
Barry Goldwater regarded racial discrimination as inherently immoral and refused to practice it himself, even as he voted against anti-discrimination laws. Senator Rand Paul still adopts a similar stand. Goldwater was wrong, and his can’t-legislate-morality stand was immoral. But he was not inconsistent.
Your meat-eating vegetarian example is imperfect because it does not account for distinctions. My counter analogy illustrates just that distinction. , A committed vegetarian may well oppose putting the rest of us in prison for eating meat. He could take that stand without any self-contradiction.
Having abandoned your initial example, the alternate analogy in which you seek refuge can allow for a similar distinction, with a radically different level of overarching morality.
Abraham Lincoln at the beginning of his career, was someone whose conscience did not allow him to own a slave. But he was not an abolitionist.
He was guilty of allowing what you and I recognize as a monstrous evil. We might applaud his private morality. We certainly should abhor his initial inability to extend that morality to the law. But his private morality did not contradict his inability to extend that morality to others.
I am happy, very happy, that he became a committed abolitionist, overcoming his too passive acceptance of evil. But self-contradiction? He was not guilty.
I hope this helps untangle your conservative mind, Mr. Paine.
TP,
Nobody is saying you have no moral foundation for opposing abortion. We get it. That’s why none of us are “pro-abortion” and resent being labeled as such. We know it can be an emotionally painful and difficult choice, that can often be determined by severe birth defects or rape.
I personally oppose abortion as a means of birth control, but it is not my right, nor yours, nor the Republican Party’s, to overrule the reproductive rights of millions of women. Those anti-choice zealots, who share your moral foundation, have agitated killers to assassinate doctors and Planned Parenthood staff and patients. Again, this is where “pro life” ends at birth.
“Choice” is freedom. “No choice” is the absence of freedom.
“No choice”, and for women only, is inequality under law, and is its own form of slavery to the dictates of theocratic Big Government. And that slavery is not just an analogy. A woman’s body is forced by government to endure for most of a year at minimum, and a lifetime at most, what the woman would choose not to do.
As I noted, this mandate would be dictated by an ideology and party that also cuts and undermines public health and public education.
If endless and misguided war on terror, and wars for crony profit and political gain, and a war on drugs, and capital punishment are the “price of freedom”, so is abortion.
I’d prefer we had none of the above, but then again, I have no choice in these matters.