www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Ann Rice: Pro-Life and Pro-Hillary Clinton?

Terry,

I think nearly every major political candidate must be at least somewhat touched by madness.

I have never been one to seek to be near to the halls of power myself. My life in corporate leadership consulting alone has cured me of any desire to ever assume the mantle of leadership. The degree and depth of neurosis seems to be directly proportionate to the level of leadership attained, which is only perpetuated by the insulation from genuine, constructive feedback. There are notable exceptions to this rule in politics and the marketplace, but they are definitely the exception, not the rule!

In ICXC,

Gordo

Father Maximos of Holy Resurrection Monastery had a good reflection on this and a good middle way between the sides

http://hrm.ductape.net/blog/index.php?/archives/15-Pro-Life-and-Politics.html

To be sure, if anyone reduces their pro-life commitment to the voting booth and to party affiliation, it is never enough. As Father Maximos observes, the accomplishments of one administration can often be swept away by an incoming one.

That being said, I believe the post by Father Peter West gives us a sense of what would be lost to both the pro-life cause and to the lives of the unborn who are either directly or indirectly affected by his decisions and efforts if a radical, pro-choice Democrat were in office.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1140835/posts

The list is EXTREMELY long and only dates to 2004. Some items do not directly pertain to his pro-life, anti-abortion efforts. But the items that do are extraordinary in their number and impact.

It should suffice to say that NONE of these things would have been accomplished under a Kerry administration OR a Clinton administration or any other Democratic administration. Period. I'd post a list of all of the pro-abortion things done under Bill Clinton, but I fear, to paraphrase St. John, that the books of the earth would not contain it.

With respect to Father Maximos' thoughtful post, I do agree that there is a range of options to reduce the number of abortions or even eliminate it altogether. One of the primary aims is to change hearts and minds - and even the culture - to one that affirms and protects all life from conception to natural death. An additional aim - and even more basic aim - is to save innocent lives...each one of the millions lost to abortion which are individual and unrepeatable.

The problem is that Democratic administrations and policies accomplish neither, nor do they seem interested in doing either. In fact, Democratic administrations traditionally become apostles of the culture of death, exporting direct abortion and abortafacient contraception (especially the Pill with its secondary abortafacient qualities, RU-486, etc etc) all over the world, especially to the poor of Third-World countries, ALL AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. Our nation thus is forced to collude with spreading the culture of death by the use of our vast political and economic power.

Whatever degree of thoughtfulness Anne Rice has displayed in her post explaining her rationale for supporting Mrs. Bill Clinton, I believe her reasoning to be flawed in this matter. It simply does not stand up to the facts and to recent history. I think what has been done here with her public statement is to insert a measure of moral confusion - even possible justification - for voting for a pro-abortion extremist into the public debate.

It is not that I question the value of Father Maximos' insight into the need for some within the pro-life movement to consider how their sense of cause has been reduced to party affiliation. (I do know several pro-life Democrats...they are like grains of sand in a virtual sea of pro-abortionists...God bless them and grant them many years!...and public office!) Instead I question the relative value of what is praiseworthy in her post to what is potentially damaging to the cause of human life.

President Bush (and the two Republican administrations before him) through a myriad of very practical and very concrete ways has limited the scourge of abortion through the use of executive power, congressional influence and the bully pulpit (where he has on many occasions affirmed the need to build a culture of life). Many, many lives in utero have been saved because of the direct action, intervention and influence of this President.

Many innocent lives in utero(and I fear beyond just the womb through the growing, largely interdependent euthanasia movement, not to mention the growing Stem Cell movement which provides flimsy moral justification for creating lives in order to destroy and harvest the useful parts of them) will be lost if Hillary Clinton is elected.

It is said that the devil has two primary tactics: he either tries to convince us that he is all-powerful ("like God") or that he doesn't exist. The devil is also in the detail, as seen in the first section of this link.

http://usconservatives.about.com/od/profiles/p/clinton_votes.htm

In ICXC,

Gordo

A link to a wonderful organization. As an Eastern Catholic, I would consider an affiliate membership:

http://www.oclife.org/

Gordo

Lance, I will apologize if my use of the word "disparage" might have come off a tad bit too strong. I went back to re-read the things you have posted on this thread, and I agree -- you have never actually attacked the President personally. I guess I get so used to folks personally assaulting the President that my hackles go up too quickly.

Of course, no politician or political party is as committed to the pro-life cause as the folks on this thread are -- its just like it was in the years before the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was too soft on slavery, don't you know. I believe that President Bush's strategy to fight abortion has been in his judicial appointment strategy. The battle over appointing judges is that they must be approved by the Senate. Reagan may have appointed some pro-choicers, either because he didn't know they were pro-choice (many proposed appointees in those days, and even today, had to have a sketchy or no record on abortion in order to be acceptable to conservatives generally and then get by the vote in the Senate) or because occasionally the President has to put up candidates he know can be approved. That's politics. The Senate was solidly democratic in those days, as it is now. Yes, the "jury is still out" on the Roberts court -- its only been in place for a few years, and it has only ruled on one major abortion rights decision. Time will tell, but this is the first time I have ever felt like the pro-life cause has had a fighting chance in modern American politics, at least since 1972. Outside of an armed conflict akin to our Civil War, the only way to change the political landscape of abortion is through the courts. As others have commented, the more effective means is to work in tandem with the Holy Spirit to change the hearts and minds of America, on our knees, through prayer.

This is not the thread to argue about the war. But I must take issue with your reference to autocracy in the current administration. The war has been conducted with the approval of Congress, and under the established executive powers of the President. You might disagree on the "why" for the war, but the President is no aspiring dictator. The unpopularity of the war has led to many of those in congress who supported the war to lose the last election, and has many, like Hillary Clinton, backpedaling because she supported the war. If the President were running for re-election, his war policies would surely lead to his defeat. Again, that's politics.

I also believe that the primary thing MOST people react to in the President, even hate him for it, is that he is a believer, and an overt Christian.

I agree with you that I can't give President Bush or any politician a free pass on everything else if they're otherwise pro-life. There are many specific policies I don't see eye to eye with in the current administration. But the political reality is this -- President Bush has done all he can do in today's political environment to fight abortion, and has, through his judicial power of appointment and his ability to steer policy by executive order (e.g. his stance on stem cell research) has done more for the pro-life cause than any of his predecessors. Your feelings about the current war aside, the President deserves an "A" in this category.

Interesting topic and discussion.

I agree that abortion in particular, and a Culture of Life and Family in general, must be a critical, paramount issue as to how we vote and to whom we throw our support.

On that basis, I do not see how any support of the Democrats, at the national level, can conform to this. I don't doubt that there are individual Democrats at the more local levels in the South and Midwest who merit consideration from a moral perspective. Democrats for Life claims that some 40 percent of all rank-and-file Dems nationwide are pro-life in some sense on the abortion issue. But, be that as it may, this has been snuffed out at the national level.

Having said, that I must also confess and concede that in the past several years, I have come to believe that the GOP is only a marginal improvement in this area, and will in all likelihood give us little to no better results in fostering a true Culture of Life and Family. When a GOP president and GOP Congress continue to fund Planned Parenthood, when a GOP president declares his open, public support for same-sex civil unions, when a GOP VP thinks homosexual marriage is perfectly fine, when a GOP administration won't lift a finger to try to end privately based and privately funded embryonic stem cell research, then I am under no illusions that whatever hope Reagan represented in the late 1970s has all but slipped away.

One only has to look at Bush and Santorum's shameless support of Sen. Arlen Specter against a pro-life GOP primary opponent. Or how someone like Dennis Prager, who favors the continued legalization of abortion, at least in the first half of pregnancy, has been warmly welcomed as a featured speaker at GOP and establishment Religious Right events. If the GOP was going to make meaningful headway in these matters, we would have seen unmistakable evidence of it by now.

In my book, the GOP is as unconstitutional in its political stances as the Democrats. And I bring that up, because I increasingly believe that a lax attitude toward the Constitution in many ways winds up feeding a lax attitude toward a Culture of Life and Family.

Lastly (I promise) Catholic Answers identifies what they call the non-negotiable 5 as a basis for casting ones vote: abortion, homosexual unions, embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and euthanasia. I can agree with those left of center that some form of expanding on this may be called for in the future. Honestly, I don't see any matters dealing with war, the death penalty, or poverty meriting inclusion, as these are subjects that don't have absolutist prohibitions in general dispute within our society, and are clearly open, as the Magisterium has pointed out, to certan degress of legitimate prudential differences. But perhaps something like torture may have to become a future inclusion, assuming we can ever figure out what it is or is not.

Regards to all,
Robster

For me, individually, abortion is the thresshold issue, understanding that finding someone who is absolutely pro-life is far more difficult than finding someone open to the pro-life side of the argument. More and more, I find it is necessary to settle for the latter.

Personally, I'd put the death penalty above the other issues on the Catholic Answers list. Stem cell research on aborted or discarded "extra" embryos ranks pretty high with me, too. That's yet another problem we've created with widespread abortion. If the fetuses died of natural causes (miscarriage) and are donated to science, then that's okay. But I imagine that they would be few and far between, as well.

We all have to vote our individual conscience, weighing our beliefs against our choices.

Truly, I vote as an American, first. There is a complicated array of issues that I care about, many of them related to what I perceive as the most important of our civil rights. So I weigh them. I rank them. I listen to what the candidates are really saying. I guess we all do. That's why the debates the candidates have are useful. You get to "grade" them.


Lastly (I promise) Catholic Answers identifies what they call the non-negotiable 5 as a basis for casting ones vote: abortion, homosexual unions, embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and euthanasia. I can agree with those left of center that some form of expanding on this may be called for in the future. Honestly, I don't see any matters dealing with war, the death penalty, or poverty meriting inclusion, as these are subjects that don't have absolutist prohibitions in general dispute within our society, and are clearly open, as the Magisterium has pointed out, to certan degress of legitimate prudential differences. But perhaps something like torture may have to become a future inclusion, assuming we can ever figure out what it is or is not.

"I also believe that the primary thing MOST people react to in the President, even hate him for it, is that he is a believer, and an overt Christian."

Many people cannot accept that decisions he may make would be founded on higher principles than reason alone. They expect their President to maintain an objective frame of mind when making decisions. Since he is a man of faith, he cannot be trusted to advance (or maintain) social and economic justice as it has been established. And, worse of all, he may unravel the progress which has been made in what they see as human rights (gay rights, woman rights, and all other such rights).

The university is one place where the leftist radicals from the 1960-1970s congregate to proselytize their dogma in hopes of influencing the culture at large. Many students come to college unformed spiritually and intellectually and, if coddled by professors of that sort, end up graduating confused or confident in their professors' belief of the personhood of certain humans and non-human animals, in the fair distribution of material wealth, and in the developing ideas of environmental justice.

In a fiction workshop I participated in, I was surprised at a consequence of how my classmates understood personhood. The issue came up when we had read a story about a hunt where we discover the target of the hunt is a Caspian tiger. The story ends with the hunter's assassination by a character which had not been introduced. The class praised the story and said the ending was understandable. It was even said that the assassination of this poacher made for quite a good ending, since he was about to shoot one of the tigers. When they were near the end of their praise I said that human life is not equal to animal life. The whole class gasped and three of the girls in the front row glared at me while one of them said "well, that's just your opinion," then the whole class and the professor dismissed my comment and continued their praise of the story. It was then that I realized my whole class, professor included, made a moral distinction in the vein of Peter Singer, even if they did so intuitively. They saw the poacher as lacking personhood because he was a poacher and they saw the Caspian tiger as having personhood because it is a tiger or because it is endangered. Therefore, they saw it natural that the poacher was and deserved to be assassinated.

I only bring this into the thread because it is related to the pro-life issue and how people can individually justify abortion or euthanasia, whether legally, in their lives, or by how they look at the lives of others. When there is moral uncertainty, confusion, or misplaced confidence in the personhood of human beings, our culture cannot advance the circumstances of the unborn and it certainly could bring a wave of destruction to others like the handicapped or mentally challenged. At the moment in America, one in four non-miscarraged pregnancies end in abortion and, if one cares to notice, far fewer downs-children are being born than twenty years ago--many doctors recommend that parents start over and try again when their child tests positive for chromosome irregularity. With a confused understanding of personhood, it would be easy to look at an impoverished life and deem it "life unworthy of life". Such an intuitive understanding of personhood can be guided and shaped into a solid perception of human life. But it can also work the other way if America steeps too long in the culture of death. More people will be jammed into the category of life unworthy of life.

It offends many people when President Bush speaks about the unborn in religious terms, especially when he says that they have the sanctity of life. Their offence is rooted in an utilitarian understanding of personhood. The thoughtful ones among them would point to him and say that he is moralizing a very complicated issue, and that abortion is justified in some cases and unjustified in others. They would then add that it is not the role of government to prevent or inhibit a woman from freely choosing that just or unjust act, because the child is a part of her body or because it is a private matter between the woman and her doctor. When people look at Christianity from that viewpoint they believe that it has a backwards effect on the progress of our culture, and that we, as a society, must seek to free ourselves from its influence. That our President is such a Christian irks them to no end. His station is a constant reminder that their proselytizers have not wholly succeeded in properly educating our nation. So they tend to excuse the populace and claim that President Bush was elected by voter fraud, by deception, or through any conspiracy theory which would assuage their fears of the political route our culture may be going.

I apologize for the length of this post; my wife made some very good coffee this morning.

In Christ,

Terry

Soxfan59,

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

I think that the democrats and other members of congress share culpability for allowing President Bush to usurp some of his war powers. My take on it is that they were all, in both parties, cowardly. They did not want to come off as unpatriotic, and they did not give due attention to our constition.

I think many of us, whether we are liberal or conservative, might possibly agree that there should be some instrument to allow 3rd parties to get into the game, whether that is via fusion voting or run off elections. That way, we can vote our consciences, but not give the store away. We will not have to hold our nose in the voting booth, and vote for the less of two evils, and take a shower afterwards. It is time for the 2-party dictatorship to end.

thanks for reading my posts,

Blessings,

Lance

Rob,

Greetings! Glad to see you post!

It is not necessary for the issues you list above to have absolutist positions attached to them in order for them to be actionable. If a policy is bad and destructive, we need to address it.

Best regards, my friend!

Lance

Annie SFO: With all due respect, I do not think the death penalty, of which I am no particular fan, can be placed on the same par, let alone above, the Catholic Answers Non-Negotiable 5. It is not, nor do I think it ever will be, an absolutist prohibition in defense of life. Cardinal Ratzinger himself said during the last days of JPII's pontificate that this is an issue that has a definite latitiude of licit prudential differences. But the Vatican needs to tackle this issue more clearly and comprehensively so we all know where licit differences are allowed or not allowed and how the current mindset of the Popes on the death penalty is comprehensively reconciled with what was traditionally held by the Church.

Terry B.: Very interesting, if not sobering and chilling. Keep that good coffee flowing!

Lance: Agreed that issues do not have to be absolutist to be actionable. However, what I think Catholic Answers is saying, and I agree with it, is that those that are absolutist have to command the highest priority of criteria in our selection of a candidate.

Best to all,
Robster

May I say that all that we have discussed here points to the need for a Catholic Party?

Of course, we cannot even say that there is any such thing as a Catholic voting block, as observed by Dick Morris in his interview with Father Tom Loya.

We need to bring back certain aspects of the days of Catholic Action - pro-life, pro-family, pro-subsidiarity, pro-personal property rights, and pro-patriotism (not to be confused with nationalism...)

Gordo

Agreed, Gordo, a Catholic political party would be a great idea, though I'm sure we're still looking at a degree of internal tensions.

I hope and trust we'll agree to keep the filioque out of the party platform discussions!

Best to all,
Robster

I have no doubt that there are people who dislike President Bush because he claims to be a Christian, just as there are those who would dislike anyone else who claims to be Christian (or Jewish, or whatever). However, I think you overestimate the extent to which that is the cause of the great deal of anger/dislike/hatred that is felt towards President Bush. I have a dislike (to be honest, contempt is probably a more accurate description) that equals or exceeds the level of dislike held by many on this Forum for Senator Clinton or for former President Clinton. However, it has nothing to do with his claims to be a Christian. Furthermore, most of the people I've encountered who share my negative assessment of President Bush do not do so on the basis of his religious claims (most of them are Christians), but for other reasons.

Also, I would give President Bush no better than a c+ on abortion. I agree that he has done more than other recent Presidents (including other Republicans), but it is also my belief that if it were as big a priority to him as he sometimes claims it is, he would be far more vocal-regardless of the potential for political fallout. He does not cease to attempt to defend this war that he has done such a pitiful job of justifying and prosecuting. Why does he not do the same in defense of the unborn? Certainly all here will agree that the moral ambiguity that troubles this war (and war in general) does not apply to the horrific crime of abortion.

Ryan

Of course, the President who promised the most to Pro-life people and delivered the least was the one most people especially the right, lionize, the "Great Communicator" himself, Mr Reagan.