I. I watched this interview live today on TV:
"It's the logic of the Civil War," Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. "If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong."It makes perfect sense to me.
If it doesn't to some folks, then they ought to be quite content with allowing all 50 states to go back and decide whether or not slavery is acceptable again.
...
II. What prolifer in their right mind, Christian or otherwise, could honestly allow that unborn baby, that child of an illegal immigrant, to go to its death and that woman to be subject to a life of pain and regret, having wanted her baby but finding no help to keep her child?
I. Regarding Huckabee's point comparing abortion to slavery: The language of the Supreme Court in both cases was exactly the same and had the same effect: to de-personize a human person:
Scott v. Sandford--the 1857 Dred Scott decision--used the phrases "non-person" and "the property of his master" to refer to Mr. Scott. Both Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113[1973]) and Doe v. Bolton (410 U.S. 179[1973]) used the phrases "non-person" and "the property of the mother" to refer to the unborn child.I too am a bit stumped by the National Right To Life Coalition's endorsement of Fred Thompson. Haven't researched it enough yet, but the man (FT) has done way too much to muddle his message. He's done nothing but deflate whatever confidence I and many others might have had in him. He looks, sounds and seems uninformed, too "dancy" around some subjects. I'm not even certain one can say he has the best pro-life stance if he once lobbied for a pro-choice organization, as is well known now. Still researching, still determining...
If one has any doubts about Huckabee, really, the best thing to do is get a YouTube or whatever of his interview today on Fox. Listen to the whole thing. Otherwise you just. aren't. getting. the. complete. answers. Club For Growth, SCHMub for SCHMowth. Huckabee really did a more than able job at answering his critics on every count, without getting defensive (think Hillary) and without tripping over any of his answers and sounding clueless or out of touch (think Fred).
Another stupendous piece of sleuthing about what's really what was published last month here.
I need to research further Huckabee's idea of this so-called Fair Tax in more depth, to be sure which of the "they said, he said's" is in fact truth. If Huckabee isn't spinning the facts, he may have some pretty damn good points. My first rubber-on-the-road thought though is, it won't happen because the vast industry that is the C.P.A. industry won't be put out of lifelong and valuable jobs that easily, nor should they be. I happen to think my accountant is great. I'd feel very sorry for him if he suddenly had no career. Never mind how much howling, scratching and clawing we'd withstand from the IRS itself, who would all also be out of their jobs.
There. Maybe, just maybe, I've just proved wrong those pro-choice folk who think we're narrow-minded, blinders-on, one-issue-only people on this side of Roe v.Wade.
One can dream, at least.
And Thompson can cluck all he wants about the upcoming Huckabee-Chuck Norris campaign ad, but I saw the clip on Fox TV and I roared! Here's the URL.
I don't think it says Huckabee is a goofball about immigration (FT's claim). I think it says he's got a sense of humor and a humanness about him. It's a brilliant ad. It isn't meant to be taken as serious public policy. It's light, so FT ought to lighten up. He's just a little miffed he didn't think of it first, perhaps.
On a serious note, while at first I was a bit unsettled by Huckabee's support for in-state tuition rates for US-born children of illegal immigrants, I had to stop, take a step back, and think. Isn't that what Catholics, and for that matter all Christians, should support? These children didn't break any laws. They are US-born. What would Jesus do with our illegal immigrants, indeed.
For the record, I do not support deportation of the many good people trying to survive by coming here illegally. I do support securing the borders, sea-to-shining-sea fence and all, so we can stop the system-breaking surge and simultaneously make stick the process of getting legal status.
I do support, not amnesty, but some means of addressing a lengthy course of legalizing action and appropriate price-to-be-paid for achieving eventual legal status. I think some form of fine is appropriate, after all, they are not abiding by the law. But they also are not wholly to blame. The Corporate Americans--both on the job and at their plush private homes--wanted to shave costs to put those extra profits in their fat pockets, so they began, years ago, hiring a few illegals. Word got around, more illegals came, and soon the wages for those jobs were driven down so far that, naturally, "Americans don't want those jobs." Sound familiar? Of course, legal Americans don't want the dirt-paying jobs, but those jobs didn't used to pay mere dirt.
Same garbage with Chinese-made goods, for which we're now paying pipers left and right. Corporate America had to wring more and more profits out to pay themselves and keep inflating their stock prices. Solution? Pay dirt-cheap prices to China to make the goods, where there are miniscule-to-nonexistent safety/quality guarantees, keep the extra dough for the executives and owners, let the children lick lead paint off their toys, the dogs die and the American worker go without a lifelong job.
It's why I boycott Chinese-made goods every chance I get and have done so for years.
Getting back to Huckabee's in-state tuition and "they will know we are Christians by our WHAT?", it struck me: Heck, many, many of my friends and I have helped such women in crisis pregnancies outside the local abortion clinic when they changed their minds wanting to avoid the abortion. My friends and many, many prolife folks nationwide have helped all such women in painful desperate situations like that, even the illegal immigrant ones, get healthcare from the state, places to live, food, clothing, pre and postnatal care, and even jobs.
Who in their right, Christian mind could turn the illegal immigrant woman away when she said she'd changed her mind out there on the sidewalk and now didn't want to abort her baby? After having had an abortion myself in my twenties and eventually coming to abhor and grieve what I'd done, I find myself wholly unable ever to neglect to help even one woman--illegal immigrant or not--who wants to avoid an abortion.
How could I allow myself to be the priest or the Levite who ignores the beaten, desperate person bleeding to death on the side of the road? How could I not try to be the Good Samaritan instead?
What prolifer in their right mind, Christian or otherwise, could honestly allow that unborn baby, that child of an illegal immigrant, to go to its death and that woman to be subject to a life of pain and regret, having wanted her baby but finding no help to keep her child?
One can call Huckabee a kind of hybrid conservative/social liberal, if he agrees that we can't turn our backs on such children.
Maybe you'll have to call me one, then, too.
Cross-posted on Abortion Pundit
