Month: August 2015

Posted on

Does Size Matter?

“From the moment of conception, the unborn has a human nature. That he cannot yet speak, reason, or perform personal acts means only that he cannot yet function to the degree we can, not that he lacks the essential nature that makes those functions possible in the first place.” 

— Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life

Information about Planned Parenthood’s business model is landing fast and furious. The Center for Medical Progress, has released multiple exposés that deserve some thoughtful attention.

Consider the implications of the above quote regarding our innate humanness and the implications that this has for cherishing human life – regardless of race, nationality, skin color, size, capacity, or eye-color. His statement draws on obvious, self-evident, and common-sense truths that shatter the pro-choice/pro-abortion rhetoric.

In essence, there is no moral dividing line between a fetus and a new-born. Certainly, there are developmental differences, but those are differences of degree, not kind. In the same way, a grade-school boy is different from a college athlete only in respect to growth and development but not in any other meaningful way.

The logic for this view of human-life is known as the SLED Defense for Life. SLED represents an acronym for four logical arguments based upon Size, Level of development, Environment and Degree of dependency.

Here’s a summary –
Size

Does size matter in our moral assessment of human beings? Are larger people more valuable than smaller people? Since men are usually larger than women are women less valuable?

Obviously not.

What about embryos? They are smaller than newborns and newborns smaller than adults, but does that matter?

Men, teens, girls, or babies are not granted their inherent, self-evident, unalienable rights based on our consideration of their size or potential.

Actually, we should all be thankful that people are not graded for size, shape or color like Grade AA poultry eggs. Our internal moral compass informs us rightly that size doesn’t equal value.

Level of development

Does level of development matter in assessing our stature as humans?
Embryos and fetuses are less developed than you and I. Yet,  a two-year old is also less developed than a full grown man or woman. Is this where the pro-choice movement wants our nation to stand?

Are we willing to say that athletes have more worth or value than those who are less developed. Do bodybuilders have more worth than those who are handicapped or have not yet reached their full developmental potential?

Maybe it’s not just physical. Maybe this category should include mental capacity, also. For instance, embryos have no sense of self awareness. Would that make a difference? Does a six-day old baby have self-awareness?   What about those who lack the immediate capacity for performing normal mental functions, as do the comatose, the sleeping, and those with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Environment

Your location has no bearing on your humanness. Whether you are in the local elementary school or the county jail your value as a human being is not weighed differently. The same holds true for you while in bed verses your stature at the office. You may look more frumpy in one place over the other, but your stature as a human does not change.

If this is true, how can someone claim that there is a significant difference between the nature of the “unborn” and the “born?”  The ultimate nature of this being is still that of a human.

Degree of Dependency

Diane and I have a new granddaughter. Her name is Adelay Joy. She is about 6 weeks old and weighs in near 10 pounds. But, her size and weight are irrelevant, watching her is the thing that is really inspiring.

There are so many beautiful things, so many simple things, about her life. Her utter dependence on her Mom and Dad, even though she was born in a different state, to a different birth-mother and birth-father. It is incredible to realize that this little girl has not yet grown into a full, trusting awareness of her parents.

Instead, she is simply helpless and entirely dependent. There is no difference between this baby and the “fetus” that she was a mere 3 months ago. She was, and still is, completely dependent on someone else to provide for her life and sustenance.

Then, there is the sheer wonder of design. The whole gamut is quite intricate. From suckling, cooing, stretching, blinking, yawning, and kicking you can see all of her motor skills developing with artistic grandeur through her own cute and unrefined ways.

Humans differ immensely with respect to gifts, talents, preferences, and accomplishments. Yet, they all share in equal value as part of humanity. Humans are valuable because we are created in God’s image, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Our nations founders clearly echoed these sentiments in our Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

No human being, regardless of size, level of development, race, gender, or place of residence, should be excluded from the moral community of human persons. In other words, the pro-life view of humanity is inclusive, indeed wide open, to all, especially those that are small, vulnerable and defenseless.

Photos courtesy of: http://heatherwagnerphotography.com/blog/

Updated from original article on Roe v. Wade…

Posted on

Power and Privilege

Executive Focus

President Obama has both eyes focused on completing his “fundamental transformation” of America. As a statist, he believes in the power and authority of the government to regulate and control every aspect of our lives.

Even Alexander Hamilton, an ardent proponent of federal control, recognized the pitfalls of power concentrated  in government.

 “The instruments by which it must act are either the authority of the laws or force. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government, there is an end to liberty!

Hamilton continues by describing the exact events that we are witnessing in today’s Washington, D.C. He writes, “Those, therefore, who preach doctrines, or set examples which undermine or subvert the authority of the laws, lead us from freedom to slavery.”  This should remind you of the President’s efforts for executive amnesty, the EPA’s waters of the US or the administration’s purposeful destruction of America’s coal industry.

Unfortunately, only a handful of our so-called “representatives” in Congress are showing even a smidgen of the courage needed to withstand this statist onslaught.

For example, this summer Obama added more abuses under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The Antiquities Act was designed to allow U.S. presidents a swift method for protecting, “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest” on federal lands.

Obama has single-handedly designated over 260 million acres of land under his warped interpretation of what should be “preserved.”  The federal government exercises jurisdictional responsibility for roughly 635-640 million acres, or 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States and over 54% of the 12 western states. This means Obama has moved nearly one-third of that total acreage into this unique “wilderness” category. No drilling, no mining, no harvesting, no grazing, no fossil hunting or swimming with the kids without the appropriate paperwork from your federal overlords.

The amount of land moved by these Antiquities abuses is nearly four times the size of the sate of Oregon.  It should be obvious that this federal land-grab effort will not serve the public good and is an ideological bent that will ultimately destroy, not preserve our land.

The executive office should be stopped by one of the other co-equal authorities at the federal level, namely, Congress. Yet, if history is our guide, the judiciary will support these schemes and Congress will fund them.

Legislative Focus

It appears Congress is too busy looking for campaign contributions, quick legislative fixes that solve nothing, and finding enough money to fund all of the initiatives in the president’s budget. This Republican controlled Congress is complicit in funding unconstitutional executive policies, such as, Obamacare, Amnesty, the FCC and it’s takeover of the Internet, EPA’s destructive programs, the renegade operatives in the IRS, NSA, BOR, and the list goes on. Based on their voting records, it also appears that most members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, don’t care about the Constitution’s original intentions.

Founders’ Focus

Our Nation’s primary founding document, The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, identifies the reason that governments exist. The reason is simple. Governments are formed among men for the sole purpose of securing the unalienable Rights of everyone. These Rights are granted to man by his Creator, not government. These rights are obvious, self evident and identified as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

The next sentence in the Declaration of Independence identifies two other Rights which are seldom referenced.

  • “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” any government which fails in its effort to secure these first rights.
  • the Right “to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”

Notice, this power doesn’t belong to the President. It does not belong to the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches of government. It belongs to “the people” and we have these rights because God gave this authority to you and I.

President Obama doe not have the right to fundamentally transform the United States. Neither does Congress, nor does the Supreme Court.

These “rights” belong to the American people. We must not allow Congress to destroy our God-given Rights.

House of Representatives’ Focus

If the Republican controlled House disagrees with the absurd monument designations of federal land for historical purposes (Executive), or the EPA’s burdensome Power Plan (Legislative), or the recent Same-Sex Marriage fiasco (Judicial), why is the House funding the President’s artful designs for accomplishing these “fundamental transformations?”

The answer is as plain as the growth of the federal budget. They have become enamored with their own power and privilege. Alexis de Tocqueville described this destructive tendency in the mid-1830’s:

“[T]he sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society;
it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules,
which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls
cannot break through to go beyond the crowd;
it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them;
it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting;
it does not destroy, it prevents birth;
it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and
finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than
a flock of timid and industrious animals,
of which the government is the shepherd.“

Baa, Baa, Baaa

A Better Focus

Give your support to candidates who believe in open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty and prosperity of all Americans – The House Freedom Caucus

See how your legislators rank in FreedomWorks Senate Scorecard, FreedomWorks House Scorecard; the New American Index; the Conservative Review; or Heritage Action’s Scorecard.