MY COUNTRY ~ Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty … ?

Tags

American Dream, American ideal, Individual rights, personal happiness, shining light on a hill

“I work hard. I’m not rich, but I have enough.
I take care of my family, provide for their needs.
I haul my weight and that of my family.
I will work to take care of them,
I don’t need subsidies or tax dollars spent on me.
Nor do I want to be taxed so those who choose not to work
and procreate more of their kind can live off my earnings.
Got it? Now lemme alone so I can work!”

MY COUNTRY ~ Tis of Thee

Once upon a time, America was inhabited by hard-working, proud, legal immigrants, grateful for a place to thrive and raise their families without fear of oppression for political, religious, or ethnic reasons. From the war ravaged European nations or nations undergoing harshly difficult times, these new Americans were eager to become part of the ideal for which America stood: … land of the free and the home of the brave! Land of the free and home to those BRAVE enough to build their dreams through blood, sweat, prayers and tears. AND Grateful, so very grateful for the chance!

Where is this American ideal today? If America was founded as “the shining light on a hill,” is her light still shining?

In human terms, America was founded for a specific reason. That reason was FREEDOM > > > Freedom to worship their God as they chose. Freedom to live as they saw fit. Freedom to be who they wanted to be. A new American didn’t have to be rich to own land enough to build his dream. He just had to do it! To work at it until he saw it finished.

This is America to me.

I was taught the notion of the American “melting pot” with neighbors from just about every imaginable European background. There were the McKuen’s two generations out of Scotland. The Dominico’s with 5 daughters, the Midocks with a back yard ice-skating rink, the Amslers, the Dills, the Allens, Davinski’s. It was not a big deal. The Polumbo’s were “rich” because they had a NEW car. The Perez family talked funny, but they were really nice. America was different than other places because we could be different and still be friends.

I was taught to be polite to everyone and to respect people, each individual. I was taught to behave. That means I was given acceptable boundaries, and if I strayed (which I occasionally did,) I paid a price (consequences!) I was taught not to lie or cheat. That when I did, I really only hurt myself.

I was taught to treat others the way I wanted them to treat me. To plant seeds of respect to reap respect. To plant seeds of kindness, and it would come back to me in my time of need.

I was taught to respect every person equally – There really was such a thing a “color-blindness,” maybe not everywhere, but where I grew up, it existed. A person’s sexuality was a completely private thing and simply not an issue. I know how foreign this sounds, but … it was real once.

Where has MY America gone?

• I believe there are more people who care and want to help one another than there are those who only want to take.
• I believe there are more people who believe in God than those who choose not to, but I also believe NEITHER side needs to shove their beliefs on the other. (respect)
• I believe there are more people who understand responsibility and accountability than those who don’t, though we may have forgotten the benefits.
• I believe there are more people who live by a moral code than those who don’t know right from wrong, but those who don’t need instruction and accountability … fast.

How many Americans today have read our founding documents: The Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution itself? How many have read the great works of our Founding Fathers and the works that influenced their political thought? People like John Locke, Cicero, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, and many others wrote brilliant papers on political thought that our Founders digested and miraculously amalgamated into the New Experiment that has now flourished for more than 235 years. Perhaps we are not Americans at all since we are uneducated, unlearned in what the idea of America is, what true Liberty is.

I believe our Founders knew what might happen if corrupt men and women were elected by an ignorant population – a population unaware of the Source of Liberty and the key elements to maintaining it, the utmost of which is a moral people seeking to better itself, to develop more virtuous character. This is like a foreign language to many today. Our ignorance has cost us much. Hopefully, it will not cost us

“There was a time in America when being on the public dole was a bad thing, today it is rapidly becoming a way of life. Getting this number back down to size is not going to be pain free.” (Clifton is a Conservative and blogs at Another Black Conservative

America Needs to Re-discover
Her Identity

Maybe we should ask the rest of the world to help us re-define our American Identity? Do we want to be known as the Global Bullies? or the Good Neighbor? The New Age “Robin Hood” (stealing from the rich and giving to the poor?) or The New Age Emancipator, freeing individuals to rise above their circumstances and find a noble purpose in wholesome work and daily, self-sustaining life? Do we want to be known as the spoiled brats of the world? it’s NOT up to government to define us. It’s up to the American people to decide where we go from here. Mistakes have been made all the way around. I’m not talking about political party here. I’m talking about ideals – about what direction WE-THE-PEOPLE want our nation to go. Freedom is only freedom until mine steps on yours, that’s why the Constitution is so vital and so perfect.

Somehow, we have to find our way through this fog until the Constitution once again lights our path with Providential blessing.

Good grief! This speech could have been given today … Americans, are you listening??? UP or DOWN? THAT is our choice!

What is important to you?

freedom to worship, or not, as you see fit, or allowing the sterilization of America from all religious affiliation and influence?

freedom to say what’s on your mind, or intimidation by way of political correctness?

freedom to live as you choose or a multitude of restrictions on your lifestyle and invasions into our privacy?

freedom to build a family or state issued “family units” defined by government?

freedom to choose your friends or political pressure toward specific group affiliations?

freedom to pursue purposeful work with reasonable compensation or government assigned “lemming” work?

time to pursue hobbies, pleasures, enjoyments or no money or time for such frivolousness?

happily involved in volunteerism and helping the needy or or hoarding “stuff” in fear?

helping others out of compassion or taxed exorbitantly to feed & house those who don’t want to work?

Help up or hand out?

“I predict future happiness for Americans
if they can prevent the government
from wasting the labors of the people
under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Thomas Jefferson

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Obama and Infanticide

Tags

Born Alive Infant Protection Act, Pro-choice, Pro-Life

By Jeremy Pierce on February 22, 2008

Barack Obama’s opposition as an Illinois State Senator to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act has been making the rounds, with a lot of people overstating their case on both sides. Some conservatives are taking this as a sign that Obama thinks infanticide is morally ok, and some liberals are acting as if his approach is what any supporter of keeping abortion legal before viability should say. I’m not sure either is true, but I’m also not sure this reflects well on Obama.

Here is the law. It says that if a baby is born alive, whether by intended delivery or by failed abortion, it is legally a person, a human being, a child, and an individual. It counts as born alive only if it is completely removed from the mother (ignoring an umbilical cord connection, which does not count as a sufficient connection according to this law). Partial-birth abortion is thus not ruled out, because a partial birth is not a complete removal of the fetus. As long as the birth has not fully taken place, this law threatens no actual abortion rights.

Obama’s reason for not supporting this ban is not because he thinks it’s ok to kill a born fetus. As far as he’s said, he does not actually support infanticide (and he didn’t vote against the law; he just voted present, although that in itself was part of a strategy devised by Planned Parenthood of Illinois to protect pro-choice politicians from voters seeing how pro-choice they are). For his actual words, see comment 9 here. What he says is that he worries about the logic. Here is what seems to me to be his argument:

1. The Supreme Court has declared laws banning abortion before viability to be unconstitutional.
2. There is no difference between the moral status of a fetus inside its mother before viability and the moral status of a born baby at the same developmental stage.
3. Therefore, banning the killing of a born baby at this stage is morally tantamount to banning abortion at a pre-viability stage. (from 2)
4. Therefore, the law is unconstitutional. (from 1 and 3)

This argument does not amount to supporting infanticide morally. It is merely an argument based on the constitutional issue. According to Supreme Court precedent, this law is unconstitutional, and thus it’s pointless to pass it. He gives no moral argument against the ban, just a pragmatic one. So from this speech alone it’s impossible to get any clear support for infanticide.

Nevertheless, I think this is a terrible argument. The first premise is clearly true. I would argue that the second is also true. I see no difference in the intrinsic moral status of the fetus merely because it is contained within someone or is separate. However, I don’t think 1 and 3 guarantee 4. There’s no legal reason why morally inconsistent laws can’t occur. You can ban something that’s morally equivalent to something else that’s unconstitutional to ban, as long as the first thing isn’t unconstitutional to ban. But the real problem I have with the argument is his inference from 2 to 3.

The standard pro-choice argument is not that a mother has a right to kill a fetus growing within her. Only the most extreme abortion-choice proponents hold such a view. The standard view is that a woman’s right to control her body is morally more important than whatever rights a fetus might have. That argument allows for a fetus to have some sort of moral status such that killing it would be prima facie wrong, even if the bodily rights of the mother outweigh that. What this means is that the standard pro-choice argument does not accord a mother the right to the death of the fetus. If it survives removal, her rights have been satisfied. That means the moral status of the fetus is what kicks in to determine what you should do in such a case, and this law settles that question. It does not threaten the woman’s bodily rights, at least not according to the standard justification of abortion rights.

What this tells us about Obama is that he probably doesn’t hold to the standard justification for abortion rights. If he thinks 3 follows from 2, then he must think a mother actually has a right to the death of the fetus growing within her, even if it’s born. If he thinks the moral status of the fetus is what justifies keeping abortion legal, then he must think the pre-viable fetus has no moral status and thus a born pre-viable fetus has no moral status. So the right to expulsion isn’t what gives the right to abortion. What gives that right, on Obama’s view, is the utter lack of moral status of a human organism halfway through its uterine development.

Now this is a view that some people have. Mary Anne Warren has a paper defending the view that infants born at full term have no intrinsic moral status. She gives other reasons to oppose infanticide, but she doesn’t base those on moral status of the fetus. Peter Singer and Michael Tooley actually defend infanticide as morally permissible. But these views are extremely radical. Obama’s view (as far as we see here) may not be as radical as Warren’s, never mind Tooley and Singer’s, but I think it’s still far more radical than the view of the majority that supports pre-viability abortion rights.

The U.S. Senate voted 98-0 in favor of a law virtually identical to this one (with the only exception being a clause that makes it explicit that this law doesn’t change any legal status of pre-born fetuses). Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) gave a floor speech explaining why no pro-choice Democrat should worry about such a bill undermining or conflicting with the Supreme Court’s guarantee of abortion rights. Hillary Clinton was among the 98 Senators who voted yes. No senators voted no. Yet Barack Obama refused several times to sign on to what a unanimous U.S. Senate was willing to pass. So I think this is a very good example of how far to the left Obama really is despite the unfounded sense that so many people have of his being a moderate. > > > READ MORE

NOTE: If this were the ONLY issue, it’s still more than enough reason to vote Obama OUT November 6th, 2012! Don’t be late!