[Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Ah, yes, the great mass of progressives...

And what's the price of admission to that unnumbered throng?  Unquestioning 
fealty to the assertion that theological thinking is irrational?

Uh, if you're considering broadening the membership requirements at all, you 
might like the new book by the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, "Reason, Faith, 
and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate" (The 2008 Terry Lectures -- 
delivered at, of all places, Yale).

+++

And now, for Today's Prize (to be announced along with the winner), name the 
Former Progressive -- now, sadly, apparently no longer a member of the Great 
Mass -- who recently wrote the following (no googling!):

   "But what is a conservative meant to think? Since the major preoccupation of 
liberals for 30 years has been the right to kill embryos, why should they not be 
suspect in their intentions toward those gasping in the thin air of senility? 
There is a strong eugenic thread to American progressivism, most horribly 
expressed in its very successful campaign across much of the twentieth century 
to sterilize “imbeciles.” Abortion is now widening in its function as a eugenic 
device. Women in their 40s take fertility drugs, then abort the inconvenient 
twins, triplets or quadruplets when they show up on the scan.

   "In 1972, a year before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized 
abortion on demand nationwide, virtually all children with trisomy 21, or Down 
syndrome, were born. Less than a decade later, with the widespread availability 
of pre-natal genetic testing, as many as 90 percent of women whose babies were 
pre-natally diagnosed with the genetic condition chose to abort the child.

   "One survey of 499 primary care physicians treating women carrying these 
babies, however, indicated that only 4 percent actively encourage women to bring 
Down syndrome babies to term. A story on the CNS News Service last year quoted 
Dr. Will Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life, reacted to the 
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) pre-natal testing 
endorsement as another step toward eugenics.“The progress of eugenic abortion 
into the heart of our society is a classic example of “mission creep,’ ” Johnson 
said. “In the 1960s, we were told that legal abortion would be a rare tragic act 
in cases of exceptional hardship. In the ’70s abortion began to be both decried 
and accepted as birth control. In the ’80s respected geneticists pointed out 
that it was cheaper to hunt for and abort Down’s babies than to raise them. By 
the ’90s that observation had been widely put into action. Now we are refining 
and extending our eugenic vision, with new tests and abortion as our central 
tools.”

   "So if we have mission creep  in the opening round, what’s to persuade people 
that there won’t be mission creep at the other and the kindly official 
discussing living wills won’t tiptoe out of the ward and tell the hospital that 
the old fellow he’s just conferred with is ripe to meet his maker. The author of 
the provision – now dropped – in the health bill before Congress – for  “end of 
life” counseling was Democratic Rep Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Blumenauer has 
denounced the “death panel” description as a  “terrible falsehood.” Maybe so. 
But Blumenauer is hot for “death with dignity”, as a speech he made in Congress 
in 2000 makes clear: “A major concern [in an attempted revision of the Balanced 
Budget Act]is a provision that would criminalize decisions doctors make on pain 
management for the most seriously ill and overturn Oregon's Death with Dignity 
Act. Oregonians have twice voted to support the assisted suicide law. H.R. 2614 
not only is an attack on the Democratic process, but also threatens to pain 
management. There is evidence that doctors are increasingly hesitant to 
prescribe pain medications to terminally ill patients for fear of being accused 
of unlawfully assisting a suicide. The on-going attempts by Congress to 
criminalize the doctor-patient relationship are a threat to pain management in 
all fifty states.”

   "For forty years, every American president has deprecated the powers of 
government to improve the public weal. Why now should Americans believe that any 
government-backed “health reform” will do them any good, as opposed to assigning 
them the appropriate lifespan, relative to their income and contributions to the 
corporate bottom line, which is what the present system amounts to?"

--CGE (who likes the title of this thread)


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> This statement is what makes it so difficult to strengthen the anti-war 
> movement.
> 
> Wayne's (and others') ideas about abortion and what the state should or 
> should not do about it will never be accepted by a great mass of 
> progressives. It's one of the destructive/divisive aspects of theological,
> i.e., irrational, thinking. --mkb
> 
> 
> On Aug 24, 2009, at 11:52 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> 
>> It's pretty hard to imagine that one ought to trust the beneficent
>> benevolent care of the poor to a coercive government that promotes and
>> funds abortion, imperialism, endless war, corporate malfeasance, and
>> financial fraud.
>> 
>> The new covenant message is that people would be internally motivated to
>> care for one another.  It's been effective where people dare to apply it.