Santorum and Paul on child slaughter...

I'd like to hear what Ron Paul's position on abortion is too. In what I've seen, he says that the legality of abortion should be left up to the states. That's fine, in my opinion (murder law is state law too for most killings, not federal law), but he should go on to say if he approves of state laws banning abortion. Does anybody know what his position on anti-abortion laws is?

I find it hard to take Ron Paul seriously on this. His answer seemed like equivocation. What chance is there (realistically none) that most states would choose, individually, to ban abortion? And how many abortions would that stop? Wouldn't women just rush off (or be rushed off) to the nearest state that still had legalized abortion?

There is little confidence on the part of most of us that anything will change, no matter who is elected. Abortion has been legal for nearly forty years. Administrations come and go and yet abortion remains.....

Not a huge Santorum fan, but his answer on this was right on!

May the Lord give wisdom to His people and lead us to put a stop to this bloodshed.

Blessings,
Nancy

>>he says that the legality of abortion should be left up to the states. That's fine...

I think not. If our US Constitution does not bind our civil magistrates to protect the lives of our nation's weak and oppressed and defenseless citizens, it's useless. Why bother defending our citizens when attacks come from outside our borders if such attacks are freely allowed so long as they originate from within?

Rule of law starts with the protection of the lives of those citizens most vulnerable from other citizens who are powerful and bloodthirsty. Where that duty is betrayed, there is no rule of law.

Speaking facetiously, maybe we could get Paul to show a little courage by pointing out that abortion is interstate commerce? You know, doctors driving or being flown in from other states to kill babies once a week. Planned Parenthood being a national racketeering business that employs hit men--isn't RICO applicable? Mothers traveling to Boulder and Wichita and New York City to purchase late term (post viability) murders of their babies.

Any man who says the civil magistrates of these United States have no legal interest in protecting the nation's most vulnerable citizens from oppression and murder is simply a coward. How have we gotten to this point?

Love,

Allowing abortion is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment anyway because it denies equal protection under the law. A true Constitutionalist would push for a federal ban.

There is probably a more infantile post than Travis' around but it is certainly an Olympic level competitor.

Ron Paul defends innocent life. A just war may be declared and fought and won. He's for that. He's not for unjust war. Santorum is, as Travis says, a warmonger, like the other candidates. Call the post "infantile" but "mere abuse is not criticism." Interact with the argument, don't name call. Travis is right.

Yahoo had a "news" article centered around "Controversial Santorum Quotes" this morning. I glanced over the quotes and did not find anything with which to disagree. I also heard about a vicious gay rights smear campaign being orchestrated against him. More reason to support him.

Regarding Paul, I watched parts of the Fox debate, and was appalled at his naivete concerning matters of foreign policy, particularly with regards to Iran.

David Grey, may I recommend you provide more substantive criticisms rather than constant digs? Makes reading this post not so enjoyable.

@David Gray, your ad hominem attack notwithstanding, Travis makes a perfectly valid point worthy of all Christians' serious consideration. Santorum's purported pro-life stance with regard to U.S. babies is inconsistent with his vociferous warmongering when it comes to Iranian babies who would very likely die in scores as a result of a war against Iran. And all that saber rattling just to win points for being "strong on defense." It's more like being strong on aggression and for no good reason. Like Iran really poses a threat to U.S. national security as it bankrupts itself in pursuit of a nuclear program.

Moreover, Santorum ain't all he's cracked up to be on the pro-life issue. He endorsed overtly pro-choice Arlen Specter in the 2004 republican primary over pro-life Pat Toomey, who ended up winning Specter's seat in 2010 after Specter switched to the democrat side of the aisle, where he should've been all along. That revealed volumes about Santorum's compromising political pragmatism and his lack of principle when it could cost him prestige and influence. When it mattered, he chose child slaughter. Also, in a Reuters article Thursday, it was reported that "he supported a bill that allows [abortion] in the case of rape or incest or danger to the mother, telling David Gregory on Meet the Press last week that this was a calculated compromise to move toward the greater goal of ending abortion." Yeah, right.

>>Santorum's purported pro-life stance with regard to U.S. babies is inconsistent with his vociferous warmongering when it comes to Iranian babies who would very likely die in scores as a result of a war against Iran.

No, Travis' point is ludicrous. If you men want to argue foreign and defense policy, that's legitimate and you might find a number of us agreeing with you at particular points. What Travis and you have done, though, is to posit moral equivalency between the bloodshed of the Middle East and the bloodshed of baby slaughter. Nothing makes this more clear than your own words where you speak about babies dying "in scores." Even one baby dying is too many.

The grisly fact is that the baby slaughter death toll from abortions is over a billion. This is the reason I've always called Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's "seamless garment" approach a seamless shroud. He was at it long before you men came along and since then we've all known that those who argue for moral equivalency between abortion and capital punishment or US military policy are not doing so because of their zeal for innocent life. The seamless garment/consistent pro-life line of attack is a foil, a Trojan horse.

As with each of the candidates, there are many things not to like about Senator Santorum, but his commitment to reverse the slaughter of a billion babies worldwide isn't one of them. On that issue I have little doubt that he's stronger than the others left in the race.

Love,

David and/or Tim, you don't see a moral equivalency in wanting to protect both Iranian and U.S. babies from needless and senseless slaughter? Do you really believe Santorum is being consistent in beating the war drums against Iran while touting his pro-life credentials? There is no valid just war argument for attacking Iran. They are not a threat to us. He is engaging in warmongering. Warmongering often results in war.

Are you not concerned that Santorum's irresponsible conduct with regard to Iran is a decidedly anti-life warmongering position? And doesn't that inconsistency give you pause as to his sincerity with regard to abortion? This is no foil or Trojan horse. I'm not a Roman Catholic arguing against capital punishment and all wars. I'm a reformed Presbyterian in support of capital punishment by a just government when necessary and in support of wars of actual self defense. But a rattling of the saber at this juncture with a relatively impotent Iran is nothing but a dangerous political game of trying to appear tougher on national defense than the next guy, which is reprehensible and very much tied to our responsibility of protecting human life and doing the best we can to prevent child slaughter within the framework of our Constitution.

It is NOT certain we will go to war with Iran or any other country in the near future. It IS certain, however, that many preborn humans will be murdered. We always take chances in the voting booth. I'll be considering the certainty when I cast my vote.

Claiming you are pro-life for believing life begins at conception, while relegating the issue of abortion for rape or incest to the states appears duplicitous.

Though it may seem benign, given many states would choose life, I think Paul's statements show a fundamental flaw in his libertarian philosophy at best.

A great question to pose to Ron Paul: should states give a mother the right to kill her conceived in rape toddler? After all - the only difference is the matter of time which brings development of the child. Every other aspect of the relationship is the same.

Either Ron Paul doesn't believe in the full humanity of the child at conception, he's deliberately appealing to the mushy middle (being two-faced), or, like Obama, he truly believes the liberties of some outweigh the lives of others.

Lewis, Amen and amen. I find that Reformed folks in general know little about just war theory (or application!!). I am extremely pro-life myself, which is why I see that abortion kills unjustly, as does unjust warfare.

>I find that Reformed folks in general know little about just war theory (or application!!). I am extremely pro-life myself, which is why I see that abortion kills unjustly, as does unjust warfare.

Odd, I find the Paulbots struggle with nearly anything related to the topic.

Consider this if you can. In war the state is performing a function which it is ordained to perform by God as testified to by Paul in Romans. Now the judgment whether war is warranted in a given circumstance is a prudential judgment made by those placed by God in authority.

Some peform this judgment in a manner which is corrupt as they are indifferent to doing what is right and see war merely as a tool to accumulate power and wealth (see Hitler, Stalin and lesser practicioners). But only the genuinely deranged believe that this is what is occurring in the US over the last 100 years.

We are then left with the question of whether our leaders have judged rightly in given circumstances. It is legitimate to question whether they have judged rightly. It is not legitimate to say that we differ with them consequently they are indistinguishable from the first group above. We may differ with the prudential judgment made, recognizing both we and our leaders are fallen, while recognizing the state is operating within the concept set forth by God, even if erring in judging when to fulfill that ordained duty.

So in our state we find war to be a tool wielded by the state which is ordained by God to do so, even if applied by fallen men in a fashion which is flawed.

There is no institution ordained to take the lives of unborn children for the convenience of parents. There is no circumstance in which that act can be performed in a manner pleasing to God, unlike warfare.

If you cannot grasp this you should be silent.

Or think of it this way, Ron Paul is Jesse Ventura with smaller biceps and better understanding of monetary policy.

>>What other solutions are there that are consistent with the Constitution?

Amending the Constitution is inherently consistent with the Constitution.

One big red flag with Santorum's posturing, however, is that he might one day be elected president and might not be content with simply reversing or nullifying Roe v. Wade. He might be tempted to use the abortion issue to add yet more power to the federal government. We could might end up with federal anti-abortion laws, thinking we've won the battle, but such a "victory" would likely have the effect of Ceausescu's anti-abortion laws in Romania before he was deposed: being forced from a central government, it would be almost impossible to enforce short of extreme totalitarianism, which could contribute in large part to a grassroots rebellion, leaving us without any laws protecting the unborn. And remember, we need to remember God's Jer. 31:33 promise, which is the only ultimate solution to abortion, short of Christ's return. Allowing the states to work through the issue creatively on their own is the solution most compatible with Jer. 31:33.

David Gray,
This is an excellent comment. I agree whole heartedly.

Abortion is either a matter for moral suasion or legal prohibition. Abortion is either a matter for state prohibition or national prohibition. Wrong and wrong. In both cases both are true and those who argue as if the two options in each of these sets are mutually exclusive are in error.

The defense of her citizens is foundational to any state or civil magistrate's rule of law. The civil magistrate must defend his subjects from oppression and murder whether the aggressor comes from without or within. We have to beat this into our heads. This is the reason the Declaration of Independence began with the right to life. Betrayal of this right as a matter of policy which establishes the wholesale slaughter of a whole class of the state's citizens is just cause for the "when in the course of human events."

Here's the text:

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When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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We may think it's procedurally unwise to fight this battle at the national level, but enough with this argument that the protection of a class of citizens being slaughtered at the rate of a million and a quarter each year is one of those matters "reserved to the states respectively." Let SCOTUS rule that husbands have a constitutional right to murder their wives if they get pregnant and see whether our mincing libertarians go around the country saying this, too, is a states' rights issue. Never.

Men may argue all they want about the limits of constitutional law, but when our nation was founded, we stated that separation is our obligation in times like these.

Argue that the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution flowing from it were wrong. Tell us the pastors and elders who signed on were unbiblical in their revolt. I'm fine with men making that argument. But to say that the rule of law in any state bars that state from defending her citizens against oppression and bloodshed is the sort of effeminate casuistry that permeates our nation, states, homes, and churches corrupting everything it touches.

Love,

Aye. And hearing no opposition...

* * *

The threat the instituions and men inside the Beltway pose to these United States and their consistent repudiation of the Constitution after vowing to uphold it cannot be overstated. Since 9/11 the foundations of our nation have been falling at a rate even more alarming than in the past. All citizens, but particularly Christians and others who believe God has ordained mediating institutions, should see the end game behind the laws passed to aid what the neocons called WWIV, the war on terror.

One reader just forwarded a good example of the betrayal of the US Constitution that too many Christians have been hoodwinked into thinking a necessary evil to enable our civil magistrates to win the war against terror:

http://americanvisionnews.com/1080/tenth-amendment-center-blasts-indefin...

The piece reminds me how, when I was at Columbia Bible College, I was arrested on a bogus charge of "interfering with a police officer." It's an interesting story, but let me cut to the chase. The president was desperate to keep the matter hush-hush because I was with his son and the son of the dean and a missionary kid when the bust went down. He wanted no bad publicity so he privately asked me not to talk about the arrest to anyone and he would have the school's attorney serve as my legal counsel at the trial.

Trial date arrived and the Dean took me to meet the attorney. A few minutes before the trial, we arrived at his office and he told me I should plead guilty to a lesser charge.

"But the only thing I'm guilty of is asking for the police officer's badge number," I responded. "The officer broke out the windshield of the (son of the president's) car. Every act of that police officer from beginning to end was a violation of our civil rights and you're telling me that I should plead guilty?"

(Let the reader understand the year was 1971 and the officer was a narcotics officer who thought we had drugs. We didn't. I've always assumed an informant directed him to the wrong VW Bug.)

The attorney responded to my question, "There's a war on drugs, and sometimes in order to win a war you have to do things that are illegal."

This is the reasoning behind our nation allowing the feds to do anything and to pass any law that facilitates their ability to fight "WWIV."

The consequences for our nation's abandonment of our hard-won civil liberties is already catastrophic and will only grow more so.

Love,

You're coming close to sounding like might makes right. By your reasoning, since governments have a God-ordained duty to defend, it matters little if they abuse their authority to pursue that duty. Those bad people probably had it coming anyway, right?

That's no way for Christians to be thinking. We can't go easy on government officials just because they have a duty to protect their citizens. Since they're fallen, we have a duty to hold them accountable. We must be careful not to give them carte blanche, a mile wide highway to attack whomever they please whenever they please, so long as they can come up with some lame convoluted argument that we would all eventually have been conquered and oppressed by the "enemy" if we hadn't preemptively struck them early on.

That would be a recipe for tyranny of a nation's citizens and its hapless foreign victims of aggression, not to mention thousands, if not millions of unnecessary deaths, tantamount to murder. Moreover, I'm convinced that the more cavalier a nation is in unleashing its military might on other nations, the more likely that nation is to kill its weakest citizens, including the unborn, and vice versa in a vicious cycle. We've unquestionably got both going on now in the U.S. Constant "preemptive" war has now become the norm for us. We've got to stop jumping into every conflict that we think might increase our influence over a region. Although we're more subtle than other aggressor nations have been (we don't come in and force everyone to speak English and to be subjects of the U.S.), we've nonetheless become an aggressor nation seeking our own preferences rather than actual needed defense of the U.S.

So, the goal should be to stop both abortion and our unjust wars. They two are completely intertwined. They both reflect our moral character and our respect (or lack of it) for the sanctity of human life.

Thus, Rick Santorum does not qualify for the support of Christians.

What you layout about the mounting laws to fight WW4 concerns me, especially when I think about my children. "Concern" is too light...it actually frightens me. These laws will eventually be used to harshly silence Christians, control churches, and justify physical persecution for those who live as Scripture teaches. Christians, not the ACLU, should be champions of this. QUESTION: Why does it appear that traditional "conservative" people/groups like Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Council etc... are blind to the long-term impact these laws will have? Looking forward to some input.

But David, it's really not a question of tone. The way we fight is a confession of faith. Rules of engagement. Nuclear bombs targeted against civilians. Military women carrying infants in their wombs into harm's way. Blitz bombing. Torture. Drones. Each of these decisions demonstrates whether we trust in horses and chariots, or the Living God; whether we believe in the God Who acts in behalf of those who fear Him.

And I say this without blushing. Either Psalm 20 applies to the People of God in their nations, states, homes, and churches, or it only applied to Israel's theocracy. I have no delusions that these United States are Christian, but we who confess the Only True Faith must confess that faith constantly and everywhere. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

And I'm equally concerned about our use of drones as I am about laws suspending our civil liberties here Stateside.

Love,

>>But David, it's really not a question of tone.

Not ultimately but some here clearly are very far from understanding our circumstances.

>>The way we fight is a confession of faith.

Absolutely.

>>Rules of engagement.

Hard to operate without them. Ours are extremely restrictive, much more so than in the Second World War.

>>Nuclear bombs targeted against civilians.

If that is to describe our targetting policies it would be an oversimplification and as I used to be part of the execution chain for the US it is something I'd thought about, many years ago. The thing was choosing not to do something was choosing to do something else. Making a choice which would enable aggression means a partial responsibility for that aggression. Sometimes good answers are hard to find in a fallen world.

>>Military women carrying infants in their wombs into harm's way.

Bad, bad, bad. I don't know a single candidate willing to take that on. As things stand today I would probably counsel my sons not to enter the military.

>>Blitz bombing.

What does that mean? After 20 years in the air force I don't know what you mean by that. I will say our targetting restrictions are about the tightest in the history of airpower.

>>Torture.

Oddly something where the church historically has been a bit more openminded. Depending on what we mean by torture and how expansively we define it. Defined properly I think we should forego it.

>>Drones.

We're overly reliant on them right now. They're a fine tool if used in the proper context. If you object to drones you should object to artillery.

>>Each of these decisions demonstrates whether we trust in horses and chariots, or the Living God. Whether we believe in the God Who acts in behalf of those who fear Him.

Not necessarily. The decisions can mean that, they don't necessarily do so. Someone who consciously chooses the evil choice for reasons of expediency does do that. Someone who is rightly motivated but differs in judgment is not necessarily doing that, even if he is wrong in his judgment.