Could I really support Obama-Biden?
I have been appalled by the slow return to form of the United States over the past twenty years or so. By that return, I mean that the USA was always a state which depended more upon aspiration than upon detail. This was a country which emerged when lawyers broke the articles of confederation, having forgotten the principles of the declaration of independence, and then deliberately forgot about them. It expanded by a Louisiana purchase illegal in international law and outside the terms of its own constitution; it then formalised the grab of half of Mexico by a nominal purchase. It upheld slavery until the pressure of expansion broke it and the Union, and then it suffered segregation, the enslavement of the Chinese, and the Indian wars until it rose to be its best self.
It was that best self of America I am a little in love with; but a republic run by lawyers where appearance has always been more important than objective substance is something that I refuse to be blind to. Most of its lawyers are schooled in being awful to succeed too--I have seen this with my own eyes time and again.
The corruption of the republic into just another Empire--and I don't like Empires, my family were part of a tradition which kicked one twisted brigandry out of most of Ireland--is deeply depressing.
Now, I would like to convince myself that the Obama-Biden ticket will lower the deficit, renew the country, unscale its vast commitments and make a real commitment to international law and, perhaps, to the federalist reform of the country. Yet a question Martin Kelly asked a few weeks ago, which I have strained to dismiss keeps coming back at me.
Obama and Biden are abortionists who supported partial birth abortion and termination on demand.
As a secular observer, can I put aside my Catholicism when I know that? Possibly I could. We live in a fallen world balanced around evils. Militarists who will ruin their country and who are likely to start a war can be balanced against abortion. I can see the point and even be inspired in different ways by a Nixon or a Kennedy, even though they were steeped in blood, and killing one or two people is the same to those people as killing many.
Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin can be conceived of as people who would be willing to fight a Persian war or who may use nuclear weapons against Iran and Pakistan.
Can I be reconciled to the blood price they both have paid and demand?
Obama and Biden show no wish to return to the west's best traditions of education, or to free education from government. They have said nothing about the hawking of the economy to the greed of a failing finance industry. 'Marcus Aurelius Biden', for whom I have a great deal of time, is not by any means a perfect candidate.
Obama and Biden do not seem to grasp the existential threat to the West; reckless McCain and strong but wrong Palin seem likely to worsen it. It comes from within, from the secondary consequences of a mixture of consumer capitalism, global finance, the ideology of rights, and a consequent narcissism. Is it too much to ask that they try to reverse this?
Obama and Biden seem to buy into the colossal waste of environmentalist nonsense that passes for stylish rationality in the modern West.
God help us. I hope that Martin is wrong, and the end of the west is not in sight. To despair is a sin.
I cannot avoid my conscience about the policies which any observer can see, and it troubles me. Thankfully, I don't have a vote, so I don't have to make the choice which my american reader, should they be let out of the hospital, is going to have to make in November.
I have been appalled by the slow return to form of the United States over the past twenty years or so. By that return, I mean that the USA was always a state which depended more upon aspiration than upon detail. This was a country which emerged when lawyers broke the articles of confederation, having forgotten the principles of the declaration of independence, and then deliberately forgot about them. It expanded by a Louisiana purchase illegal in international law and outside the terms of its own constitution; it then formalised the grab of half of Mexico by a nominal purchase. It upheld slavery until the pressure of expansion broke it and the Union, and then it suffered segregation, the enslavement of the Chinese, and the Indian wars until it rose to be its best self.
It was that best self of America I am a little in love with; but a republic run by lawyers where appearance has always been more important than objective substance is something that I refuse to be blind to. Most of its lawyers are schooled in being awful to succeed too--I have seen this with my own eyes time and again.
The corruption of the republic into just another Empire--and I don't like Empires, my family were part of a tradition which kicked one twisted brigandry out of most of Ireland--is deeply depressing.
Now, I would like to convince myself that the Obama-Biden ticket will lower the deficit, renew the country, unscale its vast commitments and make a real commitment to international law and, perhaps, to the federalist reform of the country. Yet a question Martin Kelly asked a few weeks ago, which I have strained to dismiss keeps coming back at me.
Obama and Biden are abortionists who supported partial birth abortion and termination on demand.
As a secular observer, can I put aside my Catholicism when I know that? Possibly I could. We live in a fallen world balanced around evils. Militarists who will ruin their country and who are likely to start a war can be balanced against abortion. I can see the point and even be inspired in different ways by a Nixon or a Kennedy, even though they were steeped in blood, and killing one or two people is the same to those people as killing many.
Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin can be conceived of as people who would be willing to fight a Persian war or who may use nuclear weapons against Iran and Pakistan.
Can I be reconciled to the blood price they both have paid and demand?
Obama and Biden show no wish to return to the west's best traditions of education, or to free education from government. They have said nothing about the hawking of the economy to the greed of a failing finance industry. 'Marcus Aurelius Biden', for whom I have a great deal of time, is not by any means a perfect candidate.
Obama and Biden do not seem to grasp the existential threat to the West; reckless McCain and strong but wrong Palin seem likely to worsen it. It comes from within, from the secondary consequences of a mixture of consumer capitalism, global finance, the ideology of rights, and a consequent narcissism. Is it too much to ask that they try to reverse this?
Obama and Biden seem to buy into the colossal waste of environmentalist nonsense that passes for stylish rationality in the modern West.
God help us. I hope that Martin is wrong, and the end of the west is not in sight. To despair is a sin.
I cannot avoid my conscience about the policies which any observer can see, and it troubles me. Thankfully, I don't have a vote, so I don't have to make the choice which my american reader, should they be let out of the hospital, is going to have to make in November.
Comments
A question for you: if Roe was ever struck down and the matter then went back to the states, could they be trusted to leave it at that, or do you see red states trying to prevent women crossing state lines to have abortions?
Mexico is a federal republic and the Catholic northern states ban abortion. Mexico City is not a state but it has all the powers of one and abortion is legal. It works because everyone respects the rights of a state. Would the Americans do the same?
Still, abortion 'rights' groups lose no opportunity to go on with specious arguments about rights and body property, which alienate natural supporters. It's become one of those brain-dead articles of faith, like global warming and anti-Israelism, that some on the bourgeois and bovine left revel in.
In the US, things are more desperate because it's a republic of lawyers rather than law. Were things to be returned to the states, as in Germany and Mexico, I think that red states probably would try to put obstacles in the paths of women; but not necessarily insuperable ones, as in Ireland.
I don't know, exile--I don't pretend to absolute knowledge on this point. I disagree very strongly with abortion, but I know good women with children now, who've had one on health grounds. I'd also not be keen to see it criminalised, but I would, as a citizen, want it discouraged.
Think about this 'right'. To kill a child because it's in your body--as in a car? To earn more in a twisted, ultimately unrewarding economy? To uphold some modern myth that the glittering prizes, those insubstantial, passing, monetised things, should be available to all? To avoid nature?
What a complex question. The way it causes culture wars depresses me, and the way that McCain and Palin are much more honest about what they think than the likes of 'left' candidates appals me. At least Camille Paglia, who supports it, is honest about how evil it is.
I think that it's going to lose Obama and Biden especially loads of votes, in any event, and that, as a first step, it should be imited and federalised. Here, it should be initially restricted to twelve weeks and then gradually removed as an option, as baby farming in the Amelia Dyer style has long been.