To Dispel a 'Conservative' Fantasy

 

To Dispel a 'Conservative' Fantasy

©2021 Ross Williams

Those on the American political right love to call themselves conservatives. They believe they are conserving values, whereas those on the American political left are inventing values left and right [pardon the pun], assuming those fresh-out-of-the-box values are universally held, and shooting their fellow leftists in the feet – and elsewhere – as they do so. Ask Dave Chappelle, J K Rowling and, new to the Canceled By My Own club, Margaret Atwood.

While I hold that most of the values invented over the last few generations by the American political left are incoherent, undiluted pig shit, a handful of the values being 'conserved' by the American political right are no better, let alone values that originate from the sources conservatives cite.

Some values conservatives claim they are conserving are, of course, political. Specifically, American political, as conveyed by the Constitution. The same Constitution which demands that the government leave people alone to do what they will, even if they will be stupid, self-serving, irresponsible asshats who endanger themselves and those around them. The only time the government is not required to leave an individual alone is when the government was given clear and unambiguous authority to control the activity the individual is undertaking.

By means of example, as I've said for decades: drugs are stupid and the people who do drugs are stupid but it's not the government's business. If it were, the Constitution would have included it as a power of government. It doesn't, so therefore it isn't. So toke up, snort up or shoot up, dudes. Whatever suits your fancy. If slow motion suicide is your thing, then get on with it.

Other values conservatives love to claim they champion are theological. Almost exclusively judeo-christian theological values. And colliding with conservatives at the intersection of Political Street and Theological Avenue is, naturally, abortion.

I was raised as a christian. United Methodist, to be specific. And in many regards I still am a christian, if not a United Methodist. I haven't been to church in decades, though, and plan to keep it that way. I'm mystified by the concept of a god that takes attendance. Pecuniary pastors have concocted many rationalizations as to why regular attendance is spiritually necessary, mostly devolving upon the financial support that tends to accrue, in order to push the message, naturally, about rendering to Caesar and god, in turn, as appropriate.

But about abortion... the political argument used by conservatives in conserving the political value of Liberty is that the Constitution requires the government to defend and protect inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and property. Conservatives are correct about that. But at the risk of being a broken record: you don't get points for being correct, you get points for being pertinent. Conservatives demand to QED the political leg of their stance by concluding abortion must be made illegal because it takes a life. “Abortion is murder”.

Not so fast.

One of the many many many arguments currently being disingenuously paraded by liberals, “progressives” [ironic term] and other socialists is that the government has an identical obligation to compel all Americans to wear masks and submit themselves to a growing series of injections of an experimental pseudo-vaccine which is actually a gene therapy treatment. ...and which doesn't seem to actually work. The propaganda put out about the matter also very clearly equates not masking and “taking the jab” to be conspiracy to commit murder. “Life, liberty and property” includes “life”, after all; not accepting experimental therapies costs lives. Another QED.

If the object is simply to fetishize a societal commodity in Constitutional terms in order to impose a personal viewpoint on the rest of the nation, in the process disregarding the underlying principle of Liberty, the freedom from government imposition into one's personal life that our nation was founded upon, then both conservatives and liberals [“progressives”, socialists, et al] are playing the same duplicitous game.

The pertinent reality is that the government's power to do even those things it is allowed or required to do is extremely limited. Not getting a series of Wuhan Fluhan pokes may indeed result in a given individual passing a virus onto someone else who ends up dying from it. That's entirely possible, but beside the point. The point is that the government has no legitimate power to require it. The same risk to others' lives can be claimed about everything. Congress [or a state legislature] doesn't have the power to make those laws and, under our definition of governance, the President [or Governor] absolutely doesn't have the power to dictate it.

The government's power to protect the life of the “unborn” is very specifically restricted by the Constitution itself. The Constitution defines who, in our nation, has a clear and unambiguous expectation of having their inalienable rights protected by the government. Those people are [and I quote]: “All persons born or naturalized”. Abortion, certain psychotic liberal states' laws notwithstanding, occurs upon the “preborn”, which therefore excludes the topic from the Constitutional argument used by conservatives in conserving this particular value. An actual legal gray area might be claimed when it comes to “viability”, with the understanding that viability doesn't equate to heartbeats. See Terri Schiavo.

If it were any other way, if the power of the government were UNnlimited in doing what it claimed was “common sense” protection of individual's rights to life, liberty and property, then the government could use any means available to impose mask mandates, experimental pseudo-vaccines, and indeed preventively stick black males between the ages of 16 and 34 in prison. As statistics have fairly conclusively shown, the Shanghai Shivers infection and death rate would remain unchanged under mask/vaccine mandates, but street and property crime would drop, and the murder rate [of mostly other black males between 16 and 34] would asymptotically approach zero upon the summary incarceration of young black males. Good thing the power of government is extremely limited, ainnit?

Once again, it isn't a conservation of Constitutional Principles that drives the conservative political position regarding abortion. It is an attempt to dishonestly rework a Constitutional Principle in order to impose a denial of liberty upon others for the personal satisfaction of a specific ideology. Congratulations, conservatives. Your political preening on this is indifferentiable from the “progressives'” preening on so many other topics: Whatever it takes to get our way.

If you believe in limiting the power of government, conservatives, then it requires the government's power to be limited even when it costs you your personal desires by governmental means. If you can't do that, then you aren't a conservative.

Likewise, the theological argument against abortion is equally strained. There is zero unanimity on the subject among christians, and most notably among catholics whose religious doctrine as dictatorially imposed by Papal Bullshit requires being anti-abortion. Catholics themselves are among the most frequent abortion-getters.

Many christians will parrot an anti-abortion sentiment in front of other christians, but secretly [or not-so] give a wide range of caveats, exclusions and exemptions in private. “It's not my place to say.” “But only after viability.” “Just not as birth control.” Et cetera.

Christians, on the whole, are perfectly fine with legal abortion even if they are not fine with all abortions being legal. From a strictly christianity in a democratic republic perspective, it's a wash at best and certainly doesn't represent a clear doctrinal imperative. This is particularly the case when it comes to the metaphysical assertions made about abortion: the soul of the aborted.

If the soul doesn't inhabit the “preborn” until birth – as many christians firmly believe – then it's an entirely moot point in the first place. Abort... don't abort... it's completely outside the reach of this theology.

On the other hand, if the soul attaches to the “preborn” before birth, as arguably most christians believe, then we are left with the question of when this attachment occurs. Two primary soulification points are most accepted: “quickening”, and conception.

“Quickening” is the moment the fetus first “kicks”. If one is a preborn quickener, then abortion before quickening is moot to christians. If one is a preborn conceptioner then – if the theology is correct and sinless souls go straight to heaven, then it is also moot. The aborted soul is in heaven. ...if the theology is correct.

Oh...but!!

Not all christians accept the same theology. Wasn't that your point, Ross?

Why, yes it was. Paste a gold star on your forehead.

Many christians – most particularly the loudest christians [and where “loud” arguably equates to “defying basic christian doctrine”] – do indeed believe that a soul can't get to heaven unless it has been tested in life. Ergo it must be born.

If the soul isn't born, it can't be tested, it can't have the possibility of heaven, it is lost.

And yet. Not all christians, very very few in my experience, believe souls are ever lost. A god of love couldn't – and wouldn't – allow that. God may test individuals in horrifying, wretched ways, but allow a soul to be made “lost” because of the Free Will of his ultimate creation? Inconceivable!

What happens to souls “lost” this way? Or indeed, to souls “lost” by means of any misdirected Free Will?

Whether some christians wish to acknowledge it or not – and many will be greatly offended by hearing this [I don't care] – belief in reincarnation is very common among a huge share of christians, probably a majority of them. Many devout christians were very firm reincarnationists. George Patton, for one. Mark Twain, for another. Voltaire, Wordsworth, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Wagner, Rudyard Kipling.

And before anyone drops the End of Story declaration that reincarnation is only a tenet of eastern religions, let me just point out that christianity, and its judaic forebear, are very much eastern religions. End of story. Western religions tend to devote themselves to either animal spirits or godly pantheons living on tops of mountains or in huge dining halls. The concept of reincarnation being a christian belief actually sprang from the origins of the christian faith itself. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are fairly unambiguous about it.

Let us turn to Luke, chapter 9, verses 18 and 19.

“Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say I am?' They replied, 'Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.'”

Hmmm. “Come back to life”. Interesting.

How could any jew in Judea, let alone those jews in the sect of nascent christians, ever begin to propose that Joshua bar Joseph was a dead prophet “come back to life” unless they already knew of and accepted reincarnation in at least some form? They couldn't.

What is the resurrection itself, except a final, ultimate manifestation of reincarnation? Exactly.

Wouldn't reincarnation be a loving god's means of ensuring that his children have as many chances as they need to get it right that they may get to heaven? And wouldn't a belief in reincarnation make, to a christian, the question of abortion thoroughly irrelevant from a disposition of the soul standpoint?

The answer to both, of course, is yes.

That doesn't mean that abortion is necessarily theologically benign. It is very likely a Free Will cop-out, a cheat. But, to a christian, other christians' cheating on their Free Will mid-term is not their place to address. “Judge not”. It is god's job to address it if addressing it is the thing to do.

Any christian who claims that christianity requires being anti-abortion is being entirely presumptuous and arrogant [and unchristian], and is speaking for all christians when, in fact, he speaks only for a very very slim minority of them, and possibly only himself. He obviously hasn't read the scriptures as well as he believes he has.

Any American who claims that upholding the Constitution requires being anti-abortion obviously hasn't read the Constitution as thoroughly as he thinks he has, either. He is just as willing as a “progressive” [ironic term] to abuse its principles of limited-power governance in order to get his dictatorial way.

This scold may be as futile as wishing that “progressives” would actually embrace progress for once, but: act the part, conservatives. Try conserving something that you claim to believe in.