Uncommon Commentary #477: At the Bottom of This Slippery Slope Lies Hell

On 18 September, 177 US Reprehensives—I mean, Representatives, all of them Democrats (see UC #475), voted against House Resolution 3504, which is intended to “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion”. This “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” stipulates: “Any health care practitioner present at the time the child is born alive shall—(A) exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age; ….” Infanticide is as monstrous as fœticide, but the vote by these 177 does make sense within the sinister logic of the “pro-choice”: if children don’t have a right to life before birth, they don’t have one after birth either.

Uncommon Commentary #476: UC #475 Follow-Up

In UC #475, I wrote that a devotee of Christ can favor some of the causes espoused by Democrats, but that, since not all issues are of equal importance, it is very problematic to vote for political candidates who favor the other positions associated with the Republicans’ chief antagonists. My purpose here is to say that this principle does apply to the GOP as well: in the unlikely event that, for example, an election should come to a choice between a spendthrift Democrat who has Christian views on questions of culture and morality, and a Republican who is a fiscal conservative but who holds “progressive” positions on those same matters, I, despite being a “Republican sympathizer”, would have to cast my ballot for the Democrat.

Miscellaneous Musing #74: Pride Is Reason for Humility

Christian theologians hold pride to be a deadly sin—indeed, it’s considered to be paramount among the Seven Deadly Sins, as it is the one committed by Lucifer in becoming Satan—, yet we typically speak of it as if it were a positive quality, as in “We’re so proud of you!” or “Don’t you have any pride?” (This does not mean that it’s always bad to have anything that is ever called “pride”; sometimes, we’re just using the wrong word.  For example, it’s often said that somebody takes “pride in his work”.  I think that it’s legitimate for a person to be pleased or satisfied with what he has accomplished, and that only if his accomplishments give him too high an opinion of himself, especially if he believes that his accomplishments make him superior to others, does he become guilty of the sin of pride.)  Conversely, the world regards humiliation, that is to say, a cause of the Christian virtue humility, as necessarily destructive. (This paradox might be the best illustration of how thoroughly benighted our society is, if not for the increasing acceptance as normal of the psychological abnormalities homosexuality and “transgenderism”, and the correspondingly increasing intolerance of those who do not adhere to this viewpoint.)

Uncommon Commentary #475: The Left Is So Gauche!

A devotee of Christ can favor some of the positions that are associated with the Democratic Party; it’s not incompatible with Christian belief to favor big government, for example, or to oppose development projects for the sake of protecting the natural environment.  On Election Day, however, except when a proposition is on the ballot, one votes for candidates; and, if one votes Democrat, those candidates are far more likely than not to follow such un-Christian practices as lying to the public and slandering the opposition, and to have un-Christian or even anti-Christian attitudes on social issues like (induced) abortion and “LGBT rights”.  Unless, therefore, one feels that, e.g., the highly dubious threat from “climate change” is so much more important than a definite life-and-death matter like fœticide that one is justified in electing an Obama or a Hillary [sic], I don’t see how a true Christian (or anyone else with a conscience) can still vote for (most) Democrats.