Abortion, Left and Right

This recent “debate” over abortion and government regulations shows the insanity of both the “left” and the “right” in today’s society.

The left consists of people who insist that a right to abortion includes the right to have it paid for — including by people who think it’s murder. The self-evident tyranny of such a position is lost in the shuffle of pretentious liberal idiocy.

The social conservatives who oppose this policy of Obama and the liberals don’t call it tyranny. Instead, they use it as an opportunity to talk about the “oppression” of the religious. They see being forced to pay for another’s abortion not as wrong because it’s force, but because it’s abortion. They use this outrageous policy as an excuse to say nobody should be allowed to have an abortion. In fact, this is the only reason most of these social conservatives oppose ObamaCare. This would be like opposing Nazi Germany because Hitler failed to make the trains run on time, instead of the fact that he committed genocide and instituted a totalitarian dictatorship. No wonder these hapless conservatives don’t get anywhere, not even in the advancement of their own little causes.

I hear nobody saying, “Wait a minute. Government should not be in the business of either financing or forbidding abortions. If you want an abortion, that’s your absolute right — and your absolute responsibility to find a way to pay for it.” In fact, this is true of all medical care, or any commodity, product or service that one wants or needs. Your need or desire for it does not impose an obligation on a stranger to pay for it!

Leftists claim to be “pro-choice” but they couldn’t care less about the choice of people who disagree with them to act on their own judgment or consciences. This tells you all you need to know about the tyranny underlying “liberalism” as we know it. Similarly, social conservatives are just as happy to use the force of government to impose their will on others. They don’t want consenting adults of the same sex to enter into contractual agreements, and they don’t want women who choose to not become mothers to exercise their individual right not to do so.

“Choice!” the liberals scream. Where is freedom of choice for people who make a lot of money, or who own a lot of private property? Where is the choice to purchase goods in a free market instead of one regulated and subsidized into oblivion by bureaucrats (mostly hired by liberals) in Washington DC? As far as these liberals are concerned, wealth belongs to the government, so long as the government is run by somebody like Obama. So much for choice.

“Liberty!” scream the social conservatives. Yet these same people are only too happy to support Rick Santorum for President, a man whose primary political platform is to impose his definition of family on the population-at-large. Not much liberty there. (Romney just says what he’s told, and right now he’s a willing lackey for these unconvinced social conservatives.)

The liberals and the social conservatives appear to have one important psychological factor in common. They each feel like victims for having to live in a world where people disagree with them. Religious conservatives talk about how oppressed they are by having to look at gay people portrayed favorably on television shows — yet who is making them watch these shows? They’re offended by pornography. So don’t view it! They’re offended by the fact that people are having abortions. So what? Don’t have one yourself. Everywhere you turn, there’s a social conservative offended by something.

Liberals are no better. They’re not offended by the same things as social conservatives. They’re deeply offended by anyone being successful, especially if that means making a lot of money (which it usually does). They’re deeply offended by imbalances or inequities of any kind, even though differences in strength and ability are an inherent part of human nature. They’re at war with reality, and they expect government to turn the natural into what they consider the ideal — an “ideal” that every time it’s practiced or attempted (as in socialism, fascism or Communism) turns into an unspeakable nightmare for millions.

Liberals and conservatives — the type who are most involved in the political process, and the ones most responsible for the horrendous candidates we keep ending up with — are angry and offended by things which involve no coercion on the part of anybody else; it’s just that they don’t like what they’re doing. “Make the world into the one I consider ideal. And use force if necessary.” They stop short of putting it this way, at least so far, but this attitude is implicit in just about every policy and law they support.

This is how you get Rick Santorum, Barack Obama, and the other wrecking balls who keep rising to the highest office in the land. If there’s a rational majority out there, they had better rise up and start getting us different kinds of candidates, and fast. America was supposed to be about freedom. There is no Constitutional right not to be offended.