#372 No Litmus Test, Conservative Anti-War, Charlie Gard - August 4, 2017
Democratic Campaign Chair: No Litmus Test While CLN is a non-partisan group, not to mention an international network, we’re delighted when our member group Democrats for Life of America makes any progress on getting the U.S. Democratic Party leadership to understand how its disrespect toward pro-life Democrats is costing the party dearly in elections. Now The Hill, which reports on U.S. Congressional politics, reports that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Ben Ray Lujan has announced that financial aid won’t be withheld for 2018 Democratic candidates who are pro-life, running in districts where they’re more likely to win.
Shall We Fight Them All? While Patrick Buchanan hasn’t ever identified as a consistent-lifer, in our bridge-building we like to point out good conservative arguments against current wars. He concludes his WorldNetDaily article: “Among the reasons Trump routed his Republican rivals in 2016 is that he seemed to share an American desire to look homeward. Yet, today, our relations with China and Russia are as bad as they have been in decades, while there is open talk of war with Iran and North Korea. "Was this what America voted for, or is this what America voted against?”
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Latest CL Blog: Charlie Gard Charlie Gard, a British baby who died recently, has raised an international uproar because the hospital refused to allow his parents to make medical decisions. John Whitehead goes over the complexities of the case and how it relates to euthanasia in Reflections on the Charlie Gard Case.
Two Related Quotations for the Week This Sunday, August 6, is the anniversary of the first nuclear weapon deliberately targeted against a human population in Hiroshima Japan in 1945. Next Wednesday, August 9, is the anniversary of the last time this was done, in Nagasaki, and we fervently hope it remains the last. Herman Kahn On Thermonuclear War, Princeton University Press, 1960, p. 50
Probably of limited significance to us are the so-called embryonic deaths. These are conceptions which would have been successful if it had not been for radiation that damaged the germ cell and thus made the potential conception result in a failure. There will probably be five million of these in the first generation, and one hundred million in future generations . . . On the whole, the human race is so fecund that a small reduction in fecundity should not be a serious matter even to individuals. It is almost completely misleading to include the ‘early deaths’ or embryonic deaths in the same total with the major and minor defects, but this is sometimes done by scientists who have overemphasized the abstraction ‘genetic death’ and thus lost sight of the difference in terms of human tragedy of a serious defect or an embryonic death. Juli Loesch (aka Julianne Wiley) “Shake Hands with a Prolife Peacemaker,” U.S. Catholic, May 1984
I always lay a Herman Kahn quote on them about how 100 million embryonic deaths would result from limited nuclear war. One hundred million embryonic deaths is of limited significance, he says, because human fecundity being what it is . . . the slight reduction in fecundity should not be a matter of serious concern even to individuals. Tell that to a prolife group, and their response will be, "That guy’s an abortionist." Well, what he was was a nuclear strategist. But you can make that connection because you’ve got that common ground.
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