#511 Conscientious Objector Day, Political Twists May 15, 2020
May 15: Conscientious Objectors Day Every year, May 15 is the day to honor conscientious objectors. Most object to being drafted for war, but there’s also conscientious objection to participating in abortion, euthanasia, or executions. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950, pictured) wrote a short poem called Conscientious Objector which begins: “I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death.” This video offers a moving rendition based on the poem. It expands the original locations she wouldn’t show death to (that is, direct killers to) by adding current hotspots, as well as “where the baby sleeps in the womb.”
Political Twists Because of Abortion Maggie Astor (pictured) wrote Trump Pushes Young Republicans Away. Abortion Pulls Them Back. (The New York Times, May 6, 2020). She said, “In interviews with two dozen Republicans ages 18 to 23, almost all of tem, while expressing fundamentally conservative views, identified at least one major issue on which they disagreed with the party line. But more often than not, they said one issue kept them committed to the party: abortion . . . [A]bortion is, very often, the issue that is sacrosanct — the one that outweighs their concern about climate change, for instance, and their dislike for Mr. Trump.”
We’ve quoted at greater length and added this to our Price of Roe site, on the elections page, which has several other reflections on how Democrats are losing votes over their extremism in favoring feticide. But we also make this point to those young people: we encourage you to work to influence the Republican Party on those other issues. Where you don’t follow the party line, see if you can change the party line. See for example Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty; this February 4, 2020 article about young Republicans influencing older ones on the importance of addressing climate change; and some anti-war Republicans.
Covid Bias Because of the distressing news that State Policies May Send People with Disabilities to the Back of the Line for Ventilators, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse has introduced a bill to stop such discrimination in health care.
Our Latest Blog Post: Elections 2020 Simply voting for the consistent-life candidate is rarely an option. The partition into two parties divides opposition to violence so that a voter has to either select which violence is more repugnant or decline to select one of the candidates likely to win. Focused on the U.S. presidential race this year, Rachel MacNair offers her reflections in Elections 2020: Three Consistent-Life Approaches. The approaches are to vote for one party, vote for the other, or vote for neither, and Rachel gives the reasoning and the ins and outs of each approach. Her final point is that elections don’t decide everything, and “We’ll never achieve what we need to achieve if we just leave it to politicians.”
Thomas Malthus, philosopher “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” 1798 This is another “seamless shroud” quotation - issues are connected not by opposing killing as we do, but favoring it. The last line fits current circumstances. All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons… [T]herefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operation of nature in producing this mortality . . . In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.
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