Monday, November 29, 2010

no hypocracy at all

It is hypocritical to oppose abortion while simultaneously opposing the vast support system such a ban would require. That would include full and free prenatal care of poor and uninsured pregnant women, of unemployed and unwed mothers, so that they might care for their uninsured children. It would further include a comprehensive system of government-supported adoption agencies in order to place newborn children in welcoming families when the birth mothers are unable or unwilling to cae for their children. It would include a comprehensive system of day care that would support working unwed mothers who wish to keep their children and a dramatic increase in suport for the public schools in the poorest neighborhoods that these children will attend, instead of letting these children fall off the radar as soon as they are born. All that would require funding, which means taxes, which conflicts with the greed of the Right, religious and secular. Beyond that, the working families into which children are born need to be protected by fair labor laws, living wages, medical and vacation benefits, and good pension funds. The latter in turn need to be protected from corporate criminals who run companies into the ground while giving themselves extravagant salaries and severance packages and letting the hardworking employees wo lose their jobs and their pensions end up paying for the criminal's misdeeds.
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, p 114


Well, I guess that's pretty clear--in Caputo's view, unless you're a big-government let-the-government-control-everything kind of person, a cradle-to-grave-government-support sort, then, well, you've no business opposing abortion.

Funny, isn't it, though, that it's exactly those kinds of people that want to keep abortion safe, legal, and common.

Well, there goes personal responsibility. If a woman decides to not have her unborn child murdered, well, it's up to everyone else to make sure her life is cushy. Fund her and her child, fund the family, make sure the public dole is open to her. More than just a mere hand up, we're talking hand outs, in fact hands to carry so that said mother and child should not have to do much of anything. In fact, his rhetoric seems to hint that he not only wants those things for mothers with children they chose not to abort, but for all families.

One wonders how families survived before the modern big-government state. Such a heinous, difficult life, it must have been. Couples needed to actually be married to each other, and single parenthood was frowned upon. Fathers actually needed to work to provide for the woman they've married and any children they were to have, and not have to rely on the government dole to give the mother money so he can live a care-free life and have children by other women without societal consequence. Mother's actually had to take care of the children themselves, without having to rely on government-provided child care or government-funded public schools to schlop them off on so they can sit around all day and watch soaps. Children had parents they could actually respect, and even fear when need be, parents who could show them things like dignity and self-respect, and not have societal leaches who can't even escape a hurricane even when given a few day's warning, who have not done a thing in their lives, and who live only for the arrival of the next monthly government check.

I remember reading "The Tragedy of American Compassion", and seeing how they did things way back when, when private organizations provided care for the needy and not the government. Most of them were firm in making sure that the people they were to help were people worth helping, or were willing to behave themselves, which at time meant they weren't drunkards, weren't criminals, and weren't sexually active outside of marriage, but who were in their dire situations through no fault of their own. Even if one wants to say that it was a far from perfect arrangement, it does seem to have bene a better one than what we have now.

Because what we have now is what Caputo prescribes, to a large degree, and the results are ugly. Welfare mothers, who have more and more kids so they can get more and more money from the government; deadbeat fathers, who see no reason to take back the responsibility the government has taken off their shoulders; children for whom the command to honor father and mother must be an especially difficult command, because those two people (assuming they even know who father may be) are simply not people worthy of honor, and who are simply not taught how to live and provide for themselves.

Caputo tries to make one of his patented cheap shots at the Right, and as may be expected, it is a lie. The Right is not greedy for wanting lower taxes, or for expecting people, even pregnant women, to be responsible beings. We know there are people who truly need help, or are willing to do better, and we are very willing to help them. We are rather less inclined to help those who insist on messing up their own lives, continue to act in those ways, and want only that others should provide for them while they make their lives more and more a living example of self-destruction.

There is no hypocracy in saying abortion should be made illegal while not supporting the government nanny state.

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