Those of you who enjoy Someone You Should Know on Pundit Review Radio know what a great guy Matthew Currier Burden is, and how much he cares about the troops. He was on Fox News yesterday, ripping into the Washington Post’s William Arkin, who had this to say on his WaPost blog,
Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform, accepting that the incidents were the product of bad apples or even of some administration or command order…
So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?
Here he is, Blackfive ,
For many years it has been the “conventional wisdom” that those who were “pro-choice” on abortion were the “mainstream.” This new Zogby Poll shows that the tide has turned and that it is now mainstream to be pro-life!
Polls are consistently showing that Americans are becoming more pro-life. A December poll conducted by Zogby International, a respected nonpartisan polling firm, confirms that, by a 53% to 36% margin, the public supports the statement, “Abortion destroys a human life and is manslaughter.”
And this trend cuts across party lines:
As previous polls have shown, a strong majority of Republicans take a pro-life position, but so do a sizable number of Democrats.
Some 68 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement that abortion “destroys a human life and is manslaughter” while 43 percent of Democrats in the U.S. also agreed.
Other polls:
Other recent polls also confirm a majority of Americans have a pro-life perspective.
An October 2003 Washington Post-ABC News poll, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the papacy of Pope John Paul II, found a majority of Americans and Catholics believe abortion is “morally unacceptable.”
Some 58 percent of all respondents said they thought “abortion, when the mother’s life is not in danger” was morally unacceptable. About 66 percent of Catholics agreed.
I for one am happy to see the tide turning on this issue. Our third president and author of The Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, said that government’s primary role was to protect individual human life. I look forward to the day when his belief becomes reality in America.
After trashing the United States in front of a receptive audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland John Kerry signed autographs for former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.
(AP) DAVOS, Switzerland Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry slammed the foreign policy of the Bush administration on Saturday, saying it has caused the United States to become â??a sort of international pariah.â?Â
â??When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we donâ??t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,â? Kerry said.
â??So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East â?? in the world, really. Iâ??ve never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today.â?Â
Kerry said the government needs to use diplomacy to improve national security.
â??We need to do a better job of protecting our interests, because after all, thatâ??s what diplomacy is about,â? he said. â??But you have to do it in a context of the reality, not your lens but the reality of those other cultures and histories.â?Â
Kerry criticized what he called the â??unfortunate habitâ? of Americans to see the world â??exclusively through an American lens.â?Â
Hot Air has the video.
Matt at Blackfive isn’t too happy.
Captain Ed points out some of the hypocrisy,
Once again, we have the spectre of Kyoto haunting the Bush administration, when it was the Clinton administration that refused to submit the treaty to the Senate — and the Senate that unanimously passed a resolution saying they’d never ratify it. The Byrd-Hagel Resolution in 1997 made it clear that the US would not allow itself to be bound by the treaty as long as it exempted India, China, and other developing nations. That’s the same position as the Bush Administration has taken — and the same position that John Kerry himself took in 1997 when he voted in favor of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution.
That’s yet another example of the hypocrisy of John Kerry — but there’s more.
Instapundit says that Kerry is following the Carter model,
Like Jimmy Carter, he’ll never forgive America for rejecting him, and he’ll console himself with the approval of America’s enemies.
Michael has a terrific new dispatch, Desolate Roads Part 1 of 2.
John Noonan of Op-For has an email from Michael which says the following,
[It’s] getting pretty kinetic here. During my first 5 days we lost 6 KIA Americans and 1 terp, so that was 7, plus quite a few others who were really messed up. Serious business, but ISF making serious progress in Mosul. This place is dicey, though. I need to downgrade my initial assessment. The ISF is much better, but this “deal is not sealed” as it were. At this point I would say we are probably actually losing the war, but I really think this can be turned around. Petraeus is just the man who can do it. He’s brilliant and is ready to slam those militias. We need to kill Sadr. We will lose a lot of people taking on the militias, but we should either take them on or pack up and go home. I vote for killing them.
Michael also had this to say in a separate email,
My request to extend the embed with the 2/7 Cavalry has been approved and I am looking forward to being able to observe and report on the dynamic situation on the ground here. Already, two of my camera lenses, my ballistic goggles and other expensive gear have been damaged beyond repair. The support of readers will determine how much longer I will be able to continue this work.
If you are willing and able, support Michael’s work here.
When Mitt Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 he said that while he personally opposed abortion, he would â??protect the current pro-choice status quo in Massachusettsâ?¦Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the governmentâ??s.â?Â
This raises an important question as to whether a person can be personally â??pro-lifeâ? and supportive of a â??womenâ??s right to chooseâ? simultaneously as suggested by Mitt.
In short the answer is a resounding, no.
If you are â??pro-lifeâ? it means that you support legal protection for living human beings inside their motherâ??s womb regardless of the stage of development.
Those who call themselves â??pro-choiceâ? support the legal â??rightâ? to abort their developing baby in the motherâ??s womb. The term â??pro-choiceâ? is actually a misnomer since the baby who is killed during an abortion â??procedureâ? never gets a â??choiceâ? in the matter. Thus, people who donâ??t support legal protection for developing babies in the womb are pro-abortion.
I would also like to ask Governor Romney if the 750,000 female babies in the womb who are killed every year in the US should have a â??choiceâ? in the matter.
So, you can only be one or the other. Itâ??s understandable that politicians such as Romney, Kerry, and Clinton all say they personally â??oppose abortionâ? but donâ??t believe they have a â??right to impose their beliefs on somebody else.â? After all, they are attempting to appeal to both sides of the debate by staking out some â??moderateâ? more â??middle of the roadâ? position.
As I write in my book â??Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Liesâ?Â
â??The bottom line is that those who call themselves â??pro-choiceâ? oppose legal protection for the unborn and condone the murder of other developing babies. Indeed, one canâ??t be pro-choice and pro-life simultaneously. The statement that â??I believe that abortion is murder and am personally opposed to murder but support a womenâ??s right to choose murderâ? is an irreconcilable, confused, and utterly absurd notion that is totally inane.â?Â
Itâ??s like saying: â??I oppose slavery and would never own one personally, but donâ??t think I have a right to impose my beliefs on others. Itâ??s a choice people have to make individually.â?Â
Memo to Governor Romney: When you are elected to public office, your job is to advance the ideas and values you believe in and ran on and to codify them into law. So, in a way, as an elected representative of the people, your job is to impose your beliefs- which are ostensibly the shared beliefs of those who elected you to office- and to enshrine them into law. What do you think governors and presidents do, just let the people decided matters by the dictates of their own â??beliefs?â? That a presidential candidate-especially a self-described conservative would hold such an opinion is fairly unsettling.
With regards to Romneyâ??s comment that, â??Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the governmentâ??sâ?Â- this too is totally inane and demonstrates to me that this is not the type of brain power we want occupying the White House. By his line of reasoning, government should not restrict abortion in any way even â??partial birth abortionâ? since it might conflict with a â??womenâ??s personal beliefs.â? I wonder how Governor Romney would reconcile that incongruous position if questioned?
If the Republican party now feels that men such as Giuliani and Romney- liberal country club Republicans through and through-are qualified to lead the Party of Lincoln and Reagan, then we will have abandoned what Thomas Jefferson considered governmentâ??s primary role- the protection of innocent human life. And when and if we take that step, that will be the beginning of the end for the Republican Party and, I believe, America.
Gene Lalor of the always entertaining Citizen Journal has a great interview with Gregg which you can read in full right here.