It's the Freedom, Stupid

Through the choice of his pro-life running-mate, Sarah Palin, John McCain and the GOP have made one point perfectly clear:

This is a single-issue election, and the issue is abortion.

The future of America -- our precarious economy, our critical foreign policy -- everything about this election that requires a sensible, grown-up argument with wonky, unemotional, boring facts behind it -- is being thrown under the bus.

The Republicans, in the face of Obama's ascendancy and the indefensibility of their policy decisions in the last eight years, have just pulled a desperation maneuver and hijacked what is perhaps the most important election in America's history by demoting it to an emotional cat-fight between pro-choice and pro-life women, over the one issue where neither side can be reasonable. They have opened up a new front in the Republican War on Sanity.

The rest of this election, no matter what is discussed, will be essentially brain-dead.

McCain, with one stroke, has tipped all the wavering, undeclared Christians into his own till. This is brilliant political strategy, until you consider the fact that it is horrifically short-sighted -- it shows that the Republicans still prefer dirty pool to thoughtful leadership. Many taxpayers who aren't conservative Christian Republicans will lose faith in this country if our new leaders seem willing to support the tendencies of the current administration. Many will abandon hope that America will pull out of its current downward spiral, and abandon this country completely rather than subject themselves and their children to the disastrous aftermath of yet another hair-raisingly corrupt, myopic, and incompetent Republican administration.

I believe the choice of Sarah Palin represents the GOP's tacit declaration of war on secular government. She signifies the intentions of the Republican party to let the highest office in the United States serve as a handmaiden to the ambitions of the Christian right.

Sarah Palin represents the ambition of evangelical Christianity to forcefully dominate, and pervert into its own ideological image and likeness, the legislature of a country that was founded on a principal of religious freedom.

John McCain has effectively declared a holy war on Americans whose religions are less dogmatic than that of evangelical Christians. The GOP seeks to put women back in chastity belts: Sarah Palin is their fit-model.

Freedom, like it or not, is synonymous with moral relativism. The whole point of the idea of America is the glorious notion that someone else's extreme religion is disallowed from imposing its morality on personal decisions concerning our lifestyles, our sexuality, and our bodies.

We didn't pick this fight: John McCain did. Abortion may be the fight, but it isn't the point. The issue at stake is our personal, civil liberties and individual rights -- particularly those of pro-choice women -- which are being directly threatened by the GOP's grasping, rapacious desire to impose a new theocratic authoritarianism on our society.

Christian evangelicals have forced America's sexual IQ to plummet even lower than the value of the American dollar. Do we really want an America where teenage girls are going to die from abortions that, once illegal, will only become an unsafe, underground economy like illegal drugs?

Do we really want our daughters to be forced to flee to liberal, civilized places like Mexico City (where abortions incidentally, are free) to terminate their unwanted pregnancies?

Freedom and hope are the greatest selling-points of America. If America sells out its freedom to Christian religious extremists, the brains of this country will go elsewhere, because freedom will go elsewhere. America will be as hopeless as a fat, poor, pregnant teen -- and just as smart a conversationalist.

Now that America is so deeply in debt, we don't get to make the rules anymore. Our future as a country now relies very uncomfortably on the perception the rest of the world has as to whether or not America will be able to bounce back after an utterly calamitous eight years of a faith-based, conservative Republican administration with absolutely no sense of responsible stewardship.

With Barack Obama, there is some actual hope for America -- at least in terms of the perception of America beyond our borders -- to begin a slow, painful recovery. If John McCain and Sarah Palin win, they will accomplish more than the Taliban and al-Qaeda combined in terms of destroying the image of the United States as a free country, and a democracy that protects the civil liberties of individuals.

We cannot afford another administration with religious delusions of moral certainty in the White House. The sorry fact is that John McCain has brought this grudge match into the election booth. The future of America -- which desperately needs thoughtful leadership to steer us out of this crisis -- is hinging dramatically on the terribly emotional issue of choice. If abortion is made illegal, Liberty, ironically, will die.

Abortion should be the least of our worries right now, as a nation. The issue is freedom, and the vital importance of secular government to the success of this nation. We want to live in the The United States -- not the Holy American Empire.

Comments

[Hadriane]

Has it ever occurred to you rabid proponents of abortion that killing the baby is not the answer? How about punishing the offender, especially if it is rape or incest? Women who are for abortion are blind to the fact that they are being played into enduring two catastrophes--the unwanted pregnancy and the murder of their own child. I'd like to hear a feminist mull that one over and OPEN HER MIND to the fact that abortion cheapens human life. Pro-abortion women think they know what's best for all women when they really don't know jack.

Abortion will go down as the darkest period of history since slavery when slaves were not considered human either. Think about it and get on the right side.

[barkanomics]

Is there any group in America more vulnerable than teenage girls? Homeless people have more of a voice in this country than teenage girls. Zygotes have more of a voice. And how about teenage girls who have been impregnated by their own relatives?

[pelops-ops]

Yes, barkanomics, there is a group in America more vulnerable than teenaged girls, but it is a group that the left apparently does not consider "trendy" enough to defend: Muslim American immigrants, many of whom are citizens.
Unlike teenaged girls, they are not sexy, therefore, we will avoid discussion of them, and stay silent while their rights are crudely violated. Also, they will not join our hot-button social issues crusade (feminism, gay marriage and abortion) so they apparently mean nothing.
Ditto black people - too Christiany for us.
What happened to the Democratic Party? What happened to the ability of the liberal left to set priorities and protect the most vulnerable?

[pelops-ops]

First Ms. Wilson writes:
"The future of America -- our precarious economy, our critical foreign policy -- everything about this election that requires a sensible, grown-up argument with wonky, unemotional, boring facts behind it -- is being thrown under the bus."
The adjectives are "sensible", "grown-up", "unemotional", "boring", "wonky".

We then get from Ms. Wilson the following lines:
"The GOP seeks to put women back in chastity belts: Sarah Palin is their fit-model."
"America will be as hopeless as a fat, poor, pregnant teen -- and just as smart a conversationalist."
"If abortion is made illegal, Liberty, ironically, will die."

Does anyone else notice a disconnect?

[pelops-ops]

This doesn't make any sense.
First you write: "If abortion is made illegal, Liberty, ironically, will die."
immediately after that you write:
"Abortion should be the least of our worries right now, as a nation."
Er, which is it? The end of Roe v. Wade will kill liberty? Or: it's the least of our worries?
This article represents the dangerous turn that the Democratic Party took when it embraced an all-or-nothing position on abortion. As a woman who would prefer to let other women make their own decisions about their bodies, I fail to see how abortion is the #1 issue facing this country.
Ms. Wilson, we have a $9.5 trillion federal deficit, and your number one threat to liberty is the restriction of abortion?
Come on..... All our pretty civil liberties only exist amid a semi-stable economy. Note that owing China 600 billion to 1 trillion may seriously hamper democracy as we know it. But to Ms. Wilson, as with the Republicans, it's "all abortion, all the time."
Thank God there are more rational voices within the liberal left. Last time I checked, the freedom to vote and participate in elections hinged neither on gay marriage nor on abortion, or any other hot-button social issues that people like Ms. Wilson scream about to the delight and the profit of evangelical Christians.
You don't seem to get it, Ms. Wilson. Can I please direct you to George Lakoff's books?

[Beket]

Dear Pelops-ops, maybe I can help you out. The problem, aside from your smug and snarky tone, lies in your reading comprehension. She did not say abortion IS the #1 issue facing this country. She said it SHOULD NOT be, but has been elevated to that position, or very near it, in relation to ELECTORAL POLITICS, not in relation to all the other terrible challenges we face.

[pelops-ops]

It's not my reading comprehension; those are quotes taken directly from the text.
Check it again.
Last line of penultimate paragraph, followed by first sentence of last paragraph.
And snarky? Uh, reminding you that there are larger issues facing us is rational. Snarky better defines a line such as this:
"John McCain has effectively declared a holy war on Americans whose religions are less dogmatic than that of evangelical Christians. The GOP seeks to put women back in chastity belts: Sarah Palin is their fit-model."
That's from Ms. Wilson. And it's not just snarky. It's hysterical. Whoops, is that sexist?

[WeSeeYou]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful, intelligent and accurate article!

In addition, taking away women's right to choose will also result in the numbers of unwanted babies already being left in dumpsters, or tossed onto the sides of highways, the number of children raised in abusive homes, extreme poverty without access to safe housing, nutritious food or health care - and possibly even increase the already alarming number of suicides in our teenagers.

The Republican party isn't 'right' about this, they are dead wrong!

[MaryanneAZ]

You are absolutely spot on!!! McCain's Phoenix church is circulating an email to their members wherein they claim that McCain is only going to serve one term and then Palin will run for President and FINALLY be able to turn this into a "Christian" nation worthy of the "under God" portion of the Pledge. They are exuberant that Palin will be able to do what Dubya failed to do: legislate their interpretation of "Christianity" upon the rest of us. I am a Christian, but I believe that extremism faith is wrong--extremist Christian is just as dangerous as extremist Islam. We fled England to avoid having our lives under the tyranny of the Church of England and these extreme "Christians" pine for the day when they can return to that place. It appears that these extremists do not understand that a Nation cannot be hijacked by any faith and that such an endeavor will always fail. The fact is people who claim to be "Christian" often have one higher goal--their me first mentality, where they have more motivation to elect people who will enrich their personal lives and wallets. I think greed will trump faith in the end. This will never be the "Baptist States of America." Elect Obama/Biden for your future and for a right to your own faith or no faith.