"Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I took half the pains to preserve it." -John Adams


Welcome to Patriot's Lament. We strive here to educate ourselves on Liberty. We will not worry ourselves so much with the daily antics of American politics, and drown ourselves in the murky waters of the political right or left.
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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Can you be pro-life, AND pro-war?

This article is fantastic. Perfect. Amazing. I suggest you read it, then read it again. You "pro-life" Christians need to ask yourselves these questions, and realize the world is seeing through your hypocrisy. And rejecting you for it.
Instead of listening to war-mongering "pastors" like Tim LaHaye, Bauer, and Hagee, read your bible!! Ask yourself, and be honest, really, what would Jesus do?
The answer is obvious. Christ isn't just against American abortions.
Get real.
 Modern industrial war, once unleashed, produces an instant Auschwitz for the unborn—that’s fact, not conjecture.
Mass abortions are the necessary and one hundred per cent inevitable consequence of modern war.
Morally, that which a person is certain will occur, if he or she makes a particular choice, represents a choice
for which he or she is responsible before God. A person cannot morally claim he or she does not intend the
abortions that are absolutely certain to take place, by claiming he or she only intends to preserve the mother’s
bodily health or the health of the body politic. Health is being preserved at the cost of knowingly and
willing killing in utero life.

So, where is the Church’s pro-life voice for the voice-less children in the womb in Iraq, who are daily being
chopped to pieces by military abortions? Or, is
abortion by war the great exception to the inviolable
right to life of the innocent child in utero? If so, how
many abortifacient military actions is a desert oil
field worth in the eyes of God? How many abortions
are justified to destroy non-existent WMDs? How
many does God permit in order to get rid of a two-bit dictator who sits on a black gold mine? How many? 1?
100? 1000? 10,000? Where are the pro-life protests of industrial high-tech war on the unborn?


Read the whole article here.

15 comments:

  1. The footnote to the article is important. "Why do they hate us?" Because "we" abort their children, and they've not yet been so morally destroyed as to view their own children as fashion accessories.

    Jim in Kenai

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  2. Nice point Jim! Joshua thank you for posting this article. The phenomena of how good people are manipulated into the consent of evil is known as The Lucifer Effect. This article touched on how it comes about.
    The architect (Lucifer) of the system (government)uses manipulative agents to create situations (war)that ordinarily good people do evil things in without them even realizing it. It is done by the manipulation of reality.

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  3. So then, is there a difference between terrorism and collateral damage?

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  4. Of course there is a difference. When you are an American, and someone kills an American for killing 500,000 of his countries kids, like what happened in Iraq, it's called terrorism.
    When you are the U.S. and you kill 500,000 Iraqi kids, you call it, like Secretary "not so bright" Albright said, it's and acceptable price for "Them" to pay, in other words, collateral damage. Why is a human life collateral? Does that mean there is a price to pay for that collateral at some point? Now if you are the Iraqi getting pummeled by the American forces, you might be terrorized, but, you are suppose to accept it, because God is on our side, dontcha know?

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  5. In more simple terms, no, there is no difference.
    It just makes some people feel better. I think it actually makes God feel better too.
    Or not.

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  6. Collateral Damage is simply a euphimism for Man Slaughter. The word play here is used for the desired affect of distorting reality.

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  7. We judge me by the most generous possible understanding of my intentions, we judge you by the consequences of your actions.

    I don't know why you don't think this is a fair system.

    Jim in Kenai

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  8. Not so much about abortion as about war and collateral damage...


    I get that there is a huge problem with seeing any human being as collateral. Born or unborn. I'm just wondering what the solution would be when you have an evil dictator, like say, Pol Pot, Menghistu, or Kim Il Sung. Where the lives that are taken are in the millions. Is 100,000 innocent lives lost "better" than 1 million? Or is a life is a life is a life is a life? Also, in Iraq--some of the largest loss-of-life days took place, not because of American military actions; but because of Iraqi terrorism. (Like the Yazidis and Sunnis fighting--their '07 Yazidis car bombings killed around 800.) How many people would have died if Saddam hadn't been hung in 2006? Did we do more damage to the unborn/born/innocent by driving him out of Kuwait in 1991, than he would have done had he stayed? I read an estimate once that said there were between 70 and 125 deaths for every one of his 8000 or so days of power. Which would be half a million to a million people killed under his government. I would say that Iraqis would have also been, "pummeled" by Hussein, is all. I know that the number of civilian casualties in Iraq, since 1991--has been terribly undocumented. Many times deaths were recorded as Taliban deaths--when they were in fact civilian. That's part of the problem with modern warfare though. We don't know who our enemies are. Terrorism is violence with no face. (Maybe the term "collateral damage" is, too.) These cultures foster hopelessness. Many times, the person on the side of the road would just as soon sit down and eat with you and they would be bought off to detonate explosives to kill you. The Taliban and al-Qaeda nurture a society that vacillates deeply between apathy and doing *whatever* is in ones power to attain the best version of heaven you can. It's all kind of confusing. We are often at war with other countries *because* of a lack of sanctity of life/human dignity. A county that slaughters its own grown civilians is not going to bat an eye at the loss of the unborn.

    As far as collateral damage; it might all come back to how America wages war. These wars aren't declared, aren't well documented, have little accountability, and have vague objectives as to why we are fighting them.

    "Going to war without a declaration of war not only represents aggression against the nation in question, but against every U.S. taxpayer as well. The only argument that can be made for taxing a free people is that taxation is necessary to underwrite protection of their lives, liberties, and properties. The only way that they can be compelled to pay for a war is if a state of war exists between them and another nation. To tax them for a war fought for other reasons, including defending people other than themselves, is to aggress against them. Once the government is allowed to do that, it is time to stop calling the United States “the land of the free.” (Tom Mullen, http://www.dailypaul.com/164204/whats-so-important-about-a-declaration-of-war)

    Maybe the human rights atrocities that are not directed towards America are really the responsibility of Christendom. As individuals--as Christ followers. When hundreds of thousands of people in the horn of Africa are repeatedly starved and displaced--not only because of drought, but because of government policies; maybe it's our job to step in? Not as taxpayers, but as individuals who value human dignity. Maybe that's what should have happened in Iraq. That's a tall order.

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    1. (WAY more than I planned on writing! This is stuff I think about all the time. Genocide. Collateral Damage. War. Abortion. Sorry so long.)

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  9. HI Sarah,

    Your post was thoughtful and thought provoking. Here are some of my thoughts. Not necessarily directly responsive.

    You can't just "do the math" on this sort of thing. Would it be okay for me to kill one person to take his organs and donate them to 5 people who would die otherwise? Obviously not.

    In a hostage crises can I kill 1/4 of the hostages in order to get to the hostage taker so he can't kill the rest? Any justification for doing this in an immediate situation goes out the window when we're talking about something unfolding over time as there is way too much uncertainty. The more people, the more time, the more distance, the more dislike the cultures, the more uncertainty.

    A nation isn't really "held hostage" by a tyrant, though. A tyrant is one man. He can't hold the entire nation himself. He has constituencies. He has to balance their demands, which restricts how bad he can be. The hostage situation becomes one where the hostage taker has people working for him scattered amidst the hostages so killing the nominal head could result in more loss of life, erasing the justification for the intervention. Plus, once you kill the hostage taker one of his subordinates may try to fill his position. The constituencies will vie for power. This will get messy. It may even be much worse.

    There is simply no way to make these sorts of decisions on behalf of the "hostage" population. Why do we submit to our tyranny? Would we appreciate the Chinese liberating us from it if it meant wiping out 1/6 of us? Would that even solve the problem? No. Maybe we believe that the best way to liberate ourselves isn't to kill the tyrant but change the character of the hostages as in Étienne de La Boétie.

    The answer is one which I didn't like in my youth as it was much too time consuming and much too indirect (to my mind). I was of the mind, "there is a bad guy who needs to go, so he goes." But the bad guy is the SYMPTOM, which is why taking him out doesn't actually SOLVE anything. Taking him out is like taking an aspirin when you have a broken arm.

    The answer is that the solution is to spread, not democracy, but the gospel. Not the gospel of Jesus with an M-16 and a flag, but the gospel of Jesus who died on a cross.

    There is a reason Jesus sent MISSIONARIES, not conquerers, into the world.

    Civilization is a bottom up thing.

    Jim in Kenai

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  10. I disagree when talking about "these cultures" in such broad terms. The entire middle east has been the playground of the western powers for 100+ years. Maybe seeing your society being cynically used by overwhelmingly more powerful outsiders would breed apathy followed by outbursts of violence? Maybe it would push people towards more violent versions of their faith in the hope of lashing out and getting some relief.

    The way the western powers have exploited these people (and I use that term in a fairly specific sense) has discredited Christianity, just like the way D.C. abused the peaceful Indians did with Chief Joseph. At some point we have to decide if we're more loyal to Christ or to our political leaders/national history. Are we more interested in advancing the Kingdom of God or the domain of D.C.?

    Note that Hans Hoppe has set up his Property and Freedom group in Turkey.

    Jim in Kenai

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  11. I agree on the thought of doing charity work via private groups, mostly church and missionary groups. Private groups wouldn't have the assumption of sovereign immunity so they'd have to be more circumspect in their behavior. There is work to do, but none of it is quick. The soil has been heavily salted by previous state action. There is no quick fix for this, either.

    If someone gets taken hostage there can't be any of this "Uncle Sam, save me!" stuff, because this just reinforces the idea that the missionaries are just a foot in the door for D.C. to mess with them.

    Charles Spurgeon talked about how being associated with the British Empire made the job of missionaries so much harder to get actual converts (as opposed to opportunistic converts). He said he wouldn't want to be seen as one of the invaders but as one of the people to whom he is ministering.

    Jim in Kenai

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  12. Each generation has to learn from scratch, line upon line, precept upon precept. The temptation to use force to take from others is a constant temptation which each person has to deal with individually. There are no short cuts, but we want short cuts. The church was seduced into the shortcut of using the state as the surrogate for Christ -- winning sinners and teaching young believers is too hard and so disappointing so we'll just pass laws. Let the bureaucrats and prison guards deal with the personal failings of those around me so I don't have to be a neighbor/brother, so I don't have to show Christ-like love, so I don't have to reach into my own pocket to help someone. Helping people to BE better is harder than forcing them to ACT better.

    The state is the opposite of Christ.

    Jim in Kenai

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  13. The government is not my friend and not your friend. It is the friend of itself alone -- that is, of the government officials, the palace guard of police and military forces, and the most important of its cronies and supporters who bankroll its acquisition of and hold on power. Even within this inner circle, every member of the power elite is angling to cut the throats of every other member. In relation to this unsavory cabal, you and I have but one role to play -- to be the patsies who acquiesce in being plundered and bullied day and night in the service of its aggrandizement and enrichment. -- Robert Higgs

    Jim in Kenai

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    Replies
    1. Legalize Hemp and
      Stop Liars From Starting Wars and Starving people...


      Considering it was the 1980's before spousal rape was outlawed. I'm not very optimistic about being an abortion free nation any time soon. Until the woman has complete control over her body, including the right to say no. Pregnancies will occur and some will end in clinical abortions. Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions than OpResQ ever dreamed of doing. What group is top target of the admitted liars against a woman having a choice? Like the hypocritical Ganjawar, the war on women is fabricated by lies, intimidation and back room bartering. To sum up the anti-choice movement just listen to the Westdonkey Blabtists...

      GOPerversion, another Prohibition! On Women...

      Wall street's Spontaneous Abortionists

      Tobacco and alcohol use by pregnant women has adverse effects on the fetus. Tobacco use causes an increase in SIDS and miscarriages. It is estimated that 3700 children die by the age of one month because of complications from the mother's smoking during pregnancy.

      Pesticide Exposure in Farm Families Linked to Spontaneous Abortion
      The timing and types of pesticide exposures are critical determinants of reproductive outcomes, according to a recently published study by Canadian researchers. The study found strong evidence that a woman's exposure to pesticides in the three months prior to conception or in the month of conception significantly increased her risk of spontaneous abortion.

      Pro Life? Not even anti abortion...

      Preconception exposure to the pesticides glyphosate, atrazine, carbaryl, and 2,4-D increased relative risk of spontaneous abortion by 20-40%. Risks were even higher for women exposed to pesticides at age 35 or older and for women exposed to pesticide mixtures.

      Switching cotton fields to hemp fields would improve: the quality of our soil, the durability of our clothes, the safety of our ground source water, the quality of our air, and the preservation of forests cut for paper (not to mention saving hundreds of thousands of lives prematurely ended by disease caused by pollution)

      Starving Babies and Illegal Food
      In 1937, Ralph Loziers, general counsel of the National Institute of Oilseed Products, told the Congressional committee studying marijuana prohibition in 1937 that, "Hempseed… is grown in their fields and used as oatmeal. Millions of people every day are using hempseed as food. They have been doing this for many generations, especially in periods of famine."

      Collateral Damage Abortions

      Can you be pro-life, AND pro-war?

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