Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal has his prescription for conservatives. In short, it’s give up on defending traditional marriage and stop protecting life from the moment of conception. Because that’s not cool.
Who knows, this may be great political advice. But they’ll do it without me.
I love this part about marriage though:
Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms, so long as it’s lawful and consensual and doesn’t impinge in some obvious way on you. This obsession is socially uncouth, politically counterproductive and, too often, unwittingly revealing.
Well, we’re sorry to have embarrassed you. But here’s the thing, the debate over marriage has nothing…NOTHING…to do with what’s going on in people’s bedrooms. In fact, the gay “marriage” advocates are the ones seeking to codify what they do in the bedroom into law.
So what Stephens is saying makes no sense in that respect.
Many people say the same thing about abortion. They say, “Keep the government out of the bedroom!!!” But abortion has nothing to do with the bedroom. Last I heard, Planned Parenthood doesn’t make house calls to the bedroom. If women are seeking an abortion, the bedroom part is kinda’ over and done with.
Stephens had a prescription for how the GOP should deal with the abortion issue as well.
Also, please tone down the abortion extremism. Supporting so-called partial-birth abortions, as too many liberals do, is abortion extremism. But so is opposing abortion in cases of rape and incest, to say nothing of the life of the mother.
Here’s the thing. Didn’t the GOP just have a candidate for the presidency who said those exact same things. He was pro-life except in cases of rape and incest and the life of the mother. So I’m not sure what Stephens is saying here because I don’t know if he knows this but Romney lost. Kinda’ bad too.
So I’m assuming he’s talking about guys like Akin and Mourdock. Uhm yeah. I think the lesson learned there is that when a candidate talks about rape, he’s losing points. No matter what you’re saying about rape, you’re losing points, unless you’re saying something like, “I just caught this rapist and strung him up by his…”
Here’s my thinking — how about instead of sitting around waiting to take hits on how extreme we are, we hit Democrats for their extremism. Why not? Guess what, people don’t like partial birth abortion or late term abortions.
I’ve got to wonder sometimes. How are pro-lifers losing? WE’RE DEFENDING BABIES!!!!! CUTE BABIES!!!! How the heck are we losing? The cutest people on Earth are being pulled apart or burned to death in the womb and those who defend them are seen as monsters????!!!!! Are pro-lifers the worst p.r. people in the world? We’re defending little people that make other people smile when they just look at them.
And what’s the result — one party is defeating us and the other is considering ignoring us.
We’re losing because too many Republicans want to be liked. We’re losing because too many Republicans in their heart think they’re wrong on marriage and abortion. They think, “All the cool people think otherwise.” And they want to be one of the cool kids.
I understand it’s tougher to defend life in the cellular stage because they’re not cute but holy cow folks. Let’s put our best foot forward. Have some courage. Defend life. Let’s make some headway on this.
And remember this, ignoring you is what the Republican Party wants to do to you. They want you to vote for them and they want to ignore you completely. Because you’re not cool.
I may be, as Stephens said, “socially uncouth” but I’m cool with that. I don’t need to be invited to your parties. I’d probably just bore you showing baby pictures anyway.
November 13, 2012 at 9:44 pm
This is one of the hallmarks of a declining civilization. Marriage is simply not the province of government. Unfortunately, once the rot sets in, government grabs the right to license marriage, and then the right to continually redefine it. Rome falls right around the time that the courts are chock full of every kind of weirdness. This is a way for the lawyers to keep themselves in business, so I have no doubt things will get worse.
See, the true conservative, indeed Christian, position is that these things are not political issues. The Acts of Apostles describes a people who had the ability to freely associate and decide how they would live within their enclave. The deviants, of course, get to decide the same thing. Back then, Christianity became popular- probably because people noticed a difference between our ancestors, and the ignominy of the red light district. Now the average non-church going Joe can't tell the difference between the local Catholic priest running around in shorts and a t-shirt, and some single dude who does nothing but play video games- so, obviously, the aforementioned Joe is not going to notice much of a difference between you and your lesbian neighbors.
November 13, 2012 at 10:12 pm
Excellent points. Bret Stephens needs a very public and very thorough rebuke so that his "vision" for the GOP never sees the light of day.
November 13, 2012 at 10:13 pm
I'm quiting the Rep. party this week….it is very clear where they're headed, and people of serious Faith are not welcome any longer. We've heard the same promises for 25 years, and they are democrat lite and worsening…I fully expect the next platform to jetison pro-life, traditional marriage, and God. And if they think it'll help them win, they'll boo God 3 times…Karl Rove smells a winner in that. Enough is enough.
And, really, like our votes matter anyhow…does anyone really, REALLY believe this whole thing wasn't kabooki theatre for the masses? What are we at now, 20-some precincts reporting obama got 100% of the vote….Sadam Hussein didn't even get that! And no serious effort is being made to contest the OBVIOUS fraud; the only thing happening is Boehner polishing his knee pads as he wets himself in the corner. The republic is dead. What comes next?
November 13, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Funny–the people who want the government to "stay out of their bedrooms" are the same ones who want taxpayers to pay for their birth control. #hypocrisy
November 14, 2012 at 12:53 am
Marriage, even purely natural marriage, is a public matter, a public institution which begets the family, the unit basis of society. Whether or not a particular sexual activity is "lawful" (presumably statute law) is a public matter. If a particular society decides to make something which is a serious violation of the Natural Law (and God's Law), "lawful", it becomes an even more urgent public matter, as it is objectively harmful to the common good, and to the individual, particularly, the young and vulnerable who may find it hard to understand that something "lawful" is not necessarily good. If the Republican party decides to support the killing of unborn children, and the conferral of legal recognition and status on sexual relations between two persons of the same sex, the party will make itself irrelevant, as this will be the same as the Democratic Party's policies, and millions of people will be without any party to represent them.
November 14, 2012 at 1:00 am
…ahhhh, Lynda….this is where we talk about a serious third party. A conservative party. And let the republican party go the way of the whigs. We get all the people that Karl Rove and Bill Crystal and Michael Steele and Mary Matalin et. al. hate, and take all the voters that they so disdain…myself included.
November 14, 2012 at 5:30 am
To follow up on what Susan said above, there may be a silver lining in this, as we could finally see the rise of a desperately-needed third party through this. Coincidentally, I was recently discussing my ideas related to this with a friend. The following could potentially happen:
1) The worthless establishment GOP drops the pro-life and traditional marriage agendas.
2) Finally, after years of rationalization and eating the garbage the GOP establishment has fed them, a substantial number of conservatives finally leave the GOP (better late than never) and join the rest of us who have long realized that the GOP is not an acceptable home for us.
3) Following the break by these conservatives, further people wake up and abandon the GOP, essentially fracturing it. The GOP is severely damaged and left with mostly moderates and neocons, greatly reduced in number and therefore utterly incapable of competing against the Democrats.
4) In order to build its numbers back up in order to compete again, the GOP shifts even further to the left.
5) This results in a significant portion of more moderate Democrats leaving that party to join the new, formally moderate GOP. Hence, the Democrat party shrinks a bit.
6) With the further shift to the left of the GOP, more folks on the right of that party leave to join the new third party.
7) These changes and shifts continue to work themselves out, and end up ultimately resulting in overall number shifts that result in none of the three parties having a majority and all being potentially competitive.
8) Welcome to the new three party system.
If only we could get rid of this two-party disaster. Those who are still clinging to the GOP are fooling themselves.
November 14, 2012 at 12:33 pm
According to the October 2012 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, in 1792 Thomas Jefferson abandoned his interest in emancipating slaves after calculating the profits from their increase on his plantation: "As Jefferson was counting up the agricultural profits and losses of his plantation in a letter to President Washington that year, it occurred to him that there was a phenomenon he had perceived at Monticello but never actually measured. He proceeded to calculate it in a barely legible, scribbled note in the middle of a page, enclosed in brackets. What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. The enslaved were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest. Jefferson wrote, “I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.” His plantation was producing inexhaustible human assets. The percentage was predictable."
In today's society, by replacing natural family units with broken neo-family units kept dependent on Uncle Sam serving as plantation master, the political powers are able to subdue and control the electorate, especially the urban electorate, and shield their political capital from the changing opinions of a free populace.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Little-Known-Dark-Side-of-Thomas-Jefferson-169780996.html#ixzz2CCPr4feb
November 14, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Get over it. Soon, nasty gays will be getting married ON YOUR LAWN.
November 14, 2012 at 4:26 pm
From my view, no one has ever given a definitive answer from the Catholic perspective as to why life begins at conception. You won't find that position in tradition going back more than fifty years, and even people who have recourse to the argument that Christ was "ensouled" at conception don't realize that the Church Fathers and Scholastics admitted that yet did not apply it to the rest of humanity: "quod licet Iovi non licet bovi". And also, one cannot solve a metaphysical problem with a physical solution (though, arguably, that is what various ancient philosophers were trying to do). In other words, most arguments about the origins of human life in the womb are based purely on emotion or arguments from authority that don't even meet the supposed standards of that authority. And, sorry, third trimester abortions are just too rare and complex to rile anyone up other than the most fundamentalist believer, and even then, this only occurs because of ulterior motives that they dare not mention.
November 14, 2012 at 5:11 pm
Anonymous 11:26-
Man is a creature of BOTH body and soul. If we cannot know the exact moment of ensoulment, then we protect the exact moment of his/her bodily beginning.
Deb
November 14, 2012 at 6:07 pm
A human being cannot exist without a soul. A human being exists on the fusion of the gametes of his mother and father. People in earlier times had not discovered when human beings came into existence.
November 14, 2012 at 8:27 pm
I wonder why no one sees how the SSM movement does infringe on people's rights. It threatens to change the very nature of some denominations. It has restricted Roman Catholic adoption agencies from doing their job because they would not consider a same-sex couple eligible. In short, the homosexuality movement has set out, and has succeeded, in infringing on the rights of Orthodox Christians. And I keep wondering why no one seems to care.
November 16, 2012 at 2:45 pm
The problem is that following this advice would only result in huge majorities for the Democratic party. Look, Romney may have been a moderate in comparison with Santorum, but he was a conservative in comparison with McCain. He lost, but the numbers were closer than McCain's, and he was fighting an incumbent. So, why should we go more socially liberal? It seems to me that those who suggest this strategy do not have the best interests of the GOP at heart. Sure Akin lost, but Akin was also making not only inappropriate comments, but foolish ones.
November 16, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Also, here in the South, people would not vote Republican on merely economic issues. We are Democrats by nature, Republicans by circumstance. Eliminate social issues, and the South goes Democrat again.
November 19, 2012 at 9:05 pm
It was true once that the institution of marriage was sanctioned and protected by the state/tribe, because inherent in the institution was the duty and promise to produce more warriors and mothers for said state/tribe. And this is a perfectly reasonable proposition. Gay marriage under such circumstances is obviously rendered ridiculous. However, in our current world, where marriage has devolved into nothing more than a quasi public "celebration of love", in all fairness, gays' argument that we are arbitrarily discriminating against certain people who 'just love each other' is kind of an honest one.