Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Ghoulish Gotcha 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 25 October 2012

In a panicked attempt to deflect attention away from an increasingly desperate president, the Fourth Estate is trying to interest us in the purported gaffes of two Republican candidates -- first Akin, and now Mourdock -- on the subject of pregnancy that is the result of rape. So let's talk about that for a minute.

From the reports, Akin's response was clumsier than Mourdock's, and yet the same kind of reaction can be seen to both of them. The wimpy Republican establishment dropped Akin like a hot rock -- though it now looks as though he may win anyway -- and the returns are still out on Mourdock.

When a rape results in a pregnancy, this means that we are now dealing with three people instead of two.
Two of those three are innocent, and one of them is guilty. Take a case of violent rape. The pro-choice ghouls want to do two things -- first, they want to go easy on the guilty one, refusing to execute him, while executing one of the innocent parties for something his father did, and secondly, they want to make out anyone who objects to this arrangement as the callused one.

In the future (as if any of these guys are taking my counsel), pro-life candidates for office need to answer the question in this way: "That is an excellent question, but we have to settle certain things first before we answer it. When a rape results in a pregnancy, are we dealing with three people or two?" And then he should refuse to answer the question until the reporter tells him "three or two," along with the reasons why. This is how the Lord handled this sort of question.

While we are the subject, the other day I tweeted this about Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate for president.

"Gary Johnson is opposed to drone strikes on Americans in the Middle East, but supports them if the Americans are in utero."

I got a number of responses to this, but one of them posed the possibility of a contradiction the other way also -- Christians who are pro-life but who support the drone strikes. The difference is this -- the drone strikes are a legitimate tactic in war, which means that there is the possibility of them being used justly.

Like everything else in war, there is a possibility (and depending on the situation, even the likelihood) of them being used unjustly as well. When that happens we should condemn it. But if anyone cannot tell the difference between killing children accidentally (because they were playing in the terrorist's backyard), and killing children on purpose, because they were inconveniently alive, really ought to stay out of these discussions.

One other thing, slopping over into Second Amendment issues. I do not say this in any rah rah support of whatever our government might do with its drones. One of the reasons why I think the Second Amendment needs to be understood as applying to more than hunting rifles -- to things like shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles -- is that we are going to need something to shoot down the government drones.