Saturday, August 9, 2014

Pro-choice Presumes and is therefore Secondary to the Right to Life

What is the “right to choice” based on? The right to life!

This devastates the pro-choice argument. Why? Every single argument for choice first presupposes the right to life, depends on it, for without life there is no choice. Since these rights interact, one cannot simply hold the tension of these rights in some radically abstract space - the universe of life versus the universe of choice. No, one actually presupposes the other.

Therefore, in the case of attempted abortion, a woman is FIRST of all asserting her right to her life, and only consequently her right to choice. But since choice by nature MUST always presuppose life, the right to life is therefore the DOMINATING principle in all arguments of choice, and so in the case of the unborn child, as a human being, her right to life is qualitatively equal to that of an adult, and so the adult’s “choice” can only be a secondary conditioning factor in relation to the primary right to life. And so, because all choice necessarily follows only upon life, only when the mother’s equivalent right to life is in danger can there even be a question of abortion, otherwise the right to life is ALWAYS primary, dominant, overriding, and final.

Therefore, no one has any "right" to abort a child. The child's right to life is equal to that of a woman's, and the woman's right to choice cannot override the child's right to life.

Not incidentally, this same principle applies to cases of suicide. Since the "right to life" does not emerge out of and is not built from of a "right to choice," choice rights therefore cannot then meaningfully turn around and violate their own first principle.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

The Morality of Law

Law is essentially moral in both nature and origin. It would be hard, and a bit too circuitous, to argue that laws against theft and murder are not essentially moral positions. These positions are enforced legally in societies that, presumably, you or I or anyone would want to live in.

It is an abstract (and highly modern) notion of law which allows one to state that law is not necessarily moral. At its root, law is moral; and if a law isn't grounded in moral principles, then it ought not be law.

Now, people cannot look into the state of the heart. We are not talking about piety or sincerity, we are talking about the basic moral nature of protecting people from theft, murder, slander, etc. The law is an objective moral standard for those, and there are many many who fall into this category, who do not intuit the "golden rule."

Entire civilizations have been and are being built on principles other than the "golden rule," such as those the armies of Genghis Khan operated under, or the Vikings, or the Nazis, or the Soviets. To say that law is not moral in nature, or to imply that people don't need these laws, is to overlook a great deal of, not just the accidents or mistakes of particular groups who have betrayed their own moral law, but of the large and powerful groups of people throughout history who have an alien moral law which purposely burns, rapes, and pillages in complete agreement with their (false) moral law.

As such, no law is or can be amoral in nature, even if from certain perspectives a law in question may seem distant from its basic moral principle.

All legislation is fundamentally moral in nature. Law is unavoidably moral. This is why the question, "which morals?" is so pertinent. The problem today is that people think they can legislate in a morally neutral way, but that itself is a moral position.

In other words, of course we should legislate morals, like morals that forbid murder and rape. We as a people need to know our criteria for the morals we choose to legislate, and where we get these criteria, and not pretend we can legislate in a moral vacuum.

If someone says I am morally wrong to impose my morals on others, and that they are morally right to not impose, then they are arguing morally; and if someone tries to legislate that, they are legislating their morality over and against mine, imposing their moral vision of society onto me.

What gives them the moral right to legislate their morals if their very reason for disagreeing with me is that I am legislating my morals?

The fervor for secularity omits very real and very severe truths, because the idea of the secular borrows much of its ethics from religion. A secular culture does not need to be tolerant, and nothing but religion actually requires tolerance. And even if people regularly fail to live up to their religion's principles, it only proves the necessity for those religious principles because without them there would be no philosophical check against secularity becoming the cruelest and most inhuman experiment ever invented.

And so, as the secular continuously tries to cut itself off from its religious roots, it will cut itself off from its humanity. A separation of Church and State requires a Church to be separated from, otherwise the State becomes its own wicked and distorted version of a Church - minus a moral compass.