Political discourse

Chuck Colson has a daily blog that I receive via e-mail. Today's posting contained this:

"Russell Kirk... said that ideology is "the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers." Most tend to be utopian and end up serving not the welfare of the people, but the interests of power-seekers.

Conservatism, on the other hand, is not a set of doctrines, but "a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order."

On Wednesday this week I was visited by a political door knocker. As usual I came out to the front porch and just smiled and waited to find out which liberal organization she was representing. This time is was NARAL, I have to lose the smile, it puts them on guard. But it's fun cause they know, they know, they aren't getting any money and they have to decide if they going to run or fight. She was kind enough to stay.

Unfortunately, she had nothing of value to say. I haven't heard some of these really, really old arguments for quite some time. I thought I was in the 60's. "If we outlaw abortions, more woman will die of back ally abortions". She didn't flinch when I mentioned they seemed to die at regular abortion clinics as well.

Everything was based on moral relativism. I hit her with the fact that Obama is in favor of infanticide. That gave her pause, and she asked for clarification. Obmama voted against the Child Born Alive act, which says that any child born alive after a botched abortion attempt needs to be given care. Obama thinks thats an undue burden to women. I just did a search to find the exact quote and found this site: Top Ten Reasons

It's astounding that any Catholic could even consider voting for this guy, yet I know they do and most probably will. But thats for another post. One of Obamas views was repeated over and over by the NARAL volunteer: "[W]e live in a pluralistic society, and that I can't impose my religious views on another" Her remarks were that we can't legislate morality. We don't have any business making laws that peer into the bedroom and say somethings illegal. My argument was while I people are free to do various things that aren't good for them, I object to them creating legislation that prohibits me from saying it's wrong and bad for them and for society, AND, which then labels me irrational for holding that belief. And in a nutshell, that's what hate crime legislation is all about. We covered a lot of ground in about 30 minutes. I felt that was 30 minutes she couldn't bother someone else.

My favorite part of the exchange was that our social order was broken and needed to be fixed. I said it wasn't broken, just difficult and nobody wanted to live by the rules. (my G.K Chesterton moment) Our moral order wasn't broken, a large number of people just didn't want to live by it, and when you don't follow the directions, thinks break. In this case being short a pinky was a good visual effect. She had no good arguments for anything. And she used statistics that when I pointed out their inherent flaws, admitted they we're flawed. (divorce statistics) Admitted they were based on the UK cultural issues, not the US! (did you know that in the London there are Christian "No-Go" zones, because they are Muslim areas?)

And yet nothing I said had ,at least at the time, any affect on her view. Because she wasn't looking for truth, she was arguing for ideology. And ideology has a poor foundation. How can we reach people who have no concept of a moral order? There was no depth for this person who I think was a college grad. I have no idea how to reach them.