The Enlightenment lives.

Oh please. The quote in question talks about reeducation camps and property confiscation, and then heightens the handwringing by describing Obama-voting libertarians as ‘monsters’ guilty of depravity and stupidity. Let’s not pretend that it’s an even remotely sensible commentary on the situation. It’s teenage melodrama.

Nice strawman, though.

Of course, anything incomprehensible to the reader regarding morals or politics must be due to a mental defect on the part of the one writing or speaking. How else can one explain differences on moral positions except through someone else’s lack of reason.

The Enlightenment lives.

Goldwater was the politician associated with the conservative movement, but that does not mean that he defined it, nor was the only origin of it. How many of the other ‘founders’ were libertarian with regards to abortion?

An unborn fetus is not a part of the polity, plain and simple.
It’s as much a part of the polity as the mother.

It has no interests apart from the mother’s interests, in the same way that the mother’s kidney’s have no interests apart from her own.
Kidneys are parts of the mother’s body. The embryo is not, having a distinct genetic and ontological identity unto itself.

Not until a child is born and is out of it’s mother’s womb does it have legal rights of its own. Obviously because its rights have not been recognized by the government. Doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have legal rights.

etc. etc. etc.

Until I read it myself, I’d have thought such trash was below the dignity of this blog. Not so, apparently. More’s the pity.

As for your views on reproductive rights, well… phew. It goes without saying that you’re entitled to your view, but your words on this subject seem manifestly lacking in the evenhandedness, civility, and intellectual generosity that, up until now, I’ve associated with your writing.

You can claim all you like that Goldwater is a “libertarian”, and not a true conservaitve, but that is just narcissism speaking, and defining conservatism to be whatever you hold dear, rather than acknowledging it has some existence as an historical movement, and that Goldwater is acknowledged by one and all to be the political originater of its modern revival in America. That he is not considered a conservative by you and those who now have control of the movement simply means that it is no longer a conservative movement at all, it is a theocratic movement that wishes to control people’s lives through compulsory moral interventions by the state to “prevent unjust acts from taking place”. This is a crazy definition of conservatism, as if it were the role of the state to correct any and every kind of “injustice”, even those occurring inside a woman’s body. This is far more a form of socialism than anything contemplated by Democrats.

It’s certainly fine for you to argue that abortion is a moral crime that will be paid for by eternal damnation in the life to come. It is another thing entirely to use the power of the state to compel a woman to carry a child to term when she has no wish to use her body for that purpose. The conservative state exists to balance the interests of the polity. An unborn fetus is not a part of the polity, plain and simple. It has no interests apart from the mother’s interests, in the same way that the mother’s kidney’s have no interests apart from her own. Not until a child is born and is out of it’s mother’s womb does it have legal rights of its own. This is just the simple facts of life.

Now, as for “natural law”, this is of course a moral issue, and I might or might not agree with some of what you would have to say about it. As a legal matter, however, I see no basis for making your version of “natural law”, into the legal law of the nation, backed by the compulsory force of the state.

For choices to be ‘moral’ they must be in accordance with Natural Law. That you cannot grasp the precepts of Natural Law regarding abortion does not mean they do not exist.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m shocked to see these conservative views expressed on this conservative blog. :-) Actually though, values like “property rights, limited, constitutional government, traditional Christianity” are almost antithetical to what I think of as Western Civilization (including Christianity if “traditional” would refer to the various crazies I grew up around). This would appear to be a pretty hefty core of disagreement. But then, again, doesn’t the fact that we are so deeply divided call for the kind of ecumenical (or “non-partisan”) approach that Obama aims at, so that we are actually capable of acting at all? Or, I guess we could just spend the rest of our lives threatening to move to Canada or inventing lists of people that the President supposedly murdered, as each of us may prefer.

What he proposes to do and what he does actually believe, going on nothing more than his record and his proposals, seem to me to be antithetical to a large part of what conservatives consider good. His tendency to accommodate with entrenched interests confirms this, since most of the interests he will be accommodating are also antithetical to what conservatives would try to preserve or restore (e.g., property rights, limited, constitutional government, traditional Christianity, etc.). He isn’t uniquely awful in this regard, but that isn’t saying much. However, I already suggested above that Dr. Fleming’s phrase overstates things, and I should have said as much in the first place.

It is also almost certainly the case that many of the things Obama supporters regard as good things that have happened in the history of our country and civilization are regarded by traditional conservatives as disasters, mistakes or at best mixed blessings.

Are you kidding? He’s not a white man with the letter R trailing his name. Anything else is just the same shit they toss at any democrat candidate amplified because we’re a bunch of racist assholes. Most liberal evah, going to raise your taxes and redistribute your wealth, going to mandate abortions and force one gay marriage per family. The closer we get to the election the more you’re becoming Hannity-lite. This Fleming character sounds like Chicken Little. ‘He is an enemy of anything good that has ever been done in this country or this civilization’. wow. Something like that needs to be mocked. Repeatedly.

Less sarcastically: Any serious points Dr. Fleming may be attempting to make about the state of the nation, about the choice of Palin, or about why one should vote for John McCain, are overshadowed by his talk of re-education camps and Socialism. It’s the sort of rant you might see coming from the more unbalanced people at “The Corner”.

One observation: Larison, for the most part, bases his evaluation of how Obama will behave if President on things that Obama has said or actually done. While I sometimes think he takes Obama’s words/actions too seriously, doing so helps avoid wandering off into flights of fantasy. Fleming explicitly goes down the “don’t believe anything Obama says, I know what’s in his heart” path of lunacy, and it shows.

You quote a guy who says that Obama is “an enemy of anything good that has ever been done in this country or this civilization” and, rather than disagree and shred it to pieces as hyperbolic nonsense as I expected you to, your only comment is that McCain and Bush are to blame for making his presidency possible. I admit I was surprised to find rhetoric that makes the most vile racist and (literally) murderous stuff I’ve seen people say about Obama look tame approvingly quoted here. “Enemy of anything good that has ever been done in…this civilization”? Why not just call him the anti-Christ and be done with it.

Do you really think Obama is going to have government agents going into the homes of Larry Page and Sergei Brin to take their furniture and appliances and clothes so that he can make America more fair? You really endorse that nonsense? The reeducation stuff too? I had no idea Obama was another Kim Jong-il. Thanks for alerting me.

Oh and I also completely disagree with you on abortion, and I’m confident my opinion of your opinion on the issue is reciprocated.

It’s November 1, not April 1, so I must assume this post was not a joke. Shame, that.