{"id":37136,"date":"2013-06-25T05:26:02","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T09:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=37136"},"modified":"2013-06-25T13:15:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T17:15:04","slug":"heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"Heartless presidents and hapless opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"Obama-Planned-Parenthood-2013\"Yes, it\u2019s shameful that the president of the United States has no compassion<\/a> for America\u2019s unborn. But speaking for myself, it\u2019s hard to feel too much umbrage toward him personally. Barack Obama has established himself as one of the primary antagonists in this chapter of America\u2019s story, so it\u2019s to be expected that he\u2019ll do the wrong thing. What really bothers me is the fact that our protagonists fail to meet his efforts with a proportional response.<\/p>\n

From elected leaders, strident abortion rhetoric is decidedly one-sided. Democrats shriek that anything less than unconditional support for abortion shows \u201ccontempt\u201d for an entire sex, and usually most of the GOP would rather talk about something else. When they do, the best Republicans can come up with are general statements about a culture of life and respect for American consciences. Rarely do we see the ostensibly pro-life party give abortionism true moral indignation, like Mary Lazich of Wisconsin<\/a> or Dick Black of Virginia<\/a> have, and even that often amounts to just a flash in the pan.<\/p>\n

Nor does the callousness it takes to defend abortion seem to inform Republicans\u2019 broader assessments of Democrats\u2019 character. For most of the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney qualified<\/a> his every criticism with insistence that he thought Obama was a \u201cnice guy\u201d who was merely in over his head. Preemptively conceding that Obama\u2019s \u201cnot a bad person\u201d is a mainstay<\/a> of Sen. Marco Rubio\u2019s speeches. Speaker of the House John Boehner claims<\/a> he \u201cabsolutely\u201d trusts Obama, with whom he has a \u201cvery good relationship\u201d that is \u201copen\u201d and \u201chonest.\u201d Sen. Scott Brown deems<\/a> Obama a \u201cgood man\u201d who possesses \u201cjust different priorities.\u201d When Republicans do question Obama\u2019s character, they either recant<\/a> quickly<\/a> or see other Republicans run away<\/a> from them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry, but Barack Obama isn\u2019t a good man.<\/p>\n

Decent people may identify as pro-choice if they are genuinely misled about what the unborn are, what abortion does to them, and what the effects of prohibiting it may be. But they do not promote abortion through every stage of pregnancy, for any reason, without any<\/em> regard for the baby\u2019s welfare, all the while displaying complete indifference<\/a> to the accuracy of what they\u2019re basing those views on. They do not lie on behalf of<\/a> the practice and its practitioners. They do not slander those who disagree. They do not turn a blind eye to the plight of the unborn after taking an oath that charges them with knowing better about the rights they are sworn to uphold.<\/p>\n

Our politicians should be honest enough to say so.<\/p>\n

As nice as disagreeing without getting disagreeable would be, it\u2019s not how the world works. When one side is on the warpath and the other is trying to channel Mister Rogers, the result is not the latter\u2019s innate goodness shining through and melting people\u2019s hearts. It\u2019s horrific ideas and malicious stereotypes taking root in the public consciousness because they\u2019re constantly being reinforced without anything to counter them. Lots of bad ideas can take on an unearned air of legitimacy when people hear them from important people without pushback. \u201cNice guy,\u201d etc. implies trustworthiness, lending validity (or at least the presumption of sincerity) to their accusations against us – after all, a \u201cnice guy\u201d wouldn\u2019t say such ugly things against someone unless they were really warranted, would he? And \u201cgood man\u201d fosters a cognitive disconnect between the abortion supporter and the moral severity we assign to abortion itself.<\/p>\n

All this is not to say pro-life officeholders should become reckless, obnoxious purveyors of gratuitous bile for its own sake. (Talk radio fans, think of it as the difference between emulating the tone of Dennis Prager vs. that of Michael Savage.) All we need is for the people representing us to indicate that abortion disturbs them as much as it disturbs us, and to signal to the general public how much it should disturb them, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of bad ideas can take on an unearned air of legitimacy when people hear them from important people without pushback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":33884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nHeartless presidents and hapless opposition - Live Action News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heartless presidents and hapless opposition - Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lots of bad ideas can take on an unearned air of legitimacy when people hear them from important people without pushback.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-06-25T09:26:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-06-25T17:15:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/Obama-Planned-Parenthood-20131.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"620\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"459\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@liveaction\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calvin Freiburger\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Calvin Freiburger\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/6eb2bf94c8064b71953ba137bf413c4d\"},\"headline\":\"Heartless presidents and hapless opposition\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-06-25T09:26:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-06-25T17:15:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/\"},\"wordCount\":673,\"commentCount\":7,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/heartless-presidents-and-hapless-opposition\/\",\"name\":\"Heartless presidents and hapless opposition - 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