The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Little Big League

7.17.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 6 of 6)

The problem with drawing lines where no lines exist is that the line drawer is forever re-drawing them as his arguments are one-by-one proven fraudulent or irrelevant. Mr. Bateman's letter today points out the difficulty of navigating our way through the moral inconsistencies we create once we begin our descent down that slippery slope. We have neither the capacity nor the moral authority to make life and death decisions based upon subjective measurements of another person's worth.

The uniting of a sperm and egg is the event that triggered your existence as well as every other human being on this planet. This is simple biology 101. Once that union occurs, no other genetic information needs to be added or subtracted in order for that living being to achieve human status. The fertilized egg contains human DNA, not that of some different species.

As for your death penalty example, your analogy is completely spurious. The man sitting on death row had a choice not to commit the act for which he was condemned to death. An aborted baby made no such choice and is guilty of no crime. To say that some sort of moral equivalence exists between sentencing to death an innocent unborn child simply for being an inconvenience to the mother and the execution of a convicted murderer is disingenuous in the extreme.
-- Rick Arand
Lee's Summit, Missouri

July 16 letter writer frost asks, "(I)sn't it interesting how the 'Pro-Life' people aren't necessarily for ALL life -- most are for the death penalty (as am I) -- but, it's ironic, 'ay?"

I am at once pro-life and in favor of the death penalty and yet, contrary to frost's assertion, there is no irony. Why? Simple. The unborn have not been convicted of a capital crime in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

Always a pleasure,
-- Mark A. Tarnowski

GOLDWATER STANDARD
Re: Quin Hillyer's reply to Edmund Dantes's letter (under "Homespun") in Reader Mail's Arrogant Nonsense:

It's not that I disliked Mr. Hillyer's speech. It conforms nicely to the demands of the Toastmaster's Handbook, and is in every way appropriate for delivery in a small room full of people not given to political discourse. But it is inappropriate for inclusion in a magazine read by well informed conservatives searching for a reason to vote for John McCain.

Nor do I doubt that Hillyer believes his effort to compare McCain to Barry Goldwater was meant as "the highest of praise." Unfortunately, McCain suffers badly in the comparison.

I doubt Goldwater would have spent much time talking about immigration "reform" as a wave of illegal immigrants, and God only knows how many terrorists, crossed an undefended American border during time of war. I don't doubt that he would have demanded that a fence ten feet tall and fully electrified be erected along the entire length of that border, or that he would have mentioned that fence daily until it was a fact of life. Discussion of such a fence has been in progress for several years, but McCain has been significantly silent on the subject. Is he more interested in the pursuit of power than in the best interest of his constituents? Goldwater wasn't.

I doubt Goldwater would have had many qualms about methodologies used in the interrogation of men dedicated to using suicide bombing, biological warfare and atomic weapons in an effort to make America into "a shadow of itself." I do not doubt that if he were now president, Iran, Syria and at least one Latin American nation would know what a bad idea it is to aid and abet those inclined to use terrorism and/or extortion against the United States and its allies.

I likewise doubt that Goldwater would have appointed judges "no worse" than the loathsome Kennedy and O'Conner, or that he would preside over an administration "no worse...than a holding pattern."

I know there would be no Goldwater-Feingold Act depriving Americans of their freedom to speak in the weeks immediately prior to a presidential election.

I am one of many people who, on the basis of promises made late in the campaign, voted for Bush against my better judgment. We were betrayed. We now seek a credible reason to vote for John McCain, but so far find none. Comparing him to one of the giants of conservative thought only lowers my opinion of the man.
-- Edmund Dantes
Coshocton, Ohio

HAPPY DAY INDEED
Re: Doug Bandow's Do You Know What Today Is?:

I think I'm gonna be sick.
-- Jim Jackson

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Education, Trade, John McCain, Barack Obama, Islam, Abortion, Law, Iran, NATO, Immigration, Energy