Obama and Abortion: Franky Schaeffer weighs in
My wife posted this way before me. I need to be on my feet.
Franky Schaeffer is the son of the late Francis Schaeffer, who along with C. Everett Koop provided the philosophical foundation to the Pro-Life movement and the political religious right. Franky’s moved far away from his upbringing and has posted why he is supporting Barack Obama this election.
Here’s a long excerpt.
In 2000, we elected a president who claimed he believed God created the earth and who, as president, put car manufacturers and oil company’s interests ahead of caring for that creation. We elected a pro-life Republican Congress that did nothing to actually care for pregnant women and babies. And they took their sincere evangelical followers for granted, and played them for suckers.
The so-called evangelical leadership — Dobson, Robertson et al. also played the pro-life community for suckers. While thousands of men and women in the crisis pregnancy movement gave of themselves to help women and babies, their evangelical “leaders” did little more than cash in on fundraising opportunities and represent themselves as power-brokers to the craven politicians willing to kowtow to them.
Fast forward…
Today when I listen to Obama speak (and to his remarkable wife, Michelle) what I hear is a world view that actually nurtures life. Obama is trying to lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated. A leader who believes in hope, the future, trying to save our planet and providing a just and good life for everyone is someone who is actually pro-life.
Conversely the “pro-life” ethic of George W. Bush manifested itself in a series of squandered opportunities to call us to our better natures. After 9/11, Bush told most Americans to go shopping while saddling the few who volunteered for military service with endless tours of duty (something I know a little about since my son was a Marine and deployed several times). The Bush doctrine of life was expressed by starting an unnecessary war in Iraq that has killed thousands of Americans and wounded tens of thousands more.
The society that Obama is calling us to sacrifice for is a place wherein life would be valued not just talked about. As he said in his speech delivered on February 6 in New Orleans, “Too often, we lose our sense of common destiny; that understanding that we are all tied together; that when a woman has less than nothing in this country, that makes us all poorer.” Obama was talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but his words also apply to our overall view of ourselves.
Regardless of the official position of the Supreme Court on abortion, a country in which all Americans are offered some sort of dignity and hopeful future would be a place conducive to the kind of optimism each of us must hold in our hearts if we are to welcome children into this world. But if our highest aspiration is to be a consumer with no thought or care for our neighbor, we will remain a culture in which abortion is not only inevitable but logical.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
This well-written drivel. Hey, kinda like Obama’s well-spoken drivel.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
driv·el /ˈdrɪvəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[driv-uhl].
–noun
1. a word used to describe the ideas of your opponent such that you do not have to deal with the substance of their message.
2. any idea, concept or way of thinking with which you disagree.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Oh I am quite able to deal with the substance of their message. I am just not willing. But I will point out an example: “The society that Obama is calling us to sacrifice for is a place wherein life would be valued not just talked about.” That’s drivel.
Oh and by the way, anyone who calls me to sacrifice for society is a moron. I am quite willing to sacrifice for friends, family, church, Jesus, peers, etc. But society. No way!
February 13th, 2008 at 7:40 am
“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.”
H. L. Mencken
February 13th, 2008 at 7:42 am
“1. The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
2. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
February 13th, 2008 at 8:42 am
Steve,
The sheep are baaahing.
Too bad they don’t know they’re sheep.
We’re so lucky you and Mencken know the truth.
Scott
February 13th, 2008 at 8:48 am
I think the irony of all this is that the religious right has been led around by their nose by immoral religious leaders and politicians for a couple of decades now, all by “keeping the (christian) populace alarmed . . by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins.”
Thank God Dobson said he’s not voting in this election. Maybe he’ll shut up while he’s not voting, too.
Scott
February 13th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I don’t disagree entirely with #7. I don’t see your point in number 6. If you are suggesting that I think voters are sheep, then you have me pretty well pegged.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:04 am
And therein lies the problem. Elitism. Arrogance.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Three questions from a first-time commenter:
1. Am I just running in the wrong religious circles or do the new (not too new) “action items” of the religious right concern marriage more than abortion?
2. Has the marriage issue already become passe or is there just more political energy (and thus more rhetoric) around the time-tested issue of abortion?
3. Steve, in the purest sense, shouldn’t a “hands off” libertarian like RP be against against any government restriction regarding who someone can marry and against any laws restricting a person’s right to an abortion?
February 13th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Scott… I read Frank’s piece too, and my problem with it is the same problem I have with Obama in general: a lack of substance. When I hear his speeches, I’m awed by his inspirational style, but I don’t hear a plan. How will he “lead this country to a place where the intrinsic worth of each individual is celebrated…?” What does it mean to “believe in hope, the future,” etc? All the candidates want “a just and good life for everyone.” It’s their ideas about how that is accomplished that separates one candidate from another.
I agree with Frank’s denoucement of our consumerist culture. But you can hardly blame that on Bush, a republican congress, or the pro-life movement.
I also get really annoyed by the constant comparison of abortion with the environment: the notion that killing an unborn child is equivalent in some way to driving an SUV.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Scott,
Steve is right when he says that there is very little substance to Obama’s message.
Obama is a good man if the measure of one’s goodness is his sincerity. He appeals because we think he really cares. But ultimately a politician has to enact public policies. And by this measure Obama is just a big-government liberal. He wants the government to be our savior. Of course, not just any government…a government led by him. What is “elitist” is thinking that he will be able to do with government what no one else can. I honestly believe he has developed a messiah complex.
Even liberal newspaper editorialists are becoming nervous. Lines like this coming from Obama:Obama will ““remake the world as it should be”…Obama describes himself as “a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest.”
SCARY…truly scary. Especially…when there is no substance behind it all.
I recently was reading about Maximillien Robespierre who was an architect of the French Revolution (and the Reign of Terror). To be honest Obama reminds me of him.
To stay true to our principles we need to believe in an even greater man, George Washington, who said:”Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Seth
February 18th, 2008 at 11:39 am
One last thing…I would ask Scott…do you no longer believe in liberty as the most important touchstone of the American experiment.
Be cynical about Steve’s comments if that makes you feel better. But he is right.
Perhaps you DO believe in liberty. If so then you have not grasped a fundamental principle: The size and power of government is inversely-proportional to the liberty you possess. IF you do not see taxation as one of the ultimately assaults on liberty then you do not understand liberty. The founders understood this and that is why income tax was UNCONSTITUTIONAL until freedom-haters overturned it with the 16th amendment. By this definition will Obama expand our liberty or reduce it? There is no question that he will work to reduce it. He will seek to give us the “safer” and “fairer” world that he envisions and espouses. But at what cost? Liberty.
Nothing is worth that cost.
IF you want to be radical, support Ron Paul. But not a freedom-hater like Obama.
Seth
February 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Scott,
I honestly don’t know RP’s views of same sex marriage. But RP is strongly pro-life and since libertarians believe that one of the few (very few) legitimate roles of government is the protection of life, liberty and property, then being pro-life certainly can be consistent with libertarian ideals.
Steve
February 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Finally - the triplets are bloging again! (at least in this comment thread) and… I guess that I find myself agreeing with Seth & Steve who are voicing most what I believe to be the truth of Obama - though I have to also say… I think that Obama will be the next president of these United States. And… liberty will suffer accordingly.