Pro-choice and consistency
I was listening to talk radio in the car yesterday, and I heard a religious conservative complain about the liberal, “pro-choice” lobby. I don’t agree with the man, but it made me think of a question for the liberals the man was addressing:
Why shouldn’t the right to choose what you do with your body apply to your choices in health care?
Liberals are usually considered “pro-choice,” and the reason is that they believe a woman should have the right to decide what she does with her body. But when it comes to health care, the belief in that right seems to go away. Socialized health care is all about forcing people when it comes to what they want to do with their money, what doctors patients can see, what doctors are allowed to do, and overall limiting what health care is available. And that’s in direct conflict with the right many claim to uphold: the right to choose what you do with your body.
If that logic was applied back towards the issue of abortion, it would be like saying, “Yes, you have the right to choose an abortion. But, you’ll need to meet with one of our counselors first. Then if you are approved, you must go to the doctor that we have assigned to you. You can only do it within the time frame that we have selected, and you must pay the government-established rate. Now, exercise your right to choose!”
I believe that individuals should have the right to choose what they do with their bodies. I wish people would uphold that right more consistently.
Tags: [abortion, individual rights, socialized health care, universal health care]Comments
John Lewis at GMU
I finally listened to the talk John Lewis gave at George Mason University last month, titled “No Substitute for Victory: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism.” It can be hear at the Objective Standard’s website here. You can also read the article off of which is talk was based here.
This was the first time that I’ve heard John Lewis speak on a subject like this, and I have to say that I was very impressed with his speech. He clearly laid out the idea that religion must be completely separated from government if people are to live in a truly free society. He explicitly stated that we are not battling Islam as a religion, but those who wish to enforce Islam using government force. He explained that the role of government should be to protect individual rights, including one’s right to practice Islam, and that we must oppose up to anyone who uses the government for the opposite. He even made it a point to say that if Catholics were trying to force their religion on us in the same way some of those who practice Islam do, he would be giving the same speech against the Catholics. He also explained how our refusal to understand this and our refusal to fight back will only result in more violence, death, and destruction. The only way to preserve freedom is to defend it.
What makes the speech even better is the circumstances in which he made it. He clearly made the speech in a very hostile crowd. Throughout his entire speech he had to talk over protesters who booed him, shouted insults, and tried their best to interrupt him. I only heard the audio, I can’t imagine what the crowd I heard actually looked like. Lewis behaved admirably throughout the his entire presentation. He never responded to their attempts to provoke him, he only spoke louder to allow his voice to be heard over their noise and to offer them a chance to respond to him during the Q&A. I know most people, including myself, who see and hear protesters such as these online might think, “Oh, if only I had a chance to stand in front of them, I’d show them,” but it’s much easier to take that position sitting in front of a computer than standing on a stage in front of a crowd like that. John Lewis did it, and he deserves much credit.
Lewis stayed for a “Q&A” session, if that’s what you want to call it. I would expect a Q&A session to be composed of questions from the audience and answers by the speaker, but this session was more of a platform for members of the mob to attack Lewis with insults and false statements. I think that Lewis tried to deflect many of the attacks he knew he would have to face in the Q&A by stating (sometimes, repeatedly) in his lecture that we shouldn’t declare war against Islam, that there are probably a vast majority of people in the Middle East who want to live in peace, and that he stands against all those that would use the government to violate individual rights, but Lewis probably thought that the protesters would listen to his speech. He had to spend a good portion of the Q&A defending himself from multiple false statements. But he still went through it, never lost his temper, and is still alive today. Special thanks to whomever handled security that night is probably deserved.
Hearing this speech really makes me worry about the future this country will have. One one hand, I understand that the crowd that attended Lewis’ lecture is probably not representative of the population as a whole. On the other hand, it is very scary how people of certain extreme ideologies, especially those from the left, have organized, consolidated, and mobilized their efforts to demonize, drown out, and shut down any opposing thought. Even if their numbers are small, they can still have a lot of influence on a population that is comprised of people who are missing a clearly-defined philosophy of their own.
Tags: [government, individual rights, islam, john lewis, religion, totalitarianism]