Evolution to Pro-Life

My Pro-Life evolution continues.

Yesterday we received a mailer from Ken Cuccinelli who is running for Attorney General in the Commonwealth of Virginia. From an edited version of an email I sent to Mr. Cuccinelli...

100% Pro-Life?

You proudly proclaim to be "100% Pro-Life" on one page of your recent mailer and yet on another you highlight on the facing page your record as a "Strong defender of Virginia's death penalty". Then later headlined with the title "Defend Human Life" you underline, "Human life is our most basic right, and it deserves protection from conception until natural death". My question is this... How do you hold these plainly contradictory beliefs? To explain... there's nothing natural about a life ending by Execution. Frankly, if someone has committed a crime so terrible the State would consider ending that persons life, is it worth the Millions of dollars from taxpayer contributions to put that person to death?

Even if we were to do so, what have we gained? With such a great cost, what opportunities have we lost?


Position Politics
While Ken Cuccinelli is pointed out in this instance, it's his mailer which illuminates a problem with Position Politics. Republicans and Democrats take up sides and over the course of debate have switched and traded sides as time has passed. One paints the other unfavorably with some brush and the electorate has to choose the lesser of the evils they are presented. A Pro-Life stance and a Pro-Death Penalty position are incompatible with each other if we're honest with ourselves. The Pro-Abortion and Anti-Death Penalty views held together are also incompatible, intellectually.

Intellectual Dishonesty
You have to hold simultaneously that the essence of innocence, life as it is beginning, is somehow less precious than a life which the State might seek to end because of egregious acts committed against others... that's if you are a party line Democrat. On the other hand, saving the innocent and executing the viciously guilty is not a Pro-Life stance. It is a Pro-Punishment position.

Name Calling
Pro-Choice is anything but... Pro-Life is not necessarily.. Pro-Abortion isn't used much and isn't claimed by those who believe in it. But that goes just as well for Pro-Death.

Summary
"100% Pro-Life" means all mankind, to me. I agree wholeheartedly with Candidate Cuccinelli when he stresses, "Human life is our most basic right, and it deserves protection from conception until natural death." He just doesn't seem to agree with himself.

Life without the possibility of Parole satisfies a Pro-Life stance as it assumes God knows better than Man and leaves the ultimate fate of the criminal up to Him.


see you on Tuesday November 2nd, 2010.

e.