McCain and Palin Visit

Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin will be in the Twin Cities on Friday, September 19.

You can click here for the details, to register and print your free tickets. They will be at the Anoka County airport, conveniently for us, on the north side of the metropolis.

You can see the lady who drives donkeys mad. In their backhanded way, the liberals have been telling us how good Sarah is. Why she is so good that Obama is running against her!

Hypocrisy: Part 2

In a letter to the editor of the Post Review, Robert Walz, wrote:

It is a bit strange that the party that promotes "family values," doesn’t walk its talk. Neither McCain nor his running mate, Sara [sic] Palin are good examples. McCain cheated on his first wife, obtained a marriage license for his second before his divorce was final, and then used her family wealth and connections to win a "safe" Republican seat in a state he had never lived in. Sara [sic] Palin, a former Catholic, like her daughter, was pregnant before she married (her first son was born less than nine months after she eloped).

Do they represent wholesome family values? Is the "shotgun" wedding for her 17-year old daughter in anyone’s best interest? How about the DUI her husband got?

Not walking one’s own talk makes one a hypocrite. That is true. However, in his LTE, Walz leads us to believe that hypocrisy is worse than the act that violates walking the talk.

Follow what he says. His paragraph is framed by its first sentence that speaks of not walking the talk. He illustrates this with examples from McCain’s and Palin’s life, who are framed as hypocrites. Their misdeeds make them hypocrites, which is worse than their misdeeds.

Walz isn’t really concerned about the Palins’s fornication or drunkenness or McCain’s cheating on his wife (which countless Democrats do). Those misdeeds are important to identify them as not walking the talk and therefore being hypocrites. In other words, if the Palins and McCain didn’t have the talk, they would not be dastardly hypocrites.

This reasoning makes hypocrisy the significant fault and downplays the misdeeds as insignificant. Walz knows Palin’s husband’s DUI, her daughter’s fornication and her own supposed fornication do not disqualify Sarah Palin from being VP. But hypocrisy assuredly disqualifies her, he thinks.

Walz’s insistence that others must walk their talk implies that a person should never talk about pursuing a virtuous walk in order never to be identified as a hypocrite. Walz’s approach honors those who sin without hypocrisy and dishonors those who preach the pursuit of virtue and end up sinning. How despicable!

In contrast, we should preach what is worth practicing precisely because we do not always practice what is worth practicing. None of us has ever met a person who fully practices what he preaches. And many repent of it when they fail.

Furthermore, if someone can truly and fully practice what he preaches, he isn't practicing anything worth preaching.

One who sins non-hypocritically will never inspire moral excellence in others, but a hypocrite who repents, will. Walz doesn’t allow for Sarah Palin’s repentance; she must forever be a hypocrite.

Hypocrisy

In a letter to the editor of the Post Review, Robert Walz, wrote:

It is a bit strange that the party that promotes "family values," doesn’t walk its talk. Neither McCain nor his running mate, Sara [sic] Palin are good examples. McCain cheated on his first wife, obtained a marriage license for his second before his divorce was final, and then used her family wealth and connections to win a "safe" Republican seat in a state he had never lived in. Sara [sic] Palin, a former Catholic, like her daughter, was pregnant before she married (her first son was born less than nine months after she eloped).

Do they represent wholesome family values? Is the "shotgun" wedding for her 17-year old daughter in anyone’s best interest? How about the DUI her husband got?

This is typical Democrat rant about the Republican Party of family values being full of hypocrites who should not be in political office because they don’t practice family values which they preach. Let’s start to analyze Robert Walz’s reasoning.

Walz wants us to conclude that McCain and Palin are hypocrites because they talk about family values but don’t walk that talk. However, he doesn’t actually say that. Rather he says, "It is a bit strange that the party that promotes 'family values,' doesn’t walk its talk" (my emphasis). He implicates McCain and Palin by implicating the party—the political party is a hypocrite. This is the old "guilt by association" argument—a person is guilty because the party is guilty.

While McCain and Palin are guilty because the party is guilty, Walz knows the party is guilty because his two examples, McCain and Palin, are guilty. This is circular reasoning.

By his standard of guilt by association, Mr. Walz would be self-condemned. Consider, if Walz is a member of an organization that avows a certain standard of behavior and Walz does not act accordingly, then, by his own measuring stick, he too would be a hypocrite. I doubt he would like to be implicated personally on the basis of that organization’s failure to abide by its own standard.

Second, a person’s own stated standards are a measure by which a person should be judged. A person may be a hypocrite if she violates her own standards. Walz assumes Sarah Palin was pregnant prior to eloping (which he himself cannot prove). And he assumes that as a young person, she held the standard that premarital pregnancy is wrong. Only then can she be regarded as a hypocrite. Walz is claiming to know two pieces of information that he actually cannot know to be fact.

We do not need to excuse McCain’s or Palin’s behavior. However, we should identify Walz’s behavior for what it is. It is actually hypocritical of Walz to apply his two standards to others which he would hate to be applied to himself. By his own measure of guilt by association, he would certainly be a self-condemned hypocrite many times over.

And by his own measure of assumed personal standards, anyone could insist that Walz holds to a standard of personal behavior without proof and all departures from that assumed standard would be regarded as hypocritical.

None of us ever wants to be judged by the measures which Walz has condemned McCain and Palin and her daughter. Indeed, he would not either.

Sarah Palin Defended

Liberal, libertarian Camille Paglia has a superb piece on Sarah Palin. Here are a few enticements to read her long article.

When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist.

....Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today's pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.

....Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion.

....But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

She Wrote the Book

Source

Faith and Politics

Over at the Hometown blog, Matt Perkins expresses himself, clearly stating he doesn’t like Gov. Sarah Palin’s religious views. (Please read his post.)

In fact he derides her as some undesirable, unrespectable, dangerous radical. In every paragraph, he belittles her faith. He derides her belief that God created the universe, that he has an interest in his creation, that he has a plan for it or that he directs its destiny. I guess that about covers it!

By condemning Palin, he condemns her church in Wasilla, AK. He derides ". . . the 5-15% of people who truly believe in that. . ." With his broad brush, he implicates Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and numerous others who have theistic world views.

Perkins implicates Benjamin Franklin who urged the Continental Congress to pray to God for guidance when he demeans those who ". . . believe that God guides political actions and decisions."

The US Congress and State Legislatures thus would come under attack for their daily opening prayers asking God to guide the actions, thoughts and decisions of those august bodies. He implicates our founding fathers for their efforts to establish a governmental framework that would protect the right to worship or not worship God as a person chooses, without fear of reprisal. And those same founding patriarchs worked inside that constitutional arrangement without hesitating to believe that God directs the affairs of men.

But somehow Senator Obama’s expressions of faith are apparently OK.

And then Perkins has the audacity to say, "Even if God did exist I don’t think he would want us to be so dependent on him." So who gives the right to Perkins to say what God would want?

While Perkins derides Palin's faith, he fails to realize that he too has faith. Perkins’s view is a faith belief just as much as he thinks Palin’s is. Perkins believes something, just as Palin believes something. He believes either God does not exist (atheism) or he believes he cannot know God exists (agnosticism). In either case, that is a religious belief just as much as theism is a religious belief.

His atheistic or agnostic faith is a philosophy, a world view, a religion, just as ardently and dogmatically held as any theistic view. But Perkins presents himself as if he is above faith, while calling Palin’s faith into question, thinking he is on high ground. Perkins cannot prove his faith so he is not on any better ground than he thinks Palin is.

Perkins has no idea that he is a man of faith, that he cannot prove his faith and that he is just as suspect and radical as he thinks Palin is. Perkins has no idea that his faith permeates and informs all of his beliefs, including politics, just as much as Sarah Palin’s faith does.

Nor does Perkins realize he acts like a "clingy girlfriend" when clinging to his unrecognized faith.

I pledge allegiance!

Unbelievable, the difference between listening to two people, willing to turn their lives over to the country as servants....and the Obamas, who wish to re-create the lives of the Ceasars, complete with pillars! Anything for power, say what pleases the masses. The speeches this week, culminating in Sarahs and John McCains showed clearly the difference in the calibre of human spirit. Let's hope there are enough people still feeling loyalty to the country to hear them, and not the clarion call of the Obamas promise of instant gratification (at our expense)

Created Equal....the Pursuit of Life

Senator Obama’s position on infant human rights is well known. We analyzed his illogical declaration in support of abortion here. Senator Biden is pro-choice for women, but pro-death for potentially any of the unborn. Senator Pelosi is ardently pro-choice, anti-life, stating the beginning of human life cannot be known. Both Obama and Pelosi took paragraphs to give convoluted explanations that did not answer Pastor Rick Warren’s or Tom Brokaw’s simple question.

Senator John McCain, presumptive GOP presidential nominee, answered Pastor Rick Warren’s question, "At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?" with a quick, short, decisive response, "At the moment of conception."

Senator McCain’s love and respect for life wears shoes in his daily life, in the person of his adopted daughter.

"John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her."

And nominee McCain’s selected VP running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, respects equality and the life of the unborn as well.

"Four months into her most recent pregnancy, Palin learned the child would have Down syndrome, and she said she never had any doubts about whether she would have the baby.

"We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential," Palin told AP earlier this year in describing what she and her husband had confronted. Trig, her fifth child, was born in April."

The contrast between the Democrat and Republican presidential/vice presidential ticket cannot be sharper. One provides no hope for the unborn and possible terminal change. The other provides hope, dignity, respect, equality and the opportunity to pursue life. McCain and Palin value life, not just of the born, but of the pre-born.

I would never argue a president should be elected on the basis of one issue. But this year, there is a very stark contrast between the two contenders on this basic human right.

The McCain/Palin team, which recognizes equality and chooses life and the pursuit of life for all, can be trusted to provide national security which is the fundamental framework we need for the pursuit of happiness in post-natal life.