As noted in the earlier Lozier Institute study, the first round of grants under this category, in October, 2009, saw a marked departure by CIRM away from a funding preference for hESCR [human embryonic stem cell research] and towards adult and other non-embryonic stem cell research.

That pattern continues in the July 2012 round of grants. Of eight research projects selected, only one involved hESCs while two involved the use of fetal tissue. The others used ethically non-contentious adult stem cells or other non-embryonic approaches. Of the $150 million awarded, $48 million went to the hESC and fetal tissue projects; the remaining $102 million went to the ethically non-contentious adult stem cell and other non-embryonic projects.

Results are drawing the funding, not political hype, and the trend is away from embryonic stem cells.

The newborn and the fetus are morally equivalent

The authors, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva,  start this section with their definition of personhood.

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.

Thus, to be a person, you have to know you’re a person and be able to value it. The state of not knowing, however, lasts quite a bit beyond newborn status. The authors, again, fail to address this. More than fail to, actually, they refuse to address it, as we shall see.

Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life. Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life: spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted, fetuses where abortion is permitted, criminals where capital punishment is legal.

The equivalence here is somewhat flawed, not the least because they start to blur the moral right to life with the legal right to life. Further, they equate giving up your legal right to life (by, for example, murdering someone else) with a fetus or embryo being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Depending on your morals, all three examples have a moral right to life, it’s just in the last case it was actively forfeited.

Being human, I believe, ascribes you a moral right to life, in and of itself. Having it deprived of you, whether as an embryo being experimented on, a fetus being aborted, or being the victim of a murderer, has moral implications. The legal system has its own concept of "rights" as well, and the murderer (again, actively) gives up his legal right, while the embryo and fetus simply cannot. Therefore, by trying to conflate moral and legal rights, the authors are trying to make their case for their moral definition of personhood by comparing it to legal issues. They are not equivalent.

[I feel it necessary to explain why I, being pro-life, believe that capital punishment is still a valid punishment in certain cases. As noted, there is a great difference between government not ascribing you a legal right to life in the first place (as with an embryo or fetus in our current system of government) and you forfeiting that legal right by actively doing something. Thus, there isn’t the equivalence between taking lives in these two cases that critics of pro-lifers assume there is. Further, self-defense is a legitimate cause for killing, both legally and, in many religions including Christianity, morally. I see capital punishment as "societal self-defense" to protect us from the most heinous of criminals and to discourage others from behaving likewise.]

Our point here is that, although it is hard to exactly determine when a subject starts or ceases to be a ‘person’, a necessary condition for a subject to have a right to X is that she is harmed by a decision to deprive her of X.

And this is where we step across the line into vary murky moral and ethical territory. Indeed, the authors admit, "such a condition depends on the level of her mental development, which in turn determines whether or not she is a ‘person’." If you can justifiably be killed based on your mental capacity to realize what you’re losing, things don’t look so good for that 3-year-old with autism. If a life was not really taken, this could also become a legal defense for murder; this is not such a stretch. If we’re discussing extending the arguments (and their implications) for abortion to include "after-birth" abortion, we can extend them (and their implications) further to legal defenses, can we not?

Those who are only capable of experiencing pain and pleasure (like perhaps fetuses and certainly newborns) have a right not to be inflicted pain. If, in addition to experiencing pain and pleasure, an individual is capable of making any aims (like actual human and non-human persons), she is harmed if she is prevented from accomplishing her aims by being killed.

I find a large gap in their logic here. Let us stipulate that those who can experience pain have a right not to have pain inflicted on them, as the authors are saying. Then it follows that those who can experience life have a right not to have it take from them. Now, a fetus and a newborn may not realize that they are experiencing "life" — they may not be that self-aware — but then, do they realize that they are experiencing "pain"? Are they self-aware enough understand what pain actually is? All they know, when in pain, is that they don’t want the current experience, whatever it is. But they are not aware enough of the concept of "pain" to realize what it is, much the same way the experience of the pleasure of life itself is somewhat lost on them. In neither case are they aware of what it is they are experiencing.

Whether or not you understand what you are experiencing has no bearing on whether or not you have a right to or from it. Similarly, whether or not you understand the future prospects for that experience also have no bearing on your rights. The point is, our experience and understanding has nothing at all to do with our rights.

This even works in the legal sense as well. In America, if I don’t know or understand my "Miranda rights", it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, nor can they be taken away from me.

This is different from animals (or, as the authors put it, "non-human persons") because animals do not have the same innate moral rights as humans. (This does not mean it does not matter how animals are treated.  God has told man to be a good steward of His creation, and few would deny some inner love for animals, particularly the cuter ones, which I believe, too, was put there by God. But they do not have the same moral rights, and thus their use as beasts of burden, for example, are not moral issues.)

Using this flawed definition of "person", the authors then put it to use to use in their arguments for "after-birth" abortions. Having fouled up their definition, everything else from here on out fails to convince me at all.

The fetus and the newborn are potential persons

It might be claimed that someone is harmed because she is prevented from becoming a person capable of appreciating her own being alive. Thus, for example, one might say that we would have been harmed if our mothers had chosen to have an abortion while they were pregnant with us or if they had killed us as soon as we were born. However, whereas you can benefit someone by bringing her into existence (if her life is worth living), it makes no sense to say that someone is harmed by being prevented from becoming an actual person. The reason is that, by virtue of our definition of the concept of ‘harm’ in the previous section, in order for a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm.

With their definitions of "person" and "harm", this all makes sense. But those definitions are extremely flawed, and thus so it their conclusion that there is no harm in killing a newborn baby. Most of this section launches from these definitions, so there is no real need to dissect it piece by piece. I will note a this passage.

The alleged right of individuals (such as fetuses and newborns) to develop their potentiality, which someone defends, is over-ridden by the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being because, as we have just argued, merely potential people cannot be harmed by not being brought into existence. Actual people’s well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of. Sometimes this situation can be prevented through an abortion, but in some other cases this is not possible. In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions.

What they argue is that a newborn has no right to life because of, in addition to all the previous arguments, the prevailing economic conditions. I understand that many abortions are done for these reasons, but I don’t consider economics a valid reason to kill a child, before or after birth. Now, I am the first to admit that I’ve never been in as dire a situation, but I hope I would stick with my principles about life over economics when the time came. (Interestingly, people like Sarah Palin, who lived their principles, seem to be castigated more on this than others. Odd, that.)

Whether or not one sticks to one’s principles is, however, not germane to the issue, which is, what moral right to life a newborn may have. And this section of the article does not persuade in the least, because it starts with assumptions that fail its own logic (or fail to be addressed).

Adoption as an alternative to after-birth abortion?

This section is summed up in one sentence from the article.

What we are suggesting is that, if interests of actual people should prevail, then after-birth abortion should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption.

That is, if the biological mother might suffer stress or other psychological from letting the baby live, killing it is fine. Not to minimize the psychological health of the mother, but there is a life on the line. The authors and I would not agree on whether the infant’s life is meaningless or meaningful, so we are, again, at a disagreement.

Conclusions

After they restate their position that the criteria for "after-birth" abortions should be the same as those before birth, they point out two considerations that they wish to add.

First, we do not put forward any claim about the moment at which after-birth abortion would no longer be permissible, and we do not think that in fact more than a few days would be necessary for doctors to detect any abnormality in the child. In cases where the after-birth abortion were requested for non-medical reasons, we do not suggest any threshold, as it depends on the neurological development of newborns, which is something neurologists and psychologists would be able to assess.

Here is where they quietly slip out altogether from the question of, having obliterated one fairly bright line, where to draw the new line. I appreciate the fact that they even brought it up, but to say "we do not suggest any threshold" is to play fast and loose with life itself. I go back to that example of a 3-year-old autistic child, and wonder where the line would be drawn. Would there be a line drawn by this society? Living your personal morality is one thing. Inflicting it on a child at the cost of his or her life is another one entirely.

This is where the charge that they are advocating infanticide comes from, in spite of their previous denial. They say that killing a newborn can be justified, they don’t say at what point it wouldn’t be, but then they protest if you call them to account on it. Whatever it is, they insist, they don’t want to label it "infanticide". Well, call it what you want. The result is that people who want to kill their child legally will figure out a way to do it, once they get a legal imprimatur. One million abortions per year prove it.

Second, we do not claim that after-birth abortions are good alternatives to abortion. Abortions at an early stage are the best option, for both psychological and physical reasons. However, if a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical [sic], social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford.

I do not believe that before-birth abortions are a good alternative to adoption, and yet upwards of a million abortions have been done every single year since Roe v Wade. I don’t think that the rate would double if "after-birth" abortions became legal, but what Giubilini and Minerva would release on this society will not at all be curtailed in the least by their personal view of what’s a good alternative. Again, one million abortions per year say otherwise.

This proposal is one that completely ignores essential elements of the history of abortion in this country; namely that, as a political tool used by the Left to supposedly "empower" women, it has become virtually sacrosanct, a sacrament of the Left. It can not be calmly or logically discussed without baseless charges of misogyny or religious fundamentalism getting thrown out and discussion stops before it really starts. The Left simply will not give up the "fundamental right" to abortion-as-birth-control,which, as I’ve noted, the vast majority indeed are. What Giubilini and Minerva would do is simply extend indefinitely the time period in which "abortion" could take place, and expand the culture of death in this country and around the world.

I think they’re proposal is wrong on its face, and when you look at the details, it’s even more wrong. That is why I disagree with it in the strongest terms.

I’ve read the whole piece by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, and I come to the conclusion that, while their stated intent may not be to suggest that it is desirable to kill newborns, the result will be the same. The main problem I see is that, while they have their personal moral stances regarding how often and in what circumstances what they call "after-birth abortions" would take place, their stances would not be what others use to make their determination. Would they accept a gun manufacturer’s statement that "I don’t intend my product to kill innocent people"? Perhaps not, but it can be used that way, and abortion kills millions upon millions because they are merely inconvenient. The authors’ morals will not be used to put into practice their suggestions. Keep that in mind.

(Note: While putting this blog post together, the article was removed from the Journal of Medical Ethics website. The link takes you to a "Not Found" page, and no amount of searching for title, text, or authors could find it. I’m not sure if it was taken down for some reason, or if, perhaps, only the most recent articles appear on the website. In any event, the article is no longer there. I’ll continue to look to see if it gets posted elsewhere.)

(Second note: This is why I haven’t posted anything this week so far. I’ve been spending my time working on this.)

I will not be quoting the entire article, but I will be summarizing as I go along with quotes as needed. Please follow the link for the full text of the article.

First, their abstract:

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

Please note that they are invoking morality from the start. Thus, I, too, will make my appeals to it as well. We will see how just that changes things entirely, especially regarding one’s "moral status as actual persons".

Introduction

Giubilini and Minerva start their introduction by noting various reasons for abortion:

1. Severe abnormalities of the fetus.
2. Physical and/or psychological health of the mother (sometimes in connection with #1; issues that may arise taking care of an abnormal baby).
3. Loss of partner after finding out she is pregnant, and not being able to take care of the child herself.

These situations may not be known, or may change, after birth, and the problem is that at that point there is no possibility of "abortion". As an example:

However, such rare and severe pathologies are not the only ones that are likely to remain undetected until delivery; even more common congenital diseases that women are usually tested for could fail to be detected. An examination of 18 European registries reveals that between 2005 and 2009 only the 64% of Down’s syndrome cases were diagnosed through prenatal testing.

They acknowledge that a diagnosis of Down’s virtually always results in abortion. "Once these children are born, there is no choice for the parents but to keep the child, which sometimes is exactly what they would not have done if the disease had been diagnosed before birth."

Abortion rates for diagnoses of Down’s hovers around 95% in the US and Europe. Are we to believe that every one of these mothers were physically or psychologically unable to care for their child, or that their partners left them after finding out the diagnoses? By removing reason #1 (calling Down’s "more common"), they seem to suggest that every diagnosis of Down’s results in #2 or #3. Had either of these situations been determined in those cases of abortion, or, as is more likely the case, the majority of them were a result of not thinking themselves able to handle it (when they quite possibly could have) or, worse, just not wanting to deal with the hassle?

Let’s not forget the percentages we’re talking about here. According to the Guttmacher Institute:

1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).

The vast majority of women just don’t want to deal with the baby, healthy or not. And if Down’s babies are part of the 6%, then (if the percentages hold for unhealthy babies as for healthy ones), 93% (at least) of those with Down’s babies indeed don’t want to deal with the situation vs. those who actually can’t deal with it.

I’m spending a bit of time at the beginning here to deal with the abortion question, and why I find it grossly overused, because the authors intend to make an equivalence with it. My definition of a justified abortion is, however, not shared by much of society. I will note, then, that the authors’ definition of a justified abortion is equally irrelevant to society at large, though they will continue to appeal to it.

So keep in mind that Giubilini and Minerva have a "solution" looking for a problem, considering the actual percentages. This is not to say that there aren’t serious abortion situations that come up like they have described; only that they are very rare and, if the past is any indicator, their solution will be applied in situations far outside of this as well.

Abortion and after-birth abortion

While Giubilini and Minerva agree that life may still be worth living, even if the child has Down’s, they find a reason to suggest that killing it is acceptable.

Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

Let me highlight that first sentence: "Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care." The potential, then, for a happy future life is not enough to outweigh the economic factors, in the eyes of the authors, such that an "after-birth abortion" is justified. Deciding that a life is worth taking because of economic considerations is something that you’re only likely to hear in countries where the national government is the ultimate source of health care benefits (whether as a single payer or as one that manipulates private insurance companies to act on its behalf). As the US edges closer to that, I expect to hear more of this sort of justification.

But setting aside the heartlessness of this, again we’re seeing a situation that likely is true in a minority of cases. Further, is economic aid from the state truly a burden, when it provides what those who get a chance live it consider happy? That’s not a burden, as far as I’m concerned, and if we’re going to appeal to morality, I’d say that’s an overall moral good. But to Giubilini and Minerva, it’s just not good enough to provide a happy life for a child who would have otherwise been aborted.

Next, they play with words so as to make what they’re suggesting not sound as bad.

In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be.

In order to avoid the term "infanticide", the authors have to argue that the newborn is not a person. The idea that a newborn baby isn’t a person, on its face, just goes against any bit of common sense one might have. Yes, it is not independent, but this line — birth — has been a line that even pro-abortionists wouldn’t cross. Now, however, we see people trying to push the envelope further out, and, as we’ll see, leave the door open for further redefinition of "person", beyond what the authors themselves may intend.

They define personhood rather specifically, so let me quote the relevant paragraphs.

Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. The reason is that, unlike the case of death of an existing person, failing to bring a new person into existence does not prevent anyone from accomplishing any of her future aims. However, this consideration entails a much stronger idea than the one according to which severely handicapped children should be euthanised. If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet.

There are two reasons which, taken together, justify this claim:

The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense.

It is not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense.

First, they say that allowing the death (or "failing to bring … into existence") of someone requires that one be able to form a life goal in one’s mind; "future aims", as they express it. Now, if they aren’t speaking as sweepingly as this (if "a life goal" is too long a time period and perhaps the future aim could be, for example, their next meal), then even a newborn has a few short-term future aims; to satisfy their hunger, as an example. And they’re more than willing to let you know about their future aim, or at least their lack of something that they want fulfilled. But since a newborn fits this definition, clearly the authors’ intended the timeframe to be longer than the next meal, but less than a life goal; a rather wide range subject to all manner of manipulation and goal-post moving.

Does a 3-year-old who’s autistic have a life goal or future aims far enough out for Giubilini and Minerva? We’ll see later that they find the question — the very heart of the ethics of this — too much to deal with for their medical ethics article. The purpose of this article is to try to erase one one line (birth) but refuse to draw any new one. They only ever say "newborn", but their own definitions come back to haunt them. Thus, the article, rather than solidifying any ethical conclusion, merely opens wide the floodgates leaving no restraint in place. They say that are not advocating infanticide, while at the same time not being able to ethically curtail it.

I will say this, though. I do agree with part of their first reason: The moral status of an infant is indeed equivalent to that of a fetus, which is what pro-lifers have been saying since there were pro-lifers.

[To be continued.]

Also from the Great White North, government intrusion into homeschool, saying that Christian parents can’t teach a Biblical view of homosexuality. Freedom of religion is being chipped away slowly enough that most don’t see it.

If Obama is some post-racial president, why is he launching "African Americans for Obama"?

Medical "ethicists" are seriously arguing that post-birth newborns are "not persons" and can ethically be "aborted".

With all the religious implications of Obama’s policies, you’d think he’d have kept around his faith-based council for advice. Nope, they’ve just faded away.

Movie reviewers of the liberal persuasion are all for anti-war, anti-military or pro-environmental message movies, but that idea gets thrown out when they disapprove of the message. Suddenly, it’s "propaganda".

Scofflaw Democrats. "The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 further provides that if, for two years in a row, more than 45% of Medicare funding is coming from general revenues rather than Medicare taxes, the president must submit legislation to Congress to address the Medicare funding crisis. President Bush dutifully followed the law, but President Obama has ignored it for the last three years."

Obama claims that we can’t drill our way out of the energy problem, and then, in the same speech, notes that domestic oil production is at it’s highest level in 8 years. Because we drilled! Can’t have it both ways, Mr. President, but the press will try to let you have it.

The Pope reminds Europe that moral failure usually precludes many other kinds of failure, eve economic.

A page to bookmark when someone brings up the faulty idea that billionaires are running the Tea Party.

Congress will investigate Planned Parenthood. About time.

Meryl Yourish has a keen eye for news media bias against Israel and, coincidentally, a bias for Palestinians. The latest? A Palestinian man kills an American tourist (because he thought the American was Jewish, which he wasn’t). The AP headline only say the Palestinian man was convicted of "stabbing" the tourist. (Oh, and the tourist was a Christian who happened to be wearing a Star of David.)

"Despite increases in gun sales, gun crimes continued to decrease in the United States for the fourth straight year in 2010, according to the FBI." This goes completely against the liberal narrative. The reality is likely closer to crime is down because of the increase in gun sales.

"President Obama’s jobs bill is better than doing nothing in the face of a national crisis, but it won’t have much impact on unemployment." This incredibly foolish line begins a column trying to suggest Obama’s Stimulus Jr. should be bigger. First of all, how is wasting money on something that won’t do what it purports to do better than doing nothing? That’s how politicians have gotten us into this fiscal mess. Second, the answer is always more, more, more. And yet here we are anyway. How can more pounding our heads against the wall feel any better?

And finally, a political cartoon (of sorts) of my own. Someone took a picture of tax protesters, and attempted a little irony by pointing out things around them paid for by taxes. But they missed the point entirely. Then point is… (Click for a larger version).

Albert Mohler brings up a recent court decision in Canada where a mother was convicted of strangling her newborn baby and tossing him over the fence into a neighbor’s yard. To compound this horror, the Canadian justice system (and I use the term "justice" very loosely) decided she would not spend any time in jail. None. Here’s how the judge justified this.

Justice Joanne Veit, whose name should now go down in legal and moral infamy, tied this woman’s act of infanticide to Canada’s lack of legal restrictions on abortion. The judge’s decision stated that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”

She continued: “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.” She also stated that the Canadian approach is a “fair compromise of all the interests involved.”

Two juries had found Effert guilty of second-degree murder, but an appeals court had reduced her conviction to infanticide.

This is what comes from acceptance of a million abortions per year, and what comes from a judiciary far more concerned about feelings than laws. Mohler’s column notes that this slippery slope has been known to be coming for years now, but the Left has been deaf to the warnings.

The ultimate insult is that Effert may actually spend time in jail, not for killing her baby, but for throwing the lifeless body into her neighbor’s yard. Kill your child and we’ll grieve with you, but litter? That’s over the line.

I’ve heard those on the Left, including Christians, suggest that if you’re against abortion, just don’t have one. But life, even (especially) of the "least of these" is worth defending. Mohler closes by explaining why.

Mark this well — the horrific logic of this judge’s decision will not remain in Canada. Indeed, it did not even start in Canada. Those arguments are already in place in the United States. If we will not defend life in the womb, eventually the dignity of every single human life is thrown over the fence.

A study released Sunday shows embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells are almost identical.

Since human IPS cells were first produced from mouse cells in 2006 and from human cells in 2007, it has been thought they were equivalent to embryonic stem cells, which are controversial because they are derived from human embryos.

But new research, directed by Josh Coon, a UW-Madison associate professor of chemistry and biomolecular chemistry, shows the proteins in the two types of cells are almost identical.

Stem cells have the ability to develop into any of the different types of cells in the body. In many tissues they serve as a sort of internal repair system, dividing to replenish other cells.

There is really no longer any ethical or scientific reason to use embryonic stem cells. But scientists will continue to try, and to justify it ethically. Some do this by, ironically, casting moral aspersions on those of us who bring up the ethics issue. Writing at the First Things blog, Wesley Smith responds to a faculty level scientist at UC Davis who got upset at one of Smith’s articles on the ethics issue. It is amazing how tone-deaf some of these fellows can be. One imagines that if, someday, we were able to extract perfect stem cells from pine needles, they’d still insist on using embryos.

But this is only one side of the equation. I came up with a parallel situation to demonstrate the problem.

I spend most of my money on a very few things. My biggest expense is no doubt my house. I pay so much money to one person; my mortgage banker. He and my grocer, between them, probably get the biggest chunks of change out of my annual income. I have a family doctor who, too, gets a significant portion of my resources. And, as my kids have started going to college, two colleges have been getting a bigger slice of the pie.

(At this point, I quote a paragraph from his post and apply it to my parallel situation.) As a matter of justice, it would not be reasonable to think that it’s morally acceptable for those few people to consume more than half of my resources. Even though the laws were written in such a way that they are allowed to acquire those resources legally, it makes for an immoral and unjust situation, does it not?

If all you’re looking at is the percentage of resources consumed (and that’s all his bullet points cover) and using only that criteria to determine whether it’s just or not, then my mortgage banker, my grocer, my doctor and two colleges are acting unjustly with my resources.

Except that, for those resources, I’m getting shelter, food, health care and education. I’m getting a disproportionate percentage of what I need to live from this small number of people. Perhaps they could charge less for some things and not take as many of my resources for their lifestyle, but on balance I’m getting some essentials from these few folks.

In the same way, while it is true that the US consumes a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources, and while it is also true that many of us could do with less, the world gets quite a bit out of the bargain. Medical advances for longer and better lives. Educational opportunities that people come from all over to take advantage of. Technological advances in energy production to bring a higher standard of living around the world (and higher standards of living almost always result in better health). Agricultural advancements that let vegetables grow in the desert and other inhospitable conditions. And on top of all this, when the world needs protection from enemies or help during calamities, who’s the first place they turn for a shield or a helping hand? And who has the armaments and money to help out?

We do. The world’s getting quite a lot for the money.

Ask the illegal immigrant risking what he has to come to America for work. Ask the African who now has a garden courtesy of a charitable organization. Ask the Libyan who may soon be out from under a dictator. Ask the Dani tribesman in Papua, Indonesia who won’t die from an infection that is now easily curable. Ask the survivors of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

So unless he’s ready to start laying into his grocer for the "unjust" use of his resources, it might be best to reconsider this pronouncement of immorality and unjustness.

Do you agree or disagree? My main point is that you can’t just look at the consumption side; there’s so much more to the question than that. While we consume more than our share, we produce so much from that consumption, and the benefits absolutely do not stay within our own borders. I believe the religious (question of how moral this consumption is) is being colored by the political. Not "going green" as much as you may wish me to is not, by itself (and this post isolates consumption by itself) a moral failing, or certainly can’t be used to solely just the overall morality.

I believe the Christian Left falls into this trap more often than they care to admit; conflating the political with the moral. Being against Cap & Trade or the Kyoto Protocol, or not following the Green Othodoxy is somehow immoral. We should be good stewards of our resources; I’m not denying that. But to look at the "bad" side of the equation without looking at the "good" side results in fatally flawed policies. We need to deal with the bad without damaging the good.

Anders Breivik, the madman who was responsible for the recent massacre in Norway, is often referred to as a "Christian terrorist". Granted, he called himself "Christian", but his aims were political. But the Left really, really wants to use him to equate radical Islamic terrorism and so-called "Christian terrorism". The Blaze asks,

Have any churches or clergymen openly celebrated Breivik’s slaughter of innocents? Are young Christian children dancing in the streets anywhere in Europe, as young Muslims did in Gaza on September 11, 2001? Could any honest observer of the world over the past 30 years believe that Christianity and Islam have played equal parts in terrorist attacks?

And Chuck Colson notes, the secularization of Europe, with its refusing to understand the problem of evil and sin inherent in human nature, is not helping Norway work through this or prevent it happening again.

More rationing of health care in England. This will happen here under ObamaCare. History has already spoken.

What G. K. Chesterton had to say about the Tea Party. (Sort of.)

Obama may have inherited a mess from Bush, but y’know Reagan inherited a similar mess (in some cases, a worse mess) from Carter. And he did far better with it.

The US accuses Iran of aiding Al Qaeda. Are pitiful sanctions really helping things out here? AQ would love to get its hand on a nuke, and so would Iran.

Government, apparently in the pocket of Big Agriculture, bringing more red tape and expense to the family farm.

The Obama administration admits "the White House doesn’t create jobs". It’s about time you realized that, guys. Congress doesn’t either. Government can get out of the way (or get in the way) of business, which does create jobs.

When Sarah Palin came onto the scene, with her history of speaking truth to power, even within her own political party, I noted that the Democrats, who purport to love that sort of thing, went on the attack instead. Like watching "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and rooting against Jimmy Stewart. Now, the same Dems who purport to want grass-roots groups to help fix Washington ask the media to ignore the biggest grass-roots effort in a long time. True colors: Shown!

And speaking of "terrorists" (click for a larger version):

One of the great difficulties of this issue, for Christians, is that the morality of spending and debt has been so thoroughly demagogued that it’s impossible to advocate cuts in government spending without being accused of hatred for the poor and needy.  A group calling itself the “Circle of Protection” recently promoted a statement on “Why We Need to Protect Programs for the Poor.”  But we don’t need to protect the programs.  We need to protect the poor.  Indeed, sometimes we need to protect the poor from the programs.  Too many anti-poverty programs are beneficial for the politicians that pass them, and veritable boondoggles for the government bureaucracy that administers them, but they actually serve to rob the poor of their dignity and their initiative, they undermine the family structures that help the poor build prosperous lives, and ultimately mire the poor in poverty for generations.  Does anyone actually believe that the welfare state has served the poor well?

Read the whole thing. Seems some Christians see any attempt to reign in entitlements or reform these program ergo an un-Christian attack on the poor. It isn’t.