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| Tim Kaine on the left, Mike Pence on the right. |
During the debate, Kaine, a Catholic, reiterated his absurd and long-held position of, "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but I support a woman's right to choose." In order to make people feel okay about voting for a candidate who won't stand up for the defenseless, for decades now Democrats running for office have used the "personally opposed" argument when it comes to abortion.
Renowned Christian thinker, Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, satirically (and brilliantly) indicts the "personally opposed" position:
I am personally opposed to killing abortionists. However, inasmuch as my personal opposition to this practice is rooted in a sectarian (Catholic) religious belief in the sanctity of human life, I am unwilling to impose it on others who may, as a matter of conscience, take a different view. Of course, I am entirely in favor of policies aimed at removing the root causes of violence against abortionists. Indeed, I would go so far as to support mandatory one-week waiting periods, and even nonjudgmental counseling, for people who are contemplating the choice of killing an abortionist. I believe in policies that reduce the urgent need some people feel to kill abortionists while, at the same time, respecting the rights of conscience of my fellow citizens who believe that the killing of abortionists is sometimes a tragic necessity-not a good, but a lesser evil. In short, I am moderately pro-choice.
Do you suppose Senator Kaine "personally opposes" slavery? I wonder if his car is adorned with the bumper sticker, "Don't like slavery? Then don't own a slave." According to Mr. Kaine's logic, Jeffrey Dhamer’s cannibalism was just a "dietary choice;" Hitler and Stalin's genocide was merely a “demographics choice;” and as they execute apostates, members of ISIS are only exercising their "right" to religious liberty.
As National Review's Kevin Williamson points out, Tim Kaine's abortion argument (like countless others before him, and no-doubt—until we all stand face-to-face with the Eternal Truth—countless more after him) "is incoherent and indefensible; it is, in fact, illiterate." The word "incoherent" came to my mind when Senator Kaine declared, "That’s what we ought to be doing in public life: living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitement, convincing each other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day. But on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions."
When it comes to the morality of life, we as a society often stop people from "making their own decisions." What's more, we often "discriminate" when we do so. For over a year now, my family has wished that someone would have stopped the drug-impaired man who, "making his own decision," got behind the wheel of his truck and struck and killed my beloved father-in-law.
Senator Kaine also declared, "We really feel like you should live fully and with enthusiasm in the commands of your faith, but it is not the role of the public servant to mandate that for everybody else." Kaine seems perilously close to another "incoherent and indefensible" argument: the old tried and untrue, "We shouldn't legislate morality!" As I've noted more than once, all law is rooted in someone's idea of morality. And as I put it in 2013, "It is absurd and ignorant to lament conservative Christian efforts when it comes to abortion, marriage, and so on as some attempt to 'legislate morality.' The other side is attempting the very same thing!"
Mr. Kaine seems stunningly blind to the fact that, whether through the courts or through legislation, the left has long been "mandating for everyone else." Whether abortion, homosexuality, a perverse redefinition of marriage, transgenderism, and so on, for decades the "public servants" on the American left have used the power of the U.S. legal system—with the threat of fines, jail, and other similar punishments—to enact and enforce, in other words, to "mandate," the (im)moral agenda of modern liberalism.
Bakers, florists, photographers, wedding hosts, conservative U.S. States, and the like have suffered under our legal system due to their Christian views on marriage and homosexuality. In addition, those corrupted by liberalism in the corporate and entertainment industries (especially the sports entertainment industry) have joined their perverse pals in legislatures and the courts in punishing those who hold to what the Bible reveals on marriage, sex, gender, the family, and so on. So much for allowing those with whom we disagree to "live fully and with enthusiasm in the commands of [their] faith."
Mr. Kaine seems to have no problem allowing his faith to inform his decision-making as a professional when it comes to the death penalty. As the Daily Beast recently pointed out,
Over the course of his career, Kaine didn’t just oppose the death penalty; he worked to prevent executions by representing men facing death because they committed murders...Since his first days as a lawyer, Kaine has put in hundreds of hours, for free, to get murderers off death row. His first, formative case was [Richard Lee] Whitley's, who confessed to slashing the throat of a 63-year-old woman living in his Fairfax County neighborhood and then using two umbrellas to sexually assault her.
At first, Kaine said no to defending Whitley, but then his selective hypocrite radar went off.
"But then it kind of worked on me that I had said no because my feeling is, well, I say I’m against the death penalty," Kaine told the Virginian-Pilot for a 2005 profile. "If I say that’s my belief but I say, 'Nah, I’m not going to do it,' then I’m a hypocrite."
Kaine ended up putting in about 1,000 hours for Whitley, who would eventually—and justly—be executed. After Whitley's just sentence was carried out, Kaine declared, "Murder is wrong in the gulag, in Afghanistan, in Soweto, in the mountains of Guatemala, in Fairfax County... and even the Spring Street Penitentiary." Liberal logic at its finest: executing a throat-slashing rapist is "murder," but killing the most innocent and defenseless among us is a "choice."
"And he cited his faith," the Daily Beast adds, then quotes Kaine concluding: "I think it’s outrageous that there is the death penalty. It's not the biggest outrage in the world, but it's one of a number of outrageous [things] where people don’t appropriately value the sanctity of human life." Again, according to Kaine's twisted logic we should "value" the life of murderers (who themselves have shown a callous disregard for human life), but not the unborn. Amazing.
And notice what's absent from Kaine's personal "pro-life" activism? For a man who's "personally opposed" to abortion, other than not having an abortion himself (If liberals think men can have babies, can't they also have an abortion?), Mr. Kaine seems to have done almost nothing to help the plight of the unborn. In his mind, he’s a “hypocrite” for not standing up for murderers, but that doesn’t apply when it comes to the unborn. Again, amazing. Sadly, it seems Kaine has done a wonderful job of humanizing the worst among us and dehumanizing the least among us.
Lastly, Kaine's notion that, if Donald Trump has his way, women who have abortions will face legal consequences ignores the fact that, when abortion was illegal across the U.S., the law targeted abortionists, not pregnant women. State laws treated women as the second "victim" of abortion.
As Williamson concludes, when it comes to abortion, Tim Kaine is an intellectual mess and a moral coward, and as Matt Walsh puts it, a heretic as well. In other words, he's the perfect candidate to run alongside Hillary Clinton.
(See this column at American Thinker.)
Copyright 2016, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the brand new book The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com
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