Monday, January 30, 2012

A Quick One While I'm Awake

This image was in my Facebook Tabloid Friend's feed today. (I looked him up, and John Fugelsang is a stand-up comedian.) It's built on the familiar observation that many if not most "pro-life" individuals are not distinguished for caring about human life outside the womb -- or even inside it, if the expectant mother is poor, or brown skinned, or of the wrong religion. Nor is this constellation of attitudes limited to the US.

As I read through the list, I realized that it's not really fair to Republicans; after all, President Obama also favors the death penalty; he is pro-war in theory and in practice; he is pro-unmanned drone bombs; he is pro-nuclear weapons (and pro-nuclear power); he is pro-torture (though like Bush, he calls it something else); his stance on gun-control is fuzzy, but I'll admit that the gun lobby considers him anti-gun (though that may hold no more water than the Israel lobby's conviction that he is anti-Israel); he has refused to sign the international land mine treaty, which makes him objectively pro-land mine. (And for an added bonus, he's pro-cluster bomb.) It turns out that you can be all these things, and still call yourself a Democrat.