Reductio ad Absurdum
Life-size model of fetus at 8 weeks after conception. Brain waves begin at six weeks, and heartbeat at 18 days. Photograph by Bill Davenport: 4 March 2007 [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]
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I have a question for Catholic Democrats or “anti-Republicans”: if a candidate made it clear that he hated black people, or Jews, or Arabs, or Catholics, or Muslims, or had neo-Nazi affiliations, would that be an automatic dealbreaker / disqualifier, in terms of voting for him or her?
Is a neo-Nazi or KKK or anti-Semite acceptable to vote for, provided they get other stuff right? Say, Hitler got the economy or foreign affairs right: could a good Catholic or morally traditional non-Catholic Christian vote for him in good conscience? Sorry for using Hitler, but it just fits so well, in terms of extreme exaggeration to make a point. But even Hitler is responsible for far less murders than the astronomical numbers of dead babies that are the result of the pro-aborts in our time. In terms of death and destruction of innocents (we’re talking maybe half a billion dead babies by now), they make Hitler look like a harmless kitten.
[Note: In July 1932, Germany gave the Nazi party the leading number of seats, by vote. Hitler was the leader. Not much different from the British parliamentary system, looks like. Being named Chancellor was later, but his party was initially voted in by a democratic process.]
We could use David Duke. Forget Hitler. Could a Catholic vote for him if he had a lot of great policies, while he also hates black people, Jews, etc.?
Now, the above, is what is called reductio ad absurdum, or argumentum ad absurdum, in classical logic. It’s designed to show (in this case, by analogy), that one undesirable scenario — that the person being asked would certainly, or most likely reject —, is not even as bad, by analogy, as a position that they do hold. Since the hypothetical analogous scenario is rejected, so should be their real preferred scenario. Thus, such an argument is designed to make a person holding a particular position uncomfortable, or “squirm.” And, this being the case, they often perceive it as a personal insult and attack, in our wonderful world today, where these sorts of arguments are about as foreign and remote to the average person (even a college-educated one) as Hieroglyphics or Sanskrit.
In other words, bigotry and hatred of ethnic or religious groups is not as much of a disqualifier as the far greater sin of advocacy of childkilling [aka, “abortion”]. So if one agreed that a person with such views should not ever be voted for, it would also follow that the childkilling advocate could not be voted for, either.
To bring it down to brass tacks in this election season, many Catholics and other pro-lifers feel perfectly justified in voting for the socialist childkiller advocate Bernie Sanders (or for that matter, the childkilling advocate and quite-possible felon Hillary Clinton), when there is a pro-life alternative (Catholics are allowed to choose the lesser of two evils if those are the only choices available). But I highly doubt that the same people would vote for a bigot and hater, neo-Nazi candidate, if there were a better alternative available. It all depends (for them) on what else a candidate also believes, according to this mentality. If Sanders has great economic policies [choke!], then we can wink at the childkilling stuff, acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide, radical redefinition of marriage, etc.
Voting for pro-aborts is what sustains the abortion holocaust. Period. No amount of rationalization can make it otherwise. It’s because good people vote for those with evil policies, that the latter triumph and continue unabated for generations. We observe the pathetic spectacle of pro-lifers (!) voting for those whose views diametrically oppose them on that issue.
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I made a public reply to a supporter of Bernie Sanders:
1. If the reasoning is that in a Sanders vs. Trump scenario, we can oppose Trump because he is for waterboarding, which is said to be intrinsically evil torture, this ignores the fact that waterboarding has not been definitively declared by the Church as torture. I oppose it as unnecessary and abusive, but I have not been convinced that it is torture, by the Church’s criteria, nor on the basis of specific magisterial statements about waterboarding (which don’t exist, as far as I know).
Even if we grant that waterboarding is intrinsically evil torture, for the sake of argument, we know that all of three people (all terrorists) were waterboarded during the Bush years. So the comparison is between that and some ten million babies being legally slaughtered and murdered during the same time. This is hardly an immoral equivalence or a scenario where it is morally superior to vote for Sanders the childkiller, as if he is relatively morally superior (i.e., the lesser of two evils).
2. It is stated that Trump is pro-abortion, too. This is untrue. His stated position is that he is pro-life, including de-funding of Planned Parenthood (even though he thinks PP does some good things, too).
People doubt this because it would be a radical change of mind. Well, they should be aware that Ronald Reagan was also pro-choice, as recently as 13 years before he was elected President. In 1967 he signed a bill into law in California that legalized abortion. It is estimated that 200,000 legal abortions resulted: before Roe v. Wade.
Elder Bush was also pro-choice not long before he became Vice President. I believe his wife still is.
Conversely, President Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, and others used to be pro-life, yet no one questions that they are sincerely pro-aborts now.
It’s all a moot point because Sanders is very unlikely to be the candidate, unless Billary is indicted or if the FBI at least recommends same. If Sanders is actually the candidate, he’ll be defeated in a landslide: possibly an historic one. We’re talking 46-47 states or more.
If Clinton or Sanders are elected, more babies will die. There is no doubt about that. They’ll appoint ultra-liberal, pro-abort Justices to the Supreme Court, who will then uphold abortion “rights” and restrict restrictions on abortion, which are the primary cause of the reduction in abortions.
Catholic Democrats can get as elaborate and legalistic as they like (spin and fine-tune and rationalize and nuance it till kingdom come); the blood remains partially on their hands if they vote for people for national office who sanction childkilling. They directly allow the holocaust to continue. Things will only change if Catholics and other pro-lifers start voting according to their stated positions, and never vote (unless faced with a terrible choice of two rabid pro-aborts: which scenario the Church recognizes) for those who advocate childkilling: by far the greatest and most diabolical evil and social issue of our time.
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