Sick as a Dawg

March 17, 2002

by Charles E. Perry

I’m sick as a dog this week, so I don’t really feel much like writing a column. Still, my editor expects one and, I hope, at least a few of you good people do too. So, fortified by a few snorts of a home remedy, I sat down to write. What the heck, I can’t sleep. If I lie down I start trying to cough up a lung, and sitting up gives me the only comfort I can get. After staring at a blank screen for a bit, I decided to write about the inconsistencies I see in people’s political philosophies, notably, them blamed liberals.

Liberals will tell us that it’s horrible for the state to execute some guy who went out and hacked up a dozen people or so with an axe. It doesn’t matter if the guy even ate some of the body parts or sold them in his butcher shop at 89 cents a pound, liberals will tell us we shouldn’t kill the guy for doing it. Why, he might contribute to society in some way, other than introducing the masses to people burger I mean.

Liberals will hold vigils for the guy. They will raise money for his defense fund, so he can appeal his death sentence from here to Hades and back. Hollywood liberals will wear ribbons in his honor, and will go on talk shows defending his crimes as "an experiment in alternative food sources," or even possibly as "an offbeat artistic expression," and an "example of freedom of speech the government is out to suppress." You know how those Hollywood liberals are.

The victims names will never be mentioned, and it will be made to look as if the prosecutor is out to railroad this guy, who was caught running various arms and legs through a wood chipper, into the death chamber. We’ve all seen examples of it, I’m sure, and after we were done losing our lunches over liberal reactions, we all expressed our outrage in various ways.

But when it comes to killing a completely innocent child, everything changes. Suddenly, it’s not only okay, it’s a right, and the government shouldn’t even be involved. You all know, I’m sure, that I’m talking about abortion, and while I’m usually loathe to do a column on abortion - I get enough hate mail - the hope that I may leave this mortal coil before this is published spurs me on. I probably won’t be that lucky though, so let me tell all the NOW-types right now: I print out your emails, and we gather to laugh at them over lunch.

Nobody has ever been able to explain to me while the state, after a lengthy legal process, lawfully executing a convicted murderer is somehow wrong, while a mother killing her innocent child in the womb is not only right, but a right. I’d like Andrea Yates’ defense team to argue that she just had some really late term abortions, and see how far they get with it. If you can kill ’em before they’re born, why can’t you kill ’em after? What’s the real difference? Location?

This whole death penalty/abortion thing is about the biggest inconsistency I’ve ever run across in liberal philosophy, though it’s assuredly not the only one. There’s that whole Feinstein "I don’t want the masses to have a gun but I need one" thing, for instance, but the death penalty/abortion one stands out, and smacks you between the eyes like a 2x4 wielded by an incompetent carpenter. Did you like that last? It’s called a metaphor, and columnists are supposed to use them, so I try to put one in now and then. What I’m doing now is called "padding," but we’ll get to that in another column sometime.

The same liberals who hold prayer vigils for the hundred or so murderers we execute every year, don’t even blink an eye at half a million abortions, and I have to wonder why. They always say that the executed murderer might have contributed to society somehow, but we’re not talking Einsteins here, we’re talking lowlife scum. We’re talking people who rape, hack, and maim others, not rocket scientists. But, while we’re on the subject, here’s something for those liberals to consider: the person who was slated to discover the cure for AIDS may have been aborted. He or she may be in a dumpster behind the "Quickee Abortion Center" in Paducah. How does that make you feel?

Well, I’m about done with my rant here. Let the hate mail begin. Maybe next time I’ll tell you all about my plan for male abortions, and then I’ll really get some hate mail. But, in the meantime, I’ll just stay confused as to why liberals feel it’s wrong to kill convicted murderers, but okay to kill innocent children. Beats the heck out of me.

_________________________________________

Charles E. Perry is a freelance writer living in Michigan. He has done a variety of things in his life, including Ward Supervisor at the State of Michigan's Maximum Security Mental Facility. His degree is in accounting, but he discovered writing and now spends his time hunched over a keyboard, hollow-eyed, looking for just the right word. Perry is the author of "How Government Should Work: A Look at the Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States," currently pending publication.

Send the author an E mail at Perry@ConservativeTruth.org.

For more of Charlie's articles, visit his archives.