Defining Good and Evil in 2008 America

When asked by Rick Warren at the Saddleback forum about his beliefs on when human life begins, Democrat Presidential wannabe Barack Obama obfuscated, finally responding that the answer is "above my pay grade." Obama apparently hoped to at once avoid criticism from any who would disagree with him if he got specific, while attempting to claim the moral "high ground" on the basis that he would leave such decisions to a higher authority.

In truth, Obama accomplished neither. Hardly offering a nuanced answer, the Illinois Senator was spotlighting his consistent unwillingness to recognize the humanity of the unborn. And by so doing, he was making an absolute moral determination that the littlest and most helpless among us could not count on any protection from the likes of Barack Obama. Rather, during his brief political career he has been a reliable champion of those who promote the destruction of innocent life through abortion.

Human existence contains only two defining instants, which are conception and death. And this is not a matter of "religion" but of biology. All other milestones, no matter how dramatically recognized in society, amount to transitional phases in the human life cycle. So despite all of the grandiose but empty oratory, any individual who does not advocate the defense of all innocent human life between those two landmarks is an individual who holds no regard for the sanctity of human life on the whole.

Under even casual scrutiny, it is evident that Obama's implied assertion that the best recourse might be to leave such decision making to God is in no way backed by the actions of his public life, nor those of his political allies. Democrats and liberals (and Obama is the most liberal of Democrats) long ago made a political calculation on the nature of human life, and in particular, the unborn. It is their contention that such helpless life is easily trivialized and discarded at the pleasure of those who hold the reins of power.

Obama, with his absolute no-holds barred, pro-abortion track record, rightly carries the torch for a political party that has for several decades built its legacy on a foundation of moral ambiguity. As a result, the "above my pay grade" effort at defusing the question was as transparent as cellophane, and echoes the rationalizations offered by every prison guard at Auschwitz, along with every enabling minion of every corrupt tyrant in history.

Nevertheless, whether considering those in the womb, the aged, or the infirmed, liberals have habitually sought to "play God" when determining who among the innocent will live, and who ostensibly lacks sufficient "quality of life" to be allowed to do so. Only when deliberating the fate of murderous criminals does the left suddenly find within itself a soft spot that forbids the taking of a life. And at such times this "principle" is trumpeted to the rest of society in a deluge of moralizing and sanctimony.

It is further noteworthy that while they flee from such a thoroughly defining topic as the definition of human life, Obama and his liberal cohorts have never shirked any opportunity to establish moral boundaries on virtually every other aspect of life in America.

Having virtually done away with the annoying limitations imposed by traditional (read: Judeo-Christian) morality and the Constitution, those on the left believe they are now free to substitute an entire code of their own, dealing with every issue from "correct" speech to the greater good served by properly inflating one's tires, to the right amount of property and material possessions to own, to the right temperature at which to set the household thermostat.

Liberalism along with all of its derivatives including environmental extremism, are at their common core a set of warped moral/religious tenets. Thus, a left-wing politician who strenuously opposes any involvement of true Biblical precepts when crafting a law ("Separation of church and state," we are told) can flagrantly tout a socialist agenda on the basis that it is simply the "right thing to do," as if some universal understanding of collectivism exists as a canon of self-evident absolutes transcending all human experience.

Increasingly, the voices of traditional America are being systematically silenced from even being able to voice any objection to the onslaught of leftist ideology and its accompanying moral decay. Currently, under the perverse auspices of "political correctness," the same social entity that removed the customs and institutions of a comparatively moral society proceeded to supplant such things with its own ideological boundaries. However, on the propriety of its precepts, no flexibility, and indeed no room to even question its veracity, is allowed.

If such an assessment seems overstated, consider the harsh and oppressive "speech codes" imposed on America's college campuses where liberalism reigns supreme. And as the product of those campuses fans out into society, so does the blight of "political correctness" that was inculcated into its members.

So Barack Obama, who has inarguably spent far more time as a student in far-left academia than he has in the United States Senate, now assumes the role of standard bearer for such thinking within the Democrat Party, and if he wins in November, for the United States Government as a whole. Yet when pressed he would have us believe that he would impose no moral judgments of his own as edicts requiring strict compliance from the rest of us.

No amount of window dressing will dilute the dire nature of Barack Obama's radical liberalism, or that of the entire socio-political movement he represents. Time is running out for America to recognize his leftist ideology as the poison that it is.