This one dates to January 21, 2005.

"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

-Inaugural Address, President George Walker Bush, January 20, 2005

There are many good reasons to be a Republican, and that unflowery, bold, idealistic statement in the best tradition of Ronald Reagan is one of them.

But it's not why I'm a Republican.

The reason I signed up for all of the junk the Republican National Committee and every subpart thereof sends; the reason why I voted Republican down to the freaking Water District Manager; the reason why, should I ever be stupid enough to actually contemplate a run for elective office, I would unhesitatingly file the appropriate papers for a Republican primary, is this: Abortion. Beginning, end, total. Everything else is nice. I like lower taxes, and think it is good to keep them low as a policy matter. I believe in a robust national defense. I believe in human liberty. I think the aggrandizement of the State is one of the greatest moral and intellectual errors in human history. I like elephants.

But when it comes down to it, the reason I'm a Republican is this: One party's platform reflects a fundamental belief that men are inherently possessed of a right to life, and that life is the predicate from which all other rights flow. The other does not.

And now, I think they're trying to push me out. And a lot of the Party with me.

Let us not put too fine a point on this: To use Mark Shea's characterizations, I would much rather vote for the Stupid Party than the Evil Party. If the Stupid Party is also the Evil Party (Lite), well, then, Knights of the Old Republic II is out for the PC next month; I've never read anything by Edmund Burke, and I do need to remedy that; and with the twelve or so hour days I put in, I suspect my kids would like to see me more. My wife might, too. What I don't need to do is follow politics; organize; get out votes; or vote myself. Those are things one does because one cares.

And it would appear that the GOP is trying to shove the social conservatives into the corner. That notwithstanding, I'll be honest: If you offered me the end of legalized abortion in return for gay marriage, I'm there with bells on. I suspect the latter presages wrack and ruin; the former is the murder of millions.

I could handle it as Bush appointed a pro-baby murderchoice Cabinet (including Secretary of State and Attorney General). It's a big tent Party, and the guy at the top makes the final calls. I'm cool with that. But now this:

Ken Mehlman, incoming chairman of the Republican National Committee, has asked abortion advocate and party activist, Joann Davidson of Ohio to become the next co-chairman of the party.

Davidson, a former state legislator, has served on the advisory board of Republicans for Choice since its inception in 1990. The group has stumped for pro-abortion Republican candidates and lobbied to change the strong pro-life plank in the Republican Party's platform ever since.

After word of Davidson's potential selection filtered back to the group, Republicans for Choice posted a message on its Internet web site encouraging Davidson to "make sure the concerns of pro-choice and moderate Republicans are heard within the Republican National Committee headquarters."

With the selection generating national publicity, the message has since been removed.

Taken alone, this is a nothing. A pro-life Cabinet would make this irrelevant, or more accurately, an important concession to the minority of the Party that hews to this take on ordered liberty.

But.

There is a point past which loyalty to a cause that shows no reward to you is either blind religious devotion or utter idiocy. I'm Catholic, and I'm not (that) stupid. If the Party thinks we're along for the ride and too benighted to notice things like this, well, that's at their own peril. We may not be the majority of the Party apparatus, but I note that when it came time to gather votes for the election, Team Bush manifestly did not rely on getting out the pro-choice vote. And it showed.

The next round of Supreme Court Justices -- what I, at least, am fighting for -- had best not be Souters. It would be ... interesting to watch the Party try to win without pro-lifers.

This one is from February 23, 2005.

Well, it looks like absent some other intervention, Michael Schiavo gets to finish off his wife once and for all.

Red State has examined this death sentence before, and some of its broader implications. There's one angle we haven't touched on, though, and that's what this entire mess says about our legal system: At some point, we decided that some lives weren't worth living, and that the law would sanction the end of those lives.

Think about that for a second. Forget any religious dimension. Forget abortion for now. Just think about that: Our law does not favor life. It's such a small thing. We believe that life is an inherent right of every human being (well, a lot of us don't believe that about humans who are attached to a placenta, but I leave that to the side). But we don't carry a predisposition toward life itself.

Obviously, I'm writing this because very soon, a husband will put his wife to death, despite the pleas of her biological family. But there's more than Michael Schiavo's greed desire to carry out his wife's execution wishes at issue. And it's certainly larger than the extraordinary moral flexibility the fellow has shown to date, although there's some of that here, too.

Law is not in itself just. Law is a creation of imperfect human beings. We are capable of rendering highly just laws -- laws that protect the weak, provide order, and lessen the worst tendencies of men, or at least their effects. We are also capable of laws of powerful injustice, including those that give succor to those who slaughter the innocent.

There are more important things than the law as written. There are higher (or if you prefer, greater) laws. And our legal system has, in some vital ways, enshrined values opposite those laws.

I use the Schiavo case as a convenient example, but that's really the tip of the iceberg. Abortion was once criminalized, not because we wanted to control women, but because we thought there was something terribly wrong with killing babies. Suicide was criminalized, not because we wanted to imprison corpses, but because we wanted to add the law's opprobium to such a terrible act -- wanted, in other words, to put one more emotional and psychological hurdle in the path of an act for which there is no chance to express regrets in this world. We understood, in other words, that a life ended is ended finally, and that there is nothing any human being or group of human beings can do to reverse that.

It is a terrible path to which we have committed ourselves. If life has no sanctuary in the law, it will eventually have sanctuary nowhere; for law is but an organic outgrowth of society's values and mores. If a man can kill a woman who is, as far as the courts of law are concerned, completely incapable of experiencing sentience, and for whom others have offered their lifelong service to care, then why would it stop there? Why should it stop there? The slippery slope is an old argument, true; but we are now well and truly on that slope, and can begin to see the bottom.

A law that is more concerned with the convenience of life than life itself; with eliminating distress rather than seeing living children; with whether systematized murder overwhelms a procedural mechanism for good governance is, in a word, depraved. It is no law at all.

This dates to January 7, 2006.

My kudos to Wisonsin Governor Jim Doyle (surprise! a Democrat!) for once more giving the lie to the third adjective in the Evil Party's formulation on abortion: Safe, legal, and "rare."

Gov. Jim Doyle on Friday vetoed a bill that would have forced doctors to tell women seeking abortions after their fifth month of pregnancy that their fetuses could suffer pain.

Doyle, a Democrat, said there is no evidence conclusively proving when a fetus can feel pain. The Republican-controlled Legislature should not be allowed to decide scientific fact, he said.

"It would be reckless to inject a requirement that doctors communicate unproven science to their patients during an already difficult and sometimes traumatic time," Doyle wrote in his veto message. "This bill intrudes on the doctor-patient relationship ... and contravenes the requirement that doctors provide objective and accurate information to their patients."

Putting everything else to the side, what the good Democrat is really saying is not merely the absurdity that viable children have no sense of pain -- obviously, only the class of abortion rights supporters are without that sensibility, and only in the moral and intellectual spheres -- but that anything that might slow a mother's approach to Moloch's altar must be stopped. Carthago delenda est, indeed.

But, seriously, thanks, Jim. Every time I wonder why I'm still a Republican, along comes a Democrat to remind me that the alternative, for once, is truly Manichaean.

This dates to January 23, 2006.

I am no fan of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In order to avoid speaking ill of the dead, I'll simply repeat what I've said before: He was a man of powerful conscience, albeit not one that could ever get him to vote against his own Party with any regularity when there was a conflict between the two.

But, credit where it's due: He articulated something that we now take for granted: That over time, sins and moral weakenings are viewed as right and normal; or, in his memorable phrase, we define deviancy down.

And so, yet another innocent is being marched to the abattoir, her fate consigned by the State, despite signs of life.

Haleigh Poutre will die, ladies and gentlemen. This much is certain.

But what is increasingly certain is that she will die at the hands of the State, a State that arrogated the power to protect her from abuse and failed; a State that hid that abuse; a State that now wants to dispose of yet another inconvenient life. And make no mistake: A court is as surely an agent of the State as a police officer.

No "libertarians" in any numbers will rise up to demand that the State not exert its power over an unwitting innocent; no "liberals" will cry out in rage at the execution of an innocent (when there are so many misunderstood criminals duly convicted by their peers to gnash teeth over); and far too many "conservatives" will simply wash their hands of this much blood (what's a little more?), reluctant to wade into these waters again soon, or perhaps mutter something about federalism, as if that solves the moral issue involved.

Her blood on all our hands. And the blood of the next child killed for convenience, who maybe shows a few more vital signs. Yesterday's deviance is today's standard.

This dates to August 1, 2005.

We're going to lose this one.

Let's be honest about it: Bill Frist's little pirouette on slicing and dicing children was merely a precursor of things to come.

I was, frankly, amazed that he sided with the President way back when all of this started in 2001. He never struck me as much of a social conservative, and frankly, I never trusted him to hew to that position. But do not doubt what this signifies in the larger scheme of things: My long-held suspicion that we would have government-sponsored involuntary human experimentation is about to become a certainty.

Do not, ever, misunderstand me on this: I rank this little expedition into the old jungles of human depravity as one of the worst, stupidest atrocities this country has ever countenanced. When we seriously contemplate making people to use them as experimental tissue; when we justify the dismemberment of already-made people with "they were going to die anyway"; when we offer human lives on the altar of Better Medicine for the Rest of Us, well, let it simply be said that Harry Blackmun is smiling from his little outpost in the Ninth Circle right now.

But we will lose this fight, at least in the short run. To say otherwise is to deny political reality, and to deny ourselves the tools needed to win the war in the long run. Here's why we lose:

People are basically scum. Actually, that's more or less a constant of the human condition. Anyone who banks on heroism out of their fellow men is either richer than the wildest dreams of avarice and hates money, or is an utter fool. Most folks will save their own skins given a chance, and will definitely sacrifice an unrelated other's life (or even a related other's life) for their own convenience and comfort. This is part of why our Founders were so nervous about the direct rule of the people: Men are hardly angels, and even the Prince of High Places took a third of the Host of Heaven into revolt at one time. When we are dealing, as here, with humans who don't even look human, well, let us simply say that the collective human track record of dealing with folks like that is not encouraging. (Believers in human "progress" insert squeals of protest here.)

Like Ronald Reagan, I'm a big optimist about the American spirit. Like most American conservatives, though, I'm one heck of a pessimist about the selfishness of humans in general. And when comfort and continued life are on the line, we're humans first, Americans second. That leads to:

The "Greatest Generation," the Baby Boomers, and at least Generation X will not be denied a chance to put off death and discomfort for just... a... little... longer. I'm not going to fall for the Iliad fallacy here, but I will say that those three generations have shown an inordinate fear of death and growing old (events heretofore considered somewhat ordinary for mortals). They (we, as I think I'm considered an X-er) diet and exercise and watch Suze Orman and follow the latest fad diets and dietary supplement fads and spend ridiculous amounts of money on preventative (and psuedopreventative) medicine and worry and gab about death and spend simply incredible amounts of money on art and literature about staying young forever. A fear of death is probably an intrinsic part of the human condition, but we've taken it to new, technologically aided heights.

And although embryonic stem cell research is still all about the potential benefits, the instant it was sold as a potential cure for everything from arthritis to Alzheimers to Parkinson's to everything short of death, the jig was up: Something that could cure every ailment of the human condition some day simply would be in the toolkit, and exciting alternatives to slaughtering kids can be damned, because we haven't been adequately promised that they can cure us of being human.

And, historically, we -- those three generations -- have had no problem with butchering children in utero; why would we, who together are easily the largest voting bloc in the country, deny ourselves manna (or, for geeks, mana) just because we have to kill them in petri dishes?

We won't. We'll demand it on a government-funded silver platter. Which is why:

Embryonic stem cell research is a winning issue. Maybe not in the Republican primaries; we'll see. But in society at large, that mega-voting bloc dwarfs any opposition, no matter how principled and correct, and it crosses party and non-party lines. How does this compare to abortion? Not as big yet. The Democrats' odd, suicidal desire to be seen, 1970s-like, as utterly weak in the defense of the United States? Not in the same league. The collapse of fiscal conservatism? Well, I disagree with a lot of the editors here: People will tell pollsters again and again that they demand fiscal accountability, but when it comes time to pull the lever, the boys who bring home the pork are the ones who don't have to go home.

But if all other things are equal, this will win out. Credit where it's due: Attacks on American soil have been notable for their absence the last four years. (God grant that it stay so.) Defense will fade as an issue if that trend continues. I suspect we'll be fighting the abortion wars at the state level relatively soon. And you know what I think about pork.

Because, at base:

Our Priesthood has declared that embryonic stem cell research is vital. When The Scientific Community tells us that we need something to put off death, we embrace it wholeheartedly. Scientists are no different from other human beings: They want to do Big Things, they want their work to Make a Difference, and they are, as are we all, selfish, flawed creatures. I'm not quite sure when or why we decided to elevate them to the level of a secular priesthood, but we did so, and they are now solemnly assuring us that they need to be able to take people apart for spare parts. Like a good group of Faithful, we will bow to our betters and give them what they demand, for they will reward us with the divine gift of an extra month in the actuarial tables for our fidelity and obedience.

It is precisely that simple. The folks to whom we've delegated far too much of our moral decision-making -- and thank God we held those reins fifty years ago -- are telling us that what the conscience should know is depraved is licit, and more than that, is necessary. They want to play with their toys without moral supervision. They're offering us one heck of a potential payoff. You'd better believe we're going to snap it up.

So it's coming. Federally funded embryonic stem cell research, with the resulting therapeutic cloning and massive increase in the number of children butchered for that bitch-goddess, Reason.

It is incumbent upon us to fight that. It is also incumbent upon us to prepare for inevitable defeat, but to learn the lesson of Roe and fight accordingly: Men will do depraved things to popular acclaim with what to a non-conservative must be depressing frequency. Unless we're prepared to take up arms -- and I'm not -- then we must resign ourselves to massive slaughter at the indirect hands of the government. But, the abortion wars showed us that how we fight determines the course of the war.

The pro-life movement was so outraged by Roe and the mandated sanction of the murder of children that it spent the 1970s floundering, unable to make any headway in public opinion. We were perceived as frothing religious lunatics.

But we learned. We learned the importance of a consistent, reasonable message. We learned the importance of working within the political system. We learned the importance of grass-roots organization, and message crafting, and listening to our fellow Americans for the best way to present our arguments to them. And though it's taken thirty-plus years -- and, yes, forty million dead -- we're within inches of sending Harry Blackmun's abomination to the grave with him.

We must do the same thing here. We must advertise the science of human life. We must remind people that the difference between an embryo on the cutting line and one on the way to becoming a baby is merely coincidental location. Men may be depraved, but they have better angels to whom we can appeal over time. We must make Republican and, yes, Democrat politicians pay for supporting this policy, by denying them our time, talent, treasure, and votes. And we must make clear to them why we're so doing.

Millions will die. Mark me.

But it is said of the Roman Legions during the Republic that they lost many battles, but never a war. As many wags have noted, this is because the Legions refused to let a war end until they had won.

We must be as the Legions.

Vita populi Suprema Lex.

This is from February 23, 2006.

We are constantly heckled, in the endless abortion debate, that pro-life fears of a slippery slope leading from the devaluation of human life in the womb to the devaluation of human life elsewhere, are merely that: The unrestrained fantasies of a group of religious fanatics.

Maybe.

My good and esteemed friends Josh Trevino and Paul Cella like to heckle me for abandoning Europe to its death-throes, arguing that we are bound to that Continent in a hundred ways, and that at any rate, if for no other reason than this, we should stand by Europe to see what lies in store for us.

Maybe.

So I give you this:

A pro-abortion city councilwoman in Rotterdam says that forced abortions should be used to curb the "problem" of unwanted children in Holland and its territories.

Alderman Marianne van den Anker of the Leefbaar Rotterdam (LR) party says the forced abortion and contraception would reduce the incidence of child abuse. ...

Van den Anker said Antillean teenage mothers, drug addicts and those who are mentally disabled should be forced to have abortions and use contraception if they are having sex.

Otherwise, an "unacceptable risk" of some children exposed to "violence, neglect, mistreatment and sexual abuse."

She indicated courts would determine when women should be forced to have abortions and that social workers "can see in 95 percent or even 100 percent of cases whether the child has a chance of growing up with love."

Every child a wanted one, indeed.

Oh, I know, this is different somehow. And I'd be dishonest if I told you I expect this to pass on the first try. Heavens no. There's a certain ... griminess here that won't take.

Right now. In ten years, the unthinkable will be normal. And there will be good, wise judges to make sure that no unloved child is allowed to enter this world. And we'll all shrug.

Hat tip to Orrin Judd.

This dates to August 15, 2005.

I normally eschew this sort of thing for reasons that will become clearer below. But I want to say something about this Cindy Sheehan nonsense that I think hasn't gone said anywhere else.

There is nothing special about losing a child. Or, more accurately, there is nothing special about losing a child, given that many people lose children. I did.

Many folks would say I did not, as my wife was only a few months along when we lost the child. Some might even think it funny. I did not. I'll spare you the personal details, except to say this: I would have given my life for that child. I begged God to take me instead. With pain, if need be. He did not.

My wife made the same offer, same result.

I understand the pain of losing a child. I understand what it can do to your head. I understand wanting to die as a result. I understand being angry. I also understand that you're emotionally vulnerable on that count.

So here's my point, and it's two-fold: Cindy Sheehan has no more right to argue against the Iraq War than I have to argue against legalized abortion. I do not bring up my loss when discussing abortion or embryonic stem cell research because, simply, it seems ghoulish beyond compare to drag one's lost little ones into your personal war. Does it animate my arguments? Take a guess. Frankly, what motivates me isn't anyone else's concern. But I'll be damned before I drag a child over whom I still cry sometimes into a political mudfight. And having lost a child that way, or indeed, any other, I understand wanting to rage at everything in sight.

And now let me get to the real target of all this: The ghoulish, deranged Left. Shame on you. Each and every one. Sheehan's anger is understandable. Your behavior is not. You've taken her as a Judas goat, torn her family apart, and paraded her in front of the cameras so you can have one more small cut inflicted on Chimpy McHitlerburton. Or BushCo. Or whatever it is you call the man you hate so much.

Oh, I'm sure she's gone along willingly at every turn. I'm sure the Left takes comfort in this. You have no freaking idea what it's like to have every parent's worst nightmare come true. I would have stormed Heaven's ramparts for my child when the moment came that we all knew was coming.

Ms. Sheehan should have our humble thanks for the sacrifice of her son, and then we should turn our eyes away from her grief. Maybe she needs to protest to get this out of her system. There's still no excuse for our enabling this, or for our voyeurism.

Let it go.

So let me pose a hypothetical:

Suppose -- and I think we can take this as a given -- that there are people who so very much hate the existence of gay men and lesbians, that it actually hurts them. They are gnawed-upon from the inside over the existence of homosexuals, for whatever reason. And, unable to bear the emotional -- and physical, in an ugly biofeedback loop -- pain, they begin sneaking up on gays while they sleep and butchering them alive. Literally: They crush, slice, and dice the bodies of these men and women, ruthlessly. They feel better when it's over.

It would not be too much of a stretch to call this inhuman. Someone who did this, deliberately, with malice aforethought, is in a state of grave sin, and should not receive communion in the Catholic Church. This is straightforward stuff. Any politician who enabled this behavior -- who said, I disagree with his choice to murder these people, but I also understand how much pain he's in, and so I refuse to interject the State into what he does with his own body would rightly be considered at best deranged, and at worst, a cold-blooded murderer. I don't imagine many people would take issue with the decision of any Church to deny that politician its sacraments.

You see where this is going.

I understand Kerry, and Cuomo, and Kennedy, and other blood-letting, coldblooded, power-mad psuedo-Catholic politicians overlooking human biology and the teachings of their faith, and trying to pretend that their sin represents bravery. They're morally incomplete; they're, like most humans, greedy, grubbing little creatures who desire power more than they desire the warmth of God's embrace.

It happens to the best of us.

What I don't understand is their flackers. Like, just for example, Andrew Sullivan. So, without fisking his argument, let's just say it this way: If you put "murdering sleeping gay men and women" in place of "abortion," you kinda gotta concede that, first, he would never make this argument; second, that his Catholic formation, such as it was, was sorely lacking; and, finally, that it makes him a bit of a moral monster.

Oh: Ramesh was too kind.

Could it be? A Catholic Bishop with a spine?

Miracles happen, kids.

Andrew Sullivan says something unequivocally bad about abortion! It can be done!

Technophobes of the world, UNITE!

Just for the information of all the vaguely anti-religious folks out there, most of us like science, and its results. What we don't like is the sacrifice of human life for anything other than highly specific self-defense.

I'm addicted to the format. Sue me.

Right. As opposed to the humorless, whiney conservatism of the libertine right.

That said, this well-traveled piece is worth a read and a chuckle.

For those of you not reading Little Tiny Lies, go there now.

On the woman whose husband is trying to kill her: For the record: The reason he is her guardian is not because, as her husband, he is ipso facto her guardian, it is because he asked a court to be so, and he was so made. Hence, his decisions concerning her welfare are subject to judicial scrutiny. And the judiciary in Florida is no greater than any other branch of that State's government. A judicial order may be put aside by legislative action. it is, precisely, that simple.

(Mr. Sullivan: Yes, it's because life trumps marriage, and we're treating his marital "rights" -- although the word is not applicable here -- cavalierly because he is so doing, and is therefore waiving them. Put differently: Some people have a little more perspective than you.)

Paul Cella produces one of the most impressive essays I've read in a while.

Mr. Kennedy: It is a profoundly bad idea to get sloshed just before a significant vote, especially when you're trying to make sure that an additional thousands of children go to the abbatoir every year.

Just for kicks: Mary Jo Kepechne.

Why I'm not a libertoid, Volume XII: Liberty for me, and not for thee. I'll probably get to this later, but the short of it is this: We say Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in that order, because each successive one is predicated on the latter. One cannot have liberty without life. Therefore, any "libertarian" who whines about government restrictions on killing children in utero is merely a selfish nitwit -- his liberty trumps another's life (and therefore her liberty). Following that, even assuming secondhand smoke isn't deadly, it still stinks, and it's, you know, smoke, so forcing me to inhale it is hurting me so you can benefit. (I'll spare you talk of negative externalities for a little while.)

ACLU sides with murderous husband.

In other news, Asmodeus sides with Satan.

In case you're wondering:

(1) Yes, I'm being awfully Manichaean about this. So? A man is attempting to kill his lawfully married wife -- whom he won't divorce because he's "Catholic," even though he's engaged to another woman, and has conceived two kids by her already -- because she, allegedly, once, said that she didn't want to be kept alive by tubes. Of course, he only remembered this five years into battles to kill her, and is taking this little soiree down Murder Lane after promising a jury he'd take care of her the rest of her life. ("Fraud on the courts," anyone?) And the ACLU -- founded, let us not forget, by some folks who thought the American Communist Party was a bunch of wussies -- one of the foremost bastions of the theory that Civil rights matter, but alleged civil rights that kill matter more joins in, and I should be surprised, or soft about it? Bupkis.

I never really appreciated before what the words "the culture of death" mean. Now I know.

(2) I'm also being terribly fair.