I got this e-mail that really ticked me off, one of those Coulteresque sweeping condemnation type of things. It was titled “20 ways to be a good liberal” and each one was enough of a fallacy that I decided to write individual blog posts addressing each one. (Edit: hubby tells me this is a really old piece, but obviously it’s still getting sent, so it still irritates me.) So, here’s the first:

1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on
demand.

And isn’t it bizarre that the good neocons are so supportive of capital punishment, even if it means the execution of an innocent person, but regard unwanted babies as a good thing? GWB and his brother have been responsible for the executions of a huge number of people, and among those executed and those awaiting execution have been a number of innocent people – I have the number 40 in my head for some reason, but that could have been a state figure or a year or a total altogether, or it could be completely wrong. And heck, we have Ann Coulter saying just this week that the problem with the genocide in Darfur is that they’re not killing people fast enough (and, later, that we should be wiping out the population of Iraq with greater alacrity as well.) In my good liberal mind, the execution of a living, feeling, grown human being who is important to other human beings is not something that should be undertaken lightly; the execution of said human being when he or she is innocent of the crime for which he or she is executed is inexcusable. Be it 40, or 400, or 4 executions of innocent citizens, it is too many to justify continued use of the death penalty. What surprises me is that even if this argument falls on deaf neocon ears, why the financial one doesn’t make an impact, either. A prisoner who is condemned to death has the right to appeal unlimited times until his sentence is carried out, while a person sentenced to life may have conditions attached to the sentence that prohibit or limit appeals, ensure no early release, or set conditions for release that limit appeals. As expensive as it is to keep a prisoner in custody, it’s nothing compared to the cost of his multiple appeals. From a purely economic standpoint, the death penalty is prohibitively expensive. For a neocon, that money could be spent on something else. For a liberal like me, it could be not spent at all.

But it will be spent, and we all know it. If our mewling little liberal voices weren’t heard, it would probably end up going towards more prisons. You see, we can look at the crowded prisons, the huge numbers of unemployed and working poor, the people who are hungry, in need of clothing and shelter, the sick who have no insurance or money for medical care, and the children growing up in dangerous places without the education that will lift them out and see a few things that neocons apparently cannot. First, we see people suffering, and want to see them helped. Second, we see opportunities for social programs for people that are being cut, while funding for war, pet line item spending, and corporate welfare and favoritism not only get more money, but receive no public scrutiny. Third, we see that women in these situations, given no opportunity but to give birth, bring more children into these same situations. It’s a nice little sound bite that you may be aborting the next Einstein, but the truth of the matter is that Einstein was not unwanted by his mother, brought up in filthy, dangerous conditions, given a second-rate education, or been tempted into criminal activity. Had he been born to a poor black mother in Camden, who couldn’t get an abortion when she wanted one, we wouldn’t have Einstein, or at least we wouldn’t have him as an example of something to aspire to. In other words, we sniveling liberals look beyond that fetus and see a human being, one who would be stuck in a life anywhere from less than ideal to completely miserable, but a human being who starts life with the disadvantage of being unwanted by the person who should care for him the most. The fetus that is aborted early has no nervous system – no sensations of any pain, physical, mental, or emotional. After he is born, though, not only can he feel these pains, but he can spread them around, even to those he loves. So I think we can have a corrolary to this first point: “20 ways to be a good Neocon: 1. You have to oppose abortion, but eliminate all social programs that will help the children after they are born. 1a. You have to be opposed to killing innocent babies, but not worry about killing innocent adults by mistake.” Sound about right?