Wikipedia offers this definition: A political football is a political topic or issue that is continually debated but left unresolved. The term is used often during a political election campaign to highlight issues that have not been completely addressed, such as the natural environment and abortion.
I have an addition for the Wikipedia page. A political football is also a topic that generates more hypocrisy than any other form of discussion. During my first few months in the world of politics I discovered that particular sport was not specific to any one of the political parties.
My first example is Illegal Immigration. On the Democrat side the football becomes one of so called “human rights” where the people breaking the U.S. immigration laws somehow have been granted rights above and beyond those of natural and naturalized citizens. On the Republican side, those violating our border are criminals, unless they suddenly become a valuable resource in protecting the bottom line of big business by working under the table. The reasons are quite different but both parties are refusing to resolve the issue, much less even come close to it. The real issue is that the United States is a sovereign country and should act as such. Immigration has rules for good reasons and the U.S. labor laws are also in place for good reasons. The hypocrisy of both parties on this issue has no good reason.
The second example is capital punishment. The left views capital punishment as cruel and unusual and claims the state has no right to kill people. At the same time they champion the killing of unborn children and support terrorist organizations overseas actively involved in the killing of innocents. The right is no better. They have allowed the laws involved around capital punishment to metastasize into a cancerous tangle that has reduced the effectiveness of the punishment to a moot point. Execution is not there to provide entertainment value or even revenge. It is there to act as a deterrent just as every other law with a stick attached to it is put in place. Our government isn’t interested in exacting punishment, it is interested in promoting good behavior, and yes, there is a difference between god and bad behavior.
The last example is abortion. It ties in with capital punishment because of a particular hypocrisy of the left. It is almost a certainty that most of the supporters of abortion know that a human life is being destroyed each time an abortion is performed. They also know that well over 99% of all abortions occur without a medical necessity. They simply cannot acknowledge that realization because of political necessity. The party agenda is far more important than human life…check that, human life that cannot vote.
I received several rather incendiary comments on this topic because I used the example of a woman’s unborn child being killed and the killer not being sentenced for the murder of that child. The point was missed, and I doubt it will ever be got. The person who pulled that trigger should be sentenced just as stringently for the killing of an unborn child as they would be for the killing of a 50 year old man. The age, sex, race, or economic status of a life should not matter. Wanton killing is wanton killing, regardless of the circumstance of the victim. Where are NOW, the ACLU and every other abortion rights group on this issue? They are silent as is to be expected, because the life of a child in the womb is nothing to them. They have their own agenda and that is the furtherance of their own political power. This football is simply a means to an end.
The right has its own problems where this issue is concerned. A few churches and several individuals have acted with the same fanaticism as members of the Taliban. The bombing of clinics and the killing of doctors have done nothing but place their cause in a bad light. Breaking the law is not the answer. Committing murder certainly is not the answer. Education is and it is going to take a long, long time because, though individuals may be intelligent, people are stupid. Just take a look at what we think is good television if you don’t believe me.
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4 comments:
I see that you have changed topics (a smart move, I think).
I don't think they have named it properly. It sounds more like Political Volleyball than Football. No clocks seem to stop here...
I agree that many, MANY important issues get addressed, and then left in the "in box" with no resolutions.
Truly, however, I think that this abortion thing is stuck in your frontal lobe. There are so many MUCH more important issues for our government to address at this time. You mention some of them. Education. Terrorism (both domestic and inernational). The supposed Recession. (That is a topic worthy of addressing in its own blog, as it is an obviously TACTICAL, CREATED recession, and not a true representation of our economy at this point.)
Abortion, despite opposing views, will always happen. They have been happening for hundreds of years. No one will stop this. At least right now, women have the opportunity to have them under medical care. Using abortion to divert people's attention from other, far more important issues, is another tactic. Period.
No, I'm not the Anti-Christ. I'm not even saying I support abortion. What I really support is abstention, or at least PREVENTION. The wise use of either would prevent the need to debate abortion, AND the proliferation of unplanned pregnancies supported by the welfare system - not to mention the proliferation of STDs, which are rampant. And perhaps it would stop the rampant flight of males who father children, and then abandon them.
Our new President is so proud of his father. A man who fathered a child, and later on decided to leave. Do I hear Obama praising his mother endlessly for raising him as a single mother, getting him through college, and creating the confidence to run for President in the first place? MAYBE once. Maybe. All the man seems to be proud of is to be the first (half) black President of the United States. He is also the first President of the U.S. who was raised by a mother who withstood God knows HOW much rejection and judgment for engendering a mixed-race child, rose above that, and gave him every possible opportunity to progress in life. What I seem to hear him say is, "It's fine to be a man and leave the mother to raise the child alone. Look how well I turned out!"
That's a TERRIFIC message to give to young American men, who already need NO encouragement to do so.
Again, I do not disrespect your views on abortion. But I think that there are other issues at least as important that need addressing.
Speaking of hypocrisy... You brought up those who swear that they support the rights of the unborn, and then go about committing crimes in the name of that "holy grail..." I'm glad you at least brought up that topic.
Kind of reminds me of someone who once said "Let he who is without sin be the first to throw stones."
You are right, there are equally important subjects, and I thought I mentioned a few of them. Hypocrisy is the chief I think and the problem that the American voter seems to not want people in decision making positions that aren't hypocrites.
Calling a fertilized egg a human is like calling an acorn an Oak Tree. While a fertilized egg has (well most of the time anyway - even at this early stage there are often fatal errors) a full complement of genes, that does not uniquely determine a human.
If it did, then there would not be identical twins, who are in fact Not identical, but can vary drastically, especially as to temperament. From fertilization until birth many things can go wrong, resulting in seriously deformed entities, including ones that spontaneously abort (anyone for a murder investigation for all spontaneous abortions?) or "humans" that can not live after birth.
By any definition of human that does not rely on the word human (you know, as in humans come from humans) which makes the definition circular, which is no definition at all, a fertilized egg is not even a blueprint for a human. It is, at best, just some really good suggestions of how to make a human under the right conditions.
I like the idea that God knew you when you were in the womb. Did go know the "thing with no brain" when it was in the womb? Does the thing with no brain have a soul? The Psalms are poetry, and as logic this fails to show that all fertilized eggs are human. I am sure that sculptures knew what they wanted before they made the sculpture. That does not mean that every thing that they worked on had value. Sometimes they make mistakes.
Now you can claim that God does not make mistakes, then what is a fertilized egg that does not implant. And if God does not make mistakes, then why do we not let seriously pre-term babies die?
The bottom line is that those who claim to be pro-life, are really just pro tortured language, and pro-control
Calling a single cell entity a human no more makes it a human than calling a horses tail a leg makes it a leg.
I am continuously baffled by the illogic those who purport to be logical use when arguing the pro-death side. Take the acorn/oak gambit used above. An acorn becomes an oak when it begins to germinate. If we extrapolate this argument, then when a human egg is fertilized and begins the germination process, by the commentary’s logic, we have to call the developing entity “human”.
Acorns fall to the ground and may or may not germinate. By the same token, some human embryos perish in the womb. These are accidents, acts of the natural process, or, to use the commentary’s religious bent, acts of God, not an act of human will which is either cutting the sapling (an oak child), or performing an abortion.
The pro-death crowd refuses to honestly answer my question because they know the scientific logic is unassailable. You will notice my original question was not answered, only argued around. I posited that a fertilized human egg is a “developing human”. I did not use religion, only logic in my dissertation. The growing entity cannot be anything else, whether it has achieved sentience or not is beside the point. Whether it is healthy, malformed or perfect is beside the point. It cannot be insectoid, reptilian or an oak tree, it is human in origin. Whether the law says that condemning the innocent to a death typical of the middle ages or not is also beside the point. The fact of origin remains. That the pro-death crowd refuses to acknowledge that fact in spite of overwhelming evidence is what is interesting. That is the point.
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