Do babies have a right to be free from decapitation and dismemberment?

On March 20 I wrote about a woman who lured a pregnant woman to her apartment by posting an ad on Craig's List ostensibly to sell baby clothes. When the woman arrived, the other woman stabbed the pregnant woman and cut the baby out of her womb. This happened in "progressive" Boulder County, Colorado, where babies in wombs are not considered to be persons, so the woman will not be charged with the murder of the baby.

Matt Walsh picks up the story:

Yet most of the people insisting that gays have a right to cake will not argue for, and in fact will viciously oppose, the basic right to life for infant children. The dead bodies of children pile up all around us, and all these clowns can do is whine about their right to pastries.

It’s preposterous. Also, deplorable, barbaric, and evil. We have a right to PRODUCTS but a baby has no right to be free from decapitation and dismemberment?

...Unless it can be proven that the infant took a breath outside of the womb, the law does not consider her a person. Of course, the police report says the “fetus” gasped for breath, and emergency room personnel said she was “viable,” but none of this can be proven, so as far as Colorado is concerned, she wasn’t a person.

But why should her personhood be hinged on whether she took a breath outside of the womb in the first place? Are hospital patients who require ventilators not people? If I hold my breath, do I forfeit my humanity for those brief moments? And if breathing outside of the womb is the completely capricious standard for “personhood,” and if that made sense, which it emphatically doesn’t, then what was she if not a person?

...Indeed, as babies are explicitly excluded from basic legal protections and the most fundamental of human rights, the attention of the country focuses on a religious freedom bill, passed last week, which might, in some limited circumstances, interfere with a gay couple’s ability to procure baked goods. Liberals throughout the land are frantic over the prospect that homosexuals may possibly, in some potential situations, experience the moderate nuisance of a business owner declining to participate in their gay wedding.

Cakes for gay people, that’s the issue of the day. The widespread legalization of child murder? Well, why would anyone be upset about that?

...You need to understand how astonishingly incomprehensible progressivism is. In their minds, there exists the fundamental human right to a wedding cake, but not to life itself. If a man is refused a pastry, a crime against humanity has occurred. But if, in the womb, his spinal cord is severed, his body dismembered, and his lifeless carcass thrown in a dumpster, nobody can be accused of infringing on his liberty.

...So whatever supernatural force bestows us with our right to commodities, this omnipotent being did not, it turns out, also give us the right to exist to begin with. You have the right to have, but not to be, which seems like a logistical complication considering the minor difficulty of having something when you aren’t something. Might abortion be opposed, then, on the grounds that murdering a child will impede his right to eventually have his gay wedding catered by the business of his choosing?

I suppose that’s a path pro-lifers haven’t explored.

Speaking of which, interestingly, we’re told gays have the right to marry and buy cakes and so forth because gay is not a choice. And gay is not a choice, they say, because gays are gay from birth. And if gays are gay from birth, then the matter is genetic, and if it’s genetic then gays are gay even before birth. But if gays are gay before birth, then it would seem that they were them in the womb. In other words, whatever their nature is, their essence, they had that, they were that, in the womb. And if they are now what they were then, and were then what they are now, then either they’re people now and they were people then, or they weren’t people then and they aren’t now.

...The moment you say “I was X since before I was born,” you are admitting to the rather unavoidable truth that you were you before you were born.

...I’m picking on Colorado, but they aren’t unique in their horrific, cruel dehumanization of children. Babies aren’t considered people anywhere in the country. Planned Parenthood murders over 300,000 of these mysteriously unhuman creatures every year, and does so with not only the approval of the government, but with considerable financial support.

(However, destroying unborn bald eagles is still a federal crime, carrying a sentence of two years imprisonment. Apparently, an eagle is an eagle from the moment of conception.)

...In all 50 states, unborn children are offered fewer legal protections than pit bulls, polar bears, and spotted owls. Consequentially, about 60 million have been exterminated in this country since 1973, and not a single murder charge was handed down. Sixty million. Think of the Holocaust repeated every decade for one hundred years. That’s the body count we’re dealing with. Only, many of the German Nazis were eventually tried and executed for their crimes, while the American Nazis are treated to banquets with the president.

Read more here.

Is Obama a Christian?

Matt Walsh asks,

Do you know who the media DIDN’T asked about Obama’s religion while Obama was running for president? Obama. And now they’re quizzing the governor of Wisconsin about it? Insane.

...You never win, no matter what, under any circumstance, when the liberal media set out to trap you. It doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it.

What would have been the appropriate way to respond? Walsh suggests:

Do I think Obama is a Christian? Do I look like his biographer? Why not ask me his shoe size next? Maybe his preferred Sleep Number setting? Truly, sir, this line of questioning is the dumbest thing I’ve encountered since the last time I encountered a reporter from the Washington Post. Why in the name of all that is holy are you quizzing me about the president’s religion? Why don’t you quiz him? Oh, that’s right, you’re a groveling coward and a pathetic excuse for a journalist. You forget that you’re job is to get to the truth and enlighten the people, not to seek out Republicans for cheap gotcha moments. You, sir, are a fraud, a disgrace, and an embarrassment to what’s left of your dying profession. This president has prosecuted, spied on, and stifled the media, yet you still carry his water like a spineless vassal. Why don’t you shine his shoes while you’re at it? You should be questioning authority, not shielding it from scrutiny, you shameless hack. I will not legitimize you by answering this question. Instead, I will pray that the Holy Spirit sees fit to endow you with even a shred of integrity and courage, so that you might one day decide to do something that in some way resembles journalism. Until then, please leave my presence before I become physically ill. Thank you, sir, good night.

As everyone has heard, Obama came of age in Jeremiah Wright’s church, learning that white people are bad and God hates America. He was indoctrinated into a heresy called Black Liberation Theology, which teaches, among other things, that Jesus was a black man who came to free the black race, and that whites can earn salvation through paying reparations to black people.

Now I don’t mean to turn this into a homily, but it is interesting to note that Jesus said “by their fruits you will know them.” So far all this talk about how we shouldn’t “judge” others, it seems that Christ is specifically telling us to make judgments about a person based on what they do. How else could we come to know a man by his actions? The insinuation here is that sometimes a person might say one thing but do another, and Jesus wants us to look at what they do and make judgments accordingly. That doesn’t mean we’re omnipotent; it just means we shouldn’t go around like blind idiots (my word, not His) believing everything everyone says, no matter how they actually conduct themselves.

What about Obama's consistent support for abortion throughout his career? Walsh writes,

We know that Obama is either lying about his belief in Christ (my guess) or he honestly believes that Christ blesses abortion and wants to see more of His children ripped to shreds and tossed in medical waste dumpsters. Obama hasn’t just done every conceivable thing in his power to bring about that end, he has done so while invoking the name of God. What sort of Christianity is this? And I hate to think what sort of Christians we are, that so many of us think it impolite to loudly say: “If you believe in a Jesus who celebrates the slaughter of babies, you do not believe in Jesus.”

While many of us try to equivocate and make excuses for men like Obama, it was Jesus who spoke out in terms that, nowadays, would lead to Him being scolded and disowned by many Christians. Christ Himself, who loved children and made it clear that the smallest among us should always be welcomed and protected, said:

If anyone causes harm to these little ones, it would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Did you catch that? Can we all take a moment to let that one sink in (no pun intended)? You would be better off dead than harming a child. It would be wiser to literally drown in the ocean than do anything that would bring harm, whether physical or spiritual, to a child. That’s God talking. Do we think He was joking? Exaggerating? Just blowing off steam? Does he need to calm down and be reasonable, as pro-lifers are constantly told when they make statements not nearly as strident and damning?

No. This was a direct statement. A command. A promise. When you bring harm to the innocent, you commit a sin so terrible that physical death would be preferable. That’s how much Jesus loves children. He loves them far more deeply and eternally than you love even your own kids. So how could anyone try to turn that Jesus, this Jesus, the Jesus, into a God who blesses abortion? And how could they commit such a heresy and still expect to be considered a Christian in any substantive way?

Walsh would ask Obama:

if I were in a position where I could pose a question to the commander in chief, I’d ask this:

Mr. President, do you believe that Jesus Christ condones, endorses, blesses, loves, or otherwise supports a woman’s right to choose abortion?

Read more here.

Any of these apply to you?

Matt Walsh decided to write a blog post on how guys can ruin their marriages. He lists four things guys can do that will ruin their marriages.

The first is porn.

It’s definitely not an easy time to be a virtuous man. Everywhere we look there are words and images trying to grab our attention and send us into a spiral of lust and sexual greed. You really can’t even scroll down a Facebook newsfeed anymore without seeing blatant or borderline pornography. The entire world, it seems, is out to exploit our weaknesses.

The second is laziness.

Families take effort, so when I refuse to exert it, I am to some extent refusing to be a part of the family. It makes sense that our wives get upset about that attitude. It make sense that something as ‘small’ as not ‘helping around the house’ could ultimately destroy a marriage. It destroys it because we aren’t participating in it. We have no right to be lazy husbands. Family is work, marriage is work, life is work, and it’s our job to do it all without complaint.

The third is passiveness.

What I’ve come to understand is that leadership is a responsibility, not an entitlement. It’s something we are called to do with humility and love, as servants, not as emperors. I’ve learned why men are tempted to pass the buck on to their wives or even their children, and I’ve learned why that can be such a devastating choice. But I’ve also learned the joy of embracing that leadership role, however imperfectly, and accepting the vocation that all husbands and fathers are called to.

The fourth is immaturity.

A child’s life might be dominated by a desire to play with their toys and other frivolous pursuits, but as men we need to develop interests in deeper things. Our tastes should mature right along with the rest of us. Is it fair to our wives when we put her in a situation where her husband is just as obsessed with toys as her children are? Is she supposed to feel a great desire for a man who ignores her in favor of TV and Xbox?

Read more here

On depression, joy, life, and death

After Robin Williams committed suicide, The Academy of Motion Pictures tweeted this:



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Genie, you're free.
6:56 PM - 11 Aug 2014

Matt Walsh responds:

Free? I’ve seen a lot of this kind of rhetoric. Robin Williams is “in a better place,” he is “free,” he is “at peace,” he is “smiling down upon us,” he’s “happy.”

This all might seem pleasant enough, but have we stopped to think how it looks and sounds to those who may be contemplating this heinous deed themselves? Can we tell our friend to step away from the ledge after we just spoke so glowingly of Robin Williams’ newfound “peace” and “freedom”? This is too important a subject to be careless about. We want to say nice things, I realize, but it isn’t nice to lie about suicide.

It is not freeing. In suicide you obliterate yourself and shackle your loved ones with guilt and grief. There is no freedom in it. There is no peace. How can I free myself by attempting to annihilate myself? How can I free something by destroying it?

First, suicide does not claim anyone against their will. No matter how depressed you are, you never have to make that choice. That choice. Whether you call depression a disease or not, please don’t make the mistake of saying that someone who commits suicide “died from depression.” No, he died from his choice. He died by his own hand. Depression will not appear on the autopsy report, because it can’t kill you on its own. It needs you to pull the trigger, take the pills, or hang the rope. To act like death by suicide is exactly analogous to death by malaria or heart failure is to steal hope from the suicidal person. We think we are comforting him, but in fact we are convincing him that he is powerless. We are giving him a way out, an excuse. Sometimes that’s all he needs — the last straw.

Second, we can debate medication dosages and psychotherapy treatments, but, in the end, joy is the only thing that defeats depression. No depressed person in the history of the world has ever been in the depths of despair and at the heights of joy at the same time. The two cannot coexist. Joy is light, depression is darkness. When we are depressed, we have trouble seeing joy, or feeling it, or feeling worthy of it. I know that in my worst times, at my lowest points, it’s not that I don’t see the joy in creation, it’s just that I think myself too awful and sinful a man to share in it.

So this, for me, is always the most essential moral at the end of these kinds of sad, terrible stories: we are all meant for joy. We are all meant for love. We are all meant for life. And as long as we can still draw breath, there is joy and love to be found here.

Joy and love. There might not be much else for us on this Earth, but these are the only two things that matter anyway. These are the forces that brought the whole universe into being, and these are the forces that sustain it, and us, and all life.

Life. Life exists, and we are made to live it.

To quote Robin Williams playing a character quoting Walt Whitman:

“What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here — that life exists.”

If you are thinking about suicide, don’t keep it inside. Tell someone.

Never give up the fight.

There is always hope.

Read more here.

Drop the one, and pick up the other

Matt Walsh writes:

Christianity is a faith for all people, but it is not a faith for all notions and ideas. You cannot simultaneously profess the Faith while also defending the murder of the innocent. You are welcome into the church, but your belief in baby-murder is not. You cannot carry the cross and a Planned Parenthood banner at the same time.

You have to drop the one, and pick up the other.

I hope you do. I hope you start today. Now. This moment.

But until then, you cannot follow Christ while you still support the murder of His children.

You cannot be both.

You cannot be Christian and ‘pro-choice.’

Please read more here.

Abortion

Matt Walsh writes about abortion, and includes lots of pictures. Read it here.

WWJD?

Matt Walsh writes that some have turned Jesus into a purple dinosaur puppet.

“We’re best friends like friends should be. With a great big hug, and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too?”

No, Walsh writes, that is not the Son of God.

He’s not the Jesus I read about in the Bible. I read of a strong, manly, stern, and bold Savior. Compassionate, yes. Forgiving, of course. Loving, always loving. But not particularly nice.

He condemned. He denounced. He caused trouble. He disrupted the established order.

I think it’s time we ask that question: ‘What would Jesus do?’

And I think it’s time we answer it truthfully: Jesus would flip tables and yell.

Maybe we ought to follow suit.

Read more here.

Boys don't have it any easier than girls

In this post Matt Walsh follows up on his epic post I linked to the other day about the Ban Bossy movement. I highly recommend both of Matt's posts.

Apparently Matt received lots of complaints from feminists when he completely demolished the Ban Bossy arguments. So, today he calmly explains that girls don't have it any worse than boys.

Boys are frequently kicked out of school and sent hurtling on a path towards delinquency and failure, even for minor instances of physical aggression. Does it make sense to treat a kid like a dangerous psychopath just because he got into a minor shoving match or — horror of horrors — a fist fight? This is how boys often express their aggression. Girls express it in more damaging and traumatizing ways. They spread gossip and rumors, they shun and ostracize other girls, and these acts can reverberate through a child’s life much further and deeper than getting pushed into a locker or punched in the nose.

My son Jon was suspended from school (eighth grade) for one day Monday, and is on in-school suspension "doing janitor duties" for the rest of the week. What did he do? He tackled and kicked a boy who threw a tennis ball in his face last Friday.

I asked my daughter Sara. She said fifth grade girls are often sassy and think they are leaders, but most likely aren't real leaders. "Boys are wimps," she said. I asked her what did she mean by that. She gave me the example of her challenging boys to compete with her on the monkey bars, but the boys usually say they don't want to. they would rather go down the slide.

My son Greg said that girls are more likely than boys to be leaders in his seventh grade class. Greg calls himself ADHD. I tell him he does not have ADHD. He is just energetic!

Wrong

Matt Walsh writes that

If it isn’t wrong to kill children, then it can not be wrong to do anything else.

I’m often told that I need to be more understanding on this topic, but this is an unfair request. There are people — millions of them, in fact — who think it should be legal to murder babies, but then illegal to, say, pay a fast food worker less than minimum wage, or refuse to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. How could I possibly understand this mentality? How could I wrap my head around the thought process that leads one to conclude that the latter cases are so atrocious — so dehumanizing — that they ought to be outlawed, but the former case is so acceptable that it ought to be vigorously defended, and even funded, by the federal government?

Matt then tells about a couple in Washington that has just won a fifty million dollar lawsuit against a hospital.

Brock and Rhea Wuth sued a hospital because their son was born severely disabled. No, they were not alleging that the hospital caused the disability; they alleged that the hospital (and a lab testing facility) did not run the correct tests that would have detected the genetic defects while the child was still in the womb. Had they been given the correct tests, they would have known that the baby was “defective,” and then killed it. Tragically, they were robbed of the opportunity to abort their son, so the hospital must pay for the son’s care — for the rest of his life.

Can you imagine how this is going to affect the cost of having your baby in a hospital?

Whose job is it to make you happy?

Will having kids make you happy? Matt Walsh answers the question:

Funny, if kids are supposed to give me a happiness high, why are they sometimes such a buzz kill? Times, specifically, like when we’re on long car trips and they take turns screaming at a pitch so high it would make a dog’s eardrums explode. Or the times when they decide they’d like to get up and start the day early — at 2 AM. Or the times when I’d like to take my wife out for a date but we can’t find anyone to watch the kids. Or the times when they have their diarrhea set on a timer, ready to explode right as I’m taking off their diapers. If they are supposed to “make me happy,” what are they doing crying and crapping so much? Attention son and daughter: loud screams and messy diapers do not make Dad happy. Didn’t they get that memo? What’s wrong with them? They’ve clearly failed in their Divine Mandate to be the harbingers of my own personal happiness.

Or maybe no such mandate exists. Maybe no human being was put on this Earth to “make me happy,” least of all my children. The joy and happiness of parenting is like the joy and happiness that can be found in many good things: it comes from sacrifice, self denial, and self giving. It comes with work and effort. I have to be the sort of person who finds happiness in giving, and I will not automatically be that sort of person just because I had sex and made a couple of babies. In other words, my kids don’t make me happy to be a parent; I have to make me happy to be a parent. And I am. I am beyond words. But that happiness will decrease if I become more selfish, and it will increase if I become less selfish.

And then maybe we should stop worrying so much about this happiness thing, anyway. I think the happiest people are the ones who spend the least amount of time whining about their desire to be made happy. They do a thing because it’s right, or because they have a duty to do it, or because it is interesting, or beautiful, or enlightening.

They are a danger to liberty, but also a danger to themselves and their loved ones

Did you know the NFL has a rule not allowing ads for guns during the Super Bowl? Matt Walsh weighs in:

I wish it was as simple as saying that our culture loves sex and hates violence, but even that isn’t true. We seem to be obsessed with sex while hating only the particular brand of violence that can be morally justified. Abortion is violence, but you won’t hear these anti-gun idiots cry about that sort of brutality. Pornography is violence, but again the “anti-violence” gun grabbers stay silent. They rarely even chime in to condemn violence for entertainment. No, it would seem that they only oppose the “violence” of men and women protecting themselves and their loves ones from predators and tyrants.

Matt goes back to the first quarter of last year's Super Bowl and describes the action:

Game: violence, violence, violence, concussions, violence, concussions, violence.

Commercial break: sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, booze and sex, booze, booze, sex, booze, action movie preview (violence), sex, booze, sex.

Game: violence, violence, violence, violence, time out.

Commercial break: sex, booze, sex, booze, booze, sex, sex, sex, boozy sex, sexy booze, goat beating up guy for Doritos (weird violence), sex.

Game: violence, concussions, violence, time out.

Commercial break: sex, sex, sex, booze, sex.

Game: violence, end of quarter.

It’s become popular to laugh about the “tea bagging rednecks” who are “obsessed” with guns. But the tea bagging rednecks I know aren’t obsessed with guns at all; they own guns because it makes sense to own guns. It’s the anti-gun crusaders who have the unhealthy obsession. They are the danger. They are a danger to liberty, but also a danger to themselves and their loved ones. They proudly go through life defenseless, vulnerable, ready to be victims.

Cannibalizing Thanksgiving

Are you getting ready for Black Friday, which is now on Thursday? Matt Walsh has some things to say about this new trend:

A holiday created by our ancestors as an occasion to give thanks for what they had, now morphs into a frenzied consumerist ritual where we descend upon shopping malls to accumulate more things we don’t need. Our great grandparents enjoyed a meal and praised the Lord for the food on the table and the friends and family gathered around it. We, having slightly altered the tradition, instead elect to bum-rush elderly women and trample over children to get our hands on cheap TVs.

For a while, Black Friday and Thanksgiving coexisted. We thanked God for His blessings on Thursday, and then jumped into the consumer mosh pit at Best Buy on Friday. But this Black Friday-Thanksgiving marriage was tenuous and rocky from the start. It was doomed to fail. Thanksgiving offers tradition, family and contentment; Black Friday offers smart phones at drastically reduced prices. In America, we all know who wins that battle. So Black Friday, like a black hole, violently expanded; it absorbed the light that surrounded it and sucked everything into its terrifying abyss, where all substance is torn to shreds and obliterated. Black Friday could not be contained to a mere 24 hours. It is Consumerism. It wants more. It always wants more. Nothing is sacred to it; nothing is valuable. So, now, Black Friday has eaten Thanksgiving alive. Thanksgiving let out a desperate cry as Black Friday devoured its soul, but we barely noticed. It’s hard to hear anything when you’re wrestling 4,000 other people for buy one get one free cargo shorts at Old Navy.

Why give thanks for what you have when there’s so much you don’t have? That’s the new meaning of Thanksgiving: count your blessings, and then buy some more blessings and count them again.