House of Eratosthenes

Normally I am skeptical over these “This Line-on-the-Graph Just Went Past the Fifty Percent Mark” stories. I think they are generally much ado about nothing, since when you read them, the swing is something close to the margin of error. I also tend to think on some issues, people have an unrecognized need for conflict with balance. They want to be fighting. In two camps — not in three. And they want that line somewhere around fifty-fifty.

But it is really hard to assert this wouldn’t mean anything. The numbers strongly indicate there is something significant taking place here.

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

The new results, obtained from Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

What could it mean? Can Republicans find some new life by putting the abortion issue at center-stage again?

Not so fast. It would be a welcome change from talking about gay marriage. But I think the issues involved are more philosophical and more primal…even moreso than abortion.

Think about it: What is the abortion issue really all about, anyway? It’s about, when liberals-in-charge form their highly arbitrary talking points and settle on the idea that something “must” be a certain way — and make it look like they’ve just gotten done “listening” to what “The People” has to say, because hey, someone somewhere is always willing to agree with just about anything — an entire class of human loses the right to live.

This is something Main Street USA might find comfortable, but only under the right set of circumstances.

Now look what’s going on. Liberals are running things. They say something “must” be a certain way…so…our grandchildren have to be born into a staggering, debilitating debt.

A terrorist who would vaporize a crowded town square, suddenly has a right to be interrogated only gently. Three hots and a cot with a nice comfy pillow, and if he doesn’t feel like telling you anything, he doesn’t have to.

For the sake of “embryonic stem cell research,” humans can be grown like silicon wafers, or grass seeds, or vaccines. How many lives are saved with the embryonic variety, that can’t be saved with the non-embryonic — is something we simply aren’t allowed to discuss in public.

If a burglar breaks into your home, you have to dial 911 and wait. If that’s ten minutes, then too bad for you. You aren’t allowed to defend yourself.

If we work hard and we are rewarded with a bonus, Congress will work against our right to keep it.

The guy who is tasked with enforcing the tax code against us, judging by his actions — and not judging altogether too recklessly — doesn’t appear to think this is a tab he should be compelled to pay.

We are “free” to do whatever we want — but — pretty soon we’ll have to pay for “cap and trade,” which is a tax on anything we do that emits carbon, or involves a machine that emits carbon, or uses power that was produced through the emission of carbon. Or anything that involves breathing. Because the world is ending and it’s because of “human activity.”

Our sons and daughters willingly sign up to do…isn’t this a kicker?…exactly what liberals say they want to do. Sail off to the farthest corners of the world, where people are facing problems with blight, famine, plague and warfare, and help those folks out. We are called hypocrites for “sending” them there. The charge is a killer of two birds with the proverbial stone. It robs us of our sacred right to support an action in the private domain between our ears, and it robs our children of their free will.

When those children of ours are in school, they must behave in certain ways and not in other ways. They must not pray anywhere, or in any way, that they can actually be seen. They cannot counsel other students to share their beliefs — even as the secularist types can call them “stupid,” publicly and loudly, for believing in “The Sky Fairy.” Atheism has become a sort of softly-official state religion now; government cannot possess an understanding of how the universe was created, save one single explanation lacking in a deity. Life in school carries special restrictions for the boys: They can do whatever they want, so long as they don’t act like boys. If they display the male strength anywhere outside the gym, they will be punished as “threatening.” If they display the male weakness anywhere on campus, they will be medicated for their inattentiveness. In both sexes, whatever is unique and special is now contraband. The only exceptions are those cherished weaknesses that enhance the sense-of-purpose of government and all its special programs, like mythical learning disorders, phobias and allergies.

Life is even more restrictive, in certain ways, for our daughters. Just look at the treatment of Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean. The message is clear: Women are allowed to believe in traditional, conservative values; to be powerful; or to be pretty. They are exposed to a mild, patronizing sense of irritation of they do one of those three things. If they do two of them, then they will be acquainted with a white hot omnipresent dangerous rage, to which homely straight white guys like Yours Truly will remain an everlasting stranger. And if any one of them does all three — meltdown!

See what all these things have in common? They trivialize humans. They reduce humans to an entity of non-sentience. Like cattle that are to be herded around. Or the oh-so-sensitive stuff that lines your sinus passages, and must not be disturbed even a little tiny bit.

People get tired of this treatment quickly. That’s the point.

This fifteen-point swing from last year’s poll, minus-six to positive-nine, proves out that people have a pressing need to mean something. To be significant. It is a vacillating instinct, and in recent years has been a fleeting, occasional thing, visible as often as a moonshadow. But it is something intrinsic to our being, and when the conditions are right the protest flares up, predictably, unwaveringly. In fact it seems there is no hunger that settles in with greater speed. Now that it is here, the questions are: How much passion? How enduring?

So here’s another winning slogan, not quite so much for Republicans, but for anyone who would rally against the democrats in ’10 and ’12. It speaks directly to what people have in mind, to the hunger that was left unfilled by last year’s hope-n-change:

Humans Matter

Get that issue out there, front-and-center, before you start making noises about abortion. Do that, and people will understand how important it really is. If you don’t do that, you hand the task of definition to the opposition. And then they make it all about “controlling a woman’s body.” But that isn’t what it’s really all about. That’s never been what it’s really all about.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Humans Matter

I like it.
- philmon | 05/15/2009 @ 15:20
But..but..less abortion means more babies for “gay” couples, eager to adopt….(sic)

I’m kind of amused with “With YOUR ten dollars, WE can buy insect netting
to give a woman/child (where DDT is forbidden) protection while they sleep.
- CaptDMO | 05/15/2009 @ 20:12
[…] PATRIARCHAL misogyny triumphant! U.S. Pro-Lifers in the Majority for the First Time …. (rsmccain.blog, […]
- Steynian 356 « Free Canuckistan! | 05/18/2009 @ 17:32

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Pro-Lifers in the Majority for the First TimeFriday, May 15th, 2009

Pro-Lifers in the Majority for the First Time
Friday, May 15th, 2009