By Selwyn Duke

It’s interesting to hear the
euphemisms bandied about in campaigns. After
Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s appearance a week ago at Saddleback Church,
for instance, the former’s ardent supporters were as effusive in their praise
as ever. His stammering and copious
“uhs” weren’t signs of a befuddled and muddled mind, but of “thoughtfulness”
and “nuanced” thinking.

Yeah, sure, and when President Bush occasionally invents
a new word, we can chalk it up to creativity.

The truth is that, sans
teleprompter and prepared speech and contrary to myth, Obama is at best a
mediocre speaker. (If you say that we’re
electing a president and not a professional orator, fair enough. But given that Bush’s wanting speaking skills
have made him the butt of jokes and have been used to paint him as an idiot, I
think it bears mention.) Yet neither
this nor “thoughtfulness” explains his fumbling tongue. After all, politicians are people who are
supposed to live and breathe issues and policy, so there should be few things they
haven’t been asked about or at least pondered before. Thus, they should have oft-rendered, memorized,
standard responses at the ready. For
sure, John McCain did, despite his supposed status as a septuagenarian with
senior moments. And if politicians don’t
have them – neither sublime answers nor slick dodges – what does it tell us? Well, perhaps it means they haven’t put much
thought into things at all. For if a person
makes it a practice to think deeply about issues, he doesn’t have to think
about them on stage. It’s the difference
between preparation and improvisation.

Speaking of which, we might want to
take note of how the senator’s “thoughtfulness” and “nuanced” thinking were on
full display at the Saddleback forum. I
refer to his answer to event moderator Rick Warren’s question about when a
developing being (dare I call him a child?) inside the womb becomes human. Obama’s response was:

“Whether you are looking at it from a
theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question
with specificity is, you know, above my pay grade.”

While this dodge was delivered
artfully, its conception cannot be thus characterized (perhaps it should have
been aborted). For starters, a
thoughtful person might understand that science and theology are simply
different methods for uncovering Truth, the former using the scientific method
and the latter reason and divine revelation. Thus, if each one is applied correctly using adequate “data,” they will
arrive at the same answer to a given question.

As to theology, there is an
incongruence between the supposed seriousness with which Obama takes his faith
and the ignorance he pled in his answer. While I’m not sure what the black liberation theology that influenced the
senator teaches on Warren’s question (unless it’s that whites become human when
they assent to reparations), traditional Christianity holds that life begins at
conception. Moreover, correct me if I’m
wrong, I don’t know this to be some esoteric point such as the “law of double
effect.” It’s Sunday school 101.

Transitioning from the theological
to purely logical, when would human life begin if not at conception? If, like Obama, you cannot provide
specificity, it doesn’t matter. Just
pick a month – any one you wish – my follow-up will always be the same. I’ll ask, what week of that month would it
be? Then, what day of that week? What hour of that day? What minute of that hour, second of that
minute and nanosecond of that second?

This places the matter in
perspective. Is it really tenable to
claim that one moment the baby isn’t human but the next he is so, unless the
moment is that seminal one called conception? There is a reason why “conception” has a definition of “origination” or
“beginning,” for it is the nascence of new life, human life. And if some say this life only becomes human
at some later point, we need to ask not only when that critical juncture might
be, but what definition of “human” would be congruent with such an assertion. After all, if certain physical qualities are necessary
to attain such status, can it be lost if those qualities are lost? If your heart stops beating and you receive a
mechanical one or head trauma causes a cessation of brain waves, do you cease
to be human? To think so is to cease to
be humane.

In a way, it is much like
fire. Once you have the necessary
elements – flammable materials and a spark – and there is ignition, a fire is
born. It then will exist until it burns
itself out and its life ends . . . or until it is snuffed out.   

Whether or not you accept that
reasoning, there is no denying that there are only two possible answers to
Warren’s question: A, human life begins ____ , or, B, I don’t know. Obama’s answer was a more stylish version of
the latter, and, generally speaking, a man deserves credit for admitting
ignorance. Commentator Alan Colmes would
certainly agree, as he recently said on “Hannity & Colmes” (I’m
paraphrasing):

“Obama may simply be saying that this is
something for God to decide, not him.”

While this at least shows that,
unlike true Obamaniacs, Colmes hasn’t confused his political messiah with a
divine one, he omits an important point.

God doesn’t make policy.

People such as Obama do.

Thus, no
separation-of-church-and-state argument will fly here. Obama wasn’t being asked about his position
on the Trinity or transubstantiation, but on a hot-button issue existing within
a continual maelstrom of legislative battles. So if it is above his pay grade, I suggest that the presidency if not
politics itself is also so.

Strangely, though, while Obama
claimed that the question was above his pay grade, legislating in areas in
which it must be answered never seemed to be. Why, he never shrank from making policy or pronouncements regarding
abortion. He never said, “I’m, uh,
sorry, but this issue is, uh, above my pay grade; I’ll have to withhold
judgment and, uh, recuse myself from votes.” Nor did he take the logical, compassionate and humane default position,
which is to say that since I don’t know whether this being is human, I’ll err
on the side of caution. I won’t allow
him to be killed. Instead, whenever
Obama was called to weigh in, there was never any question as to where he
stood: Shoulder to shoulder with the most radical elements of the pro-abortion
lobby. And, as with them, we have to
wonder not about when Obama believes human life begins, but whether he believes
in the human right to life at all.

After all, in 1997 Obama voted
“present” on two bills that would have prohibited partial-birth abortion (in
the Illinois legislature, such a vote counts as a “no”). In the same vein, while a member of that
body, he effectively blocked his state’s version of the Born Alive Infants
Protection Act (BAIPA). This bill was
proposed because some babies in Illinois who were meant to be aborted were born
alive and then, unbelievably, were left to die in soiled store rooms. Now, to understand just how far off the rails
Obama was on this issue, know that senators Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Ted
Kennedy all supported the federal BAIPA, and even the radical NARAL Pro-Choice
America went neutral on it.

So what are we to conclude from
this? Is it that Obama isn’t sure if
human life begins after birth, either? Perhaps,
just as he once over-estimated the size of the U.S. and spoke of our “57
states,” he is under the impression there is a 4^th trimester.

Yet, at the end of the day, a truly
thoughtful voter will have no trouble interpreting Obama’s actions. It’s simple really: The senator may not know
when human life begins, but he sure knows that political life for a leftist
Chicago politician ends when he fails to accede to blood sacrifice at the altar
of the pro-abortion baal. So I suspect
that Obama has never actually put much thought into the nascence of human life
for a simple reason.

He doesn’t really care.

To him, life – human or otherwise,
born or unborn – all melts into political calculation. This is why he could render the poorly
conceived “pay grade” answer. It bespoke
of a complete lack of seriousness and understanding of the gravity of the
issue. It was immature, flippant and
disrespectful to the voter, the “I tried it but I didn’t inhale” response of
the abortion debate.

Speaking of inhaling, before
casting a vote for Obama, a deep breath and a 10 count may be in order. Because whatever his pay grade is, I’m quite
sure that we cannot afford to have him in the White House.

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