Let me get this straight. You say abortion is a crime but also that a handicapped child is a threat to their persuit of happyness? You need to step back and reallize what you're actually saying. Do you remember the saying "charity begins at home"? Nowhere in that does it say anything about the govt. The situation you gave is where the family and church steps in and charity is given. It's not the govt's job to force me to be charitable.

Do you understand that approximately 50% of American voters support a party that fights like dogs to keep abortion legal? That that party does not give a hoot about the unborn and does indeed regard them as potential obstacles to happiness and their removal as a "cure" for international poverty? Do you understand that I can say that without believing it myself?

My point is that this idea that the government "should not compel charity" is incompatible with the purpose of law. Conservatives who want abortion outlawed with all other forms of unlawful killing wish to compel those Americans who do not care about "blobs of jelly" etc. to obey the Fifth Commandment. Under Christ's own analysis, that commandment is a precept of charity. We may take it for granted that murder has always been outlawed, but we need to remember why. Without charity, it is just killing, like killing a rabbit. (Now don't take that remark to mean that I think humans are not worth more than rabbits!)

The law goes further than this. For example, the three branches of government collectively require all of us to expend labour and money on making our homes secure for our neighbors to visit. This is called occupier's liability, and as I mentioned before, it derives in no small measure from the parable of the Good Samaritan.

From this I do not see why it is beyond the law to provide assistance to "loser home owners" who would like to pay their bills but can't sell their homes because the market has come to a standstill, and are now threatened by falling wages and rising unemployment. Unless we should not have provided assistance to tsunami victims because they should have taken out insurance? Or perhaps the "losers" had to take the risk of violent weather when they sought the reward of a sun-kissed location? (By the way, until you have an national Church in America then privately donating to your favorite denomination will not cover these things.)

In summary, I do not believe that Glen Beck's principle 7 as currently stated stands up to scrutiny. It is not consistent with the current state of the law or with the overall conservative political platform.

And come to think of it, if "God is the center of my life", why is He second on Glen's list of principles?

"Government cannot force me to be charitable."

That sounds like a pro-choice slogan. Hey, Obama, stay out of my wallet!

Here is the problem. The fifth-to-tenth commandments are all phrased in the negative - thou shalt not - but when Christ came to fulfil the law he encapsulated them in the single commandment that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. This is an expression of charity, which I can see is one of Glen Beck's values. The difference, in conservative philosophy, is that whereas the Mosaic commandments are enforced by law, the virtue of charity is binding only in conscience.

This creates a situation where a couple could be expecting a severely handicapped child, and be forbidden by law to remove this "threat to their pursuit of happiness", while at the same time having no guarantee of social support for this difficult challenge that has been randomly assigned to them. Were there an established religion in the US, this might not be so great a dilemma, but, under a strict reading of the Constitution, the possibility exists that you could be punished for aborting a handicapped child, but left on your own when it comes to raising it.

Nor is this just a question of charity. In an advanced capitalist economy, everybody plays along by engaging in increasingly specialised work that leaves them extremely vulnerable to losing their market value overnight. One can practise thrift up to a point, but this depends on how long you have been fortunate in not losing your market worth. The sword of Damocles could drop at any moment.

Yet if we didn't take that risk, the economy could not advance. Conservatives are wrong to relate "rewards" to "risk". Effort should be rewarded, risk should be insured against. I cannot see anything inherently wrong in the idea that such insurance should be national and compulsory, since we all benefit from diversification, just as much as we benefit from national defence and law enforcement.

Did you see Jon Stewart on Santelli the other night? He nailed it. Santelli called struggling home owners "losers", yet if one is to be truly accountable for one's work, CNBC has given repeatedly bad financial advice. Where is the blowback for them?

Working for the government does not give one a halo, but neither does working in the private sector. The astonishing failure of the financial sector has ripped the rest of us to shreds, yet there are many in that sector who will have all those things that the "Tea Party" posses are joking about: plasma TVs, fancy cars, houses with pools. Conservative philosophy will not confiscate those possessions from the capitalists, yet it will kick people who have committed no crime but who want to keep a roof over their heads. Perhaps this is because it is easier to understand the inability to pay one's bills than it is to track down a complex fraud?

I saw the first 25 minutes of El Rushbo's overly long speech at CPAC. I had to turn off because all I could hear was materialism apparently predicated on the idea that everyone in America has the capacity to be Bill Gates - "if you want to". I don't know why people have different capabilities, but it is clear - and fortunate - that we do. Until conservatism can articulate a complete picture of how these differences should be supported within society, I suspect that conservatives will continue to be threatened by their own adherence to free elections in which voters can choose a different philosophy.

Kevin,

Nations, governments and organizations are not created in God's image, only man is. By reason, everything created by God is good and anything not created by God is not good. Therefore that which HE created has a right to exist while anything not created by God (man made) has no "right" to exist as all rights come from God. Right to life being of the utmost importance and from which all other rights derive.

That said, He has no concerns for government or politics except where it concerns His people. It took 400 years of bondage in Egypt before He heard the cries of His children Israel so I'm fairly certain He's not concerned with a few lazy people crying over a few years of self inflicted discomfort.

He also gave us free will to Love him or separate ourselves from him through sin. As we can do that with God, we can certainly have the free will to do that with one another. We can, through Love and charity, bring ourselves closer together until we are truly one in the body of Christ. Or we can separate ourselves from that Love casting ourselves further from God.

The word charity comes from the Latin word caritas which the word for Love so I'll use the word Love for simplicity. Love comes from one heart to another or it isn't Love. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world" (1 John 2:15)

Love isn't what you receive, rather what is given (John 3:16) so it must be freely given or it isn't Love. Without the choice to give, it ceases to be Love or charity, the kind that God wants of His children.

We are all called to give to the poor and that is a central theme to Catholics during Lent, but throwing money at a problem solves nothing. Giving it away to possible mismanagement is irresponsible and wasteful. While money given to organizations, agencies and governments to help the poor may sometimes do good things, history has proven that to be the exception rather than the rule. It is only through freely given face-to-face charity can we see the face of Jesus in one another.

Feed the hungry doesn't mean give money so someone else can do your dirty work for you. It means feed the hungry yourself and the same goes for all forms of charity, be to those who hunger, thirst, who are prisoners, or who have no clothes for whatsoever we do to the least of our brethren we do to Jesus. Feed Jesus through that hungry person. Clothe Jesus through that naked person. Give drink to Jesus through one who thirsts. That is what we are called to do, not to delegate our money or our responsibilities as Christians away to others.

Conservatives believe firmly in the rule of law and in individual freedoms so accordingly God's law to Love one another is of the utmost importance and cannot be delegated away. Only then can we be liberal with our Love!

Please read my blog articles:
http://catholicconservativeamerican.blogspot.co...
http://catholicconservativeamerican.blogspot.co...

I'll keep you in my prayers.

God Bless,
Bob Cavalcante
http://CatholicConservativeAmerican.blogspot.com

"I'll keep you in my prayers."

Thank you for that thought.

What a dope! I wonder if you work, ever held a job longer than a year, do you camp out in your parents home? How much of your salary do you donate to charity, do you pay tithes? Jealous, loser dope.

I thought the first rule of conservative debate was never to engage in an ad hominem attack.

Since when did a couple expecting a severely handicapped child become a "threat to their pursuit of happiness?" And just where do you come off with the notion that the parents would NEED social support for that "difficult challenge?" It's not a "challenge" or a "threat" to most people who make that choice; it's a child.

And oh, yeah... I get ALL of my hard news from Jon Stewart. You, my friend, are in no way qualified to make the judgments and statements that you just did. I didn't say you didn't have the right to say it; I just said you are obviously not qualiifed to make the assumptions you made.

By the way...everyone in America may not have the capacity to be Bill Gates, but they damn sure have the opportunity to try to be him. But why would we want a world of Bill Gates? Why not some Gates, some Tiger Woods, some Limbaughs, some Billy Mays, et. al? Your focus is decidedly narrow, as is your world view.

GET SOME!

That is a very sound answer on the subject of the handicapped child (see my addendum below) - although it obviously is a challenge to raise a handicapped child, as opposed to being a "piece of cake".

My concern is that conservative values as they are publicly presented, for example by Rush Limbaugh at CPAC, appear to extol material worth over everything else. The impression given is that, if you have any extra financial burdens, from whatever source, you will fall behind in the race to become the next Gates, Woods or Limbaugh. The reality, however, is that a handicapped child may be born to a man who works in a furniture store and his wife who is a cleaner in a hotel. They must find happiness in being good people, not in accumulating astronomical amounts of money, which the vast majority of good Americans will die never having achieved.

Other than that, it would help if you didn't just defend my right to speak, but that we discussed substantive points. For example, was I wrong to suggest that compulsory national insurance could be a good idea? If so, why? If not, why are we not hearing Republicans talk about this in public? Is it media censorship?

According to Gina, only "losers" - there's that word again - do not donate to charity or pay tithes. Doesn't that violate Glen Beck's principle 7:
"I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to."

Is it that the Government cannot compel me to be charitable, but my neighbors can, through stigmatization and ostracism? It seems a subtle distinction. How about tithes? Are these voluntary or compulsory? Just to be clear again - I am anti-abortion and I am not anti-tithe. I am not, however, averse to presenting counter-arguments, as this is vital to sound debate of one's principles.

Does prohibiting the Government from compelling charity extend to repealing consumer protection laws? How about the duty of care under the law of tort? In Britain, this concept began in 1932 with a case that used the moral example of the Good Samaritan as one foundation for it. Does that violate principle 7? Why not?

Just to be 100% clear, abortion is and should be a crime.

Regarding this comment of yours:

"Did you see Jon Stewart on Santelli the other night? He nailed it. Santelli called struggling home owners "losers", yet if one is to be truly accountable for one's work, CNBC has given repeatedly bad financial advice. Where is the blowback for them?"

How is there an equalivalence between someone who accepted the responsibility of taking on a home mortgage and someone who gives financial advice? Wow... you are really out there.

as with cigarettes which the liberals hate and are punitively taxing out of existence, I think We should in the same way put a heavy, punitive tax on abortion. If we can't ban it, tax it out of existence.

The person struggling to pay his mortgage may have lost his job. A person who gives professional advice is normally obliged to pay compensation for bad advice - which could threaten his mortgage payments.

All of these different meet-ups and groups are leading a lot of new people to connect and begin to work together. Glad we were able to meet at the We Surround Them USA site, and I look forward to reading more in the weeks and months to come.