People are much more complex than the little boxes we try to stuff them into, writes Breda O'Brien
CAROL STEPHENSON-CARTY wrote a critical letter last week about my article on Sarah Palin. I realise that it will probably cause Ms Stephenson-Carty some distress, but I have to admit that I agree with most of her criticisms. She objects to my description of Sarah Palin as pro-life. "Is this the same Sarah Palin who supports the death penalty, picks off wild animals from a helicopter for sport, and boasts of packing her son off to Iraq to fight in a trumped-up war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives? . . . If so, then anti-abortion she may be, but 'pro-life' she most certainly is not."
It is probably fair to suggest that Sarah Palin is anti-abortion, rather than being pro-life. Sadly, being anti-abortion in the US is often part of a predictable constellation that includes seeing taxation as theft, the right to bear arms as akin to the right to breathe and support of the death penalty. That particular combination is relatively rare on this side of the Atlantic. Anti-abortion people here are much more likely to favour a "consistent ethic of life" approach. The late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago coined this phrase. He felt that it was morally inconsistent to, say, support the use of nuclear arms while opposing abortion, because both involved the loss of innocent life.
He thought that "one should stand for the protection of the right to life and the promotion of the rights which enhance life from womb to tomb". He was careful to emphasise that not all issues involving human life had the same moral weight, but insisted that the same respect for life should underpin approaches to such diverse issues as the death penalty, euthanasia, warfare and abortion.
Using those criteria, Sarah Palin is not truly pro-life. Mind you, in suggesting that Sarah Palin should be best described as anti-abortion, people who prefer to be called pro-choice might want to pause. The logical counterpart to anti-abortion is pro-abortion, not pro-choice. They should also pause before labelling anti-abortion activists as anti-choice. Feminists for Life (FFL) of America recently neatly filleted the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) for describing FFL as anti-choice. FFL says that NARAL conveniently forgot that their representatives successfully lobbied alongside NARAL to support the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, and for enhanced child support enforcement, as well as fighting against cuts in benefits for the children of poor women. Moreover, NARAL opposed FFL's successful campaign to secure healthcare for working poor, pregnant women and their unborn children. So just who is anti-choice? It depends on what choices you want women to have.
As for Sarah Palin, I still believe that my comments about the knee-jerk reaction to women who do not fit a dated feminist stereotype still stand. Further, personalised attacks are disgusting, and when Palin's opponents targeted her pregnant daughter, and her child with Down syndrome, the tactics were beneath contempt.
I would part company with Stephenson-Carty when she asked: "Is this the same Sarah Palin who, as governor of Alaska, slashed funding intended to help unwed teenage mothers and special-needs children?" Actually, she did no such thing.
Don't take my word. Look at FactCheck.org. This is a website that checks the accuracy of facts regarding politicians of all stripes. The site cheerfully whacks Palin around the head for distortions about Obama's policies on tax and other issues in her convention speech. It also points out that far from cutting funding, she tripled funding per pupil for special needs children in three years. No, it doesn't fit the Republican stereotype, but people are much more complex than the little boxes we try to stuff them into. We are pretty good at little boxes in Ireland, too. One of the most tedious things about Irish politics is that we often substitute anti-clericalism for left-wing ideology. Thus the ludicrous situation arises where someone can be, say, moderately left-wing on economics, liberal on immigrants' rights and supportive of alternatives to prison, but still be categorised as right-wing simply because of opposing abortion and being unconvinced of the merits, for children, of divorce.
Mind you, the old categories of left and right never really applied to Ireland, and less so now than ever. The approach taken by the website politicalcompass.org makes much greater sense. It uses two axes: left/right and authoritarian/libertarian.
Pope Benedict is judged to be mildly left and mildly authoritarian. George Bush is strongly right and authoritarian. Nelson Mandela is strongly left and moderately libertarian. (Your humble scribe's results placed her slightly to the right of Nelson Mandela.) Using attitudes to abortion as shorthand for political positions is a flawed approach. Yet attitudes to abortion are not insignificant, either. I am among the many who would really love to believe that Obama is as visionary and idealistic as he appears, and yet his inconsistencies bother me as much as Sarah Palin's do. (Just because I find Sarah Palin feisty and likeable, and agree with her on abortion, does not mean I would be thrilled to see her as vice-president. There are other vital pro-life issues, such as climate change.) I find it hard to understand how Obama can espouse the rights of the vulnerable but exclude humans in the womb from vindication of their human rights. I keep hoping that his obvious intelligence will allow him to see the contradiction implicit in his current stance.
And if he loses the election, blame Hillary. When she began her insidious attacks on him, and he felt forced to respond in kind, his aura was irreversibly tarnished. It seems impossible to maintain real integrity in the Faustian world of high-stakes politics. Factcheck.org has pulled Obama up for endorsing advertisements that misrepresent McCain's views, and for "stretching the truth" in his acceptance speech.
What about Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment? It is a common enough American expression, and McCain used it himself about Hillary's healthcare policies. However, given that lipstick is now so associated with Palin's pit bull joke, it was at best unfortunate and at worst, a gift to Republicans.
For one thing we should be grateful. Political junkies have never had so many fixes as this campaign has provided, no matter where you stand on the political compass.