Herman Cain
September 24, 2011 in Orlando, Florida
Photo: Mark Wilson/Staff / Getty
Not many anti-choice activists are like Herman Cain: willing to make abortion a crime even in cases of rape and incest. Most anti-choice activists through the years have been willing to allow for such exceptions even though they are inconsistent with their own anti-choice rhetoric.
Herman Cain is thus more consistent but also more callous -- but that's only because the anti-choice position is itself inherently callous.
"I do not agree with abortion under any circumstance," he insisted.
"Exceptions for rape and incest?" Gregory asked.
"Not for rape and incest," Cain replied. "Because if you look at rape and incest, the percentage of those instances is so miniscule that there are other options."
But when it came to cases where the life of the mother was at stake, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO left a little wiggle room.
"If it's the life of the mother, that family is going to have to make that decision."
Source: C&L
It's interesting that he is willing to make an exception for when the life of the mother is at stake. Why would he do that? After all, the fetus is still an innocent life according to his ideology, isn't it? How is abortion not murder even in those cases? Why is it OK to leave the decision to the mother in one case but not in other cases? Even Herman Cain isn't consistent -- even he can't embrace the full callousness of his beliefs. I guess that's good.
But I can't say that there's much hope for him because while he'll allow abortion to save a mother's life, he has little regard for the lives of people trying to cross the border. He's quite comfortable with erecting an electric fence that kills.
It is not the first time that Mr. Cain has floated the idea of an electrified fence. He has told the story many times of a caller to his former radio show who chastised him for talking about building a border fence, saying that such an idea was impractical. Mr. Cain often says he told the caller that he had recently returned from China, and if the Chinese could build the Great Wall then America could build a border fence.
Last summer, after President Obama remarked that some Republicans seemed to want a moat filled with alligators in addition to a fence, Mr. Cain responded by saying that he would indeed add an alligator-filled moat to his proposed fence, which would be topped with electrified barbed wire.
In his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Cain appeared to go a step further. Speaking to a rally sponsored by the Roane County Tea Party, Mr. Cain said that part of his plan would be to "secure the border for real" with a fence.
"It's going to be 20 feet high. It's going to have barbed wire on the top. It's going to be electrified. And there's going to be a sign on the other side saying, 'It will kill you -- Warning.'" At an earlier rally, on the campus of Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tenn., he added that the sign would be written "in English and in Spanish."
"This nation has always been a nation with wide open doors," Mr. Cain said at the second rally. "We want to make it easy for people to come through the front door. And we're going to shut off the back door so you don't have to sneak into America."
Saying that some critics have told him that his remarks about building a fence are insensitive, Mr. Cain said that the fault lies with the actions of some illegal immigrants. "It's insensitive for them to be killing our citizens, killing our border agents," he said. "That's what's insensitive. And that mess has to stop."
In addition using a fence and unspecified "technology" to cut down on illegal immigration, Mr. Cain added: "If we have to put troops with real guns and real bullets for part of it, we can do that too."
Source: The New York Times
Wanting to reduce illegal immigration is one thing; a willingness to kill those attempting illegal immigration is quite another. There are lots of actions that we might legitimately want to limit, restrict, reduce, or even eliminate if possible (though it rarely is). Creating a death penalty for such actions, though, is even more rarely justified.
Less shoplifting would be great, but do we want to put electric barriers around stores that kill people who haven't had the security tags removed from whatever they're carrying? Less lying would be nifty, but do we want to shoot people who don't tell the truth? One of the differences between a civilized, free society and a barbaric, authoritarian society is the how transgressions are treated.
In a civilized, free society punishments are proportional to the transgression. You don't kill someone for shoplifting. In a barbaric, authoritarian society every transgression is treated either as an existential threat to society itself or a way to demonstrate authoritarian power. Thus transgressions are treated as harshly as possible.
Herman Cain doesn't seem to believe in an America that is civilized and free. His ideas are more in line with a barbaric, authoritarian state that doesn't treat citizens with much respect and doesn't accord them much autonomy. But maybe that's why he's so popular with Republican voters -- none of his policy ideas are really outside the Republican, conservative mainstream in America today.
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