ACLU to America, "Bonk Bonk"
The parents have to sign a form before a child can be allowed to visit the local zoo with her classmates escorted by her teacher and transported in a big, yellow, happy bus. But if she wants to have an operation in another state to end a pregnancy? Well, Mr. and Mrs. America, it's none of your damn business what your daughter is up to. Huh? It's not a story that we are changing this law...the story is how we could have put up with something so twisted for so long. We are told that abortion is no different from any other surgery that removes something unwanted. And yet if a minor wants her tonsils removed mom and dad have to be informed, that seems different. Where is the outrage over this current tonsil-related oppression of our children? Where is the ACLU? Silent, because it would be asinine to argue against something so sensible. Just like it is asinine that secreting children across state lines for abortions without giving those responsible for their well being a say so was ever legal.
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Not to nitpick such a noble sentiment as serving others, but our Creator does not guarantee American citizens protection from illegal search and seizures, the Constitution does. Nor does our Creator provide protections such as freedom of speech, right to assemble, right to bear arms and the rest. These rights are a gift we give each other. Liberty is in fact a gift, or privilege dictated and protected by people and bestowed upon any civilization that allows them. I agree that sacrifice can accomplish a greater good than most can image, but I think you confuse spiritual enlightenment with the day to day functioning that the ACLU is concerned about. These are entirely different concepts. Apples and oranges if you will.
Having said that, I think the ACLU overstepped its boudaries here. I don't see the Civil Liberty endangered here. Even their press release seems to throw in Federalism as an afterthought, http://www.aclu.org/ReproductiveRights/ReproductiveRights.cfm?ID=18134&c=223
Liberty has several flavors. Unk speaks of political or practical liberty and he is correct, man controls it. But the question of whether we think man gives it to man or man takes it away from man leads us to the matter of first causes. Spiritual liberty comes from God and man has no power over it. Now if God is the source of liberty then man can only steal it, he can never give it. If God is not the source then it is an arbitrary construction and no more valid than any other relational condition.
Spiritual liberty is the model that practical liberty should be based on. Practical liberty is derivative and, therefore, less perfect and less functional. In fact, it has often proven to be its own opposite. The ACLU demonstrates this as it only recognizes practical liberty. This explains why they often make very little sense in the causes they choose to champion. The story that generated this thread shows the ACLU arbitrarily deciding that abortion rights trump parental rights. Based on what? Nothing, just a particular opinion. The tyranny of taste is all that is left when objectivity is deemed antiquated.
I'm sorry, I'm just not smart enough to understand what Mr. Malone wrote. I thought I was, but I kept getting lost. Mainly I got lost in the linkages. I get the spiritual points (I think), and I get the practical points (again, I think) but I got lost in spiritual/practical link. Can you dumb that down for me, even if its in a side e-mail.
Generally, I got the first paragraph, and the first two sentences of the second, then I had a Homer Simpson moment. "Uh-oh, I don't uderstand a word he's saying..."
Sorry.
Practical liberty is a subjective standard as you demonstrated when you said our freedoms come from men. "Man gives it to man" implies something that man creates; "man takes it away" implies liberty is something we all have intrinsically (from a source beyond us) and man comes along and steals it. How you view it determines what you think about spiritual liberty.
Spiritual liberty is from God and never changes. It applies first to our spiritual condition (a proper relationship to God) and from there can be extended to our worldly condition where it becomes practical liberty. Practical liberty freed from spiritual liberty is relativism. This reduces everything to a matter of opinion or taste. That is how the despicable actions of the French Revolution came about under the slogan "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite". In the name of Liberte much liberty was destroyed.
Liberty then is a passing fancy. Not long ago the majority thought it reasonable that millions of people be enslaved, today the majority find it reasonable that millions die before they are born. The tyranny of taste. Any societal conviction can change just like fashions...even our understanding of liberty.
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