One issue voters

Since when is being labeled a "one-issue voter" an insult?

The other day I heard a debate about how idiotic it is that people might actually be voting for Sarah Palin's ticket with McCain solely on her strong Anti-Choice stance (and demonstrable resonance of this in her personal life by bearing a down's child into the world).

Now, whatever stance one has on that particular topic, why do so many begrudge others for having the intellectual fortitude and resolve to prioritize the issues before them and be willing to compromise on those they feel far less strongly about (ones they deem issues of style, not principle)? It takes a more liberal mind (old connotation, not the neo-socialist hijacked connotation) to elevate the most important component and ignore the lesser. Only a pompous needler makes mountains out of things even they deem to be political molehills. Now, if the pundits aren't half-witted, they'd see that to Pro-Coersion voters, like myself, HUMAN RIGHTS issues just kind of matter a whole lot more than, say, anything economic. Right makes might, not vice versa. To be wrong on human rights is to be wrong on something so fundamental to everything America stands for that it discounts whatever eloquence may be exhibited beyond the initial error in managing and manipulating any subsequent detail errors.

When, by perspective, an individual's choices are yes to permitting eugenic murder and no to permitting it, any post-WW2 amateur philosopher with any remnant of moral compass shouldn't be flinching. But they do. I listened (I don't watch TV much, but I listen a lot) as an east-coast woman with a heavy New England accent described how, being Catholic, she believed that life begins at conception. But, being a Democrat, she was also pro-choice. Apparently, it's a very common combination. I was floored by the idiocy. Maybe she didn't think it through, but, from my perspective, she just said, "yes, it's human" and in nearly the same breath, "go ahead and kill humans, if you're inconvenienced by them." There is, of course, a third way. A moderate way. It is possible she is taking this road, and her sentiments really are saying, "Oh, it's human all right, but not human like I'm human or you're human. Not human, human. Subhuman, really. Not quite fully developed into humanity."

Some previous Democrats have also taken this historical third-way stance before. In the south, local governments legislated magnificently appropriated rights based on arbitrary gradations of skin tone. Today, these pseudo-moderates are as equally concerned with arbitrary fractions as their political ancestors were. A timeless question to ask one's self, if pregnancy can be divided into thirds, with latter trimesters exhibiting increasing humanity, at what fraction white/black descent does a mulatto lose or gain the rights of citizenship? 1/8th? 7/16ths? 13/74ths? Too concise? Maybe it's roughly between 1/4th and 3/4ths?

Perhaps it's 1/3rd?

Doesn't make any sense? Of course it doesn't! Because there is neither a blur in the arbitrary sand they rummage through nor is their a line. They're looking totally and completely in the wrong field. There's no compromise possible on the definition of humanity. No fraction. Any candididate for it is all or none. Either one is working to expand this definition, and bring more into its sphere as recipients of these rights (Republican Party, then and now), or one is working to constrict that sphere for some individuals to exact more rights at the expense of the weaker or voiceless (Democratic Party, then and now). Or, third way, being a moral idiot.

It's all or none. Truth or lie. Believe it or don't believe it. In a literate nation, most people recognize the significance of strong words, and respond with actions of equal caliber. And then in morally illiterate nations, you get a large number of these, people who don't follow ideals to conclusion, and are caught in the middle, thinking they are helping (yeah, they're helping all right, helping perpetuate the problem so that indecision makes it end painfully, often violently). Far from being as self-evident as we claim by reason, some ideals are, in practice, exacted slowly and painfully. Phantom wounds linger from our last run-in with this very problem. Let us hope they linger long and strong enough to motivate the circumvention of new pains by reason.

Speaking of old pains, did you know that while Roe v. Wade shot down the convoluted state definitions for the beginning of human life (ironically laws established directly in the "moral honeymoon" aftermath of the civil war), I believe the Dred Scott case, fairly applied, would have shot down as many convoluted southern citizenship laws as it attempted to do to northern slave freedom laws? If no person of African descent could ever claim citizenship in the U.S., then southern state laws allowing mulattos with minor, trace black ancestry to be considered natural born citizens would be equally void.

Oh, and about voting based on only one issue. Thankfully, I don't have to. I'm voting for about 4 or so, but I'd certainly be willing to, if it came to it. History will find me on the right side of what I believe to be the linchpin challenge of my generation. Linchpin in that either we pin it to the wall now, or historians rightfully lynch our legacy forevermore. Kind of like how the slavery crisis defines a number of generations of Americans, who I'm sure did other fine things as well (but rightfully are overshadowed by the wrong they permitted).

I'm not getting everything I want politically this year. Are you? If you are, I'd say you're not prioritizing things concisely enough, all you splatter-approach, weasel voters out there. Anyone voting their pocketbook? To those I say might is an effect, not a cause. Right first and the rest follows naturally. Ad hoc, ergo propter hoc? It's the new (old) logical fallacy, inhumane utilitarian humanism, and makes promises like Tantalus' fruit and drink, that is, whenever actively sought for its own sake, it will recede.