Scott Adams makes sense

If you're a geek like me you enjoy reading Scott Adams' popular Dilbert cartoon. And if you've been following the news you've probably read about what Scott Adams said about the upcoming election. Here's a piece of it (actually most of it - I wanted to give enough context to make my point - I encourage you to read the whole thing).

Let's say a CEO does a great job for stockholders; he increases profits five-fold, treats the employees well, and causes the stock price to skyrocket. He's a superstar. One day the public learns that the CEO killed a guy to get ahead in his career, but the CEO doesn't get convicted because his clever attorney gets him off on a technicality. Assume in this hypothetical situation that the public correctly believes the CEO killed a guy to advance his career. Should the board of directors allow the superstar CEO to keep his job? Or is killing a guy to advance your career always a firing offense?

Okay, keep your answer in mind.

The next question is for supporters of President Obama. Let's say your political views map closely to the President's positions. He's your guy. But suppose you found out he once killed an American citizen in the United States to help his reelection. And assume, as with the CEO example, that the facts of the killing are undisputed and the President found a legal means to avoid prosecution. In that hypothetical case, would you still vote for President Obama? Or would you say it is a firing offense for a President to kill a citizen to advance his career?

I predict that every one of you favored firing the hypothetical CEO for killing a guy to get ahead. My second prediction is that every Republican reader of this blog favored firing President Obama in the hypothetical and imaginary case of him murdering a citizen to get elected. My third prediction is that supporters of President Obama will quibble with the hypothetical example, or my comparison to the CEO, or say President Obama is still a better option than Romney. In other words, for most supporters of President Obama, I don't think there is such a thing as a "firing offense."

For the record, President Obama did not technically kill anyone to get elected. That was just a hypothetical example. But he is putting an American citizen in jail for 10 years to life for operating medical marijuana dispensaries in California where it is legal under state law. And I assume the President - who has a well-documented history of extensive marijuana use in his youth - is clamping down on California dispensaries for political reasons, i.e. to get reelected. What other reason could there be?

Mr. Adams is speaking about unjustly trumping state law and trampling the rights of American citizens rather than killing someone. And as he points out later in the post, while there is no guarantee Romney won't do the same, but he does claim to support about states' rights and it is likely that he will have a different policy in this area.

Now, I disagree with the state of California's legalization of marijuana, but I see parallels with the way federal law is trampling states' rights in the case of drugs, and the way federal law is trampling states' rights in the case of abortion.

But that isn't my purpose for this post. Mr. Adams points out something that Catholics and pro-lifers have been pointing out for a long time. There is such thing as a "firing offense." From a pro-life perspective, while President Obama hasn't killed with his own two hands and innocent human being, he has aggressively pursued policies and laws to increase the number of abortions in the US, and made abortin the most important point of his presidency. And so a pro-life analogy might be (with apologies to Mr. Adams for paraphrasing his point):

Let's say a CEO does a great job for stockholders; he increases profits five-fold, treats the employees well, and causes the stock price to skyrocket. He's a superstar. One day the public learns that the CEO supports KKK lynchings to get ahead in his career, but the CEO is a clever attorney who says clever sound bites like "that's above my pay grade" when asked if it's OK to kill black human beings. Assume in this hypothetical situation that the public correctly believes the CEO supports lynchings to advance his career. Should the board of directors allow the superstar CEO to keep his job? Or is promoting lynching to advance your career always a firing offense?

As some pro-lifers point out (as an excuse for support President Obama), Governor Romney doesn't have a coherent pro-life strategy, and undermines his platform by the exceptions he keeps talking about, but it is that he will at least not pursue the aggressive funding of Planned Parenthood (under the lie that it provides mammograms)? It is also likely that he will remove the laws supporting the HHS mandate that makes abortifacients free. He has pledged to reinstate the Mexico City policy.

Posted in: abortion,morality,Obama