Eliminating Conservatives?

A question came up about what I mean by "wanting to eliminate conservatives". My email response follows, along with some additional comments I would like to throw out in the context of the yet ongoing abortion debate:

"Conservative thought" is not centered on a pro-life stand. It's the attitude that one person, any person, is more worthy than another person. It's a way of thinking that "those people over there" are not worth as much as "we are over here". That's the kind of thinking that I want to eliminate. The conservative movement has been fighting for 7,000 years for total domination of the planet's resources. I don't want power, I want peace. I don't want to control, I want to cooperate. That's where I'm coming from. Differences should be explored and celebrated, but I will always stand against one group gaining control over another, regardless of who it is.

I'm against the ideology, not the people who hold that ideology. The meme that one person has the right to control the lives of other people may have the right to exist, but I would say that it should only exist in history books that tell the story about what the Human Race has done wrong in the past and why we should not follow that same ideology moving forward into the future.

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I have never said that final term terminations were ok. Except in cases where the life of the mother is in extreme risk, or severe deformities where the child has little chance, I think every effort should be made to give the body as much nourishment as possible. I think the picture changes during the first and second trimesters, although I fully agree with the people who say that the US Supreme Court should not have taken it upon themselves to draft law based on that idea. It should have been the US Congress after a healthy debate.

I'm reading the book "Capitalism at the Crossroads" by Stuart Hart. Part of the business ideal that he describes is the concept of Stewardship, taking responsibility for a product throughout the entire life cycle of that product from the development process through the initial raw materials being drawn from the environment, the conversion of those raw materials into a saleable product, the use of that product by the customer, and the disposal of that product to ensure that it does not pollute the environment.

The metaphor can be translated to human life in the following way. As a society, we need to take responsibility for the lives of our people from conception through death. Women who wish to have children should be supported physically, mentally and spiritually to ensure her children have an advantage from the very start. Parents should have all the resources they need to help the child reach their potential. Children should be nurtured and supported while they learn about our world and their place in it. Adults should be supported as they reach for their potential. Seniors should be celebrated and respected, while their needs are provided for. Our family members and friends who pass beyond the veil should be celebrated. All of this is the responsibility of that individual, their family and friends and society at large. Each of those is part of the foundation that we create and nurture for ourselves and everyone else. And that is a detailed description of one of the core principles that I hold dear.

Those of us who follow the true teachings of Jesus understand that life does not begin at conception, nor does it end at death. Life is a cycle that never ends. I am focused on building the foundation for the entire cycle, not just a 9 month portion of it. When we can say that every child has a loving home to go to, a great school to attend, a competent and caring doctor to see when needed, and an exciting future in a healthy society on a healthy planet, then we will have succeeded. Until then, we still have work to do.

That work is what I do every day as a progressive activist working within the Democratic Party infrastructure.

Chad