Ignaciophile On Barack

From the Jesuit and Ignaciophile blog, Under a Chindola

Why I Cannot Vote for Barack Obama
Without further ado, the main reasons why I cannot, in good conscience, vote for Barack Obama.

1) Abortion. Since the national and total legalization of abortion caused by Roe v. Wade, 48,920,704 human persons have been slaughtered in the womb in the United States. This level of systematic murder joins the ranks of Stalin's Great Purge, Mao's Cultural Revolution and Hitler's Holocaust as one of the greatest crimes against humanity. For the record, no President has ever seriously contributed to the pro-life movement's ultimate goal of changing our culture. For this, every pro-life American, to some degree, is guilty of political compromise and complacency on this issue. Barack Obama is another in a long line of progressives who makes my stomach turn as he proudly declares his commitment to the "right" of women to abortion. The stench has long past being bearable and I would never vote for a person who takes a deep breath and then smiles.

2) Foreign Policy Foibles (and the Life and Death Consequences). Obama is not (at least for now) a hard-boiled neo-con, but he has gathered around him a foreign policy team heavy with them. Among his biggest neo-con backers come from (not surprisingly) the Clinton administration: former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross to name two. Others include former Carter National Security Council Director Zbigniew Brzezinski and Project for the New American Century enthusiast Ivo Daalder. On Iraq, Obama remains true to his word (again, at least for now) on responsible withdrawal and no permanent military presence. On other foreign policy issues, I find that he is quickly developing a position that continues to support American hegemony as our highest national interest. He has not spoken at all of Latin America and our meddling there under the guise of the "War on Drugs." He has advocated a unilateral invasion of Pakistan if we had "proof" of Osama bin Laden's whereabouts. And he became the first Presidential candidate EVER call for a unified Jerusalem under Israeli rule, negotiations be damned. I find none of this surprising and all of it unacceptable.

3) Spending. Since last week, the national debt has climbed to $9,547,505,862,771.27 and, like McCain, Obama has no plan for beginning to pay it down. Obama is on the right track: raising taxes. But he has no plans of using any of that revenue for debt reduction, but for more spending. Some of the spending I would support, but much will no doubt go into our bloated military budget and continued subsides for corporations. The burden this creates for future generations is still staggering and Obama shows no concern.

4) Judges. What I am looking for remains the same, but the likelihood of getting even one constitutionalist out of an Obama administration is very slim.

Mason Slidell