I usually stay out of debates centered around the topic of abortion, (or its more politically correct term, women’s individual reproductive choices,) but something happened recently that made me give it another thought. Before we get there however, I’d like to disclose a couple of things to you. I am Jewish, and while our religion shares some strong similarities with Christianity, and we are very close on many beliefs, we are also worlds apart in other respects. We do not proselytize. Christians from what I’ve been told, consider it one of their sacred duties to save the souls of others. That difference right there is huge, at least in terms of today’s topic. My faith is a personal thing, and usually does not come out at all in public anymore, unless someone chimes in with a comment on one of my posts citing the Old Testament as a means to tell me where I’ll be going in the after life. Politically speaking, I guess you could either label me as a free marketeer or a libertarian leaning Republican.

I was mad beyond words when the GOP Primary debates hosted by our good friends in the alphabet media excluded every other challenge America faced at the time in deference to that top tier topic of whether or not we could find any preposterous and equally painful circumstance which would allow women to make an horrific decision or whether we would instead have a society where we advertised family planning with K-Mart’s famed Blue Light. Our budgetary problems, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weaponry, rampant unemployment, purposeful inflation of our economy, national defense, terrorism, bureaucratic overreach of every government agency, and pretty much any other topic worth mentioning were all shelved for a one and a half hour discussion of how much each candidate really really hated abortion, (and all women in general as the meme would be turned into later.)

Election time for me has always been more about economic concerns first, and stopping our shift leftward in this country to a point beyond return. I’ve shied away from the abortion issue, primarily because I’ve always felt it to be more of a distraction from other things which would or could help our side to win elections.

Special Note:

Since I mentioned elections in one of my posts and said our side, I must give this rhetorical shout out to the Third Party Advocates, who view everything from their own very very narrow prism: All hail to the Gods of the Third Party. Hail to thee, hail to thee, hail to thee. May our discussions be worthy of your acceptance.

With that disclosure out of the way, here’s what made me think twice about the whole thing. Earlier this week, it was reported that several, as in not an isolated group of sick lunatics, of the NHS Hospitals in Britain were burning the remains of aborted babies for use as a heating source. Let that sink in for just a moment, and please be sure to control your outrage for the purposes of good, and not evil.

My friends, this is one of those seminal, “how did we get here,” moments. Britain, by and large is not a Socialist economy. On the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, Britain ranks 14th in the world, two slots behind the United States, safely included in the, “mostly free,” category. (Yes, it upsets me to no end that for the first time in my life, Barack Obama has shepherded the U.S. economy from the, “Free,” category and seen us fall to the, “Mostly Free,” category. That’s another discussion entirely.) The NHS, Britain’s singular foray into that sad little experiment known as Socialism, is that shining example of what happens when the rights of the individual are sacrificed for the good of the masses.

I would suggest, not meaning to be immodest here, that some serious questions need to be asked. This is the one sector of the British economy that has been placed under the control of the top down thinkers, formerly referred to as the central planners. How is it possible that their finances are in such a state, with their nation’s smartest ruling elite apparatchiks in charge, that they felt it necessary to burn their dead as a substitute for heating oil? What does that say for the society at large, that they felt so little remorse for those dead babies that not one person with knowledge said, “perhaps we should be show more reverence, seeing as how we’re a hospital and all, for those no longer among the living?” Yes, acknowledging the Socialists reading this, there are those cultures which use cremation as a means of burying their dead, but they are not using the ceremony as a cheap means for keeping their lights lit. How is it that the very group of people who have established themselves as occupying the moral high ground in all things related to, “Social and Economic Justice,” found themselves burning dead babies for heat, against the ethics of every other civilized person on the planet? Those of us on the political right are lectured to continuously about how we are cruel for championing a system that sometimes leaves people behind, and creates winners and losers. I would argue otherwise, but I know that capitalism is not perfect, nothing is. I just also happen to no that comparing capitalism to Utopia and not against the other systems of economics put into place, is the only way to make it seem a poor choice. No where in capitalism would we ever be treated to a scene as horrific as that scene which is being played out in the hospitals of the United Kingdom.

This represents a dehumanization of our society that goes way beyond alarming. We are talking about man kind being on the edge of the proverbial abyss here. I think it’s time we stop and take stock of ourselves, before we jump off of the edge.

Economic Freedom Index: Rankings By Nation

Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.