Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Catholics: Do Note Vote for Pro-Abortion Candidates. The Country You Save May Be Your Own.


No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.Fr. John Corapi (see his article included at the bottom of this post).

On the Democratic ticket, we have Joe Biden, a Catholic for abortion (against the teachings of the Church) running for vice-president. For his part, presidential candidate Barack Obama has repeatedly voted against anti-abortion legislation, and even laws that would comfort and try to save infants that are born alive after abortions.

Democrats hotly defend the "right" to partial birth abortion. This "procedure" partly delivers a baby that is almost at full term and kills it by inserting a surgical instrument into the base of its skull. They don't wait until it is fully delivered because they want to avoid the charge of infanticide only by the most cynical of technicalities.

Please, for the sake of the health of this country and your own soul, do not vote for any person who thinks it is moral to allow a little babe to be chopped up or burned by saline solution or vacuumed out of the womb, which should be the safest place in the world for her or him. And do not vote for anyone who thinks there is a "right" to stab babies in the spinal cord after partial delivery. Please don't. That politician who is for the legalized killing of unborn children has killed a part of his or her humanity. Do not join the dark side your self.

If you are unconvinced, ask God to guide you. I challenge you to pray and ask God to show you the truth. Pray the rosary for the outcome of this election for much is at stake. This is my prayer, may God show us all the truth in these matters.

The devil does not seduce us with ugliness and clumsy speech. He set before us glamour and appeals to all of our nature, including our ideals.

As Fr. Corapi wrote in the included email, the fate of the nation and the world is at stake. As Roy Schoeman has written about the Nazi regime, Satan gets a foothold in a person's soul through the introduction of sexual deviance. Actually, any sex outside of marriage is a perversion. Allowing "freedom" in this are has led to the promotion of spurious "freedoms" like the "right" to choose abortion.

Many Catholics have been influenced by the promoters of a false compassion. It is true that we have to love individuals, but we don't have to love and legalize and normalize the evils that they do.

If you want to see what the Catholic Church has taught about abortion from the beginning see the Catholic Encyclopedia at:
http://www.catholic.com/library/abortion.asp

The article has many quotes like the following, which are from Tertullian

----------- Start Catholic Encyclopedia Abortion Article --------------------

"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

"Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course was alive. . . .

"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive" (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).

"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22–24]" (ibid., 37).

------ end quote from Catholic Encyclopedia ------------------------------------------------------

Many sexual evils have been legalized since the start of the 20th century: contraception, divorce, living together outside of marriage, pornography, all kinds of sexual acts, . . .. For a while, the ersatz sex researchers justified any kind of sex, even sex between children and adults. But they have silenced themselves, for the time being at least, because crying out against pederasty give such great ammunition against the Catholic Church. No one recognizes that some of the priests and bishops in these sick events had their judgment clouded by these same psychological experts who are currently lying low about their real beliefs.

In the name of everyone's right to untrammeled sex, we have even gone so far as to legalize the destruction of unwanted children.

The spin doctors justified loosening abortion laws for the "hard cases" of rape and incest. But God loves every soul that He calls into being. I once talked to an Evangelical Free Church pastor on this topic. He showed verses in the Scriptures that show God knows and has a plan for each soul.

"Before you were in your mother's womb, I knew you" is one of them.

To kill a child because of the circumstances of his or her conception is adding another evil to the first one. Two great wrongs do not make a right. And now, how many of the 4,000 abortions committed daily are for those hard cases? Very very few.

Now women are routinely screened during pregnancy, and if any defect is found, they are pressured to commit abortion on the child. They even claim it's for the good of the child, so the child will not suffer. What worse suffering is there than death? How many "defectives" would ever say to their mothers, I wish you had taken my life?

The devil got his toe in the door and kept pushing and pushing until all hell has broken into our world in these matters. We live in a society with mad scientists creating monsters by combining human and animals (Frankensteins) and human clones. What brave new world is this?

Much is at stake. If you are leaning towards candidates that offer all kinds of rosy prospects, consider the black back sides of their platforms. As Fr. Corapi writes, all the other terrible and grave issues [the war in Iraq, torture, financial misdealings], they do not add up to justification of the routine slaughter of and experimentation on human lives.

With love, in HIm, your sister,

Roseanne


Begin Fr. Corapi's article:

A Call for a Rosary Novena
By Fr. John Corapi
www.fathercorapi.com

Among the most important titles we have in the Catholic Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary are Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary. These titles can be traced back to one of the most decisive times in the history of the world and Christendom. The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7 (date of feast of Our Lady of Rosary), 1571. This proved to be the most crucial battle for the Christian forces against the radical Muslim navy of Turkey. Pope Pius V led a procession around St. Peter’s Square in
Vatican City praying the Rosary. He showed true pastoral leadership in recognizing the danger posed to Christendom by the radical Muslim forces, and in using the means necessary to defeat it. Spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and this more than anything was a battle that had its origins in the spiritual order―a true battle between good and evil. Today we have a similar spiritual battle in progress―a battle between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies, life and death. If we do not soon stop the genocide of abortion in the United States, we shall run the course of all those that prove by their actions that they are enemies of God―total collapse, economic, social, and national. The moral demise of a nation results in the ultimate
demise of a nation. God is not a disinterested spectator to the affairs of man. Life begins at conception. This is an unalterable formal teaching of the Catholic Church. If you do not accept this you are a heretic in plain English. A single abortion is homicide. The more than 48,000,000 abortions since Roe v. Wade in the United States constitute genocide by definition. The group singled out for death―unwanted, unborn
children.

No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.

I strongly urge every one of you to make a Novena and pray the Rosary to Our Lady of Victory between October 27th and Election Day, November 4th. Pray that God’s will be done and the most innocent and utterly vulnerable of our brothers and sisters will be protected from this barbaric and grossly sinful blight on society that is abortion. No woman, and no man, has the
right to choose to murder an innocent human being.

May God grant us the wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and counsel to form our conscience in accordance with authentic Catholic teaching, and then vote that well‐formed Catholic conscience.

Please copy, email, link and distribute this article freely.
God Bless You

Fr. John Corapi
www.fathercorapi.com
Fr. Corapi's conversion story on YouTube

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

It All Started when A Northside San Jose Neighbor Posted a Comparison of the Republican and Democratic Candidates

It all started when M- (a woman) posted a humorous comparison between Sarah Palin, John McCain, and Barack Obama on my Northside Neighborhood yahoo
group.

--------- initial post from M --------------------
Since we're takling about the candidates...

Got this from a good friend and found it to be quite interesting. It's all about spin I guess. I'll try not to send anything else political, but just couldn't pass this one up. Enjoy or not...

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight...
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you?re ?exotic? and ?different?. Grow up in Alaska eating moose, you?re an American story.

If your name is Barack, you?re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Bristol, Piper, Trig and Track, and you?re a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating with a degree in journalism and can't name any newspaper you read on a regular basis, then you?re well-grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, help register 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a constitional law professor, 8 years as a state senator of a district of 750,000 people, chair the state senate?s Health and Human Services Committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people, sponsor 131 bills, and serve on the Foreign Affairs, Environmental and Public Works, and Veteran?s Affairs committees, you don?t have any real leadership experience.
...
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you?re not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, left your ill wife, and married the heiress the next month, you?re a Christian.
. . .

M
N. 21st
--------- end initial post from M --------------------

In response, I quoted the first part of this blog http://tinyurl.com/ilikeSarahPalin up to "I think that that Hilary Clinton and women like her must be wondering how things could be any more unfair" and sent it to the group:

And then M wrote back:

--------- reply from M --------------------
Re: [nnasj] Re:Since we're takling about the candidates... I Hate to Admit It, But I Like Sarah Palin. A Lot.

Just the opposite. I work in the financial industry and I'm surrounded by conservatives (maybe working with money made them so) who refuse to really discuss the issues with me or even around me so hide in their offices and talk about 'guess what Obama did or did you hear what Biden said'. Plus hatred for Obama is much larger and comes from much deeper roots (elephant in the room). Also Palin did not over-strategize Hillary. Palin didn't run - she was picked. I just don't think she's ready. And I think that if not offered this grand opportunity, would she even have strived for it eventually? I don't think so. What I see is not what I get. I feel it's a facade, an act that is not charming nor funny. I just don't see it.

Anyway, it's not just about her. For every election since Reagan, Democrats have been labeled as ammoral, god-less, unpatriotic and liberal. I cannot support a party that adopts such a platform and to claim to be the Moral Majority, looking down on the rest of us.

M
--------- end 2nd reply from M --------------------

---------- start my 2nd reply to M--------------

HI M-,

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

It is funny that you are surrounded by conservatives and I am surrounded by liberals. :-) From my point of view, liberals don't want to dialogue with anyone who doesn't agree with them.

I am not saying Sarah Palin over-strategized Hilary. My point was that Hilary did all the "right things" and didn't get the prize. And it is amazing to me that this comparatively naive Alaskan got picked over Hilary. God's ways are mysterious.

The "Immoral Minority" looks down on the Moral Majority, so both sides do the same thing.

I cannot support a party that thinks it is a "right" to be able to cut up little babies inside of and outside of their mother's wombs. And Obama has fought laws that would intervene to save a baby if the abortion fails and the child is born alive. In my book, anyone who believes that slaughtering pre-born or partly-born babies is OK has lost part of his or her humanity. Rape or incest, two wrongs don't make a right. It would be wrong to kill a baby conceived by rape or incest after it was born, and it is equally wrong to kill a baby while it is in what should be the safest place in the world for it, it's mother's womb.

God loves each one of us. Before we were conceived in our mothers' wombs He knew us. We don't have the right to destroy a baby because of the circumstance of his conception or because she might be flawed. God gives life and only God has the right to take away .

Religious people are being labeled as amoral, dangerous, sexually-repressed, the source of all wars and all the evil in the world. These slurs ignore the vast numbers of murders under atheistic regimes such as Russia and Cambodia. But why not overgeneralize when the facts will prove you wrong?

But this is too big a subject. I don't have anything against you. I just thought I'd try to speak my piece.

Best to you,

Roseanne

---------- end my 2nd reply to M --------------

And then G- (a man) joined the discussion

Re: [nnasj] Re:Since we're takling about the candidates... I Hate to Admit It, But I Like Sarah Palin. A Lot.

Hi Roseanne,

Thought I'd take a moment to correct a couple of the more insulting stereotypes with which you apparently feel justified in dismissing large segments of human civilization.

>I generally am surrounded by people of a uniformly liberal > bent. You know the type. After their professors indoctrinated them in > the whole "religion is a crutch" curriculum, these people walked away > all facing the same direction, away from God and Christ, and never > looked back.

A lot of *people* - as distinct from brainwashed types, y'know those convenient strawmen that get paraded when a sweeping generalization is otherwise unwarranted - are atheists because there are simply better explanations available in the 21st century that render the concept of gawd as superfluous as luminiferous ether. It's called Occam's razor in case you're curious.

> And they pretty much walk in lock step in all their other > sympathies, likes and dislikes: I don't have to ask any of them where > they stand on issues of sexual morality, global warming, or Sarah > Palin.

Yes, there is a probable majority of the American electorate who have decided to vote for Barack Obama on the basis of these and other issues. For many these include disgust with the Republican party's platform of endless war, ruinous economics, blatant disregard for civil liberties, etc. etc.

Oh, and the cynical valuation of loyalty over competence that brings us the token-female candidacy of Sarah Palin.

Cheers,

G-

---------- end G's first post --------------

---------- start my reply to G's first post --------------

Re: [nnasj] Re:Since we're takling about the candidates... I Hate to Admit It, But I Like Sarah Palin. A Lot.

Hi G-,

The media and other anti-religious people are insulting believers all the time. Don't I get a chance to try to get my licks in too?

I didn't think I was making sweeping generalizations: I never heard anyone say what I wrote from my own observation, that anti-religious people's opinions are usually cookie-cutter versions of each others'. There is no nuance. Whatever was picked up while they were sophomores is carried high like a banner the rest of their sophomoric lives. Even when the evidence of their wrecked lives and a wrecked society proves that there is a fallacy involved somewhere in their God-less belief system.

Whether or not you think God is superfluous, He does not think the same about you.

You know, whatever slur you could throw against religion, I have hurled it too. I left the Church when I was a 18, brainwashed by the big thinkers like Satre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Ashley Montagu, an endless list of anti-religious novelists and intellectuals, and by my college professors. And I came back 15 years later after trying all the available alternatives and finding all the other explanations of life fall short. I am not a blind believer. I am a sadder but wiser believer.

Don't get me wrong, I loathe the Republicans too. I think John McCain is despicable for having been unfaithful to his injured wife and for abandoning her for a trophy wife. It was crazy for President Bush to have invaded Iran. Torture, the lack of respect for human rights in Guantanamo, and croneyism of the rich greasing the hands of their rich friends, all are shockingly wrong.

I was mostly trying to say I'm amused that a woman who did all the "right things" was eclipsed by a woman who didn't.

I suspect that Sarah Palin was talking nonsense because she was picking up the scorn of those questioning her, and it made her nervous. That happens to me sometimes.

Really, I don't know who out of the whole bag of politicians is any more competent than any other.

The history of the American presidency is full of people who weren't qualified. Who ever could be?

If you think Barack Obama is the best man for the job, then vote for him. I don't know why, but I feel that there is something really scary about him.

But it really comes down to the fact that I basically cannot support a party that has in its platform that it is a moral good to slice up little babies in their mother's wombs. And also when they are partly outside of their mother's wombs. It makes me sick.

Sorry. I guess that makes me a single-issue voter.

Roseanne

More later

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Hugh Wants Women to Castrate Themselves and Other Reactions to the Lies They Feed Us These Days

Subtitle: Riling up the Opposition at The California Democratic Party Line Blog



At The CA Dem Party Line Blog, a video of Sarah Palin's vist to CA shows only Obama supporters. They talk a lot about how women need to protect their rights to control their own bodies, which prompted the following comment from me:

Women need the right to be in charge of their own bodies. The truth is that we have been shamed by the "free" sex spin doctors. We have lost the right to say no to sex that stops with the orgasm or that lasts only as long as a temporary "relationship" might last. We have been told we don't have the right to wait and give ourselves in love in a life-long, life-giving marriage.

The proponents of male sexual predation like Hugh Hefner are the biggest supporters of sex outside of marriage, contraception, "free" love, and the horror of abortion. These so-called rights give unprincipled men free reign over women's bodies.

Can't you see what these people have done, pulling the wool over our eyes? In our day, women are brought up to live in a way that thwarts their sexuality. This lines up exactly with the desires of men who do not want commitment. We have lost the joy of being chosen as life-long partners without being "tried out" first. We have followed their lead and become predators ourselves.

When every woman is pressured to believe that she must have sex outside of marriage with the hope that maybe the man might someday make a commitment, and every woman is forced to make sure to use artificial means to prevent her sexuality from its full flowering in child-bearing, this is the equivalent of female castration.

All this being said, I cannot support a presidential candidate who believes it is good to chop up babies inside and outside of their mother's wombs. And if they are born alive, Obama is adament that they be abandoned to die uncomforted. Anyone who believes these actions are good has lost a big part of his or her humanity.

Women throw off these lies. Look at Sarah Pahlin. Whatever her failings, she is a woman who truly has it all. See http://tinyurl.com/3pg4g5 for more.

Reality check: Which would you rather be? A Playboy bunny living with an 81 year old lecher who wears pajamas all the time and has multiple "relationships" or a fulfilled woman with five kids and a supportive husband?

BTW, when interviewed, Playboy bunnies almost universally say that what they want is to be married and have children. As I just found out by googling Hugh Hefner this morning, his current crop of girlfriends from his infamous "reality" show Girls Next Door are leaving him apparently for that reason. And a Playboy survey in the 70s brought back unexpected results. People who waited to have sex until marriage and who were faithful within marriage reported a much higher degree of sexual happiness. Go figure. Could it be that sexual morality promotes our happiness?

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Isaiah Wrote: If You Keep Holy the Lord's Day "Then You Will Delight in the Lord"

If you separate your labor from the day of rest and from doing your will on my holy day, and call yourself the delicate, holy, and glorious Lord's day of rest, and if you glorify him by not doing your own ways and not fulfilling your own will, then you will delight in the Lord, and I will extol you above the heights of the earth and feed you with the inheritance of Jacob[Isaiah 58: 12-14].

This morning while eating breakfast and reading, I was struck by the above quote from Isaiah that I found in the commentary by St. John of the Cross on Stanza 36 of his work The Spiritual Canticle.

St. John of the Cross explains "Jacob's inheritance here is God himself."

The mystic writer also known as San Juan de la Cruz is honored as one of the greatest Renaissance poets. But as this quote passage shows, Isaiah's poetry resonates too.

How many of us go this far? separate your labor from the day of rest and from doing your will on my holy day,

Even if we do, we are supposed to go further.

I am pondering what it means to call myself the delicate, holy, and glorious Lord's day of rest. I suppose it entails changing my heart so I can say: Today I am not Roseanne. I am the Lord's day of rest.

I suspect this means that on the Lord's day, at least, I am not to identify myself with the ambitions that drive me the whole rest of the week. At least on Sunday, I must identify myself with God's will for me that day. It is, after all, His Day.

And I can glorify Him by not doing my own ways and not fulfilling my own will.

We can keep our Sunday obligation and attend Mass reluctantly as an interruption of our plans to enjoy ourselves on the weekend. Or we can love the Lord's day because God wants us to, so much that we become one with it and give it all to God.

During my digression into evangelical Protestantism, I was struck by this. They have no threat of mortal sin if they miss Sunday services. But they seem to have internalized the joy of Sunday better than us Catholics. They spent their Sundays in church, starting with Bible study, followed by a long service during which the pastor reads from an interprets the Word of God, and they come back for evening service after a family dinner. They seem to have grasped the spirit of the Law of keeping holy the Lord's day better than we have.

I sometimes pray that all that evangelical zeal be brought back into the Church. They would gain the strength to be obtained only by participating in the sacrifice of the Mass and receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. And the rules-based formalism of many cradle Catholics might melt away at the example of their zeal. As the conversion of Scott Hahn and many like him, the formation of the Coming Home Network, and Marcus Grodi's show, The Journey Home, on EWTN indicate, that conversion of evangelicals is happening en masse. Thanks be to God.

The reward of living Sunday God's way is great. When we call ourselves the Lord's day of rest, then Isaiah promises that we will "delight in the Lord." And we will be fed with Jacob's inheritance, God Himself. Small price to pay.

This goes along with a prayer I have been led to pray frequently lately:
"My Lord replace my ambitions with Yours this day. Lead me to do only what You want me to do."

Amen.

Further reading:
From Dies Domini by Pope John Paul II. He wrote: I would strongly urge everyone to rediscover Sunday: Do not be afraid to give your time to Christ! 7

Read the Third Commandment with care: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath [holy] to the Lord your God. Then you shall do no work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your servant, or your maid, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your beasts, or the foreigner within your gates, that your servant and maid may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded that you keep the Sabbath day" (Dt 5:12-15).

God's will be done.

Friday, October 10, 2008

I Hate to Admit It, But I Like Sarah Palin. A Lot.


Sarah Palin's sudden emergence out of the North as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate was shocking at the very least. Many many people are very very upset about her candidacy. In the article, "Why Some Women Hate Sarah Palin," Time magazine called her Queen of YouTube and the clips are mostly mocking. Hatred for Sarah Palin is strong in many circles.

In the face of all this vitriol, I am ashamed to admit it, but I like her. I'm writing this while feeling like the barber in the Greek myth who couldn't keep secret his knowledge that King Midas had donkey ears, so he spoke the secret into a hole in the ground. I can't comfortably talk about this with hardly anyone, so here goes, oh anonymous blogsphere, I'll have to tell my secret to you.

Sarah Palin's candidacy has made me feel awe-stricken and thrilled. It took me a couple of weeks of pondering to figure out why.

Snatches of offensive conversations about Sarah Palin float around me when I lunch at work with my fellow technical writers. When I am not at Church, I generally am surrounded by anti-religious neighbors and co-workers of a uniformly liberal bent. You know the type. After their professors indoctrinated them in the whole "religion is a crutch" curriculum, these people walked away all facing the same direction, away from God and Christ, and never looked back. And they pretty much walk in lock step in all their other sympathies, likes and dislikes: I don't have to ask any of them where they stand on issues of sexual morality, global warming, or Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin is a Nazi, one of my fellow tech writers said at lunch a few days after the announcement,the same day when everyone else at the table was chortling about her daughter Bristol Palin's pregnancy. Why? Because she is against abortion? I blurted out. The guy didn't answer me. My diplomatic boss changed the subject. I remembered I had some urgent work to do, and left the group in the break room. to continue slamming Sarah Palin without me

There are obvious reasons for all this scorn against Palin. But I think one not-so-obvious reason she is enraging people is that she achieved her sudden prominence in spite of not doing the things that the common wisdom teaches that a woman has to do to make it in a man's world. She hasn't gotten to be a governor and now a vice-presidential candidate by going to good schools, being politically correct, or un-sexing herself. Think of that!

According to Wikiedia, poor Hilary Clinton married reluctantly. She interrupted her career to have one child only, and has been strategizing her way to the White House for most of her life. She went to Wellesley, got a law degree at Yale, paid her dues. And sadly for her, during this election year the coveted prize she wanted so badly has eluded her once again.

Then out of the blue, Sarah Palin, this pretty, charming, funny, uncultivated rifle-toting woman from Alaska, stepped gracefully over the master strategizer's politically-correct body and appeared as a vice presidential candidate on a major national ticket. And this even though she married young and started having a big family right away. She didn't go to the best schools. She just lived her life, and took the opportunities that presented themselves to her, and now here she is making serious cracks in the glass ceiling.

I think that that Hilary Clinton and women like her must be wondering how things could be any more unfair.

I've got to hand it to her. Sarah Palin is an original.

She hasn't denatured herself by having two, one, or no children. Oh, no, she has five. She breast fed them, brought two of them to work and nursed them in the governor's mansion. She is currently nursing the youngest, carrying a breast pump on the campaign trail. I remember what it was like to be nursing a baby and trying to keep up a busy schedule. How can she do that? Where does she get her strength?

Instead of aborting her first son when she got pregnant before marriage, Sarah Palin married the father, and she loved both him and the child. Instead of aborting her second son when she got pregnant with him in her early 40s, when the baby was diagnosed with Downs syndrome, Palin bore the baby and is equally proud of him too as she is of the rest of her five children.

And when her oldest daughter got pregnant at a critically embarrassing time for her, and thereby proved to the whole world that she was practicing sex outside of marriage even though they are an evangelical Christian family, Sarah Palin did not encourage her daughter to abort the baby or shame her with blaming words in the statement she released to the press. For these things alone, she is a hero to me.

She stood out on that stage at the Republican National Convention, now the world stage, supported by her five children and her genial handsome husband. And I thought to myself that she is living proof once again of this verse from Psalm 127.

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. {Psalm 127:1].