This quote could apply to the work we do…
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth.
When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
— Thomas Sowell, (1930- ) Writer and economist
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Speaking the truth
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True. But to play the contrarian, how many posts on this blog tell your readership what they don’t want to hear? To go by the comments (though they might not necessarily be a good index on this point), it would appear that most of your readers are pro-life, and largely in agreement with your take on things. I don’t recall reading very many posts that strongly run counter to the way I prefer to see things. Not that you have some duty to magically discern everyone’s preferences so as to pop our bubbles as often as possible — but I wonder whether there might be more opportunities to tell pro-life people truths that we don’t want to believe.
Hey Joel – I meant in speaking to the larger Canadian context. Not PWPL. I wasn’t exactly being clear, now was I? 😉
What kind of truths are you referring to? This could make for an interesting exchange or posts at PWPL.
Your post was clear. I was just offering one of those yes-but-why-didn’t-you-say-something-about-a-different-topic-Huh?-Huh? responses …
I’m not sure what truths I’m talking about; that’s for you ladies to come up with–you’re the bloggers. 🙂 Seriously, I didn’t have specific examples in mind; I just think that on most any issue those of us on a particular side of a controversy tend to have favourite themes (points that offer especially convincing support for our stance) that we raise repeatedly while saying nothing about considerations that don’t fit so well with our position.
Perhaps there could be a post on why abortion is so popular with the grass-roots general public in this society and many others (in terms of the percentage of the public that supports its availability)–indeed, why various forms of controversial killing (abortion, capital punishment, assisted suicide, to pick an obvious troika) typically all receive majority support. Or, in that vein, perhaps a post could explore why a large chunk of the anti-abortion camp is supportive of capital punishment, and another large chunk adamantly against it. Nor sure whether everyone here would find anything challenging about whatever “truths” there are in that, but those are just two possible examples.
Of here’s one: some defenders of abortion rights love to argue that pro-lifers don’t *really* believe abortion is murder, because we wouldn’t be willing to subject women who have abortions to such severe penalties as we use for murderers, or because if there were clinics at which hundreds or thousands of five-year-olds were being exterminated we wouldn’t merely publish blogs or hold the occasional mild protest or run centres designed to help parents who preferred not to kill their 5-year-old–rather, we’d be out in force screaming blue murder, physically trying to stop the atrocity, and plotting to overthrow our evil government which abetted it, because of course normal people don’t sit by watching while what they *really* believe to be a genocide takes place under their noses, since North Americans obviously are more moral than those weird mid-century Germans or those strange Rwandans of the 1990s. Despite my sarcasm toward the end there, the argument isn’t wholly stupid–at the least, it raises some questions that many of us would find uncomfortable, or perhaps it would require us to say things we’d be uncomfortable saying.
I’m not saying that it either is or should be part of the purpose of this particular blog to discuss any of the specific issues I’ve mentioned. But some pro-life voice should deal with such questions sometime. (Though maybe there are plenty of pro-lifers already talking about this–I don’t read much about the movement.)
Hi Joel,
Those are good topics. Actually Josh Brahm and his team over at LifeReport have covered each of those issues in the past through their podcast. http://prolifepodcast.net/ They’ve tackled them head-on and with intelligence. If you’re interested in browsing their archives, they’re all there.
I’ll flag your comment with Andrea and see what she has to say about it.
Great, thanks for the link, Faye — will check out their podcasts.