THE Global Justice Movement Website

THE Global Justice Movement Website
This is the "Global Justice Movement" (dot org) we refer to in the title of this blog.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Pro Hobson's Choice

Here's another in our series of (unanswered) letters to major newspapers. Again, please feel free to plagiarize any part of this letter for submission to your local journal.

Dear Sir(s):

William McGurn's "Main Street" column in yesterday's Wall Street Journal ("Democrats Made No Room on Abortion," WSJ, 08/26/08, A19) makes it clear that the Democratic Party in the person of Barack Obama is offering the American people a Hobson's Choice. Employing common pro choice rhetoric, this can be expressed as, "if you don't want an abortion, don't have one." One might as well say, prior to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, "if you don't want a slave, don't own one."

If Senator Obama is serious about "change," why doesn't he advocate changing the way in which pro life Americans are forced to subsidize abortions with their tax dollars — thereby giving them the choice of supporting abortion with their tax dollars or going to jail? Why is he ignoring economic reforms that to this writer's certain knowledge have been presented to him, and which would eliminate the economic reasons for abortion by changing how ordinary Americans participate in the free market, to say nothing of reforming the currency, correcting the tax system, and freeing America from dependence on foreign investment?

If Obama (or Senator McCain, for that matter) is serious about what is best for this country instead of what he thinks will get him elected, he should dust off one of the copies of Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen (2004) with which he has been presented, or remove the material on the Just Third Way from the circular file, and get busy studying something that has the potential to put this country back on the right track — and without worrying about whether it's in his pay grade, or if he can come up with a clever (or not so clever) quip fast enough to cover up his real intentions or slips.

(According to the Wikipedia, "Hobson's Choice" is, ". . . a free choice in which only one option is offered, and one may refuse to take that option. The choice is therefore between taking the option or not taking it, colloquially formulated as "take it or leave it." The phrase "Hobson's choice" is said to originate from Thomas Hobson (1544-1630), a livery stable owner at Cambridge, England who, in order to rotate the use of his horses, offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.")

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