2010-01-26
Dumbest Idea of the Month: Virtual March For Life
Those of you who have read this blog or who know me personally know undoubtedly that I'm as pro-life as they come. I believe abortion should be illegal except when the heath of the mother is seriously jeopardized. I'm so pro-life that I'm even opposed to the death penalty, which makes me stand out among other supposedly "pro-life" conservatives.
You see, I'm pro-life because I believe that life is sacred. And because life is sacred, I'm also opposed to people doing stupid stuff with their lives. That's why I'm opposed to the legalization of drugs and why I support an escalation of the War on Drugs to model Colin Powell's philosophy of "Total Force" warfare. That's also why I get worked up over people following idiots like Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin as though they were political messiahs while simultaneously demonizing leftists for doing the exact same to Barack Obama.
And every now and then, conservatives put together something so insanely stupid that I have to speak out and bring to light the flaws in their thinking. That's why I'm calling the "Virtual March For Life" a really dumb idea.
The logic behind it is that this "Virtual March" allows for the millions of pro-lifers who can't physically go to Washington to participate nonetheless. The problem is that it cheapens the whole thing in several ways. First and foremost, of the 300,000 people that showed up, I'm willing to bet that a lot more than a few of them signed up for the 82,000 person "Virtual March."
Second, there's nothing stopping people for registering multiple times.
Third, if it ever takes off (God forbid), it's going to excuse people from attending the virtual march, which can be quite expensive and inconvenient if you don't live in the Washingon, DC area.
Fourth, you've given an excuse for pro-life leaders to skip the event completely with a couple clicks of a mouse (that's what the broke Mike Huckabee and lazy Sarah Palin opted to do, along with other pro-life conservative politicians). Don't get me wrong, certain politicians can't be in Washington... Marco Rubio is a good example; unless he's on a national television show for publicity, he needs to spend every waking hour between now and the Florida Primary in the state of Florida campaigning. However, politicians like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, according to their own rhetoric, should have no priority higher than Life issues and thus they should be at the largest rally for activists of that issue in the country. It's pathetic that they're not there and the "Virtual" March for Life was their excuse.
Fifth, it's an oxymoron to have a "Virtual March" for anything. Seriously, unless I see an old fashioned Marquee code with an animated *.gif of a marching character, you don't "March" "Virtually."
The whole point of doing something virtually is so that you really don't have to do it. And that brings me to my sixth point.
Sixth! The thing that's so special about the March for Life is that hundreds of thousands of people are willing to drop what they're doing, go to their nation's capital, and petition their government to protect unborn children. How incredible is it that people are that passionate about this issue that such a large segment of our population is willing to travel all the way out there for this one common goal! You know that if 300,000 people are passionate enough to come out to Washington, then they and millions of other Americans are definitely passionate enough to walk or drive to their local polling place and vote in the next election. The very idea of a "virtual" march is stupid because it tells politicians, "Hey, I care enough about this issue to sit on my butt and click this button."
Yeah, that has them shaking in their shoes. It tells them NOTHING. How loud were the internet activists against the Iraq War in 2004? It was crazy! I didn't have a comments feature on my website at the time, but I literally got over 100 e-mails a day towards the end of the campaign from anti-war activists. Yet how many of them cared enough to get up off their butts and vote? Hardly any of them.
Didn't 2008 and Barack Obama change all of that? Yes, but conservatives behind the "Virtual" March for Life are too stupid to figure out how and why it worked. Instead, they're making the same mistake John Kerry's supporters made in 2004. Barack Obama used the internet to organize people into getting OFF their butts. The TEA Party movement is a conservative example of using the internet to get people OFF their butts. The "Virtual March For Life" is an example of using the internet to stay ON their butts and not do a thing. That's how you create apathy and indifference.
If you can't go, you can't go. But don't let people think they can make a difference by sitting on their butts and clicking a button. It's going to take a LOT more than that to save these millions of children from being killed and their mothers from making one of the worst mistakes of their lives.
