Bumper Stickers

My best friend in the whole world, a young lady I have known since my infancy, is a self-professed dirt-worshipping, tree-hugging, bisexual neo-Pagan. To be perfectly honest, I am still trying to discover what exactly all of this implies. This young lady has a penchant for covering her car in bumper stickers. So, for Christmas, I thought I would purchase a few I thought she would like and give them to her. While searching for one in particular I had seen, which reads “Sorry I missed church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian,” I came across several that really sparked my ire. I’d like to comment on a few of them.

Imagine: Nothing to Kill or Die For
As an ardent defender of the culture of life, I’m right along with the bumper sticker at first. But then comes the “or die” part. Apparently, having nothing to die for is now a utopian ideal. I had always thought that being willing to die for things – for virtue, for love of another, for faith – was a good thing, indeed something intrinsic to human nature. I did not select these three things at random. Rather, they are three of the four categories of martyrdom in the Catholic Church. The Church affirms that dying for these things is a sign of God’s grace. A world without people with belief as great as the martyrs is a bleak vision indeed.

Keep Your Theology off my Biology!
I am not quite sure whether this bumper sticker is supposed to be about abortion or about evolution, but because I am better versed on abortion, I’ll assume it’s the former. Unfortunately, biology confirms the pro-life point of view. Biology shows us that from the moment of conception, a new and genetically distinct life is formed. Biology shows us that from the moment of conception, this new life is a human life because it has human DNA. Scientific technology, specifically ultrasound machines, is one of the pro-life movement’s best allies. It is not religion, nor the pro-life movement, that corrupts biology; rather it is the pro-choice, pro-contraception ideology that corrupts biology. When scientific definitions become inconvenient for pro-choicers, they simply change them.

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities:
I completely agree with this statement, but perhaps would apply it somewhat differently than its makers intended. I can only assume they are referring to our current government, which has ‘brainwashed’ the American population into fighting an ‘atrocious’ war against poor Iraq. Yet I would apply this statement to something rather different. The absurdities that so many people believe in today are moral relativism and a notion of human rights without any grounding in natural law or theology. Many atrocities are committed in the name of these absurdities, but the most obviously heinous is the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children in the form of procured abortion.

Those Who Would Give Up Essential Liberty to Purchase Temporary Safety Deserve Neither Liberty nor Safety – Benjamin Franklin:
Again, I don’t disagree with the statement, but its application. I assume that this one is again referring to the Iraq war. Those opposed to enhanced security measures in a time of war misunderstand something fundamental: there can be no freedom without security and order. Freedom and liberty are impossible without security. Lack of security threatens even the most essential freedom – the freedom to simply be alive. Further, there is a distinct difference between measures that procure temporary safety, and temporary measures that procure safety.

There Never Was a Good War or a Bad Peace – Benjamin Franklin:
1. There has never been a good war, but there may very well have been justified wars. WWII – ring any bells? 2. Lack of war does not imply peace – sometimes it implies utter chaos and disordered violence. Today’s wars predominantly seek to contain or limit evil and violence.

What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving?
Tradition, values, morality, family, society, Western civilization, faith, freedom, principles, personal responsibility, the rights of the individual, the dignity of each and every human being, modesty, respect, community… nothing really important, I suppose.