Hillary Clinton, Serial Self-Disqualifier

It's a bit hard to know what to make of Hillary Clinton's recent speech in regard to "women's rights" which, in this case, was the "right" to terminate pregnancies.

This is a woman who has declared herself to be a candidate for the presidency of the USA, who eventually, if we are the cursed nation some think, would have to lead an entire country. Yet, in the course of speaking to something called the "Women in the World Summit", she made the statement that "[D]eep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed”, for the sake of giving women access to “reproductive health care and safe childbirth.”

I have stated my opinion multiple times in the 175 preceding essays in this site, as far as abortion.  In short, it is miles and miles below my interest level.  I do not pay a shred of attention to candidates' positions on it.  There are far more important topics that the President of the United States should be worrying about.

As a moral issue (roughly half the country thinks it to be murder, and the other half think it a "woman's right"), it rightly devolves to the most local level of government to address it.  The Federal government should neither prevent it nor subsidize it, and the states should address its legality as their citizens see fit.

But I digress.  This is not about abortion.

Former medical student that I am, I'd like to dissect her statement itself.  "Cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed", she says.

How appalling is that?

This is America, the land of the free, where the First Amendment ensures citizens the right to practice their religious beliefs free of Government establishing its own religion or obstructing yours.  So what is she actually saying?

First, let's go to that miserable use of the passive voice, the one I spend hours every day removing from other people's writing for a living.  "Religious beliefs ... have to be changed", Her Majesty declares.  By whom, Mrs. Clinton?  There's no subject to the sentence, so we don't know either to whom you are entrusting this awe-inspiring task, or how you propose that it be done.  Lining people up and shooting them until the rest come around, like ISIS?  Hillary doesn't say.

She doesn't say, either, whose religious beliefs we're talking about, except for the logical inference that she means those whose faiths' published doctrines deem abortion to be murder, like, say, Roman Catholicism. Mormonism, Hinduism, Islam (after four months) and my own denomination, the Southern Baptists (although that is a policy more than a spiritual affirmation).

So in a reasonable interpretation of her comments (we have to interpret, because Her Majesty does not deign to answer reporters' questions), as president, Hillary Clinton would somehow produce a process by which American Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Muslims and Hindus would be forced to change their religious beliefs and cultural codes.  Am I missing something?

Here's another thing I'm not missing: Hillary Clinton believes that those faiths are wrong.  If they weren't wrong, they wouldn't need to be "changed."  How, then, does she propose to go about doing that?  There's this pesky little amendment to the Constitution that gets in the way of the Government doing anything that smacks of religious interference, and even the Lockstep Left on the Supreme Court would have a challenge upholding anything she did to try to make that happen.

Aside ... again, I feel a pesky need to reinforce the fact that I have almost zero feeling regarding abortion, other than seeing it consuming far, far too much of our political campaigns.  This piece is not about abortion.  It is about the unchecked hubris of a woman who believes herself entitled to step in and correct the religious beliefs of several of the most widely-followed faiths on earth.

I am trying to imagine myself running for president, and making a speech -- a prepared set of comments, not a reactive answer to a question.  Hillary Clinton prepared to say exactly what she said, so she had to mean exactly what she declared.  I'm trying to imagine having the gall to stand up in front of anybody and tell them that I needed to help change people's religious beliefs.  Maybe it takes her level of self-importance and entitlement to be able to do that.

Whatever.  I just know that after six and a half years of one "Chosen One" willing to do anything to press his own agenda and create a legacy, the USA certainly has learned the lesson -- that a self-aggrandizing person with a grand sense of entitlement to the position is an abject threat to our nation.

Hillary Clinton continues to disqualify herself with every word she speaks.  I pray we get it right this time.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
 Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."