Elections and Morality

As you are most likely aware, the elections are coming up very soon. I don't know about you, but I'm personally looking forward to not being onslaughted by "this Republican is evil incarnate" or "this Democrat is a lying psychopath" and general bull like that (though I wouldn't doubt that some of those statements are true in a few cases). Most of what we've heard from the presidential candidates in particular is about the economy, jobs, and money. I'm pretty sure very few people actually know how to solve that problem, or that they even really care about the economy itself; most of them probably see "fixing the economy" as "getting more money in my own pockets, to hell with everyone else." But I digress. And I don't want to minimize the importance of building a better economy and getting people back to work.

I keep asking myself this question, however: why aren't we hearing more about plain old morality? I'm not talking about a difference between capitalism and socialism or food stamps and independence or something. No, I'm talking about plain old right and wrong.

I don't know how to fix the economy. I'm not an economist. But I do know that when child-slaughter is even an issue on the table, you have a serious moral problem in your country. After a lot of consideration about who I should vote for and why, I think that abortion is probably the most important issue I'll be voting on, primarily because the choice is clear: it shouldn't happen.

• Murder is wrong.
• Abortion is murder.
• Thus, abortion is wrong.

And please, please don't give me that "You're a man, you don't have the right to talk about it" argument. In one way, you're right. I don't have a right to tell a woman what to do with her body. But that child is not your body. That child has its own body that is dependent on the mother's body for its life. If you decided you didn't want to have a child dependent on your body for its life, and there was a way to make that happen without killing it, then I'd be okay with that procedure. I might question your motives, and I may find it unnatural, but at least then the child lives, so big deal. As it stands, however, the only way to fix that "problem" is to kill the child, and that is wrong. It is a human being with a beating heart. It deserves to live.

Really, there are plenty of moral issues out there other than abortion. So why don't we ever hear about them? Why isn't what's right and what's wrong a genuine issue? Why don't we hear persuasive moral arguments rather than (mostly contrived) facts and figures about gas prices? Morality is not a matter of opinion, and anyone who says they believe it is will soon find their argument falling back on itself. Personally, I'd love to hear Romney and Obama discuss moral issues far more than I want to hear "this candidate is making stuff up" and "my job plan will fix everything."

That's just my question. For the record, I'm not going to be writing blog posts about which candidate to endorse. I think everyone who reads this already has his or her mind made up about that. But we should at least know why, more than just "everyone else is doing it" or "I want to piss my parents off."