Will the Real 'Party of Life' Please Stand Up?

From AlterNet:

The outermost framing circle focuses on the use of the word "life." UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff noted that it makes no sense for Republicans to act as if they have exclusive use of life as their "brand." Historically, Democrats are the party of life, in the sense that they have taken seriously the task of guaranteeing the right of every American to live a life of dignity. From this moral high ground, Democrats are concerned with the quality of life at each point along the continuum of existence -- health care, education, jobs and the environment -- rather than to fixate, as the Republicans do, exclusively on the endpoints: life of the embryo/fetus and death.

Lakoff observed that rather than Republicans being the "Party of Life," it would be more accurate to describe them as the Party of Death, since they are indifferent to the life and death struggles of the average American working family. In the tragic case of Terri Schiavo, President Bush remarked, "It should be our goal as a nation to build a culture of life." Nevertheless, Bush is opposed to federal funding for pre- and post-natal care and ignores the reality that one in three Americans has no health care.

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The GOP is also the party of executions and war. Many Democrats are also into death, but not nearly as many as the Republicans. Yeah, really the whole "pro-choice" "pro-life" euphemism thing is starting to wear quite thin. I prefer to be straight up: I support abortion rights; "pro-lifers" want to control women's bodies. It's that simple. Why must we be so skittish?

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