I do generally fall in line with a conservative, "don't expect others (esp. the gov't) to help you" mentality. However, I have found more often than not, that conservatives actually think: "we will give away more than we should, because we really have more than we need." Many even act on these thoughts. This was recently well documented in a surprising book about compassionate conservatism, Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks, Basic Books, 2006.
I am a strict pro-life voter. Here's why.
The true character of a person is never determined by what they say or do in public alone.
The true character of a person is seen
• in private,
• in how they treat people when no one is watching,
• in how they treat a person whom others have determined is not worth treating well,
• in how they value the life of the unborn.
• in how they treat people when no one is watching,
• in how they treat a person whom others have determined is not worth treating well,
• in how they value the life of the unborn.
True character is best seen when one is faced with a difficult dilemma. Difficult dilemmas are messy, they usually involve moral high roads and moral middle roads, and then a lot of roads that our culture now considers just roads.
Being pro-life does not automatically give a person a morally upright character. It's just that when a presidential candidate supports pro-choice legislation, that candidate is publicly telling me how they value a person whom others have determined is not worth treating well. More specifically, it tells me how they value such an "unwanted." I might be an "unwanted" someday.
And here is why I included the comment about Gonzales v. Carhart: the pro-choice candidate immediately says, "You can't make the above claim about me because I don't believe the fetus is a person." Gonzales v. Carhart is about babies, who, if preserved in an incubator instead of having their skulls crushed for extraction purposes, would live. My or their arguments about personhood pale in comparison to what is communicated by the finger prints and eye lashes of a "fetus."