A society should be judged by how it treats its weakest members

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn says Gov. Sarah Palin has handed Sen. Barack Obama an opportunity to move past the ‘culture wars’ over abortion.

Palin has prominently featured her son with Down syndrome on the campaign trail, pushing for the removal of barriers to opportunities for children with special needs. She has proposed full funding for the federal commitment to special education, and allowing children with disabilities to use federal funds at either public or private schools.

An excerpt:

Now there is little in this that is uniquely Republican, except perhaps the idea of letting these kids use federal funds for private schools. In policy terms, Democrats conceivably could even improve upon it. At the very least, a presidential candidate who has positioned himself as postpartisan should recognize the opportunity here — and grab it.

Conceding that Mrs. Palin has a point here would not require Mr. Obama to give up anything, and would underscore a commitment to real choice instead of just abortion.

… At times, Democratic leaders have been reluctant to celebrate the humanity of some of our most vulnerable members of society, lest they be thought to be starting down a slippery slope leading to a no-Roe America. Mr. Obama in fact used something of that logic in the Illinois Senate to explain why he opposed the state version of the federal Born Alive Act.

Maybe that’s a casualty of the culture wars. If so, Mr. Obama now finds himself uniquely situated to change it. Thirty years ago, Hubert Humphrey suggested that the measure of any government was “how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

In that same spirit, would it really be so hard for Mr. Obama to say that the measure of the society we are working for is one that looks at Trig with the same hope and wonder that his sister Piper does?

William McGurn is a vice president at News Corporation and has served as chief editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal in New York. Previously he served as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

(AP photo, Palins at the Republican National Convention, in the Wall Street Journal)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 11:18 am and is filed under Campaign 2008, IDEA, abortion, disabilities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post