Very little dream recollection this morning beyond the fact that my dream involved stinging insects. Beyond that, I can't remember a thing. And of course, I had tasks I had to complete quickly this morning rather than coming straight in to the computer room--that seems to be the variable that determines things.

The Bush twins. What is there to say, really? Twelve years ago, their grandpa wouldn't be caught on MTV and criticized Clinton for disregarding the "dignity of the office." Now his granddaughters have basically brought MTV's level of intellect to the RNC along with some of the least amusingly timed pop culture references (including Sex and the City, a show I'm sure Jim Dobson and Jerry Falwell just love to watch together while they plot new ways to persecute gays) I've ever heard. Of course, they were following the third heavy-hitting pro-abortion Republican speaker of the week, so why should I be surprised?

You might wonder why I back Ralph Nader, who's openly pro-abortion, while criticizing the Republicans for trotting out their pro-abortion politicians on TV. For years (I'd say up into the nineties) I was an increasingly conflicted single-issue Republican. I found their stances on guns, capital punishment, corporate regulations, the environment, and persecuting gays and lesbians unstomachable, but abortion was a bad enough thing that I figured that biting the bullet on the rest of that stuff at least might pave the way for some real reform when it comes to our treatment of the not-yet-born.

Now I realize that abortion is a product of late capitalism, that the rich would simply find ways around any anti-abortion law just as they find ways around tax law, criminal law, and just about anything else. The underground phenomenon would be immense--after thirty years of legalized abortion, there's no way any law would be enforced consistently. For an analogy, consider whom the IRS spends most of its time auditing.

So now I call myself anti-abortion rather than pro-life; I'm in no way a part of the Republican effort to repeal Roe v. Wade; I simply view abortion a part of the culture of death, alongside capital punishment and unrestricted corporate capitalism and the war industry, that Christians are to renounce prophetically but not necessarily smite with Caesar's sword (the category of "evils that should be smitten with Caesar's sword" has shrunk considerably over the last ten years for me). And with the prophetic renunciation should come, as always, caritas that invites those involved to repent and believe, to become part of the movement that threatens their industry as it threatened gladitorial combat in Rome and as it threatened idol-making in Ephesus (I think it was Ephesus).

So I'm no longer a single-issue Republican because I think that the Republicans are misguided on that issue and flat out wrong on most others. Being no lover of John Kerry either, I'll likely cast my vote sixty-three days from now for Ralph Nader.