The President and The Pope

"In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary,"  - President George Bush during Pope Benedict's visit to the White House.

 

While I agree with this statement without bias, I have a very hard time reconciling the words with the person who spoke them. I find it to be very hypocritical.

 

I heard once during a recorded lecture given by the author Caroline Myss that truths don't need to be qualified in order to be truths. The moment you add a but, an except for, or an only if to the phrase the truth is negated.

 

It seems that dear old George has plenty of those to go around. Apparently, all human life is sacred and should not be debased except for terrorists, enemy combatants, and convicted killers. We can just dunk them, torture them, and execute them because they are less than human. They don't count.

 

I don't want to give the impression that I condone the behaviors of these people or that I am having some sort of knee jerk liberal reaction to the indignities heaped upon the oppressed masses, but I try to keep my beliefs consistent. It is very difficult to do so and has caused me to reassess my positions on certain issues from time to time when apparent discrepancies are brought to my attention.