Election 2006: Detachment with Love

Many times when family and friends try to "help" pro-abortion politicians by voting for them, they are actually making it easier for them to continue in the progression of their addiction.

This baffling phenomenon is called enabling, which takes many forms, all of which have the same effect -- allowing the pro-abortion politician to avoid the consequences of his actions. This in turn allows the pro-abortion politician to continue merrily along his pro-abortion policy ways, secure in the knowledge that no matter how much he screws up, somebody will always be there to rescue him from his mistakes and re-elect him next year.

Helping is doing something for a someone that they are not capable of doing themselves. Enabling is doing for a someone things that they could, and should be doing themselves.

Simply, enabling creates a atmosphere in which the pro-choice politician can comfortably continue his unacceptable behavior.

Are you an enabler?
Here's a few questions that might help determine the difference between helping and enabling the pro-abortion politician in your life:

1. Have you ever "called in sick" for the pro-abortion politician, lying about his symptoms by saying things like "He's not really pro-abortion, his position is very complex"?

2. Have you accepted part of the blame, or blamed others, for his (or her) pro-abortion behavior by telling yourself that "there's no consensus on when life begins"?

3. Have you avoided talking about his pro-abortion policies out of fear of his response?

4. Have you bailed him out of jail or paid for his legal fees?

5. Have you paid bills that he was supposed to have paid himself?

6. Have you loaned him money for his campaign?

7. Have you endorsed him in hopes of strengthening the relationship so that you'll "have a place at the table"?

8. Have you given him "one more chance" every election and then another and another?

9. Have you threatened to stop voting for or endorsing him and didn't?

10. Have you finished a campaign or project that the pro-abortion politician failed to complete himself?

Of course, if you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you at some point in time have enabled the pro-abortion politician to avoid his own responsibilities to the nation. Rather than "help" the pro-abortion politican, you have actually made it easier for him, and the nation, to get worse.

As long as the pro-abortion politician has his enabling devices in place, it is easy for him to continue to deny he has a problem -- since most of his problems getting elected are being "solved" by those around him. Only when he is forced to face the consequences of his own actions, will it finally begin to sink in how deep his problem has become.

Those kinds of choices are difficult. They require "detachment with love." But it is love. Unless the pro-abortion politician is allowed to face the consequences of his own actions, he will never realize just how big a problem his pro-abortion policies have become -- to himself and those around him.

HT: About.com