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Reposted Content from Newsmax, September 4, 2026
Republicans are right to condemn socialism, but they need to explain what they are ultimately defending.
On Aug. 27, Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colo., introduced a U.S. House Resolution denouncing socialism and citing the horrific death toll produced by totalitarian regimes that embraced it.
The Resolution passed on Sept. 1, with the support of eight House Democrats.
The Resolution is an opportunity to force Democrats to take a position on socialism, but the Republican Party should use the moment to have a much deeper conversation about the value of human life.
The fundamental problem with socialism is not simply economics or government control.
It is what happens when government assumes the authority to determine what people are worth and whose interests matter.
America was founded on the opposite principle: that our rights come from our Creator and that government exists to protect them.
Those rights cannot be conditional upon a person’s usefulness, health, independence or perceived value to society.
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Look at what is happening in Canada. Doctors in Quebec are reportedly discussing whether newborn babies with certain medical conditions could be euthanized under Canada’s assisted-dying framework, which was expanded in 2021 to include people who are not terminally ill.
I call this “10th-month abortion” because it exposes the dangerous consequences of treating birth as the dividing line between human beings who deserve protection and those who don’t.
If a baby can be intentionally killed because of a medical condition immediately after birth, what has fundamentally changed except the baby’s location?
A doctor killing a patient and calling it medical treatment is like a mathematician erasing the problem and declaring it the final solution.
It isn’t compassion.
It is barbarism in a lab coat.
More importantly, it reflects a global view in which the value of a human being can be measured by health, independence or perceived quality of life.
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History should make us extremely cautious about that global view.
Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany demonstrated what happens when governments begin dividing humanity into categories of people who are valuable and people who are expendable.
The circumstances were different, but the underlying principle was horrifyingly similar: human worth could be determined by authorities pursuing a supposedly greater social good.
That is why Republicans should put personhood at the center of the debate.
The real question isn’t merely whether Democrats will denounce socialism.
It isn’t even simply whether abortion should be legal.
The deeper question is whether every human being possesses inherent dignity and rights, regardless of circumstances.
The late Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb,” offers another cautionary example. His predictions of population catastrophe proved embarrassingly wrong, but his broader global view treated humankind primarily in terms of its impact on the planet.
Once human beings are viewed as a problem to be managed rather than individuals possessing inherent worth, it becomes easier to justify deciding which people are burdens and which are valuable.
Once human beings are viewed as a problem to be managed rather than individuals possessing inherent worth, it becomes easier to justify deciding which people are burdens and which are valuable.
Republicans need to make the moral case for the principles they claim to defend. Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., and congressional Republicans should certainly expose the failures of socialism, but they should also explain why individual liberty matters.
If all people are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, then those rights cannot depend on whether someone is born, wanted, healthy, independent or useful.
The unborn child is where that principle is being tested most directly. American law continues to distinguish between human beings based on whether they have been born.
Yet if personhood is inherent, birth cannot be what determines whether someone deserves protection. “A person is a person, no matter how small.”
That is why this writer has urged Republican leaders to pursue a Personhood Clarification Act affirming the equal dignity and protection of every human being from the moment of fertilization to natural death.
If the GOP wants to resist socialism, cultural decay and authoritarianism, it needs a moral vision strong enough to encompass all people equally.
Republicans shouldn’t simply tell Americans what they oppose.
They should tell Americans what they believe: Every human life has inherent value, every person possesses the God-given right to life, the sine qua non of rights, for without life no other rights can be exercised.
That is the foundation of liberty. And without it, opposition to socialism is ultimately just an argument over who gets to control the machinery of government.
In Christ,
Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div.
CompassCare CEO
EMC FrontLine President
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The Connection Between Antifa and Jane’s Revenge and the Need for a Personhood Clarification Act
