I have noticed a pattern in the ways that Democrats and Republicans deal with terrorism and abortion that I think reveals a fundamental difference between the two parties. My revelation came after learning that the number of abortions performed each year has, after a steady decline throughout the Clinton years, gone back up under Bush. That a man so opposed to abortion would somehow create more abortions struck me as eerily similar to Bush's apparently strong stance on terror leading to the creation of more terrorists. What is the connection? In both cases, Bush takes the underlying problem for granted and tries to deal with it once it exists. There will be unwanted pregnancies and there will be people who want to kill us. Given these `inevitabilities' the people on the Right come up with what seems to be a very forward-looking policy of preemption. In the case of abortions, it is to try to legally deny abortions, while with terrorists it is to attack the countries that harbor them (in theory).

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