The current fight for the soul of America is so very intense because for the first time since the Civil War some of the issues dividing Americans are truly about life and death.

The deepest point in the chasm that separates liberals and conservatives today is defined by each group's beliefs on when it's okay to kill your neighbor.

Your neighbor is, as Jesus said, everyone. America has always hewed to the Christian belief that we can only kill our neighbor in self-defense. Liberals believe that they can kill those who burden them.

Liberals believe that it's okay to cause their mom to die of thirst if she's confused and a burden to them. Conservatives believe that we have a debt to our mother and that executing her to avoid our responsibilities is wrong.

Liberals believe that killing their daughter is okay so long as she's young enough. Conservatives believe that killing our children is always wrong.

Liberals believe it's wrong to kill terrorists without a trial while conservatives don't believe that everyone who is trying to commit mass murder should be allowed to continue until their public defender loses in court.

Liberals believe it's wrong to even try to kill terrorists if they surround themselves with human shields while conservatives believe that you can't let evil run amok at any cost.

The liberal philosophy would seem to be straightforward:; it's okay to kill your neighbor if they are a burden to you. But the reality is much more complex, and more sinister.

Americans believe in the rule of law not the rule of men; all men are subject to the same law irrespective of their wealth or power. The reality is that those with power have always been given more leeway than the average Joe or Jane but that reality did not change the ideal that most Americans endorsed.

Liberals however have clearly taken a stand in defense of the rule of men; different laws for different people.

Mild versions of that were seen when liberals declared that perjury wasn't that big a deal so long as the perpetrator was one of their own -- Bill Clinton -- and in the concept of hate crimes where a black killing a white is not as serious as a white killing a black. Conservatives believe that murder is murder irrespective of who the killer or victim happens to be.

Liberals love for the rule of men can be seen in cases involving self-defense. Compare how liberals treated George Zimmerman and Carl Rowan. Most people are unfamiliar with the Rowan case because of the liberal rule of men.

Rowan was a very liberal columnist for the Washington Post. He fervently advocated gun control and went so far as to advocate"a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail-period.".

Yet on the night of June 14, 1988 Rowan used an unlicensed handgun to shoot an unarmed teenager who was trespassing in Rowan's backyard.

Liberals attacked Zimmerman because they thought he was white based on his name -- hence the frantic discovery of the new White-Hispanic race when liberals learned that Zimmerman was Hispanic -- even though the evidence indicated that Zimmerman was, in fear for his life. Liberals initiated no crusade against Rowan because Rowan was a liberal. Liberals believe a liberal with an illegal gun shooting an assailant is okay but a conservative with a legal gun shooting an assailant is not; according to liberals right and wrong depend on who you are.

Compare how liberals treat the use of drone strikes by Obama to drone strikes by Bush; silence vs. frantic protests. It is apparently okay for liberals to kill terrorists but illegal and immoral for conservatives to do so.Once again the rule of men rather than the rule of law on a matter of life and death.

Liberals often condemn conservatives as being "uncaring" because conservatives don't believe that the government should pay everyone's medical bills.

But it's liberals who believe that killing people to save money is a perfectly reasonable philosophy. Liberals advocate aborting the differently abled in order to avoid the expense of caring for them. Liberals tell the elderly to die rather than cost America money for their health care. Liberals encourage the sick, or even just the depressed, to kill themselves to avoid burdening others.

The lliberal utilitarian approach to deciding who lives and who dies is extremely frightening in light of liberal views on how health care should be run in America.

Liberals believe in the government being in charge of all medical care, and ObamaCare is a major step in that direction. Liberals also believe that the government, which in their mind is run by liberals, is empowered to decide who should live or die based on economic considerations -- the death panels. To see how deeply the liberal double standard is compare how liberals treat people with lung cancer due to the lifestyle choice of smoking compared to how liberals treat people with AIDS due to the lifestyle choice of homosexual promiscuity. While disproportionate amounts of money are constantly directed towards AIDS little is done to help smokers survive.

Liberals adhere to a dual track system of morality to define when killing one's neighbor is acceptable in foreign affairs. Let Hamas fire a missile at a school bus full of Israeli children and nothing is said except to bemoan the occupation of Palestine by Jews. But when Israel retaliates and accidentally kills civilians, civilians amid whom the terrorists purposely hide, liberals cry to the high heavens.

To summarize; conservatives believe that we can kill our neighbors only when our neighbors are trying to kill us, while liberals believe that they, and in some cases like self defense only they, can kill their neighbors whenever those neighbors become a burden to them.

The fight for America's future then is between "compassionate" liberals who believe they have the right to kill people who "burden" them and "hard hearted" conservatives who believe that all human life is sacred and can only be taken to protect one's own life.

Because all aspects of a society reflect how society treats the least among us, the two possible future Americas are drastically different. In the liberal future the value of a person's life is measured by her utility or political power while in the conservative future everyone has, as the Declaration of Independence says, a right to life.

Without an inalienable right to life no one has any rights. If we can be killed because we are "burdens" then what rights do we have that cannot be cast aside for the "right" reason?

While in the past the stakes were what sort of life we would live as Americans, our current fight is about who will live and who will die. Conservatives can either defend the most defenseless or we can sit back and watch liberals remold America into a centrally controlled state where everyone is judged based on their utility to the liberal establishment and their political power.

You can read more of tom's rants at his blog