Recently in Politics Category

Something to think about as our Commander-in-chief who, having just accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, is escalating the war effort in Afghanistan:

This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory. For, as our Scriptures say, "the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth" [Psalm 10:3]. Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes, that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell me that this and the other was a "great" man, because he fought and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take the consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such arms.

(City of God, book 3, n. 14)

In the last presidential campaign, there was much grumbling about the "Obamessiah" phenomenon—the apparent wholehearted devotion to a man who is most decidedly not "sort of God." This phenomenon has also been referred to by Mark Shea as an "Obamagasm."

However, the apotheosis of political leaders is nothing new. In ancient Rome, the emperors believed themselves to be descended from the gods. Augustine had this to say in reply (City of God, book 3, n. 4):

Some one will say, But do you believe all this? Not I indeed. For even Varro, a very learned heathen, all but admits that these stories [of the divinity of the leaders] are false, though he does not boldly and confidently say so. But he maintains it is useful for states that brave men believe, though falsely, that they are descended from the gods; for that thus the human spirit, cherishing the belief of its divine descent, will both more boldly venture into great enterprises, and will carry them out more energetically, and will therefore by its very confidence secure more abundant success. You see how wide a field is opened to falsehood by this opinion of Varro's, which I have expressed as well as I could in my own words; and how comprehensible it is, that many of the religions and sacred legends should be feigned in a community in which it was judged profitable for the citizens that lies should be told even about the gods themselves.

In other words, don't buy the hype.

...so I used the Americans United for Life form for sending an e-mail to my senators and congressman. They provide a ready-to-send message although I slightly edited mine. My edited message reads as follows:

I am very concerned about the health care reform proposals currently moving through Congress. None of the bills under consideration in Congress contain language that would sufficiently prevent federal funding of abortion or mandatory abortion coverage; in fact, amendments that would have added such language were defeated in all five committees of jurisdiction. The killing of those not yet born is the antithesis of health care and does not constitute reform.

So far, the plans being considered in Congress either expressly include abortion coverage and funding or delegate to bureaucratic committees the responsibility of determining whether abortion coverage and funding is mandated. Over 70% of the American people oppose taxpayer-funded abortion. U.S. taxpayers should be protected in law from being forced to pay for something they overwhelmingly oppose.

In your consideration of the various health care reform proposals before Congress, I urge you to vote against any bill that does not explicitly exclude abortion coverage and funding. I look forward to watching your votes on this very important issue.

I would encourage everyone to contact their congressmen and senators, either by e-mail, in writing, or by telephone. In our government of the people, for the people, and by the people, "the people" doesn't mean the general population, but rather the people who own the country. It was, after all, the intention of James Madison that our government protect the "minority of the opulent against the majority," and it appears that he was successful in forming such a government. Under such authority our speaking out may not make the slightest difference. We must still make our voices heard.

If you read my last post, you know that the life issues are more critical for me in the upcoming election than any other issue, so choosing candidates carefully is extremely important. We don't vote for a President and hope everything else falls into place. We must evaluate as carefully as possible those offices which can have a direct or indirect influence on any moral issue. For example, a hypothetical candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction who belongs to a hypothetical party which includes gay marriage on its platform could influence directly or indirectly the hypothetical Department of Public Instruction's decision to imitate California's very real Gay Day. That's why I have spent the better part of this afternoon researching the candidates.

Federal offices are fairly easy to choose because they get plenty of press and TV coverage. However, state and local offices typically get less press (you know, like the Randolph County Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor). Plus, a few years ago, North Carolina threw everyone for a loop and removed party affiliation from the ballot for the state district, appeals, and supreme court positions (luckily, the parties maintain lists of their judicial candidates). At any rate, if you have not yet decided on who to vote for, you may find these web sites useful.

• NC Republican Party Candidate List;
• NC Democratic Party Candidate List;
• State Government of North Carolina—find out the responsibilities of the executive offices described in NC Constitution Article III §7;
• NC State Constitution—if you want to know in detail how the state government actually works;
• U.S. Constitution and Amendments—if you want to know how the federal government was supposed to work;
• Project Vote Smart—lists of candidates for all sorts of elections across the nation plus voting records for incumbents.

In conversations with my family about the upcoming election, statements like "Won't it be terrible if Obama is elected?" come up frequently. I suppose the answer is yes, quite possibly things will be bad. Of course, things might be equally bad if McCain wins—there is no guarantee. No doubt, Obama is a very scary guy and the thought of his presidency makes me cringe. But I am a pessimist by nature and consequently I have a sneaking suspicion that he might win. Why? Well, one of Obama's vague promises of change is some kind of economic reform which is better than McCain's who, because he is a Republican, will be exactly like George W. Bush. That combined with the fact that human beings in general are selfish creatures who tend to care more about their checking account balance than about every human's basic right to life gives Obama a pretty good chance. Given our recent financial crises and bailouts and what-not, money is at the top of the priority list for too many of us. And while the financial matters should concern us, it is stupid to care more about the economy than about the right to life. After all, economics doesn't matter a damn if you're dead.

I don't really know whether Obama's economic policies are better than McCain's or which one of the two has a better plan for getting out of Iraq. Quite frankly, I really don't care. If I can't trust a candidate's position on a human's most basic right to life, then I can't trust him to make sound economic or military decisions. What I do care about is that Obama is a pro-abortion extremist who voted to refuse medical care for babies who survive abortions—which, effectively, amounts to infanticide. I further care that McCain, while creepy, is mostly anti-abortion. Though he is in favor of abortion in cases of rape, incest, or life-of-mother-at-stake situations, and in favor of government funding for embryonic stem cell research, which, like abortion, involves the destruction of human beings, he remains the lesser of two evils. Or, to borrow Mark Shea's term, the "Lesser Cannibal." If there actually existed a pro-life independent candidate who stood even a slim chance of winning, I might vote for him. However, I haven't found one. So if for no other reason than to help prevent Obama from winning, McCain will get my vote in November. (It's a shame that Ron Paul isn't on the North Carolina ballot.)

But I digress.

Notwithstanding who wins the election, my pessimistic attitude requires me to believe that things will be bad and eventually get worse. Western Civilization has removed God from the equation and has embraced moral relativism as its fundamental organizing principle. The U.S. Supreme Court itself embraced this moral relativism in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. They declared that it is each individual's right to "define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." If we each define our own concept of existence, we are left without an absolute on which we can base our vision of the common good. Consequently, morality becomes a free-for-all—whatever is bad for you might be okay for me. I expect that we will soon see the open acceptance by the majority of things like gay "marriage," and involuntary euthanasia for those too old to be useful. One needs only to look at the Netherlands to know that this will soon be heading in our direction.

With this moral decline, we will see a concurrent backlash against Christianity. And this trouble will come ultimately from those who would turn their hatred of life into public policy. Let us hypothetically consider a future Congress which passes two bills, one requiring churches to witness homosexual unions, and the other requiring all physicians to perform abortions. A future President might sign those bills into law. Christian physicians and pastors would then refuse to violate their consciences and thus violate the law. Then, someone would sue, appeal, etc. until the case eventually reached the Supreme Court. The Court, having assumed for itself the power of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison in 1803, would of course uphold the new laws. Churches would soon see their tax-exempt statuses taken away and doctors would lose their licenses to practice. And this would only be the beginning of sorrows.

But no matter what persecutions we Christians in the U.S. will face, we should not be surprised. Jesus never promised to save us from tribulation in some half-baked Left Behind really-three-comings-of-Christ scenario dreamed up by Tim Jenkins and Jerry Leroy or whoever they are. Our Lord himself told us that "they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake" (Mt 24:9, RSVCE). We in the West have had a fairly easy time since Constantine legalized our religion and returned our previously confiscated property in A.D. 313. But elsewhere in the world Christians are being persecuted even today. Over the centuries we have been hated because always and everywhere Christ's morality challenges practices common to the secular social order. In the early centuries when Christianity was still illegal in the Roman Empire, we were hated because we were fiercely opposed to things like, say, abortion, or throwing undesirable infants into the Tiber to drown. We face these same evils today, but instead of throwing our babies into the river, we toss their dismembered remains into a box labeled "biohazard." Christians went to their deaths in the first and second centuries because they proclaimed that Jesus is Dominus Deus over against the emperor's claim to that title. Today, we are hated because we refuse to bow down to the Lord God of Self, and that really irritates the moral relativists who do.

Though I paint a very pessimistic picture, I do not mean to suggest that we Christians should simply drop out of public life. We do not live in a totalitarian regime where we have no voice. Our government is a republic in which we can participate and thus we have a moral obligation to do so. Not all of us should run for office or even volunteer for a political party, but each of us can vote, no matter how futile it may seem.

However, we must go to the polls with realistic mindsets. A focus on only two candidates for a single office is too narrow (and McCain v. Obama isn't much of a choice anyway). We must remember that though the President may initiate policies, he cannot overturn Roe v. Wade or remove the knuckleheads currently on the Supreme Court (although he can appoint lesser knuckleheads to the Court when the greater knuckleheads retire). It is ultimately Congress who makes laws and/or gives up its power to the President, and ultimately the Supreme Court who interprets those laws and finds things in the Constitution that aren't really there. This election most likely won't affect things drastically one way or the other—neither of the two candidates venture too far left or right of center. Moral decline and the rise of evil will most likely happen slowly in the case of the United States, but unless there is a drastic intervention by God Almighty, the culture of death will ultimately prevail. Perhaps not in the next four years, but possibly in eight or twelve or sixteen years.

But Christians have hope. The death culture's victory and whatever persecution we face because of it will only be temporary. Our Lord promises that though "most men's love will grow cold, he who endures to the end will be saved" (Mt 24:12b–13, RSVCE). Thus, we can with confidence await the day when God says, "It is done," and in the meantime we can pray, "Come, Lord Jesus" (Rev 21:6; 22:20, KJV).

In a recent essay at salon.com, Camille Paglia praises Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's "brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism." A dissident from today's "whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem," Paglia hopes that Palin "may be breaking down those barriers" which make feminism "a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership" and prevent the movement from being about "equal rights and equal opportunity." For Paglia, one of the largest barriers of feminism's ideological litmus test is abortion, which has become the "obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women's movement." I take it from her essay that Paglia believes that if feminism could distance itself from its militant support of abortion, that women like Sarah Palin, though staunchly pro-life, could find a way to work together with those women who are pro-abortion to further the cause of women's rights. Make no mistake, though. While she would like Palin to compromise her stand on abortion, Paglia herself has no intention of compromising her own stand.

We pro-lifers know that abortion is the murder of the unborn. If abortion was not murder, there would be no need for a pro-life movement. But I think that perhaps we in the pro-life camp proceed from the assumption that if the pro-abortion group could only recognize what abortion really is, then there might be a change in the public consciousness. Perhaps we would finally achieve legal protection for the unborn. However, we may be naïve in our assumption. Those of us who subscribe to a natural law philosophy recognize that, in the words of J. Budziszewski, there are some things that we can't not know. That abortion is murder is one of those things that we can't not know. But, those who are pro-abortion rationalize their way into support for an act that they know deep within themselves to be evil. It is extremely rare to find an abortion advocate who makes no rationalizations and clearly admits the true nature of the act, and I held the firm conviction that such a person could not actually exist. I have now dropped this conviction thanks to Camille Paglia.

In her salon.com essay, Paglia claims to have "always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful." She also, if only implicitly, agrees that the unborn baby is real human life; she writes that abortion "results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue" (my emphasis). This is perhaps the most eloquent, concise expression of the pro-life message that I have ever read. But, even though Paglia freely admits the true nature of abortion, she is still a "firm supporter" of the murder of the unborn. I wonder whether the prophet Isaiah and Our Lord had Paglia in mind when they warned us about those who would call good evil and evil good (cf. Is. 5:20 and Mt. 12:34).

Paglia is a self-described "atheist and libertarian" and thus believes "that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice." Personal choice obviously cannot go unchecked, however, so Paglia qualifies her position: "Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body." We might assume then that she is applying the tired feminist reasoning that an unborn baby is part of his mother's body, no one can tell a woman what to do with her body because of her right to privacy, and thus she may kill her baby if she so desires. However, Paglia's support for abortion does not square with this traditional feminist line. If abortion is the murder of "concrete individuals" then abortion is an attempt not to control one's own body, but rather the body of another person. Paglia's correct assertion that abortion is the murder of a real person makes what one does to one's own body irrelevant. For the murder of concrete persons to be acceptable, Paglia's "sphere of personal choice" must expand to include the bodies of others. If this sphere is expanded, then her argument from the right to privacy fails. Far more frightening than her faulty logic is its conclusion: If Paglia's position is correct--that it is okay to kill certain groups of concrete individuals--then it should be acceptable to murder any group of individuals. While Paglia does not explicitly go this far in her essay, it is the logical conclusion of her argument.

Undaunted by, or perhaps unaware of her logical quandary, Paglia goes further. Not only is it acceptable to murder certain groups of persons, it is our duty to murder them. She rightly observes that "nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation." The Christian should recognize some truth in this statement; clearly, God's master plan for life is built into and can thus be deduced from nature. However, that which is good--life--becomes evil for Paglia. She writes that nature's bent toward procreation is fascist and "that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism." Technically speaking, Paglia fails to establish nature as a fascist. That every species should procreate is closer to egalitarianism than fascism. Thus if we were forced to assign nature a political ideology we would be more correct to call it socialist. If nature were truly fascist, it would insist that only one species procreate. The idea that any one group is superior to another is ethnocentric at best and at worst is at the heart of fascism. In Paglia's world, she and the rest of the pro-abortion camp are the superior ones, free to destroy the powerless unborn "concrete individuals." A similar scenario was played out by the Nazi party in 20th century Europe. The Nazis held that the Aryan race was superior to all others which resulted in the senseless slaughter of millions of persons. I would suggest that Paglia's notion that it is perfectly acceptable to murder some groups of concrete individuals (in her case, the unborn) is identical to the Nazi notion that it was perfectly acceptable to murder some groups of concrete individuals (in Hitler's case, Jews and Christians). It seems that Paglia has more in common with fascism than does nature.

It is ironical that though Paglia plainly states that abortion is the murder of unborn children, she supports the death penalty for murderers of children. She writes:

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

While I myself am undecided on the death penalty and understand arguments both in favor and against it, I have to agree with Paglia in principle. If anyone deserves death, it is the guilty, not the innocent. However, the concrete persons--children--which Paglia has no problem murdering by abortion are innocent, not guilty. How she can support the murder of children yet include it on her list of atrocious crimes punishable by death is a question which is beyond my capacity to answer. Because she supports the murder of children in one breath but says it deserves death in the next, one wonders on what standard her scale of atrocity is based.

Paglia seems oblivious to the fact that authentic feminism--that is to say the pursuit by women of their full potential--requires at least a respect for motherhood, though clearly not all women have a vocation to it. But not a shred of respect for motherhood can be found in advocating that children of mothers be murdered. Even if she were successful in distancing the modern feminist movement from abortion, Paglia could not be counted among those women who pursue true feminism given her admitted "firm support" for murder. She rightly calls Sarah Palin a feminist, but Palin's feminism has nothing to do with hunting moose. Palin has acquired political power which has historically only been held by men. This is certainly a step toward equal opportunity for women. Yet she has also embraced her vocation to motherhood and certainly does not advocate the murder of children. Whether or not Palin would accept the title "feminist" I cannot say. But I doubt that she, having given birth to five "concrete individuals," would appreciate being counted among those women who endorse "extermination of the powerless by the powerful."

Life-long liberal playwright David Mamet, of Glengarry Glen Ross fame, has finally come to his senses in his Village Voice article "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'" (be warned: some foul language is afoot).

This is a much more interesting discussion of the sociological themes that we are discussing in my sociology class than the discussion in my sociology class.