No "national dialogue" on abortion

Both William Clinton and Barack Obama have called for a national dialogue on race. Because this issue divided the country before and after independence, entailing slavery and then segregation; and because it continues to divide the country with the current reverse discrimination, the call struck few people as unreasonable. Unfortunately, those making the call are less interested in dialogue than they are in stigmatizing anyone who disagrees with them as bigots and racists. President Obama has acknowledged that the issue of abortion also divides the country and has made similar dialogue gestures. But, given his thoroughly pro-abortion position, it is unlikely that any national dialogue that he supported on that issue would be any more productive than one on race.

My own experience confirms this. Abortion generates more outrage whenever I write a column about it than any other except homosexuality/gay marriage. Last week’s column drew five responses off site (three opposed, two supporting). In spite of my pessimism about a national dialogue led by a Democratic administration, I favor a dialogue on abortion.

Surely no such dialogue would serve any purpose if it were merely an academic exercise. No political debate occurs in a vacuum: while people are talking, babies are being killed. Pro-lifers favor a debate because they want abortion on demand to end. Pro-aborts oppose it because it they want no restrictions on abortion. It’s that simple.

I am grateful to those who commented on last week’s column, even if they find my arguments wanting. A person who emailed me from Kansas, the state in which the recently murdered George Tillman performed late-term abortions, said that I "glorified" women who refused to abort their babies, even in the face of dangers to themselves or their babies. This error is explained by the fact that I hold abortion to be "wrong period."

Regular readers here know that I do not oppose abortion "period" but give principled reasons based on the political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. Few critics of abortion are blind to the fact that there are hard cases, such as rape and incest (which make up a tiny percentage of them). But as Oliver Wendell Homes famously said, "Hard cases make bad law." In order to accommodate those rare cases, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the exception to swallow the rule. Abortion on demand is the law.

More to the point, children being diagnosed in their mother’s wombs as defective are not being given the benefit of any doubt. Whereas the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath enjoins doctors to err on the side of life, the abortion "ethic" mandates just the opposite. Is this not appalling?

One opposing reader makes the point that abortions are very hard for women and that none would consent to a late-term abortion unless the need was compelling. But that is hard to square with the massive number of abortions performed since 1973 (45 million and counting), not to mention the attraction of Dr. Tillman for those "rare" cases.

Most doctors want nothing to do with abortion, and most abortionists don’t perform them late term. Is this reluctance explained by some mild anxiety, or is it genuine moral revulsion at crossing what used to be regarded as a very bright line, whether early or late in pregnancy?

Another critic reminds me abortion has been the law for 36 years and urges me to "get over" my opposition to it. Thirty six years is a long time from one point of view, but for those who waited 100 years for racial segregation to end it is not so long, and for those who waited much longer for slavery to end, it is a trifle. Prolifers have patience.

The bedrock pro-abortion position is that every woman has a right to control her own body. Yet the baby growing inside her is not her body but someone else’s. Slave holders argued over a century ago that every black they held by force was their "property," and demanded protection for it. Is there any difference in principle between these positions? I await a response.

And the similarities do not end there. Slave masters denounced opponents of slavery as insurrectionists, just as proaborts routinely call their critics "terrorists." Both became "tired" of criticism and favored ending it. Nothing would satisfy slaveholders then, or proaborts today, until everyone calls them right.

Let the dialogue continue.

Family ties through music

Recently I attended a wedding of a friend at church, followed by the customary reception. After a delightful meal, some charming innovations to commemorate the occasion and the cutting of the cake, there followed hours of dancing, slow and fast, as also is customary. What struck me in this quite ordinary and conventional setting was how a kind of folk music has returned to our society that had been practically banished long ago by the popularity of ballroom dancing with the waltz, foxtrot and two-step and the decline of what was called folk dancing, not to mention square dancing. The latter are by no means dead but it would be inaccurate to say that their appeal had not been eclipsed by the dancing of couples as distinguished from larger groupings. As a children, many of us developed a decided prejudice against folk dancing as quite beyond the pale, for squares and old fogies. But those who have attended ethnic weddings, as we tend to call them, particularly Jewish and Greek (or just seen movies), experience, if only vicariously, group dancing on as big a scale as the number of people in attendance will encourage. Young and old, "cool" and "uncool," will join hands and dance with abandon with no reservations about being out of place, or worse, mixing adult dancing with kid dancing. I still recall a comment made by a friend who suggested that we not object to loud, raucous music played by young people because it is "their" music. That divide always has bothered me.

However, partly because I am widowed and partly because I like the exercise, I have taken to the floor and "danced' for hours to whatever music was being played, occasionally but not often well, and enjoying it. (I just learned how to line dance too.) At the wedding last week I danced with my 30-something daughter and two teenagers from her church youth group and realized that it might just as well be a Jewish or Greek wedding, because adults were dancing with children and bonding by means of music. Indeed, the bride was holding a small child and dancing around the room, quite common these days. I realized that some of the music was the sort that I have long disdained, especially "rap," but because the occasion called for a sort of communal expression, I danced to whatever was playing.

I used to criticize the rather unstructured form of dancing that has become so popular, on the grounds that there were no partners per se. But that presupposed that the only legitimate form of dancing was the kind I grew up with. (Granted, growing up in the 1950s, as I did, meant learning to dance to rock 'n roll, etc.) As a parent I tried to impress upon my children the virtues of slow dancing, and that lesson has been learned well enough. But now I'm just having fun and glad that the generation gap can be bridged at least under the circumstances which originally threatened to foreclose that possibility. If it is natural for families and friends to bond, then nature has found a novel way to reassert itself. That's a gain.

Condemning the evil murder of Dr. Tiller

Dr. George Tiller's murder in cold blood at a Wichita church today should shock the conscience and grieve the heart of every thinking person -- especially persons of faith, and above all, those of us who defend the right to life. Wichita Eagle story here. This evil and lawless act deserves absolute condemnation. It is in no way excusable, regardless of the slain man's inexcusable career as an abortionist.

I hope you will join me in praying for Dr. Tiller, for his family and loved ones, for his killer, and for the quelling of passions on all sides that would threaten peace and order in our land.

'Suicide of West' imminent?

National Review listed James Burnham's "Suicide of the West" as one of the top 10 books that nudged America toward political conservatism in recent decades. (See rankings in their 50th anniversary edition.) Burnham was a young Trotskyite who turned against Communism and in his later years wrote for National Review. He wrote this book in 1964.

Burnham's thesis was that liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.

For a young person unschooled in political thought, such as I was, this thesis was difficult to believe. Both JFK and LBJ were aggressive in their Cold War liberalism, which in those days included a strong pro-American component. Even the true believers on the Left assured us that they were pro-American, despite appearances to the contrary. Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs and I.F. Stone were all leftist idealists, they never actually betrayed their country. Or so we were endlessly and emphatically told in the mass media and in our classrooms.

Well, it turned out that Burnham and his fellow conservatives were correct, and we had been lied to on virtually all fronts. We now know that Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Stone and many others on the American Left spied for the Soviet Union for years.

The leftists were not only for collectivism, they were against America and most of what it stood for. Their virulent assaults against the free market, against a strong military and against traditional American values were all of a piece. They regarded liberal journalists and liberal officials in all three branches of government as "useful idiots" and as loose allies in the steady drip of daily propaganda and assaults against America.

By now we are much further along in this process. Some of the most prominent liberal journalists and liberal Democratic leaders in government are no longer acting as merely useful idiots. Some of them are at last revealing themselves to be more malevolent than that.

This is most clearly seen in their move to prosecute those in the Bush admininistration who authorized the enhanced interrogation techniques (which they falsely call "torture") against a few of our top terrorist enemies.

We should recall at this point that the laws of war and the Geneva Convention clearly distinguish between (1) conventional soldiers and (2) nonuniformed terrorists who hide among civilians and attack from schools, mosques and civilian residences. Conventional soldiers, when captured, must be treated humanely. Nonuniformed terrorists, when captured, may be summarily shot.

Unfortunately, instead of shooting these vicious predators on the spot, our government unwisely treated most of them better than we have ever treated prisoners of war. They get better food in prison than our schoolchildren get in school cafeterias. There have been strict limits even on the interrogation techniques.

In three highly supervised cases waterboarding was employed to get vital information that saved many innocent lives. (Many of our own soldiers and sailors undergo waterboarding as part of their training, hence it is absurd to deem it "torture".)

But now many voices are telling us that this was unacceptable, that America's leaders must be punished, rather than thanked and honored, for this great so-called evil. They quote the Constitution much as Satan quotes Scripture, and they pretend to defend both America and the Constitution. However, this new thrust is clearly intended to demoralize those who are defending the country and to reduce or destroy America's future effectiveness in fighting our enemies.

Here at last the Left is taking a position that is so clearly anti-American that there is very little room at the margin for "useful idiots". Some Democrats on my "lunatic" list claim that foreign terrorists captured on the battlefield should be treated as if they were American citizens with Constitutional protections, but even for them that level of imbecility is not credible. Political maneuvering aside, their position can be seriously maintained for long only by the actual enemies of the United States.

For benefit of the lawyers and other confused citizens, let us apply the Left's argument in mirror image so that everyone can see just how bonkers it really is.

The FDR administration put more than one hundred thousand Japanese American citizens in concentration camps during World War II. This was clearly a much more heinous crime against humanity than waterboarding three Al-Qaeda terrorists. We should therefore prosecute all those Democrats still alive who had anything to do with perpetrating that great injustice. Correct?

The LBJ administration entered the Viet Nam conflict on the false and exaggerated claim of being attacked near the Gulf of Tonkin. This resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers and sailors and of millions of Asians. We should therefore prosecute all those Democrats who had anything to do with perpetrating and acting on that falsehood. Correct?

The Reagan administration's retributive attack across Libya's "line of death" in 1986 happened to kill Gaddafi's innocent young daughter. We should therefore prosecute all the Republicans who had anything to do with that attack. Correct?

The Obama administration's attacks on Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists using Predator drones and other means also produce collateral damage, killing innocent children and others, without benefit of legal hearing or trial by jury. Also the suspects are not even given their Miranda warnings. We should therefore (as Ted Olson has recommended in a recent thought experiment) prosecute everyone in the Obama administration who has anything to do with these attacks whenever they occur. Correct?

No, of course these assertions are clearly not correct. The concept is intended to be used only against the "evil" Bush administration, which in fact was trying with the best of intentions to protect America in a legally acceptable manner.

However, war is not police work, never has been, and never can be. The concept of prosecuting actions like this, if taken seriously, would degrade or destroy our ability to defend ourselves. But that is the whole idea. Our domestic enemies will now have another powerful new tool to weaken us, if we have become so confused and lacking in will as to allow it.

In summary, James Burnham was both correct and extremely prescient. Liberalism is indeed the ideology of Western suicide. We will see this in spades during the next four years.

The Aussie & the atheist

What some people won't say about themselves with bumper stickers or tee shirts. I saw a charming one and an infuriating one this week. "Good grammar costs nothing," said the Asian girl's shirt in line behind me to board a flight. Such exhibitionists either want or deserve remarks from strangers, so I asked her what it meant. Standing up for the English language when most people no longer bother, she replied in a thick Aussie accent. My sentiments exactly, I said. Los Angeles would be her last stop homebound after six weeks of travel in Europe and America. In the worst economy since the 1930s to hear some people tell it, mind you.

"Religion stops a thinking mind," scolded the tee on a dumpy fat guy at the pizza parlor last night. It was illustrated by one of those stat-line medical monitor waves. Him I didn't accost because A, I didn't trust myself to be civil, and B, his childish plea for attention merits nothing so much as cold silence.

After a moment I realized the slogan was someone's oh-so-clever twist on "Abortion stops a beating heart." I wanted to ask his rejoinder to that undeniable fact, and to pile on with the additional facts that abortion really does stop (or forestall) a thinking mind as well as extinguish (or divert from this world) a feeling soul.

I wanted to challenge him for examples of societies where God is ignored or banned but free and noble thought flourishes -- or to refute the conclusive truth that thought has risen highest in those societies where God is lifted highest.

But it would have been a waste of breath, so I just ate my pizza and reflected on the late George Roche's mordant comment, "The world is full of slobs." Yet not quite full of them, for there is still room for the occasional grammatically idealistic Aussie Asian girl. And thank heaven for such as she!