Posted on 04/12/2009 10:33:08 AM PDT by wagglebee
VIRGINIA BEACH, VAIn his tremendous novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy observes that some men choose their opinions like their clothesaccording to fashion. He adds that no matter how derivative their views are, such men may hold those views with all the passion of partisans.
How true. I dont know how many times Ive heard people parrot clichés as if they were voicing their own hard-won, independent convictions. In college, I had more than one professor whose political ideas seemed to have been culled from the bumper stickers in an academic parking lot. (They werent grateful when I pointed this out.)
A free mind is a rarity, really. I was reminded of this sad truth by the news that Notre Dame University plans to award an honorary degree to Barack Obama this spring. The ostensible meaning of this gesture is that a Catholic university plans to honor our first black president. Seems simple, no? But another way to look at it is this: A nominally Catholic university is honoring Americas foremost apostle of abortion.
The devil must be cackling. As the great French poet Charles Baudelaire put it: Satans cleverest wile is to make us think he doesnt exist. Most educated people nowadays assume he doesnt exist, which makes them easy prey for him.
Obama is a clever fellow. He realized some time ago that if he wanted to be the first black American president, his best bet was to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party; and in order to do that, he would have to be pro-abortion.
Now of course most blacks dont like abortion. They know, or at least sense, its reality: white abortionists getting rich killing nonwhite babies. The profits are so big because the overhead is so low. Aborting a child requires very little medical skill, and most doctors won't do it. Yet this aspect is rarely discussed. To hear liberals talk about it, you could get the impression that abortion is just an abstract matter of individual rights, or choice. But back here on earth, its net result is to depress the nonwhite population in this country. Some of its supporters also argue that it depresses the crime rate too, but they seldom refer to the racial angle, at least in public.
So our first black president got where he is by taking a profoundly antiblack position in order to gain the favor of liberals in his party. After all, liberals dont call the killing of the unborn racism or genocide; they dont even call it killing.
In any case, when it comes to abortion, Obamas conscience seems to be quite untroubled. He makes no concessions to the humanity of the unborn, even if they survive attempts to destroy them in the womb.
When I was young, not a single American politician would endorse legal abortion; the subject almost never came up in public. But as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in an incoherent majority opinion, that all laws in all 50 states restricting abortion were in violation of the Constitution, public opinion began to conform to the new fashion. Millions of people seemed to change their deepest convictions in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
To be sure, politicians, especially Catholics, often professed to be personally opposed to abortion while voting to promote it, but that was a transparent fig leaf; in practice it meant nothing. The phrase personally opposed must have warmed many an abortionists heart.
Someone has suggested that Notre Dame, which is named after Our Lady, cease calling itself a Catholic university. It is about as Catholic as, say, Ted Kennedy.
Which reminds me: I am so old I can remember when some people feared that the pope would control America through the Kennedy clan. They stopped worrying about that some time ago. No pope can control even the Kennedys.
Most people, like animals, are at home in their environment and dont question it; they merely conform to its pressures, including the pressure of circumambient opinion. They accept what they suppose are the prevalent beliefs and attitudes without question. As far as they are concerned, fashion is virtual truth. Public opinion may be defined as what people think other people are thinking.
Tolstoy would understand.
Joe Sobran is an author and a syndicated columnist. See his latest writings at http://www.fgfbooks.com/ and see him on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NJZ3FZ4iiw.
Perfect!
Pro-Life Ping
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To the pro-choice I ask; How do you feel about taking the life of a year old infant?
How about one that is 15 seconds old?
How about one that has only partially left the birth canal?
What about one that is a month or two away from delivery?
How about one that is just two month from conception?
How about one just a few days past conception?
Tell me, just where on this scale do you find it palatable to kill?
For that matter, what about when the become teenagers and really drive you crazy.
The culture of death’s desire is to be able to kill ANYONE they want for ANY reason they want at ANY point they want from conception onward.
Is there something about closure of the ductus Botalli that confers personhood?
The height of fashion? Maybe to Satan and his minions.
I remember seeing that feminazi bimbo, Naomi Wolf on cspan a few years ago.
She said baby-killing was a "right of passage" for college girls.
Tragic.
Not for me. It happens long before that.
i agree
my comment was an additional ? to the list
the followup ? is “does an entity with a patent DA have personhood.... if not, why not? if so, how does closure confer personhood?
iow, there is really nothing about birth that fundamentally changes.
the identifiable, fundamental change is the diploid #
I’m slow and don’t understand all the med terminology.
Yes. Perfect!
And before that he realized if he wanted to rise in Chicago politics he needed to sit in “Reverend” Wright's church. I doubt he really cares one bit personally about abortion and is probably an agnostic (at best).
That is fantastic!V’s wife.
I can think of a few people I’d take that argument further with...
If you think abortion is fine, what about killing your daughter killing your grandson when she gets tired of him? He’s still a toddler and dependent on her for everything, why was it okay then but not now?
Perfect indeed! I might humbly add the old story that he doesn't come to us in an ugly form, but as a handsome, well dressed man (or woman).
In his tremendous novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy observes that some men choose their opinions like their clothesaccording to fashion. He adds that no matter how derivative their views are, such men may hold those views with all the passion of partisans.
Tolstoy is remarkable, one of my favs. We certainly conducted this election 'according to fashion'. And our partisans are excellent cheerleaders, whipping up one great pep rally.
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