Posted on 11/13/2004 6:05:41 AM PST by cpforlife.org
Well spoken, but I fear it will fall upon as deaf a set of ears as those attached to the "Principled Libertarians" who "sent a message" on November 2nd.
A very nice article on the issue
At a recent Halloween party, my fourteen-year-old son met some kids who did not share his view of life. Somehow they ended up in a discussion of abortion. His new acquaintances made two principal arguments – arguments which pretty well encompass the entire philosophical content of the pro-abortion movement, and which also reveal a fundamental misconception of the nature of truth.
It’s About Me, Stupid!
One teen-aged girl argued that if a woman who was not prepared to care for a child brought the child to term, she would undoubtedly have a strong emotional attachment to the newborn baby. Therefore, it is unfair to ask her to give the baby up for adoption. Far better to kill the child early than to break the mother’s heart by giving it away later, especially after all the trouble of pregnancy.
This is as neat a summary of the motivation of the pro-abortion movement as can be framed in 25 words or less. In the final analysis, the abortion movement is about feelings, specifically the feelings of whoever is talking at the moment – that is, my feelings. In a single act of denial as gargantuan as it is continous, the proponents of abortion bestir themselves mightily to ask, “What about me?”
Who Is It Right For, Anyway?
Me-ism, however, is difficult to sustain as a serious argument, and as a mere attitude it is forbiddingly unattractive to others. This doubtless explains why its proponents seldom express their attitude so nakedly. Rather, they find it necessary to clothe it in the robes of philosophy. In my son's case, this became evident as soon as he tried to explain that the anticipation of one’s bad feelings on parting with a beloved child cannot justify killing the child before love can develop. Obviously, he argued, taking the life of the baby would be gravely wrong.
This compelled the young lady to resort to philosophy: “Oh, but if I disagree with you and hold a different view of the matter, then it would be right for me.”
In the pro-abortion camp, the watchfires burn with the uncertain and variable light of relativism, flaring up here and dying to embers there, controlled entirely by mood or whim. For relativism is the philosophical cloak of me-ism. Its great utility is to make true whatever I may want. It does this by locating truth in my perceptions of reality rather than in reality itself, thereby legitimating at any given moment whatever it is that I wish to do.
Truth and Reality
In contrast, authentic philosophers share a profound sense of truth as something both outside and larger than themselves. Exactly what this is may be revealed in the following confusion of terms. People often claim that “truth” is relative, but nobody ever claims that “reality” is relative. Or people may claim that they can safely ignore this or that system of “truth”, but nobody claims that they can safely ignore “reality”. Or people may claim that they can make up their own “truth”, but nobody claims they can thereby command “reality” to change into something else.
This strange use of terms reveals that many people fail to grasp what should be inescapably clear: that truth is neither more nor less than the mind's conformity with reality. Hold this thought, for it is vital. Insofar as something is proposed as true, the test is whether the proposition is an articulation of a mind conformed to reality. If so, the proposition will be very useful in assisting less well-instructed minds to conform themselves more perfectly to reality as well. If not, the proposition arises purely from personal confusion or personal desire. It is useless.
Because truth is necessarily conformed to reality, it follows that to deviate from truth is to run a very grave risk—the risk of being harmed by a reality which one has failed to understand, or of missing the opportunities which reality provides.
The Catholic Advantage
It is now perhaps obvious that truth is neither a series of arbitrary or subjective propositions, nor a mind game, nor a word game. It does not and cannot change from culture to culture, age to age, or whim to whim. Rather, truth is both permanent and transcendent. Well-formed Catholics have a great advantage in grasping this point.
An understanding of truth seeps into a Catholic’s bones from the apparent obstinacy of Church teaching, which stands against the changing fashions of the world, and is criticized from a different side in each new secular age. It seeps in too from the lives of the saints, a vast and diverse company of men and women from every time and every walk of life who, somehow, have all reached the same conclusion. It seeps in from our own experience of sin and forgiveness – the healing and wholeness we experience after a personal fall, but only when we are sacramentally restored by something (or Someone) outside ourselves.
For, finally, this understanding seeps in from a knowledge of Christ Himself. He who has identified himself as “the Truth” has also identified himself as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the same yesterday, today and forever. Ultimately, to know the truth, we must conform our minds to Christ, God the Son, the creative Word of the Father, in whom all reality has its being.
Avoiding Falsehood
This goal of conformity to Christ makes Catholics wary, as all should be, of theories proposed by the fashionable, of the constantly new and changing ideas offered by the world's illuminati, of the many notions which are so helpful in justifying our personal desires or ingratiating ourselves with this or that social group.
With abortion rights as with so much else, we need to be on the alert for falsehood by keeping the inescapable nature of truth in mind. Understanding the relationship of reality, mind and truth is one of the most effective safeguards against being led dangerously astray. This understanding resolves itself into an astonishingly simple first rule: Only one who speaks from an understanding of reality's transcendence tells the truth. Or, as Augustine so wisely put it 1600 years ago, he who speaks from himself, lies.
http://www.catholiculture.org/highlights/highlights.cfm?id=36
Does this single-celled zygote, left unmolested, progress to an 8 week old baby?
Thanks for the info. I feel sick to my stomach. I can see withholding extraordinary measures, but this is just depraved.
Yes, I've noticed that a moratorium on congressional pork grabbing has even been declared.
(/sarcasm)
Principled people are always in short supply but, thank God, I believe there are enough of them to make the difference.
There are almost certainly enough of them bring down anyone who would ignore them.
Dear Vicomte13,
I'm fascinated by some who allege that President Bush has not promised to overturn Roe.
What does it mean that all children, born and unborn, will be protected in law? How is that to be achieved without overturning Roe? Roe sets down an unmoveable right to kill unborn children. Without overturning Roe, not a single unborn child can be protected in law.
Did Mr. Bush mean it when he said he is working toward a day when every child, born and unborn, is protected in law? Or did he not?
If he did, then the intention to protect every child in law must include the intentions for those actions required to accomplish that overall goal. Perhaps someone can enlighten us as to how children will be protected in law without overturning Roe.
As for what happens after Roe is overturned, well, the immediate aftermath would be that abortion would be mostly illegal in about 27 states, and late term abortion would be largely illegal in about 40 states.
After that, it's a political fight. Fought in Congress, in the legislatures of the states, in battles for governorships, etc. That's fine. We "rabid" "extreme" "nutjob" pro-lifers are up for that. If we win, we win through the political system.
If we lose, we lose through the same way.
Right now, we aren't losing through the political system. We're losing in spite of the political system. Culturally, our country is becoming more pro-life. But it means little in the way of law, because Roe blocks any change on the issue of abortion.
Overturning Roe merely turns the question back to politics.
But without taking the steps necessary to overturn Roe, President Bush cannot truthfully say that he is working toward the day when all children, born and unborn, will be proteced in law.
We pro-lifers who have supported the Republican Party, donated our time, money, energy, blood, sweat, and tears, are merely asking that President Bush do his part in furthering the goal of protecting all children, born and unborn, in law. His part is to make sure that a Republican Senate approves judges and Supreme Court Justices who are open to the question of Roe, rather than who view Roe as "inviolate" (the word of some creep from Pennsylvania).
The moment is here. The time is now. It is unlikely that things will get much better. It is unlikely that there will be a more propitious time to appoint these judges and Justices than during this second term in office of President Bush. If he doesn't do it in the next four years, he won't get another crack at it.
If he doesn't appoint Justices open to the question of Roe in this term, then the Justices he does appoint will lock in Roe for another generation or two to come.
If he doesn't get it done, he will have broken his promise.
In that case, the Republican Party will have broken faith with a key constituency, and that constituency would then no longer owe any loyalty to the Republican Party.
sitetest
Either way, it was a cruel and insensitive comment, and should not have been made.
narses, you made it sound as if Howlin's sister had personally (and selfishly) been responsible for slaughtering infants. Has it occured to you that she was a desperately ill woman who took advantage of whatever treatments the doctors offered, in hopes of at least living until her teenaged children were grown?
Has it occured to you that you would probably be very hurt and offended if someone made a similar comment about one of your parents, siblings, or children?
Look, I know you feel very strongly about this issue, HOWEVER....
As I've said earlier, it's as much a "hearts and minds" issue as anything else, and until you change hearts and minds, you will not change laws even if R.v.W. is overturned.
Some of you are so single-mindedly focused on the infants that you can't see the other people involved, and most of the other people involved are more deserving of (and will react better to) your love and compassion than your scorn, hatred and disdain.
Some of them are misguided, some are ignorant, some are desperate for whatever reason...but with the exception of some of the clinic operators, I don't think most are evil.
Your Christian love and compassion just glows from this post. You've provided a perfect example of the point I just made.
Unless you've lived in the South, YOU don't know how many Zell Millers are left in the Democratic party, EV.
There are a LOT of people down here who've been voting GOP in national elections for years, but are still running as Democrats in state and local elections - part of the legacy of Reconstruction, if you will.
Yes and no, I C&P this piece from Turnabout, it touches on the sea change in thinking and philsophy that occured as a result of the events above. That thinking I do reject. Mr. Kalb is an accomplished writer, you should if nothing else consider his perspective.
An issue that isn't raised because public figures don't understand it won't get far in a media-drenched age. So an obvious problem for social conservatives is that the articulate classes don't understand — at all — the issues they raise. Some possible reasons that come to mind:
* Modern intellectual life, education and methods of organization make the methods of the modern natural sciences the standard for rationality, and tend to treat social life as a matter of engineering outcomes in as direct and controllable a way as possible. Morality, to the extent it's of public concern, becomes a matter of rights and obligations regarding formal organizations. "Personal" morality therefore becomes a strictly personal matter that no one else can comment on rather than a factor basic to our lives together.
* Intellectual life and education have become highly centralized, detached from any particular concrete way of life, and subordinate to the needs of large rationalized institutions. On the whole, the function of what passes for the life of the mind today is to develop perspectives, ideas and information useful to markets and bureaucracies, and train young people in those things so they'll be useful to the institutions and able to make their way in them.
* The articulate classes are a meritocracy. The well-spoken and well-placed have undergone endless schooling, they believe what they were told, they got where they are by giving the right answers, and they base their sense of who they are academic background and position in large formal organizations that don't rely (at least directly) on the things social conservatives care about.
* The members of the articulate classes, like the members of any ruling class, think they can mostly get what they want in personal relations, and will lose more than they gain from any definite system of social obligations. Modern ideology says that if they want to feel free to do what they want they have to make the standards they prefer general principles that apply to everyone. So that's what they do.
* The logic of the next step. "Civil rights" and feminism demand the effective abolition of historical, cultural and even natural human distinctions. Those things can't be allowed to have any social function, since otherwise we wouldn't be absolute self-defining individuals. Further, contraception, divorce and "living together" have become settled social habits and all but beyond criticism. Since all that's so, what reason can be given for not accepting abortion and "gay marriage"? Forbidding abortion would deny women the right freely to construct what they are at all times, while denying "gay marriage" would mean that there is a social institution that is not a construction to further individual desire.
So the problems social conservatives face making their case aren't a matter of finding the right spin to put on things. They have to do with the basic organization of society and the ways of thinking that follow from it. Which isn't surprising, since basic social organization is what's at issue anyway. So what to do? Some suggestions:
* Decide whether the business is worth pursuing, or whether it would be better to throw in the towel to maintain a place at the table or whatever. My answer is that the things that make human life tolerable — for example, social organization that connects to what we are, distributes action and responsibility to each level, and reflects the whole range of human needs and experience — can't be conceded. The alternative to informal traditional and local organization — meaning social conservatism — is an increasingly aggressive technocracy that can't work and will only make us all miserable.
* If the fight is worth the effort, then hang in there, go at it on all fronts, and hope for better days. If technocracy is truly nonworkable then better days will come even if we can't say when. The intellectual side of the battle is especially important, because that's where social conservatives are weakest and because defense of social conservatism requires a comprehensive assault on accepted public ways of thinking that will require a great deal of effort.
* Make alliances. Utopia is never complete, or as rational as it thinks, so there's always a lot that doesn't fit in:
o Married people, especially those with children, find technocracy radically at odds with their sense of what's necessary and right. The future belongs to married people with children.
o Artists and intellectuals need a coherent system of things that reflects as much human experience as possible to give their work meaning.
o One way or another, libertarians and liberationists of various kinds want to distribute power down.
o Scientists and scholars are interested in how things work. If there are indeed problems with technocracy they'll eventually want to investigate and assess them.
o commercial and organizational life can't get by without personal reliability and integrity.
At least in the long run, social conservatism is the only way those concerns can be met. Eventually people will realize that. Our job is to smooth the way for that day to come.
Do other industrialized nations allow abortion? We know that China requires it...how does the U.S. relate to other countries in this regard? Do you know?
Right-o
For the record Freeper Vicomte13 wrote the piece.
Man...your posts are harder to follow than an old friend of mine who used to hang out in FR, and was fond of word salad.
This individual is "warning" the GOP of the consequences of some imagined malfeasance when it comes to the administration's decisions in governing while in office, and that the pro-life movement may take some sort of punitive action if their desires are not satisfied.
Well, I consider myself part of the pro-life movement, and I want to know when the hell I gave you, or the poster for that matter, the right to speak for me?
That point, has been brought to light by many other posters in this thread...who the hell gave either one of you the right to speak for all of us?
The GOP platform is made up of many policies, AMONG THEM the right to life.
Which means that no one individual platform controls the policy making ability of the administration.
Simply stated...don't warn anyone of anything but YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL INTENTIONS.
I don't suppose Alan Keyes' loss had anything at all to do with his inane statements in favor of reparations, insulting Dick Cheney's daughter, and supporting a draft...or, alternatively, his allowing the press to twist his words so it would appear he'd said those things.
And, EV, I can see why you wouldn't understand that Keyes impresses most people as being arrogant, judgemental, and hateful - because your posts are just like that.
Keyes preaches personal responsibility...ha!
Actually, culturally is the bigger and better change, IMO, because if the culture changes, you change the demand for abortion, which means there are fewer of them even if they are still legal.
And realistically, even if Roe is gone, without the cultural change, laws will change if necessary to provide for abortions to be just as available as they are now.
Same thing. Unique DNA that zygote, not mom, not dad, unique.
Do you want the GOP Platform to modify or drop the Pro-Life plank?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.