Politics Will Not Stop Abortion

Today's Peggy Noonan column is particularly incisive about the Republicans and this year's electoral prospects.

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

By the end of the column she holds out a little hope for McCain and the GOP. But not much.

Rod Dreher is even more pessimistic. As you may recall, I've been slowly concluding that political means are not going to achieve the ends that social conservatives desire. At Rod's post some of the reader comments argue that we need to hold our noses and vote for McCain for one reason only: there is at least some chance he will appoint Supreme Court justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, while there is little or no chance Obama will do so. This idea is compelling at first, but consider this response from one reader:

If McCain is elected he can attempt to appoint as many strict constructionists as he wants but not one of them will even get to a committee vote. There will be NO pro-life justices confirmed to the Supreme Court by this next Senate.

If, by some bizarre occurance, Roe V Wade were to be overturned, within two election cycles there would not be enough Republicans left in office at any level to influence or stop anything and there would be federal legislation codifying roe into law. The reason that no anti-abortion constitutional amendment was ever introduced was very simple. There has never been, and probably never will be, 67 votes in the Senate to pass it.

In other words, if anyone thinks that abortion can be outlawed again in this lifetime--forget it. That battle is lost, probably forever...

If Roe were to be overturned, California, New York, Illinois, Minnesota and Massachussetts at the very least, would immediately codify abortion rights into state law even before all the Republicans would be thrown out of office. That means that abortion would be available to everyone with only a relatively short airplane ride.

And then within four years it would a guaranteed right under federal law anyway and everyone opposed to it would be packed into some internment camp in Cuba.

This is closer to the truth than I think most of us want to admit. We live in a representative democracy. Abortion will stay legal as long as a majority of people want it to be so, which they quite obviously do. Why? Because abortion permits them to indulge their sexual desires without annoying and distracting consequences such as pregnancy. Like it or not, that is a fact in 2008.

If we elect McCain and if he appoints conservative Supreme Court justices and if they overturn Roe v. Wade, then what? All that happens is that states will be permitted to ban or regulate abortion if they wish. Some will do so, but the practice will be just as legal as it is now in many states. Women from other states who want abortions will simply go to where it is allowed. Maybe a few poor women who don't live near a state border will end up carrying their babies to term, but for the most part there will be no fewer abortions than there are now.

This suggests to me that the better strategy is cultural and spiritual. We need to work on building a society in which people appreciate life for the great gift it is. We need to help people respect the power of their sexuality and keep it in the right context.

The sad fact is that American Christians haven't done a very good job of this. Our sexual behavior is often indistinguishable from that of the pagan cultures we say we oppose. Only when we repent and start to lead by example will the culture begin to follow. Yes, it will take many years. That's why the time to start is now.

Wisdom of the Saints XXX

When we speak about wisdom, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about virtue, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about justice, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about peace, we are speaking of Christ.
When we speak about truth and life and redemption,we are speaking of Christ.

St. Ambrose
338-397

(Hat tip: Fr. Jay)

The Bishop and the Governor

From Catholic World News:

Kansas, May. 9, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has announced that Governor Kathleen Sebelius should not receive Communion because of her support for legal abortion.

In a column appearing on May 9 in the archdiocesan newspaper, The Leaven, the archbishop said that Governor Sebelius has sent a "spiritually lethal message" by implying that she could remain a Catholic in good standing while supporting abortion on demand.

The archbishop's column cited in particular the governor's veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which would have required abortionists to inform women about the effects of the procedure and alternatives to abortion.

The governor's stand in favor of abortion is particularly painful, Archbishop Naumann wrote, because Sebelius is a Catholic. He reported that he had met with her "several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions." Because the governor has now rejected his pleas and her public stand constitutes a scandal to the faithful, the archbishop said that he has now directed her to refrain from receiving Communion. Archbishop Naumann reported that he has asked Governor Sebelius to accept this directive, so that she will "not require from me any additional pastoral actions."

More from American Papist.

Governor Sebelius has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Barack Obama, so this story may make it into the national media soon. "That mean old bishop," they will say. "How dare he tell the governor how what to do! Separation of church and state! Theocracy! Off with his head!"

Actually, Archbishop Naumann isn't telling the governor how to do her job. He is telling her how she must behave in the church over which he, not she, is the earthly shepherd. The governor remains free to join some other denomination which is less concerned about these things. The governor is also free to attend no church at all. What she is not free to do is pretend she is a Catholic in good standing while continuing to act in ways that are contrary to centuries of Catholic teaching.

We should also note that the church does not regard such actions as punishment. The bishop is attempting to convince the governor to amend her life and save her own soul. Because she ignored his private requests, he was forced to make the matter public.

Archbishop Naumann is surely familiar with St. Ambrose who, as bishop of Milan in the fourth century, threatened his own emperor with excommunication for the murder of 7,000 people. The emperor repented and was reconciled after several months of penance. Will Governor Sebelius do likewise? For her own sake, I hope so.

GOP Swimming Upstream

I haven't written much about politics lately. The reason for this is my growing conviction that it just doesn't matter who will be our next president or which party controls Congress next year. All the possible scenarios add up to deep trouble. There are only slight differences in the particulars.

I still think Obama has the edge over McCain. I say this not because he is charismatic, attracts hordes of young voters, or has the black vote locked up. All those things are true but he would win even without them. The tide of 2008 is in the Democrat's favor.

The most recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP — the lowest since CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison, 52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

Things are so bad that many people don’t even want to call themselves Republicans. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has found the lowest percentage of self-described Republicans in 16 years of polling. [More]

With the economy sinking, an unpopular war with no end in sight, and the most unpopular president in history on his side, McCain is swimming upstream. Unless he can rebuild the entire political landscape in the next few months, there could be a blowout in November.

Yes, McCain is a war hero. All well and good, but so was George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996. Draft-dodger Bill Clinton beat both of them handily. Al Gore and John Kerry may not have been heroes but at least they went to Vietnam. Both lost to George W. Bush of the Air National Guard. Being a war hero is not an automatic ticket to the White House.

With Democrats busy sniping against each other, McCain has had a free pass for the last three months. That is about to change. You are going to see a serious effort to convince the electorate that a vote for John McCain is a vote for a third Bush term. McCain will try to distance himself from Bush, but I don't think he can succeed.

So barring some major surprise between now and November, it seems very likely that Barack Obama will be our next president. It is also likely he will have a big Democratic majority in Congress. This will allow him to actually get things done. Fortunately, parties in that position have a tendency to overreach and get slapped down in the next election. How much damage will be done in the meantime? All we can do is wait. And pray.

Investing in Sin

Investing in sin actually sounds like a pretty good idea. Sin has been a growth industry for several thousand years now. A new exchange traded fund now makes it easy to capitalize on the Fall of Adam & Eve. The FocusShares ISE SINdex Fund is available under the ticker symbol PUF.

There are, of course, endless varieties of sin. The SINdex fund buys the stock of companies in the alcohol, tobacco, and gambling sectors. This is where I begin to question the strategy. Are alcohol, tobacco, and gambling actually sins? If you ask a Southern Baptist, the answer will be “Yes.” Other Christian traditions take a more nuanced view.

Alcohol is obviously not an intrinsic evil; Christ himself turned water into wine. Yet drunkenness – the abuse of alcohol – is clearly condemned in Scripture. So the production of alcoholic beverages is not sinful, unless the producer is specifically trying to make people drunk. Alcohol manufacturers are no more responsible for the misuse of their products than gun manufacturers are for the misuse of guns.

The same can be said for tobacco. Yes, the human body is God’s temple and we have a duty to maintain it as best we can. Where do we draw this line? Big Macs aren’t good for you, either. As far as I can tell, McDonald’s isn’t in the SINdex fund. As with alcohol, moderate use of tobacco products isn’t sinful, nor is it sinful to produce and sell them.

What about gambling? We are obliged to make wise use of whatever money God gives us. We have a duty to our families and all those who are sick and poor. Yet it is not a sin to have fun. If someone has enough money to cover all their other responsibilities and finds gambling to be a pleasant diversion, it is no more sinful than playing golf or watching TV.

Given all this, it seems that the SINdex fund is probably guilty of false advertising. It does not invest in sin at all. If you want to invest in real sin, here is a good example. Producing drugs that are specifically designed to kill unborn babies is clearly sinful. Sadly, it is also very profitable.

How To Defeat America

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes:

I’m a few years older than Osama bin Laden, so I didn’t really know him at King Abdul-Aziz University. We don’t attend the same church and our kids don’t play on the same soccer team. I don’t need to know much about the guy, though, to realize that he is probably the greatest strategist of the 21st century. I don’t have to be a world class strategist myself to have a pretty good idea what he wants to do or to figure out that he has access to the same information I have access to, and given those two things I can certainly imagine what I would think and do if I were in his position.

If I wanted to take down the United States but didn’t have an air force or navy or army to do it with, I’d find a way to get it entangled in another disaster like Vietnam. In September of 2000, I would have read the neoconservative manifesto Rebuilding America’s Defenses (I would have downloaded the .pdf file here) by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and understood that if they gained power in the U.S. they would invade and occupy Iraq on any pretense. When their hand-picked candidate won the 2000 election on a technicality, I’d put the wheels in place to give them the “new Pearl Harbor” they were looking for, and come September 11, 2001 I’d have told my people “Let’s make magic happen.”

Then I’d sit in the countryside in prayerful meditation and watch as the American people bought their leaders’ Vietnam guilt trip in six-month installments and squandered their country’s might and wealth into a sand dune until it was all gone.