Komen vs. Planned Parenthood: A Win-Win-Win

by James J Heaney Posted on 3 February 2012

Both sides are declaring victory in the landmark case Susan G. Komen for the Cure vs. Planned Parenthood of America.  Well and good.  Both sides won. 

Pro-lifers hold the battlefield: Komen is never going to give money to Planned Parenthood again (although local affiliates may).  We can participate in their 5K runs and so forth with a clean conscience now.

Planned Parenthood, for its part, won the war of perception: the news sphere is reporting that Komen “reversed” or “backed down” from its “controversial” decision, partly because that’s what the press wants to believe, but mostly because that’s what the press and Planned Parenthood want everyone else to believe.  James Taranto nailed it yesterday:

Planned Parenthood’s bitter campaign against Komen–aided by left-liberal activists and media–is analogous to a protection racket: Nice charity you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it. The message to other Planned Parenthood donors is that if they don’t play nice and keep coughing up the cash, they’ll get the Komen treatment.

Obviously, the mob doesn’t like it when somebody stops paying their monthly dues.  They threaten, harrass, do violence, and generally make life miserable (or death, as the case may be) for their erstwhile business partner.  But they don’t need the money.  If the partner gets out successfully, that’s that.  What the mob absolutely cannot afford is for there to be a public perception that it is possible to get out.  The mob most maintain the appearance that, if you cross them, you won’t last five minutes before you have to back down — or you’ll end up dead.

Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar organization.  This $700,000 is a drop in the bucket; they get 360 times that much in government dollars every year.  But Planned Parenthood is not popular these days.  The pro-life boycott of its supporters are making themselves a nuisance.  Organizations are uneasy with PP as its nasty underbelly is increasingly exposed, and now it’s under Congressional investigation.  It’s politically motivated, but it’s still a big deal.  There’s unrest in its big public donors’ ranks.  And then Komen breaks off!  The most popular and widely-recognized women’s health group in America!  If Komen were allowed to leave, or was even perceived to have broken off ties relatively painlessly, the strategic damage to PP would have been incalcuable.  So they bided their time, marshalled their forces, and hit back, in a surprise attack, with everything they had.  Komen was unprepared, incompetent, and completely inexperienced in fighting this kind of political PR war, and was routed utterly.  Popular perception is that PP has both beaten Komen to a pulp and forced it back into the happy abortion family like a battered wife.

Oh, and women win, too, since the money will now be used for more effective anti-cancer measures.  But that’s a bit of a “duh,” so I won’t dwell on it.

Can we get mad with Planned Parenthood for this?  Only a little. 

The officially advertised sense of entitlement over in abortionland is breathtaking, but nobody in abortionland really feels that Planned Parenthood is entitled to Komen funds, any more than Komen cut funding just because of Congress.  I mean, PP doesn’t even do mammograms, much less breast cancer research.  All the grant did was provide funding so that nurses could do free breast exams.  There are not fancy-pants technological breast scans.  They’re the “self-exams” you learned in 9th grade health where you feel around for a lump for a few minutes.   (They also cost no money, take very little time, and PP nurses already know how to do this, so I’m a little confused as to what PP is spending a million dollars on.  Overtime pay?)  If something came up, they’d give you a referral to a clinic where, unlike Planned Parenthood, actual medicine is practiced.  If Komen had taken the $700,000 out of its joint accounts with Planned Parenthood, piled it up out in the bank parking lot, and burned it all, this decision would not have had any obvious effect on women’s health.  As it stands, Komen is not burning it, but redirecting the funds to other sources that actually diagnose and treat women with breast cancer.  They’re using it more efficiently.  This is good for women.  PP and its supporters know that.  The backlash wasn’t about Komen killing women or whatever.  It was because it is terrifying to pro-choicers that their very legitimacy as a public interest group is being questioned, and they felt they had no choice but to hit back against that idea with everything they had.

This may be difficult for pro-lifers to understand, because pro-life organizations have never been considered part of the public interest no matter how much non-profit good they do for unwed mothers and the like.  We’ve borne the brunt of a forty-year media assault.  We’ve never had “legitimacy” to lose — just love, prayer, and donations.  Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, has taken government money in the hundreds of millions of dollars for 42 years, and is generally acclaimed by a fawning media as a critical contributor to women’s health in the United States.  An analogy pro-lifers might understand: suppose the government threatened to pull all funding from successful, decades-old Catholic adoption agencies unless they agreed to place children with gay couples on a non-discriminatory basis.

Oh, wait.

We fiercely defend the Church’s legitimacy in the public space just as Planned Parenthood did.  As we should!  As evil as Planned Parenthood is, as much as this resembles a mob-style shakedown, I don’t believe we have grounds to criticize them for their response.  It was tactically sound, brilliantly executed, and only a little disingenuous.  Indeed, we should take lessons from the abortionists on their incredibly effective mobilization (and motivation) of their entire base in well under twenty-four hours.  Right-to-life organizations, which are invariably impoverished, poorly organized, technologically behind the curve, and operating largely independently of one another, could never dream of this kind of response as presently constituted.  Despite the fact that we crushed the abortionists in actual volume of response, it took us days to reach that point, as our message had to go out slowly through, basically, Facebook.  Our messaging was completely uncoordinated, and most of the “news” updates our supporters received was from the virulently anti-life mainstream media and the Huffington Post.  Once again, where was the NRLC on this?  Where, for that matter, was my favorite group of recent days, Personhood USA?  Only AUL kept up steady messaging about this from start to finish.  Jill Stanek cannot fight the entire billion-dollar abortion megaphone on her own here, people.  The mere fact that we have a just cause does not win us the war: we also have to fight the battles!

Posted in Mere Opinion | 131 Comments

Re: Were Early Republicans “Conservative”?

by James J Heaney Posted on 1 February 2012

From a Facebook discussion I’m having:

How are you defining “conservative,” James? I’ve done a lot of reading on the 19th Century, and the early Republican Party has always seemed mighty liberal to me. You know, “Radical” Republicans, valuing civil rights over property rights, redistributing wealth–40 acres and a mule and all that.

I should probably start by linking back to my first post, which sketches out my basic understanding of what conservatism is all about.  (And I should probably apologize to Brian for not yet replying to his comment.)  Now we can go from there.

I, too, have done much reading on 19th century politics, especially surrounding the War.  The only Republican president I ever saw who was more conservative than Mr. Reagan was Mr. Lincoln — fine though the line that he was forced to walk.  His fealty to the rule of law, and especially the text of the Constitution; his sturdy resistance to the Democratic doctrine (championed by Steven Douglas and the Dred Scott Court, which is now nearly ubiquitous and protected by Cooper v. Aaron) that Supreme Court rulings are binding on all constitutional actors in every respect; his steady prosecution of a bloody and wearisome war despite quagmire, incompetence, and peace riots in the streets of New York, simply because it was his necessary duty; and, above all, his reluctant determination to grant equal protection of the laws to *all* persons, even when inconvenient… all these signify a president who is living out conservative principles under the most trying circumstances imaginable. Lincoln might easily have used the war to subvert or undermine the Constitution, assail federalist principles, and establish federal police powers, as Wilson would do during World War I — but he didn’t, because, even when he feared that he might have no choice, Lincoln loved that document and all the principles it stood for.  It sings through all his writings, from the debates with Douglas to the Cooper Union address on to the First Inaugural.  Package that loyalty to the Law up in a man with a cool head, a sharp, quiet wit, and a deep humility and reverence toward the Almighty (seen best in his Second Inaugural), and you’ve got a man I’d love to see atop the GOP ticket today.

Ah, well.  So much for that.

I must admit myself considerably sympathetic to the radicals in Congress, though.  As you say, they campaigned quite ruthlessly so that all men might be treated equally under the law — the basis for the age-old Republican belief in maximizing equality of opportunity before (and, when necessary, against) equality of outcome.  They enforced this through a military occupation won by right of war — a right I don’t think political liberals have recognized since at least Armistice Day.  (It was under the auspices of military conquest that General Sherman instituted his short-lived policy of “40 Acres and a Mule.”  Though never enacted by any Congress, it would have been no sin against property to seize that owned by the vanquished and yield it to their slaves.  Still, Lincoln thought it unjust and imprudent, and I must pay him some deference.)

In short, early Republicans were social conservatives, obsessed with affirming the equal right of every human being to rise or fall on his own two feet, equally protected under the law.  They were foreign policy conservatives, willing to prosecute a war that was extraordinary in its extravagant expense, bloodletting, and the national agony it engendered, despite the fierce opposition of more short-sighted protesters — and they were willing to prosecute the occupation for as long as necessary. They were obsessed with the Constitution and its particular text, obeying that text despite the less studied broad assertions of the secessionists (and the Northern Democrats), even when that meant ignoring the unconstitutional orders of the Supreme Court when directed against the co-equal executive and legislative branches.  And it so happens that they were economic conservatives, too, defending property rights in the territories and opposed to large deficits and any but the most basic spending on national improvements like roads and the Transcontinental Railroad.  (Although, back then, EVERYONE was an economic conservative compared to everyone today save Ron Paul.)

About the only place a modern Republican would part ways with the GOP platforms of 1856, 1860, or 1864 would be on legal immigration, and then only because there is a great deal more *il*legal immigration now than there was immigration of any sort at the time.

I know much less of the GOP during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Age.  I can say that I am certainly disappointed with President T. Roosevelt, who ultimately broke away from the party anyway, but I am generally fond of President Coolidge.  I am uncertain whether I think better of modern free-trading conservative doctrine or old high-tariff conservative doctrine, but, either way, there’s clearly been a change in tarriff policy over time.

Our great sin as a party was allowing that scumbag Nixon to adopt his “Southern strategy” to win votes along purely racial lines. It was a disgusting betrayal of ancient conservative principles — but, then, betraying conservative principles, from wage controls to Watergate, was more or less Nixon’s metier.  (Not that Watergate was a “liberal” thing to do.  No, it was just a scummy thing to do.)  It has cost us far, far more than the exactly nothing we gained through the fifteen years between the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the election of Ronald Reagan, and lost us (quite rightly!) the loyalty of a demographic group conservatism has otherwise done nothing but champion from its rebirth in 1856 down to today.  One day — perhaps as progressives continue to use the courts to deprive the unborn of human rights, endeavor to nationalize everything from Boeing plant locations to lightbulbs, and usurp the institutions of religion by mandates and broad redefinitions of institutions in which the State has no prior right to interfere — we may hope to win those voters back.  Until then, we have penance to do.

Posted in Mere Opinion, Reads & Reactions | 88 Comments

READS: The Definitive Secular Gay Marriage Discussion

by James J Heaney Posted on 30 January 2012

I am sick to the teeth of reposting this every few weeks, so I am going to put it here now that I have a blog and just link to it.

In early 2011, Robert P. George, a prominent social conservative from Princeton, plus some colleagues of his, published “What Is Marriage?”, which is generally considered the definitive case against same-sex marriage from a non-religious perspective.  (Note that “definitive” is not the same as “conclusive.”  Many conservatives I know would quibble with George on a number of points both minor and major.)

Here is “What Is Marriage“: https://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/GeorgeFinal.pdf

That paper kicked off an EPIC marriage debate among online intellectuals.  It is ALL worth reading — both sides make serious arguments.  If you want to actually have a conversation about gay marriage, rather than just resorting to your Bible or to calling all your opponents hateful bigots, this is a great place to start.  Although I have sorted them, I have tried to keep the conversation in chronological order, since the various critiques build on each other at times:

Kenji Yoshino’s critique (I): https://www.slate.com/id/2277781/
Robert George’s reply: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2217

Andrew Koppelman’s critique (I): https://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-marriage-isnt.html
Robert George’s reply: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2263

Barry Deutch’s critique: https://familyscholars.org/2010/12/21/what-is-bodily-union-a-response-to-what-is-marriage/
Robert George’s reply: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2277

Kenji Yoshino’s critique (II): https://www.slate.com/id/2278794/
Robert George’s reply: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2295

Andrew Koppelman’s critique [of Yoshino]: https://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/12/that-elusive-timeless-essence-of.html
Robert George’s additional comments: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2350

That’s the basic discussion that took place at the time.  I also recently found an earlier, tangentially-connected exchange from about a year earlier:

Andrew Koppelman’s paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1544478
Robert George’s critique: https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/02/more-on-koppelmans-paper.htm
Andrew Koppelman’s defense: https://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/02/koppelman-vs-george-on-same-sex.html

George later posted two further articles on the subject of marriage at Public Discourse:

“Marriage and Procreation: Avoiding Bad Arguments“: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/03/2637
“Marriage and Procreation: The Intrinsic Connection“: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/03/2638

It’ll take a smart person the best part of a day to do all this reading, but it’s crucial to do this or something like it if you’re on *either* side of the debate and want to have a serious conversation.

I should note that I don’t think George is 100% right.  His defense of marriage for knowingly infertile couples doesn’t really add up from a civil standpoint, in my opinion.  But, like I said at the outset, this is a starting point for intelligent discourse, not a conclusion.

And, yeah, this is kinda the Robert P. George show.  If you want an introduction to the issue from a secular pro-natural marriage perspective, that’s where you go.  You want more complexity, or to deal with specific objections within the two broad camps, you dig deeper.  But this is an overview.

Enjoy!

Posted in Reads & Reactions | 1 Comment

On Insane Tax Plans

by James J Heaney Posted on 28 January 2012

Many believe that the Ron Paul tax plan is insane, because the Ron Paul tax plan is, ultimately, “Eliminate the individual income tax! 0% for everyone!” People say, “We can’t possibly afford that!”

Surprise. Revenue from the individual income tax is $899bil (less than half of total federal revenues). Ron Paul’s spending plan is to cut $1000bil from the budget in just the first year.

In other words, if we did both these things in the first year, we would actually be shrinking the deficit. What’s insane is the budget plan of every other candidate, which grows our already monstrous deficit (and debt) indefinitely — none moreso than President Obama.

Posted in Pith | 1,976 Comments

Why a Tax Protest Against Abortion Wouldn’t Work

by James J Heaney Posted on 26 January 2012

Someone wondered aloud whether we could stop abortion simply by bringing the U.S. government to its financial knees. All we have to do is stop paying our taxes!

So I ran the numbers.

There are approximately 300 million people in the United States, but only 100 million taxable returns are filed with the federal government, representing about 140 million people (nearly half of all returns are Married Filing Jointly or Surviving Spouse). In the general population, about 20% believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. This figure fluctuates slightly from year to year, dipping as low as 13% in the mid-90’s.

There is good reason to believe (and no countervailing evidence) that the taxpaying population is no different from the general population on this question (that is, views on abortion do not vary significantly by income level). So, 13% of 140 million = 18.2mil people. This can be taken as our “base.” Surprisingly small numbers of people are willing to participate non-violent civil disobedience, especially this sort that may run afoul of Biblical commands (“Render unto Caesar…”). Based on some polls I’ve read (but can’t find), you would be rather lucky to get 20% participation in this, and that may be too high by a factor of ten. This leaves us with an optimistic base for tax protest of 3.7mil people.

This is not small, but it is not huge, either. It is about 1% of the total U.S. population, representing almost 3% of its income tax base, or $24bil. Compare to the NASA budget ($17bil), the National Institutes of Health budget ($30bil), the annual spending on the Iraq and Afghan Wars combined (~$150bil until recently), the Obama stimulus ($800bil), or annual spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined ($1494bil).

It is important to remember that the government gets less than half its funding from income taxes — and it spends quite a bit more than it takes in. Two-thirds of Washington’s money ($2314 bil, in 2010) comes from legitimate revenue. The rest ($1156 bil) is either printed or borrowed, driving inflation and the national debt, and unaffected by tax protest.

So a tax protest against abortion is unlikely to be effective, even if it can be reconciled with Biblical teaching.

Posted in Analysis | 1,988 Comments

The State of the Union 2012 is…

by James J Heaney Posted on 25 January 2012

RHODE ISLAND!  Congratulations, Rhode Island!  Come on down!

Apparently, as a political blogger, even a new one, I am required by law to say something about the State of the Union Address.  (This is one of the many infamous new regulations President Obama added to the Federal Register, right after his regulation setting the legal maximum height of public school teachers at 7’2″ and the one regulating human sweat as a pollutant.)

This is too bad, because the State of the Union Address, politically speaking, is the least consequential night of the year.  Absolutely nothing new happens whatsoever.  There is no Congressional floor action (which, as Jon Stewart observed, is much less exciting than it sounds), no surprising new policy proposals (ever), and the worst our representatives can do to argue over it is sit on their hands during the applause lines.  Do you remember when Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted, “You lie!” at the president two years ago?  And everyone’s heads exploded about the death of civility in Washington and the imminent fall of the Republic?  That was my favorite moment in Congressional addresses in years.  You know how the Brits do it?  Like this.  You know how often they have these sessions?  For an hour, four days a week.  Seriously, if you have cable, go watch Question Time on C-SPAN 2.  Despite having no clue what any of the issues are, you will not be disappointed.

But, nobody shouted out this year, and the Supreme Court decided to show even after the President’s silly attack on them in last year’s address.  (Or was it the year before?  Oh, right — I don’t care.)  That meant there was only one interesting thing to do: people-watch.

And I don’t think there can be any disagreement from anyone who watched it.  The absolute best part of the night was the handsome Eric Cantor (R-VA).  Joe Biden struggling not to pick his nose was a close second.

Alright, so, the speech.  It was probably the President’s best speech since he took office.  This was, in part, because it sounded a great deal like a President Bush speech.  Our troops and their war in Iraq have made us safer at home and respected abroad.  Really, Mr. President?  I wonder what Candidate Obama would say to that.  American is “the indispensable nation”.  Really, Mr. President?  You’ve been pointedly avoiding any reference to American Exceptionalism for three years now; why quit here?  He said, at one point, quoting Abraham Lincoln, “That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more,” which, for a moment, I thought was supposed to be a laugh line. Republicans can only hope that Mr. Obama’s conversions of heart on these points are heartfelt and sincere.

Unfortunately, when the President speaks of energy development and energy independence, it is clear that he speaks from craven hypocrisy.  The two great legacies this president has left American energy are Solyndra and the Keystone XL cancellation.  We’ll call the oil spill a wash, since his actions to sharply reduce offshore drilling expansion in its wake is at least defensible under the principles he’s articulated.  The President continues to labor, meanwhile, under the evidently sincere belief that the Congress in Washington is a wiser appropriator of funds than the American people or the several states, and calls upon legislators to put its fingers in even more pies.  It is telling that the President blamed the recession entirely on those horrible, evil big bankers and lenders, and reserved no criticism for our government’s considerable role in pushing those lenders by policy and fueling them by the Federal Reserve’s stupidly low interest rates.  It is telling that the President is able to blame both parties in Congress for the abuse of the filibuster without apologizing to the nation for his own abuse of it during his short term as a Senator.

In short, the President reminds me of a well-meaning Bob Page: wanting the best for the world, but incapable of imagining the world achieving anything without his immaculate hand at the rudder.  (Bob is the one with the cigarette.)  But he hit all the right beats: Americans want to raise taxes on the rich, they want infrastructure spending, they don’t want to cut spending, especially hate entitlement reform, and they are willing to pretend there is no looming debt crisis.  They love America, the troops, and the 1950s, all of which were nerves President Obama tried to hit tonight.  Never mind that it is the sort of environmental regulation that killed Keystone XL that make it impossible to build Hoover Dam or the Interstate Highway System today.  Never mind that middle-class America was worse off by every material standard in 1954 compared to today, and that’s without recalling how much more terrible it was to be black or poor or both at the time.

Irony of Ironies: it is now the progressive Democrats, not the Moral Majority Republicans, who find themselves longing for a Leave It to Beaver era that never existed!  I hope this means we get another movie about Joan Allen setting a tree on fire. (WARNING: Link mildly NSFW.)

But I digress.  The point is: great speech, Mr. President.  People will like it, on the whole.  I even liked it.  At least, I liked the parts where I wasn’t hitting my head really hard, and that’s because I’m a policy wonk, not a citizen.  For instance, when you point out, “Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid. We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money,” the answer is, “Yes, we need to cut student aid, because it is fueling that tuition increase and making college unaffordable for the very kids we are supposedly helping.”  The answer is not, “States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets.”  AAAAAAGH!  The money you’re spending on student aid is taxed away from the states in the first place!  You’ve already left them broke!  Putting more student aid in the budget could only be done by printing money for it!  You’re insane!

Oh, dear.  I keep trying to praise the president, and keep ending up calling him a well-meaning lunatic instead.  So let’s stop trying and turn to the Republican response, which was the only interesting part of the night.  It, too, was a dull and unsurprising speech, and it was only interesting because there’s serious talk of drafting Mitch Daniels to run for president, on account of Gov. Romney and Mr. Gingrich being terrible candidates and the GOP establishment despising my man Ron Paul as a backup.  Daniels gave a fine speech.  It was too negative following the president’s extremely positive tone, but laid out a good case for why the Republicans have acted — and must continue to act — the way they have, offering real budget solutions that the President and the Senate have slapped down hard while pursuing Utopia through spending and regulation.  Daniels would very likely be a better candidate than either of the GOP frontrunners, and, unlike Mr. Perry and Ms. Bachmann and Mr. Christie, has been reasonably well-vetted for the national stage well in advance.  I’d be happy to see him use this as an opportunity for a late entry into the race (although my support remains behind Mr. Paul).  We’ll see.

Gosh, I hate State of the Union nights.  Good night, world.

Posted in Mere Opinion | 88 Comments

Roe v. Wade’s “Jane Roe” endorses Ron Paul

by James J Heaney Posted on 23 January 2012

…back in 2008, anyway.  Following Roe, Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe went on to have her baby, and became a pro-life Christian in the mid-1990s.  She’s very active in the movement.

And, apparently, she’s a Paul fan.  I didn’t know about this until today.  But, since I am always pushing the pro-life cred of my man Paul… and since I am rather annoyed by the sanctimonious twaddle Mr. Santorum was peddling today at the Journal, I figured I’d mention it:

I support Ron Paul for president because we share the same goal, that of overturning Roe v Wade. Ron Paul doesn’t just talk about being pro-life, he acts on it. His voting record truly is impeccable and he undoubtedly understands our constitutional republic and the inalienable right to life for all. Ron Paul is the prime author of H.R. 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v. Wade. As the signor of the affidavit that legalized abortion 35 years ago I appreciate Ron Paul’s action to restore protection for the unborn. Ron Paul has also authored H.R. 1094 in Congress, which seeks to define life as beginning at conception. He has never wavered on the issue of being pro-life and has a voting record to prove it. He understands the importance of civil liberties for all, including the unborn.

Source: Reason.

Posted in Horse Race | 2,269 Comments

READS: The Unbearable Wrongness of Roe, by Michael Stokes Paulsen

by James J Heaney Posted on 23 January 2012

Up today on Public Discourse: “The Unbearable Wrongness of Roe.”  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: somebody needs to make this man a Supreme Court justice.  This is likely to be the first of many links to his work.  Excerpt:

Here is the problem, undressed: If human embryonic life is morally worthy of protection, we have permitted sixty million murders under our watch. Faced with this prospect, many of us—maybe even most—flee from the facts. We deny that the living human embryo is “truly” or “fully” human life, adopt a view that whether the embryo or fetus is human “depends,” or can be judged in degrees, on a sliding scale over the course of pregnancy; or we proclaim uncertainty about the facts of human biology; or we proclaim moral agnosticism about the propriety of “imposing our views on others”; or we throw up our hands and give up because moral opposition to an entrenched, pervasive social practice is not worth the effort, discomfort, and social costs. The one position not on the table—the one possibility too hard to look at—is that abortion is a grave moral wrong on a par with the greatest human moral atrocities of all time and that we passively, almost willingly, accept it as such.

All of this should tell us a few more sobering things. It should tell us that, much as we would like to believe that human beings have become more morally conscious, more sensitive to injustice and intolerant of clear evil, it remains the case that we often either fail to recognize it in our midst, or refuse to respond to it decisively, out of self-interest or cowardice. It should tell us that, much as we would like to think that we surely would have stood bravely against slavery, even if embedded in a nineteenth-century society that tolerated and accepted it as a legal right, we might have acquiesced or been tepid in our condemnation. It should tell us that, much as we would like to think we would never have put up with what transpired in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the 1940s, the evidence of our lives in twenty-first century America is that we might have put up with quite a lot…

The Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade should not be accepted as law, in any sense. It should be resisted by legislatures and it should be refused enforcement by executive officials because it is not the law. It should be resisted by all citizens, with all the resources at their disposal, and perhaps even with resources not (yet) at their disposal. Anything less is holocaust denial.

Also watch out, near the one-third point of the article, for the unflagged quotation of the Court’s monstrous opinion in Dred Scot v. Sandford, which held that “Negroes” were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”  Sums up Roe.

Posted in Reads & Reactions | 85 Comments