How many PETA members are pro-life? Just asking because they are famous for opposing the killing of rodents and in watching one’s step lest one commit reckless ant-icide. But of course, if they had to buy Pampers on a regular basis, they might not be able to afford the BMW payments or the bus ticket required to get them to Oregon to plant tree-protecting spikes.
Before seven lawyers in robes opened a Pandora’s Box 40 years ago (that no Congress of We the People had broached since 1776) when the Supreme Court ruled for Roe against Wade on January 22, 1973, the United States:
- won its Independence;
- abolished slavery;
- raised its and the world’s standard of living through free market capitalism and its oil, coal, electricity, automobile, airplanes and other fruits;
- defeated Fascists;
- and put a man on the moon.
In other words, we didn’t join Don Quixote in tilting at windmills.
Yes, there had been previous constitutional transgressions by five-plus attorneys: on slavery (Dred Scott), Jim Crow (Plessy v. Ferguson) and kicking God out of schools (Engel v. Vitale). Super constitution-amending majorities are hard to muster; but thanks to Lincoln and King, all but the latter remained un-remedied before Roe.
Of course, Roe didn’t require anyone to abort their babies but, rather than reject Pandora, too many Americans lost their shame, aided and abetted by the diminutive stature of abortion’s victims. The Judeo-Christian principles preached by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. apparently having been spent, and thus overcome by the prospect of having one’s sexual gratification cake and eating it too, America proceeded post-Roe to:
- Abandon the Hmong and Vietnamese, who with our help had secured most of the nation, to Communist tyranny;
- Exalt the creation above both the Creator and those for whom the Creator created Earth and its contents for;
- Saddle future generations with debt to pay for the present’s luxuries; and
- Re-elect a President more interested in a government takeover of health care (and thus totalitarian power over our lives) than an economic, individual liberty-empowering recovery; and uninterested in ending cross-generational theft.
Yes, Providence blessed even such a people with two presidents willing to endure the slings and arrows of an outrageous liberal press and Democratic Party to defeat economic malaise, inflation, high tax rates, an Evil Empire and avenge 9/11 before waxing inactively over the question of why terrorists hate us. But all along, even after cameras entered the womb, slaughter the equivalent of more than 18,000 9/11s proceeded apace.
Absent super-majorities in states or Congress, a Republican President Ronald Reagan tried to reverse the slaughter but his effort was “Borked” by Ted Kennedy-led Democrats and a turncoat Republican Anthony Kennedy. Yet, despite the epic failures of all Democrats save one chirped at by a Georgia Newt, majorities of Americans still too often default to the “Mamma” party while demoting motherhood to a mere choice. Expectations should be low that a nation so constituted could soon come close to approximating the courage to restore the vision of the Founders that made America exceptional, even if they had the inclination…which they don’t.
If America is to be saved from the abyss, it will be a minority of patriots that unite to do so after the next, and much larger, financial crisis. But come to think of it, when shots heard round the world were fired at Lexington and Concord and General George Washington began his command of the Continental Army, only a minority were then American patriots.
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
