Time Immortal

Leave it to a British journalist to catch the deeper significance of the electoral victory of Barack Hussein Obama. The sane Hitchens brother notes:

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street — which runs due north from the White House — the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan.

As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear. But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy.

They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.

These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

The main problem with a progressive demagogue taking office is that the changes he brings about tend to be of the sort not easily dislodged from the public scene. Think of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and how he gave Canada its Charter, which purports to defend the rights and freedoms of Canadians but which, in effect, does almost the opposite. Think of nationalized , or nationalized Education, or the welfare culture extant today in most Western democracies. Think of the irregularities and insecurities that plague Immigration laws in many nations, Canada and the U.S. included.

Now imagine how it might come to pass that those things could be undone again? It’s impossible to envision, isn’t it? Or, at least, nearly so?

Even in what could be called the best-case scenarios (either a disastrous Obama presidency that swings the American populace strongly back toward an invigorated, staunchly conservative Republican party, or an Obama presidency in which Obama himself is forced by circumstances to channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan), the social changes that the Obama administration is (if only at first) going to be anxious to implement will be of the same lasting character.

And who knows who will then pay the price for such progressive excess? The unborn almost certainly will, but I doubt it will be just they who suffer.

A lot of Catholic opinion I’ve been reading has tended toward being rather glum at the victory of Barack Hussein Obama in the recent American presidential race…and with good reason, given Obama’s strong support for abortion…even for its most vile methods.

This is, after all, the man who promised to make FOCA into law if at all possible, and then as one of his first acts upon taking office. Not only would this legislation make partial-birth abortion legal again and remove the need for parental notification in the case of minors attempting to procure an abortion; there’s a very good chance that FOCA would also abolish freedom of conscience protection for doctors and nurses who want nothing to do with abortion.

For Catholics, that’s pretty much the definition of “problematic.”

But in spite of that, the general approach that I’ve seen on Catholic blogs and news sites has been to look on President-elect Obama with an air of charity and prayer. John C. Wright’s reflection that this is a time to set factions aside, in particular, resonated with me:

Let us reflect on the duties enjoined upon a free man under a republican form of government in these times; and next on the duties of a philosopher; and finally on the duties of a Christian.

First, our duty as citizens of a democratic republic is to affirm our loyalty to the will of the majority. The losers form rank and file behind the winners in a democracy. Everyone had a chance to vote; but the bargain is that you agree to abide by the outcome, and that agreement is implicit in the act of voting. That is the price you pay for democracy, my fellow sovereign citizens.¹ Anything less erodes the sovereignty of the people. We are at war, and we have a new Commander-in-Chief. During wartime is not the time to diminish the authority of the leadership. It is better, for the sake of obedience and cohesion, to obey a bad leader than to follow the fractures of party faction.

Second, the duty of a philosopher is to regard adversity with Olympian detachment, if not stoicism, and to offer that obedience to the laws that logic and right reason commands. Socrates drank hemlock rather than disobey the laws placed above him, and died with the dignity of a philosopher, the courage of a soldier. Do you wish to live a life free from the misery folly brings? Then you must study philosophy and temper your passions. Can no modern man follow the ancient models? Are we to be found wanting in such virtue, when the yoke of the laws under which we labor are so much lighter than this?

Third, the duty of Christian men is to obey the authorities placed above us. “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (Romans 13:2).

My brothers in Christ, do we take these words of Holy Scripture seriously? As far as I know, there was no revised version of the Bible printed up during the Enlightenment that left out the inconvenient passage after the fashion of Luther scuttling the inconvenient the Book of the Maccabees. This verse was written in a century which also saw Imperial Rome persecuting Christians in the bloodiest fashion the ancient world knew — the faithful being torn to pieces by wild beasts as a popular entertainment, or tied to stakes covered in pitch and ignited as screaming torches for the amusement of the Emperor’s court. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s was the command of Our Lord, who submitted to a kangaroo court, and who was handed to the tormentors appease popular tumult. Obama is not the Messiah, but neither is he Nero.

No less poignant than the above is the response of the Church herself, as Archbishop Donald Wuerl called upon Catholics to offer their prayers for the upcoming presidency of Mr. Obama, and that his eyes might be opened and his mind given wisdom as he takes on his role as leader.

And this is especially true of Obama’s pro-abortion stance; may his eyes be opened in Christ Jesus, the better to perceive the necessity of preserving the unborn — the most precious, fragile, and vulnerable of all people — from harm.

The point, I guess, is to do all things with grace, and if not with grace then at least with charity. As Obama’s fans and zealots denigrate and insult all those over whom they have emerged triumphant, our response must be to humbly submit to the guidance and wisdom of the Lord; if an unjust time is upon us, then we must confront it prayerfully.

I speak here in a tone which implies that I am thinking about this issue as though I were American, as though Obama were about to become my head of state. I am not, and he is not. But I am thinking in an air of unity with my brothers and sisters in the Church in the U.S., who must confront what is to come.

And for them, my prayer is charity, and grace.

(P.S. don’t miss Wright’s commentary on St. Barbara!)

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

1) in this, good Reader, conservatives must succeed, and then in a way that puts to shame, by way of demonstration, the raving madmen and madwomen on the Left whose very existence hinged — or seemed to hinge — upon casting Bush and Cheney as incarnations of pure evil and malice.

Not surprising at all: kill off 40 or 50 million potential citizens, and you just might suffer a trillion-dollar hit to your GDP.

Researcher Dennis M. Howard, president of the pro-life group Movement for a Better America, who has been tracking the economic impact of abortion since 1995, has shown that the 50.5 million surgical abortions since 1970 have cost the U.S. $35 trillion dollars in lost Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

If the number of missing children includes those aborted by IUDs, RU-486, sterilization and abortifacients, the figure climbs to over $70 trillion.

Originally calculating losses in “downstream tax revenues as an index of the cost of abortion,” which showed only government revenue loss, Howard then turned to using lost GDP (GDP per capita per year times the cumulative number of abortions since 1970) as a measure of total economic cost.

“No matter how you slice it, aggressive ‘population control’ exacts a huge price in future economic growth that can never be recovered. Indeed, it is a loss that reverberates through all future generations. Without an enormous new Baby Boom lasting another 40 or 50 years, that growth is lost forever. We don’t have a debt crisis. We have a death crisis,” wrote Howard.

Howard mentions the collapse of the former Soviet Union as an example of a nation whose demographic implosion has contributed to its economic breakdown.

“The main reason for their collapse was internal — 300 abortions for every 100 live births for decades. Their future is still grim. Right now, there are not enough younger women to reverse their population decline. Indeed, they are expected to lose another 40 million people between now and 2050.”

This was, I think, utterly predictable. Abortion, like all sins, is not victimless, and in fact the scope of whom it victimizes is not limited to only the unborn child that is killed. The impact of abortion is felt also at a societal level, and for obvious reasons: society depends on humanity to produce more human beings. And in cultures where abortion and birth control have been de-stigmatized and/or legitimized, that is exactly what increasing numbers of human beings are either failing to do, or choosing not to do.

And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the result is nothing other than flirtation with societal collapse, whether at a governmental level (as in the Soviet example) or at a fiscal level (as in the American example).

Phillip Rosen writes in concerning this article from January.

I cannot understand why you would mention the horrible thought, that it is legal to kill that beautiful baby with scissors?

That is such a ridiculous, innacurate statement, that I discounted the rest of your article as simply not believable!

Well, good Reader…under Canadian law, the unborn are not persons with a right to life until completely free and clear of the mother’s body. There’s some legal ambiguity, as I understand it, concerning with interfering with a live birth…but on the other hand, I think that only applies to third parties. If the mother requests it, the termination of the partially-delivered child is legal in most Canadian jurisdictions.

That’s the sad reality; if it’s that disgusting, it should be commented on, the better to inspire change. And I think it is disgusting, and I think it should be changed…so I remark upon it.

(I may be incorrect, but to the best of my knowledge I am not. If I am, someone point me in the direction of the relevant statute, please!)

Reader Drumna Parx writes (on the day when Henry Morgentaler is to receive his Order of Canada, no less!):

Abortion might have saved the lives of some women who were raped, sick or went out drinking too often and were promiscuous…but I guess I am missing the point when you speak of child poverty. Thousand of immigrants have swarmed this country and have children left and right without any problems. Our governement is providing for them even more than it ever gave us. Those welfare services helping children, single mothers and poor families exist and whether or not Morgentaler had abortion legalized doesn’t seem to make much difference at this point!

Now, I confess that I’m at something of a loss as to which article Ms. Parx might be referring to here, if any. I’m also not entirely sure of her tone; I would hope that nothing I have said recently could be mistaken for something which is supportive of abortion, because that would be very far indeed from the truth of my thoughts and opinions. I’m wondering if she is perhaps thinking of Count Roland’s recent article, or perhaps my comments on the wretched concerns of Dr. Andre Lalande, who fears that the example of Sarah Palin might motivate more women to keep unborn babies that, in his opinion, they might not be “ready” to have.

As though one is ever “ready” to have a baby. Sorry, but if that’s your standard, you’ll die childless.

Abortion very likely has not “saved the lives” of any woman who was raped or who had to cope with the aftermath of a drunken romp, because the overwhelming majority (99%+) of pregnancies resulting from such things will probably progress normally, as pregnancies are wont to do. I will grant that in some medical cases, it is impossible to save both mother and child…although I’m not sure that such a surgery could rightly be termed an “abortion,” given that both mother and child would probably be saved were it possible. And given the pace at which medical technology is advancing, it may one day be possible, and then perhaps within my lifetime.

But I think Ms. Parx does raise an interesting point about Immigration and economics. If I am not misinformed, one of the “justifications” trotted out in defence of the odious practice is that it acts as a shield for economically disadvantaged women to prevent them from having to bear the cost of an unexpected baby (admittedly, raising a child is not exactly cheap). Except that in Canada, it is both very easy to game the public welfare system, and very easy to live at a reasonable standard on the public dime, even if one is raising a child. We don’t quite have the cradle-to-grave welfare that is so commonly found in European countries, but we come fairly close.

I spoke of gaming the welfare system, and the issue of having children is applicable here as well; more children equates to more welfare claimants, for example. Indeed, if one wants to rake in more than one’s reasonable share of the public purse, one would do well to have a few children, preferably by different fathers (why not boost one’s “victim” cred at the same time?), in order to maximize one’s potential “earnings.”

The government pours out huge amounts of dollars into those who are either unable or unwilling to work, so much so that many supposedly “poor” families have amenities that even a working family (such as my own) cannot afford; having sold big-screen televisions for a year or two, I can speak to this more directly than some others could hope to.

And indeed, at a glance, it does not seem to be the case that women who supposedly fit into the category of “economically disadvantaged” are the ones procuring all that many abortions, given the number of children that such women often seem to have. In many parts of the U.S., abortion is used as a method of birth control, and then by more well-off women. The same is true of immigrant communities, except perhaps where female children are concerned.

I don’t know…certainly, in my limited amount of work with the pro-life movement here in Alberta, I’ve not encountered too many arguments grounded in economics and demographics, but it might make for an interesting study.

As to Morgentaler’s reception of the award today, I’ve not much to say, except to note that it seems that cowards think alike.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I haven’t blogged all that much about the coming presidential elections, and perhaps I should be doing it more. Okay, I’ve had a fair bit to say about Sarah Palin, given the tone and quantity of hateful vitriol being directed at her. But in the end, she’s still just a VP pick; the race is not between her and her counterpart, but between her boss, and Joe Biden’s boss. That latter boss, Barack Hussein Obama, is actually a rather…concerning individual (I won’t say ’scary,’ because I don’t want to sound too much like a Lefty).

It’s not just Obama’s record of support for abortion, which is somewhere in the vicinity of 100% (he even, apparently, voted against the partial-birth abortion ban). Indeed, such is the depth of Obama’s support for a woman’s “right” to terminate the life of her unborn child that he won out at Planned Parenthood’s favoured candidate during the primaries, beating out Hillary Rodham Clinton!

That’s saying something, and not a good thing either.

But in addition to that, there’s his complicity in voter fraud — in this current election, as well as in previous ones! — perpetrated by ACORN. There’s also his advocacy for censorship, including internet Censorship — and the use of police and lawyers to silence those who disagree with his campaign platform or opinions. The man is altogether not fit to govern a democratic nation…and yet, his chances of doing so seem to be at least fair, if not quite good.

Of course, sorting out fact from fiction in election forecasts is becoming difficult these days, as the Anchoress points out. She also has this to say, about a few additional reasons why Obama should not be president…and some hopeful advice for concerned Christian voters facing the prospect of a man who is nearly the antithesis of almost everything they hold to be true and dear taking the office of President of the United States:

My advice: live in the Present Moment and ask God to reveal Himself and His plan for you in that moment. Not in the next moment, not in the past moment. Work on the present moment. If you can get a real grasp of that - and if you can remember that past and future are also constructs, because time itself is illusory - then you have no need to hyperventilate.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Go read Matthew, go read the Sermon on the Mount. It’s all about that.

Meanwhile, the press is getting upset about free speech, and suggesting that McCain/Palin are “inciting hate.” It wasn’t “inciting hate” when books and plays and films were made about how President Bush was a nazi, a baby-Hitler who should be assassinated. THAT was free speech. But now…hey, laughing at Obama and sneering at the lying, feckless press — that’s inciting hate, and that should be CENSORED. Get the waaahmublance for the press. They descended upon Palin like Jackals and didn’t think the public would notice.

Once again, we see that all the evils the left has projected upon Bush for these 8 years, are the ones that they harbor within themselves. Classic, classic projection. Bush has never censored anyone, or suggested as much, and he’s had nothing but hate and vile accusations made against him. These folks have made it clear, that censorship is something they really like.

Remember when Keith Olbermann called Bush a terrorist, a liar and a fascist? Yeah. Projection. Let’s talk about Obama some more.

F’rinstance, here’s more on Ayers and Obama.

I frankly think McCain should be hammering the origins of the economic crisis, but this is the path on which they’re choosing to run. And yes, it is important, too. It is important to know who the president of the nation is…which is precisely what the press has been trying so hard not to tell you. They did that once before, too. As Bob Owens notes here in this good piece - the Obama/Ayers/Dohrn association should not be dismissed.

Unless you prefer the illusion and the construct.

Bill Ayers is a terrorist, it should be noted, and a close political and personal friend of Obama. To put the silence of the press on this issue in its proper context, imagine for a moment the reaction if some scrap of evidence surfaced linking Todd Palin to Timothy McVeigh. I know, I know…hypothetical, and not particularly realistic. But let’s just suppose, for a moment, that such a link were even hinted at by some tangible scrap of evidence — an old yearbook photo, maybe.

Virtually every member of the press would experience an almost sexual ecstasy at the very idea, an ecstasy that would not cease until such time as Palin had been hounded off the Republican ticket, and McCain defeated in a landslide Obama victory. And we, the proles, the people, would never hear the end of it. The press would try and make even the most circumstantial connection between a Palin and McVeigh into a damning indictment of the Republican party, and an exposé of its close links to racist extremists, unto seven generations.

But on the very tangible connection between Obama and a Marxist/Maoist extremist who once plotted the murder of thousands of Americans?

Crickets.

Because the press is not interested in telling us about the real Barack Obama; they wish only to present us with the illusion.