Slavery, Abortion, Truth, and Morality

“I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” - US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) on CBS’ 60 Minutes, January 6(!), 2019.

“In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.” - Katherine Maher, CEO, of National Public Radio, in a TED talk in 2022.

"Well, who ya gonna believe me or your own eyes?" In the 1933 movie Duck Soup, Groucho Marx unwittingly predicts political and ideological slippery slopes and gaslighting in the 21st Century.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize how multicultural Marxists and their useful idiots have made a mess of things - just look at college campuses today. But give them this - they’ve been wildly successful in their “long march through institutions.” That term was coined by one of their ideological patriarchs (trigger word!), Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, reportedly while imprisoned before his death in 1937. As reported by Bobby Harrington at the Christian website Renew.org:

The phrase is used to describe the intellectual takeover of a society without need to resort to a military conflict. Instead, the strategy focuses on slowly winning over the chief institutions that determine the direction of a culture and thereby creating a soft revolution from within those institutions. So, the focus was on the universities, then the unions, the arts, the K-12 schools, the media, then corporations, and finally the society as a whole.

According to Gallup, America now trails all major Western nations’ faith (among the “G7,” anyway) in fundamental institutions, from our military to churches and schools.

It gets worse.

Gramsci’s theory was complimented by Herbert Marcuse—all the rage on college campuses around the time I attended nearly 50 years ago—with “repressive tolerance.” That was about shifting the Overton Window (the range of acceptable political discourse) away from unacceptable speech. It practically advocates for the censorship we see on display today in the guise of curbing “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Normal Americans have been asleep at the wheel during this march through our institutions, even our churches, either in denial or in the belief that we were strong enough to deal with the crazies on either extreme, and somehow, their lunacy would go away. Oops.

This brings us to the abortion issue, arguably the moral issue of our time, at least since Roe v. Wade in 1973. A few others have been added, but abortion sits prominently in the First Chair. Few things are more fundamental to the American way of life than protecting and promoting life, liberty, and the “pursuit of happiness.” Life comes first in the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and inspired by the Virginia Declaration of Rights, largely crafted by George Mason.

Interestingly, references to abortion and slavery can’t be found in the Constitution. The framers either found it unnecessary, even unfathomable or unresolvable in the case of slavery. But they left behind principles that guide and inspire us even now.

Slavery was the moral issue of our time in much of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and we seem to have always had one or two moral issues since. After slavery, it was the prohibition of alcohol (see: 18th and 21st Amendments) for a while, then the fight against Nazis and the Axis powers during World War II.

Where’s the 101st Airborne, or National Guard troops, on some of our college campuses?

Racial segregation continued to fester through Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 began to pound nails into its coffin. Leading up to that, in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne to escort the “Little Rock Nine” into school over the objection of racist Democratic Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus.

Jews looking to ensure access to classes at Columbia or Berkley? You’re out of luck with the Biden Administration.

While the finest government founding document in world history, the Constitution wasn’t perfect. The framers and founders, while brilliant, lost their wrestling match with southern slavery and kicked the can down the road (pardon the mixed metaphors) until Appomattox in April 1865 and 600,000 war dead later, not including those dying from dysentery and imprisonment. Even then, it remained culturally unresolved despite the 13th and 14th Amendments. Even now.

Of course, we’re still dealing with racial issues. A proverbial melting pot, we probably always will. However, thanks to multiculturalism and intersectionality, racism is being turned on its head, a cultural and political cudgel in the never-ending quest for power. Racism is now fine so long as it is targeted at whites and, by extension, Jews. The means justify the ends. And it won’t end well.

There are many similarities with the abortion debate today, which probably won’t be resolved in my or my children’s lifetimes. Maybe my grandchildren will live to see it resolved. Except it isn’t limited to abortion. It is really about how we value and treat life itself at all stages, which includes Canada’s moral issue of their time, euthanasia, or “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID. Or, as one Canadian says, “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.” And if Democrats are successful in the US on abortion, that’s next.

And be careful what is considered “mental illness” that might result in a prescription for “medical assistance in dying.” “You’re opposed to vaccines? You may be mentally ill. We have a solution for that.” Slippery slopes, indeed.

Through most of the era when Roe v. Wade was debated after its ignominious ruling in January 1973, pro-life supporters suggested a game of word substitution. Replace “abortion” with “slavery” in some of “pro-choice” rhetoric. You know, like this:

“If you don’t want a slave, don’t get one.”

“My slave, my choice.”

“I’m against slavery, but. . .”

I can hear abortion rights proponents chirping that the slavery and abortion issues are not related, but I have news for them. Both sides have used the slavery issue in defense of their position, with “pro-choice” advocates claiming that the pro-life position is practically “forced labor.” Andrew Koppleman, a Northwestern University law professor: “Laws against abortion define women as a servant caste and enforce that definition with criminal sanctions. This is the same kind of injury that antebellum slavery inflicted on blacks, and it therefore violates women's thirteenth amendment rights.”

I sense the late US Senator and presidential candidate Stephen Douglas stirring in his grave. Douglas was a proponent of “popular sovereignty” on the issue of admitting states to the Union during the mid-19th century, trying to assuage public opinion. Let’s states decide whether they could allow slaves or not, Douglas said, since the Constitution was silent (never mind that pesky Declaration or the Bill of Rights). Douglas strongly defended preserving the Union until he died in 1861, but chattel slavery? Your state, your choice.

There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life ... That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to be concerned.

                                                                       Jesse Jackson, February 13, 1975.

Just like the abortion debate today. Donald Trump, seeking to return to the Presidency and never one to be constrained by moral issues, is channeling Douglas in his abortion rhetoric, mirroring much of the rhetoric from previous Supreme Court decisions and dissents.

As a matter of law, Trump is correct, as was a majority of the Supreme Court in its Dobbs decision when it struck down Roe, as was the late Antonin Scalia in his famous dissent of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. As a matter of public morality, not so much, and the implications are yuge. That wasnt’ the job of a court of law, but it is the responsibility of a President and a Congress.

A social evil must inevitably 'progress' through a process that always requires three steps;

(1) the social engineers describe the behavior as a 'necessary evil' while they work to legalize it;

(2) when the behavior is legal, it is reclassified as a morally neutral issue that nobody can really pass judgment on;

(3) finally, the supporters of the behavior defend it as a positive good and resist any and all efforts to limit it in any way while making sure that it becomes entrenched at all levels of government.

— American Life League

California Gov. Gavin Newsom very publicly and aggressively is promoting abortion tourism to his decaying state, even erecting billboards, paid for by his political campaign committee in “red” states, promoting access to abortion at any time, for any reason, in the Golden State.

California, where unborn children go to die.

To be sure, the abortion debate is complex and nuanced. We deserve a robust and detailed discussion on reasonable exceptions and respect for everyone who is honestly and sincerely engaged. That includes open and inquisitive minds, respect for others, and a desire to seek common ground without overt political agendas.

Yeah, I know; good luck with that. But why not try? Or, at least, keep trying?

Democrats, with a failing and infirm president, a wildly unpopular, cackling, and indecipherable vice president, and no other issues on which to run, have seized - pounced! - on free and unfettered abortion as their ticket to electoral paradise and political power. And given recent election results in Ohio and Kansas, red states where voters rejected the “pro-life” position, they have ample incentive. The latest example is Arizona, although GOP state legislators are working to circumvent an 1864 territorial law to allow abortions up to 15 weeks.

Which, as we’ve said before, affects about 1 percent of abortions performed under Roe v. Wade.

All this warfare over a distinction without a difference.

The vast majority of abortions - elective and otherwise - occur well before that time frame (6-12 weeks). But that’s not stopping Democrats from seizing the rhetorical low ground and falsely claiming that Republicans want to ban all abortions. It’s a big lie; no current state law does that, but that’s not stopping them. And gullible people are buying it. Remember, it’s all about political power.

Even in Tennessee. And that’s the latest controversy.

A Tennessee woman left her state to abort a child who was dying in her womb, claiming state law prohibited her from a potentially life-saving abortion. It's too bad she didn’t read state law, which, like every state, puts the mother’s life above the human life within her when her existence is affected. She’s returned to run for the state legislature to change the state’s law. I’m not sure what she’s trying to change since that law appears to protect her access to an abortion in her specific case.

Other states, from Missouri to Oklahoma, are seeing abortion advocates attempt to place initiatives on the ballot to drive turnout, not necessarily to protect abortion but to help Democratic candidates on the ballot. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Look at who is organizing the ballot propositions and where.

Will it work? The jury is out. Most Americans favor reasonable restrictions on abortion. A recent poll (there are so many) suggests Americans are not on board with the broadly held Democratic position to “trust women” at any time, for any reason, up to and maybe through birth. Just ask former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat and former Pediatric surgeon, as he articulates a commonly-held Democratic position shared by then-State Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

Keep the infant comfortable until the mother decides whether to kill it. Dear God, that is sick and evil.

Life, not abortion, is the moral issue of our time, and it’s long past time to reframe the debate. Republicans and conservatives are losing the debate over a very persuasive “who decides” retort over terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Either life matters, or it doesn’t, and then, who decides? The government, full of Anthony Faucis? There’s a middle ground here if Republicans will take it and talk about it.

It is not enough for Republicans and conservatives to mimic Stephen Douglas’s failed proposition. Life is the moral issue of our time. Do the work, be smart, take a stand, defend, and then prepare to deal with “medical assistance in dying.” You remember Jack Kevorkian. It’s okay if we “go incremental,” as former Gov. Nikki Haley indicated. Incrementalism—something the left has used with great success—is a worthy strategy. You have to start somewhere. Ducking and hiding is the dumbest thing to do. It’s okay to play the long game. Democrats and Marxists do.

It’s not hard to articulate the cause for life, but it will take work and time. I’ve shown you how before. Remember, it’s about life at all its stages, not abortion. It’s not too late, but it’s time to get off the sidelines. We have a country - and children - to save.

Go on offense. Choose the side of truth and morality. Trump won’t do it, but you can.