Blog | Subscribe | Free Trial | Contact Us | Cart | Donate | Planned Giving
Log In | Search
facebook
rss
twitter
  • CURRENT
    • Winter 2023
    • NEWSworthy: What’s Happening and What It Means to You
    • Blog
    • INSISTING ON LIFE
    • Pastoral Reflections
    • About Us
    • HLF In The News
    • LIBERTY TO DO WHAT? Hadley Arkes and Rusty Reno join George McKenna June 1, 2022 in New York
  • DINNER
    • GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER 2022
    • HOST COMMITTEE Great Defender of Life Dinner 2022
    • Great Defender of Life 2022 Dinner Ticket
    • Great Defender of Life 2022 STUDENT or PREGNANCY CENTER STAFF Ticket
    • DINNER JOURNAL ADVERTISING 2022
  • ARCHIVE
    • Archive Spotlight
    • ISSUES IN HTML FORMAT
  • LEGACY
    • Planned Giving: Wills, Trusts, and Gifts of Stock
  • SHOP
    • Cart

Articles

Over 45 years of Life-Defending Articles At Your Fingertips
0 Comment

Keeping the Lights On

09 Nov 2012
William Murchison
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

 

          Re the Nov. 6 mess: First thing to say is, can we avoid the sin of over-extrapolation? The journalistic, not to say human, tendency is to ride every political tide out to sea and back. Gee, if we’re here now, won’t we be there tomorrow? History, a process full of accidents and unplanned events, doesn’t work so. (Remember Hurricane Sandy?) I don’t say this in a kiss-it-and-make-it-better sort of way after the fiasco of last Tuesday. I say it in order to preserve a measure of realism concerning the large cause of Life.

       It doesn’t look good—that’s true—when 55 percent of women vote for pro-choice, pro-gay marriage Barack Obama. Stanley Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, attempts to explain: “It’s not about abortion. It’s about women having a modern role, and [Republicans have] taken it to another level, where they’re talking about people losing contraception.” Aha. The Sandra Fluke brouhaha, needlessly elevated by Rush Limbaugh to a bashing contest over the alleged right to free contraception vs. the actual question at stake – has Washington, overriding religious convictions, the right to make Georgetown University, directly or indirectly, finance Ms. Fluke’s protection?

         Nor did it help that two Republican senatorial candidates—Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana—expressed in awkward ways their concern for the lives of the tiny percentage of babies born as a result of rape. There was more to the matter than these small episodes: namely, a lingering sense that Republican men (the brutes) are figures out of the black-and-white television era: obstacles to women’s growth and progress. A Los Angeles Times writer, Paul West, seemed this week to celebrate the passing of “the hegemony of the straight white male in America.” (If only I’d know I was once a hegemon!)

         The ground would appear to be shifting beneath our feet, harder and faster than ever. Should Republicans therefore surrender to the zeitgeist: dial down the pro-life stuff;  acknowledge that choice in marriage partners is as necessary as choice at the grocery store? I expect such advice to provoke plenty of head-nodding in coming months. The easiest policy in defeat is always surrender. Smiles and compliments come your way. Best to acknowledge reality—right?

       That would depend partly on one’s definition of reality. When women profess disproportionate admiration for the non-pro-life candidate, it gives concern. Bear in mind this, though: Politics—a game, at best, and generally an unsavory one—isn’t now and never has been the right field for sorting out the varied understandings of life. There isn’t supposed to be a Democratic or a Republican concept of the purposes for which humanity was shaped. Only in the past 40 years have particular voters come to think that Power, as contrasted with religion and tradition, has much to teach us along those lines. What do politicians know about these matters?

         How much, for that matter, do voters remember months after an election—what turned them on or off, who said what. The Fluke uproar? A genuine fluke, soon to lie as still as the consternation over Todd Akin’s infamous remark about rape. We may count on more discretion regarding how politicians deal with certain topics, maybe some disquietude (for now) about attacking Planned Parenthood. Which leaves some undoubted political concerns out there on the table; e.g., whether the government can get away with undercutting religious conviction in the evidently sacred name of “free contraception.” The war against Roe vs. Wade continues as usual. Most Americans support restrictions of some kind on abortion. Politicians will find ways to recognize this reality without sounding like Limbaugh clearing his throat. Nov. 6 wasn’t the end of civilization, as we know it. Crawling under the covers in a dark room—that would be more like the end.

2,127 people have visited this page. 1 have visited this page today.
About the Author
William Murchison

William Murchison, a former syndicated columnist, is a senior editor of the Human Life Review. He will soon finish his book on moral restoration in our time.

Social Share

  • google-share

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Comments will not be posted until approved by a moderator in an effort to prevent spam and off-topic responses.

*
*

captcha *

Get the Human Life Review

subscribe to HLR

Recent Posts

Wyoming Bans Abortion Pills

22 Mar 2023

Legal Issues on Chemical Abortions

13 Mar 2023

HHS weighs declaring access to abortion a "public health emergency’

08 Mar 2023

CURRENT ISSUE

Anne Conlon Anne Hendershott B G Carter Brian Caulfield Christopher White Clarke Forsythe Colleen O’Hara Connie Marshner David Mills David Poecking David Quinn Diane Moriarty Dr. Donald DeMarco Edward Mechmann Edward Short Ellen Wilson Fielding Fr. Gerald E. Murray George McKenna Helen Alvaré Jane Sarah Jason Morgan Joe Bissonnette John Grondelski Kathryn Jean Lopez Kristan Hawkins Laura Echevarria Madeline Fry Schultz Maria McFadden Maffucci Mary Meehan Mary Rose Somarriba Meaghan Bond Nat Hentoff Nicholas Frankovich Patrick J. Flood Peter Pavia Rev. George G. Brooks Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth Stephen Vincent Tara Jernigan Ursula Hennessey Victor Lee Austin Vincenzina Santoro W. Ross Blackburn Wesley J. Smith William Murchison

Pages

  • Issues
  • Human Life Foundation Blog
  • About Us
  • Free Trial Issue
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Planned Giving
  • TOPICS
  • GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER

Follow Us On Twitter

Tweets by @HumanLifeReview

Find Us On Facebook

Human Life Review/Foundation

Search our Website

Contact Information

The Human Life Foundation, Inc.
The Human Life Review
271 Madison Avenue, Room 1005
New York, New York 10016
(212) 685-5210

Copyright (c) The Human Life Foundation.