THOUGH ALL THE WORLD BE SILENT

George Tiller spent his days systematically slaughtering helpless children in the womb. His murderous practice focused especially on those near birth, and included techniques that required literally tearing them limb from limb. Like Shakespeare's homicidal tyrant, Macbeth, he was unafraid of what he himself did make, "strange images of death."

On Sunday, May 31, 2009 an assailant killed Tiller as he took time off from his professional endeavors to attend church services.

Jim Pouillon spent his days sitting in a lawn chair holding up signs that contrasted images of living babies with the gut-wrenching images of dead babies, like the victims of Tiller's handiwork.

On Friday, September 11, 2009 an assailant murdered Pouillon as he practiced his vocation in front of Owosso High School in Michigan.

Tiller died while trying, through a false show of piety, to distract people from his perpetration of a crime the Bible tells us God hates (The taking of innocent life is an abomination.)

Pouillon died while trying, in true piety, to rouse the just heart of people around him to the ugliness of that crime, and their duty to respect the children whom God has told us He especially loves.

After Tiller's death, those who praise and protect his murderous profession blamed peaceful pro-life witnesses like Jim Pouillon for the killing, (with headlines like this one Why the Right Shoots Abortion Doctors not Child Traffickers from Huffingtonpost.com.) They demanded that pro-life leaders condemn the killing. Their footmen in the Obama faction rushed "US Marshalls to protect abortion clinic [sic] and doctors around the country."

In the wake of Jim Pouillon's murder, these footmen of the culture of death have little to say. They, and their servile so-called "mainstream media" claque try to hide or downplay the unrighteous hatred that was the motive for the murder. Their agents in power, far from offering protection to peaceful witnesses for life around the country, can barely conceal the encouragement they gave to such murders when they officially proclaimed the lie that law enforcement officers should regard pro-life witnesses as terrorists in waiting.

Some pro-life leaders have called on the cult of death's prominent acolytes to condemn Jim Pouillon's murder. I say that people of conscience should not care what these death cultists condemn. They are wily advocates of the specious 'right' to murder children in the womb. Their condemnation of murder is worth about as much as George Tiller's piety. It means nothing because their hands are full of blood.

They purposefully harden the human heart against the just claims of innocent human life, whether it sleeps in the womb or sits in a lawn chair, bearing prayerful witness that invokes God's authority in support of those claims. (The force of that authority is revealed in the discomfiting jolt of repugnance most people feel when they see images of babies like those that died at George Tiller's hands.) They deny the intrinsic worth of human life in its beginnings. Therefore, they devalue human beings whatever their stage of life. They purposefully open the way to bureaucratic abuse of the elderly and infirm through health care rationing. They purposefully blunt the righteous hatred of terrorist acts, such as those that claimed the lives of thousands on that other September 11 in 2001.

I care not for their silence, nor for that of all the world. I care only for the blood of Jim Pouillon. Like the blood of Abel it cries out from the ground. Though human ears are deaf; though human lips are silent; God hears. God speaks.

He speaks with the voice of millions, children crying out for joy, As the gates of heaven open, as the angels' songs deploy.

O, to hear that chorus singing, trumpet voices clear and strong, Rousing heaven's host to witness as Christ brings Jim Pouillon home.

Birther or Deather- which would you rather be?

A Meditation Especially for Fellow Christians (and those willing to think so.)

Much of my thought and writing in recent days has, not surprisingly, focused on the events and issues involved in the current battle over the national, socialist takeover of the health care sector being engineered by the Obama faction. Though a discussion of health should focus on how best to strengthen and preserve life, I am struck by the deep preoccupation with killing and death the Obama faction's proposals have forced upon us.

For all his hollow rhetoric of hope and compassion, the inescapable essence of Obama's actions reveals that killing and death are the foundation stones of his political vision. To reduce health care costs he proposes to establish institutions and practices that pressure the elderly and infirm toward self-abnegation and self-harvesting. To advance his political ambition he promotes as rightful action the killing of innocent children in the earliest stages of life. To gratify the demands of the licentious elite that has made him their idol of self-worship, he works to clear the way for those who seek to legitimize an understanding of human sexuality that encourages individuals to turn away from the responsibilities of natural procreation. Thus he extends the shadow of death through self-extinction to the whole human race.

Pope John Paul the Great roused Christians to recognize and reject the culture of death. Today there can be no doubt that Barack Obama is its great High Priest. The platform of the Presidency offers him unparalleled opportunities to promote it, and to draw the American people ever deeper into complicity with its rejection of the Creator's authority and intention. Ironically, those who demand an investigation into the inadequate credentials Obama has offered as proof of his Constitutional eligibility to wield the power of the Presidency, have been derided as 'birthers' by detractors who openly or covertly adhere to the cult of death he represents.

Though intended for derision, the term may aptly apply to people like me. After all, we fight to vindicate the right of birth for every child conceived in the mind of the Creator, God. We fight to preserve society's obligation by law to respect the natural family that is the first belonging and birthright of every human being. We fight to defend respect for the understanding of right and justice that requires all legitimate government to secure the unalienable rights inherent in the Creator's conception of our humanity.

Why do the deriders think we should cringe and be ashamed when they call us by an epithet that brings to mind our faithful allegiance to the truths upheld in America's great Declaration of Independence? I would rather be an advocate of life and birth, than a cultist of child murder and self-inflicted death. I would rather be held up for ridicule as a 'birther' than identified with the 'deathers' who idolize Obama at the expense of truth and reason, offering themselves as the vanguard of the future of tyranny and human self-immolation he represents.

The term 'deather' is not original with me, of course. I have seen or heard it elsewhere. But I am more and more taken with the aptness of the term. The specter and promotion of death lurks somewhere in every element of the Obama faction's agenda. I remember in particular the pro-abortion women who were demonstrating at Notre Dame. They sought to drown out the words and witness of people gathered to decry the homage being done to the idol of death by university administrators falsely identifying themselves with faith in the Tree of Life that is Jesus Christ. "Without abortion rights, women cannot be free," they chanted. This mantra truly epitomizes the principle Obama means to substitute for the self-evident truths on which America bases its understanding of freedom, beginning with the unalienable right to life. It clearly outlines the real import of the choice Americans face.

Which are we: a people that defines its freedom in terms of our obligation to respect the right to life, and the natural responsibility for procreation and self-government it entails; or a people that defines its freedom in terms of the right to murder our offspring, thereby rejecting the natural obligation of parents to love and care for their children and of children to respect and care for the lives of their aging parents?

Are we 'birthers' looking before and after to the origin of life in God's goodwill; or 'deathers' who assault the living image of God that represents His goodwill toward our humanity, so as to revel momentarily in the false similitude with God that appears seductively (to us as to Eve, the mother of us all) in the choice to transgress its provisions?

Deathers shall be delivered ( first in the throes of seeming pleasure and proud self-approval, but then forever grieving) from the body of this death to the inconsolable similitude of dying without end. Who cares to join them, while the Tree of Life still beckons, while Christ is standing nigh? I pray God it is not you or I.

The Notre Dame Scandal- A Brief Report

Last Friday (May 8) I and others concerned with Notre Dame's scandalous invitation and extension of an honorary degree to Barack Obama were engaged in peaceful, prayerful witness to truth on the Notre Dame Campus. We walked onto the campus praying the rosary and pushing strollers that illustrated the Church's teaching with respect to the objective evil of abortion. At the behest of Father John Jenkins, the President of the University, we were detained by the UND police and turned over to the civil authorities. At the time of our arrest we were not defying civil law, but obeying the laws of God and the directives of the Church and its leadership. We sought to counteract the scandalous impression given by University authorities that it is compatible with Christian faith and Catholic teaching to honor and hold up as an example of good conduct someone who has made himself the focus of abortion evil in the world today.

Yesterday I sent a letter to David Tyson, the Provincial Superior of the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross urgently requesting a hearing at which I and the others injured by Father Jenkins' abuse of his authority can present our grievances and seek relief. Unlike Father Jenkins, we are acting with respect for Christ's instruction that people of faith should work out their differences within the communion of the faithful before calling upon civil authorities who may or may not act with respect for the laws of God and the teachings of the Church. This is why I sought to meet with Father Jenkins before I joined in the spiritual rescue efforts occasioned by the University's scandalous behavior. He did not respond to my request. In this he displayed the same obdurate indifference to spiritual considerations that has exemplified his conduct throughout this scandalous affair. He has encouraged a bunker mentality within the University of Notre Dame community, by treating other members of the Body of Christ, even those in communion with the Holy See, as if we are "outsiders".

This mentality contradicts the "emphasis on Community in Catholicism" cited in the University's mission statement but utterly ignored in the actions ordered by Father Jenkins and his colleagues. Archbishop Burke of the Vatican and the American bishops who have asked that the invitation and honorary degree be withdrawn; the hundreds of thousands who have signed the petition with the same plea; the millions of Catholics and prolife Christians they represent: though part of the Church communion, the body of Christ or the community of the faithful, all are apparently to be treated as criminals if they dare to set foot on the Notre Dame campus to question the University administration's will and judgment.

Where is the humility that should characterize Christian leadership? Where is the love toward other believers that should give glory to God? Instead of ordering arrests and persecution, a true Catholic and Christian heart should seek to converse in order to instruct (if there is misunderstanding) or to learn. Instead Father Jenkins has reacted with a harshness that bespeaks fearful guilt, using force to dispose of opposition. If, despite the opinion of the Vatican, the bishops and so many of the laity, he and his colleagues are right to honor evil, why are they afraid to deal openly and respectfully with both the Church authorities and fellow believers who disagree?

They react with forceful abuses of their authority because they cannot properly defend their action in terms of the laws of God and the teachings of the Catholic Church. They therefore substitute force for persuasion. In this too they honor evil, by imitating its methods.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

[FYI: This past weekend Fox news reported the arrest of Randall Terry as he protested against Notre Dame's invitation and honorary degree for Barack Obama. (See Notre Dame: Promoting the Glamour of Evil, and An Open Letter to Father Jenkins.) According to the report "Terry was taken to the St. Joseph County Jail on criminal trespass charges." He has since been released after posting a bond. In light of this occurrence, I feel bound in conscience to make the following statement, commitment and call to all who labor in defense of the God given and unalienable right to life.]

With the arrest of pro-life servant Randall Terry, Father Jenkins and the University administration at Notre Dame take their adulation of evil to a new level of spiritual atrocity.

In a little less than two weeks they will welcome to the university campus a man who represents the most abominable and extreme commitment ever known in US politics to destroying the God given right to life of innocent human offspring. With their actions and the "honor" they confer upon Obama, they will actively promote the lie that it is possible to dishonor God blatantly and unashamedly, yet be somehow "honorable" in the eyes of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ said

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:31-40)

These words must ring in the ears of faithful Christians as they consider the grim reality of abortion. Every time abortionists rip a child limb from limb within the womb; every time they crush an infant's fragile head; every time they have scorched the life from its body with a death dealing chemical solution; every time they scrape its nascent cells of life from the walls of a womb- Jesus is savagely beaten again; his skull pressed down with thorns; his limbs pulled recklessly in their sockets; his hands and feet pierced through with nails; his breaths infused with fiery pain; his life finally extinguished; every time.

And every time there stands vociferous in the taunting crowd, the ambitious man of blood, Barack Obama. He is crying aloud, "Let Him be crucified." He is justifying the torture, forcing bystanders to aid in the atrocity, assuring that the nails are paid for and the henchmen of evil well fed and rewarded for their role in the daily crucifixion. Even the garments of the innocent children (their little organs or their stem cells), like the vesture of Christ, he prepares for division among those who perpetrate the slaughter.

All his life Randall Terry, seeing this passion play of evil repeated over and over again in our day, has born witness bravely and shamelessly against it. On the day of crucifixion, Christ endures the punishment reserved for infamous rebels and criminals. Fearing that they too would be treated as criminals, Peter and most of the other disciples run and hide. So too do many of us today. Though we profess to believe that abortion breaks God's fundamental law, we will not stand boldly with Jesus as he endures humiliating injustice. We fear for ourselves and shrink from association with the bloody and terrible images of torture and death. But through the years Randall Terry, and those who share his lion's heart for justice, have stood with the Mother of our Lord at the foot of the Cross. They have been sprinkled with the blood and water that gushed from his wounded side. They have received from the pierced and bleeding hand of the Lord the Blessed Gift by which he made his Mother Our Lady (Notre Dame), the mother of all the faithful ones who endure with Him to the end, receiving His crown of pain, which is also the crown of life.

Instead of cringing inwardly at Randall Terry's bold willingness to be arrested for bearing witness to God's truth, those who understand the gift of Christ's words and example must be moved to imitate his boldness. Tragically, ironically, a supposedly Catholic university and its administration have stepped forward to be the Bull Connors of this era's most clear and pressing battle for God given human rights. They have declared it an offense peacefully to demonstrate the evil of abortion. They have declared it an offense, prayerfully to bear witness to truth on a campus supposedly guided by and subordinate to that truth. Though it is an offense to them, it is a duty to Truth, and to Christ and to God. Wherever there are faithful hearts drawn to do this duty, they must feel now the vocation to join Randall Terry in defiance of this intimidation. I will join him. I ask others who all these years have prayed and labored for the unborn to join us. I know you are there. I have broken bread with you at dinners for crisis pregnancy centers and right to life groups. I have marched with you to proclaim the sanctity of innocent life, and decry the laws that sanction its destruction. I have been uplifted by your faith, your perseverance, your love of God and His son. The forces of evil mean to lay final claim to a place supposed to be within the precincts of our God and Lord. Come what may, we must come forth now to occupy and hold it against them.

I will go to South Bend. I will step foot on the Notre Dame campus to lift up the standard that protects the life of the innocent children of this and every generation. I will do it all day and every day until, if it be God's will, shame and the love of Christ overcome the university administration's vain craving for iniquitous "honor". I will do it though it means I shall be housed every day in the prison house of lies and injustice that Obama, Jenkins and their minions now mean to construct for those who will never be still and silent in the face of their mockery of God and justice, their celebration of evil.

If this be trespass, then forgive us our trespasses and join us in trespassing until the South Bend jail is filled to overflowing with witnesses to truth; filled beyond capacity; filled until we break the most onerous shackles of all- the ones that bind the heart and mind to evil and our nation to the path of its moral and spiritual destruction.

An Open Letter to Father Jenkins

An Open Letter to Father Jenkins

President of the University of Notre Dame

I pray God that you, and the Trustees and Faculty of the University of Notre Dame will reconsider your decision to extend an Honorary Degree to Barack Obama, and that you will withdraw your invitation to him to speak at the University's Commencement exercises in May. As leaders in the American Catholic community do you not hold to the Church's teaching with regard to the inviolable sanctity of human life, and against the heinous practice of abortion?

The issue at stake in the fight against abortion is starkly simple: Are all human beings created equal, or not? It is the same issue that was at stake in the fight against slavery and racial discrimination.

As an American who subscribes to the self-evident truths our country was founded upon, I answer the question in favor of equality. As a descendant of enslaved Black Americans, I believe that any other answer would invalidate the struggle for justice to which so many Americans of all races gave their lives.

Given that the principle at stake is the same as that which demanded opposition to slavery, I have always had a simple test when dealing with any question involving abortion. I ask myself what I would do or say if slavery was the issue in question. I recommend this test for your consideration. Ask yourself whether you would invite as a Commencement speaker an individual who abused the authority of office to provide Federal funding for the purchase of slaves. Would you consider it honorable for the University to confer an honorary degree on an individual who issued executive orders allowing US funds to be used to support slave markets? Would you let the University be used to give stature to a politician who supported the position that ownership of slaves is a matter of individual choice?

I hope and assume that the answer to all of these questions is no. Since you have chosen to answer otherwise where abortion rather than slavery is at issue, you must see a moral difference between enslaving grown people and killing nascent ones. Or else you see a moral difference between the nascent child in the abortuary and the slave on the auction block. As a Black, Catholic, prolife American, I challenge you to explain the difference to me and to everyone like me. Perhaps you make a distinction because the child is more helpless, more imperatively incapable of voluntary wrongdoing, more explicitly acknowledged by Christ to be the subject of His special regard? (Matthew 18:6, Luke 17:2) Or perhaps it's because some refuse to recognize the nascent child's humanity?

Whenever someone raises the latter objection I remember a speech Frederick Douglass made in which he felt compelled to make arguments for the humanity of black Americans because, he said, "A respectable public journal, published in Richmond Virginia., bases its whole defence [sic] of the slave system upon a denial of the Negro's manhood." You see, people once raised a question about that, which supposedly Catholic Christians (including some no doubt from my home state of Maryland) probably used at that time to justify their commerce with slaveholders; their willingness to hold in honor those who practiced or defended slavery; or even their own willingness to hold slaves themselves.

When I read of slavery in my youth I could not understand why so many tolerated such evil for so long. I asked God to help me never in my life to be such as they were. Once I fully understood the nature of the abortion issue, I was moved to stand against abortion and the slaughter of innocent life as I would have wanted all people of conscience and goodwill to stand against slavery and the rape of my forbears' liberty. When people suggest that Barack Obama shares some heritage with me, I know better. For the truest test of that heritage is not the color of someone's skin, but the determination of their heart, never to stand silently by while God's fundamental law of justice is denied to persons whose only crime is the unjustly despised appearance of their humanity.

I know that the Catholic Church today is guilty of no such dereliction. The Holy Father, the clergy, and millions of the laity have joined together in prayer, and work and sacrifice to bear witness against the wrong of abortion, to bear witness against a false idea of choice that betrays God-given liberty. Your University bears the name of the Blessed Mother of Christ, who honored God's will for human life though it could have meant her own dishonor in the minds of her contemporaries. Even if, as you say, Obama's visit does worldly honor to you and your colleagues, what is more consistent with her example: to seek honor at the expense of God's truth, or to forego it if need be, in obedience to His loving will.

I realize that such a decision is not so much for thought as for prayer. So I ask that you give prayerful consideration to the plea that is on my heart, and on the hearts of millions like me. This may well be a teaching moment for Obama and other politicians like him. But sometimes one deed speaks more certainly of truth than many words could do. Thus spoke the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Are we not called to act as He did? Perhaps the best Commencement speech of all would be the testimony of silence, in which, perhaps for the first time, someone who needs to hear it will hear the voice of Rachel, weeping. (Matthew 2:18)

With Pleasing Hope for Life,

Alan Keyes

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Notre Dame: Promoting the Glamour of Evil

"Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin? (From the Roman Catholic Rite of Baptism)

Apparently the Catholic folks at Notre Dame University have no more respect for the Baptismal vows they renew every Easter than their invited Commencement Speaker this year has for the Presidential Oath of Office. At this moment in time, Barack Obama is the living incarnation of the glamour of evil. His smiley tones and non-threatening manner mask a studied commitment to the promotion of the most deadly form of evil in the world today- the cult of abortion centered on the ritual of child sacrifice. Obama has moved with impetuous determination to prove his claim to the mantle of High Priest of the Worldwide Abortion cult. With Executive orders he has shifted the resources of the U.S. government behind the global implementation of abortion. He has declared open season on embryonic human life. He has appointed enthusiastic political and judicial acolytes of this cult of death to high positions in the Executive and Judicial branches.

Even before these actions there was no rational basis for pretending to doubt his absolute commitment to the evil of abortion for its own sake. There can be no other explanation for his opposition, while an Illinois state Senator, to the bipartisan effort in the legislature to end the heinous practice of infanticide against innocent babies- delivered in the course of an abortion attempt; wrapped in soiled linens; and left on a cart to languish without medical care or any human comfort until they died. His only real explanation for refusing to support an end to this abominable practice was the cold-blooded logic that any interference with the mother's intention to kill the child would damage so-called abortion rights.

The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is objective evil of the most deadly spiritual kind. Obama embraces this evil for its own sake, without even the specious calculus of cost and benefit to cloak the true nature of his devotion. Except the Notre Dame University community consciously wishes to promote similar devotion in its students, there can be no valid explanation for their willingness to extend a platform to such a man. They cannot plead respect for his supposed High Office, unless they mean to suggest that it is consistent with Catholic teaching or the Lord's example to put such worldly reverence above the reverence for God, and the sacred laws commanding respect for innocent human life. Human honor cannot redeem that which God abhors. It cannot clear away the stain and curse that mars it. Vox Populi, Vox Dei is no maxim for the Body of Christ.

Nor can apologists at Notre Dame point to any positions he takes, or worldly programs he promises that can offset the sacrifice of spiritual integrity his unapologetic support for the cult of child sacrifice entails. It may be that he has gained the whole world's momentary adulation and tinsel honor. But as Christ spoke true, his soul is forfeit in the bargain, and the gain is as nothing compared to the cost.

Neither can they plead respect for the historic breakthrough his election supposedly represents. How can one who withdraws the protection of God's ordained equality of rights from innocent, helpless children claim to represent the triumph of justice over the very evils, born of greed and passion, unleashed by disregard for that equality? The vicious heart of selfish passion that perverted the souls of slave masters or self-worshiping lynch mobs, is the same heart offered in service to the Father of lies and evil in the abortion cult.

In the literal sense therefore, Barack Obama is the incarnation of what the Catholic Church identifies as the epitome of evil in the world today. What Notre Dame has done puts the stamp of Catholicity upon him, as if there is no absolute contradiction between what he advocates and represents and what can honorably be presented from platforms that benefit from the auspices of the Church. A Commencement speech represents a word spoken at the beginning of a new stage of life. In the literal sense it represents a principle for thought and action. Are we seriously to believe that some morally truthful argument can be made that justifies presenting Barack Obama in a Catholic context, as one who speaks for decent moral principle? It is sophomoric to suggest that any good thing he promises, promotes or even implements can compensate for his declared war upon the very principle of goodness, which is nowhere more clearly at stake than in the law of love that shrouds, protects and sanctifies our reverence for innocent human life. What Catholic theology makes good the rationalization that good works somehow supply the deficiency of a spirit and will that in the innocent person of the child, defile and abuse the very image of God Himself?

Given the evil he represents, Notre Dame's invitation to Obama is a slavish capitulation to the glamour of evil. Across America there are people of many different hues and denominations who devote themselves to the protection of innocent life, respect for the God-ordained family, and promotion of social justice in ways that conform with the principle of subsidiarity that respects human responsibility before God for the exercise of freedom His will for us makes possible. The world does not elevate them to platforms of power. Indeed it threatens them with punishment; ridicules and reviles their single-hearted devotion to Christ's example; relegates them to what it believes are the dingy fringes of respectability and esteem. Yet where is Christ to be found more than in those willing to bear with him the cross of human anguish on the long climb toward Calvary and the sacrifice that redeems mankind from the burden of sin? Rather than give an honorable platform to an evil man the world admires, a Catholic institution would do better to offer students a voice that speaks from the depths of this redemptive anguish, with a heart that sees past the glamour and power of evil, to the truth that will someday repel and triumph over it.

In an era when the Catholic Church in America still reels from the damaging effect of leaders who seem to connive at what gives scandal to the faithful, this scandalous gesture of admiration and respect toward the man who best represents the temporary triumph of evil over America's public life is a renewed scandal. As the first reeked of worldly fear and selfish licentiousness, this reeks of death and the prideful embrace of the doctrine that rejects the sovereignty of God in order to make man the master of life and death, right and wrong, hope and salvation. Catholics who abhor such scandal need to speak out. With one voice we should say to Notre Dame what Joshua said to the people of Israel: "If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve…" (Josue 24:15)

As a Catholic I earnestly pray to God, and ask of our Church leaders, that they make clear that this invitation cannot stand. If it stands, the scandalous lesson of subservience to human pride and power will lengthen the shadow of spiritual corruption that still haunts the Church. But if it is rebuked and withdrawn, every Catholic and Christian heart submissive to the sovereignty of God, as they bear witness to the affirmation of its truth, will be emboldened to speak and act with courage, even in the teeth of the whole world's scornful power.

This may also be an opportunity to begin the work that may someday turn Obama's heart from evil. Rather than confirm him in his present heedless service to objective evil, confront Him with the truth that there are Christian hearts that honor God above any man or human office. The seed planted by that confrontation will remind him of the true spirit of liberty. And it might someday grow up to impel him to repent of evil, who knows? With God, all things are possible.

UPDATE (March 22): Anyone wishing to help communicate opposition to Notre Dame's action can sign the petition at this site sponsored by the Cardinal Newman society. All who appreciate the sponsorship of evil signified by Notre Dame's invitation are welcome to sign, of course.

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Obama's Spending Frenzy and the Cult of Child Sacrifice

"…for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. I will very gladly spend and be spent for you…" (2 Corinthians 12:14)

"For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing… (Matthew 13:15)

By now most Americans not willfully assuming the three monkeys pose acknowledge that the present mad frenzy of bailouts, pork binging and budgetary abandon are driving the nation into the depths of a Mariana trench of indebtedness. Despite the self-serving prognostications of the politicians and purported economic geniuses driving us into this madness, it looks increasingly like the desperate thrashings of a drowning victim compulsively sucking deep into his lungs the water that will seal his fate. Once water fills the lungs the only question is, how long the body can sustain itself without air? For our body politic that means wondering whether the bankruptcy of the nation will hit us now, or not until the overhang of debt breaks off to crush another generation. The dead weight of debt destroys us either way, but our heedless willingness to live on the hope that our children will be the ones destroyed by it reveals the essential nature of our depravity. We have exchanged the parents' natural sense of duty toward their children for an unnatural willingness to make of them an offering to the fierce gods of our ambitious pastimes.

Many people who profess to be Christian are actually supporting and applauding this mentality of child sacrifice. I guess that, with the easygoing smorgasbord mentality too often characteristic of some self-described believers in our time, they choose not to have ears when they get to Scriptural passages like the words of Paul quoted above. Apparently God's lesson to Abraham, most emphatically confirmed in the life and fate of Jesus Christ, has no power to instruct them. It does not warn them against their sacrifice of new Isaacs on the altar of what they claim is dedication to good things like charity, compassion and justice. "We serve the god of love, in this sacrifice," they seem to say "therefore it is righteousness." But if their god demands this of them, what they worship is not truly the God who revealed Himself through the book they profess to believe in. For He made it clear that no offering can save us but only the one that He wills, and has provided, begotten from eternity in the love that informs all of Creation.

Quietly, and perhaps sometimes without being conscious of it, such believers sympathize with those who chide folks like myself for unequivocally rejecting the political idol they have set up as their totem of change and progress. We are unreasoning fanatics who insist upon a false perfection, unwilling to balance good and evil in the scales of rational calculation. They do not remember the wisdom of Solomon, who understood that the willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children gives the lie to our professions of kindness. True human kindness acts with loving respect for their wholesome existence. Like Paul and Jesus Christ true parents would rather lay down their own lives than offer up their children's, even to serve their sense of righteousness.

Tragically for these idol worshiping believers, the chief distinguishing feature of their new age totem openly flaunts this abandonment of wholesome respect for life. He advocates and consistently promotes the cultish ritual of abortion, appointing to power those who have assiduously promoted and proclaimed its central mystery, the redemptive efficacy of child sacrifice. Women are blessed by it with relief from the punishment of carrying their offspring. Health is blessed by it, with the specious advances promised by embryo destroying stem cell research. The world is blessed by it, through U.S. funding of programs that promote abortion for population control and social engineering.

If we could resurrect our offspring, as God did, perhaps we might excuse with power our rejection of His redemptive offering. But for all its Dr. Frankenstein pretensions, our technological prowess can destroy, distort and exploit human life, but its creation remains beyond our capacity. We deny, but cannot solve, its mystery. However if, as Christians profess to believe, God's Word reveals truth, there is no mystery about the evil involved in the destruction of innocent life. Are the Christian idol-worshipers like the Israelites, falling down before a golden calf in the very presence of God's Word? Perhaps they are, even down to the treasure they borrow to enamel it, secured by the aborted hopes not just of one child, or even a multitude, but of our whole posterity. "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." (Matthew, 13:9)

Steele and the GOP- No Reason for Victory

The name of Abraham Lincoln is used and abused a good deal these days. Despite his overt rejection of the principles Lincoln strove to preserve, Obama has tried to portray himself as Lincoln's heir (probably to make up for his lack of any real connection to the heritage that includes the struggle against slavery, so important in the background of the black Americans his media claque claims he represents.) On the other hand, conservatives who adhere to the mobocratic version of states' rights (some of whom I encountered among Ron Paul's supporters in the Constitution Party) practically demonize Lincoln as the original destroyer of American Federalism. In their different ways I think both Obama and the mob rule states' rights adherents simply ignore the aspect of Lincoln's statesmanship that has always impressed me the most. Though not educated in any formal sense, he was perhaps the most profound thinker ever to participate in American politics. Certainly he was the most thoughtful man to serve as President (with proper respect and apologies to Thomas Jefferson and J. Q. Adams.)

The key to my judgment in this regard is not just what he said, but the way he presented it. All of his memorable addresses bear the hallmark of true eloquence. They are not just moving phrases but each presents an argument that appeals to common sense, that moves and seeks to persuade the reasonable mind. As I recall his biography, the foundation of this characteristic in his speeches was probably his study of Euclid's geometry. Geometric reasoning develops the faculty of mind that retains a clear grasp of first principles through all the twists and turns of subsequent reflection. This faculty led to the insights on which republican, constitutional self-government is based and it is indispensable for the preservation of liberty.

Perhaps the clearest symptom of liberty's impending demise is the almost complete absence of such reasoning from the speeches, and apparently from the thinking, of contemporary American politicians. Controversies swirl over their declarations of support for this or that opinion, without regard to any reasoning that supports their declamations or relates them to the basic premises that make sense of our still assumed claim to unalienable rights and the form of government that limits its power on account of them.

I was reminded of this deficiency as I perused, and in some cases responded to, some of the reactions to my last posting about Michael Steele's abandonment of the pro-life cause. Some people simply can't understand how I dared to question his adamant declarations of pro-life conviction. They seemed to think that I was engaging in some kind of personal attack against him, questioning the honesty and sincerity of his commitment. It seems never to have occurred to them that it's possibleto say with sincerity things that make no sense. I presented reasoning in support of the view that Steele's often repeated views contradict his claim to be pro-life. But in their reaction to what I wrote these critics took no account of the reasoning. They made no attempt to deal with or respond to its logic.

But it might be said of logic what Leon Trotsky is supposed to have said of strategy (or was it war?) You may not be interested in it, but it is interested in you. Ignore it, and you will still suffer its consequences. In this case though Steele's defenders ignore it, the pro-life cause will suffer the consequences. Except as a matter of easily defused or circumvented sentiment, the stand against abortion makes no sense without an appeal to the principles of justice on which the United States of America was founded. Though in its most extreme forms (such as the live birth abortion procedure) it offends aesthetic sensibilities, its ugliness can be camouflaged without too much difficulty, and its ugliest consequences (connected with declining respect for the mysterious subjective worth of human life) may not appear in their truly most repugnant form for one or more generations. Thus even at the sentimental level, reasoning is required to argue the pro-life position. But at this level, since they must argue on behalf human life in it most rudimentary and least recognizable form, against the articulate fear, anguish and pride of fully developed people, pro-life proponents probably face a losing battle. It reminds me of the statement Tocqueville made about the difficulty of arguing justice for enslaved blacks when other Americans were accustomed to see their physical appearance as repulsive and barely human. However false, the perceptions of prejudice have real consequences.

In the American context the antidote to this prejudiced sensibility involved the mobilization of reason and common sense based on the appeal to just principles of liberty. The political effectiveness of this appeal depended on the respect people had for reasonable argument, and on their emotional attachment to what they rightly perceived as the blessings of liberty. Neither can simply be taken for granted. It's hard to imagine that Lincoln's statesmanship would have succeeded had the eloquence of someone like Daniel Webster (ironically arguing in apparent support of forbearance in dealing with the slave states) not roused and cemented the sense that liberty and union were wedded and bound together, one and inseparable.

If they bother to acknowledge that it has any place in politics at all, today's politicians generally treat the work of preserving our attachment to liberty and justice as a secondary matter. Yet when the emotional attachment to these real though abstract goods shrivels away, what is left to do battle against the strong passions of lust, greed and selfish interest which move people to trample on those whose appearance, unpopularity or material condition make them contemptible in the eyes of the majority, or of self-serving elites acting in its name? Many Republicans still claim that their Party's principles embrace the idea of limited government. But they blindly follow leaders like Steele who do not remember the limitation that ultimately matters most: the sense of justice and decency, grounded in reason, common sense and emotional conviction, that stands in the path of the mobocratic impulse, whether it seeks to despoil the rich or murder the poorly regarded.

I believe that there are times when the need to remember and articulate this limitation becomes the paramount task of American politics. Every aspect of the crisis we are in suggests that we are living through such a period. Some say our economic crisis is the greatest challenge we face. But isn't it rooted in our willingness to crush the welfare of our posterity with a burden of unlimited debt, in order to serve our own ambitions? Isn't this an aspect of the same ruthless selfishness that moves us to pretend that it's right physically to sacrifice our offspring everyday in the womb? In the past people died for the sake of offspring that had no life except in their heart's imagination. Today our living children die for the sake of a generation that seems to have no heart except to pursue its present vain imaginings. With the greatest chance any people ever had to secure a strong foundation for future human justice and dignity, we stand on the brink of losing all such hopes because we haven't the patience to think through and act upon the principles on which they depend.

Isn't this our greatest crisis? Do you really believe we can withstand it behind leaders who will not truly acknowledge its existence? Michael Steele says that his job is to work for his Party's victory. What good are Party victories if they are gained by casting aside the discipline, heart and spirit of our present and future liberty? I know that conservatives want to thwart Obama's marxist schemes. I share that goal. But I will not join with people who are seeking to defeat one false hope with another. Rather I think we should have the courage to understand and articulate the real hope, the moral hope that our nation is supposed to represent. Then, trusting in the strength that it bestows, we will be able to do what Americans have done before- against all odds we will conserve our freedom for new generations to come.

Steele Slips Again, But America Should not Fall for it

Once again we are supposed to believe that Michael Steele had a slip of the tongue. This time in an Interview with GQ magazine which included the following exchange:

"The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion," he said. "My mother chose life. So I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other."

Interviewer Lisa DePaulo asked: "Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?"

Steele replied: "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice."

DePaulo: "You do?"

Steele: "Yeah. Absolutely."

DePaulo: "Are you saying you don't want to overturn Roe v. Wade?"

Steele: "I think Roe v. Wade — as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter."

DePaulo: "Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?"

Steele: "The states should make that choice. That's what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide."

Twice before on this site (look under the topic GOP failure) I have discussed Steele's departure from the pro-life stance. Yet in a way not clearly in evidence before, this interview reveals the insidious character of the argument Steele represents. According to this argument, individual choices are not subject to interference by the Federal government. Rather you state the case for one side or the other, and let the individual decide. The problem is, of course, that matters of justice, of right and wrong, always involve individual choices. The choice to rob, lie, cheat and murder are all individual choices. The choice to rape, kidnap and enslave another is an individual choice. The choice to serve or not to serve someone in a restaurant, on account of their race, is an individual choice. Obviously the real issue is not whether individuals are free to choose between right and wrong. That's been clear since Eve made her fateful decision to eat the forbidden fruit. The issue is when and whether they have the right to choose as they do.

American liberty is founded on the premise that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. This premise is not a statement about human aspirations. It's a statement about right and wrong. An unalienable right can be transgressed by individuals and governments, but the premise of liberty forbids the assertion that those who transgress they have the right to do so. Right is not on the side of government when it commits or tolerates murder, theft and terror against the innocent. Individuals and laws that do so are inherently unjust, and powers used in this way are not lawful powers.

Steele consistently maintains that issues, like abortion, that involve respect for unalienable rights, are properly decided at the state rather than the Federal level. But the premise of liberty makes no such distinction. Respect for unalienable rights is required of human governments at any and all levels, because the just powers of all such governments are derived from the people's exercise of those rights. As the Federal government only has the powers delegated to it by the states, so the state governments only have the powers delegated to them by the people. But the "unalienable" aspect of each person's rights means that such rights cannot be given away, not under any circumstances. What the people cannot rightly give, the states cannot rightly claim.

But the premise of liberty includes the notion that "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men." Though government cannot claim the power to transgress against unalienable rights, the foundational purpose of government entails the obligation to preserve and respect them. No government powers are just except those derived from the only source consistent with this obligation, which is the consent of the people. Clearly however, the idea of consent based on respect for unalienable rights does not mean that the people have the right to do whatever they please, since they cannot rightly do anything that alienates (contradicts or surrenders) their unalienable rights. In this sense, government of by and for the people, is limited government: not only limited by the terms of its constitution, but by the purpose and terms of its institution or establishment. Liberty therefore is not identical with a simply unlimited freedom to choose. Individuals are free to choose actions that violate unalienable right, but they cannot claim the right to do so.

When, in their individual or collective capacity, people choose to violate unalienable rights they transgress liberty. Since liberty is its essential characteristic, this transgression effectively abandons the republican form of government. When an individual commits this transgression, it is a criminal act. When a government commits this transgression, it is an unlawful government. Under our constitution the supervision of this transgression when committed by individuals, has been left to the states. But if and when a state or states neglect this supervision, the U.S. Constitution (Article IV, section 4) explicitly requires that the government of the United States guarantee a republican form of government in each of the states. Like the guarantor of a loan, it must intervene to make good any deficiency in the states' respect for its requirements. Michael Steele's assertion that the states have the exclusive right to decide the issue of abortion is therefore incorrect. They should have the opportunity to decide it (which is one of the reasons the Roe v. Wade decision was prudentially wrong) but if they decide, by action or neglect, in favor of committing or allowing the violation of unalienable right, the Federal government has the Constitutional obligation to intervene. On abortion it may be sensible, after so many years of misplaced respect for the unlawful Roe v. Wade decision, to make this obligation clear to all the states by Federal legislation in some form. This could help to avoid miscalculations that might disrupt our civil peace. For this reason I think that such legislation, including a Constitutional amendment may be prudent. However, our reasoning here makes clear that it is not legally or Constitutionally necessary.

Finally, I think it's time we all stopped pretending that Steele's persistent advocacy of the "pro-choice" position is an accident, or a slip of the tongue. I believe these episodes are purposeful. His actions are meant to assert the fallacy that it is pro-life to be pro-choice. But this means accepting the position that at some level the choice to murder an innocent human being is consistent with respect for the unalienable right to life. Except we embrace the noxious position that right and wrong choices are equally just, this is not and can never be a pro-life view. Except we abandon the whole idea of unalienable right, this is not and can never be a view consistent with American liberty.

I think that Steele and the people he represents have gotten away with this disingenuous effort to warp, distract and mislead the pro-life movement for long enough. This issue is vital to the survival of America's free institutions. People of conscience deserve a frank and purposeful debate about it, not a sly attempt at argument by inadvertence. To that end I challenge Michael Steele to face me in such a debate, in a venue open to scrutiny by the general public. Though the courage to debate is not the test of truth, it may be a test of true conviction. I claim to be pro-life because I have stood that test, against Barack Obama, Alan Dershowitz and others. Why should pro-life people accept Steele's protestations of pro-life conviction if he refuses to do so?

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Obama Faction Moves to Make Medical Workers “Slaves in Conscience”

Starting today, and for the next thirty days, the Department of Health and Human Services will be "accepting comments from the public on a proposal by the Obama administration to completely rescind federal regulations placed into effect by former President Bush that protect the right to conscience for healthcare workers….The regulation mandated federally funded health institutions to certify their compliance with existing federal laws that uphold the rights of doctors and nurses to refuse a medical service on religious or moral grounds."(Obama Publishes Proposal to Rescind 'Conscience' Rule) With this and several other decisions (repeal of the so-called Mexico City Policy; an executive order allowing Federal funds to be used to support research involving the destruction of the embryonic form of human life; the nomination of a rabid pro-abortion extremist as Secretary of HHS) Obama implicates the whole people of the United States in his own pitiless promotion of abortion at any cost. The only thing so far lacking is an effort to repeal or supercede the law that prevents implementation in Federal Hospitals of his depraved support for infanticide in cases where a baby is born alive in consequence of a failed abortion. Catholics and other professing Christians should take note. Except they repent of it, those who voted for Barrack Obama surely face grim judgment from the Supreme judge of the World for their enlistment in the electoral army of this paragon of evil. But even before such judgment in the next life, in this life we will all have to suffer the grim consequences of his abandonment of respect for the unalienable rights to life and liberty.

The reaction to Obama's policies has rightly focused on the relentless implementation of his morbidly pro-abortion views. Though morally repugnant, his consistent support for these views throughout his relatively brief political career prevents sincere surprise from anyone even superficially acquainted with it (unless they are Republicans who expected Obama to imitate the deceitful practices of all too many Republican politicos who are pro-life on the stump and AWOL in the clinches.) Given the hoopla surrounding the false claim that his election represents a breakthrough for black Americans, however, what should be profoundly shocking is his willingness to be the focus and tool of an historic effort to reintroduce the worst aspects of human slavery into the United States, this time extended beyond an oppressed portion of the population to encompass people regardless of race or pigmentation.

In my previous post, I alluded to "the moral degradation that Frederick Douglass and others held to be the greatest misery of my slave ancestors." These words bring to my mind the deep humiliation of married women and mothers, forced to act as concubines to serve the lusts of their so-called masters. It brings to mind husbands and brothers forced to tolerate this degradation of their loved ones, or be subjected to the lash for fighting against it as God and conscience required of them. It brings to mind other enslaved people forced to inflict such punishment upon their fellows; or to give unwilling service to those who did so, even including forced labor to build the scaffolds from which apprehended rebels against slavery and degradation were hung by the neck to edify and terrorize anyone tempted to imitate their courage. Slavery to my mind has never meant only the spectacle of bodies bent to hard labor in the fields, for free men and women also must toil. That is the lot of all humanity. Rather it means the searing contemplation of souls tortured by burning anger and indignation against injustice, which they are helpless to act upon; of consciences racked by the defiling knowledge of their complicity with the very evil that abuses them, and shamed by the fear that deters them from rejecting it, until in all too many ways the habit of submission finally stupefies and deadens the pangs. It is the thought of anguished prayers raised up to the almighty God, that He would deliver them from their humiliating servitude to evil, until it seems the strength of faith gives out, and prayers are tempted to cynicism and despair.

This is the essence of that slavery, which the Obama faction now means to impose upon all our health care workers. Because some people wish to do and benefit from evil, others must become its tools and instruments, against their will. Because some wish to escape responsibility for the nascent life invoked by their cries of sexual ecstasy, others must accept complicity in the murders that carry out their will. At the very least the people who embrace this foul cult of human child sacrifice should have to do the dirty work themselves. But when has evil been content to wallow in its own excrement? The very pride that impels it to defy the boundaries of decent conscience rouses its resentment against those who, by standing apart from its rituals announce their condemnation of its crimes. As it was with slavery, so it is now. Evil does not accept a house divided, but will "press forward" until "It will become all one thing, or all the other."

What the Obama faction proposes to do now, without warrant in law, implements what by law it wishes, but does not yet have the legislative strength to do: secure passage of the deceitfully misnamed Freedom of Choice Act. Because both the proposed regulatory action and the FOCA deal mainly with abortion, people mistakenly think that what is at stake is just the controversy over abortion. But it must be increasingly evident to all but the most stubbornly blind among us that government control of the banks and the health care system is only the first stage in the imposition of complete government control of every aspect of our economic lives. In service to this aim, the Obama faction moves to bankrupt the nation, so that none will have the wherewithal and will to resist their coup d'état. Today they move to make all health care workers slaves in conscience to the state. Soon and very soon, this shall be the fate of us all. Our soldiers and police are being trained and will be required to move against the right to keep and bear arms, born of our unalienable right to preserve and defend the innocent lives of others. Our pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders will be required to surrender the right to live according to their beliefs whenever their free exercise of religion runs counter to the demands of "gay pride", the selfish-esteem of homosexuals; or the anti-religious bigotry of atheists who cannot bear to hear the prayers of others. Parents will be required, without exception to surrender their children for indoctrination by the state. Scientists and technical people will be required to lend their knowledge and expertise to refine and operate the instruments of surveillance that utterly destroy all privacy, and the instruments of mollification (chemical and otherwise) that utterly subvert the will. And so on.

With every extension of state control will come a new sacrifice of conscience, of decency and goodwill. And like my enslaved ancestors, many of us will raise up anguished prayers to almighty God, to deliver us from our humiliating servitude to evil, until perhaps the strength of faith gives out and we are tempted into cynicism and despair. Was it for this so many fought and died? Was it for this, they were planted as seeds of freedom? So that we could harvest the gut wrenching bile of moral subjection, and face the galling prospect that our children or our children's children will not remember enough of freedom to be dissatisfied? Too bad we have so little patience for the best flowers of our thought and language or it might occur to us, at least in spirit and will, to "take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them." But we seem now to lack more than words. We lack spirit, and will and courage. Else in the next thirty days not just pro-lifers, but everyone who cares a whit for conscience and true liberty would direct a tidal wave of comments toward the bureaucrats at HHS, defending the health care workers' rights of conscience in the hope that we will thus safeguard our own. Visit www.regulations.gov, to look for a way to do just that.

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Slouching Towards Rama

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. (Matthew 2:18)

The past few days brought news of deeply disappointing decisions by two supposedly pro-life Republicans, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Both seem intent on proving, in their different ways, my contention that the Republican Party's wrongheaded commitment to unprincipled electioneering turns potentially good leaders into bad ones. Senator Brownback stunned and outraged his pro-life supporters by announcing his intention to vote to confirm Kathleen Sebelius as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. She is notorious for her ruthless advocacy of abortion including the very late term abortions that properly defame her friend and financial backer Dr. George Tiller.

Given Barack Obama's infamous willingness to countenance infanticide (the murder of infants who have the temerity to survive an abortion attempt), it's no surprise that he would think her an appropriate choice to head the Department that will implement his plans for the government induced abortion of the U.S. health care sector. But because of his strongly professed personal conviction and his newly professed Catholic faith, Senator Sam Brownback was expected to be in the forefront of efforts to derail the Obama-Sebelius death train. But he has his eye on the gubernatorial seat Sebelius is planning to vacate. With the obtuse logic that typically prevails in Republican circles these days, he appears to have decided that the surest way to win it is to show his contempt for the faithful people who worked their hearts out to carry him to an overwhelming (69%) victory in his 2004 re-election bid. He could have invested some of that political capital to make a strong stand for innocent life. But in tune with what appears to be the Republican ethos of our times, the Senator seems now to believe that a good politician uses principles to get votes. He doesn't risk votes for the sake of principle.

What a contrast with the Democrats who worked over Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and others who refused to tiptoe gently around their immoral sensibilities. How is it that those who advocate the murder of innocents stand with passionate conviction to denounce anyone who questions their depravity, but those who claim to champion God's command that we respect innocent life seem ready to back off the moment some excuse is available for their retreat, or a little opening is offered to their ambition? It seems that Yeats had it right. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

In the same vein we see Sarah Palin elevating a former member of the board of Planned Parenthood (America's chief purveyor of abortion) to the Alaska Supreme Court. She wins headlines from the media claque for bucking the pressure from the faithful pro-lifers whose applause for her supposed pro-life stance helped to overcome that same media's ridicule and contempt in the recent national election. This marks at least the second time she has used her gubernatorial position to take a step that contradicts her supposedly conservative moral stance. When she vetoed a bill passed by the Alaska legislature that would have preempted regulations extending benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees, she mistakenly claimed she had no choice but to obey the liberal Judges who purported to order the change. Now she says that Alaska's constitution left her no choice but to accept the objectionable candidates the Alaska Judicial Council handed her. Unlike her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski, she apparently couldn't be bothered to make a fight of it, much less take that fight to the people.

We're told of course that politics is the art of the possible, but that seems to mean only what makes political advancement possible, rather than what might possibly advance the things these politicians pretend to believe. Once upon a time, it was the vocation of political leaders to use their talents and abilities to champion new and better possibilities. That's what Lincoln did as he developed the arguments that attacked indifference to the injustice of slavery. That's what Teddy Roosevelt did as he raised his voice to promote the importance of virtue and decency in America's public life. It's what set Reagan apart in the years when he refused to back away from his rejection of socialist big government policies, or his staunch opposition to communism.

Today we recognize that statesmen like these stand head and shoulders above the crowd of timid timeservers all too common in every generation. Unfortunately, despite what we should learn from them, we are too willing to accept media profile as a substitute for real character and conviction. Whatever their talk, whatever the facade created for them by media consultants and sixty second spots, actions still offer the acid test of political leaders. When push comes to shove, these so-called Republicans disappoint, retreat and betray again and again. Yet judging by the reaction of some of the die hard defenders of their unprincipled (lack of) leadership, it's less objectionable for them to abandon their posts than it is for folks like me to point out that they have abandoned them.

In the end we are forced to accept the possibility that they have taken conservative stands because they thought it would be good for their election chances, not from a sincere conviction that it is vital for the good of the nation whose people they are supposed to serve. The tragedy is that we are in the midst of the kind of crisis, of liberty and economic survival, which cannot be met except by leaders of true conviction, the kind of conviction that inspires people to stand firm against the blandishments and threats of those who are the enemies of both liberty and survival. It is clear we shall not find such leaders any longer in the party that twice raised up their kind to save first the Union and then our free economy, for a time. Those who have the will to conserve the now imperiled principles of liberty must think anew, and act anew to create a political vehicle that will call forth from amongst the people themselves steadfast and truly faithful representation. This alone will revive the hope of lasting freedom, not only for us but for the generations yet unborn whom their pretended political advocates have betrayed more than once too often.

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