Quoted. For. Truth.
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When ordinary rationalization fails, people revert to other modes of suppression. We often see this when an unmarried young woman becomes pregnant. Suddenly her conscience discovers itself; though she was not ashamed to lift her skirts, she is suddenly ashamed to show her swelling belly. What can she do? Well, she can have an abortion; she can revert to the mode of suppression called "getting rid of the evidence." Once again conscience multiplies transgressions. But she finds that the new transgression is no solution to the old one; in fact now she has something even more difficult to rationalize.
Think what is necessary to justify abortion. Because we can’t not know that it is wrong to deliberately kill human beings, there are only four options. We must deny that the act is deliberate, deny that it kills, deny that its victims are human, or deny that wrong must not be done. The last option is literally nonsense. That something must not be done is what it means for it to be wrong; to deny that wrong may not be done is merely to say "wrong is not wrong," or "what must not be done may be done." The first option is hardly promising either. Abortion does not just happen; it must be performed. Its proponents not only admit there is a "choice," they boast of it. As to the second option, if it was ever promising, it is no longer. Millions of women have viewed sonograms of their babies kicking, sucking their thumbs, and turning somersaults; whatever these little ones are, they are busily alive. Even most feminists have given up calling the baby a "blood clot" or describing abortion as the "extraction of menses."
The only option even barely left is number three: to deny the humanity of the victims. It is at this point that the machinery slips out of control. For the only way to make option three work is to ignore biological nature, which tells us that from conception onward the child is as human as you or me (does anyone imagine that a dog is growing in there?)—and invent another criterion of humanity, one that makes it a matter of degree. Some of us must turn out more human, others less. This is a dicey business even for abortionists. It hardly needs to be said that no one has been able to come up with a criterion that makes babies in the womb less human but leaves everyone else as he was; the teeth of the moral gears are too finely set for that.
Consider, for instance, the criteria of "personhood" and "deliberative rationality." According to the former, one is more or less human according to whether he is more or less a person; according to the latter, he is more or less a person according to whether he is more or less able to act with mature and thoughtful purpose. Unborn babies turn out to be killable because they cannot act maturely; they are less than fully persons, and so less than fully human. In fact, they must be killed when the interests of those who are more fully human require it. Therefore, not only may their mothers abort, but it would be wrong to stop the mothers from doing so. But look where else this drives us. Doesn’t maturity also fall short among children, teenagers, and many adults? Then aren’t they also less than fully persons—and if less than fully persons, then less than fully humans? Clearly so, hence they too must yield to the interests of the more fully human; all that remains is to sort us all out. No, the progression is too extreme! People are not that logical! Ah, but they are more logical than they know; they are only logical slowly. The implication they do not grasp today they may grasp in thirty years; if they do not grasp it even then, their children will. It is happening already. Look around.
So conscience has its revenge. We can’t not know the preciousness of human life—therefore, if we tell ourselves that humanity is a matter of degree, we can’t help holding those who are more human more precious than those who are less. The urge to justify abortion drives us inexorably to a system of moral castes more pitiless than anything the East has devised. Of course we can fiddle with the grading criteria: consciousness, self-awareness, and contribution to society have been proposed; racial purity has been tried. No such tinkering avails to change the character of our deeds. If we will a caste system, then we shall have one; if we will that some shall have their way, then in time there shall be a nobility of Those Who Have Their Way. All that our fiddling with the criteria achieves is a rearrangement of the castes.
Need we wonder why, then, having started on our babies, we now want to kill our grandparents? Sin ramifies. It is fertile, fissiparous, and parasitic, always in search of new kingdoms to corrupt. It breeds. But just as a virus cannot reproduce except by commandeering the machinery of a cell, sin cannot reproduce except by taking over the machinery of conscience. Not a gear, not a wheel is destroyed, but they are all set turning in different directions than their wont. Evil must rationalize, and that is its weakness. But it can, and that is its strength.
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Wow! Brilliant, and so true. We shall see how this plays out over the next 4 year...
ReplyDelete- Dad
Warning: Gruesome mind exercise to follow. Don’t read if you aren’t as cold as I am on the issue of death. Joe, feel free to delete it if you think I went too far. I won’t be offended.
ReplyDeleteNot that long ago, I heard of a case where some youths were sent to jail for beating their neighbor’s dog to death with a bat. I think the “neighbor’s” part of that sentence was probably irrelevant. Our society still condemns needless violence on life, especially life with a central nervous system (or anything they can project human qualities onto). I don’t think anyone would be too upset if I was to beat a human liver with a bat except perhaps the family of the deceased for desecrating* what was once part of someone they loved, or perhaps others might be upset the same way they’d be upset if I beat a perfectly good VCR. I’m curious what the public reaction would be if I was to take the in-tact remains of a saline-solution-aborted baby and publicly beat it with a bat. Who** could be upset at me desecrating anything? Who** could be upset that something was wasted? Would it simply be an act that no one wants to see in public like defecation? Perhaps I could claim the 1st Amendment allows me to do it on the capitol steps***. If there was significant disgust at my actions, I wonder how hard it would be to convince them that the act of killing the child was more disgusting than beating its dead remains. What I fear most if I was to try something that disgusting, is that not enough people would care. I hope that we as a people haven’t gone that far.
*something which could easily be argued is simply a matter of cultural opinion (especially if we didn’t bring Church teaching into it)
**pro-lifers aside
***Why shouldn't that when every other loony-left-wing act is considered free speech
Of course we've gone that far. One out of every five children in this country is murdered in the womb. Many people care, of course, but not enough to force meaningful change in a short period of time. Most people just close their eyes, plug their ears, and yell "LA LA LA LA LA LA I'm not listening LA LA LA..." while the rest of us see them driving toward a cliff, and scream "can't you see what you're doing? Turn around!", then watch in horror as the car goes off.
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