10-8-18<\/p>\n
There is a coming conflict in America, a war \u2013 a civil war \u2013 whose first battles are being waged already.<\/p>\n
The contentious nomination, debate, and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice has merely accelerated the bellicosity. We are living through a rapid decline in society\u2019s civility, which reminds us that most of history\u2019s civil wars commence as \u201ccivility wars\u201d \u2013 when factions no longer reasoned together, and have abandoned good will toward their enemies who yesterday were merely opponents.<\/p>\n
Judge Kavanaugh\u2019s victory will not change this devolving dissolution; nor would his Congressional defeat have interrupted the trajectory of toxicity. America is in a fateful vortex; no longer a slippery slope that so long was warned. The bizarre acceleration is stark when we recall that the nomination, hearings, and confirmation of another judge \u2013 of virtually identical background, resume, clerkship under the same Justice, service on the appellate bench, and judicial philosophy \u2013 encountered opposition, but was approved amid comparative calm. Eighteen months later, there were cries of apocalypse and unprecedented angst.<\/p>\n
It is as if a bandage has been ripped from a festering, not a healing, wound.<\/p>\n
I truly believe that a conflict is coming, and as I said, already here in many ways. This does not mean I welcome it; although I am increasingly convinced that difficulties must be endured and burdens borne, because if one \u201cside\u201d hates, our other side must love, or hate, and otherwise engage\u2026 but cannot ignore. Because in that hatred, the secularists hate not only us, but tradition, religion, the Constitution, the heritage of societal norms, the family unit, and nature\u2019s apportionment of gender aspects. <\/p>\n
This is not overstating the case, either as concerns fact or prediction. The French Revolutionaries were not content to behead members of royalty (then nobility, then clergy, then merchants, then the middle class) but introduced new calendars and clocks. No matter that their \u201cbellyful\u201d of \u201creforms\u201d were short-lived, nor that history recorded that such revolutions turn on themselves as they collapse. And, by the way, in their deadly futility usually usher in reactionary counter-revolutions.<\/p>\n
I am not an alarmist, except to the extent that alarms need to be sounded.<\/p>\n
We cannot turn the clock back, even a couple of years. There will be no more civil debates in primaries or elections any more. There will be no more inaugurations or confirmation hearings without violent and obscene protests, complete with arrests. There will be no more debates, in town halls or national television, without gratuitous accusations whose bases in fact are now regarded as peripheral. <\/p>\n
Democracy has failed. The Republican (dictionary meaning) form of government has been subsumed.<\/p>\n
The coming conflict is a civil war more desperate than most. The War Between the States was largely geographic but today the divides are within towns, job sites, neighborhoods, classrooms, even families.<\/p>\n
We can understand things a little better if we examine one issue that both characterizes the crisis, but also animates it. Let us call it the New Scarlet Letter.<\/p>\n
In Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s eponymous novel, the Scarlet Letter was \u201cA\u201d and stood for adultery. The book superficially was an indictment of Puritanism but was a metaphor for the nation\u2019s hypocrisy, the sin of slavery in his day. Today there is a new \u201cA\u201d that fuels debate, challenges traditions, overturns norms, confronts conceptions of morality\u2026 and divides families. It, too, has enormous consequences, far-ranging implications. That \u201cA\u201d is Abortion.<\/p>\n
Abortion has become the litmus test of candidates (now on the Left, no longer exclusively the Right); the bottom line of political activists; the symbol of the New World. I believe if Judge Kavanaugh adhered to ALL the views he advanced, but declared a commitment to abortion on demand, his confirmation would have been Springtime in Washington. \u201cA\u201d is the new password to the virtual future. <\/p>\n
About the New \u201cA,\u201d it is interesting to me to read comments along the \u201cpersonally opposed, but…\u201d and \u201cabortion is regrettable but government should not be involved\u201d arguments… So I can imagine how these people might have responded at other times in history:<\/p>\n
\u201cI am personally opposed to slavery. But it is too well established… the slaves are better off than in their previous lives… they could not successfully thrive in society outside the slave system… it is not my job to interfere with their owners’ property…\u201d<\/p>\n
or<\/p>\n
\u201cI am personally opposed to discrimination against Jews… it is none of my business, however, if other people do… a lot of people believe that Jews are not actually humans on our level, and who am I to force my views on them… prejudice would not necessarily lead to discrimination; discrimination would not necessarily lead to violence; violence would not necessarily lead to arrests; arrests would not necessarily lead to deaths \u2013 that is not who we are… Jews want freedom? Well, I am free to do what I please, too…\u201d<\/p>\n
But right is always right, no matter the consequences or personal inconvenience to us. Slavery took a war to end (and it still is rampant in the world \u2013 which does not suggest that we be resigned to live with it, but that we maintain integrity and fight in new ways); abortion is not right merely because many people support it. I once supported it, to my everlasting shame. The new Scarlet Letter is not right or wrong based on a poll taken yesterday, today, or tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Abortion is wrong because it kills babies.<\/p>\n
+ + +<\/p>\n