Pro-life

The Aussie & the atheist

What some people won't say about themselves with bumper stickers or tee shirts. I saw a charming one and an infuriating one this week. "Good grammar costs nothing," said the Asian girl's shirt in line behind me to board a flight. Such exhibitionists either want or deserve remarks from strangers, so I asked her what it meant. Standing up for the English language when most people no longer bother, she replied in a thick Aussie accent. My sentiments exactly, I said. Los Angeles would be her last stop homebound after six weeks of travel in Europe and America. In the worst economy since the 1930s to hear some people tell it, mind you.

"Religion stops a thinking mind," scolded the tee on a dumpy fat guy at the pizza parlor last night. It was illustrated by one of those stat-line medical monitor waves. Him I didn't accost because A, I didn't trust myself to be civil, and B, his childish plea for attention merits nothing so much as cold silence.

After a moment I realized the slogan was someone's oh-so-clever twist on "Abortion stops a beating heart." I wanted to ask his rejoinder to that undeniable fact, and to pile on with the additional facts that abortion really does stop (or forestall) a thinking mind as well as extinguish (or divert from this world) a feeling soul.

I wanted to challenge him for examples of societies where God is ignored or banned but free and noble thought flourishes -- or to refute the conclusive truth that thought has risen highest in those societies where God is lifted highest.

But it would have been a waste of breath, so I just ate my pizza and reflected on the late George Roche's mordant comment, "The world is full of slobs." Yet not quite full of them, for there is still room for the occasional grammatically idealistic Aussie Asian girl. And thank heaven for such as she!

Spare us your morality, Barack

On April 21, President Obama opened the way for possible prosecution of American government advisers who approved of waterboarding terrorists. Forget that such interrogation methods may have saved untold lives by extracting necessary information from those killers. The President may allow prosecution anyway, because, he said, such methods "reflected us [sic] losing our moral bearings." And certainly Mr. Obama has every right to speak of "our moral bearings," since:

**As an Illinois State Senator, he personally stopped legislation to protect babies born alive after failed abortion attempts.

**As a U.S. Senator, he supported legislation to allow doctors to stab to death babies that were 80 percent outside their mothers' wombs.

**As a Presidential candidate, he vowed to sign legislation that would wipe out scores of laws in several state that might protect some preborn babies from being killed.

**As President, he signed orders to use American taxpayers' money to promote the killing of preborn babies around the globe and to kill thousands of human embryos around the country, and also appointed over three dozen abortion advocates to positions in his government.

**Also as President, he has begun proceedings to rescind conscience clause protection for doctors and medical facilities, thereby requiring them either to perform immoral procedures or to quit the medical field altogether.

Yes, sir, this is the man we want to protect "our moral bearings."

Nature is always the standard for us

When the natural elements wreak their havoc on us, we are reminded that human power can extend only so far. Yet our submission to "the laws of nature and of nature’s God" is more cause for celebration than despair. Many people, educated and uneducated, seem to assume that nature is something outside us, forgetting that mankind is part of creation or the cosmos, and indisputably a powerful force within it. Some deplore and some rejoice that we seem to be the masters of all we see.

But, I believe, the truth is somewhere in between the extremes of minimizing and maximizing our position in "the great chain of being." We are not mere beasts and certainly not gods, for we have a nature no less than all other things in the world. Thus, there is freedom in but also limits to our power. We are the "in-between being" who partakes of both the bestial and the divine.

Some speak of creation or the cosmos rather than nature, for they understand that nature does not name all that exists but is a term of distinction for all things. That is, every thing has a nature, which is constituted by its form and characterized by its purpose.

For example, birds are designed to fly, possessing the wings, shape and feathers that equip them for this purpose. This definition also serves to distinguish them from other two-legged creatures and animals with other appendages. They do more than fly, of course, but we are speaking here of what is distinctive. Some insects fly too, but no one confuses them with birds.

Mankind is a warm-blooded upright animal with the capacity for thinking, visibly manifested in speech but also demonstrated in tool making. Some birds make sounds similar to speech but there is no inward meaning in them. Many animals build but they do not articulate a design or make blueprints.

Man’s rationality is the basis for his capacity to choose, not only among alternatives that present themselves in everyday life but to make plans for the future; to determine what is immediately pleasant or beneficial but also to discern what is good for families and nations. Nothing is more distinctively human than contemplating the purpose for our lives.

What has distinguished mankind in our time is technology. Through an industrial revolution, human beings generated greater power and demonstrated more productivity than ever in our history. As fundamental as this was to our higher living standards, it almost seems quaint compared to what has come about since in electronics, computers, and space and medical technology.

These remarkable advances have not and cannot change our fundamental nature as rational animals. I am far from minimizing the enormity and the value of technological progress, but we are still mortal and subject to the domination of passion as well as reason. In a world of brilliant scientists there are "ethically challenged" ones who need to be governed by the laws and customs of our humane civilization.

Just now our greatest danger is the passion for limitless experimentation and the urge to commandeer the whole world’s resources. Ironically, it comes in the guise of concern for mankind’s well being, whether that is the eradication of disease or the amelioration of our fears.

What could be more desirable, some believe, than utilizing the seemingly limitless possibilities of embryonic stem cells to combat diseases? Why should the loss of allegedly less than truly human blastocysts stand in the way?

And who wants to be incinerated in the zone of green house gases that are said to be threatening to dry up the world? Who wants to see the ice and snow melt and inundate the earth with water while turning the fertile portions of the earth into gigantic deserts?

These horrible scenarios depend for their credibility on the almost divine claims being made for modern science. Its practitioners believe that they can eliminate all human ills even as they accuse their fellows of making the world uninhabitable by past scientific progress! Their hubris (overweening arrogance) consists in overestimating man’s powers and ignoring the limitations of his nature.

We human beings are builders and thinkers but we are not gods. We are not free of nature. We are part of it. We cannot "save" mankind or the world. We can only live in accordance with our natures and the natural elements.

Remember, every show is podcast

Backbone Radio got this kind note from a leading Republican in Arapahoe County: "You have the most effective, informative and timely current events show on the airways. Though I miss your show on the air because of the time frame on Sunday, I am thankful for your online information...and I thank you for your diligence and accuracy." That's from Linda Gawlik, City Clerk of Centennial. I replied:

Linda, thanks for your kind words. It's fun doing the show, and we do bask in people's appreciation - especially since there's no pay. Just so you know, if there is a topic or guest you particularly wanted to catch up with, every show is podcast in full from our website as of Tuesday morning after the Sunday broadcast.

Click the Backbone Radio button on red navigation bar at top of home page for all podcasts from the past couple of years. The most recent Sunday show is usually featured under the radio section, midway down lefthand column, and in the yellow radio box, top right on home page.

Unpopularity gains on BHO

Gallup poll this week found sharp disapproval of Obama's first two executive orders. No noise about it in MSM, can't imagine why. The new president's directive to close the Guantanamo prison and relocate captive jihadists met with public disfavor by a margin of 50% to 44%.

His order to allow US funding of abortions in other countries was disapproved by 58% to 35%. Here's the story from, you guessed it, Fox News.

All this on top of BHO's tax-dodger epidemic and woes with the stimulus bill. Honeymoon seems to be on the wane.