“It is out of characterfor the left to neglect the weak and helpless. The traditional mark of the left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak and the poor. The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient. The basic instinct of the left is to aid those who cannot aid themselves. And that instinct is absolutely sound. It’s what keeps the human proposition going.” ~ Mary Meehan

I wrote a while ago that I am a professed culture war pacifist.  As the years have gone by and I’ve grown older and (a little bit) wiser, I’ve also become a pacifist in the more traditional sense.  Where once I saw virtue in strength – in the good fight, as it were – I see now only pain and confusion.  War rarely achieves what it sets out to achieve, and victory is at best a mixed bag.  Terror is often in the same futile camp, but as Matt Yglesias notes:

Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to provide these services. What’s more, you create a need for additional security at facilities around the country. In addition, the anti-abortion protestors who frequently gather near clinics are made to seem much more intimidating by the fact that the occurrence of these sorts of acts of violence.

In general, I think people tend to overestimate the efficacy of violence as a political tactic. But in this particular case, I think people tend to understate it.

Tiller’s death is the culmination of years of culture war propaganda, fear tactics, and Christianity gone bad.  Religion is not in and of itself good or evil, but in the hands of villains and fanatics it can be a dangerous thing – much as any ideology can be, though there is indeed something more frightening about the religiously charged fanatic.  The pro-life movement has gained nothing from such fairweather spokespeople as Bill O’Reilly who is in it not for the preborn but for himself, not for any particular cause but rather ratings.

In any case, this is not only a blow against life – and specifically the life of George Tiller, who has been brutally ripped from this world and from the lives of his loved ones – but against the pro-life cause.  And not just the specific political cause, either, but against life itself.  Against all causes for life – be they anti-war or anti-abortion or anti-death penalty.

Now I’m not really sure where to place myself on the generic political playing field.  In many respects I would call myself a progressive; on others I might be aptly titled a conservative.  I’m a localist, a decentralist, but I also favor social safety nets.  I’m against a pervasive government, but not against a welfare state.  I’m against military expansion and incursions upon our civil liberties by the state (and big business) but I am in favor of state services, progressive taxes, etc.  On gay rights – and rights in general – I fall amidst the left or the libertarians.  But as Nat Hentoff – an atheist and a leftist – has often noted, progressive politics are ostensibly about protecting the rights of the weakest among us and yet his fellow progressives fail to see how the preborn (or unborn) are, in essence, the by far the weakest of the weak, the most helpless of the helpless.  The right to choose, in contemporary progressive thought, trumps the right to be born (and the preborn have no such capacity for choice). [Read more →]

1 a: the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body b: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings c: an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction

~the definition of Life, from the Merriam Webster dictionary (online).

I cannot reconcile myself with the four pillars of the “culture of death.”   Each pillar finds its support at times by various proponents at many points across the political spectrum, making the discussion of life vs death very difficult to pin down politically.  To me, abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia and war are all acts which end the life of a person (or persons) – either a very young person (or fetus), a very bad (or perhaps tragically innocent) person, an enemy, or a person who is either very old or in a great deal of emotional or physical pain.  They are all living beings in possession of a soul, however damnably bad or temporarily interred to the womb that soul may be.  Soul aside, if you happen to not believe in it, they are still human beings possessed of a potentiality that death will snuff out entirely.

A fetus possesses the potentiality of full personhood.  Indeed, there is little else a fetus could become save a baby.  The point at which life begins, scientifically speaking, is the moment of conception.  Philosophically, of course, life is easily redefined.  The debate over abortion often falls on this point.  Ironically, outside of the abortion debate few arguments exist about say the beginning of life for a plant (germination) on either side of the political spectrum.

A criminal condemned to death possess the potentiality to change, to find remorse, salvation etc.  They are also, as I mentioned above, quite possibly innocent.  Beyond this, I oppose the death penalty because it oversteps the reasonable bounds of the state – and in a democracy in particular makes citizens complicit in the extinguishing of human life, whether or not they wish to be.

War, is of course, a difficult concept to grapple with because it is not (always) the decision of a powerful entity to take the life of a non-powerful entity (think: mother and fetus; state and condemned; etc.).  It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.  However preemptive, expansionary, or aggressive wars can rightly be called unjust.  They take the potentiality of peace away from another party – the invaded state or tribe or region.

Assisted suicide generally involves the will of an individual over themselves.  I can envision a state of affairs in which euthanasia becomes the accepted function of the state over people deemed incapable of choosing for themselves (as a matter of efficiency, perhaps), which is not a totally unreasonable fear.  (Read Lois Lowry’s The Giver)  Even without such insidious action by the state, is it possible that the act of assisting someone to end their life robs them of their potential future?  A future which could include breakthroughs in medical science to remove their pain, cure their disease, etc. or a future which might bring some unexpected happiness to assuage their depression?  Or for those simply too old to want to go on living, perhaps a natural death on their own without the need of an assistant to act as usher?

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“I may as well admit that I have been more influenced (as a person) by my childhood readings of Tolkien and Lewis than I have been by any philosophers I read in college and grad school. The events and characters in Narnia and Middle Earth shaped my ideals, my dreams, my goals. Kant just annoyed me.”  N.D. Wilson

Like Wilson, I find myself far more influenced by the writings of Tolkien and other fantasists and fiction writers – C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle, etc. – than by the work of philosophers, theologians, and political theorists.  I read The Lord of the Rings when I was nine (the first time) and it was a pivotal, life-changing event.  I had already plowed through Lewis by first grade, and the Prydain novels by second or third.  Other fantasies and legends filled my young mind, shaped my vision of the world and other worlds.  Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence; numerous Arthurian legends and re-tellings; L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels; and countless other tales of magic and mystery and heroism.  Even Willow has its place in my heart – long before he had ambitions for public office, Val Kilmer was simply Mad Martigan to me.

And yes, I devoured these and other works of fiction when I could have been reading Kant or Plato or Hayek.  Even as I grew older.  While Mark Twain could keep me up into the little hours, Karl Marx would send me straight to sleep.   I read George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice (incomplete but amazing) series when I could have been reading Augustine.  (More on Martin later…)  I read Susanna Clarke’s extraordinary Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell when I could have been reading Keynes or Friedman.    I’m reading the third installment of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked trilogy – A Lion Among Men – now, when I should be soaking myself in political science…. [Read more →]

“Something that has long perplexed me is how Americans have persuaded themselves that an important part of their freedom is to be measured by the degree of non-interference of their neighbors in their lives and the distance–psychological and social–they have achieved from other people.  [...]  Related to this measure of freedom is the desire for mobility and the hoped-for ‘escape’ from one’s own neighbors, perhaps the perfect expression of which is the automobile, which permits constant proximity to others who exist mainly as obstacles and causes of frustration rather than, as the shared road might suggest, as companions on a journey to a common destination.  It is remarkable how much modern Americans travel in and around the cities where they live, and how few pilgrimages we make.  This is a function of not understanding what freedom is, which is a freedom among and not a freedom apart from.”

~Daniel Larison

I recently moved into a small apartment with my wife and daughter, having in the first year of my daughter’s life moved already twice before finally settling on our new downtown digs.  Since moving out of my parents house to attend college I have lived in seven different rentals; a dorm; temporarily in my parent’s house again; and for a short time with in-laws.  Growing up I moved quite a lot, too.  In my hometown in Montana I lived in several different houses, including the abodes of both grandparents.  We also lived for a while in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. before moving back to Montana and then on to Arizona.

I attended public school in kindergarten, then Montessori school in first grade, then back to public school for second and third grade.  In Vancouver I attended public school in the first half of fourth grade; for the second half I was home schooled.  Fifth grade found me attending Catholic school, and by sixth we were back in Montana where I attended the local middle school.  By seventh we had landed in Arizona, where I thankfully remained, and remain still today, though apparently I still haven’t learned how to stay in one place for very long, even if for the most part I stay in the same town.

I find myself almost perpetually torn between my desire to go out into the world and do great things, and my desire to root myself to a place, to some semblance of home. After all, there is only so much one can do if they remain in place.  In modern terms this might be termed career inertia.  But the miracle of a child does funny things to people.  After our daughter was born I found myself more uncertain than ever about what exactly it was that I wanted, that would create for us the best life, the best home, the best childhood for our little girl.  I toyed with the idea of law school; or perhaps academia.  There’s not a terrible amount of options open to a graduate of a four year college with an English degree after all.  Surely what I needed was more. More degrees, more money, more success.

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