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Pro-Lifers on Offense

The overturn of Roe is a matter of great rejoicing. It is also only a little cloud, the end of the beginning, which promises rains and storms to come. America has put the question of human and legal personhood to the people and their elected representatives before, and, a house divided, it did not go happily. 

We who have prayed and labored for life have had 49 years to consider what might come after Roe. But a people of little faith, too small an imagination, we still seem caught by surprise. Now is a moment when America can be a laboratory of democratic self-rule and each state an experiment, yet disappointingly Gov. Glenn Younkin in Virginia and Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida have only summoned forth the will and creativity to do the bare minimum expected by pro-life voters, a 15-week restriction, more liberal than France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Redder states, too, with courageous trigger laws in place that ban the murder of the unborn, might still have anticipated the response of the left. This was only ever to be a start; shouldn’t you have known where you were going? 

Reaction, yes. Reactive, no. It is time for the champions of life to go on the offense, and there ought to have been a play. The most emotive rhetoric of the apologists for slaughter and the actions of businesses and nonprofits in the last few days have both been entirely unsurprising. This is in no way to say that anyone must concede the language and claims of abortionists, but rather that, already knowing well their words and their tactics, red states might have largely preempted them. Foster systems and adoption processes and state medical systems could have been proactively reformed. Governors could beat Congress in creative promotion of marriage and family, whether it be through housing help, child tax credits, or policies that improve employment for men without college degrees. Corporations and organizations willing to fund abortion travel should be punished for helping kill a citizen of a state that protects life. You cannot cast down the high places of Moloch without resisting Mammon, too.   

All this assumes that pro-life politicians mean what they say. But we in fact know that many of them don’t, and that many are as confused about the relationship between international corporations and the businesses of their own states as they are about the imago Dei in the human creature. A telling quote appeared in a recent New Yorker feature, courtesy of Mac Stipanovich, the chief of staff for former Florida Governor Bob Martinez. 

There was always an element of the Republican Party that was batshit crazy. They had lots of different names—they were John Birchers, they were “movement conservatives,” they were the religious right. And we did what every other Republican candidate did: we exploited them. We got them to the polls. We talked about abortion. We promised—and we did nothing. They could grumble, but their choices were limited.

Well, we always suspected. 

Stipanovich helpfully continues. “So what happened? Trump opened Pandora’s box and let them out.” And so it was. We owe in large part the overturn of Roe to a president who didn’t know how things were supposed to work and didn’t care. While the Dobbs opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, and the most forceful concurrence came from Bush Sr.-appointed Justice Clarence Thomas—who once again is receiving the special opprobrium of a Joe Biden-figureheaded left—it could not have been decided without Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. But as President Trump said in an interview with Fox News after the decision was announced Friday, “God made the decision.” 

The hardest political battles have only just begun in what is a long spiritual war. And it is the religious right, Christians, who should now let their imaginations grow and, in faith, step forward to meet the challenge. Yes, in love, the faithful church in America has long sought to meet the needs of families, mothers, orphans, and the unborn in generosity of time and money. All this must continue. But no longer is it enough to be a third leg to an unsteady coalition, letting financial interest and national security set the governing agenda. The time has come to lead. Let us demand that the election this November reflect the dream of a better land, and hold those officials who have made vain promises to account. Yet even as we are grateful for what has been won thus far, we remember that what the Court gives, and what presidents give, can be taken away. So put not your trust in princes, but nevertheless hope.  

The post Pro-Lifers on Offense appeared first on The American Conservative.

Dobbs as a Little Cloud 

And it came to pass after many days…” So starts the triumph of Elijah over the priests of Baal, and the return of rain to a desert land. Many days here is a matter of years, and the kingdom of Israel has suffered under a famine. 

In the nearly 50 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, more than 62 million human babies, each made in the image of God, have been slaughtered on the altar of convenience. 

I have not troubled Israel; but you, and your father’s house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and have followed Baalim.” So answered Elijah when the king, Ahab husband of Jezebel, blamed the prophet of God for the dryness of the land. And he challenged Ahab, and the Baalimites, and the people of Israel, to come to Mount Carmel and see there what the Lord might do. 

Now the nation waits for a decision from the United States Supreme Court regarding Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, one that may overturn Roe. In doing so it would reveal a nation not only divided de facto but de jure over the very nature of the human being. 

How long halt you between two opinions?” So asked Elijah of the assembled people, whether they would choose to serve the Lord or Baal. And Baal’s prophets were 450, and Elijah was only one. The challenge was simple: The prophets made an altar, and the prophet made an altar; and the prophets took a bull, and the prophet took a bull; and the prophets sacrificed the bull but did not set it alight and they called on the name of their god to consume their offering. And nothing happened. 

We received a foretaste of all this last September, when Texas’s effective ban on the murder of babies after the sixth week of pregnancy provoked the shrieking anger and despair of votaries observing the desecration of their temple. 

Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleeps, and must be awaked.” So mocked Elijah. And when the prophets of Baal failed to summon a response from their master, we read they cried aloud, and cut themselves with knives so that the blood gushed out. And though they were many and persisted until the evening, from Baal there was neither voice, nor answer, nor any regard.

Since the leak of the draft opinion regarding Dobbs, there has been an encore to the impotent tantrums of last fall. In a bizarre recent display outside Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s house, women affiliated with a group called “Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights” processed in pants made to appear soaked in blood while carrying baby dolls. Allegedly an illustration of the consequences of “forced births,” the performance looked more like a reminder of the essential violence of tearing babies apart in their mothers’ wombs. 

Come near unto me.” So said Elijah to the people of Israel, and he repaired the altar of the Lord that had broken down. And he prepared the sacrifice, and ordered that the assembly should douse it in water, that most precious thing in their dry land. And he prayed.

“Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that you are the Lord God, and that you have turned their heart back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, “The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.”

Not every tantrum reserves its harm for the flailing child. We know now that, whatever the final ruling in Dobbs, no matter how limited, a national storm is coming. A pro-abortion domestic terrorist group called “Jane’s Revenge” already wages a firebomb campaign against crisis pregnancy centers across the country. Activists can and will be summoned into the streets to sow chaos and destruction in retribution for even the mildest protections of life. Even the long looked for, long prayed for full overturn of Roe will only be the beginning of a new chapter in a spiritual war. But let those who labor hope in every win.

Go up now, look toward the sea.” So said Elijah to his servant, for he had promised rain to Ahab and to the people of Israel. And as Elijah prayed, the servant went up and looked and, seeing nothing, returned, and Elijah sent him forth again, seven times. “And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, ‘Behold, there arises a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.’

The post <em>Dobbs</em> as a Little Cloud  appeared first on The American Conservative.

On Assassination Attempts

More masks have been coming off lately than just the KN95s (though one fears this is a reference whose significance will be soon forgotten, because of, not despite, its enormity). Of course, if you see a mask as a mask then you know something lies under it, and liberal proceduralism has always been a manufactured friendly face for the naked realities of politics. Indeed, that was liberalism’s point, to paint some lines and make a war a sport. But that artificiality has become a little more inescapable, and so I hope more people clinging naively to a consensus that no longer exists will wake up to the acrid burning smell. 

The Dobbs opinion leak was that recent alarm for some, a final realization that the fiction of judicial sacredness, an institution set apart from the partisanship of every other piece of American life, was just that: fiction atop faction. But if that was not alarming enough, last Wednesday saw a man arrested in an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A media firestorm erupted—I kid, of course. The reality today is that we have entered a period of political history where the attempt on a Supreme Court justice’s life is largely considered a yawn. Major papers and cable news channels, with the exception of Fox, hardly touched the story, and the implicit of course we aren’t calling for anyone to actually die but he’d deserve it if he did from liberal pundits on Twitter was barely subtextual. There was a very brief reckoning of sorts when Congressman Steve Scalise and the Republican Congressional baseball team were almost killed by a lib in 2017. It was theatrical, and only happened at all because Scalise came so near to dying of his wounds. We barely remember it now. 

With the January 6 committee show trial, quite literally a professionally produced special television event, the contours of the moment become clearer. Even more clear, if we step back to actually look, are the most recent arrests related to the circus. Peter Navarro was arrested earlier this month, publicly and aggressively, after Democrats held him in contempt for refusing to testify before the committee. That arrest came a day after the former White House economic advisor promised to work to impeach President Joe Biden when the GOP takes control of Congress in the midterm elections this November. Meanwhile, last Thursday, Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley was arrested by the FBI on charges related to January 6, never mind it being a year and a half later. MSNBC acknowledged the arrest to be unprecedented, with Kelley the first candidate for major public office charged in connection to the riot.

But we are only getting started. On Sunday, since years of Russiagate and a “shadow campaign” to “fortify” the 2020 election have not been enough to banish MAGA, members of the January 6 committee announced they had enough evidence for the Justice Department to “consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump.” That would certainly be a boost for ratings, since the miniseries has been thus far, as far as infotainment goes, a snoozefest. The show’s historic interest is largely in the abstract, that it is happening at all, not the particulars. But rolling out the Watergate red carpet for an already dethroned emperor marks another step toward criminalizing losing national elections. That might be where heads already were in the Clinton and Biden family machines, Obama somewhere still present behind the scenes, but apparently it is time for the rest of us to see it: win, or it’s not just the election you might lose.

None of this is, in a long enough view, really unprecedented. It is hard for the popular consciousness to remember the chaos and violence of the 1960s and ’70s. Presidents and officials and public figures have been actually assassinated. And America fought a formal Civil War, of course, back when it was possible to fight one, the seceding states fielding regular armies against the federal troops. Today, however, after many successive administrative and judicial consolidations of our national government, that sort of professional Caesar vs. Pompey fight seems impossible. Unrest last century looked the way it did for not-yet-abrogated reasons, and so escalating future civil conflict would resemble far more the sort seen in Argentina, or Lebanon, or, God help us, Spain. And that means the line that divides rising inflation and homelessness and crime from political violence will be blurry, the point between declining standards of living and disintegrating order one we risk tripping on.

Grim, I know. But attempted assassinations should be taken seriously, and things like the apparent firebombing of a pregnancy resource center in Gresham, Oregon, now being investigated by the ATF and FBI, put one in a grim state of mind. Nevertheless, as the angels say, fear not. This too will pass, though we may not like its passage. Tend what is given to you to tend. As a mad farmer once said,

Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

The post On Assassination Attempts appeared first on The American Conservative.

The Right to a Javelin 

It was a youthful indiscretion. Papa had trained me well, put safety before fun, explained firing lines and pointing where you meant to. I still remember Nana warning him off about using high-velocity rounds on their ranch—the neighbors didn’t like the noise—and him ignoring her and explaining that we could shoot this particular direction because even if I went high the lead would still come down on family property. But this was not .22 Long Rifle on the ranch. It was the Crosman variable-pump BB and pellet air rifle, in the suburbs. 

I and the neighbor kid had shot every day that summer. Were we 12? He only had a little Daisy, but was still pretty good with it. We’d gotten bored with standard targets and moved to medicine cups and plastic army men, but still found ourselves itching for a challenge. I liked making paper airplanes, too. They could do tricks. If you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life; let’s shoot planes, I thought. A toss, a swoop, a staggering spin, two shots, and the back window of the minivan was on the ground, shattered. It was a mix between a miracle and height differentials that my younger siblings hadn’t been hit. I didn’t shoot much the rest of the summer. 

But my mother had been, till then, right to let us shoot unsupervised in the yard. We knew what we were supposed to do and the firearms were scaled appropriately to something you could mow in a couple hours. Ours were dangerous toys, others are dangerous tools, but either way there is little more American than knowing how to use one responsibly. My mother had grown up shooting with Papa. Dad had shot while briefly in ROTC. Hunting rifles in pickup trucks, and even lockers, in rural high schools were not uncommon even just a few decades ago. 

The issue today is not guns near schools, or even in them. The guns haven’t changed since the last century; the schools have, and the kids have. But along with many other obvious reforms of education and social media, here is something we can do about guns and schools: Firearms safety and use should be incorporated into our curricula. Grade kids on marksmanship. Not everyone has a Papa to teach them. 

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” was enshrined as an amendment to our Constitution for a reason—was, in the Bill of Rights, a part of ensuring the incorporation of those states wary of a stronger federal government. From the Second Amendment to Sergeant York, from Black Panthers to Roof Koreans, gun ownership is as American as apple pie. There are at least ten guns per American in America right now. Whether you like it or not, there cannot be a United States in any meaningful continuity with either the American Revolution or even the decrepit regime of today if the personal ownership of firearms were substantially changed. So with public shooting courses, let American gun use become well regulated, ruled by shared skill and custom.  

Laws must be enforced by arms. Civil War and Civil Rights, the story of American political development has been one of equality at the end of a gun. For much of that history those guns have been held by feds, but before then, and more fundamentally, political equality was built on the cooperation of armed fathers and armed sons, and, sometimes, armed mothers and armed daughters. Republican government as we know it traces itself through the rule of armed feudal lords back to the self-rule of citizen soldiers in classical democracy. It is a compact to hold arms not in common, but for the common good. Scripture being specific about murder and unspecific about weapons, it is to this tradition, and our own, that we must look as we consider what prudence suggests about the lawful ownership and use of firearms. 

The Constitution and Second Amendment have not been entirely abrogated as such yet, and I leave the minutiae of case law to the lawyers. But we can also look to our Declaration of Independence, by which our forefathers entered violent rebellion invoking the laws of nature and nature’s God, to see the causes for which Americans have kept and resorted to arms. We often read only the soaring promises of the second paragraph and skip the indictment of King George, but let us recall two here. 

First: “He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.” A professional army, an occupying external military force, turned against a citizenry, this the Founders associated with barbarism. And second: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” To leave the persons and property of the citizens undefended, to make no distinctions between combatants and noncombatants, this was associated with savagery. But this barbarism and this savagery can reemerge at any time, indeed do reemerge in tyranny and lawlessness, and thus our Second Amendment. 

Much is made by proponents of stricter gun control of Europe and Japan; to which I say, America is a nation of pilgrims and pioneers, a frontier country, and not a defeated people long occupied by foreign powers. Much is also made of the military style of popular firearms; a recent political cartoon for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution depicts Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky saying, “We want America to provide Ukraine with powerful military weapons like the ones U.S. 18-year-olds can buy.” To this I say, never mind the inanity of the apparent point about AR-15s, let the right of the people to keep and bear Javelins not be infringed. Much is made of the vast inequality in fire power between the U.S. federal government and American citizens, to suggest that since the armed preservation of rights would be impracticable it need not be countenanced; to that I say look at Afghanistan and asymmetric warfare everywhere. But I also say look back to the hoplites, and the origin of self-government in the alliance of armed citizens, and back to the breaking of martial aristocratic orders on the equalizing barrels of the gun, and hope for some new instrument of leveling the battlefield. Power armor, perhaps.  

The post The Right to a Javelin  appeared first on The American Conservative.

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