As the USA's 246th birthday approaches there remains much debate as to what was won in the Revolution and how that pertains to Americans living today. In less than a generation the leftist side shifted to a full embrace of Marxist means to define terms, wishing for personal autonomy only to the extent it serves their own wants and placing on society the burden of shielding them from the consequences of their poorer choices. The right has shifted in the same time frame, currently still trying to find itself in the balance between populism and pragmatism, but leaving no doubt theirs is the cause for maintaining the delicate scales that have Order on one side and Liberty on the other which we call Justice. The left likewise embraces cause they consider just; problem is they only succeed in a realm where they arbitrarily define terms to their suit which, as in the French Revolution, will eventually see the radicals hoisted by their own petards.
The present divide in America is due to this shift in perspectives: the focus is no longer objective justice as a balance between liberty and order, but on competing rights of which those that prevail will be those embraced by whoever attains greater power. This undermines a diverse society living freely in peaceful coexistence because it reduces the scales of justice to nothing better than the ages-old struggle for power, as well as justifying the abuse of that power as spoils of the victors which is exactly what is going on now with these January 6th hearings (the same is liable to be turned on Democrats once Republicans regain Congress; doubtless they will believe themselves justified giving their adversaries a taste of their own medicine). This is starkly illustrated in the context of yesterday's SCOTUS decision being framed as between the right of the unborn to live and the right of the pregnant to choose whether to carry to term.
For those of us who know human beings are special creation made in the image of God the life question is a no-brainer. While I disagree with Matthew McConaughey's specific gun control proposals I do agree with the stated philosophical underpinning: there must be less of this extreme focus on rights and more a focus on responsibility because the two go must go hand-in-hand to work in the real world. That is the key flaw of today's Left: they are all about the rights they believe themselves entitled but responsibility, if acknowledged at all, gets foisted on others rather than lived up to individually. Thus this is not a matter of life (not even of the mother's anymore thanks to medical advances) but of reason.
While I get my headlines from Newsmax and opinion from talk radio, I get balanced commentary online through RealClearPolitics. All the leftist perspectives I read decry women (or whichever "inclusive" term they choose) being "forced" to carry pregnancy to term with nothing about responsibility for those not ready to have children taking measures to keep from getting pregnant in the first place. No case needs to be made that abstinence is 100% effective: this is objective fact as is the necessity of self-control. Not to be callous [but to continue to be objective] pregnancy due to rape and incest occurs in way too tiny a minority of cases to justify sweeping policy granting unfettered access to abortion, and in any case the 2 most pertinent facts are still at play: 1) the unborn life is an innocent human being and 2) the decision to abort is never compassionate but is 100% of the time based on selfish convenience (as proven by all the emphasis on how life is made more difficult for young single mothers and poorer families).
This is where the church comes in. While I admit my perspective is somewhat limited, I find accusations that we pro-lifers stop caring once the birth happens to be slanderous. Charitable assistance is available for those who need it, and I notice those claiming otherwise commit the classic leftist error of failing to acknowledge the sufficiency of non-public assistance. Part of the matter is people are inclined to favor public assistance over private because the latter, while the more responsible choice, exacts a higher cost in pride which human nature is averse to pay (a key tenet of Left ideology is promotion of human pride, the root of all evil in the world). But the rubber meets the road at the same place: anyone accusing the church of not caring by not helping enough with crisis pregnancies is not bothering to observe very well, or get past the fact that people cannot be coerced to accept such help and there are many who decline.
If competing rights persist as a point of argument, a certainty since the repeal of Roe v. Wade does not ban abortion nationwide but only brings about a pre-1973 status quo ante bellum, understanding must rest that the victors in this case believe in a range of originalist Constitutional perspectives from state-level sovereignty to fundamental faith-based beliefs in what constitutes human life and its value. That is also the point reason comes into play (and proof that faith and reason are meant to complement, not contradict, each other). Those who try to claim human life with full rights and value thereof forms some point after conception creates a unique life are making as much a faith-based statement as those who consider conception that starting point...an arbitrary one at that because "scientific" criteria tends to be in the eye of whomever beholds it at the time, proven by how courts ruled on a very different definition in the 1970s than gets applied today.
That the faithful consider abortion a type of murder and recognize no right to commit murder is simple enough that it should hardly bear repeating, but it is logical that in places people of such faith dominate the democratic/representation process they are within their capacity to refuse toleration of depravity [as they see it] in their communities. Correct, the same reasoning can be applied to other matters of moral consideration such as same-sex marriage because there is no keeping values of faith and morality out of politics altogether: such is impossible, so it is actually a matter of which set of values will prevail and that the prevailing interest for society is have the best possible faith in command. Deep down Leftism does understand the truth of this, regardless of the efforts of secular humanism to exempt itself from the First Amendment's Establishment Clause that they happily impose on others (supposedly justified because they consider it to not apply to them due to their lack of following any specific deity, as if that somehow defines "religion" all on its own).
The prevailing of those values reached a culmination yesterday; that is a great thing and the results will show for themselves over time. There is no doubt in my mind why it happened now as, while President Trump noted this would not have occurred had he not lived up to his promises on who to nominate for the Supreme Court, he still gave full credit for the ruling itself to God. From now forward June 24th will be celebrated in America as the watershed point a genocide of greater scale than inflicted by any one of history's mass murderers was finally brought to heel. Before that day the greatest memorial to the many never given a chance to be born was to fight to bring to term the prevalence of the idea that their lives hold no intrinsic value; now that is accomplished and, while that mission still applies in the states where this ruling changes nothing, for the rest of country where the faithful have prevailed the best memorial is to enable those who will now get to live to grow up and create the brighter future we had been denying ourselves for a half-century.
For Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness!
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