Just Another Blog in the Wheel

A glance at the output of contemporary philosophy departments justifies this sardonic assessment: 20^th century philosophy suffered so many hernias from pushing Kant against the wall, that the first decade of the next century has proved too short a time to calculate the damage, identify the lost trajectory, or get back to business. Publishing houses long regarded as belonging to the first rank, now promote philosophical tomes insisting that the real world and make-believe worlds share the same reality.

It gets better (worse?). In fact, philosophy has fallen so far off the curb, it has become for the profession less a question of which way is up, as whether “up” has any meaning. If it is suggested by some rapscallion that it does, you may expect another Rabelaisian to immediately publish his thesis in which he “proves” that, if “up” does actually exist, it evidently bears no relation to “down.” Rab and Rap then join forces in securing a Federal grant which enables them to construct a team of scholars ready to demonstrate… something.

This nearly chaotic condition afflicting Socrates’ child offers the raw materials for a splendid, even a riotous, evening. All you need to do is,  1) secure the most recent Oxford University Press catalog of philosophical offerings;  2) buy two or three bottles of  fine Merlot;  3) gather several adults for an after-dinner fellowship; and 4) have each take turns reading aloud the titles, subtitles and blurbs. You cannot go wrong; you will not be disappointed. You’ll create a memory. Consider the following thrilling volumes, each alleged to own real estate on the cutting-edge of mankind’s intellect-in-action:

· Moral Machines, “The first book to address the problem of creating ethical robots…”
· Philosophers Without Gods, which appears to be a sort of devotional for God-haters. The subtitle says it’s Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life, which I take to be a claim that it will aid readers in thinking deeply about what isn’t. Come to think of it, this book might explain a lot—about the authors. They’re missing something for sure.
· Drugs and Justice,  Oxford says, addresses “the central issues in drug policy: the lack of a coherent conceptual structure for thinking about drugs.” This is clear proof that the authors have not yet taken enough drugs to qualify to write such a book.
· Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise, explains how you can get a terminal degree while believing “that non-actual possible worlds and individuals are as real as the actual world and individuals.”
· Value, Reality, and Desire -Oh man, I treasure this book. Really. I want it.

All together, these portend the imminent self-immolation of the Enlightenment Project. Safe bet that the altar flames will be carried first from the Philosophy Department to the rest of the campus. Listen—I didn’t even mention the book which argues for the moral superiority of non-existence. (Stay tuned.) That’s right. For this optimist,  to be or not to be is not the question. “Not to be” is his aggressive preference, for everyone, as a norm. Leave it to a philosopher, well-practiced in his atheistic devotions, to tell us a better use for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Consider this: if, as some have suggested, Nietzsche’s Superman paved a highway for Hitler, what do you suppose awaits us when some leader-to-come operates on the presupposition that bringing everyone into non-existence is to do them a favor?

Here, surely, is the terminus of man’s autonomous reason: exactly as Scripture says—death. And not as a dreaded, hated thing, an intrusion. And not, as the Word calls it, an enemy. No. This is to gaze upon it as a lover. To prefer never having been to life everlasting  is to have allied one’s self with Satan at an earlier, an even more primitive  point of departure than that taken by our First Parents. Their devotion to Satan was so strong that to rescue them God first had to place enmity where their allegiance had been. Just so, all who begin the knowledge enterprise apart from the fear of the Lord, do not engage as neutral players, but as lovers of death (Proverbs 8:28). This love may be dormant; it is easily disguised.

But when, in an age of epistemological self-consciousness—when the darkness covers every landscape beyond Goshen’s borders—that fetid love feels safely hidden. As light causes the plant of pure love to grow, to blossom, so it is when surrounded by darkness that the darnel dares lift up its head. Having neither light to see in nor eyes to see with, still it boasts, it swaggers, it beats against the wheat and calls out to it, “Come! Join me. For behold, my dearest companion has arrived and bids us feast with him. How I have longed for his appearing! And now he is here. Come meet him. Come meet my only friend, the End.”

Yes, this is the truth of knowledge falsely so called. Yet, by God’s common grace, we must acknowledge that this century of philosophy past was not entirely worthless. For example, even a casual survey would reveal that the futility of unbelieving philosophy, has, in several sub-departments, made itself known, if not yet felt. And, skipping past other, brighter spots, there was important progress made in appreciating the inseparability of Word and Being. More narrowly, work of inestimable importance was done demonstrating how language does more than influence, does more than shape our perception of reality. To a very large extent, it determines it.

Not being one to start a celebration while there’s a perfectly good funeral to go to, I must report that the inextricable connection which enables language to define reality has not gone entirely unnoticed. That’s right. It’s been noted, and put to work, by feminists and sodomites and by numerous other entitlement groups. Yet, despite this exploitation having taken place in full view of the Church, Christians have—even with a Bible in hand that disclosed, even on its first page!, the Word/Reality relation millennia before Wittgenstein was a gleam in his daddy’s eye—Christians somehow (one is tempted to say miraculously, but it’s too painful, precisely because it is too true) managed to remain oblivious to the progress noted above, and altogether unaware of its value.

Which brings me to the provocation which prompted this lament—it was a brochure publicizing the Annual Conference of the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors. “Wait a minute!,” you say. “Aren’t they the good guys?” Indeed they are. They are the people who are “pursuing excellence in Biblical Counseling.” And therein lies the tragedy. Even those among us who have the proven discipline and skill to win skirmishes, somehow manage to show themselves ever more skillful at losing entire wars.

“Why? What are you talking about, Schlissel?” I’m talking about something that appears on the inside front cover of the brochure. “What? What? What could it be?”

Please don’t be offended if I say, I fear you may not yet share with me the sort of alarm-value indicated by the word I read. But I won’t keep you in suspense. It was the simple, casual, hardly noticeable identification of one of their principal people as “Chairperson” of a certain department.

“Chairperson?! You get this worked up about the use of ‘chairperson?’ How sad!” The writing on the wall, however, is the fact that so very, very few do get worked up by this. For, first of all, the man in question is no such thing. He is the chairman. Of course those determined to turn God’s order upside down would buck and chafe at reminders of His sovereignty, and His ordained order, but those who find God’s will irresistibly sweet must surely embrace the use of reality-impacting language that speaks reflectively in accordance with God’s will.

You see, feminists began their work in good communist fashion, by unjoining that which God had joined together. In order for them to set men and women at odds with each other, in order for them to effectively initiate policies that would destroy families, they had to cast life as lived, not by families, but by “individuals.” In this way, specialized segmentation could take on a life of nearly infinite adaptations. Order is not to be found in that which well serves families, but rather in that which serves individuals, abstractly defined after being first abstracted from families.

If families had one vote each, cast by the head of the family, it was twisted to appear not as “one family-one vote,” but as one vote for a man, and a vote denied to a woman. Never mind that God had declared these two one. When political purposes demand the redefinition of an entity, unbelievers are always quick to make it. The news, however, used to be in how quickly believers joined them. But it isn’t news anymore.

The reason this instance was so very distressing is because I’ve been compelled to witness the demasculization of language as the style-czars cemented it into place as policy governing the printed works of every secular publisher. Then, one by one, it has mowed down (nearly) every evangelical publisher, with hymn-publishers reckoned among the earliest casualties. Thus, I reason, if we can’t speak like God would have us speak when we write for others, at least we can use covenantally inclusive language¹ when we write for ourselves. But no! The rot has infested so deeply, so thoroughly, the wall is so horribly mildewed that any priest worth his salt knows it’s his sad duty to tell the dwellers, their abode must be torn down. It is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. When those who advertise themselves as the most faithful among us start using the rhetoric of the Revolution (i.e., as van Prinsterer defined it, viz., raw, anti-Christian unbelief), that time of judgment has arrived.

Why do we prove ourselves ready to censor or alter any word which might remind anyone that God made man to be a covenant head? When Christians self-publish, any willingness shown by them to adopt the rhetoric of anti-Christianity should be met by severe disapproval. Why deliberately reinforce a distortion of reality and a falsehood?

Although the world has waged war on male headship, it seems necessary to remind my fellow Christians that, this war, whose chief weapons are nouveau-speech, redefinition and censorship, is doomed to fail. Why do Christians insist on being distinguished as the folks who walk in the same direction as revolutionaries, only a few yards to the rear? You’ve heard that “slow obedience is no obedience.” But understand this: slow disobedience is still disobedience! Every time a self-described Christian organization adopts the egalitarian style book, they betray their God, His created order, and they give aid and comfort to His enemies.

All my life I witnessed men and women speak and write about men—chairmen, postmen, handymen and mankind—with no offense given or taken. It was only when feminists decided to exploit the one area of philosophical progress of the 20^th century that women were made to feel as if they should be offended. But it was—and is—all as phony as a three dollar bill. There is no offense to any God-created reality—not for His own children!

As long as men are taller, and as long as women insist on marrying taller men-and as long as the first floor of Department Stores are devoted to cosmetics—feminism confesses itself a fraud. Jesus is the Truth. His church is its pillar and foundation—presenting and representing His truth in this world. It’s time for women of both genders to get used to Christian writers and publishers using language which accords not with a fantasy world, but with the one real world which God has made, the same one He pronounced good.

NANC—repent. Seeing how central gender is to identity, if you can’t honor gender differences (even in language), and the callings respective to each of the two genders, why would anyone trust you to help them become more integrated in terms of who they “really” are? There are rules—and exceptions. That language is legitimate which reflects God-imposed rules. Language which subverts those rules is illegitimate. It is language in service to a revolt against His ordinances.

NANC: Repent. Please. Rewrite. Today.

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1. He/she, or the recent s/he is, contrary to a self-conferred description, not inclusive but exclusive language. The use of “man” so as to include men, women and children is actual, genuine inclusive language. But make no mistake, the double pronouns and strained possessive cases are temporary. Already the burden has led many publishers to abandon s/he and its cognates in favor of straight up “she,” “her” and more. It seems it wasn’t power that was offensive. It was power that recognized and served the family above abstracted individuals—that power was offensive—or so fools were made to think. In consequence of such thinking, they allowed themselves to be set to war against their own interests, for the profit of  parties other than the fool combatants.

The following paragraph is from a press release honoring Black History Month, by Alan D. Aviles, the President of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Both in New York City and the nation, people of African-American descent often face greater health challenges than the general population. African-American adults are twice as likely to have a stroke and 60% more likely to die from a stroke than white adults. African-Americans have a higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, infant mortality and sickle cell anemia than other ethnic groups. In addition, they have a higher incidence and poorer survival rates of certain cancers, including lung, prostate and stomach cancer.

We are told that it was Mark Twain who observed that there are three categories of untruth: lies, damned lies, and statistics. It is paragraphs such as the above which provide to the gleg observer a disclosure of just how statistics are recruited for such (ig)noble purposes. A moment’s reflection ought to jolt the reader: How is it that these statistical observations are not joined to an explanation of WHY these disparities might exist? Whatever connection these “facts” might have with life is left to linger above the earth, the orbiting satellite of racial guilt, set to pass overhead at regular intervals to remind every American that…what? What exactly is the point of highlighting these disparities if one does not find accompanying the “inequity list” the very best or the most likely explanation which can account for the items listed? If someone really cares enough to notice the disparities, how do we account for them not caring enough to go just a tiny bit further, to bring us a tad nearer to a solution by tracing out for us the root causes of these unequal realities? It is in the Bible one may find the answer: “The mercies of the wicked are cruel.”

Prior to the 1960’s the absence of any attempted explanation would have been viewed as a lapse in integrity by the author and/or publisher. What kind of man is it who knows where a fire is raging but refuses to tell the location so that help might be sent? But you see, inequity lists such as these no longer even pretend to be doing front work for genuine concern. Rather, they are purely political, which is to say creedal phrases, recited not so that anything might be done to solve a problem or cure a disease, but to propagate a faith. They are rehearsed for no purpose beyond perpetuating a favorite myth. The Heidelberg Catechism teaches us the religious explanation for man’s problems. Illness and death are consequences of sin. Paragraphs like the one cited intend the same thing: illness and death are the result of a cardinal sin (if not the Original Sin) identified as such by the priests of the egalitarian state. This paragraph is pure catechetical preaching.

In this case, the catechism holds that all of America’s problems are rooted in inequalities. If egalitarianism has yet to descend upon a segment of life, if its visitation of destruction has failed to reach a sphere because the spreading leaven was halted in some way, then the populace is to meditate on it, chant and recite verses that they hope will, by religious fervor and force, finally bring the Great Solution of equalitarianism to all spheres. This is a religious exercise, my friends. It is because we are on this side of the communist egalitarian utopia–which it is our duty to ever hold before our eyes as THE great goal of man and state–that these terrible imbalances exist.

Black people suffer higher incidence of sundry and assorted “leading bad health indicators” because America and its health care systems are utterly racist. Isn’t it obvious? Here is the proof! There are health inequities! What further proof is needed? In the current American environment, at least, to say nothing by way of explanation is tantamount to saying, “Racism did this.”

But surely enough knowledge is available, enough data known to correlate these higher incidences with certain “lifestyle” choices. If the announcement were generic, speaking of total populations (i.e., regardless of race) in region “X” in, say, 1978 compared with the same in 2008, a conclusion stating that the 2008 population was “twice as likely to have a stroke” as the 1978 group, would certainly be joined to a hypothetical explanation. No editor worth his salt would accept the story for print if the reporter didn’t dig further for an explanation. These considerations, I insist, reveal this sort of selective reporting, in which the important questions are left unasked, to be nothing less than race-baiting, less than worthless and inexcusable. To know WHY the disparities exist and to be silent concerning these reasons, especially when seeking to draw attention to the additional burden borne by one segment of the population, is, to every sensitive conscience, unconscionable. But like the “Rev.” Al Sharpton, these people make their living off of racism. Though they put themselves forward as enemies of inequality, the truth is they are devoted to perpetuating and extending it. Without it they’d be out of a job. Any decline in real racism (and its ugly fruits) means a corresponding decline in their bonuses. And hey, these are hard economic times.

So expect lots more of these mysteriously abstracted observations. It’s like the figures bandied about by ignorant (I’m being kind) feminists who ask you to be indignant about “inequitous” (my new word!) pay between men and women. By failing to connect it to women’s choices about what sort of work they are trained or willing to do, or the number of hours they elect to be away from home, or the costs to employers who hire and train women only to find over time that other items on their agenda made it too easy for women to forsake the workplace altogether–by leaving it as an abstraction, it best serves its religious function as a training tool, instructing the next generation just what sin is. It is “any want of conformity unto or transgression of 50/50.”

If you are skeptical, if you suspect that I’ve done my own abstracting, I place before you Mr. Aviles’s next two paragraphs. If you find a reason for the disparity that might prove helpful to Blacks, let me know, will ya?

HHC has a proud history of addressing racial and ethnic health disparities faced by African-Americans in New York City. For example, we have developed numerous initiatives, such as our Web-based electronic diabetes registry, to help our patients with diabetes better control their illness and avoid long-term complications. Similar technology and special care programs help keep our pediatric asthma patients out of emergency rooms and hospital beds.

We continue our work to expand access to preventive screenings for heart disease, hypertension, and cancers; make HIV testing part of routine medical care; help people to quit smoking; and provide optimal perinatal care.

It is time for Americanity to recognize that Political Correctness is not about politics. It’s simply that old Baal showing his version of “tolerance.”

Evolution, of course.

Evolution, we are told, is the neutral, scientific, secular reality which accounts for our being, our here, our being here, and our being here now (not to mention everything else, seen or unseen, known or unknown).

Evolution is the spittoon of the Western classroom, placed in every room to collect the awkward questions and keep them separate from the answers. The wardens are confident that “natural” revulsion will keep away most who might be tempted to look and see if anything that was hawked up and in, was actually paired. “How do you account for…?” “Ach-tooie, uh, evolution.” “And what about…?” “Achtooie, evolution.”

It’s the silent butler, or the butler designed to silence, to catch the crumbs of unanswerable questions and remove them from sight, lest anyone be reminded of all that remains unaccounted for. You know, the incidentals, like meaning, purpose, sacrificial love, unexpected heroism, eyes that see, and informed consciences and mommies.

It’s the dumpster where the memories of oppressive expectations (like performance of duties and fulfilling of roles) are tossed. And despite the “DO NOT RECYCLE” painted prominently on the dumpster’s broad side, those oppressive expectations manage to show up again, often as politically correct slogans which, when uttered, must be greeted with, “Yeah, man,” the “Sieg Heil!” of the 21st Century. Must be greeted with a “yeah, man,” or else. In other days the response was “Amen,” but that has been scuttled lest someone perchance dream there was a defining Word uttered before ours.

This spittoon/butler/dumpster functions also as the reservoir and food pantry from which the raw stuff of all food served in the modern classroom has been retrieved. (So there is much recycling after all!) It’s where the teacher scavenges for an answer when confounded by the wisdom of a 5-year-old who asks, “Where do I come from?” It is said that the answer most used is a location. “You come from Baltimore, Cindy.”

I just want to know how it is that at all times and in all places, the ratio of males/females born ranges from 49/51 to 51/49. Why is that? And please don’t tell me “Baltimore.”

The allure of Evolution is that it promises to account (for the past) without an accounting (in the future).

Responses to last week’s entry have made this one necessary. Many of you thought it was Sarah Palin in the cross hairs of my scope. It was not. Now that you mention it, of course, it is perfectly obvious why you drew that conclusion. I apologize. A qualifier was called for. Please understand, though, the reason I didn’t say she was not in view was that she was not in view. Y’know what I mean?

I haven’t the slightest worry about Sarah Palin’s hormonal fluctuations. The journal entry to which this serves as a footnote was meant to remind us, not of Sarah or any person in particular, but rather, of an abiding truth: gender roles are not perfectly interchangeable. Sarah Palin’s place in history, coming after Geraldine Fararro, might be thought to turn on whether she, unlike Geraldine, makes it into the #2 Office. But from where I sit, that is not the marker.

If I had been writing about Sarah, my approach would have been the same as that taken in my recent Lord’s Day sermons, all of which have included references to her. I point out that Sarah’s appearance as a veep candidate, and more particularly, the vitriolic response to her, serves as the most powerful vision enhancement the Christian community could hope for. Before Sarah, Christians had little excuse for needing a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing. Post-Sarah, they have no excuse at all.

Sarah Palin, you see, is us. Sadly, American Christians still don’t get it. Her significance is NOT as the second female VP candidate of a major party. It is altogether as a Christian that her name has been despised, battered, whipped and abused. Sarah Palin’s gender is wholly immaterial. The stir is against her faith. Check that. The stir is against her God. The media hate her to the exact extent that our God–His existence and attributes–is revealed through her. She therefore serves as the perfect barometer of public sentiment toward Christ and Christianity. And since that public sentiment is wholly hostile, you might say she is a pretty, very unfrozen, sacrificial lamb.

Didn’t you notice? As soon as news got out that she is “pro-life,” Sarah was stripped of her gender. If you wait for a clearer example of politics trumping ontology, you’ll be waiting till long after Celine Dion’s heart stops (she said it would go on forever). The only parallel I can think of was on a radio talk show in New York. It was several years ago. A caller was asking why certain Black people are not prominently recognized. The surprising answer was forthcoming.

When the host asked for an example from the caller, he said, “Well, like Thomas Sowell,” the brilliant economist and social thinker. The host replied, “Thomas Sowell is not Black.” Coulda fooled me. And the caller. But in what must have been one of radio’s most honest and revealing moments, the radio host made it abundantly clear that race is politically defined. Since Sowell believes in personal responsibility, since he looks with justified hostility at quotas favoring Blacks, correctly arguing that to the degree they are adopted, to that degree you have permanently disenfranchised all who have used them to “get in,” that is, used a political loophole instead of their talent and test scores. Quotas mean making inescapable the brutally racist sentiment that Blacks are incapable of competing intellectually with Whites.

Since Mr. Sowell is opposed to the outstretched hand begging for favors, he lost entitlement to his race. He was assigned to the no-man’s-land of colorless, raceless souls (Sowells?). And the same was done to Sarah in regard to her gender. As a Christian who honors the God Who ALONE gives life, and Who ALONE dictates the terms governing its taking, Sarah has ripped the phony mask off the hypocritical faces of all those feminists who pretend to want “choice.” When presented with a woman who “chose” life, as Sarah did after learning that her youngest child would be a Downs baby, she is vilified.

Salon.com was probably the news source with the most to be embarrassed about when it comes to Palin-reaction. There she was brutally attacked for seeking to “deny to others the very choice which she herself employed.” DUH?! Wha? Huh? Sarah is seeking to prevent women from carrying their babies to term? Hardly! What they meant, of course, was that she is opposed to murdering unborn people. The time during which choice can be exercised without murder is before there is a new human being present. I don’t recall hearing Sarah say anything that would suggest she was against such choice (though I could speak against it in certain cases, without trepidation). What upset them is her failure to make the choice that THEY embrace: the choice to murder anyone who gets in your way.

The unrelenting, irrational, blatant scapegoating that is being practiced now with Sarah Palin is the target of choice can honestly be said to lack example in modern times, unless we go back to 1932 Germany. What we are witnessing is the warm-up of the pitchers who will dominate the game as America goes down the tubes in judgment before the holy God she has forsaken. They will be throwing out invective against Christians as Hitler did against Jews. Christians of the nominal, politically correct sort will be used as proof that there is no grudge against Christianity per se. No, it is only these extremists, these fundamentalists, these Sarah Palin-types who must, like the European Jews of the 1930’s and 40’s, be gotten rid of. All the economic (and other) ills of post WWI Germany were said to be generated by the Jews. Our recent glimpse of God’s ever-present ability to humble or destroy markets, or anything else man makes, give us also a glimpse into the various woes which denizens of the not-so-distant future will use to carry public sentiment against Christians to whatever extremes are within reach.

Judging by the ceaseless hatred being spewed toward my sister, Sarah Palin, and its lack of shame for lying, twisting, distorting, perverting the facts, Sarah’s significance seems to me to be a marker in our rush toward wrath. This little “hockey mom” has God in back of her. As long as she remains willing to let the fools show their folly, she is safe. The first time she bends to accommodate their demands, she–and we with her–are sunk.

In a manner of speaking.

On June 17, 2008, blogger Ada Calhoun ranted about the evil pharmacists who refused to hand off weapons of individual destruction to customers who presented nothing more than a physician’s prescription. The bile generated against people of conscience was startling. I find it impossible to become thoroughly jaded, no matter how much I see. I STILL expect people to be accessible by way of reason, and if not reason, at least self-interest. But the tolerant stage of this leftist revolution may be the shortest on earth. No pretense to tolerance exists any longer. “If they won’t follow MY prescription for the way things should be, let them starve!”

The small-mindedness prompted this reply from me. Don’t tell me. I know. Futile. Utterly futile.

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 This “controversy” depends upon people being ignorant enough to fail to make critical distinctions. The thinking skills revealed in the article and some comments suggests the writers are the product of government-sponsored education. The first distinction to bear in mind is the difference between a governmental service and free-market business. Even the radical ACLU generally targets governmental displays or activities which, to them, imply a governmental endorsement of a particular religion (presuming the display or activity will result in harm to those who do not share the implied faith position). It does not lash out against businessmen who put Christmas displays on their private property. Some of you seem to think that all space in America belongs to the government and not to the people. That is the sentiment of an ignoramus indeed, one you can be certain logs lots of TV time to soft-boil the brain.

The other problem is failure to discern, or even consider, exactly why these pharmacists follow the brave course they’ve taken. This may be hard for some of you to imagine, living, as you do, with the burden of freedom and responsibility inherent in the American system. If you think Angelina Jolie should be the US Ambassador to the UN, you probably won’t appreciate the civilizational obligation to think before opening your yap. Instead of knee-jerking into, “What! Somebody won’t give somebody what they want! Death to them!” consider WHY they take the position they do. Believe it or not, you do not need to share their opinion to respect theirs. That should come as good news, assuming your devotion to tolerance is something more than a complete sham.

Four generations ago, American policy, confirmed by a Supreme Court decision, had it that it was perfectly fine to enslave Black people because, the “reasoning” went, Black people were not FULLY human persons, entitled to the same protections given to all others. One generation ago, Hitler, with the support of the people of the nation of Germany, “reasoned” that killing Jews was a service, not a sin, again because of their being, by definition, excluded from claim to the protections which guarded all other “persons.”

The pharmacists refusing to dispense sincerely believe the same thing is happening again, with unborn persons having been grievously denied the rights we recognize as appropriately accorded to ALL other human beings: the right not to be slaughtered, murdered, torn apart, or burned to death. The “reasoning” which suggests that, because unborn babies are small, or because they are dependent, does not, in these pharmacists’ eyes, justify removing them from the “human being” category. You may disagree with their logic, but you’d do well to at least pretend to acknowledge it before displaying your ignorance so perfectly by treating these people as enemies of the republic.

The truth is, they are aligning themselves with those who insisted, “Slavery may be legal, but it isn’t right.” They are the rare German voice, like Bonheoffer’s, decrying the wholesale slaughter of an entire population. They are among the many Americans who do not believe that legality is the same thing  as legitimacy. It may have been lawful according to the Third Reich to mercilessly destroy Jewish life. It was NOT legitimate.

Now imagine for a moment that the pharmacists are wrong. Unborn human beings, let us say, are not really HUMAN. Perhaps they are chickens. We can ignore the photographic evidence which so strongly suggests that unborn human babies are, hmm, unborn human babies—just small. We can also ignore the pure science which holds that the entity before abortificants were administered, that these entities displayed the qualities we look for when searching for LIFE. We can ignore the science which testifies that the introduction of certain devices or products changed the status of the previously living entities to dead entities. Yes, we can insist that these pharmacists for life are just freakish brutes who don’t understand the greatness of all leftist slogans, preferring to come to their decisions by careful thought and consideration of fact. We may hate them for insisting that their jobs are places where their high regard for all human life MUST be lived out, perhaps there more than anyplace else. We may be so offended by their notion that ethics belong in pharmaceutical work, and their belief that any ethic which allows human life to be treated the same way as lab-rat death is sub-human and manifestly unethical—these convictions may so deeply offend us that we’d wish for them all to be fired or compelled to lose their businesses tomorrow. But are they such that we truly find them completely intolerable, period? No discussion, no room for understanding? Just, “Death to Pharmacists for Life”? If that is the case, consistency requires you to utter maledictions on all those everywhere who have believed that injustice and evil require us to pray for more courage, not for more slogans.

If I, however, had ever been opposed to contraception or abortion, I’m forced to wonder if it might not be better for our human race if the intolerantistas who equate bravery and compassion with evil—who regard pharmacists who are concerned for ALL their patients, including very tiny ones who may be hiding for a time inside other customers— as the enemies of freedom… Yes, I do believe I ought to change my mind and begin to encourage these intolerantistas to use every available means of birth control. How much more do I need to read to convince me that self-elected abortions might indeed be the hand of their own deity, whom they call Natural Selection, busy at work in our own generation insuring future life for the earth by eliminating these “entities” who love death?