Just Another Blog in the Wheel

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?