Words Have Meanings

Words have meanings. It is becoming increasingly clear that many pro-life Americans stand ready to spin for George W. Bush and his administration the way that the Left spun for former President Clinton and his administration of criminals. To do that, however, is to continue one of the most pernicious aspects of Clinton’s sordid legacy: his unremitting warfare against truth in every quarter of his speech and his actions. Truth is what it is. It cannot be sugar-coated. The ends never justify the means. To pretend that something is what it is not is of the Devil, not of our Blessed Lord and Savior. It is critical, therefore, to know what President George W. Bush is, not what pro-life Americans wish him to be.

President Bush is not a man of the mind. He does not read. Indeed, he partied pretty heartily until around the time he was 40. He spent two hours of his day as governor of Texas playing video golf to “relax” after going for his daily run (or exercising on the treadmill in a gym if inclement weather kept him inside). He has surrounded himself with fellow careerists, men and women who have expertise in the business of acquiring and retaining political power, but who want to avoid any issues that might offend voters, especially the life issue. That is why Bush, having been assured of tacit support from the so-called National Right to Life Committee and the Christian Coalition, did not even talk much about the issue of abortion until after he lost the New Hampshire primary last year to Arizona Senator John McCain. Bush became a born-again religious conservative in order to win the South Carolina primary, using empty slogans and promises to secure the support of voters only too eager to follow the political path charted for them by Bush’s apologists in the pro-life and “conservative” religious establishments. Bush paid attention to the life issue only intermittently after that, with now-presidential counselor Karl Rove saying quite publicly on several occasions that Bush would not be discussing it much during the campaign. Never mind that, however; pro-life voters wanted to believe in Bush with the sort of wishful thinking that led young Natalie Wood’s character in the original Miracle on 34th Street to wish herself into believing in Santa Claus.

Anyone (Howard Phillips, Judie Brown, Patrick Buchanan, yours truly) who spoke during the campaign about Bush’s actual record on the life issue was dismissed as an irritant. We were accused of wanting to elect Al Gore. We were accused of not being realistic and pragmatic in the face of the evils posed by Gore. My personal retort was rather simple: the more that we enable the so-called lesser of two evils, the higher and higher the dose of the so-called lesser evil becomes with each passing election.

Indeed, I have been contending for years that the more we enabled career politicians to appease us with empty slogans and hollow gestures, the less visible the life issue would become on the radar screen of electoral politics. Most pro-life Americans fear the evil far more than they love the good, far more than they trust in the power of the graces won for us by the shedding of our Lord’s Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Calvary to overcome the evils we face by our proclamation of the truth in love but without compromise. The Americanist mindset has such a hold on good people that we believe that silence on the most pressing moral issue of the day is actually a virtue, that such silence will help to promote the retardation of the culture of death incrementally. What has actually happened, though, has been the incremental institutionalization of the acceptance of the evils of contraception and abortion — and the concomitant rise of the belief that it is deleterious even to speak about those issues openly. As I have said repeatedly over the past six years or so, we have come to believe that someone who is conditionally, partially opposed to a certain form of child-killing in the later stages of pregnancy — but who actually reaffirms women’s “constitutionally protected right” to butcher their unborn child — must be hailed as a pro-life hero. We have lost our grip on reality, ladies and gentlemen.

Last month’s lead commentary in Christ or Chaos, “A Long Four Years,” noted the new president’s penchant for avoiding issues deemed to be divisive, especially if addressing such issues might be costly to him electorally. Bush has the same penchant as his father for wanting to appear above partisan politics, above those things that could divide Americans. That attitude is nothing other than an expression of Protestant religious indifferentism and American sentimentality and emotionalism writ large. It is sometimes necessary to challenge a citizenry on issues of fundamental justice founded in truth precisely to plant the seeds that might force them to reassess their uncritical acceptance of the premises upon which our culture of death is founded. Indeed, the host of an overnight radio program on KMOX Radio in St. Louis, Missouri, said that a guest he interviewed over the telephone prompted two hours of discussion of how to think and speak about abortion after the guest’s own interview had been concluded. The host said that the person interviewed “got people to thinking about abortion” rather than emoting about the issue, one way or the other. George W. Bush is not interested in doing any of that whatsoever.

The reality is, quite sadly, that President Bush is doing just the opposite of what one who has been entrusted with the mantle of leadership is expected by the dictates of the natural law to do. He said in an interview televised by CBS News just hours before his inauguration, “What my agenda will be is to try to reduce abortions, is to work on partial birth, banning partial birth abortion, or to work on helping states with parental notification laws. That’s a practical approach. There’s going to be abortion in America and the fundamental question is are they going to be safe, will they be numerous or not.” How is that significantly different from Bill Clinton’s slogan that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare”? Each abortion kills a child dead. It is deadly for each child. And it is inherently unsafe of its very nature for a woman. It is never possible to make an evil act “safe” and free from all of its natural consequences, both physical and spiritual. Does not that tell you something about how hollow George W. Bush is? He believes it is important that abortions be “safe.” Words mean things.

(It is important to leave aside the issue of partial-birth abortion, which, as I have demonstrated in the past, would not save a single, solitary child from extermination; there remain two other methods of child-killing in the later stages of pregnancy that would be perfectly legal to use if the ban on partial-birth abortions should be passed by Congress and then upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, which is a problematic proposition in and of itself. Moreover, the life-of-the-mother exception in the bill is a loophole through which the proverbial Mack truck can be driven. For all of the good intentions of those who have sponsored the bill and have attempted to illustrate the horror of this particular form of child-killing, it is likely that the bill as currently written would not stop this method of child-killing from being employed. It has become an emotional red-herring to be used by phony pro-life politicians to curry favor with voters who have lost their grip on reality. Furthermore, we have come to believe — falsely — that killing a child by means of partial-birth abortion is somehow more morally heinous than killing a child by means of suction abortion or saline-solution abortion in the earlier stages of pregnancy. It is not. The deliberate execution of an innocent human is the same crime morally no matter what means are employed to effect the execution.)
 

Tactics of the Bush Clan

Enter Laura Bush, the new first lady of the United States. On January 19, she told Katie Couric on NBC’s Today program that she did not believe that Roe v. Wade should be reversed. She did not say that it could not be reversed, or that it was not possible for it to be reversed at this time, as her husband contended in his CBS interview that aired on the morning of his inauguration. She said that the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that sanctioned the killing of innocent unborn children in their mothers’ wombs under cover of law as a constitutionally protected “right” should not be reversed. All of that is an old trick of the Bush clan that needs to be examined briefly.

There was a time during the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush when the entire Bush clan was gathered for a July Fourth picnic in the family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater made it a point to reveal to the media that during the picnic the Bushes had quite a heated discussion about abortion. The men were said to be pro-life, the women were said to be “pro-choice.” It was all quite carefully orchestrated as a means of portraying the Bushes as being just like any other American family: torn apart by this “divisive” issue. However, it also helped complete the portrait that Bush the elder wanted to paint of trying to be all things to all people. The Bush women “understood” how abortion was a “difficult” issue for women. The Bush men were the defenders of traditional “family values,” but more than willing to consider the “opinions” of those who struggled with the issue. I filed that one away in the old cerebral website. Thus, Laura Bush’s proclamation that Roe v. Wade should not be reversed is really not news at all. It is merely a cynical effort to try to let the pro-aborts of America know they have a first lady who, though married to a man who says he is pro-life, understands their point of view and does not want “settled” law unsettled.

Remember, Barbara Bush, the mother of the newly inaugurated president, made a a point of saying that she was “pro-choice,” taking issue with her husband. (Taking that stand, by the way, is evidently a prerequisite for a Republican first lady: Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan were also pro-abortion.) Barbara Bush partly blamed the issue of abortion for the defeat of her husband by Bill Clinton in 1992. And she actually boasted last year about how her husband had appointed pro-abort David Souter to the Supreme Court in 1990, implying that her son would be as open to such a nominee as her husband had been — which, of course, her son had already proved during his time as governor of Texas, appointing pro-aborts to the Texas Supreme Court and to various judicial vacancies in lower courts, most notably the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Martha Hill Jamison to a district court in Houston.

Laura Bush did not speak on her own authority. She is a shrewd political wife. The new president and his advisors want to cultivate the image that the Bush family is as torn by the abortion issue as many other families are. Her public disagreement with her husband, who says different things about reversing Roe v. Wade at different times, is meant to show her to be an independent thinker, her own woman, not a slave to the way her husband thinks. Her position, however, solidifies the position of women who do indeed believe they have a right to kill the fruit of their wombs, that Roe v. Wade was decided rightly. Words matter. Words have meaning. The things we say influence others, for better or for worse.

Demonstrating his utter shamelessness, George W. Bush said in the CBS interview that while he disagreed with his wife, it was not possible to reverse Roe v. Wade. Well, guess what? It will continue to get less and less possible to reverse it if those in positions of leadership and civil authority refuse to use their bully pulpits to try to change hearts and minds — and to try to make it clear that we do not wait until the last mind has been changed before attempting to conform civil law to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. It is a convenient and cynical surrender to the supposed hopelessness of our current cultural situation to say that it is not possible to do those things that are difficult and painful, things that could imperil one’s own electoral survival and popularity. Even the Founding Fathers of this nation, with whom I have outlined a series of profound disagreements, expected that individuals who ran for elected office would be possessed of their own convictions and would be willing to articulate those convictions without fear of electoral reprisal.

An NBC interview with the new president aired at about the same time as the CBS interview. Amazingly, Bush stated that he was pro-life, that he disagreed with his wife, that he would appoint “strict constructionists” to the Court (notwithstanding the fact that his record in Texas belies a commitment to strict constructionism). Bush wanted to appear in that interview as being the pro-life champion. No mention there of keeping abortions “safe and less numerous.” Will the real George W. Bush please stand up? Actually, the real George W. Bush has stood up: he is a man who is inconsistent in his core, does not understand issues of fundamental justice founded in truth, says different things at different times, and wants to be all things to all people. He wants people to read into his statements exactly what he hopes they will, knowing full well that a little bit of wishful thinking on the part of Clinton’s supporters has kept Clinton’s popularity quite high, yes, even after he reached a plea agreement with independent counsel Robert Ray on January 19. As I noted last year, Bush is Clinton with a Texas twang.

But didn’t Bush make an allusion to Mother Teresa? So what? Bill Clinton quoted Scripture regularly. Regularly. Al Gore invoked the name of our Lord in black Baptist churches. Bush did not allude to Mother Teresa — as “doing great things for love” — as a means of discussing her unalterable, unconditional opposition to all abortion without any exception whatsoever. Mother Teresa was not concerned about tax cuts or about establishing “faith” in the American “creed.” Those are not the “great things for love” that Mother Teresa wanted people to do. And the love that motivated Mother Teresa was love of the Blessed Trinity through His true Church. Bush knows that the simple incantation of Mother Teresa’s name or of words such as “faith” will give him a great deal of mileage with people seeking someone in public life to admire and respect. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another. Imagine what good could be done if presidents who invoke words such as faith and love really loved God enough to sacrifice their political careers in behalf of the defenseless unborn.

Obviously, even the phrase “pro-life” has lost its meaning. Those who support abortion in certain instances — rape, incest, alleged threats to the life of the mother — are deemed to be pro-life, when they are in fact just less pro-abortion than others. Additionally, a person who is truly pro-life understands that no one who supports even one abortion as a matter of principle is qualified to hold any public office, whether elected or appointed, not to mention the highest offices in the Executive Branch of the federal government of the United States.

Look at the bevy of pro-aborts President George W. Bush has appointed to his new administration: White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; advisors Karl Rove and Mary Matalin; White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, the subject of an article in last month’s issue of Christ or Chaos; National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice; Secretary of State Colin Powell; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a member of the pro-population control Council for Foreign Relations; and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman. Those people will have important voices in the new president’s administration, seeming to demonstrate once again that good, competent public servants can pursue the common good even though they are committed to an evil that is fundamentally destructive of that common good.

For example, many commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, have been dismissive of the importance of Christine Todd Whitman’s appointment as EPA administrator. After all, it has been argued, what harm can she do there? What does her support for abortion have to do with her new job? Actually, quite a lot. For a person who does not recognize that a human being is the zenith of God’s creative work — and who does not recognize that God Himself chose to be knit in His Sacred Humanity in His Blessed Mother’s womb — will not understand the proper relationship of the human being to the environment. We are not here for the environment. The environment is here for us. Yes, we must be proper stewards of the Earth, as Pope John Paul II recently noted. But God created the Earth for human beings to populate, master, and subdue. A person who believes that the life of even one innocent unborn child is negotiable will have no problem with the current EPA policy that subjects the bodies of aborted babies to all manner of texts to determine the impact on the human body of various toxins found in the environment. It actually matters quite a lot that Christine Todd Whitman has been appointed to run the EPA. Of course, it doesn’t matter at all if abortion is just an issue about which “good” people can disagree, right?
 

What About Tommy Thompson?

Secretary of Health and Human Services-designate Tommy Thompson is one of the scores of politicians who have traded for years on an undeserved reputation for being pro-life. As is the case with most supposedly pro-life politicians, he supports the killing of innocent unborn children in certain cases and should not be called pro-life. However, the National Right to Life Committee and its various state affiliates have spun reality so utterly that the average pro-lifer has been convinced that it is permissible to kill the innocent unborn in certain circumstances. Thompson is not pro-life. If anyone doubts that flat statement, consider the proof offered below.

Thompson supports embryonic stem-cell research and transplantation. He has called it vital work and has arbitrarily characterized it as moral and ethical. As most of you know, stem-cell research involves the removal of cells from living embryos for various research and transplantation purposes. The embryos, little human beings, many of whom are conceived artificially in test tubes, are then killed when the cells are removed. That is a monstrous Hitlerian nightmare. However, “pro-life” Tommy Thompson supports that monstrous, barbaric practice. Bush is on record in opposition to federal funding for stem-cell research. However, it is quite telling that he appointed a man who believes in such research as vital and ethical to be secretary of health and human services.

Thompson has also caused a furor over the French abortion pill, the human pesticide, RU-486, which the Food and Drug Administration, an agency within HHS, authorized for marketing in September during the presidential campaign. Speaking during his Senate confirmation hearings on January 19, Thompson promised a review of the “safety” of RU-486. As The New York Times reported on January 20:

“I do not intend to roll back anything unless it is proven to be unsafe,” Mr. Thompson said in response to a question from Hillary Rodham Clinton, the new Democratic senator from New York. But he quickly added, “Safety concerns are something that’s in question.” The Food and Drug Administration, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, has determined that RU-486 is safe and effective in inducing abortion. But Mr. Thompson, an opponent of abortion, said that the approval of the drug “was contentious, was controversial.” After the hearing, Mr. Thompson was asked about the safety of the drug RU-486. “It should be reviewed, and that’s what I will do,” he told reporters. He was asked to describe the safety concerns. “I don’t know the specifics,” he said. “People have told me there are some safety concerns. If there are, we want to review them.”