Abortion and the Election, Part I

I want to spend the two weeks before the Presidential election addressing the topic of abortion as it relates to public policy. This is an important issue for the millions of Christians who feel trapped. On the one hand, many evangelical Christians, unlike any time in the past 30 years, identify more with the Democratic party than with the Republican party on most issues. But there are many people in this “conservative Christian yet Democrat” demographic whose conscience will not allow them to vote for Democrats in the end because of abortion.(For a clear example of this struggle, go here)

I believe that abortion is wrong in the moral sense. I have seen arguments that attempt to make abortion morally justifiable, but I remain unimpressed. So if my choice was between allowing millions of abortions to happen or not, I would probably be forced to vote for Republicans, despite the fact that I disagree with them on about every other issue. But this is not the choice. There are a few considerations which make this issue more complex, which I hope to cover this week and next. I hope that my “Christian yet Democrat” audience will consider the issue more deeply than they have before.

First, as a practical matter, let’s ask what would happen if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow. Well, the number of legal abortions would certainly go down – to zero, actually. But the actual number of abortions would not go down much at all. It is well-documented that before Rove v. Wade, there were a lot of illegal abortions, which often times permanently maimed or even killed the confused teenage girl having the procedure done. There are of course no statistics on this (that’s why they called them ‘back-alley’ abortions), but we know that they were common. In fact, this was one of the liberal motivations for Roe. If you overturned Roe tomorrow, the number of back-alley abortions would be absolutely astounding, with the additional evil that a girl may be maimed. As Christians, we need to ask ourselves if we want to stop abortions, or stop legal abortions.

So for those of us who are deadly serious about keeping abortions from happening, whether they are legal or illegal, the act of making abortions illegal is only a small part of the solution. After all, a back-alley abortion is still an abortion, and declaring it to be illegal does not change the fact that it happened. The truly important thing is not to simply create laws, but to work for the kind of society in which young women do not want to have abortions. This is the only way to stop back-alley abortions. On this issue, I judge that the liberals are doing much better than the conservatives. I’ll give some specific examples next week.

America: The Best Greatest Country that God Has Ever Given Man On the Face of the Earth, Part I

An extremely interesting thing happened on Friday at a McCain rally. He actually was forced to defend Obama’s character as a “decent, family man,” and was subsequently booed at his own rally (here) He was taking questions from the audience, when one person called him “dangerous,” and another said he was “an Arab.” McCain rejected those proposals by saying that while he has some fundamental policy differences with Obama, Obama is not actually seeking to destroy America (or whatever those people believe).

This incident was not isolated. In the past week, the following phrases have been yelled out at McCain or Palin rallies: “BOMB OBAMA!,” “HE’S A TERRORIST!,” and “KILL HIM!” So why all the hate-speech in the last week? Coincidence? No, of course not. It is because, for one, people have started introducing Palin at rallies by referring to her opponent, Barack “Hussein” Obama (which is officially condemned by the McCain campaign, but hmmm, it keeps happening). Also, Palin is traveling around the country talking about Obama’s secret terrorist connections (which is false), and McCain has been running ads to that effect. Officially the ads question his judgment, but of course the word that sticks in the mind of the intended audience is terrorist.

So the steep rise in hate-speech at the Republican rallies this week was no coincidence. The amazing thing is that McCain seemed to be surprised that his recent tactics have been working so well. Now, I don’t know why McCain reacted as he did, but I am more interested in why those crowds have been reacting so strongly to affirmations of Barack’s middle name. The Republican strategy here is to paint Barack as un-American, as not “one of us.” I believe that the reason that the “un-American” attacks are so effective (and they worked on Kerry, too: he’s French!), is because most Americans have a deep belief that Americans are just better people than are people of other countries.

This leads me to my topic for the next two weeks: the doctrine of American exceptionalism. For a primer, check out this video of Colbert making fun of Sean Hannity’s articulation of exceptionalism that America is “the best greatest country that God has ever given man on the face of the Earth (here). Next week, I want to try to make a connection between this doctrine and the recent death-threats that Obama has been receiving at Republican rallies.

How Bad Would a Second Great Depression Be?

Let me answer this question from two perspectives – the perspectives of the ‘actual me’ and the ‘ideal me.’ The ‘actual me’ is quite afraid of a severe economic downturn. I have no idea how likely one is, but I am going to be looking for a full-time professorship in the next two years, and I really, really want there to be a job for me.

But it’s not very interesting what the ‘actual me’ believes. The ‘ideal me’ calls for a very different emotion than fear. This is because there is a fact, breathtakingly both in its simplicity and irrefutability, which we all learned in second grade: material possessions do not increase happiness. Of course, this excludes instances of extreme poverty. Someone lacking food, shelter, and basic health care is likely to be miserable, after all - especially if he or she is looking after children.

But beyond extreme poverty, which is not a serious possibility for us Americans, it is undeniably true that money and possessions have little to do with happiness. If anything, happiness decreases as access to luxuries increases. I was reminded of this while reading the Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, this weekend. One of his most interesting insights is that desires for possessions are inevitably mistaken attempts to fulfill basic psychological needs. For example, we might buy a particular car because we imagine the cluster of people that want to take a ride with us. An Epicurean analysis might be that we are not purchasing the car, but friendship. This is important because we can get friendship in many different ways – most of them free.

It is silly to believe that our generation is somehow “happier” than our parents’ or grandparents’generations. It is just that we have more stuff. This has been true even in my own life. Only two years ago, limited money forced me to ride a bike and take the bus all around town, and my travel budget was about $20 a month. Then when I got more money, I bought a car. I do not plan on going back to bike riding – that was hard work – but I can honestly say that on the whole, I have not been any more or less happy in the last two years. I can remember feeling quite satisfied with my life during my bike riding days – in fact, about as happy as I am now. The difference – a whole lotta money!