Why Mainstream Protestantism Lists Left

Some notorious sinner who ignored the ethical concerns of his community.

 

Friend Xerxes is arguing that our sense of morality comes from the community.

This is the claim of “cultural relativism.” It is obviously false. If a given community decided murder was perfectly okay, would it be okay? Killing Jews was perfectly acceptable in Nazi Germany; do we have no right to object to the practice? Or to slavery, since it was socially condoned in most parts of the world until rather recently? To child sacrifice? 

Challenged on the point, Xerxes seemed confused. So where then did I suppose morality comes from? Where else could it come from

From the natural law. We are all born with a conscience, an innate sense of right and wrong. Kant showed that the moral law is the one thing we cannot possibly dispute, a “categorical imperative.” It can be summed up in the simple phrase, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Nobody truly believes that murder is right, or lying is right.

Since this is self-evident, why do people like Xerxes fail to see it?

Often, I’m sure, due to guilt. Many find it easier to deny the reality of right and wrong than to admit doing wrong.

But this may also be a mainstream Protestant problem, at least in Xerxes’s case. Denominations like the United Church of Canada, or the Anglican Church, really have no fixed doctrines; you pretty much believe what you want, and worship what you want. Anglicans have their rituals, but since they do not believe in transubstantiation, they amount to little more than aesthetics. So why do you go to church?

Perhaps all that is left is latitudinarianism: you go to learn how to behave better.

Hence they must cling to the doctrine that morality comes from the community you keep. It becomes their raison d’etre.

And we can perhaps go a step further. Since the basics of morality are self-evident, they have to come up with something new. They cannot simply preach “Do not lie.” 

This may explain why these churches seem to veer into weird wokery and left-wing politics. What we sometimes call “virtue-signalling” or “political correctness.” They must have some mock morality that is not self-evident. 

It cannot be anything that requires self-sacrifice, or great effort: not fasting, say or climbing mountains on your knees. Mainstream Protestant congregations are democracies, and even strive for consensus. Such strenuous requirements are sure to cause some backlash.

So it becomes a matter of using the correct language, voting the correct way, condemning the right things in others.

On the Conscience of Psychopaths

 

This video goes into more depth, but I want to note their lede: psychopaths and narcissists do not do well on polygraph tests. This disproves the common claim that they have no conscience. Everyone does. They know perfectly well that they are lying or doing harm to others. Rather than not feeling guilt, they experience a high level of ambient guilt at all times. They are jumpy about it, and liable to explode in a tantrum or melt into self-pity if challenged. This is one reason why they are prone to alcoholism or drug use, and prone to complain of symptoms often diagnosed as “depression” or “chronic anxiety.” And then often put on SSRIs that, like alcohol, allow them to commit their crimes with greater alacrity.

This also explains something I have noticed for a long time, and been unable to really account for: you can commonly recognize a psychopath by smell. They stink; Mao Zedong famously did. This might have something to do with their corporeal self-love—they love the smell of themselves, and assume that others would too. So they do not shower or bathe as often as they might. But I’ve known narcissists who did shower and bathe, and still smelled. It might also be because they tend to sweat more than others, an anxiety response.

Another sign of narcissism or psychopathy, touched on in the video, is that they lack spontaneity. This too is anxiety; they must always guard their words. They tend therefore to seem robotic, their responses predictable, “NPC.” The unexpected or unfamiliar is to them threatening. As a result, narcissists and psychopaths lack a sense of humour, and rarely laugh in a natural way. This is also the source of the celebrated narcissistic smirk: their smiles are never sunny or spontaneous, but calculated.

The Greeks believed in the Erinyes, which would pursue malefactors to their death. Christians call it conscience. It is real.

Karma Comes to Call

 

Fuseli

I recently speculated on why Hollywood, the media, and big tech seem bound on committing suicide. All are doing things counter to their financial interests or indeed to preserving their credibility. I thought it might be a delusion caused by postmodernism’s claim that we can make our own reality. Or it might be a hysterical reaction to seeing their power and influence slipping away.

Here is another possibility.

It might be the voice of conscience catching up to them. The powers that currently be are terminally morally compromised. One word: abortion. In the cause of sexual pleasure, they have endorsed an ongoing mass murder. 

The Erinyes must be satisfied.

The activity of repressed conscience is often observed in serial killers. They start taking bigger and bigger risks. They return to the scene of the crime. They start sending clues to the police. They want to be caught. One famously left the message at a murder scene, “For God’s sake, stop me before I kill again.” Ted Bundy started his killing spree in the Pacific Northwest, but ended it in Florida—one of the few states at the time that had the death penalty. When finally arrested, his comment was, “What took you so long.”

And, when murderers are caught, their first night in a cell, reputedly, they usually sleep like a baby. 

The current elites are crying out to be replaced. The nobles in pre-revolutionary France did something similar, insisting on deferring to the Third Estate.

In this we also see the hand of God—or, if you are a pagan Greek, the gods, punishing hubris. In the Old Testament, the principle is laid down that a depraved culture, specifically one which murders its own children, must be and will be overthrown, including divine intervention if necessary. This is what happened to the Canaanites, to Sodom, to Gomorrah. The Egyptians were scourged for killing the firstborn of the Hebrews. This is also what happened to the Carthaginians at the hands of the Romans. Such a depraved culture must be defeated, even if this requires salting the earth.

Disturbingly, we are in such a culture, almost world-wide. Being visited by fires, floods, and plagues may be part of the story. As the Chinese would say, the mandate of heaven has passed.

Let’s hope we can turn things around before they get to the salting the earth stage.

Introducing Mr. Hyde

 

Man's fate.

It seems clear to begin with, that civilization is crumbling. Why?

Postmodernism is the immediate cause, perhaps. But postmodernism seems more symptom than disease. Postmodernism arises from the failure of the scientistic world view.

Scientism is the elevation of empirical science to a religion, to the fountain of all truth.

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard

But where does scientism’s attraction come from?

I think it is from scientism’s denial of a distinction between right and wrong. Granted, science has allowed technology and engineering to accomplish many things, giving it much prestige. Other tools, in other times, have achieved idolatrous status for the same reason: written language, or metalworking, or mathematics. We have seen in recent times superstitious reverence accorded to anything done with computers, or to radioactivity. The Frankenstein legend was based on a brief period in which newly-discovered electricity was thought to be the essence of life. But I think at least a large part of it is that science demands “objectivity.” That means, for scientism, assigning no particular value to anything. That means no right or wrong.

This is immensely liberating. Now we can all do as we like.

But we cannot. The attempt to behave just as we like comes up against an innate awareness of the difference between right and wrong.

Nietzsche wanted to argue that, without God, there was no longer any necessary morality. 

“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident ... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands.”

Nietzsche went mad; perhaps this was why. He was wrong. His conscience caught up with him. Perhaps this is what madness, psychotic madness, always is—one’s conscience catching up with one. For the “Christian” morality indeed is self-evident.

When we speak of “conscience,” we are tacitly acknowledging that the difference between right and wrong is self-evident.

Benjamin Franklin said so boldly in the core passage for the US Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This states the essence of social morality. All men are initially of equal moral worth. Their ultimate worth is determined by their actions. To deprive another of their life, their liberty, or their property, is the essence of immorality. (Jefferson had altered Locke’s prior “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”; and I think wrongly. Pursuit of happiness is already covered by “liberty,” and property is not.)

It follows from the truth that all men are created equal that one must “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—see them as equal to yourself, and treat them as equal. This Golden Rule is a phrase found almost verbatum in all the world’s moral codes; strong evidence, again, that it is self-evident.

Kant asserts again that the basic principle of morality is categorically imperative and impossible to deny. He phrases it as “act always as you could wish everyone else to act,” or, “treat others as an end, never a means.” These are simple reformulations of “do unto others.”

This imperative to act morally cannot be escaped. Nevertheless, there is an eternal desire to escape it and to deny it, in order to do what we will and see ourselves as superior, in effect as god. This is the eternal struggle between good and evil in every soul. 

Quite simply, to continue to struggle to do what is right gets you to heaven, but inevitably through suffering—like Jacob wrestling with the angel, like St. Paul “fighting the good fight.” To stop struggling and cop to the claim that there is no evil, no Devil, no right or wrong, it doesn’t ultimately matter, gets you to hell. If you have started down this road and are lucky, you will instead through the offices of some good angel go mad, and through the madness recover the true path.

Elijah and the Still Small Voice

Elijah in the desert. No doubt due to global warming.

At the mountain of God, Horeb,
Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter.
Then the LORD said to him,
“Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD;
the LORD will be passing by.”
A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains
and crushing rocks before the LORD—
but the LORD was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake—
but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake there was fire—
but the LORD was not in the fire.
After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.
When he heard this,
Elijah hid his face in his cloak
and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.

This is surely one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. It was the first reading at last Sunday’s mass.

Bishop Barron posted a sermon on it. He reads it as a criticism of Elijah. Elijah was on the run from Queen Jezebel for having killed 450 of the prophets of Baal. Apparently the authorities were dead right to be after him. The signs were telling him that God did not want violence, represented here by the whirlwind, the earthquake, and the fire; but peace.

This interpretation seems reassuring. We are not keen these days on killing the priests of a rival religion. But it is simply not tenable on the Bible’s text.

For the text goes on to record the words God actually spoke, what the still small voice said to Elijah:

Yahweh said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. When you arrive, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. Anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over Israel; and anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah to be prophet in your place. He who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and he who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill. Yet I reserved seven thousand in Israel, all the knees of which have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth which has not kissed him.”

Not a call to pacifism.

Bishop Barron begins by insisting that we look at the passage in context. Just so; the full context is not just that Elijah has just killed 450 prophets of Baal, but that the authorities and the adherents of Baal had previously killed all the prophets of Yahweh except Elijah, and were already hunting for him. It was not as though he had the choice of peace. And, for further context, their worship of Baal demanded child sacrifice.

The significance of the series of signs Elijah sees in the mouth of the cave, I suggest, is that we should not fear the powers or the terrors of this Earth, the powers Elijah was fleeing. The Kingdom of Heaven is within. The still small voice is the voice of conscience; and it is this to which we must listen, no matter what the world may say.

Bishop Barron worries me. He seems fully of the world.

Narcissism and Mass Murder

I am more than a little ashamed to say that I have been reading Elliot Rodger’s “manifesto,” or autobiography, online. It looks like rubbernecking at an accident scene, and perhaps it is. Rodger is the California mass killer who introduced us to the concept of the “incel”—the involuntarily celibate young male. In theory, I was reading to see if he showed any signs of conscience or of conflict. According to Catholic doctrine, we all have a conscience; we know innately right from wrong. We are all responsible for our acts. Anyone like Rodger who deliberately does great wrong must have made a conscious moral choice against conscience. This contradicts modern psychology, which insists instead that at least some of us—“psychopaths”—simply have no conscience. Who is right?

Others have accordingly sought to explain Rodger’s actions without reference to conscience. A selection of justifications found online: he was mentally ill, and that made him do it. It was a result of how our society objectifies women. It was the fault of his parents for not keeping closer tabs on him and getting him help. If only others had been kinder to him, he would not have done it.

Let’s look at each.

1. He was mentally ill.

Rodger had apparently been seeing psychiatrists since he was eight or nine, and had even been prescribed “anti-psychotics,” but he had been given no formal diagnosis. This is striking. He presumably did not fit clearly into any recognized category of mental illness.

Being prescribed “anti-psychotics” does not tell us much. What we call anti-psychotics are really just major tranquilizers. Someone comes in and indicates that they are deeply upset by their own thoughts, it is the obvious prescription. Calm them down. There is no reason to believe he was ever psychotic.

After the fact, he is being diagnosed with “Asperger’s syndrome,” which basically just means being socially maladroit. He was certainly socially maladroit. But there is no known association of Asperger’s with violent tendencies.

Reading his autobiography, he is obviously and extravagantly narcissistic. He loved himself, and hated everybody else. But I can see why this diagnosis was not given. Narcissists usually do well socially. They are highly manipulative, and so generally get what they want. Rodger was incapable of manipulating people. This may indeed explain why he, unlike other narcissists, became violent.

I’d suggest a diagnosis of narcissism plus Asperger’s.

But the question then is whether narcissism is genuinely a mental illness, or simply choosing to be selfish. If you call it a mental illness, you have, in effect, removed morality as a consideration in all human affairs; for being selfish is simply the traditional definition of being morally bad. It is the violation of the Golden Rule: you are not loving your neighbor, not doing unto others as you would have them do.

Conclusion: if Asperger’s is a real mental illness, then mental illness was a contributing factor. But even then, it did not make him do it. People with Asperger’s are no more violent than anyone else.

2. It is because society objectifies women.

This the inevitable feminist response.

Rodger certainly objectified women. He only wanted sex from them, but hated them. At the end of his autobiography he suggests they should all be put in concentration camps and starved to death. But he also objectified men. He saw everyone as an object, which either was or was not of some use to him. Most of his actual victims in the shooting were men. They were no doubt of less use to him.

He certainly did have an obsession with sex, but sex objectifies both men and women. It is a matter of using another’s body for physical gratification, thus treating another as an object. And the obsession with sex is endemic to our culture. But this is no more a case of men objectifying women than of women objectifying men.

So is the social preoccupation with sex the problem?

I think so. Society as a whole is guilty here of creating a climate in which we objectify one another. Rodger’s conscience was poorly formed on this point. He considered himself entitled to sex once he had reached adolescence, and assumed everyone else was doing it. Had the message of society been, as it used to be, that sex before marriage and purely for recreation was improper, this might not have been so. The commodification of sex surely encourages narcissism in general.

However, it also looks as though, had this been the case, he would soon have found some other ground for grievance, given his sense of absolute entitlement. He literally considered himself unjustly treated when he did not win the lottery. Had it not been sex, it would have been poor grades, or not getting promoted.

3. It was the fault of his parents. They should have been keeping closer tabs on him.

This from a panel of psychiatrists.

Not reasonable. They already had him in psychiatric treatment. He had counsellors all along. His mother could not have been any more present in his life unless he had been still living with her. She was available immediately on call, and, by his own account, immediately gave him anything he wanted. His father and grandparents were all taking him places and giving him things. His mother also became suspicious and notified the police of her concerns weeks before the shooting. It is hard to imagine what more she or his family could have done.

They might instead be faulted for being too indulgent. He got every desire met as soon as he expressed it. Surely this promoted his sense of absolute entitlement. Now he desired sex; it was not being provided. This was immediately seen by him as an injustice.

Does this absolve him of blame? I don’t think so. It is a temptation; it would not compel the assumption of entitlement. Others, with the same kind of upbringing, can develop a sense of guilt over it, and feel an obligation to “pay something back.” Moral choice seems to be involved.

His parents’ omnipresence and concern may also have played a part in Rodger’s “Asperger’s.” They arranged his social life for him in detail, from his infancy, finding friends and arranging “play dates.” Friends were just another commodity he had supplied to him on demand. As a result, he never learned to form friendships, or of the need to do so. And after a certain age, it no longer worked this way.

4. People should have been kinder

This is Rodger’s own claim, and others have taken it up. Notably, other copycat killers.

But there is no sign in his autobiography that others were actually unkind to him. The reverse: he was consistently unkind to others. If he considered them inferior, he would scorn them. If he considered them superior, he would hate them, and actually assault them. It did not matter if they had gone out of their way to be friendly or kind.

There are two references to women supposedly rejecting him in some way when he was young. What male has not experienced female rejection? But it looks as though from this early point, or even before it, he generally hated and avoided women. He just wanted sex without any of the human complications.

Rodger was both visibly rich and good looking. He regularly scored tickets to world premieres, thanks to family connections. He surely could have managed some sort of female companionship if the women involved had had anything to say about it.

He reports that his longtime best—and practically only—friend ultimately rejects him. But one can understand why. He had been regaling the friend with his plans to enslave and kill all of mankind. He would have had to be depraved and profoundly misanthropic himself to stick around. Not to mention the worry that Rodger might turn on him at any moment.

It seems there is no way anyone being kinder or friendlier could have improved Rodger’s attitude or life. It would probably only have made matters worse: giving his ego more oxygen.

But did Rodger himself show any awareness that he was the bad guy?

On the surface, no. He does condemn sex as immoral—but clearly and consciously, only because he cannot get it. He writes “Delicious food was the only vice I was able to enjoy, since I was deprived of sex.” Vices are simply things you are supposed to indulge and enjoy. He shows no shame over lying; repeatedly calling himself “wise” for doing it. He shows no remorse over mass murder either, and no concern over what might happen to him after he dies.

He ends his essay insisting that he is the real victim here. He is only responding to aggression with “retribution.”

However, if he really believed that, it seems that he would not need to assert it. He would not need to write this autobiography. That he does implies that he believes in right and wrong, and believes that what he is doing is, on the face of it, wrong. Methinks he doth protest too much.

In justifying himself, he speaks often of “fairness,” and of the world being “unfair.” Which again implies a fundamental commitment to and understanding of the basis of morality.

Yet his idea of fairness is obviously unfair: it requires him being vastly richer and more powerful than anyone else. This is obviously self-contradictory, and it is hard to believe that he could not see the contradiction himself. He assumes the right to kill anyone as punishment for having a better and more enjoyable life than he does. But as Kant would point out, what is the result if this is accepted as a moral principle? Everyone kills everyone else until there is only one human left standing. That person is unlikely to be Rodger.

The only way Rodger can make this workable rationally is to declare himself of greater merit than others. He is a “magnificent gentleman.” And so he deserves more than anyone else. They should all give it to him.

Unfortunately, Rodger is perfectly lucid and aware that he has done nothing to demonstrate that this is so, that he has earned more than others. He has no talents, he admits.

So how can he possibly make this work? By declaring himself a god. Which is exactly what he does.

If this is not conscious sin, what is? This is the essence of sin. It is the same sin, exactly, as committed by Lucifer, and the same sin, exactly, as committed by Adam and Eve.

And note the title he gives to his autobiography: “My Twisted World.” By declaring himself a god, he has implicitly taken responsibility for it. He believes, in principle, that he can alter reality by his wishes, by wanting something badly enough. This is just about the same as Faust’s pact with the devil. And he himself sees the result as “twisted.”

“He said it was a truth I had to accept, advising me to move out of there. I couldn’t accept this truth, because it was unjust. I couldn’t let such evil exist, and I will not run away from it by moving out of there. I will either thrive there, or destroy the place utterly. Since I failed to thrive there, I had no choice but to plan my Retribution.”

Note the contradiction here: he has the right to either accept or reject “truth.” Yet in the same paragraph, he has no choice in his own actions. He simply believes for the moment whatever seems to absolve him of guilt for what he wants or wants to do.

And his final act was, to him, a question of destroying the world to punish it for not conforming to his wishes.

So if he thought the world was evil, people were all beneath him, all just objects, and he was a god, why bother to write the autobiography? Why and to whom is he speaking?

And why, throughout, while he is condemning everyone else, is he also obsessed with what they think of him? “I always cared about what others thought about me, even my nerdy housemates.” He spends extravagantly on the best clothes. While he is recovering from a broken leg, he will not go outside, for fear of anyone seeing him in a cast.

Because he knows he is talking B.S., including to himself. Otherwise it would not matter. He knows he is in the wrong. He needs affirmation from others, or at least to imagine affirmation from others, to drown out the voice of conscience.

Why Faust Is Depressed

Conscience: Le Falher.

A friend of mine, 79, went to his doctor recently. It happens, when you’re 79. The good doctor asked if he was ever depressed these days. “It happens to most people your age,” he explained, reflecting, I believe, received medical wisdom. “Eventually, you realize that you aren’t going to live forever.”

Now that’s a shocker. Who knew?

In other words, this bit of received wisdom among the medical profession makes no sense to me. Haven’t most of us always understood we weren’t going to live forever? And so what? If there is an afterlife, we can perhaps look forward to something better. If there is not, we face nothing worse than going out like a light. Yes, of course, there is the option of hellfire… I suppose that is reason for depression.

Interestingly, the medical consensus apparently does not tally with the real world most of us inhabit. Most people, after sixty, just get happier and happier. Multiple studies show this.

How to explain this discrepancy? My guess is that it shows there are two kinds of people. You might call them the sheep and the goats. The good news is, most of us are apparently sheep.

But maybe doctors are mostly goats.

I mentioned this strange discrepancy in perceptions to a Pakistani friend. He told me in response a tale of a man from his own village. This man had faced terrible struggles and adversity throughout his life. Though he was a good man, honest, hard-working, kind, he could never get a break.

In his old age, he was uncommonly happy. Asked why, he replied, “happiness is the reward for a clear conscience in old age.”

Saint Paul said something similar:

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; 8in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,

Conscience: Chifflart.

This need not be about anticipated reward in heaven, either. This is about not being haunted by a bad conscience, and the realization that too soon it will be too late to set things right.

I worry, however, about those who rely on doctors for advice—including psychiatrists. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that psychotherapy is simply confession without absolution. Psychiatrists will work on improving your “self-esteem,” and try to convince you that everything is all right as it is. They have a personal, vested interest in believing this is so—the world and sheer self-centredness has so far been good to them. But your conscience is telling you you must change.

Caught in the middle, you may never heal.

Speaking of Kohlberg's Theories of Moral Development...

... Here we have what looks like scientific evidence of the reality of an inborn conscience:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/as-babies-we-knew-morality/281567/

Lies Your President Told You

A woman's right to choose.

It's often not all that hard to tell who the bad guys are, if you listen carefully. They're the ones who are lying; and their lies are often pretty artless, even self-contradictory.

Consider, for example, the Obama Administration's statement on a new abortion bill, just passed by the US House of Representatives, which seeks to ban abortion after 20 weeks except in cases of incest or rape:

The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1797, which would unacceptably restrict women’s health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman’s right to choose. Women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care, and Government should not inject itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor. 

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose. This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and shows contempt for women’s health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients’ health care decisions, and the Constitution. The Administration is continuing its efforts to reduce unintended pregnancies, expand access to contraception, support maternal and child health, and minimize the need for abortion. At the same time, the Administration is committed to the protection of women’s health and reproductive freedom and to supporting women and families in the choices they make. 

If the President were presented with this legislation, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto this bill.

The very first statement of any kind here is that retricting abortion would restrict women's health. But abortion obviously has nothing to do with women's health: a baby is not a disease. Indeed, there is some evidence abortion is a health risk for the woman; it is obviously pretty bad for the health of the foetus. Which has a good chance of itself being female. On top of this, the last thing the opponents of abortion want is to tie abortion to the health of the mother.

Ergo, calling it a women's health issue is the opposite of the truth. A lie, and a crude lie, so that the listener must actually be complicit not to call them on it.

As an aside, even if abortion were a matter of women's health, how would that make restrictions on abortion illegitimate? We have restrictions, after all, on the use of medicine and any other surgery.

The next assertion is that restrictions on abortion would violate “reproductive rights.” But reproductive rights are not in fact involved in abortion, unless it is compulsory: with or without abortion, any woman can still choose to have or not have children. 

Reproductive rights.

Moreover, if women have “reproductive rights,” men do too. Yet the current regime of unrestricted abortion denies men these rights. A man cannot refuse to allow his child to be aborted. This the memo from the White House refuses to recognize: it asserts that the decision is “between a woman and her doctor.” No father is mentioned.

So, once again, the truth is the opposite of what is being said: unrestricted abortion is a violation of reproductive rights.

Now we come to a “woman's right to choose.” The lie here is simple: there is no such thing as a “right to choose.” We do have free will, which implies a moral freedom to choose—to choose good or evil. If this is intended, though, it is a tacit admission that abortion is evil. And, of course, governments can and do legitimately restrict our ability to choose evil. Do we have a “right to choose” our neighbour's car or house? Do we have a right to choose to kill our neighbour? No more do we have a right to choose abortion, simply because it is a choice.

“This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.” Another lie. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled, rightly or wrongly, that the government could not restrict abortion during the first trimester, but had a legitimate interest in restricting it after that. This bill restricts abortion after the first trimester.

This makes the claim that the bill shows contempt for the constitution equally dishonest.

Embryo at 18 weeks.

In its ringing conclusion, the administration claims it is working to reduce abortions by “supporting child health.” A very crude lie, deliberately forcing the listener to aid and abet the crime: after all, what could be worse for child health than abortion? It then refers to “minimizing the need for abortion”--obviously implying that abortion is somehow necessary. Among other issues this raises, it directly contradicts the prior claim in the same document that abortion is a choice. If abortion is a necessity, there is no “right to choose.”

In sum, it is obvious to a careful listener that the advocates of abortion, such as the Obama White House, know perfectly well that abortion is immoral. The inborn human conscience is too strong, in the end, to be trifled with.