A Challenge to the Pro-Life Establishment

Abortion and the Postmodern Imagination

"If the law purports to require actions that no-one should ever do, it cannot rightly be complied with; one's moral obligation is not to obey but to disobey....If the lawmakers (i) are motivated not by concern for the community's common good but by greed or vanity (private motivations that make them tyrants, whatever the content of their legislation), or (ii) act outside the authority granted to them, or (iii) while acting with a view to the common good apportion the necessary burdens unfairly, their laws are unjust and in the forum of reasonable conscience are not so much laws as acts of violence....Such laws lack moral authority, i.e. do not bind in conscience; one is neither morally obligated to conform nor morally obligated not to conform." 

"All who govern in the interests of themselves rather than of the common good are tyrants....Against the regime's efforts to enforce its decrees, one has the right of forcible resistance; as a private right this could extend as far as killing the tyrant as a foreseen side-effect of one's legitimate self-defence."

-- from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas

Today, I go to work, wait anxiously for lunch time, sit outside and bask contemplatively in the play of sunlight through oak leaves, turn quickly into the building at the appointed time, let the last hours of rushing and typing and talking fly by, and go home to entertain myself with -- maybe -- a short read and certainly a show or two. Cigarette and wine after cycling and water. Aestheticizing. Bed.

Tomorrow, I will behave similarly, and perhaps call it "the holiness of the ordinary". 

In fact, many Americans will do likewise. They will be educated, self-educating, confident, secure, and moderately sane. They will be capable of thoroughly and admirably condemning the social ills around them, especially in the company of friends, of making sweet moan about the many seething injustices that exist almost by default in our rotten society. They will swear, philosophize, and prophesy. 

They will go out to eat on weekends, sleep in on Saturdays, mow the lawn, hate and love themselves -- with a little more love than hate -- and live quotidianly.

Aestheticizing on the non-despairing hope of helplessness as parousia slowly grows nearer.

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Salvador Dali

We only do what we like. We go off to die in wars when peace is hell. When peace is not quite hell, but a fine balance of leisure and self-deceit of salvation, we can endure.

And hence the ever-crumbling edifice of abortion yet lingers.

There was a story a few years ago about a woman who stood her ground as a large man armed with a hammer beat her door down. Her two children were with her in the house, and she was going to protect them. She told as much to the 911 dispatcher. When the man rushed through the door, she shot him full in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun. 

We consider it right and just to kill a man who would harm an innocent. The woman in the story had no charges placed against her. 

We consider it admirable to defend a human life, admirable because it is a difficult duty. We would call a soldier a coward who hid as his wounded brethren were murdered. We call soldiers heroes who defend their country, placing themselves in the sight of death in order to kill.

In keeping with this consideration, we ourselves organize large marches on Washington, elaborate displays of passion with no follow-through. ...

The citizens of the capitol prepare their businesses for great profit, concerts are organized, politicians make seasonal speeches pantomiming deep commitment to the cause, friends meet and talk, tourism abounds, and everyone goes home fat and happy. Thanks for coming, pro-lifers. See you next year!

And the intellectuals aestheticizing on leisure in a sinking world, waiting for the sun to liven gray tendrils that pull forth dawn.

Our moral fantasy is our great masque of protestation. It is a device of self-preservation, an intellectual necessity if we are to maintain personal safety, and, furthermore, comfort, convenience. Our great masque: our legality, our passive inoffensiveness, our pattering-about on sidewalks. 300,000 strong could shake a country. 300,000 strong could certainly shake a capitol. ISIS is not nearly so strong. But we are poor stewards of our flesh, and allow the murders.

Indeed, we have such complex rationalizations which we describe as peace, patience, humility, hope. Unfortunately, these are in practice fear, sloth, helplessness, anxiety.

We permit the mutilation and murder of innocent human beings. Right now. This minute. And the next.

The plea through the courts has been accomplished. The plea has been rejected (Cf. 1973). This was, in truth, a declaration of war. Those who met that devil's declaration -- priests who chained themselves to the doors -- are now despised and ridiculed for tarnishing the reputation of the cause.

This should be a ready sign: that we put on a pretty face for murder. "Listen to us, postmodern society. We're legitimate!" we whine.

And the intellectuals just waiting and aestheticizing. Not helping the psychosis of the masses.

And any mention of physical resistance is met with the argument that it would be paradox. An unworkable contradiction.

An unworkable contradiction is declaring abortion to be the most heinous evil we now suffer and standing by while the perpetrator struts from his Bentley to the clinic door.


This is a posture against hope.


The revolution in policy will begin. And if it does not, then ISIS will have been our moral superior: they annihilate what they perceive to be evil.

The Community of Culture

La Soledad, Carlos Saenz de Tejada

When we speak of "culture", we are often referring to a sort of status quo, the condition of education, technology, science, and the arts that we experience in our daily lives. We often refer to "culture" as if it is something without agency, something "out there", without considering our own participation in its formation. It may be for this very reason that we often fail to challenge our own actions, our own way of life, our stock viewpoints -- we see culture as an accumulation of practices and values that may be verbally dispensed and objectively discussed, but which have little interrelation with the manner in which we order our existence. 

Notwithstanding, the word "culture" carries certain connotations. We make judgements about culture because it may contain positive or negative elements. It may be a "culture of death", which is an oxymoron for, according to the frighteningly powerful Google machine, our usage of "culture" derives from

• Middle English (denoting a cultivated piece of land): the noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French culturer or medieval Latin culturare, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’ (see cultivate). In late Middle English the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and from this (early 16th cent.) arose ‘cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners)’; sense 1 of the noun dates from the early 19th cent.

Hence, we comment upon practices that are retrogressive for culture, that facilitate the accession of the inhumane, the violent, the brutish, the ignorant. (Recently, Brett McCracken commented upon the attitude in American culture (another oxymoron? not always) of "fame for fame's sake" and the prostitution of art for recognition of the ego (e.g. Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, etc.).)

If we make assertions of value in reference to culture, then we recognize that humanity is responsible for culture, and thence that we are individually responsible, for our part, for the state of culture. We recognize, too, that "culture" is not merely a label for what is, but a concept defined by continual movement toward excellence in all things human (e.g. education, technology, science, the arts).

Matthew Arnold, the 19th century British critic, describes culture as "the pursuit of light and perfection", and explains that "light and perfection consist, not in resting and being, but in growing and becoming, in a perpetual advance in beauty and wisdom" (Culture and Anarchy).

Immediately great names come to mind: Plato, Homer, Virgil, Dante -- the list goes on. The list goes on indeed ... but why do these cultural monoliths stand so solitary against the dark background of history? Why does not a great host of luminous figures swarm around them, equal or greater to the tide of human depravity and squalor?

The modern world is not devoid of cultured minds: Karol Wojtyla, Walker Percy, Arvo Part, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Yet they stand in almost diametric opposition to the crass flashing of famous names in headlines and on the little black boxes of misinformation that constantly invade our homes. Their names are not heard so loudly nor so very often as those which strive harder and harder not to be forgotten like  the finite novelty of autumnal leaves.

Perhaps because they are taproots, hidden and essential. One must dig to find them, and one must get dirty. And one must not leave the soil disturbed.

Why is the community of culture small? The community of culture is the community of the human. The human calls these facets of himself "culture" in order to distinguish them from the spoiling diction of faddism that pervades postmodern society. The human must constantly distinguish himself from that which fades. The human does not fade.

You often hear older people, when they mention the names of actors, films, musicians that no one else knows remarking upon how this particular knowledge dates them, how it is a sign of aging, a movement toward obscurity, disconnection from youth. But the youth are equally old if they speak of what their parents do not know or do not care to know.

The old betray their youth by not caring about Kardashian or whoever's next on the altar of sensationalism. The youth betray their age by caring. To be human is to learn and cling to excellence. That is a perpetual youth, a perpetual becoming, an ever-widening beauty.

And so our culture may be called a "culture of death" in many ways, one being that it clings not to the excellent, which is universal and enduring, but to the ephemeral, which is just that.

If you find yourself lonely in such a milieu, consider this.

Are you infatuated with the esoteric (pride)? Do you wrap yourself in fantasy to deny reality (e.g. the infamous MMORPG, niched obsessions, etc.)? Do you choose to be? Or are you lonely because the way of enculturation is difficult -- the road obscure, the company often silent, the goal something as seemingly unattainable as sainthood?

It is not merely the place of cultural icons to effect culture. It is the way of culture -- the way of the human -- to come out and speak, to stand one's ground among others and assert whatever merited authority one may possess. To share and to accept, certainly, but to be firm in the right.

At the base of the mountain is the battle against physical endangerment, which allows no possibility for culture. The battle against the enemies of culture (e.g. sloth, sentimentalism, political platforming, etc.) ranges in a thicker wood at a higher tier. It is even more essential to the becoming of humanity. Undoubtedly, it is a gift to be here. But it is a curse if we fail our nature and submit to the mediocre strummings, cooings, and ooings of pop folk or the abstract unartistic assertions of obscurantist "postmodern" writers or directors. They wrap the status quo in mysterious trappings and bring despair in the unveiling. Artist's shit (Cf. Duchamp).

There is always a subculture trying to be avant-garde. It is always subculture.

So let your heart be abused. Seek the shifting sifted community of culture that wants to be as best it can. People of culture see the world in its wholeness. They decry and forgive and bring in lost sheep. They acknowledge their own silly sheepishness. But they never stop striving after every ounce of unounceable eternity. They are sometimes artists, sometimes laymen, sometimes clergy, and often on low salaries. But they always try to get the world to listen with the lovingest things. At the same time, they do not reduce truth, beauty, goodness. They do not put pearls forth to be trampled by swine.

Critics called director Eric Rohmer's La Collectioneuse boring. They could not see it.

I therefore encourage you, my friends, not to forget the unity of all things, and how what is separate must be brought together, how the world fights itself but nevertheless tends to communion. To wait is not so bad as to despair and lose oneself to postmodern animalism. Do not fall to easy emotions. Be vigilant. If it were easy it would not be itself. Increase in the virtue of finding loneliness -- beauty awaits the contemplative and forbearing mind. Find and give the lovingest things. You may die cold, quiet, and alone like God.