Losing Our Minds

Most years, writing a column that is due on October 15 for an issue cover-dated December, which will go to press six days before a general election but appear in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands about two weeks after, would be a recipe for frustration.

This year, it strikes me as an opportunity.

I have never had a dog in this presidential election.  That has been true for a long time; the first time I voted in a presidential election was in 1988, and that was the last time I voted for a major-party candidate.  By the time President George H.W. Bush had proved himself “worse than unimaginative—merely silly, often” (as Russell Kirk wrote in his memoir, The Sword of Imagination), I had come to regret my folly.

In 1992, if I could have been bothered to go through the hassle of registering to vote in Washington, D.C. (where I was pursuing my graduate studies), I would have cast my ballot for Ross Perot (though if Perot, the only presidential candidate in recent memory who could make John McCain look stable, had had any chance of winning, I probably would have abstained).

In 1996, 2000, and 2004, I voted for third-party candidates: Ralph Nader in the first and last; Pat Buchanan in between.  And (as I write) with 20 days left before November 4, I still have not decided which third-party candidate to waste my vote on.  (Since, in his current run, Ralph Nader has explicitly endorsed both abortion and homosexual “marriage,” I will not be able to mark the ballot for him even as a protest vote.)

Thus, with each election cycle for the past 20 years, I have come closer, one might say, to practicing the supposedly dispassionate political science that I studied as an undergraduate.  And I have come to view the behavior of most voters—at least, most avowedly partisan voters—as something akin to mental illness.

This is not exactly an original thought, though most who have entertained it speak of “cognitive dissonance” or compare voter loyalty to people’s irrational (used in a nonpejorative sense) attachment to a sports team, or even to their families.

But as I look at the increasingly irrational (used pejoratively now) behavior of many partisan voters, I think that a more pointed label, such as mental illness (or perhaps schizophrenia or merely insanity), is called for.

It is not simply that, say, McCain voters so easily accept the claim that Barack Obama wanted to abandon U.S. soldiers in Iraq when he voted against continued funding of the war, provided that the bill was not tied to a timeline for withdrawal, yet seem unable to process the fact that John McCain (as Joe Biden rightly pointed out in the vice-presidential debate) also voted against continued funding, when it was tied to a timeline.

In other words, the disagreement between the two candidates was over setting a timeline for withdrawal, not over continued funding of the war.  Yet many McCain voters seemed unable to see it—just as many Obama voters who oppose the war have taken Obama’s vote as evidence that he will end the war tout de suite upon taking the presidential oath of office.  (And yes, he will do it in French, and correct French too, dammit, because that’s just the kind of cosmopolitehomme he is!)

No, the inability to discern the real issue at stake in such disagreements between the candidates is not the sign of mental illness.  It is the willingness—or, perhaps more accurately, the determination or even eagerness—of otherwise decent people to let such disagreements (and mistaken disagreements at that) tear apart families and friends.

Up through my teen years, my father’s family (those who still lived in West Michigan) would gather almost every Sunday at my grandparents’ house for dinner.  Before the mashed potatoes had made a complete circuit of the massive dining-room table, the political arguments would begin.  And, especially in an election year, they would become quite heated, to the point where a look of fear or panic might even begin to creep into the eyes of the women and young children.

My grandfather and his second-eldest son were devout Democrats; my father was a Republican; my youngest uncle was a conservative turned increasingly libertarian.  (At holidays or during the summer when relatives came to visit from Indiana, other political shades were thrown into the mix, new alliances were formed, and the political tides would turn in different directions.)  The debates would rage throughout dinner, pausing only for my grandfather to complain that “that woman” (my grandmother, seated at the other end of the table) had once again given him the only slice of cherry pie with a pit in it.

At some point, long after dinner concluded and the men and boys had retired to the living room to play euchre while the women and girls cleared the table and washed the dishes, the argument would finally draw to a close.  Depending on the topic being debated at that point, my grandfather might pull out this splendid non sequitur that he wielded as if it were the right bower: “The only Republican I ever voted for was Richard Nixon, and look what they did to him!”

I shudder to think how many years these weekly increases in blood pressure stripped off of the back ends of the lives of people I loved.  My grandfather, who died in February 1992, might still be alive today had dinner-table conversation never strayed from the weather.

And yet, every week, we assembled at the same table again.  The conversation might pick up where it had left off (“Speaking of Richard Nixon . . . ”), but at least it continued.

Two decades later, I know of dozens of families where the conversation has stopped.  I have had people tell me during this election cycle that they are glad that they have moved away from their families and no longer have to see them, because they cannot put up with the things that their fathers say about Barack Obama, or the e-mails that their sisters-in-law forward them making fun of Sarah Palin.

Maybe, when it all comes to an end, these families will sit down together for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, bow their heads in prayer, and recognize, even for just one brief moment, that being a part of a family is far more important than being just one of 120 million votes cast for John McCain or Barack Obama.

Maybe, but I doubt it.  I know people who are still not talking because “You Republicans stole the election from Al Gore” or “You Democrats wanted to pull out of Iraq and surrender to the terrorists.”  The unreality of national politics, including the distortions and outright lies that candidates tell about each other, have somehow become more real to them than their own flesh and blood.

What is grasping at phantasms while rebelling against reality if not mental illness?

As if on cue, I have just received an e-mail from my colleague Chris Check with a link to a FOX News story from October 14 headlined “Father Secretly Names Newborn Sarah McCain Palin.”  The five short paragraphs read like something out of The Onion: Mark Ciptak “said he named his third child after John McCain and Sarah Palin  ‘to get the word out’ about the campaign.”  That makes perfect sense: After all, how would the Republican presidential ticket receive enough publicity in these final weeks of the campaign unless a father named his daughter after the candidates rather than, say, after his mother or grandmothers?

“‘I took one for the cause,’ he said.”  (No, in fact, his newborn daughter did, and she had no choice in the matter.)  “‘I can’t give a lot of financial support for the (McCain/Palin) campaign.  I do have a sign up in my yard, but I can do very little.’”

Even more astounding, however, is Mr. Ciptak’s revelation that he took this action against the wishes of his wife, who wanted to name the girl Ava Grace.  “I don’t think she believes me yet . . . It’s going to take some more convincing.”

FOX News, of course, shows no interest whatsoever in what might happen to the Ciptaks’ marriage and their three children if he fails to convince his wife that the deception was worth it.  But why should they?  Were the Cip­taks to wind up in divorce court, the result might be two households in which FOX News is on the TV 24/7, rather than just one.

Politics today is big business—not just for the politicians, but for the news media.  For all the talk about the “need to unite” and “to come together as a nation,” politicians and the media profit from division—not simply at the national level every four or two years, but every day, among families and neighborhoods and churches.

At this point, you might expect me to say that it doesn’t have to be this way, that a more civilized discourse is possible, that as a nation we can return to the heated debates around my grandparents’ dining-room table.  But I don’t think we can.  This destruction of everything that matters in life is the logical end of modern democratic politics, which is built on removing all that stands between the “individual” and the state.

Despite our political differences, my family continued to gather around my grandparents’ table because we were a family, and that is what has changed.  Modern politics has accelerated the destruction of families, but the destruction of families has also helped make modern politics into a form of mental illness.

One sunny but cool day in early fall, during the first year or two of the George H.W. Bush administration, I drove out to visit my grandparents before heading off to graduate school.  As my grandfather and I sat in the front yard, our conversation trailed off.  Then, unexpectedly, Grandpa told me that he thought that the President was doing a pretty good job so far.

“That’s the problem,” I said.  “People like you are happy with what he’s doing.”

I simply meant that I could understand why a lifelong Democrat was more pleased with the Bush administration than a budding paleoconservative was.  Young and full of myself, I couldn’t hear how those words must have sounded to his ears.  He simply looked at me, a small, sad smile on his face, and didn’t say a word.

Looking back, I don’t know whether he even believed what he had said about President Bush; but I realize now that it was something that he thought I would like to hear.  His silence afterward, in such marked contrast to years of heated debates, was his way of letting me know that some things are more important than politics.

I wish I had learned that lesson a little earlier.  Between that day, when I suffered my bout of temporary insanity, and my grandfather’s death not all that long after, I don’t remember discussing politics with him ever again.

In Confessions of an Original Sinner, John Lukacs writes that, in the 1950’s, his diocesan newspaper regularly reminded readers that “The family that prays together stays together.”  But, he asks, “isn’t the converse of that even more true?”

Now, when one of my friends or relatives starts rattling off the latest FOX News talking point, I find myself keeping quiet, a small (but not sad) smile on my face.  McCain, Obama, Biden, Palin, Democrats, Republicans—none of it is more important than the years I spent around my grandparents’ table, or the time my children will spend around theirs.  A big bowl of mashed potatoes does wonders to ward off mental illness. 

First published in the December 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

I've Got a Secret

Back in November and December, while Republicans across the country were writing letters, calling in to talk radio, and even taking to the streets to protest Al Gore's attempt to steal the election in Florida, their fellow party members in Rockford remained strangely silent. They must have found it disquieting when the Bush campaign kept insisting that machines are more accurate than humans. After all, it's been a staple of local Republican belief for almost 20 years that Rockford Democrats have manipulated computerized counting machines to steal at least three of the last five mayoral elections.

In theory, at least, it's possible. As James J. Condit argued in Chronicles four years ago ("A House Without Doors," Views, November 1996), the same technology that simplifies the process of counting votes also makes it much easier to steal an election. Since computerized counting is conducted at central locations, ballots must be moved, which means there's an opportunity to substitute pre-punched ballots for the ones voters actually used. If that fails, the counting machines' computers can be programmed to return the desired result.

While I have been a poll-watcher during one local election and have observed the vote counting after another, I've seen no evidence that local Democrats have actually tampered with either ballots or counting machines. But I am convinced of the truth of a related conspiracy theory: Most politicians in Rockford are heavily influenced by a small group of public contractors and real-estate developers. Their own campaign-finance disclosure statements on the Illinois Board of Elections website (www.elections.state.il.us) provide plenty of evidence.

But if everyone here in Rockford has heard that the last two mayors have simply been pawns of monied interests (and everyone has), then why have the Democrats won the last five mayoral elections in a city routinely described as Republican? The simple answer could be that local voters just don't care.

There may, however, be more at work here. When most people—in Rockford or elsewhere—hear the word "conspiracy," they think of a cabal aimed at overturning the will of the people. That's certainly the way popular literature, movies, and TV shows portray conspiracies. But if you were trying to gain power (or wealth) in the modern world, why would you set yourself against the people? It's much easier to present yourself as their champion. Give them what they want, and they will return the favor.

Both Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor and the Cigarette-Smoking Man on The X-Files understood this. So, too, did the interests that backed Rockford Democratic mayoral candidate John McNamara in 1981. A blue-collar town heavily dependent on the aerospace industry, Rockford had been hit hard by the recession of the late 70's and early 80's. Unemployment was over 20 percent; factories were closing; new businesses weren't taking up the slack. Rockford was on its way to becoming a ghost town.

Helped along by the Reagan military buildup (which revitalized Rockford's industries), John McNamara gave the people what they wanted—economic recovery—while enriching his benefactors through a series of public-works projects (knocking down Rockford's historic buildings and erecting Soviet-style ones), tax breaks, and zoning changes that encouraged private development. By the time McNamara left office in 1989, Rockford's economy had not only rebounded but added a service sector (read: strip malls and chain restaurants). The public-works contractors and real-estate developers who had supported him were firmly entrenched, and he was able to handpick his successor: our current mayor. Democrat Charles Box. Box has nurtured the city's relationship with McNamara's benefactors, and McNamara himself became president of the parent company of the chief public-works contractor, Rockford Blacktop.

Because many of us don't like the intimate connection between Rockford Blacktop and our city government, we often forget that most people in Winnebago County don't mind as long as the roads that Blacktop builds make it easier for them to drive from the vinyl-sided ranch houses they bought from Gambino Realtors to the strip malls that Sunil Puri's First Rockford Group built. In other words, those who supported John McNamara in 1981 have triumphed—not by working against the people, but by recognizing what they wanted and using that knowledge to gain power and wealth. (If government weren't involved, libertarians would undoubtedly proclaim this a stunning example of the virtues of the free market.)

That doesn't change the fact that a small elite dominates the government of Rockford and Winnebago County for its own enrichment, but it changes the political dynamic. Those of us who recognize what's wrong here in Rockford can't count on setting it right by winning elections—particularly since politicians in both parties realize which side their bread is buttered on. Our next mayoral election (in April) will pit a Democratic state representative with strong ties to the McNamara/Box machine against a Republican businessman who shares a campaign- finance chairman—and several key supporters—with the current Democratic mayor. What's the point of having two parties?

At its root, the degeneration of modern democracy is a cultural problem, not a political one. Once political power is vested in the people, all that stands between oligarchy and freedom is the virtue of the masses. In the 18th and 19th centuries, "popular" revolutions failed because the revolutionaries didn't realize the extent to which the people were still attached to throne and altar. But now, the throne is occupied by the likes of Bill Clinton and the altar is attended by Jesse Jackson, and Americans don't mind. They may say they do; they may even think they do; but their actions speak louder than their words. Bill Clinton could have awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Prince of Lies, and he would still have left office with a 70-percent approval rating. (Come to think of it, he did award the medal to the Reverend Jackson.)

So why do local Republicans continue to believe that the only way Mayors McNamara and Box could have won power was by stealing elections? The trouble is not that they can't see the forest for the trees, but that they mistake one tiny leaf for the whole of human existence. Yes, many who desire power are corrupt; yes, sometimes they break the law to achieve their ends; but often, they don't have to. Why overthrow governments, stuff ballot boxes, or manipulate counting machines when you can achieve your ends simply by saying what the people think they want to hear, while doing what the people actually want done?

At the end of George W. Bush's four or eight years as President, Roe v. Wade will still be the law of the land, more states will have recognized homosexual "marriages," more American businesses will have moved overseas, more women and homosexuals will have joined the military, more Americans will have died while killing innocent civilians in countries we have no business attacking, multiculturalism and bilingualism will have increased their hold on American education (remember, Pater's Department of Education first dreamed up Goals 2000), and immigration—both illegal and legal—will have increased. And here in Rockford, no matter which party wins the next mayoral election, Rockford Blacktop will still pave our streets, Sunil Puri will still level farmland and forests to put up strip malls and vinyl-sided ranches, and "Dr." Richard Ragsdale will still murder babies. Because, in the end, that's what the people want.

History is indeed made by men in a room somewhere; but in the modern era, those men have found that it's easier to control the course of events by adding on to the room and letting more folks inside. Soon—perhaps already—those of us on the outside will be in the minority.

***

Psst. Hey, you—the guy at the keyboard. Your conclusions may he right, hut your theory's all wrong. Wanna know the truth about the presidential election? It was all rigged from the beginning—has been, in fact, since at least 1988. That's why George Senior was so smug in those early primaries, and Bob Dole was so frustrated. He knew he couldn't win; wasn't supposed to. And 1992? Give me a break. No sitting president could run such a bad campaign unless he were trying to throw the election. 

You see, it was all a setup. The Skull and Bones know that the American people are a bunch of suckers who can't get past the appearance of a two-party system. What better way to hide the fact that they're pulling the strings than to remove the pachyderm puppet from the stage once in a while, and replace him with a jackass marionette? Clinton's not a Bonesman, but he is Yale Law, so he knows the score. This year, however, it was time to bring the presidency back home. So they crowned Dubya almost a year before the first primary and forced the only man who represented a threat out of the GOP and into a dead-end third party. The stage was set: They knew Al Gore would play along—after all, he'd picked a graduate of Yale and Yale Law as his running mate. (Surely you didn't think Bill Buckley took such a shine to Joe Lieberman because of his religious values?) 

But then the Boners made a mistake: They thought it would be fun to have a real horse race, but they cut it too close in Florida. Tired of playing second fiddle to his father, to Clinton, to Tipper, to Joe, and now to some smug son of a Bonesman—Al grabbed the bow and started calling the dance. But he forgot one thing: Clarence Thomas. Yale Law. (You didn't think George Senior nominated him just because of his race, did you?) The poor sap didn't have a chance. 

Funny thing is, it all worked out better for the Bonesmen this way. Al couldn't let the American people know just what he was fighting against—most of them would have thought he was nuts. And now, all those conspiracy theorists who used to think that Skull and Bones or the CFR or the Trilateral Commission or the Rockefellers or the Bilderbergers might be calling the shots have fallen right into line. After all, the Democrats tried to steal the election, and the Republicans would never do that, right? Next time, the Bonesmen may not even need to swap marionettes. 

Anyway, that's the real reason those Republicans in Rockford were so quiet during the Florida recount: THEY KNEW. 

Pass it on. 

First published in the March 2001 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

One Moment in Time

“You mean,” said Marina, “you mean that we’re sitting here over Hell?”

“Over a hell, conceivably.  There are many hells, and the same place may be Hell or Purgatory, depending upon the situation.  Most of them are private.”

Those words echo in my thoughts as we approach the building.  Turner School, built in 1898, is no Balgrummo Lodging, the Scottish manor house that is the setting of Russell Kirk’s Lord of the Hollow Dark, and not simply because the massive brick-and-stone structure sits right in the heart of Rockford, Illinois, about as far geographically and culturally as you can get from the suburbs of Edinburgh.

Still, as I draw near to the building for the first time, the words play over and over again in my mind.  For in Turner School, as in Balgrummo Lodging, unspeakable horrors—indeed, ritual murders—have taken place, and the closer we come, the more strongly I feel the possibility of unavenged souls trapped in the place of their bodies’ destruction—and the souls of some of their destroyers as well, returned here, years later, to the site of their sin.  If there is such a thing as a Hell on earth (and theologians as late as St. Alphonsus Ligouri have argued that Hell is, indeed, a physical place), Turner School, I can have no doubt, is one.

Over the past eight-and-a-half years, I have passed by here countless times, but always in a car.  Driving down Broadway, headed to a bookstore or restaurant, you cannot help but shudder as you pass, if you know what Turner School has become.  The moment, however, passes quickly, aided by the speed of Dr. Kirk’s “mechanical Jacobin.”  Only approaching by foot, and with the intent of being here, does the full weight of this place come to bear.

For Turner School is no longer a school but a victim, like the children it used to house, of America’s 50-year-long failed “experiment” in school desegregation.  Rockford suffered for 13 years (from 1989 to 2002) under a federal desegregation lawsuit whose educational and social effects will be felt for decades to come and which may, in fact, have destroyed this town.  And Turner School was there at the beginning, closed by the Rockford School Board in 1978 after parents, led by the courageous David Strommer (later, in the 1990’s, a school-board member and one of the fiercest opponents of desegregation, school consolidation, and judicial taxation), rose up against a plan to bus students from Turner to other schools to satisfy state “integration” guidelines.  In the end, the board decided it was simply easier to force the issue by shuttering the school and scattering the children to the wind.

In doing so, the board not only sacrificed the students then at Turner School to the gods of “progress” and “diversity” but offered up future generations to something even worse: The building now houses the Northern Illinois Women’s Clinic (N.I.W.C.), the euphemistic name attached to Rockford’s only abortuary.

Partisans of state-sanctioned murder, such as Planned Parenthood, like to portray the “procedure” as “safe” and “clinical,” performed as an “outpatient service” in “modern facilities.”  Fort Turner (as its owner, Wayne Webster, refers to the decommissioned school) gives the lie to the glowing description.

In the pro-death mythology, thousands of women died every year in back alleys across America until an “enlightened” Supreme Court, in 1973, overturned the laws of all 50 states regulating the barbaric “procedure.”  From the outside, however, Fort Turner has much in common with the alley to its east, where, as we walk down it, Aaron Wolf finds tattered porn magazines and empty liquor bottles.  The horrifying thought crosses both of our minds: Are children being conceived out here, only to be butchered inside?  At the very least, it seems likely that less “respectable” partisans of death—less respectable, that is, than politicians and doctors—may get a sick thrill from performing their own ritual acts so close to the gates of Hell, where even the mulberry trees in the fencerow refuse to bear fruit.

While the 50,000 or more children he has murdered over the past 30 years will never have names by which they can be remembered, the butcher of Fort Turner, “Dr.” Richard Ragsdale (I refuse to use his title without the inverted commas), will go down in history for his “contribution” to “a woman’s right to choose.”  Showing exquisite care for his “patients,” Ragsdale filed suit in 1988 to overturn an Illinois law that required “clinics” like N.I.W.C. to have operating rooms that meet hospital standards.  (Ragsdale was already operating out of Fort Turner by that point.)  Turnock v. Ragsdale, scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 5, 1989, was expected to provide the Court with an opportunity to revisit Roe v. Wade (or at least to clarify questions raised earlier that year in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services).  On November 22, however, the case was settled out of court, when the state of Illinois agreed to create a new class of lightly regulated abortion “clinics” (that just happened to include Ragsdale’s chamber of horrors at Fort Turner) and guaranteed the “right” to an abortion with essentially no restraints through the 18th week of pregnancy.

“Dr.” Ragsdale has privileges at two of the hospitals in town, SwedishAmerican and Rockford Memorial.  (St. Anthony’s does not let him in the door.)  As we walk back up the alley to Broadway and the front of Fort Turner, I wonder: Do any members of the board of either hospital ever pass by here?  If so, what do they think of the rubber chickens hanging in the gable windows, Wayne Webster’s sick slap at the pro-lifers who meet out on the sidewalk every week to pray?  Or the signs in other windows: “What the Hell You Looking Up Here For?”; “PROTECTED BY MR. SMITH & MR. WESSON”; and, just to show his concern for his tenant’s “patients,” “BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS AND WILD WOMEN”?  (Previous signs were even worse: “Jesus loves these braindead a--holes,” “These Bible-thumpers suffer from lack-o-nookie,” “Free coat hangers to picketer’s wives and mothers,” “God bless these horny old sweat-hogs.”)  Or the mocking little shrine Webster has created of items—a crucifix, a nun doll, a picture of Pope John Paul II—left behind by pro-lifers?  Do they know that Webster’s own son went to Turner School, where now 25 to 70 children are slaughtered every week?  Do they even care?

The answer is obvious.  The “pro-life” Republican candidate for mayor in 2001, Denny Johnson, sits on the board of SwedishAmerican.  When I questioned him on a radio talk show during the campaign, he gave the standard dodge—Ragsdale doesn’t perform abortions in our hospital—and dismissed my suggestion that he take a pledge that, as mayor, he would use zoning regulations to close down Fort Turner.  (The idea, he admitted, had never even crossed his mind.)

Webster and Ragsdale are both living proof that abortion is not simply a “service” that someone can “provide” while being otherwise normal and well adjusted.  Webster has confronted pro-lifers outside of Fort Turner wearing a devil costume; he once hired someone to pass out helium-filled condoms to pro-lifers’ children.  On killing days, he broadcasts loud music and other sounds from loudspeakers mounted on the outside of the building, to drown out the voices of the faithful praying the rosary.  Ragsdale and his wife, Debbie DeMars, were charged in September 1994 with four counts of producing and distributing child pornography, after they took film to a local developer that included pictures of their three-year-old foster daughter in suggestive poses, wearing a black-lace thong, with her genitals exposed.  When Ragsdale and his lawyer claimed that the charges were politically motivated, Winnebago County’s Republican “pro-life” state’s attorney, Paul Logli, quickly cut a deal in which, in exchange for the charges being dropped, DeMars signed a statement admitting that the photos “were of an inappropriate nature and could constitute a violation of state law.”  (If the photos “could constitute a violation of state law,” isn’t it the duty of the state’s attorney to prosecute?)  State child-protection services apparently regarded the situation more seriously than Logli did: The girl was removed from the home and never returned to Ragsdale and DeMars.

Walking down the sidewalk on Broadway, I understand clearly for the first time the deepest dimensions of this battle.  If they knew where the gates of Hell were, would the faithful not keep constant vigil outside, offering—as in a scene from a medieval fresco—rosaries as lifelines to those being dragged down into the pit by leering demons?  And these doors—once the girls’ entrance to Turner School—are truly a gate to Hell.

Most pro-lifers speak reflexively of abortion as “the destruction of innocent human life.”  Would that it were.  Looking at the doors, I begin to understand the frustration and the horror that must have overwhelmed Fr. John Earl when, in September 2000, he smashed his car into Fort Turner and set about destroying the inside with an ax, before Webster, who lives in his house of horrors, convinced him to stop by firing two shotgun blasts into the wall.  For Father Earl remembers the words of the Psalmist: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”  The children sacrificed on Richard Ragsdale’s altar of progress bear no personal guilt, but they have inherited Adam’s sin.  That is why abortion is perhaps the most perfect weapon Satan has ever devised: Deprived of Baptism, the souls of these children may never find true rest.  That—more so than the death and destruction of the body—is the true horror of the act.

Father Earl, by his reception of Holy Orders, is an alter Christus, and perhaps he thought he was acting as such.  Some acts in salvation history, however, are only to be performed once, and Christ Himself descended into Hell, throwing the gates wide.  Our struggles are out in this world, not inside the doors of Fort Turner.

Some abortionists undoubtedly understand what they accomplish when they destroy an unborn child; does Richard Ragsdale understand as well?  We can only pray that he does, because then there is the possibility that his victims are, in some sense, martyrs, and that their souls may thus find rest.

In Kirk’s novel, 12 disciples gather at Balgrummo Lodging, where their leader, Apollinax, promises to grant them a “Timeless Moment”—an experience to be gained through the murder of a mother and her fatherless child.  In the midst of their act of depravity, Apollinax arranges for them, too, to die; and he knows that he will have created the only kind of Timeless Moment man can gain through his actions alone: the inverse of the Beatific Vision; an eternity in Hell.

Confused and beguiled by the lies of the god of progress, the prince of this world, the women who enter the gates of this hell, if they emerge again, may, in time and through the prayers of the faithful, come to recognize and—more importantly—repent of their sin.  And, in time, Richard Ragsdale and Wayne Webster will pass on, and Fort Turner may once again lie vacant, except for those souls trapped in a Timeless Moment within its walls—and possibly those other souls who, having repented, are graciously granted the ability, after their death, to continue, in time, to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

“You mean,” said Marina, “you mean that we’re sitting here over Hell?”

“Over a hell, conceivably.  There are many hells, and the same place may be Hell or Purgatory, depending upon the situation.”

First published in the September 2004 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

For the Children

“I figured if he was there, I’d make sure he wasn’t there [again],” Harlan Drake, a 33-year-old truck driver, told Det. Sgt. Scott Shenk of the Shiawassee County Sheriff’s Department.  But on the morning of September 11, 2009, James Pouillon was there, sitting across the street from Owosso High School as he had on so many other mornings.  And so Harlan Drake stopped his car, pulled a .45 out of a bag, carefully took aim, and shot Pouillon.  “He was still moving so I shot him one more time.  I aimed under the ribcage going up toward the heart.”

Alana Beamish, who had just dropped her son off at school, attempted to save Pouillon’s life, but it was too late.  The 63-year-old died on the ground.

Drake murdered another man, Mike Fuoss, that day, and went in search of a third, James Howe, intending to kill him, too.  Caught a few hours later, Drake told Detective Sergeant Shenk that “he was going to make our job very easy.”  He confessed to both murders, and from then until his trial ended in a guilty verdict on March 11, Harlan Drake expressed no remorse.

Mike Fuoss’s name was little more than a footnote in most media coverage of that fateful day in Owosso, Michigan.  It was the murder of Pouillon that captured the nation’s attention.  As Drake told Detective Sergeant Shenk, “I asked [Pouillon] over the years not to do that in front of the kids.  A little kid shouldn’t have to look at that.”

Was Pouillon a pervert, an exhibitionist?  No: Through his decades-long stakeout at Owosso High School and numerous other places throughout the city and county, Pouillon intended not to victimize children but to save them from the horrors of abortion.  Harlan Drake claimed that he had no problem with that message; it was the medium that Pouillon used that convinced Drake to put an end to Pouillon’s life: “I’m not against anti-abortion.  I’m against showing little kids those pictures.”

Those pictures were three- and four-foot-high graphic photographs of bloodied, dismembered unborn children—the “product” of abortions.  Drake wasn’t the only resident of Owosso who objected to Pouillon’s tactics.  In a community that is largely pro-life, Pouillon found few defenders.  Why?  Because, as the Associated Press reported on February 23, Pouillon “was everywhere—the farmers market, City Hall, the county courthouse, football games—with verbal taunts that were as shocking as his signs.”

As Pouillon’s barber told the AP, “I had no problem with his message.  He was just overboard with it.  He knew how to push buttons on people, but Jim didn’t deserve to be executed on the sidewalk.”  A local woman interviewed by the AP went even further: “I don’t agree with someone taking someone’s life . . . But I don’t miss the man on the corner or his foul mouth.  He would chase you, call you names.  He was evil.  His pictures were so gross.”

One does not have to draw a moral equivalence between murder and a pro-life protest, no matter how unsettling the tactics used, to see a disturbing parallel between the two men.  Their shared conviction that extreme measures are justified “for the sake of the children” left one man dead and the other in prison for life.  But what, in the end, did either man accomplish?

Those of us who oppose abortion and support pro-life measures need not give Harlan Drake a second thought, except perhaps to utter a prayer for his conversion.  But can we learn any lessons from James Pouillon’s tragic end?

The images that Pouillon used are being increasingly adopted by pro-lifers—a sign, perhaps, of desperation, as the years since Roe v. Wade continue to tick by, with only minor and occasional declines in the number of abortions in the United States, from 1.4 million to 1.2 million per year, every year, for over 37 years.

Thus the excitement in the pro-life movement in early October 2009 when the New York Times published an article on its Lens blog by reporter Damien Cave, who had covered the murder of Pouillon and attended his memorial service in Owosso.  “Behind the Scenes: Picturing Fetal Remains” is the first serious and extended examination in the mainstream media of the use of such images in pro-life protests.

Cave interviewed Monica Migliorino Miller, the director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and a theology professor at Madonna University, a Franciscan school in Livonia, Michigan.  Mrs. Miller estimates that half of the images of aborted children that are used in pro-life protests are pictures that she took, starting in 1987.

What is most interesting about Mrs. Miller’s story is her understanding of what she hoped to accomplish.  From the beginning, she told Mr. Cave, her purpose was “journalistic”: “We felt it was very important to make a record of the reality of abortion.”

Yet “Over time,” Cave writes,

her views on which images are appropriate have evolved.  She no longer sees gory pictures showing blood or organs as acceptable.  She has tried harder to shoot younger fetuses, because that’s when most abortions take place, and she said she also believes that the most graphic images should not be deliberately directed at children because “they can’t intellectualize what they’re seeing.”

And yet an increasing number of pro-lifers who use such images justify deliberately targeting children by arguing that it is too late for adults (we have already made up our minds about abortion), while children are (as one put it) “not yet in that horrible fog.”  And some even defend the use of such images by attacking the moral character of teenagers en masse.  Because some teenagers engage in premarital sex, and some portion of those who do have sex get pregnant, and some portion of those who do get pregnant have abortions, all children—including those who would not have an abortion if they were to get pregnant from the sex that they are not having—should be exposed to these terrifying sights.

As parents, we have an obligation to protect our children from the violence of abortion.  But confronting them with such images accomplishes exactly the opposite: It draws them into the reality of abortion in a way that can do great damage to developing minds and souls.

For her second thoughts, Mrs. Miller is now being criticized by some of those who have used her pictures the longest.  Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, told Cave that Mrs. Miller’s current stance is “a nice sentimental argument.  What’s important is truth to us; that this is the truth.”

There is something to be learned from the difference in the language that Mrs. Miller and Mr. Benham use.  Perhaps it can be ascribed to Mrs. Miller’s training in theology, but her description of her photos as a “record of the reality of abortion” is accurate, while Mr. Benham’s claim that “this is the truth” is not.

This is not a mere semantic quibble.  In the modern world, we often use the word truth as if it were synonymous with reality, but in Christian theology, as in classical philosophy, truth has a more limited, and more elevated, meaning.  Abortion, by definition, is untruth; it is the destruction of the truth of human nature and of the created order.  It is a direct assault not only on the child who is being torn apart, limb from limb, but on the God Who declared to the prophet Jeremiah, in that verse so familiar to pro-lifers, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5, RSV).

What happens when we dwell on untruth, when we constantly expose ourselves and others to it, even with the best of intentions?  We become inured to the reality of that untruth.  The shock and the horror that we experienced when first confronted with pictures of aborted children dissipate; we need even more graphic images in order to excite the same feelings of revulsion.

We can see this in an anecdotal way in a picture that the New York Times ran alongside a front-page story, also by Mr. Cave, in the October 9, 2009, print edition.  At a prayer vigil for Mr. Pouillon in Owosso in September, in front of a camper plastered with signs that read “Mommy, why do they want to kill me?” and “Abortion=Murder: The same by any name,” several young girls stand talking.  One, a pretty blond-haired girl perhaps 10 or 12 years old, has a broad smile on her face—while a foot or so behind her hangs a four- or five-foot image of a bloodied, mangled baby on a white sheet stained with more blood.

Mrs. Miller is right: “[T]hey can’t intellectualize what they’re seeing.”  What they can do, what they will do, is compartmentalize it, become desensitized, confuse the reality of evil with truth.

That very confusion today afflicts the broader pro-life movement—even those who would never dream of using these graphic photos.  Abortion has become a moral “issue”; a political “question”; a cultural “problem” to be solved.  It has taken on a life of its own, separate from Christian teaching.  Indeed, when pro-abortion zealots claim that opposition to abortion is simply an attempt to impose Christian morality, the usual response of Christian pro-lifers today is to point to Jewish and Muslim and even atheist pro-lifers, to declare that abortion is a matter of “civil rights” or “human rights,” to compare it to slavery and point out that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece is a pro-lifer, to decry the unequal impact that abortion for sex selection has on unborn baby girls and to argue that any true feminist must, for that reason alone, be pro-life.

What few will do is simply say, “Yes.  And what of it?”  At the time of Christ, both chemical and mechanical abortion were practiced in the Roman world; by the time that Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan, and for well over a millennium afterward in the Western world, such practices were shunned.  How did that change come about?  Through graphic representations of Flip Benham’s “truth” of abortion?  By petitioning the Roman Senate to outlaw such practices?  No: It occurred through the widespread conversion of Romans to Christianity.

The Didache, the first-century document known to early Christians as the teaching of the Twelve Apostles, declared that “There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death”; those who would follow the Way of Life that Christian converts had embraced “shall not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide.”  Why?  Because such practices violate “universal human rights”?  Because they are akin to the slavery that was commonplace in the ancient world?  Because they make women no more than sex objects for men?

No.  Such actions were to be avoided because they are the Way of Death, not of Life; they are untruth, and thus opposed to the Truth that will set us free.

Some may object that the civil-rights and human-rights and slavery and feminism arguments carry weight today, while Christianity does not.  How can we expect to win the fight against abortion if we cannot even get people to listen to us?

But what exactly is it that we are fighting against?  Better yet, what exactly is it that we are fighting for?  Abortion is not simply a cause of our civilizational decline, though it is that; more importantly, it is a symptom—a symptom, first and foremost, of the increasing destruction of Christianity from within.

In Casti connubii, his 1930 encyclical on Christian marriage, Pope Pius XI speaks of the proper role of the state in upholding the teachings of the Church, but he never loses sight of the fact that “the family is more sacred than the State and that men are begotten not for the earth and for time, but for Heaven and eternity.”  That is why there can never be a purely political solution to a cultural problem; if we put our trust in princes who have forgotten that God is the source of their authority, then our trust is likely to be betrayed when the teachings of the Faith threaten to bridle their passion for political power.

The solution is for the Church to play the role that She played in the conversion of the Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages.  As Pius XI writes,

For the preservation of the moral order neither the laws and sanctions of the temporal power are sufficient, nor is the beauty of virtue and the expounding of its necessity.  Religious authority must enter in to enlighten the mind, to direct the will, and to strengthen human frailty by the assistance of divine grace.  Such an authority is found nowhere save in the Church instituted by Christ the Lord.

But surely the hour is too late; the day is too dark; we cannot spare the time necessary to convert the masses.  Every year, 1.3 million children are murdered; are we simply to throw them to the wolves?

Of course not.  But our time and attention are necessarily limited, and we need to focus on preventing abortions where they actually occur—not in the halls of Congress, or the Oval Office, or the chamber of the Supreme Court, but in the abortuaries and hospitals of our hometowns.

The unabashedly Christian 40 Days for Life campaign, held in towns and cities across the United States the past three Lenten seasons, is a perfect example of the kind of pro-life action that can and does make a difference.  Volunteers take turns holding vigil, praying the rosary and offering other prayers of intercession for the women entering the abortuaries, the men who brought them there, the children whose lives are being snuffed out before they even see the light of day, and even the “doctors” and “nurses” who perform and assist in the act of murder.  The faithful offer sidewalk counseling, directing women who have doubts about their actions to crisis-pregnancy centers and even, in some cases, opening their own homes to frightened women and girls who thought they had nowhere else to turn.

Political measures can be undone, but every child whom we save becomes a living witness—an icon—of the love of God and a testimony that we Christians live what we preach.  Focusing on what we can accomplish, rather than on what we have failed to accomplish over the course of 37 years, will allow us to begin to turn the debate around.

Remembering that our opposition to abortion is not separate from our belief in Christ is but the first step.  Simply urging mothers to “Choose Life” will not end abortion on the mass scale that we see it practiced today; bringing them to the One Who is the Way and the Truth and the Life will.  Rome wasn’t converted in a day, and the United States will not be, either.  But she will never be converted as long as our actions lead others to believe that we value the cause of life more than the Way of Life.

On the last day of His earthly life, Christ stood before Pontius Pilate and declared, “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.  Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.”  Beholding the Creator of the world and the Savior of mankind, His body bruised by the blows of the servants of the high priest and His face covered with their spittle, Pilate responded, “What is truth?”

The bruises and the spittle were reality, but they obscured the truth that Pilate sought.  And in the end, he sent that Truth away to be crucified—the same Truth Who, through His Resurrection, wrought the conversion of the Roman Empire and even, some traditions say, of Pontius Pilate himself.

We can end abortion in the United States in the same way that Christians ended abortion in the Roman Empire: by finding our hope in the Truth of the Gospel, rather than despairing in the reality of evil.

First published in the May 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

The Sunday of many names →

If there is another Sunday, or indeed any day of the year, that has so many different names signifying so many different aspects of the day, I don’t know what it is.