Roe Delenda Est!
So Congress has decided it might be a good idea to build a fence between our country and Mexico. "Good fences make good neighbors," so says the rural proverb. To all the citizen-patrols, to those who live near the border, to those who've watched their schools and hospitals bankrupted and their income confiscated to care for illegal aliens, to those who have decried the gaping national security holes on our southern border - to all these folks, this legislation is validation of their complaints.
It won't completely solve the problem, of course. There are holes in our border that won't be patched by a fence. But it's a start - and a significant one because it admits that a border/immigration problem exists, and it refutes the policy beneath the President's "guest worker" or "amnesty" program.
Anne Henderschott, in her excellent book The Politics of Deviance, demonstrates how public policy can influence our attitudes and, in turn, our behavior. When Congress gives force to the people's wish for immigration-control, it may cause many of us to take the matter more seriously that we would otherwise have done. Such a shift in popular attitude can reinforce and strengthen immigration-control policy. Each of these forces - public policy and popular will - thus urges the other forward. This is why tentative, "half-measure" legislation can sometimes be very potent.
"But hang on a sec...Just the other day you were decrying our 'journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' approach, right?"
Some public policy errors are, in my estimation, of such moment that a piecemeal approach to correcting them can actually do harm - specifically when this approach fails to restore, uphold and defend our fundamental principles of government. Slavery was one such error; abortion is another.
The Supreme Court's Dred Scott debacle attempted to settle the ongoing public debate regarding slavery by permanently codifying a fundamental, nationwide policy on the issue. It's true the nation's founding could not been achieved without compromise on the issue, but the very foundational structure thus established encouraged discourse and allowed for subsequent policy change. And that discourse did, in fact, lead the nation toward policy change regarding slavery.
The Court's preemption of constitutional democracy was an affront to America's foundational principles; and thus, for the preservation of the nation, it called for repudiation in no uncertain terms. What was required was a direct confrontation of the error; no "single-step" half-measure would suffice. In view of Dred Scott and the secessions, the abolition of slavery might even be considered a secondary objective. Not insignificant; no, not at all insignificant. But secondary to the preservation of the nation and its constitutional democracy.
The republic had already endured for some 70 years with the "peculiar institution". But as anti-slavery sentiment grew, the desperation of slavery's proponents compelled them to subvert the nation's foundational principles. Should Lincoln and the Republican Congress have, in deference to the Court's decision, taken a "single-step" approach to abolition?
Perhaps such an approach would have eventually ended slavery. Burdensome regulation of the slave trade, intrusive inspections of facilities, oppressive taxation of slave-owners, barring the transportation of slaves on public roads and waterways, banning the splitting up of slave families - perhaps these and similar measures could have squeaked by the Court and dismantled the institution a la "death by a thousand cuts". But pursuing such a course would have conceded to the Court and its courtiers authority reserved to the people and their representatives. And that concession would have done more damage to the nation than slavery.
Is slavery more offensive to natural rights than murder? Is taking a man's liberty from him a worse crime than taking his life? The legal code God dictated to Israel prohibits murder outright, pronouncing it a capital crime. But the Law merely regulates slavery and servitude, injecting into the institution fairness and mercy. Should America be less vehement in our efforts to rid this land of the scourge of abortion, our "peculiar institution", than were the abolitionists?
In Roe, the Court again bypassed public debate and subverted constitutional democracy in permanently codifying a fundamental, nationwide policy. But as with slavery, the people will not be silenced by the Court's tyrannical edict - no, not even with the accompanying censorious orders to "shut up and just let it go."
The masses of Americans opposing abortion, and the volume and duration of their protest, would indicate to any observer the enormous weight of this issue. At least the Court's attempt to silence this opposition is consistent with their philosophy of supra-constitutional authority. But America's outrage at this error should be neither suppressed nor ignored - nor will it be.
Nor is the desperation to "save a few lives" with single-step measures hard to understand. Congress and state legislatures continue to enact laws intended to restrict and curtail this peculiar institution - hoping, perhaps, to effect a rebuke like that resulting from the border-fence act, and in so doing turn the tide of battle and begin to retake some ground one tiny step at a time.
Abortion is such an affront, though, to America and her Constitution - to even civilization itself - and Roe, Plessy and the whole gamut of abortion jurisprudence so subversive of constitutional democracy, that the single-step approach will never enable us to topple the abortion empire. Instead, we will be induced to accept a truce which limits the body count to a tolerable number, while leaving key outposts in the enemy's hands and their most strategic weapon - Roe - intact.
No, this is not a thousand-mile journey we should begin with a single step. Roe must be faced head-on, challenged forthrightly, exposed for the legal farce it is, and its hollow shell paraded about as a warning to others whose hubris and disdain for the rule of law would lead them to similar acts of tyranny.
CORRECTION: It was Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book One Nation, Two Cultures, who discusses "legislating morality" - not Anne Henderschott. Both very smart women, and both books well worth the reading.
It won't completely solve the problem, of course. There are holes in our border that won't be patched by a fence. But it's a start - and a significant one because it admits that a border/immigration problem exists, and it refutes the policy beneath the President's "guest worker" or "amnesty" program.
Anne Henderschott, in her excellent book The Politics of Deviance, demonstrates how public policy can influence our attitudes and, in turn, our behavior. When Congress gives force to the people's wish for immigration-control, it may cause many of us to take the matter more seriously that we would otherwise have done. Such a shift in popular attitude can reinforce and strengthen immigration-control policy. Each of these forces - public policy and popular will - thus urges the other forward. This is why tentative, "half-measure" legislation can sometimes be very potent.
"But hang on a sec...Just the other day you were decrying our 'journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' approach, right?"
Some public policy errors are, in my estimation, of such moment that a piecemeal approach to correcting them can actually do harm - specifically when this approach fails to restore, uphold and defend our fundamental principles of government. Slavery was one such error; abortion is another.
The Supreme Court's Dred Scott debacle attempted to settle the ongoing public debate regarding slavery by permanently codifying a fundamental, nationwide policy on the issue. It's true the nation's founding could not been achieved without compromise on the issue, but the very foundational structure thus established encouraged discourse and allowed for subsequent policy change. And that discourse did, in fact, lead the nation toward policy change regarding slavery.
The Court's preemption of constitutional democracy was an affront to America's foundational principles; and thus, for the preservation of the nation, it called for repudiation in no uncertain terms. What was required was a direct confrontation of the error; no "single-step" half-measure would suffice. In view of Dred Scott and the secessions, the abolition of slavery might even be considered a secondary objective. Not insignificant; no, not at all insignificant. But secondary to the preservation of the nation and its constitutional democracy.
The republic had already endured for some 70 years with the "peculiar institution". But as anti-slavery sentiment grew, the desperation of slavery's proponents compelled them to subvert the nation's foundational principles. Should Lincoln and the Republican Congress have, in deference to the Court's decision, taken a "single-step" approach to abolition?
Perhaps such an approach would have eventually ended slavery. Burdensome regulation of the slave trade, intrusive inspections of facilities, oppressive taxation of slave-owners, barring the transportation of slaves on public roads and waterways, banning the splitting up of slave families - perhaps these and similar measures could have squeaked by the Court and dismantled the institution a la "death by a thousand cuts". But pursuing such a course would have conceded to the Court and its courtiers authority reserved to the people and their representatives. And that concession would have done more damage to the nation than slavery.
Is slavery more offensive to natural rights than murder? Is taking a man's liberty from him a worse crime than taking his life? The legal code God dictated to Israel prohibits murder outright, pronouncing it a capital crime. But the Law merely regulates slavery and servitude, injecting into the institution fairness and mercy. Should America be less vehement in our efforts to rid this land of the scourge of abortion, our "peculiar institution", than were the abolitionists?
In Roe, the Court again bypassed public debate and subverted constitutional democracy in permanently codifying a fundamental, nationwide policy. But as with slavery, the people will not be silenced by the Court's tyrannical edict - no, not even with the accompanying censorious orders to "shut up and just let it go."
The masses of Americans opposing abortion, and the volume and duration of their protest, would indicate to any observer the enormous weight of this issue. At least the Court's attempt to silence this opposition is consistent with their philosophy of supra-constitutional authority. But America's outrage at this error should be neither suppressed nor ignored - nor will it be.
Nor is the desperation to "save a few lives" with single-step measures hard to understand. Congress and state legislatures continue to enact laws intended to restrict and curtail this peculiar institution - hoping, perhaps, to effect a rebuke like that resulting from the border-fence act, and in so doing turn the tide of battle and begin to retake some ground one tiny step at a time.
Abortion is such an affront, though, to America and her Constitution - to even civilization itself - and Roe, Plessy and the whole gamut of abortion jurisprudence so subversive of constitutional democracy, that the single-step approach will never enable us to topple the abortion empire. Instead, we will be induced to accept a truce which limits the body count to a tolerable number, while leaving key outposts in the enemy's hands and their most strategic weapon - Roe - intact.
No, this is not a thousand-mile journey we should begin with a single step. Roe must be faced head-on, challenged forthrightly, exposed for the legal farce it is, and its hollow shell paraded about as a warning to others whose hubris and disdain for the rule of law would lead them to similar acts of tyranny.
CORRECTION: It was Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book One Nation, Two Cultures, who discusses "legislating morality" - not Anne Henderschott. Both very smart women, and both books well worth the reading.
posted by Lear's Fool | 3:07 PM
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