Seven Per Cent

According to a recent Gallup Poll - that's the number - 7% - of Americans "trust" Congress ... I find that believable ... how 'bout you?  Let's re-phrase that down to an individual ... what that basically says is I almost never believe my member of congress ... for me that's true ... "my" congressman ... I don't believe him at all ... my senator one I believe over 70% of the time ... the other I believe 0% percent of the time ... what are your numbers?

facebook

It is an odd thing, I find, the things I post on facebook that get lots of response and those that get no response ... there is a pattern ... and it is not encouraging toward individuality ... it supports homogeneity ... which, I think, is the opposite of political correctness ... weird, huh?

Opinion Piece On WWJC? [sic]

Retrieved from http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=1365610 on 6/12/11.

Keep Jesus out of your socialism (Part 1)
Dr. Michael Youssef 6/9/2011 9:35:00 AM

The headline of the full-page ad asks, "What Would Jesus Cut? -- A budget is a moral document." The text continues, "Our faith tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats the poor."

The ad was produced by Sojourners, a self-described "evangelical" organization whose slogan is "Faith in Action for Social Justice." The ad was signed by Sojourners president Jim Wallis and more than two dozen Religious Left pastors, theologians, and activists. They urge our legislators to ask themselves, "What would Jesus cut?" from the federal budget.

How would you answer that question? My answer would be, "It's a nonsense question. Your premise is faulty. Your priorities are not His priorities."

Palin on Leno Transcript w/Stand Up Comedy Routine from 3/2/10

Retrieved from http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/03/03/palin-discusses-press-leno-mainstream-media-quite-broken on 3/9/10.

Transcript of 3/2/10 appearance -

JAY LENO, HOST: Now, the media has been critical of you. Now you are a member, you have joined the other side.

SARAH PALIN: It's kind of full circle for me. I studied journalism. My college degree there in communications. And now I am back there wanting to build some trust back in our media. I think that the mainstream media is quite broken. And I think that there needs to be the fairness, the balance in there. That's why I joined Fox.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Liberalism - Definition

Pertinent definition of oft-bandied word ...

"Until the eighteenth century the term generally meant whatever was worthy of a free man, e.g., as applied to the liberal arts or a liberal education. This meaning is still current, but at least since the French Revolution liberalism has become more or less identified with a philosophy that stresses human freedom to the neglect and even denial of the rights of God in religion, the rights of society in civil law, and the rights of the Church in her relations to the State. It was in this sense that liberalism was condemned by Pope Pius IX in 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors (Denzinger, 2977-80)".<sup>1

1 Hardon, John, S.J. 1999 (2nd Printing, 2001). "Modern Catholic Dictionary", p. 317. Eternal Life. Brownsville, Kentucky.
"Denzinger" refers to Enchiridion Symbolorum (Handbook of Creeds) originally edited by Henry Denzinger and first published in 1854.</sup>

ProLife Mark Crutcher responds to "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament"

Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his book, "On Message" (2005, Life Dynamics Incorporated, p. 34) Mr. Crutcher addresses the oft-heard wisecrack directed at Pro-Life males – “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”. To grasp the insidious intention of this insinuation one must appreciate what a “sacrament” is. According to the Baltimore Catechism a “Sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace” (http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson13.htm, retrieved 1/19/10). A further definition is useful, that of “grace”; meaning “a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us, through the merits of Jesus Christ, for our salvation” (http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson10.htm retrieved 1/19/10). That preliminary basic definitions on terms for which entire volumes have been written are required reveals the underlying nature, whether intentional or inadvertent, of ineptitude and contempt toward theological concepts pervading this comment. Mr. Crutcher exposes the absurdity of the pro-abortion remark and does so with his characteristic sense of disarming reason. (Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com and Mr. Crutcher's blog at www.markcrutcherblog.com.)

Since the beginning of this debate, radical pro-aborts have been regurgitating this nonsense and it is time to set the record straight. If you look at polls taken on the public’s attitude about abortion, one thing jumps out. Regardless of whether the poll is paid for by the pro-abortion side or the pro-life side, and regardless of how the questions were slanted to favor one position or the other, one finding almost never changes. With virtually no exceptions, the results show that men are consistently more pro-abortion than women. It seems that men, especially single men, are aware that they are the ones best served and protected by legal abortion.

So while these abortion advocates continue to espouse this “sacrament” garbage, they do so with the full knowledge that it’s a bald-faced lie. They are fully aware that the data shows that the ability to become pregnant actually makes a person less supportive of abortion. Of course, the abortion lobby finds that fact to be counter productive, so they just ignore it.

***

The only people who ever tried to sell the idea that women will never be equal to men unless they can legally butcher their children, are those who have either a financial or political interest in abortion. The average woman, regardless of her views on abortion, is simply not gullible enough to be convinced that protecting the unborn would mean relegating women to the status of nothing more than the property of their husbands.

Let’s not forget, with almost no exceptions, pioneers of the women’s movement like Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Brinkerhoff, Sarah Norton, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were quite outspoken in their opposition to legal abortion. In fact, Alice Paul, who helped write the original Equal Rights Amendment and worked 50 years for its passage, called abortion, “the ultimate exploitation of women.” Even suffragist newspapers like Woodhull’s and Claflin’s Weekly, had editorial policies which openly attacked abortion and abortionists. (For more information on pro-life feminism see: Victoria-Woodhull.com)

These early women’s rights advocates correctly saw abortion as patronizing and paternalistic. What they recognized back then remains true today. Abortion doesn’t free women, it devalues them. Abortion says they are second-class people whose problems are so trivial they can be handled with a “quick-fix” solution. These women knew that abortion favors sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible males. It allows them to sexually exploit women in a relatively risk-free environment. These guys can have their fun, and if a pregnancy occurs the woman involved can just be “vacuumed out” and used again.

True feminists also know that abortion lets men buy their way out of responsibility. The fact is, no other single factor has freed more sexually predatory and sexually irresponsible men than women's willingness to submit to abortion. It is, has always been, and will always be, a safety net which makes it easier for women to provide responsibility-free sex to men.

The reality that abortion is a protector of men is now so well known that some abortion advocates no longer even bother to deny it. In fact, some even say it should be celebrated. On May 11, 1990, on the nationally syndicated radio commentary program Spectrum, one very vocal proponent of abortion-on-demand, Ann Taylor-Flemming, was expounding on the need for their side to bring more men into the cause. She said this should be done because of the service abortion renders them. This is what she had to say about men, women, and abortion:

“I came of age with the women’s movement. It has given license to my ambitions and dreams, and filled me with the fervor for equality that permeates all that I do. But this time, I want to turn the tables a bit. Take an issue that always seems like a women’s issue and pitch it directly towards the men out there. And that issue is abortion … it’s time now to invite the men of America back in, to ask them to raise their voices for choice … I dare say that many of them have impregnated women along the way, and then let off the hook in a big, big way – emotionally, economically and every other way – when the women went ahead and had abortions … the sense of relief for themselves was mixed with sympathy for and gratitude towards those women whose ultimate responsibility was to relieve them of responsibility by having abortions … it would sure be nice to hear from all those men out there whose lives have been changed, bettered, and substantially eased because they were not forced into unwanted fatherhood.”

Even the most bigoted male chauvinist would never suggest that women have a “responsibility” to let the men who impregnate them “off the hook” by submitting to abortion. And yet, here is that very philosophy being espoused by someone who claims to be an advocate for women.

Statements like these prove that even outspoken advocates of abortion know that by its nature abortion will always be something which allows men to sexually exploit women. The really deplorable part of this is that they have this patronizing attitude toward women while claiming the only motive they have for being in this battle is to protect women. Maybe that’s an example of that old warning to be suspicious of anyone who says they only have your best interests at heart. (A recording of the Taylor-Flemming quote is on file at Life Dynamics.)

Another point is, not only does abortion protect men, it does so without demanding that they face any personal risk. After all, while the baby that’s sentenced to death is just as much his as hers, it’s only her body which will be invaded to carry out the execution. You can bet that if these guys were the ones who might end up on the abortionist’s table, facing unknown emotional and physical risks, they’d suddenly have a different attitude about sex and abortion.

Then there is the argument that a woman sometimes “needs” an abortion because a baby might interfere with her career. However, true feminists do not ask women to change to meet society’s needs, but instead work toward a society in which pregnant women, and women with children, are allowed to fully participate just as they are. If the failures of society clash with the biology of women, a feminist would not say that women are the ones who have to change. Simply put, real feminism does not ask women to solve society’s problems by killing their children. In fact, powerful women do not kill their children for anyone or for any reason, nor do they believe that women need surgery to be equal to men.

It is interesting to note that anytime a state has tried to enact legislation prohibiting abortions for sex selection, these “protectors of women” are the first ones to fight against it. They do this despite the fact that it’s been proven time and again – by people on both sides of this issue – that when a sex selection abortion occurs the overwhelming majority of the time it’s a female baby which ends up dead. These people think so little of women that they won’t even stop killing those babies whose only sin is that they would one day be women. The pro-choice mob has apparently decided that if our society wants to view being female as a fetal deformity punishable by death, that’s okay by them.

The abortion industry wraps feminism around abortion hoping to hide what it really is. Better than anyone else in our society, these people know that abortionists are nothing more than cowardly, cold-blooded, hired serial killers and moral hyenas who prey on women in troubled circumstances. They also know that abortion has the same relationship to women’s rights that pornography has. It cheapens, degrades and victimizes them for the benefit of men. For the abortion industry to suggest that having a clean place to kill their babies is the cornerstone of women’s equality is a self-serving and vile perversion of the basic values of true feminism. As pro-life feminist Melissa Simmons-Tulin once said:

“… women will never climb to equality over the dead bodies of their children.”

Oprah Shows Her True Colors with Words of Discouragement for Teens

On January 22, 2010 Oprah Winfrey criticized 19 year-old Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, for pledging abstinence until marriage during an interview with In Touch Weekly. Bristol, who has admitted to previous poor choices, is a mother of one.

Oprah commented at the start of the interview with Bristol, “I kind of bristled when I saw this—where you said, ‘I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. I can guarantee it’ ... I’m just wondering if that is a realistic goal. I think teaching responsibility, teaching, ya know, a sense of judgment about it, but is that a realistic position?”

A Story of Life - "A Mass of Fetal Tissue" - A Heisman Trophy

I heard about this story on 1/25/10. The story is being told in an advertisement placed during the NFL's Superbowl on the CBS Broadcasting Network. The ad was produced by and paid for by the Christian group Focus on the Family. The cost to place the ad is reportedly about $2 million dollars, all of which has been paid for by donors to Focus on the Family who donated specifically for this project. Almost immediately after hearing this story, a twist was filtered through and given center stage in mainstream media - certain groups that claim to advocate on behalf of women, and groups that call themselves "pro-choice" were raising a ruckus about the ad. Though, representatives from such groups admit they had not seen the ad ... they were opposed to it. In fact, the only ones that had seen the ad were those involved in its production and some Focus on the Family staff. CBS had reviewed a script and determined the ad met whatever guidelines CBS imposes. What is interesting is that the groups that oppose the ad oppose it - without having seen it or having reviewed scripts or poster boards, mind you - because it comes from a Christian group and is NOT supportive of abortion. These groups call themselves "pro-choice" but seem to really struggle with individuals who choose life instead of, well, another "choice". Rather than make a fuss over ads that undoubtedly will air during the game which reduce women to nothing but play things for men and exploit them as objects useful to sell product - these groups choose to fuss over (the personal and private decisions they say they defend) of the family told in this story. Rather than fuss over domestic abuse against women, these "pro-women, pro-choice" groups want to vilify one woman, one family, and one man for making a choice. Very telling indeed.

***

In the mid-1980s, Pam and her husband Bob, were Christian missionaries in the Philippines and raising four young children. While abroad, she contracted amoebic dysentery, which is typically transmitted through contaminated food or water. During this time she became pregnant with her fifth child. The treatment for the dysentery would require strong medications that doctors told Pam would cause irreversible damage to the little baby she and her husband had already named “Timmy”; they advised her to have an abortion.

Pam refused the abortion and cited her Christian faith as the reason for her hope that her son would be born without the devastating disabilities physicians predicted. She and her husband prayed to God and promised that they would raise the boy to be a Christian and a preacher.

Doctors continued to counsel the mother and family to abort the baby, describing the child as “a mass of fetal tissue and not a baby". She spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and, eventually, gave birth to a health baby boy in August 1987.

Little Timmy, now a man, did grow into a preacher with a ministry to prison inmates and orphans. Veteran sports commentators gush, not only about Timmy’s fearlessness on the football field, but also about his off-the-field endeavors. Little Timmy is Tim Tebow the University of Florida quarterback, who became the first sophomore to ever receive the prized college football honor, the Heisman trophy.

In Florida he has become a role model garnering so much affection that the local fans like to joke that "Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas." In Alabama, there is even a Tim Tebow bill in the legislature which would afford home scholars (Tebow and his siblings were all home-schooled) equal access to public-school sports programs and extracurricular activities.

As prominent researcher Joel Brind writes in a LifeNews.com editorial, doctors are frequently telling women they should consider abortions when confronted with various medical situations affecting their health. Yet, as he notes, physicians can successfully treat both mother and child without suggesting that the baby be killed to spare a mother's life.

Read more about the work of Dr. Brind at http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/

REVISION - AFTER AIRING OF THE AD

Seriously, so what was the fuss about? Now, the same groups that opposed the ad prior to its airing are complaining it was too violent, because through a sight gag the appearance is given that Tim Tebow tackles his mother in a football blocking style. Are the same groups complaining about the ad that aired just before this one, in which, a facsimile of actress Betty White was tackled? The ad was well done with a tag to visit the Focus on the Family website for more of the Tebow family story. The ad can be viewed at numerous sites found through a quick search through many familiar search engines.

HealthCare Bill - Online, Readable, Searchable

Have you wondered what's in the Health Care bills? Where you could read them and search them?

www.marpx.com

Heard about this on RelevantRadio.com.

Fascinating stuff.

Not the bills themselves (I don't know, I haven't read them), the website and the technology!

From the website - "January 8, 2010: Over 14,000 classic English books and documents are available free at this site for download onto your Windows computer... Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and thousands of other authors" (www.marpx.com).

On abortion - Back-alley-abortions and "Rape clinics", comments by Mark Crutcher

Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his blog (http://www.markcrutcherblog.com), Mr. Crutcher exposes a false logic used to justify abortion in cases rape, and he does so with his customary reason and logic.

If Saving Women is Really the Goal . . .
October 23, 2007

Now that the political season is back at our throats, we are again hearing the abortion lobby trot out its usual collection of distortions, half-truths and outright lies. Of course, one of their favorites is the old line that since women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, we have to protect them against dangerous back-alley abortions.

This assumes that the legal abortions women are getting right now are safe, but we'll let that fairy tail slide for the moment. We'll also ignore the fact that, if abortion were outlawed today and illegal abortionists started springing up next week, every one of them would be someone who is pro-choice. In fact, every woman who was ever killed or maimed during an abortion was killed or maimed by someone who was pro-choice. That means the obvious solution to the back-alley abortion problem is for the pro-choice mob not to do them. But like I said, we'll ignore that for now.

What I'm wondering about is this. If the motivation for legalized abortion really is to save the lives of women, why aren't the people who make that argument also calling for the repeal of laws against rape? After all, it is not uncommon for a woman to be killed by a rapist so she can't identify him to the authorities. Legalizing rape would save those women by taking away the rapists' motivation for killing them.

Legalization could also result in the establishment of rape clinics where rapists could take their victims instead of dragging them into dangerous back-allies. These facilities could offer clean rooms, condom machines, emergency contraception and perhaps even doctors on staff in case the rapist injures his victim. We could also issue licenses to rapists requiring them to undergo monthly testing for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Remember, the pro-choice argument is that women are going to have abortions regardless of what the law says, and that keeping abortion legal will make sure they occur in a clean and safe environment. Well, those dynamics also apply to rape. We know that keeping rape illegal has not stopped women from being raped, so why not try to create a more “enlightened” nation where rape is safe, legal and rare?

And by the way, as ridiculous as this suggestion is, if our goal is saving women's lives, it makes as much sense as legalized abortion.

http://www.markcrutcherblog.com/index.cfm/rape

“Personally Opposed, But…” Five Pro-Abortion Dodges by Todd M. Aglialoro

“Personally Opposed, But…” Five Pro-Abortion Dodges
By Todd M. Aglialoro

In that passage from Orthodoxy so familiar that it is almost now cliché, G. K. Chesterton wrote that there are a thousand angles at which a man may fall but only one at which he stands. By this he argued for the unique, enduring character of orthodox Church doctrine, of the one, true, upstanding strand of Right Teaching. Though the same tired heresies may reappear to contest it—mutated, renamed, warmed-over—the old, wild truth remains standing, “reeling but erect.”

This well-worn lesson takes on a new freshness, I think, when applied to the culture war. The wild truths that inform Christian ethics—our insistence on a moral universe, on a real human nature with its own teleology, on the transcendent significance of human acts and human relationships—also reel but remain erect in the face of perennial challenges. We are not gods. Moral truth is something we discover, not invent. From the Garden of Eden to the Supreme Court of the United States, we have fought the same battle under different banners.

In what is probably the modern culture battle par excellence, the fight against abortion, we see displayed with perfect clarity the principle of a single upright truth (that directly killing an unborn child is an evil and a crime) being contested by a rotation of errors; taking turns or working in tandem, passing in and out of fashion, each seizing upon the vocabulary, events, and moods of the cultural moment until the next comes along to supplant it.

In some cases cultural developments render one of them obsolete. In the years shortly after Roe v. Wade, abortion debates inevitably featured three words the pro-abortion side considered a trump card: “blob of tissue.” This factually empty but sound-bite–perfect catchphrase made a great impact with its implication that the fetus was roughly equivalent to a ball of snot. Which put abortion about on par with picking your nose: bad form, a messy affair that ought to be kept private, but nothing to get overly excited about.

Of course, advances in the study of human embryology, most notably the window to the womb afforded by the sonogram, all but pulled the teeth from the “blob of tissue” canard. The 1980 film The Silent Scream, an ultrasound depiction of an abortion at eleven weeks, provided a chilling, graphic look at abortion’s inner workings. And today, expectant mothers keep pictures of their “blobs of tissue” on the refrigerator. They make copies and stuff them into Christmas cards.

So that particular line was no longer viable. But it wouldn’t be the last. More would follow, and we who are engaged in the culture have surely heard most of them. However, even for those who have heard them all, I think it can be valuable to gather them up and define them; to identify their originators, exemplars, and champions; to understand their appeal; and to consider how to counter them. Let us now look, then, at five (a nice number, though by no means exhaustive) of history’s most insidious pro-abortion arguments.

1. ‘Don’t Say the “A” word’: NARAL

Names are important to propagandists. One could hardly imagine, for example, Planned Parenthood enjoying the status it does had it not in 1942 dropped “American Birth Control League” in favor of its current benevolent-sounding moniker. What if Greenpeace had instead called itself “Vegan Freaks Against Ambergris”? Would society still look on that organization in the indulgently tolerant way it does today? Would Bono still play its benefit concerts? There are some things we are just never meant to know.

Early last year, in a calculated PR move, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America. Amazingly, the new name is even more cumbersome than the old. “NARAL” juts out at the front like “Nokia” before “Sugar Bowl.” But this name change was not about streamlining signage and business cards. It was an attempt to deflect notice from the singular object of NARAL’s 30-plus years of existence—unlimited access to abortion-on-demand—and toward broader, more high-minded, and less gruesome concepts of gender equality and personal self-determination. The change was timed to coincide with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting the new-and-improved NARAL not so much as an advocate of “abortion rights” as a defender of women’s suffrage, satellite TV, and 31 Flavors.

Semantic games have always been part of the battle, of course. No one—no one, mind you—is “pro-abortion.” Folks are “pro-choice,” “pro–reproductive rights,” or, slightly more courageously, “pro–abortion rights.” In each case, even the last, the emphasis is steered away from the repugnant reality of abortion itself—a sure loser in focus groups time and time again. Whenever we debate abortion or write a letter to the editor, we engage in a struggle for the linguistic high ground.

But NARAL’s gambit takes things to a new level. By all accounts, abortion’s popularity is waning steadily. Recent polls show high school and college students reporting pro-life leanings in growing numbers. The pro-life side’s rare propaganda advantage in the partial-birth abortion debate has riveted public attention with clinically graphic descriptions of the violence abortion inflicts on the unborn.

Clearly, the long-term survival strategy, from NARAL’s perspective, is to make the abortion debate about anything but abortion.

It can be wearying sometimes, but the counter-strategy is continually to return the debate to where it belongs: the humanity of the unborn child and his right to life. It may also be effective to ask just why abortion is so repugnant to so many.

2. ‘Personally Opposed, But...’: Mario Cuomo

It is these days thoroughly engrained in abortion discourse; its premises taken for granted and its logic never questioned. It is all too common for a politician, clergyman, or fellow parishioner to claim that he is “personally opposed” to abortion but wouldn’t dream of “imposing” that opinion on a public with diverse religious and ethical beliefs—and then sit back, secure in the feeling that his is an ironclad position.

Yet this line about being “personally opposed, but…” has only the appearance of reasonableness, acquired through sheer repetition. It also fits perfectly in a society valuing tolerance above all other virtues, conflict-avoidance over tackling unpleasant truths.

Some might trace this attitude back to John F. Kennedy, who as the price of the presidency swore that he would not let his Romish religious convictions dictate his politics. And if you want to point to JFK as a kind of spiritual grandfather to the “personally opposed, but…” position, you’ll get no argument from me. But in its full form it must be credited not to Kennedy but to the former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo.

In a 1984 speech at the University of Notre Dame (at the invitation of the notorious Rev. Richard McBrien) titled “Religious Belief and Public Morality,” Cuomo laid out the basic premises of the “personally opposed, but…” line, by way of reconciling his soi-disant devout Catholicism with his political support for abortion-on-demand. Skillfully equivocating Catholic teaching on abortion with Catholic teaching on contraception and divorce, as well as a presumed Catholic perspective toward nuclear weapons, he asks, would it be right for a Catholic to make (or sign) laws forbidding divorce? Withholding state funds for contraception? Instituting a unilateral nuclear freeze?

“Should I argue,” he asks, “to make my religious value your morality? My rule of conduct your limitation?” Clearly not, is his conclusion. Not, absent a democratic consensus, in a society of varied and sometimes flatly contradictory moral values, a society in which even the collective voice of Christianity is not monolithic on issues but fractured and sectarian. Not, he notes, when “there is no Church teaching that mandates the best political course for making our belief everyone’s rule, for spreading this part of our Catholicism.”

The forceful case made by Cuomo in his speech (he quotes for support, in places, Michael Novak and even Pope John Paul II; the whole thing makes for fascinating reading) touches only on the context of politics, and mostly from the politician’s perspective. But its spirit has crept out of the corridors of power into general society. It is the spirit that makes the saying “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one” sound to some ears like a devastating rejoinder. The spirit that gives rise to slogans like “You can’t legislate morality,” when in fact the morality that protects human rights and thus the common good is the first and best thing worth legislating.

It is also the spirit that animates our next argument.

3. ‘Safe, Legal, and Rare’: Bill Clinton

Among politicians only Bill Clinton could devise a line like this, during his 1996 campaign, brilliantly triangulating liberal abortion-on-demand orthodoxy with Middle America’s broad-based distaste for the practice. Ultimately nonsensical yet somehow familiar and reassuring, like a couplet from Dr. Seuss, this buzz phrase became an instant and enduring success, for two reasons.

First, it validated the internal conflict that the majority of Americans were (and still are) experiencing over the abortion question. They were conscious of a natural sense of revulsion toward abortion itself, yet unwilling for whatever reason to sign on whole-hog with the pro-lifers. Clinton let them know that he felt their pain and that his administration’s policy would include a subtle nod toward the general feeling that abortion is a Bad Thing (which ought to be “rare”) but would not place restrictions on its availability (“legal”) that might send women to back alleys (“safe”). Thus he accomplished an unprecedented political feat: co-opting the vaguely antiabortion sentiments of the masses and mollifying the blood lust of the radical pro-abort left with one simple statement.

“Safe, legal, and rare” also subtly but definitely realigned the terms of the abortion debate. No longer would the question center on whether the aborted fetus was a blob or a baby; no longer would it be necessary to make tortured distinctions between public and private morality. In the first place, safety and legality are conservative concepts, not radical ones. Now the pro-choicer could consider himself a guardian of the status quo—an American tradition, even. In the second place, with the word “rare,” the focus shifted away from abortion itself (which we now presumed to be beyond debate) and toward abortion’s presumptive root causes. The abortion issue was now really a health-care or poverty or education issue—right in the liberal Democrats’ wheelhouse.

To be truly pro-life, they could argue, meant to “get over this love affair with the fetus” (as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders put it, with typical elegance) and instead pay attention to alleviating the conditions that led women to get abortions in the first place. Implied here, of course, is a kind of false dichotomy: The qualities of justice and mercy are not strained, nor must the interests of the mother and unborn child be necessarily set at odds. But the argument worked by playing into multiple stereotypes: pro-lifers as single-issue fanatics, misogynists, icy-hearted grinches. And it allowed politicians to spin abortion questions into Great Society sermonettes.

Pro-abortionists’ next major tack would ratchet to a new level the lip-biting empathy invoked by “safe, legal, and rare” and that slogan’s tacit admission of abortion’s unpleasantness. But at the same time, it would rebuke the Clintonian strategy of ignoring or spinning away from the question of abortion itself.

4. ‘Embrace the Guilt’: Naomi Wolf

Feminist-at-large Naomi Wolf is perhaps best known for her work as a consultant to Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1999-2000. Charged with creating, ex nihilo, a personality for the vice president that would play better with women voters, Wolf devised the “alpha male” strategy, which began with Gore donning earth tones and lumberjack duds and ended (mercifully) with his PG-13 smooch of Mrs. Gore on convention night. In years previous, Wolf had been credited with identifying the “soccer mom” constituency while advising Clinton’s reelection bid and caused numerous stirs with her books and publications on gender conflict and female sexual “liberation.”

But in an earlier writing—an article for The New Republic in 1995—she caused quite a different kind of stir. In it she claimed that her recent firsthand experience of pregnancy and childbirth had given her a new perspective on the abortion debate, a perspective she believed her fellow feminist pro-choicers needed to hear and act on.

In “Our Bodies, Our Souls,” Wolf called for “a radical shift in the pro-choice movement’s rhetoric and consciousness about abortion.” Self-deluded by their long practice of dehumanizing the unborn (what she termed “the fetus-is-nothing paradigm of the pro-choice movement”), pro-choicers, she argued, were falling dangerously out of touch with the reality of abortion and women’s experiences with it. In order to avert the loss of credibility and thus political influence the abortion movement would suffer thereby (although to her credit, Wolf also cited the need simply “to be faithful to the truth”), she asserted the “need to contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of a fetus is a real death.”

This remarkable essay is liable to engender, in the pro-life observer, the same kind of cognitive dissonance that “safe, legal, and rare” does. In it Wolf admits bluntly that the fetus is a live human being with a certain value and that abortion undoubtedly kills that human being. She laments the prevalence of casual, “‘I don’t know what came over me; it was such good Chardonnay’ abortions.” She insists that abortion calls for a period of “mourning” and recommends spiritual “mending” ceremonies for women who abort, for vigils outside abortion clinics “commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead.”

Yet her practical aim all along is to help other pro-abortionists develop a better strategy for keeping abortion legal.

Wolf avoids adopting conventional pro-life convictions by assigning the significance of the guilt and blood and killing to interior categories only. “If I found myself in circumstances in which I had to make the terrible decision to end this life,” she writes, “then that would be between myself and God.” For the unhappily pregnant woman, oppressed by patriarchal society and burdened by this fellow-victim inside her womb, abortion is not a social injustice but a personal “failure”; an evil to be borne and acknowledged and slowly atoned for.

For its frank admission (and thus diffusion) of the evidence that abortion kills a living human being, and its conclusion that this evidence doesn’t logically require prohibition of abortion—and in fact may even lend its perpetrators a certain tragic nobility—Wolf’s argument is a powerful one. Its effects live on in every pro-choice apologist who tries to imbue his position with moral gravity—or, as with our next case, in those who invoke the name of God.

5. ‘Pro-Faith, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice’: The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Some abortion advocates pick up Wolf’s ball and run even farther with it. For some, God might be not merely patiently tolerant, even sympathetic, toward this business of feticide; He may in fact positively endorse it, as the exercise of a mature and devout conscience. For sure, the landscape is dotted with liberal churches and associations of them, each self-defined as “pro-choice.” But the biggest and best organizational representation of the religious pro-abortion folk can be found within the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Planned Parenthood’s collar-and-chasuble lackey.

Beginning with the assertion that “most people of faith are pro-choice because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them,” the RCRC attempts to build a case for abortion on both sectarian and interreligious principles. First, compassion: “People who follow Jesus…should bring healing and wholeness to those in distress,” claims one of the canned sermons the group offers as a resource. This means not forcing them into back alleys for their “healing” abortions and not forbidding them to opt out of the life-threatening ordeal of childbirth. Of course, there’s good ol’ freedom of conscience, too. Didn’t Jesus “emphasize the moral agency of each person”? By this He compels us to believe that a woman’s “life, health, and freedom…are more important than the potential life in her womb.”

Not convinced? Then there’s the cleanup issue: religious freedom. Church and state are separated in this country; without this separation we would be in danger of losing the freedom to believe and worship freely. “And at the center of religious freedom is keeping the government out of personal moral decisions such as terminating a pregnancy.”

This rather bald assertion is a kissing cousin to the “libertarian” pro-abortion argument one is beginning to hear more frequently (which I do not treat fully here due to space limitations): According to this argument, the whole question hinges on whether “the government” has the right to interfere with personal medical decisions. Here the RCRC simply substitutes “moral” or “religious” for “medical.” The antiabortionist’s affront is not to the presumed sacrosanctity of medicine but to the cherished American ideal of religious liberty, of which the right to an abortion has apparently become iconic.

One could spend a great deal of time deconstructing the RCRC—its sophistic mastery of religious vocabulary and concepts; its historical place in the disintegration of American mainline Protestantism; its clever self-positioning as an “equal but opposite” voice in the abortion debate and thus its successful bid to neutralize the natural advantage the pro-life side enjoys in religious contexts.

But I will make just one other observation: It’s the pro-abortion side that always wants to turn this into a religious issue. Sure, there’s no shortage of biblical positivist pro-lifers, but by and large, the pro-life side would like to frame the debate in social-justice terms. One needn’t be a Christian to oppose murder or to look at a sonogram. Conversely the pro-abortionists need desperately to paint the issue as a struggle against religious zealotry.

To these folks it is always an effective—and unexpected—rejoinder to ask that they stop talking about God so much.

Wesley Clark and the Eclipse of Reason

There may be a thousand angles at which a man can fall and an equal number of ways to justify killing the unborn, yet all pro-abortion arguments really boil down to one root fallacy. General Wesley Clark, once a pretender to the Democratic presidential nomination, expressed it quite well to a New Hampshire newspaper earlier this year. Keen to display his abortion credentials (having entered the race too late to attend the NARAL fund-raiser at which the other major candidates had already pledged their obeisance), Clark claimed to oppose all restrictions to abortion, up to the point of complete delivery. After fumbling for a moment with a follow-up question about where life begins, he replied, “Life begins with a mother’s decision.”

Here we have a philosophical phenomenon aptly summarized by the title of Bernard Nathanson’s second film, The Eclipse of Reason. Here we have nothing less than a fundamental crisis of being at the heart of our culture: a legal and societal status quo wherein a person is defined (and thus has rights apportioned to him) not by what he is but by how another person feels about him. This has been underscored in the debate over the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. If “life begins with a mother’s decision,” kill a pregnant woman on the way to an abortion clinic and you’ve committed one murder; kill a pregnant woman on the way to buy baby clothes and you’ve committed two.

The human mind can barely contain such a violent conflict of premises, forced together against the laws of nature and reason like identical poles of powerful magnets. How much more can the national soul contain it?

Todd M. Aglialoro is editor for Sophia Institute Press.

On abortion - Cases of Rape or Incest comments by Mark Crutcher

Few write with clarity and precision as well as Mark Crutcher, Founder and President of Life Dynamics. Here, from his book, "On Message", Mr. Crutcher confronts the matter of abortion in cases of rape or incest directly.

Why should a woman who was the victim of rape or incest have to bear a child?

Abortion for rape and incest victims is a very cynical way to address this issue, and it trivializes the harm that the victim suffered. It is as if someone pats her on the head and says, "Now everything's better. You've had an abortion."

When pregnancy occurs as a result of rape or incest, the baby is indeed the child of the perpetrator. What is often overlooked is that this baby is also the child of the woman. To suggest that inflicting violence on her baby will somehow benefit the mother is cruel to each of them. As a society, we have an obligation to see that every rape or incest victim is offered whatever assistance is needed to put her life back together again.

In recent years, there have been many books, reports, studies, etc., written about this very subject. Some were written by sociologists, some by professional researchers, and others by rape and incest victims. Naturally, this wide range of backgrounds and experiences leads at an equally wide range of suggestions for how to help rape victims cope with the problems they face. However, they almost universally agree what the problems are. They will tell you that these victims feel dirty. They feel helpless, no longer secure in their own homes. Some even experience shame or guilt, as if they were responsible. Often their sense of having been violated fills them with anger and rage toward all men. Many suffer low self-esteem. These are the most common hurdles which experts say rape victims have to overcome. Interestingly, pregnancy is seldom listed.

The reality is, having an abortion at a time when she's not yet over the shock of what's happened to her may actually make it harder to put this episode behind her. There are many examples of women saying that while they will never forget the rape or incest, they have learned to accept and live with it. But among those who had abortions, many say they will never be able to accept the fact that they killed their own baby. Through abortion, these women became not only victims of someone else's violence, but of their own as well. For many, it will be this second act of violence that "re-victimizes" them for the rest of their lives.

On the other hand, you never hear a woman who decided not to have an abortion later say she wised she had. Once she is able to deal with the feelings of shame and guilt, of feeling dirty, the anger, the rage, the feeling of helplessness or low self-esteem, she seldom views the child as another bad thing that happened from the situation, but maybe the only good thing that came out of it. If she keeps the child, that will certainly be the case for her, and if she decides to place the baby for adoption, it will be the case for another family.

Although it is understandable that some rape and incest victims will not see these children as a blessing but a curse, placing the babies for adoption will mean this "curse" will last for a few months. Killing these children could haunt them forever. Regardless of the circumstances, abortion never results in fewer victims but more. So, while the contention that abortion should be allowed for rape and incest victims may be driven by compassion, the reasoning behind it is severely flawed.

Unfortunately, when a sexual predator deprives someone of her right to decide for herself whether to have sex, he takes from her something neither the law, nor society, nor any individual has the power to give back. There is simply no logical basis for believing that allowing a woman to inflict violence upon her own child will lessen the effects of the violence that was done to her or benefit her in any other way.

***

Every unborn child is a living human being, and that remains true even when a baby is conceived through the most deplorable of circumstances. Further, if the legal protection afforded unborn children can differ based on the circumstances of their conception, there is absolutely nothing which says this discrimination has to end at birth. If an unborn human being conceived through rape or incest is less valuable than one conceived through a loving act of its parents, that same thing is true about a five-year-old. If a drunk driver runs over and kills a child, are we going to give him a lesser sentence if we find out the child was conceived through rape? If a parent kills their two-year-old and their defense is that the child was conceived through rape or incest, are we going to let them off?

The bottom line is, children do not find their right to life in the circumstances of their conception, and it is disgusting that someone would painfully execute a completely innocent baby for a crime that was committed by his or her father.

***

If the guiding principle for abortion in rape an incest cases is that the woman shouldn't have to have a child that was fathered by a rapist, consider the following scenarios. A married woman discovers that she is pregnant after being raped by a man of anther race. She wants the baby if it is her husband's but not if it was fathered by the rapist. Should she be allowed to wait until the baby is born so she can see what race it is, and then have it killed if it is not here husband's child? Or what if a woman had an ultrasound, was told her baby was a boy, but learned at birth that it was a girl. Should she be allowed to kill the child because she would have aborted it had she known it was a girl?

***

If the argument for abortion in rape or incest cases is that the cause of the pregnancy was beyond the woman's control, imagine that woman who was impregnated through rape has an abortion scheduled but she gives birth in the care on the way to the abortion clinic. The pregnancy is far enough along that the baby might survive. Should she be allowed to legally kill the baby there in the car? After all, the circumstances of its birth were no more within her control than were the circumstances of its conception. If we were willing to let her kill her child on the basis that the pregnancy was beyond her control, why would we take that right away because of a second event which was also beyond her control?^1
1Crutcher, Mark. On Message. Life Dynamics Incorporated, 2005, p 54.
Visit Life Dynamics at www.LifeDynamics.com

How Might Homosexuality Develop by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.

How Might Homosexuality Develop?
Putting the Pieces Together
Excerpted from "The Complex Interaction of Genes and Environment: A Model for Homosexuality" by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.

NARTH Collected Papers, 1995

It may be difficult to grasp how genes, environment, and other influences interrelate to one another, how a certain factor may "influence" an outcome but not cause it, and how faith enters in. The scenario below is condensed and hypothetical, but is drawn from the lives of actual people, illustrating how many different factors influence behavior.

Note that the following is just one of the many developmental pathways that can lead to homosexuality, but a common one. In reality, every person's "road" to sexual expression is individual, however many common lengths it may share with those of others.

(1) Our scenario starts with birth. The boy (for example) who one day may go on to struggle with homosexuality is born with certain features that are somewhat more common among homosexuals than in the population at large. Some of these traits might be inherited (genetic), while others might have been caused by the "intrauterine environment" (hormones). What this means is that a youngster without these traits will be somewhat less likely to become homosexual later than someone with them.

What are these traits? If we could identify them precisely, many of them would turn out to be gifts rather than "problems," for example a "sensitive" disposition, a strong creative drive, a keen aesthetic sense. Some of these, such as greater sensitivity, could be related to - or even the same as - physiological traits that also cause trouble, such as a greater-than-average anxiety response to any given stimulus.

No one knows with certainty just what these heritable characteristics are; at present we only have hints. Were we free to study homosexuality properly (uninfluenced by political agendas) we would certainly soon clarify these factors - just as we are doing in less contentious areas. In any case, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the behavior "homosexuality" is itself directly inherited.

(2) From a very early age potentially heritable characteristics mark the boy as "different." He finds himself somewhat shy and uncomfortable with the typical "rough and tumble" of his peers. Perhaps he is more interested in art or in reading - simply because he's smart. But when he later thinks about his early life, he will find it difficult to separate out what in these early behavioral differences came from an inherited temperament and what from the next factor, namely:

(3) That for whatever reason, he recalls a painful "mismatch" between what he needed and longed for and what his father offered him. Perhaps most people would agree that his father was distinctly distant and ineffective; maybe it was just that his own needs were unique enough that his father, a decent man, could never quite find the right way to relate to him. Or perhaps his father really disliked and rejected his son's sensitivity. In any event, the absence of a happy, warm, and intimate closeness with his father led to the boy's pulling away in disappointment, "defensively detaching" in order to protect himself.

But sadly, this pulling away from his father, and from the "masculine" role model he needed, also left him even less able to relate to his male peers. We may contrast this to the boy whose loving father dies, for instance, but who is less vulnerable to later homosexuality. This is because the commonplace dynamic in the pre-homosexual boy is not merely the absence of a father - literally or psychologically - but the psychological defense of the boy against his repeatedly disappointing father. In fact, a youngster who does not form this defense (perhaps because of early-enough therapy, or because there is another important male figure in his life, or due to temperament) is much less likely to become homosexual.

Complementary dynamics involving the boy's mother are also likely to have played an important role. Because people tend to marry partners with "interlocking neuroses," the boy probably found himself in a problematic relationship with both parents.

For all these reasons, when as an adult he looked back on his childhood, the now-homosexual man recalls, "From the beginning I was always different. I never got along well with the boys my age and felt more comfortable around girls." This accurate memory makes his later homosexuality feel convincingly to him as though it was "preprogrammed" from the start.

(4) Although he has "defensively detached" from his father, the young boy still carries silently within him a terrible longing for the warmth, love, and encircling arms of the father he never did nor could have. Early on, he develops intense, nonsexual attachments to older boys he admires - but at a distance, repeating with them the same experience of longing and unavailability. When puberty sets in, sexual urges - which can attach themselves to any object, especially in males - rise to the surface and combine with his already intense need for masculine intimacy and warmth. He begins to develop homosexual crushes. Later he recalls, "My first sexual longings were directed not at girls but at boys. I was never interested in girls."

Psychotherapeutic intervention at this point and earlier can be successful in preventing the development of later homosexuality. Such intervention is aimed in part at helping the boy change his developing effeminate patterns (which derive from a "refusal" to identify with the rejected father), but more critically, it is aimed at teaching his father - if only he will learn - how to become appropriately involved with and related to his son.

(5) As he matures (especially in our culture where early, extramarital sexual experiences are sanctioned and even encouraged), the youngster, now a teen, begins to experiment with homosexual activity. Or alternatively his needs for same-sex closeness may already have been taken advantage of by an older boy or man, who preyed upon him sexually when he was still a child. (Recall the studies that demonstrate the high incidence of sexual abuse in the childhood histories of homosexual men.) Or oppositely, he may avoid such activities out of fear and shame in spite of his attraction to them. In any event, his now-sexualized longings cannot merely be denied, however much he may struggle against them. It would be cruel for us at this point to imply that these longings are a simple matter of "choice."

Indeed, he remembers having spent agonizing months and years trying to deny their existence altogether or pushing them away, to no avail. One can easily imagine how justifiably angry he will later be when someone casually and thoughtlessly accuses him of "choosing" to be homosexual. When he seeks help, he hears one of two messages, and both terrify him; either, "Homosexuals are bad people and you are a bad person for choosing to be homosexual. There is no place for you here and God is going to see to it that you suffer for being so bad;" or "Homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable. You were born that way. Forget about your fairytale picture of getting married and having children and living in a little house with a white picket fence. God made you who you are and he/she destined you for the gay life. Learn to enjoy it."

(6) At some point, he gives in to his deep longings for love and begins to have voluntary homosexual experiences. He finds - possibly to his horror - that these old, deep, painful longings are at least temporarily, and for the first time ever, assuaged.

Although he may also therefore feel intense conflict, he cannot help admit that the relief is immense. This temporary feeling of comfort is so profound - going well beyond the simple sexual pleasure that anyone feels in a less fraught situation - that the experience is powerfully reinforced. However much he may struggle, he finds himself powerfully driven to repeat the experience. And the more he does, the more it is reinforced and the more likely it is he will repeat it yet again, though often with a sense of diminishing returns.

(7) He also discovers that, as for anyone, sexual orgasm is a powerful reliever of distress of all sorts. By engaging in homosexual activities he has already crossed one of the most critical and strongly enforced boundaries of sexual taboo. It is now easy for him to cross other taboo boundaries as well, especially the significantly less severe taboo pertaining to promiscuity. Soon homosexual activity becomes the central organizing factor in his life as he slowly acquires the habit of turning to it regularly - not just because of his original need for fatherly warmth of love, but to relieve anxiety of any sort.

(8) In time, his life becomes even more distressing than for most. Some of this is in fact, as activists claim, because all-too-often he experiences from others a cold lack of sympathy or even open hostility. The only people who seem really to accept him are other gays, and so he forms an even stronger bond with them as a "community." But it is not true, as activists claim, that these are the only or even the major stresses. Much distress is caused simply by his way of life - for example, the medical consequences, AIDS being just one of many (if also the worst). He also lives with the guilt and shame that he inevitably feels over his compulsive, promiscuous behavior; and too over the knowledge that he cannot relate effectively to the opposite sex and is less likely to have a family (a psychological loss for which political campaigns for homosexual marriage, adoption, and inheritance rights can never adequately compensate).

However much activists try to normalize for him these patterns of behavior and the losses they cause, and however expedient it may be for political purposes to hide them from the public-at-large, unless he shuts down huge areas of his emotional life he simply cannot honestly look at himself in this situation and feel content.

And no one - not even a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, sexually insecure "homophobe" - is nearly so hard on him as he is on himself. Furthermore, the self-condemning messages that he struggles with on a daily basis are in fact only reinforced by the bitter self-derogating wit of the very gay culture he has embraced. The activists around him keep saying that it is all caused by the "internalized homophobia" of the surrounding culture, but he knows that it is not.

The stresses of "being gay" lead to more, not less, homosexual behavior. This principle, perhaps surprising to the layman (at least to the layman who has not himself gotten caught up in some pattern, of whatever type) is typical of the compulsive or addictive cycle of self-destructive behavior; wracking guilt, shame, and self-condemnation only causes it to increase. It is not surprising that people therefore turn to denial to rid themselves of these feelings, and he does too. He tells himself, "It is not a problem, therefore there is no reason for me to feel so bad about it."

(9) After wrestling with such guilt and shame for so many years, the boy, now an adult, comes to believe, quite understandably - and because of his denial, needs to believe - "I can't change anyway because the condition is unchangeable." If even for a moment he considers otherwise, immediately arises the painful query, "Then why haven't I...?" and with it returns all the shame and guilt.

Thus, by the time the boy becomes a man, he has pieced together this point of view: "I was always different, always an outsider. I developed crushes on boys from as long as I can remember and the first time I fell in love it was with a boy, not a girl. I had no real interest in members of the opposite sex. Oh, I tried all right - desperately. But my sexual experiences with girls were nothing special. But the first time I had homosexual sex it just 'felt right.' So it makes perfect sense to me that homosexuality is genetic. I've tried to change - God knows how long I struggled - and I just can't. That's because it's not changeable. Finally, I stopped struggling and just accepted myself the way I am."

(10) Social attitudes toward homosexuality will play a role in making it more or less likely that the man will adopt an "inborn and unchangeable" perspective, and at what point in his development. It is obvious that a widely shared and propagated worldview that normalizes homosexuality will increase the likelihood of his adopting such beliefs, and at an earlier age. But it is perhaps less obvious - it follows from what we have discussed above - that ridicule, rejection, and harshly punitive condemnation of him as a person will be just as likely (if not more likely) to drive him into the same position.

(11) If he maintains his desire for a traditional family life, the man may continue to struggle against his "second nature." Depending on whom he meets, he may remain trapped between straight condemnation and gay activism, both in secular institutions and in religious ones. The most important message he needs to hear is that "healing is possible."

(12) If he enters the path to healing, he will find that the road is long and difficult - but extraordinarily fulfilling. The course to full restoration of heterosexuality typically lasts longer than the average American marriage - which should be understood as an index of how broken all relationships are today.

From the secular therapies he will come to understand what the true nature of his longings are, that they are not really about sex, and that he is not defined by his sexual appetites. In such a setting, he will very possibly learn how to turn aright to other men to gain from them a genuine, nonsexualized masculine comradeship and intimacy; and how to relate aright to woman, as friend, lover, life's companion, and, God willing, mother of his children.

Of course the old wounds will not simply disappear, and later in times of great distress the old paths of escape will beckon. But the claim that this means he is therefore "really" a homosexual and unchanged is a lie. For as he lives a new life of ever-growing honesty, and cultivates genuine intimacy with the woman of his heart, the new patterns will grow ever stronger and the old ones engraved in the synapses of his brain ever weaker.

In time, knowing that they really have little to do with sex, he will even come to respect and put to good use what faint stirrings remain of the old urges. They will be for him a kind of storm-warning, a signal that something is out of order in his house, that some old pattern of longing and rejection and defense is being activated. And he will find that no sooner does he set his house in order that indeed the old urges once again abate. In his relations to others - as friend, husband, professional - he will now have a special gift. What was once a curse will have become a blessing, to himself and to others.


Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved.

Updated: 4 May 2002

Has the Doctor been accurate on Obama?

From February 2009

Dr. Samuel Vaknin on Barack Obama

An interesting point of view. Samuel Vaknin, Ph.D.: Dr. Vaknin has written extensively about narcissism. Dr. Vaknin states:

I must confess I was impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident - a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.

Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such quasi "religious" impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming.

Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist. Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love believes "Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist."

Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens.

Vaknin says that Obama's language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).

Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People's Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao,Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom.

When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late. One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. "Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations," says Vaknin.

"Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995".

One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them.

Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.

Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention.

If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong.

Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.

Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations

The University of Chicago Law School provided him a lot longer than expected and at the end it evolved into, guess what? His own autobiography!

Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father. Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?

Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama's lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month. A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power.

A narcissist cares for no one but himself. This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake.

What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of concience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world?

I hate to sound alarmist, but one is a fool if one is not alarmed.
Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others...They are simply self serving and selfish.

Obama evidences symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined.

This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw.

Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous.

Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. This is racism, pure and simple. The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites.

The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960's. Obama will set the clock back decades...America is the bastion of freedom.

The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations. It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Castrists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House.

America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.