IM: Gadfly, what are your thoughts about the
recent Planned Parenthood revelations?
Old Gadfly: You are referring to the
harvesting of fetal tissue?
IM: Yes.
Old Gadfly: Interestingly, those who support
abortion frame the issue in terms of the means by which this practice was
revealed, and find that part immoral. So
they attack the messenger and not the message.
Many of these same people have no issue with Harry Reid accusing Romney
of not paying taxes for 10 years and then recently publicly acknowledging it
was a false statement from the outset.
His response to a reporter was “Romney lost didn’t he?” Where is the outrage for blatant
dishonesty? But, I digress. This current debate is really about
unalienable rights—one party believes the unalienable right to life came from
God. The secular humanists, however, believe
the administrative state has the superior authority to grant the unalienable
right to abort a life— the Supreme Court institutionalized this unalienable
right in the Roe versus Wade ruling in 1973 and now the administrative state
funds the largest abortion producing institution, Planned Parenthood, with
around $500 million annually.
IM: Joy Overbeck wrote an interesting column
along these lines, singling out Hillary Clinton and her perspective on this
subject. What many good Americans do not
comprehend is the very deliberate machinations taking place to secure political
power. By eliminating or diminishing
God, the administrative state becomes the ultimate moral authority. This is exactly what has happened in
totalitarian nations that embraced fascism (Germany and Italy) and Communism
(the former Soviet Union, China, and North Korea).
AM: Yet, I must say Planned Parenthood does have
an attractive leader at the helm.
Old Gadfly: I offer two
comments in response. First, the leader is paid over $590,000 per
year in salary and benefits for a 35 hour work week (according their most
recent IRS Form 990 report). Second,
Hannah Arendt might have something to say about the “banality of evil” when
associating apparent attractiveness with the insidious evil taking place under
the leader’s command.[1]
IM: This conversation motivates me to
reread Jonah Goldberg’s, Liberal Fascism. And, as I recall, one of our discussions
about deliberate engineering of public sentiment was based on clearly
establishing indentured
classes—women being one of them.
Old Gadfly: Sadly, too many within these
indentured classes believe the progressive rhetoric and acquiesce to being
human instruments in the elite, central planner cause to achieve and to
maintain political power. As C.S. Lewis
astutely observed in his book, The Abolition
of Man, the conditioners are relatively successful in conditioning those
who become the conditioned. Even before
Lewis, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book, Democracy in America, warned of the “soft
tyranny” that would evolve when people vote for “government-provided entitlements.” Politicians and government administrators
would then abuse this dynamic. Lacking
this understanding, Americans will become, in Tocqueville’s prophecy, “a
flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the
shepherd.”
AM: To accelerate a move toward a
timid flock, progressives must attack those who seek the truth.
IM: AM, that is a very sobering
observation: “progressives must attack
those who seek the truth.” We have
discussed numerous times Hayek’s observations about the end of truth: that it is not tolerable to disagree with
elite, central planning values; that each individual must internalize those
values to the point where he or she spontaneously reacts to any opposition.[2]
AM: Exactly. Four U.S. Representatives, all Democrat (Jan Schakowsky, Zoe Lofgren, Jerry Nadler, and Yvette
Clarke) have thus reacted and asked the U.S. and
California Attorneys General to open a criminal investigation against the
Center for Medical Progress, which collected the Planned Parenthood video
footage.
Old Gadfly: We have previously
discussed how controlling the narrative is critical for the progressive
movement. Manipulating language to
conflate and obfuscate is an important tactic.
A university professor describes how this tactic was
employed in 2006 by the State of Maryland to successfully pass legislation
allowing state taxpayer funds for human embryonic stem cell research.[3] She emphasized the role of “clear,
non-controversial terminology in debate, discussion, and potential compromise.
. . . For instance, what does the term ‘embryonic’ stem cell evoke in
ordinary citizens, and how can policymakers avoid images of little fingers and
toes, or abortion clinics, when discussing them?”[4] After describing the chronological
development of legislation, the professor highlighted the key changes in
wording that led to successful passage:
“Throughout the bill, the words ‘human embryo’ were replaced by ‘certain
material’ or ‘unused material.’”[5] She continued with this observation:
“Proponents of stem cell research funding had to learn to use less politically
sensitive terms, substituting ‘unused material’ for ‘human embryos’ when
discussing donations from infertility treatments.”[6]
This is clearly an example of one ideological group—that is, the elite, central
planners--manipulating language to achieve a desired outcome. Once enacted,
settled law achieves momentum that makes it difficult to reverse or change
course. As my good friend, Dennis, and I
discussed just yesterday, settled law, or legal precedents, are treated as unchallenged
axioms, even though subsequent conditions and circumstances may be
significantly different.
AM:
Are we destined, then, to be “a flock of timid and industrious animals”
controlled by the administrative state?
Old
Gadfly: Not necessarily. Americans have unwisely and unwittingly outsourced
that political power to a growing administrative state. For those Americans that possess the capacity
to think for themselves, “we the people” still have inherent, political power
and unalienable rights that are God-given.
I believe we still have time to restore the balance of political power. The Article V Convention of States project (www.ConventionofStates.com) provides
such a remedy, and I am fully on board with this peaceful, Constitutional
solution.
IM: Count on me being part of the
reawakening!
AM: Count me in as well.
[1] See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in
Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil, (New York, NY: The Penguin Group,
2006 [1963]).
[2] F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, (Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press, 2007 [1944]), p. 171.
[3] Patricia M. Alt, “The Political Linguistics of Maryland’s Stem
Cell Research Bill,” Ethics Today,
Volume 8, Number 4, Summer 2006, retrieved October 7, 2011 from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/aspa/unpan024115.pdf
[4] Ibid,
p. 5.
[5] Ibid,
p. 11.
[6] Ibid,
p. 12.
