America’s Moral Moment

Posted in: News By House Divided on May 20, 2019

On July 24th, Democrat Sen. Corey Booker spoke out against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh: “Kavanaugh has shown us who he is”, said Booker – presumably referring to Kavanugh’s expected opposition to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion.

Quoting the bible, Booker framed the abortion debate saying, “There is so much at stake here. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with who we are as a moral people…in a moral moment there is no neutral…you are either complicit to that evil, you are either contributing to a wrong or you are fighting against it”. On this analysis, Americans who support abortion rights are good and those who oppose any restrictions on abortion are complicit to evil.

Today, it seems morality has become like beauty – it’s in the eye of the beholder. But this hasn’t always been the case. In the first American dictionary, Noah Webster wrote, “…The word moral is applicable to actions that are good or evil…and has reference to the law of God as the standard by which their character is determined.” For millions of American’s, Webster’s definition is as valid today as it was when published in 1828.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. agreed with Webster. From his cell in the Birmingham Jail, King wrote,”…a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law”. In determining whether our abortion laws square with the moral law of God, we gain some perspective from Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelozi.

On May 17th, in comments criticizing the Trump administrations’ enforcement of immigration policies, Pelozi said “We believe we are all God’s children, there’s a divine spark of divinity in every person….” Pelozi’s views are in harmony with the theology of Dr. King who said, “Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from a limitless smoldering…Man is a child of God, made in his image, and must be respected as such”. King believed in the “sacredness of all human life”, including nascent human life.

The abortion controversy has created strange bedfellows. For example, Camille Paglia is a prominent feminist who is also an atheist, a lesbian and a “firm supporter of abortion”. Yet Pro-life advocates find themselves in agreement with Paglia as it concerns the ethical ramifications of abortion. Paglia criticizes “liberals (who) for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just lumps of insensate tissue”. Said Paglia, “I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful”.

Democrats argue that Roe is “settled law” and every Supreme Court justice is duty bound to follow its precedence going forward. But this position cannot be true. Where would our nation be today if President Dwight Eisenhower pledged not to nominate anyone to the Supreme Court who refused to follow the precedence of Plessy vs. Ferguson? Decided in 1896, Plessy legalized racial segregation in public schools under the doctrine “separate but equal”. Described as a decision that was “wrong when written”, Plessy was finally overturned in 1954 – but not before generations of African-Americans had lost their chance at an equal education.

Long ago, this nation was divided by a different moral controversy which was not resolved until there had been what one poet called a “baptism in blood.” In that day, Abraham Lincoln framed the moral moment in a way that translates well to the controversy facing America in this day: “The real issue in this controversy, the one pressing upon every mind, is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks on the institution of (abortion) as a wrong and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong.” If it is wrong, Lincoln would say, “no one has a right to do wrong”.

If Senator Booker quotes scripture going forward, his enthusiasm should be curbed by the verse, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…”