Crisis readers are a unique group. As seen in the 1996 reader survey (p. 29), you are clearly well- educated, politically active, and religious. The results make me curious to know more. What other magazines do you read? What books and movies do you like, what television and music? I suspect the culture you inhabit, your home and close associations, is starkly different from the culture-at-large.
People magazine’s recent puff piece about the new president of Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion provider, makes us aware, once again, of the disorientation at the heart of the cultural mainstream.
People’s editors evidently consider her hobbies and her New York apartment view more interesting to their readers than Planned Parenthood’s determination to make the world happier by ridding it of a million children a year.
I remember as a teenager when magazines like People began to glamorize celebrities having children out of wedlock. I waited for the outcry against this violation of common sense, but none came. When Dan Quayle raised the issue thirty years later, he was scourged. Now his infamous Murphy Brown speech is hailed as prescient.
I also remember when the influence of The Phil Donahue Show convinced a generation of television watchers that expressing your feelings was the same as serious intellectual exchange. College classrooms would be infected for decades to come with students easily outraged by being told they are wrong. Fortunately the pedagogy of self-esteem—quickly assembled to satisfy these customers—is being discredited.
But, as a whole, my generation has accepted without protest both the moral dimunition and the dumbing-down of our culture. Americans have embraced media that scoff at morality and profit from inflating their self-esteem.
The widespread popularity of John Paul II is an obvious anomaly. Liberal critics dismiss this, saying that people respond to the person of the Holy Father, his charisma, and not to his message—his condemnation of a culture preferring death over personal sacrifice. Are the critics right?
Polling results consistently have shown that a majority of Americans prefer some kind of restriction on abortion. Yet when Clinton vetoed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, even the cardinal’s protest failed to sway public opinion. Polling preferences don’t necessarily indicate the stomach for a fight.
Pundits who reflect on issues like the Catholic vote wonder why Clinton’s veto hasn’t cost him more support among Catholics. The answer is twofold. First, the dominant culture has successfully kept that story from penetrating public consciousness. Second, many Catholics have become too cozy with the idol of individual autonomy.
Lew Lehrman’s contribution to this issue of Crisis points us in a positive direction. As Lehrman shows, there are political and constitutional remedies to redress the culture of death. There is also the example of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership as president—his willingness to steer a course against the prevailing wind of the judiciary.
Religious conservatives are properly reminded that the ends of morality and politics are not the same, that we cannot expect a political realm dedicated to liberty to enforce the highest ethical standards. Lincoln understood that politics and morality are formally different, but he also understood, like the Founding Fathers, that no legitimate polity can operate without the protection of fundamental human rights. These rights designate what cannot be com-promised—the minimal standards of our life together.
Lehrman suggests that the political will to protect the right to life can be recovered by popular involvement, by political leadership, by telling the truth about the history of this country, and by taking the rule of law seriously.
One of the stated purposes of Crisis is to evangelize the culture. Because we have a Catholic vision, we will use all the means at our disposal in this effort—aesthetic, legal, philosophical, religious. Lehrman’s argument, like the ongoing work of Hadley Arkes, reminds us that even judging by its own stated first principles something has gone seriously wrong in American culture, quite apart from any specifically religious considerations.
Thus, the issue dividing the culture is not just one of belief and unbelief. It is a question, first of all, of reaffirming the American birthright. Our present misunderstanding of the right to liberty and happiness effectively nullifies the right to life. It’s a consensus that did not exist in 1973, the year of Roe v. Wade. Lehrman’s comparison of the present age with the years following Dred Scott should be considered by those who consider legislative initiatives premature. They may have the cart of public opinion before the horse of law.