In Fear of Shadows
Every day, Americans read the newspapers and look at the things that are going on around them and, somewhere inside, they know that something is terribly wrong. I call it the "Billy the Kid" syndrome. The legend once held that Billy became infamous and feared in the old west because he killed his first man before he had reached the age of sixteen. Today, a sixteen-year-old killing someone is not even newsworthy.
I am no psychiatrist, but to me this is clearly related to the concept of cognitive dissonance. It is a phenomenon that occurs when a person concurrently believes two things are true when, in reality, they are in direct conflict with each other. This is the place Americans now find themselves in and it is abortion that put us here. We continue to tell ourselves that we are a civilized nation while, simultaneously, sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of what we know to be innocent human beings. Each of us knows that the act of abortion is murder, but that knowledge cannot be reconciled with the reality that we made abortion legal. So we no longer call it murder; now it's just called a "choice." That is the way cognitive dissonance is resolved.
It has always seemed to me that this psychological disorder could only be found in human beings. I say this out of my observation that the human brain is the only form of matter on earth with the ability to intentionally deceive itself. It is from that ability that we can rationalize the worst behavior imaginable if it is something we want to do badly enough. What we conveniently ignore, however, is that this voluntary self-delusion always comes with a price. What we are seeing today is that, while we may still believe in the "vision" of America, the distinction between vision and hallucination is fading. By violating our own moral code, we have created a world for ourselves in which unforeseen and unintended consequences pace in the shadows like starving tigers. And even though the American people may not yet realize it, as long as they remain in this place, every path they take will lead them past another shadow.
As Habakkuk prayed, my prayer is, "Lord, in your wrath remember your mercy,"
Habakkuk 3:2
When a society holds something evil up as a legal right, it is in trouble. Abortion, though, is not the sole issue in itself. Abortion is the extreme callousness toward human life. It exists in many forms in our society and gets expressed in many ways including a complete disregard for the most vulnerable. Abortion, infanticide, euthanasia are the "tip of the iceberg" so to speak. This callousness often drives women to abortion, when they view abortion as their only choice.
Because for many of us abortion is the key issue, we view everything in this light. For many pro-lifers healthcare reform was o.k. as long as it didn't provide for funding for abortion. But when a government, which places no value on the sanctity of human life, wants to take over a huge part of the economy, watch out. When abortion, for some, is seen as the answer to poverty, child abuse, and other "social ills" and when government controls major segments of the economy, it is certain that we will have more poverty. We need only look to the Soviet Union where central planning and high abortion rates went hand in hand. While the struggle is life vs. death, on the political front I believe there is a real struggle now between big government vs. limited government...in part because of the out of control spending and deficits that simply are not sustainable and an economy that will surely continue to unravel.
I believe the right to life and big government and incompatible ideas so candidates that get most of my attention are those that not only believe in the right to life but also embrace limited government.