February 22, 2024 - 10:00am
The American Left is zeroing in on a new Right-wing bogeyman: Christian nationalism.
God & Country, a documentary released over the weekend, explores fears that the growing force of Christian nationalism could replace democracy with theocratic rule in the US. It features footage of religious leaders expressing negative views of DEI and immigration, alongside commentary from prominent anti-Trump Christians concerned about the fusion of Right-wing politics and evangelical Christianity.
Meanwhile, a Politico report from Tuesday warned that Trump’s allies plan to promote Christian nationalism in his next term if he wins re-election this fall. “Christian nationalism” was reportedly a bullet point in a list of priorities drafted by the Center for Renewing America, a Trump-aligned think tank run by a Russell Vought, a former staffer of the ex-president; the CRA has denied the report.
These stories indicate a growing concern on the American Left about the alleged threat of Christian nationalism, the belief that the US was “founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life”. In practice, it promotes policies including mandatory child support beginning as soon as paternity is determined, ending no fault divorce, banning commercial surrogacy and ending sex education in schools, according to Politico.
Though very few Americans would describe themselves as Christian nationalists, attention on the movement has grown commensurate with the prospect of a second Trump term. It may seem an odd complaint to lob at a thrice-married man who rarely attends religious services, and a comfortable majority of Americans think Trump is not religious. He was the first president to campaign openly in support of same-sex marriage for his first term, and he has distanced himself from the overturning of Roe v. Wade and privately expressed support for legal abortion through the first 16 weeks of pregnancy. In some sense, though Trump enjoys strong support from religious voters, his rise ushered in the post-Christian Right in America.
The emphasis on Christian nationalism reflects a shift on the political Left, away from campaigning against Trump the individual and shifting to campaigning against the Right more broadly. Trump may not be particularly religious, but he will nonetheless fill government jobs with “Right-wing psychos” who want to ban birth control and abortion and usher in fascism, some have argued.
While Trump hysteria may be losing steam, abortion has proven a salient issue for Democrats, credited with several electoral wins since Roe was overturned in 2022. Stirring fears over Christian nationalism helps Democrats marry the abortion issue, a winner across much of the political spectrum, with fears that democracy is under threat, an issue that stirs the progressive base.
The Christian nationalist label will serve as a battering ram for the Left this election year, drawing voters’ attention to what they expect will be winning issues and away from immigration and the economy — issues on which Biden is losing. Polls so far indicate a close race, but with 45% of Americans believing the US should be a “Christian nation”, it’s hard to imagine the label doing much to push voters out of Trump’s camp.
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Subscribe“when Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross”.
The beginning of the end for the American experiment.
No you may not see anything wrong with America being a predominantly white, anglo-saxon and solely Christian nation based on traditional family values with little tolerance for difference and a strong enforcement of “law and order” and maybe you’re right but that’s not America. That’s more like Russia.
Famous Anglo-Saxon country of Russia
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/more%20like
It’s noteworthy that you didn’t object to any other parts!
Russians are not Anglo Saxons.
Kimberly
I’m mostly in agreement, though I think the American experiment is not yet an inevitable success or failure.
Strong enforcement of law and order (which you put in “scare quotes” that seem to muddy the water) needn’t mean severe or ruthless enforcement. Respect for traditional values or nuclear families can or at least could co-exist with respect for novel or non-traditional ways. The predominance and cultural sway of Anglo-Saxon-American Christians, once a reality, is largely a thing of the past. Its hegemony was always shadowed and threatened by the survival of some Native Americans and the importation of millions of African slave-laborers–even before huge, successive waves of immigration, from countries like Ireland, China, Italy, Poland, India, and Mexico.
Mostly in agreement too. The reality of Anglo-Saxon-American Christian dominance was only ever going to be transitory as they happened to win a particular moment and become the dominant class. It was never a critical mass. And even then they couldn’t stop fighting amongst themselves!
But they were supposed to be setting up in the liberal ideal of independence and tolerance. There is no doubt in my mind that even if the American Right did “drown the state in a bath tub” so they can no longer blame that old bogeyman for threatening their freedoms the Conservative Christian Right would still be trying to enforce their way of life on others thousands of miles away.
That to me is a failure of America and if others don’t see it that way it only proves the point!
Fascism has come to America, and it is both anti-American and anti-religion. It’s not the right that actively tries to silence people or find scapegoats whom it’s okay to abuse. But do carry on.
Do you genuinely believe that? There’s no point in me bothering with a substantial response if so.
It’s happening in Canada also DEI fascism is everywhere. In Ontario they make new lawyer make a loyalty oath to the ideology.
Is pledging allegiance to the flag in school fascism?
Because that looks an awful lot like making a loyalty oath to the ideology of Christian Nationalism.
But then there is the convincing counter-argument that it’s only fascism when the other side do it.
Cmon man. It’s a ritual. Nothing less. Nothing more. The most famous and relevant words are liberty and justice for all. Canada recently replaced the one religious reference in its national anthem. It doesn’t change anything. It’s all performative.
OMG such an ignorant comparison … Google what Ontario is requiring of lawyers.
Then put a more pleasant label on it. Are there efforts to silence dissent from approved narratives? Yes. Is the power of the state used to attack political opponents? Also yes. What happened before did not start with box cars and death camps. It began by demonizing certain groups, by making it okay to abuse them. But, again – if you have a better word for it, let’s hear it.
I think you’re on the wrong forum.
Is this officially a self-soothing echo chamber now?
Never been anything else in my experience. I never (well sometimes…) troll and always produce reasoned posts but just get thumbs down and dumb zingers in response.
For a place that’s supposed to favour alternative views and balance of opinion they don’t really like alternative views or balance of opinion. It’s just a safe space for right wing weirdos who think about men in dresses and toilets way too much.
It’s always had plenty of that side to it, especially on certain topics, but it’s much worse here than a year ago. That’s doubly true when it comes to anything even tangentially related to Trump. Troubled times.
I’ll tell you this much. I’ve always detested Trump – way before he entered politics. I am more sympathetic to him today than I was a year ago. The lawfare gets ridiculous and exhausting
I know you’re not alone in that. I appreciate your overall fairmindedness and moderation–and I’m glad you’re Canadian!
Thanks AJ. Much appreciated.
Nonsense. The US is one of the most tolerant countries in the world. Welcome massive legal non-white immigration. Openly gay politicians get elected. Numerous religions practiced.
that’s exactly what i’m saying… Many would prefer it not to be that way.
Bingo.
Actually, the people of Mexico, Central America and South America are white. When I fill out a form, it will ask me whether I’m white, Non Hispanic or white Hispanic.
Duh. It’s not the “whiteness” that millions of immigrants from every nation on earth are coming here for. It’s not to be Anglo-Saxon. It’s because we (used to) have a form of government that produced prosperous, safe, stable communities, based on trust and fairness under the law.
America is largely color-blind. It already has the EEOC and transparent laws against racism. That’s why immigrant blacks and Hispanics are some of the most successful people.
The “Christian” in Christian nationalism is what gave us equality under the law and institutions free of corruption. The “Nationalism” part is simply saying that if you don’t have borders you don’t have citizens, and if you don’t have citizens then you don’t have a culture, and if you don’t have a culture, then you don’t have a meaningful democracy. A country is like one big family. If I come and sit in your living room uninvited, do I get to choose what’s on television?
You’re free to come here. You’re not free to change the culture to angry factionalism. We have a Constitution, which happens to be based on Christian ethics. We’re not a Christian nation. We just look like one because Christ’s teachings were found to work, so they got adopted.
So in your view Americans are doing a good job of following the teachings of Jesus, including: forgiveness, compassion, courage, and self-sacrifice?
Which countries are doing a better job, outside the broad umbrella of the west?
None that I can think of*. I just observe that–with millions of “exceptions”–Americans are meaner, less forgiving, more afraid, and more self-centered than they were a generation, or even 7 years ago. But we’re not exceptional in this way. A broad and unoriginal generalization that seems warranted, for what little it’s worth.
I do think that following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth involves much more than kind of being nice most of the time, not stealing or assaulting people, and cutting down on lying. The message is one of radical compassion, forgiveness, bravery, and self-sacrifice (not necessarily unto death)–and a renunciation of worldliness.
Some of the most militant Christians are worse than average by this measure, in my fallible and non-binding assessment. Not that I’m great at it.
*Actually I think Canada gets a little closer to the real spirit of the Gospels on average, again with a multitude of exceptions and not to some transformative degree. Granted, I’m only up there for maybe a few weeks a year.
This is fair. Pretty sure the internet and social media are driving most of this. People are no longer connected like they used to be. Party membership, even service club membership, has dropped through the floor. People don’t meet in person anymore and exchange ideas.
Trump really epitomizes this cultural shift. He’s an obnoxious boor who says stupid, mean-spirited things. The lawfare annoys me, but Trump makes it so much worse by his behaviour. Biden kept classified documents too, but he wasn’t an ahole about it. His New York trials were unjust IMO, but he makes it so much worse by being an ahole to everyone. Yet justice is supposed to be blind to aholes. It has to be.
As much as the deterioration in discourse bothers me, I’m more worried about the political class abandoning logic and common sense. Our institutions are gripped by all sorts of luxury beliefs that only a fool would think are anything but nonsense. This is the disconnection that troubles me most.
I’m in primary agreement with you here, Jim.
Precisely. It’s not about Christ, it’s about ethics that Jesus (among others) taught.
Good Samaritan: a temple worker passes the man who was mugged, doing nothing. A Samaritan (different culture, religion) comes along and helps the poor man.
Jesus is telling us that it’s not your religion or beliefs that make you someone’s good neighbor, it’s your actions.
Amen to that.
Or perhaps, “when Fascism comes to America, it will be in the rainbow flag and carrying a d***o.”
https://areomagazine.com/2023/03/15/cute-authoritarianism/
I’m afraid you’re stuck in the past. The fascists of today are far more sophisticated than your outdated mid-twentieth century versions.
*no longer applicable
The more I hear liberals and Communists whine about this ‘Christian Nationalism’, the more sympathetic I get to it.
Similarly, was watching a documentary about Iran recently. By the end of it I was so sick of hearing the nonsense coming out of the mouths of Iranian liberals and Marxists that I almost (not quite) had some sympathy for the ayotalloahs for at least not being as ridiculous as the liberal-left.
There is no Christian nationalism, just Christians being more politically active as their society turns to crap after years of divisive Left wing politics.
Well exactly, but the left finds any non-left/liberal Christian political mobilisation as illegitimate, so need to stick scary labels on it
At least you are honest and said the quiet part out loud (“sympathy for the ayatollahs”).
Looks like they’ve moved on from ‘white supremacy’.
‘Racist’ lost any value to the left….then so did ‘fascist’, then ‘white supremacy’ as you said. Now they bring out the theocracy boogeyman
This says more about the right than the left.
Christianity is seen as white despite its origins in the Middle East. They edit that out.
…and exploding in Africa and much of Asia.
I saw Moses in a movie once. He looked like a white man to me.
This article pretends there is nothing to see here: “move along then”. There is no acknowledgement of any threat from the extreme Right, let alone any serious engagement with the overlap of Christian and blood-and-soil nationalism.
An article that spoke about racial-grievance riots and academic capture on the extreme Left as an “alleged threat” would be voted and shouted down here–justly so.
Of course Trump is not a sincere Christian or believer in much of anything beyond his ego and narrow self-interest. But many crusading Christian extremists–or non-extremists who are put-upon and afraid–see him a their bulwark and champion, even their de facto savior. To treat the appetite for chaos and rationalized extremism that is ascendant on both the Left and Right as some tempest in a teapot is a mistake.
As individuals, we might feel ready to select our preferred violent extreme, if it should come to that. But it has not come to that, yet. No need to jump the gun–or pretend that no one is armed and dangerous.
Maybe the lack of widespread violence from “the extreme Right” has something to do with no acknowledgment of any credible threat. In the last election cycle, cities were on guard because Trump might win, not because he might lose. It wasn’t his supporters who had people on edge; it was the same people who populated the likes of BLM, antifa, and the current pro-Hamas movement, all agitators on the left. I’m fairly sure that if the side that legally owns millions of guns was a problem, we’d know about it.
Many on the hard Left say close to the same thing in reverse, ever dismissive of threats and dangers in their own ranks.
Are you quite sure that Jan 6th, 2021 would have stopped when and where it did if not for the fears and disruptions of Covid? Do red-pilled mass shooters, “prepper” militias, and separatist cults secular and religious not worry you at all, because they seem to be ideological allies (overall) or their violence is not too “widespread” yet?
I challenge people to denounce and oppose extremism, whether it comes from their favorite camp or not.
No but when it’s a red-pilled mass shooter doing the killing it’s a troubled individual. Violence from anyone else is evidence of societal breakdown (caused by progressives of course) and a fundamental incompatibility with American values meriting deportation or the death penalty.
Jan 6th was comprised of a disorganized, unarmed rabble, who surprised themselves by getting into the Capitol building, and then didn’t know what to do. Unlike the George Floyd rioters, who were several orders of magnitude more violent and destructive, but supported by much of the media
BLM et al were also extremely organized and militarized. Read something by Nancy Rommelman.
https://reason.com/2020/09/04/youre-not-allowed-to-film-the-fight-for-control-over-who-reports-from-portland/
Sorry, that is BS. The January 6 rally was very organized with speakers in top places, notably the then-President.
The “mostly peaceful” riots were not the work of militias or preppers or mass shooters, many of whom were Dems, by the way. It wasn’t the right that wanted vaccine skeptics treated like 1940s Jews in Germany. And it’s not the right actively promoting division through DEI.
But I hope you’d at least acknowledge that the Jan 6th. rioting was, broadly speaking, of the Right.
How about the 1940s-German card you played? Was that somehow not a Rightist movement because “socialist” was in their infamous acronym? Could such a metastasized nationalism never happen again?
I don’t intend to deny Leftist violence and disorder but you are attempting to section off the most extreme right-wingers from the Right, and treat their documented violence as some mere anomaly or reaction to the Big Bad Left.
May both far-polar wings be defeated.
The extreme right IS an anomaly. What have they done since then? Look back at the 2020 election and the preparations cities were making in case of a Trump victory. Look at the pro-Hamas stuff here and in the UK. Look at the efforts to silence or jail opponents. We can say each side has its bad elements, but there is a big difference in degree.
You blame elements of the Left for their preparations, but not elements of the Right for their readiness to foment Civil War II.
I just don’t agree with your insistently one-sided perspective. I can agree that the historical body count of the extreme Left is worse than its mirror image on the Right, but that gap is narrowed when we consider the briefness of the period from ’39-’45.
I’m really dismayed at the growing tendency, on both the mainstream-moderate Left and Right, to ally oneself with one boiled-down side of history and politics, no matter how extreme, as if speaking out against anyone perceived to be on Our Side is a breach of zero-sum realpolitik or whatever.
If we don’t defend the broad middle we will lose it to one violence-geared extreme or the other. Many may then discover, too late, that their respective favorite extremists were plenty dangerous after all.
There is no plausible, non-nightmare world in which the Left or Right are ever conclusively defeated. Nor should there be.
It wasn’t “elements of the left” who prepared in 2020, it was municipal govts. You can disagree if you like, but the facts are what they are. This isn’t about my side/your side. I’m well aware that the mess in the US is a bipartisan creation.
“You can disagree, but I am right. Quod erat demonstrandum.”
Nice try. I do appreciate the bare acknowledgment of shared responsibility for this current mess.
There isn’t shared responsibility, though. Over the last two decades, Western societies have been fundamentally transformed to accommodate the wishes of formerly ‘marginalized’ people (to borrow a popular leftist term) at cost to the functional mainstream. What we see now is the weaponization of marginalized ideas (all the critical theories) against the mainstay of the population. A popular narrative has been built up that is anti-tradition, anti-authority, anti-democratic, and ultimately very anti-human flourishing. It purports to help the marginalized, but all it really does is cede more power and wealth to government and corporations. This is cleverly done by a process known as astro-turfing in which powerful people sow societal discord (LGBQT, BLM, Net Zero), and then pay themselves a lot to solve the very problems that they perpetuate.
If there is a hard-right, it is wholly insignificant compared to the leftist state-machinery used against the people. It is only the left-wing legacy media that spreads the idea of hordes of young men sporting tattooed swastikas and cloaked in confederate flags. However, left-wing ideology is now baked into all our institutions: schools, libraries, politics, charities, entertainment, etc.
The relationship between left and right is undeniably asymmetrical.
“The relationship between left and right is undeniably asymmetrical”.
That is nothing more than an opinionated assertion you treat as a demonstrated fact.
No Right-wing culpability for our financial mess and grotesque income equality, you say. Nor for the protracted, futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or rampant gun violence.
“If there is a hard-right, it is wholly insignificant compared to the leftist state-machinery used against the people”.
Evasive nonsense. Of course it exists (how absurd!) as part of you must still know. You are well inside a self-confirming information bubble at this point, and you are getting steadily more extreme–in my informed opinion.
Can you please tell me what your beloved Right has accomplished that is so very wonderful or above reproach?
I know you’re smart and capable of fairmindedness but I’m quite familiar with your general constellation of often predictable stated views and have noticed a growing sociopolitical one-sidedness, or at least heightened stridency, in your posts. So unless you’re merely here to drop the mic and do a victory lap in front of a favorably disposed readership, we should probably leave it there.
I am neither left nor right, but am guilty of using them out of convenience, and because of this, I cannot fault the reprimand in your comment.
Fundamentally, I believe that terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ are used to corral people into boxes so that we are forced to pick a ‘side’ in order to become willing participants in our own subjugation.
One thing that I miss in current political debate is that of self-governance and self-reliance.
If I have a side, it is that of a healthy balance between state and individual. I have a deep mistrust of collective thinking, yet am realistic enough to know that no human can go it alone.
In one of my comments above, I stated that I was a Christian Nationalist. This is not rooted in any kind of racial or religious animosity, but from a deep-rooted belief that Christianity is the best moral framework on offer. In principle, it is universal in affording all people regardless of color and creed grace and dignity. Now that Christianity has been removed as a central moral pillar it is being replaced by all kinds of nonsense: critical theory, intersectionalism, anti-racism, synthetic identitarianism, etc. None of these are edifying; they all pander to our worse human instincts: negative outlooks, ethnic strife, and unfettered sexual lusts. We have basically replaced Christianity with politics: the idea that a perfect government can create Utopia.
As far as nationalist is concerned, I am nationalist in that it is unrealistic to expect a nation-state to be everything to everyone. We cannot have open borders along with a welfare state. We cannot expect decent wages while competing against undocumented workers. We cannot have multiculturalism without assimilation. The other side of this is true too. I do not and did not want wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, simply because I believe these were geo-politically motivated and didn’t serve the interests of the American people.
I could go on longer, but will stop here. Your comments made me ‘think’ out loud. At the end of the day, I think we all want the same thing, but disagree about how to achieve it.
Fair enough. I appreciate the clarification and see more of the fairness and balance I remember you for in this follow-up .
I need to call it a day for this board as I’ve said all I really have to say, and then some. See you next time.
I can’t honestly think of anyone with credibility on the right who has not denounced Jan. 6. On the other hand, we were told for months that they were mostly peaceful protests.
Trump has not denounced them. Tucker Carlson has walked back his initial denunciation. Jim Jordan, MTG, Josh Hawley…
With any credibility is a tricky qualification. All of the above people (even MGT) are credible with many voters, especially DJT. I could also say that few Lefties with any credibility still call the race riots of 2020 mostly peaceful or leave it there in a dismissive way.
Only one side of the aisle has an election denier and apologist for seditious rioters as their front runner for president. I think likely Trump-voters are further away from the true sociopolitical center, overall, than likely Biden voters. Despite all the talk of wokeness, language-policing, and gender madness–not for no reason–the American Right is more radicalized and ready to spill blood than the American left right now. (Granted, that could change). Fortunately, both sides are less insane than the loudest voices on either side would suggest. If only they’d stop sucking up so much air and attention!
There is indeed a very real RWE threat but it pales in comparison, on a global scale, to that from jihadis. The latter out-kill the former by several orders of magnitude. Facts are facts after all. Our security services (full disclosure: I worked in Canadian intel for 3 decades) should monitor RWE but NOT at the expense of the need to watch the jihadis.
I agree with you concerning jihadis. If you had to place ultra-fundamentalist zealots and backward-looking violent theocrats (including jihadis) on the Left or Right, where would most of them go?
I’m not claiming it’s simply one side or the other. I’m genuinely interested in your knowledgeable perspective on this.
*Thumbs up to your reply though you may not see my response or care.
Islamism is much stronger, more assertive, and more illiberal than Christanity.
Gilead is much more believable as an Islamist theocracy, rather than anything to do with lily livered liberal Christians
Indeed. In fact it was the Islamic revolution in Iran that inspired Margaret Atwood to imagine a similar event in the US. At the time the Bible Belt was strong in America and so that was her focus.
Attwood’s book was written in 1985. That was pre-Rushdie. If she had chosen a muslim environment, she would not be alive today. I found it rather a coincidence that the book was serialised by Netflix when Trump became president. The hate for Christians is quite simply explained. Christian schools emancipate minorities. They should stay poor and ignorant. Again who said: ‘If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black’?
This antiChristian hate has had real world consequences. Church and Christian school shootings in the USA. Widespread church burnings in Canada. The Left is a threat to a cohesive and civil society. It all stems from DEI ideology.
What ideology motivated Dylann Roof, Anders Brevik, and Brenton Tarrant?
I believe it was the ideology of Crazy, but maybe you know better?
Anti-minority hatred of a classic far-Right character. In case that’s actually news to you.
Burning down an unoccupied church is awful, but shooting one up–or a synagogue, or a mosque–with people inside is surely worse.
You simply can’t blame all the world’s evil–nor even some convenient preponderance–on one side of the ideological spectrum.
That is blindness that requires insistent repetition and a very selective vision & memory to seem convincing.
To succumb to this growing idiocy on the Right and Left is to abdicate the inverted Golden Rule: don’t treat your opponents or perceived enemies in a way you’d not want to be treated.
And stop buying in to caricatured vilifications of liberals/progressives, or conservatives/populists (for those few that do, yet subscribe to UnHerd) that fairly represent only a tiny fraction of the group getting tarred with a broad brush. Especially when we “exile” progressives and populists from the equation, and look upon the age-old tension/engagement between liberal & conservative, tradition & innovation, that is fundamentally healthy when done right. In any case it is inescapable.
It’s best to defend a plurality of views, if only to protect your own ever-precarious freedoms of thought and action.
Fair enough in a liberal society which respects its past and cultural roots, builds on them and looks for a consensus or at least something for both sides. You could easily have Christian ‘inspired’ laws on a host of issues with exceptions for dissenters or secular laws with exceptions for Christians, but that doesn’t seem possible.
I accept that such a balance is not plausible right now and will always present a major challenge. Full tolerance or true fairness will remain aspirational and steps toward betterment will not be final or secure–if all of history is any sort of predictive guide.
I think we can agree that it is possible and not too unrealistic for us to improve on our current sociocultural moment.
I wish more liberals truly respected the inheritance and hard-won achievements of past generations, and that more conservatives had less uncritical veneration for the way society looked when they very young, or appears in re-creations of the distant past.
I’m not immune to either sort of myopia, but I do try to check my figurative prescription.
The leftist diatribe has also lent legitimacy to the persecution of Christians throughout the Islamic world and in other parts od the world where Christianity is proscribed.
Since 2009, over 18,000 churches have been destroyed by Fulani in Nigeria along with tens of thousands of Christians.
No, the so-called “leftist diatribe” has not lent legitimacy to that. The horrific persecution of Christians in Nigeria has been going on for years by extremists supported by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, and has been condemned and publicized by such “leftist” human rights organizations as Amnesty International and Oxfam.
Can anyone clarify for me why so many people support the right to abortion? Stepping back from the “my body” argument (it’s not your body, it’s the body of another unique human being), what can people say to defend this act?
It seems like proponents move through a series of weak arguments:
The fetus isn’t human yet (yes it is) It’s the mother’s right to abort (there should be no right to murder, it’s not her body, it’s the body of another) It should be allowed to save the life of the mother (questionable whether this is necessary in many cases, and irrelevant in all other cases – bad-faith argument) It should be allowed in cases of rape and incest (a small fraction of all abortions, and really besides the point when abortion is primarily used as birth control)
It honestly seems that the West has taken a massive L here. Opted for something that is clearly wrong, but no liberal wants to admit they’ve been supporting baby killing all this time.
Human life begins at conception. Abortion ends that life in a premeditated, unjustified act of killing. We have a word for that – murder. Happy to hear any counter-arguments.
And let’s not forget the classic – men can’t tell women what to do! Don’t even know where to begin with that. Maybe, if men had asserted themselves a bit more and not been pushed over by abortion advocates, we could have saved millions of lives. But that didn’t happen, and here we are.
The baby has a dependent relationship with the mother’s body, and arguably an emphasis should be placed on trust in the mother’s decision to carry out the pregnancy, at least within the first 12 weeks.
The reality of abortion after 12 weeks is pretty grim tho.
And a lot of the liberal certainties over the issue seem crazy.
Abortions will take place whether they’re sanctioned by the state or not.
Best to do so in as safe a way as possible. There is no case you can put forward which gainsays this.
“Abortions will take place whether they’re sanctioned by the state or not….”
History shows you are quite correct about this, but however you go about, abortion should not be socially acceptable, much less celebrated.
We must somehow roll back the depravity.
The use of the word “depravity” is not one that pro-choicers agree with. Is it “depravity” for someone to have their wisdom teeth removed? If not, why should a fetus be any different?
A wisdom tooth cannot grow up to be a successful human being with an immortal soul, but a fetus can. Therefore, it is not depravity to remove wisdom teeth. Still, it is depravity to kill a fetus, which has an immortal soul (probably from the moment of conception) and can become a successful adult human being. (By the way, I am a practicing Catholic, so that flavors my point of view.)
The fact is that in this day and age, an entire organism can be cloned from a single cell.
Just because “an entire organism can be cloned from a single cell” is no reason it should be done. I believe cloning a human being is immoral. (Again, my religious beliefs flavor my point of view.) The only way human beings should reproduce is through sexual intercourse between a husband and wife, and all acts of sexual intercourse should be open to life. (Of course, postmenopausal women can have sex with their husbands if they accept conception, childbirth, and raising a child should a miracle occur.)
Domestic murders will take place whether they’re sanctioned by the state or not.
Best to do so in as safe a way as possible. There is no case you can put forward which gainsays this.
How about this? Murders (or choose another crime) will happen whether they are state-sanctioned or not. Why not make sure they are done as humanely as possible and with little consequence to the perpetrator? Your argument is logically to this nonsense.
Can someone “put a murder” into another person via rape or incest? Can it be necessary to murder someone to save one’s own life (a trickier question) as with a non-viable pregnancy?
If a woman falls down stairs and suffers a miscarriage, is she guilty of (could-have-become-a) manslaughter?
I understand this is a very charged issue, but I don’t think the murder analogy is fully sound or logical.
The rape / incest / health-risk argument is immediately presented by the Pro-Choice lobby whenever the subject of abortion arises, but this is a disingenuous debating strategy.
Most abortions are not carried out for these reasons.
It’s not a mere “strategy”, nor disingenuous ploy–at least not always, or as often as you may think.
How many children of nuclear-family incest or forced “gestation” for ectopic pregnancies and zero-survival fetuses that threaten the mother’s life have to occur before hardcore anti-abortion crusaders acknowledge this reality, and surrender their severest stances?
Or would you have a twelve year old girl, impregnated by her father or via rape by a stranger, seek a “back-alley” abortion to avoid a misbegotten child she cannot bring to term without huge risk of death?
Sadly, pregnancy via incest is not an anomaly in the U.S. Nor are other horrific and life-threatening complications.
I don’t think being an absolutist in one direction or another reflects justice or the reality of our world. If you are an absolutist, I hope you are also staunchly opposed to war and the death penalty too.
The goal should be: safe, legal, and rare. Up to 15 weeks in my estimation; adoption encouraged but not demanded.
This argument gets trotted out as if it’s the wise, non-judgemental angle on the whole debate. But it doesn’t make sense.
Yes, people break laws and you can never stop that entirely. Murder is illegal, for instance, and yet people still murder. But don’t you think the murder rate would go up a lot if it was legal? Of course it would.
Same with abortion. Yes, it always happens. But it’s estimated that pre-Roe vs Wade, there were about 200,000 abortions per year in the US. After abortion was made legal, that number went up to 800,000 a year (just think about that number. Each of those is the termination of a human life)
So, you’re saying it’s a net good to ensure that women who want to kill their babies can do so safely and suffer no harm in the process. But the consequence of that is that way more babies get killed: 600,000 more a year in the United States alone. 600,000 more! Let that number sink in, then tell me it’s still a good idea to make murdering your children safer.
Your proposition is far more slippery than you let on.
When abortions are legal, many will take place.
When abortions are illegal, fewer will take place.
So it’s true: you can’t stop abortion entirely. But you can certainly alter the numbers.
No, a fertilised cell isn’t a “human being”. It might be going to develop into a human being but that’s not the same thing. Why isn’t the sperm or the egg human in the same way?
In addition, many societies accepted infanticide. It was a different category from murder. Some practised human sacrifice. It seems many in the Right are entirely happy with the death penalty. So they are as philosophically incoherent on the issue as any other group. At the end of the day this is down to social acceptance, and your anti abortion position is that of a tiny minority in the West.
The sperm and egg are both pre-conception, brain-box.
Conception of an individual requires the combination of both sets of DNA, from the mother and the father.
The rest is just whataboutery based on tribal assumptions about the Right. Where does the definition of ‘infanticide’ begin and end.
That is the central problem.
Embryos have no particular status at law. Surely you are aware that they are regularly created and frozen in IVF clinics?
“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”― Saint Augustine
Yes, but why shouldn’t an embryo be protected by ’embryo rights’?
No answer was the loud reply.
Every aspect of the liberal position on this issue is mindlessly assumed.
“Human life begins at conception“. It’s simple – we don’t agree with that sentence. A “fetus” doesn’t become a “baby” until it is viable outside the womb, and it can until then, it can be removed in the same way a mole can be removed. That’s my two cents worth anyway.
I’m trying to understand this point of view, Martin, but I find it very difficult. I’m not sure you’re being honest with yourself, or with me. Moreover, I find your comparison of a human baby, made in the image of God, to a mole, to be distasteful and just plain false.
You do realise that “fetus” just means “baby” in Latin, right? Using a euphemism and putting the word in scare quotes doesn’t change the fact that a “fetus” is, biologically speaking, a unique human being with unique DNA.
A human life begins when a sperm fertilises an egg to form a zygote. This is just the fact of the matter. No amount of obfuscation and discussion of “viability” or anything else can change that. The fetus is alive, and it’s human. It might not be viable, but nor is a newborn, which also needs care and attention to stop it from dying. But we recoil from the thought of killing a newborn. We should feel the same horror about killing a baby in the womb.
Of course, no abortionist can reckon with this fact – hence the mental gymnastics. You have to say it’s not a baby, because otherwise killing it would be appalling and you could never live with yourself for supporting such an idea.
So please, Martin, answer me this: if it’s not human, what is it?
I think this just displays an ignorance of the range of forms an unborn baby takes. There is a great difference between a baby in the womb in the first few weeks of pregnancy, and after 8 months.
Surely that isn’t a difficult thing to understand
The war on Christianity is nothing new. Realisation that Christianity had to be destroyed in order for Marxism to triumph in the west dawned early in the 20 century. In 1915 Gramsci wrote this: “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
I have no issue with people’s right to practise Christianity (or indeed any other religion – I find them much of a muchness), but I think the State should be rigidly secular.
I agree that a secular state is the best way to preserve religious freedom. There have been plenty of past Christian theocracies where minority Christian traditions have not been tolerated.
I’m both Christian and nationalist. It may not be quite the insult the American Left think it is.
Are you a Western chauvinist?*After carefully re-reading your comments: I retract this aggressive question. I’m in broad agreement with much of what you say in our exchange below.
*You did come after me pretty combatively, but turnabout is fair play.
Cheers,
AJ
Your cleverly-couched bias seeped through eventually. Some believe that using the meaningless, popular, journalistic jingoism “some have argued”, is a euphemism for “I think”. Enjoyed your arguments though.
There are many who would disagree with you.
The Founding Fathers (now a controversial title) were either deists like Franklin and Jefferson, or, like Washington, held a pantheistic sense of providential destiny. Others were Congregationalists or Unitarians; far from theological agreement, and overall pluralist.
While the Declaration of Independence made reference to a Creator, the Constitution made no reference to a divine being, Christian or otherwise.
No single person rose to rule the USA as in other revolutions. Nor was the USA founded on a common ethnicity, language or religion that could be taken as the primary source of American identity.
When Woodrow Wilson visited the UK after the Great War, he instructed his listeners to stop thinking about Americans as cousins. They had ceased to have any such affinity.
The Left’s concern about both nationalism and Christianity handily combined is a result of their own nightmares. Theologically, Christianity was not a conservative creed. “The Lord has put down the mighty from their seats. He has exalted the poor”. Jesus of Nazareth was an uneducated provincial who found Himself opposed by an educated, metropolitan elite.
Can someone define “Christian nationalism”?
Here is one detailed analysis, from a subjective, measured Christian point of view:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/february-web-only/what-is-christian-nationalism.html
We say this at church every Sunday. Am I a Christian Nationalist? I would bloody well hope I am!
“We beseech thee also to save and defend all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors; and specially thy servant CHARLES our King; that under him we may be godly and quietly governed: And grant unto his whole Council, and to all that are put in authority under him, that they may truly and indifferently minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion, and virtue.”
How many of these ‘predictions’ come true? Very few, I’d wager.
The Left seems to hate those who do not agree with it.
Christians want a fair legal system, people to be judged by their merit and character alone, forgiveness, traditional values that made the USA a world power and a beacon of freedom, democracy and free speech for the world.
Let’s be honest.
The attack by the left progressives on Christianity is because it produces people with a worldview not sanctioned by them.
In its “purest form” Christianity pushes traditional families, charitable behaviours on a macro and personal level, a strong moral compass and should be a positive thing.
I have met some seriously humble and generous people of many colours and nationalities along the way who keep the charitable sector going with their unfashionable moral compass.
All of this is abhorrent to progressives.
It therefore needs to be tainted with whatever colour can be thrown at it and linking it, by whatever spurious means, with some weirdo with an M4 under the bed is par for the course.
This will become the latest attack on western society structures as unsanctioned kindness, fairness and charity on which our laws are based and how we govern must be stopped and smeared.
I note that the progressive movement howls about the theological led Christians but not a word about the vastly more conservative and hardline Muslim society. Why might this be I wonder?
There was a story last year in the US where the progressives pushed for the take over of the cities school board by Muslims which was lorded as a great victory for minority groups.
The celebrations were cut short by said progressives when they found that the deeply conservative new council ditched all Pride/gay flag’s references etc and any other liberal education materials. Complete silence from the progressives press but lots of red faces. These people do not exhibit the wisdom of Solomon evidently.
That said, I am very fond of my Muslim neighbours in London who show tremendous discipline and share comparable old school values but then I’m an old Irish catholic so I should be publicly flogged for wanting plurality, and a cohesive, fair society based on mercy and charity however flawed that is in execution.
Any noble cause must be crushed it seems.
Liberal used to mean something different to what I see from illiberal liberals today .
Please read “The Vanishing” by Janine di Giovanni for more anti-Christian issues.
I’m so bored of this anti-Christian rhetoric.