Commandments

I’m not that big on commandments. Don’t get me wrong, don’t kill, cheat, lie, are good guidelines, and I’ll give you honor your mother and father in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases. But call me humanistic; I just can’t get behind the idea of not doing things because you’ll be punished as opposed to not doing them because they are wrong.

I have greater respect for the man who does right when no one is looking, than the man who does right only because God is.

That being said, I like Jesus’s take on the commandments. While not repudiating the Big Ten completely, he challenged us to a greater one, a harder one. One that to my view may be a more noble one. “Love one another.”

Man, is he kidding? He expected us to live up to that one? That one is hard! That means loving the jackass who cut you off in traffic. That means loving the guy who didn’t tip. That means loving the stranger who you never met, and will never meet again. That’s hard!

But all in all, it’s a good one. One that I fully support, even if I fail to live up to it on a regular basis. I have a minor quibble of course. It’s often translated as “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This presumes that one loves oneself, something that anecdotal experience suggests isn’t a given. Also it opens the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Now, Jesus addressed this and, as typical, did it in a parable which has been misinterpreted and misapplied for millennia. The answer I like to think he meant to give was, “Everyone.”

I heard a variation of this commandment once years ago that stuck with me. “Be excellent to one another.” What does it mean to love? Here one is asked to act. Who should we treat this way? “One another,” everyone, yourself included.
Now, that’s what I call a commandment.

Let's talk about abortion! No, really, it'll be fun!

So, Rob, what is your personal opinion on abortion?

Yikes. For real? You want to know?

No, of course you don’t, because you are a figment of my imagination, a rhetorical device.

And yet, you’re certainly thinking about it. You clearly have an opinion.

Well, that’s just because Fred Clark who posts the inspirational blog The Slacktivist brought up a wonderful point regarding the issue. He equated his inability to understand the point-of-view of supporters of torture with other people’s inability to understand the point-of-view of people who view abortion as permissible. Kind of. I may not have gotten that completely right. You should read it, though.

Oh, come on. There’s got to be more to it than that.

Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s a pretty important issue, and I’m pretty sure that it’s going to become even more divisive and could well sunder our country in a way not seen since the civil war.

Isn’t that a little drastic?

Drastic? Yes. But I’m serious. In Generations: The Future History of America Strauss and Howe posit that we are heading towards such a major, shattering event. The so-called “culture war” seems the most likely candidate. Let’s compare abortion to 19th-century views on slavery.

Must we?

You brought it up.

Okay, so first off, they are both issues that some people see as moral and other people see as political. There were those who saw slavery as morally wrong, an abomination, something which must not be tolerated. Likewise, the anti-abortion movement sees abortion as infanticide, an abomination, which must not be tolerated.

Meanwhile, an opposing quarter saw them as political issues. Proponents of slavery saw the anti-slavery movement as challenging state’s rights, just as the pro-choice movement considers the decision of abortion a matter of privacy and a woman’s right to choose.

Second, slavery and abortion both tie into sectional concerns. Kind of.

There has always been antagonism between the New England/Northern “Intellectual” and the Southern Genteel Aristocracy. It’s the same Will & Grace vs. Blue Collared TV split that we have today. It’s the New Yorker vs. NASCAR. It’s the Liberal Media Elite vs. Mid-America.

But this time it’s slightly more complicated than that. In part because there isn’t the economic issues of slavery. Slavery was key to the southern economy leading up to the eighteenth century, and then even more so with the advent of the cotton gin. Thus even people who otherwise might otherwise agree that slavery was bad, or not have much of an opinion had a vested interest in keeping slaves in the south, while the north had no such interest.

So, it’s not going to be as easy as the North vs. South, or Liberal Coast vs. Conservative Mid-land. Because within each region I’m pretty sure we’re healthily divide anyway. The Associated Press ran a nation-wide poll in February-March of 2006 (except Hawaii and Alaska). 52% said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 43% said abortion should illegal in all or most cases. 52-43. I find it hard to believe that the distinction will be neatly drawn between states. It’s most likely that means you probably disagree with the person living next door.

Or sharing your home.

But the real problem, the real issue, is that for the 16% of the population who said it should be illegal in all cases, it really is that absolute. I mean, how nuanced a view can one have when one believes the question involves killing babies? How much room for compromise is there?

You can’t really compromise. Just like, if you believe slavery is wrong, you can’t compromise on the issue a whole lot. So you do your best… and ignore it. You make a political compromise (slaves are 3/5 a person for purposes of elected officials) and you ignore it for the greater good.

But it can only be ignored for so long.

We ignored the issue of slavery for a whole generation. But as the political power of the South and specifically the Old Dominion waned, it became harder and harder. More compromises were reached, until at last there came a generation who wouldn’t compromise anymore. And it split the country apart.

Is it really that unimaginable to see the same thing happening? For thirty years the anti-abortion movement has been gaining power. The 43% has influenced control over all three branches of the government. What will be the reaction of the other 53%? How can there be any compromise on the part of the 43% (And lets admit that the “most cases” is a bit of a compromise already.)

The slavery problem snapped the country in a great bloody half, thanks to the sectional nature of the question. But what will happen with the forces are within and all around? Where there is no point or fulcrum to split?

Is it so hard to imagine we will be not split, but shredded?

Everything I Know I Learned From Battlestar Galactica

“The gods don’t answer prayers. We’re here on our own… We have to find our own answers, our own way out of the wilderness without a nice little sunny path all laid out in front of us in advance.”

Man, that pisses me off.

See now, wouldn’t it be nice if I had an interesting, coherent, thoughtful response? Nope. It just pisses me off.