06.28.05 - 1:25 p.m.

I don't believe that, reposted here, on this minor outpost of the web, where the only readers are likely as not my friends and presumeably therefore, like me, prefer to keep government out of religion and religion out of our government, the following will strike the scales from any conservative eyes. But in these times - with right-wing religiousity on the ascendency in the States (another Great Awakening?) while we see - to-wit - the results of fundamentalist absolutism in the Middle East all over the headlines each and every morning, it can't hurt. From Justice O'Connor's concurring opinion in McCreery v. ACLU, which was handed down... was it Monday?

At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. � Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly.

I've been reading (and reading about) William James and other 19th century intellectuals lately: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Emerson and the Boston "Brahmins, " the rabid abolitionist and the milquetoast unionists, nutty "scientists" like Agassiz (who found, among other things, evidence of glaciation in the tropics) and scientists like Darwin and the effect of our WWI - the American Civil War - on the cultural consciousness of the country in The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menard. Oh, pragmatism: truth in service to utility, the danger of strong beliefs and the bloody ground on which we fight those battles, and sometimes, the necessity of going further.

I know that the rabid pro-lifers like to compare themselves to the pre-Civil War-era abolitionists as a means of illustrating the ultimate righteousness of their cause, and now, absolutely, I see the parallels between the abolitionists and the contemporary right-wing Christian movements. Both emphasized the personal over the political, and both - although explicitely political in their goals - are deliberately a-political or even anti-political in their rhetoric. Prophets and madmen usually are, with the tablets and divine knowledge leading them forward. They don't play games with words, you see, they are crusading for ultimate truth. They don't get caught up in the temporal political gamesmanship of parties are politicking because their eyes are firmly locked on a higher purpose, a purpose that explodes the tainted morass of political life - the compromises, the cronyism - on god's altar.

But of course, their goals are political, and so are even their more extreme methods. So, for that matter, is the deliberately apolitical or anti-political stance, which attracts a certain kind of (very committed) individual who likes to see him or herself as a righteous, uncompromising paragon of virtue adrift in a treacherous secular world.

Obviously, the pro-lifers make the comparison between abortion and slavery because they see (and want others to see) abortion as the moral equivalent of slavery (which is, with another century of segregation and gov't sanctioned discrimination), one of our nation's two greatest sins (the other is obviously the massive land-grab and systematic extermination of the Native Americans). If abortion is the moral equivalent of slavery or worse, then the people who favor choice are the moral equivalent of slavers.

It's the perfect rhetorical ground for crusaders to claim. You are either with me or you're evil. There is no room in between. From that position, everything changes: the middle ground is as wrong as the other side's extreme view. The Unionist advocates of compromise - well, we're not fans of slavery, but - but - but it'll just go away - are potentially as morally bankrupt as the most violent slaveholders. And, except to the extent that the compromisers' ultimate goal may well be the complete eradication of legal abortion (or the abolition of slavery), compromise is wrong. There can be no lasting "Missouri Compromise," because passionate pro-lifers will not be satisfied until every last refuge for legal abortion (rape victims, or dying women, or braindead fetuses) has been removed.

Most people don't live their philosophical and moral lives on the fringe, of course. I'm pro-choice, but I don't think I could have an abortion myself except under the most extreme circumstances and I suspect that it morally wrong under most circumstances - but I think that there are greater moral wrongs, of course, and that having an abortion may be the best moral choice for some specific person in some specific circumstances. I think that that's a smart, reasonable position. Individual women should be able to make individual moral choices without simple-minded evangelicals barging into every aspect of their sex lives. (<--- Mind you, this position is not sexxay. It doesn't fit will in your mouth. You can't spit it out. It doesn't exactly inspire the sort of visceral righteousness that enrages people enough to send them spilling into the streets for a lifetime and not a moment, whether they see progress or no.)

Now: substitute the word slave for the word abortion. That's no longer a smart, reasonable position. I'm the next Mengele.

Except, of course, I don't see a moral equivalence between slavery and abortion. I don't believe that an eight-week old fetus (or a 1-day old clump of cells) is the moral equivalent of a fully developed human being. If I want to go nuts with the rhetoric, I might even make a different comparison - forcing a woman to bear an unwanted child is the moral equivalent of slavery: it turns her into an object, an incubator. It removes the choice from her life. (Note: this is equally nutty, of course, since women (in the U.S. at least) can choose not to have sex (unless raped), or to use birth control (unless nutty pharmacists refuse to fill the prescription because every sperm deserves a chance at a genuine viable egg), if she does not wish to become pregnant. Women in other countries, of course, are not so lucky. I heard a story on NPR this morning about the gov't crackdown on free family planning clinics in the Philippines and how it was impeding the war on poverty there. Thanks Catholic Church. I do think that Jesus would advocate free condoms for poor women in the contemporary world, thanks much.)

Which brings me back to the inspiring passage from William James I read yesterday, which resonates, for some reason, with the small passage from Justice O'Connor's concurrence above. This is from Williams James' speech at the dedication to a monument to Robert Gould Shaw (who led the 54th Massachusetts - one of the African-American regiments) in Boston in 1897. The whole text of the oration can be found online here: http://www.holycross.edu/departments/english/sluria/wjspeech.htm. Essentially, the background is that Robert Gould Shaw was already an officer in the Masschusetts Second - an all-white regiment - when he was invited to become the commanding officer of the 54th. He was already being exposed to the dangers of battle - he had already fought in numerous battles, etc. - but he was, as an officer in the Mass 2nd, in an otherwise comfortable position. By taking a position with the 54th, he was defying the popular belief - even in the north, even among abolitionists - of the inferiority of blacks and courting disaster - what would it do to Shaw's cause as a. an abolitionist; and b. an advocate and a believer in the equality of all humankind if the regiment failed, if it melted down in the crucible of actual battle, if the soldiers broke and ran, etc. What if, worse yet, the regiment broke down the way so many white regiments do/did and engaged in what we would today call war crimes - pillaging and looting and the like?

The speech is brilliant, because it begins as a paean to the martial courage displayed by Shaw and the 54th throughout the war and particularly in the assault on Fort Wagner in which Shaw died (a battle, mind you, which the Union lost), but ends, instead, praising Shaw's "civic courage" - to stand up (reasonably) for his belief in equality by joining the 54th:

That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared, for the survival of the fittest has not bred it into the bone of human beings as it has bred military valor; and of five hundred of us who could storm a battery side by side with others, perhaps not one would be found ready to risk his wordly fortunes all alone in resisting an enthroned abuse. The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

I just can't top that. Not that I'm a pragmatist - I think some things are true regardless of their utility. I'll categorize slavery as a clear moral wrong not subject to relational morality. I'll put racism in there, too, and torture, and female circumcision, and maybe even wage slavery - 2 cents a day for $100 tennis shoes. But beyond that, what a rallying cry in an age of distasteful weirdo theatrics and partisan hackery and image image image cowboy-booted image: reason, reason, reason.