The Democracy of the Dead

G.K. Chesterton notes that tradition is intrinsically democratic: "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

Thank You Lord!

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Catholic Vote

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Human Backups...Coming Soon To A Medical Center Near You!

By Wesley J. Smith...More proof in that embryonic stem cell research is not—and never has been—about getting some use out of leftover IVF embryos that are due to be destroyed anyway. A serious proposal has been forwarded in the UK that would allow people to make IVF embryos, not to bring to birth, but rather, solely for the purpose of storing them for later use as a source of stem cells. From the story:

Couples could be allowed to store embryos in order to use them to create new body parts or cure diseases.

Government legal and ethical experts are to discuss whether families can 'bank' embryos not just for procreation but also for use by doctors to create personalized treatments for parents and their children.

Now, [under UK law] embryos—the first stage of life after an egg has been successfully fertilized—can be stored for up to five years but only for procreation. But a huge ethical debate is set to erupt as the Government's fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA), moves closer to endorsing new developments in medical science. It will debate whether embryos could be stored to harvest important stem cells that have the ability to turn into any tissue type in the body.

Given that this is Brave New Britain, which already allows the creation of human/animal hybrid cloned embryos, the outcome of this "debate" is easy to predict.

This is figurative cannibalism, and it won't stop with embryos. Once the principle is accepted that living human beings can be objectified and used as a product, there is no way it will be limited to the earliest humans. Indeed, as I have often described, fetal farming is already on the table in bioethics discourse and some of the world's most notable medical journals have published articles urging that people with profound cognitive impairments be used as sources of organs and human subjects in medical experimentation.

Ideas have consequences. Once we state that human life does not have intrinsic moral value simply and merely because it is human, there isn't much that we cant justify.

The Clarity of First Things

Certain matters are at the heart of what First Things magazine(firstthings.com) exists to do. The struggle to halt the slaughter of the unborn and the ill, for instance—the need to defend the weakest among us, constantly threatened by a culture that accepts abortion and euthanasia as easy devices with which to solve personal and social difficulties. We believe the United States to be a grand historical experiment, worth defending in its own right and inherently interesting to study. We work for the advancement of Jewish–Christian relations. We feel the divisions of Christianity—Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic—as a scandal that shames all believers, even while we know that true ecumenism must begin with each tradition's theological integrity. We demand a society that feeds the hungry and cares for the poor. We know that the political effort to strip religion from the public square is an attempt to undermine the American experiment, and it will bring only disaster in its wake. On all this, we will not be silent, and we will be heard.

First Things is not a political magazine. It deals with religion, culture, and the moral structures of public life, and it does so in the politically indifferent light of philosophy, theology, literary theory, and historical study. We live, however, in strange days: a time in which the doing of such things—the very attempt to be serious—is itself a political act, with political consequences and political costs.

Politics is a secondary activity, of course. Even theology, philosophy, and poetry are secondary, in a sense: They may be first in the order of language—and thus first in the range of what a magazine can actually publish—but they come second to faith and prayer in the order of existential truth. Still, both politics and intellectual pursuits have a genuine importance and dignity precisely because, in their proper secondary places, they require neither false inflation to the all-encompassing nor false deflation to the insignificant.

"The first thing to be said about public life is that public life is not the first thing," Richard John Neuhaus declared when he launched First Things in 1990, and he added:

"By religion and public life we mean something like what Saint Augustine meant by the City of God and the City of Man. The twain inevitably do meet, but they must never be confused or conflated. Whether at the beginning of the fifth century or at the end of the twentieth, the particulars of their meeting are always ambiguous. At the deepest level the two cities are in conflict but, along the way toward history's end, they can be mutually helpful. The polis constituted by faith delineates the horizon, the possibilities and the limits, of the temporal polis. The first city keeps the second in its place, warning it against reaching for the possi-bilities that do not belong to it. At the same time, it elevates the second city, calling it to the virtue and justice that it is prone to neglect. Thus awareness of the ultimate sustains the modest dignity of the penultimate."

As the dead ideas of previous decades rear again their angry heads, we seem in many ways thrust back to where we were when the magazine began. This is a moment when the modest dignity of the penultimate must be reasserted. This is a day, again, for seriousness. This is a time, once more, for First Things.

Marilyn Chambers R. I. P.

by Francis Beckwith

This morning I was greeted by a headline that the porn star, Marilyn Chambers (56), was found dead on Easter Sunday. Her obituary was written as if she had actually accomplished something. She was, of course, in her own way a "community organizer." So much so that ten years ago then-mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, declared a "Marilyn Chambers day." But compare her obituary to any mainstream media obituary of the late Jerry Falwell, a person who, I must confess, would sometimes annoy me to no end. He was not my kind of guy. He was a rural, white, Southern Baptist, who was sometimes embarrassingly uncharitable and not careful with his words when addressing issues with which many other Christians would be sympathetic (but who would nevertheless cringe upon hearing the Rev.'s less than measured presentation). And, most importantly, he was not on the right side in the Civil Rights struggle when it really counted (something, by the way, for which he would later repent). For someone like me--an ethnic, urban, Yankee, cradle Catholic who grew up in a liberal Democratic household--I could not imagine ever hanging with him.

And yet, the Rev. Falwell founded a university, started a social movement of great influence, pastored a church of several thousand for several decades, led many, many people to Christ, and as far as we know was a loving and devoted husband and father. (He was a person that even Larry Flynt called "friend"!) On the other hand, Ms. Chambers, who died young (as is the case with virtually everyone in her "profession"), is portrayed as a cultural trailblazer who enlightened our culture to the "blessings" of anonymous, promiscuous, widely diverse, and videotaped, copulation. For this reason, you will hear no lamenting of the innumerable lives on which her example made chic the infliction of countless miseries. You will not hear of the unborn children killed, the addictions borne and nurtured, the marriages decimated, the offspring abandoned, the spouses betrayed, or even the diseases contracted—spiritual, mental and physical—that her "trailblazing" facilitated.

We live in an age in which we know precisely what recycle bin our newsprint and soda bottles belong. But we have no idea what a human being is, what it's supposed to do, or who or what it is permissible to sleep with. So, this is the lesson of our time: the "good" man is the one who treats his garbage with greater care than his own soul. This is why, for our cultural gatekeepers, Ms. Chambers is an icon and the Rev. Falwell did not die soon enough.

Einstein on God

I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.

-Albert Einstein

High School & Dr. House

Conformity is a confusing topic to discuss. Let's start with high school, where the young and impressionable roam.

My high school social scene was probably the same as yours. It was the popular kids vs the non-popular kids. The non-popular kids were made up by the nerds and the goth kids. I was the nerd who was often fascinated by the goth kids. How could I not be? They were ALL so anti-conformity and ALL so unique. They ALL wore dark clothes from Hot Topic instead of bright colored A&F polos made by the evil corporate. Their faces ALL exuded the misery and pain from living in suburbia America. They were the symbols of anti-conformity, because they conformed to rebel against conformity.

I hope you sense where this is going.

Many years after high school, while watching an episode of my favorite TV show, Dr. Gregory House said something that summed up my feeling on conformity during a conversation with a young doctor.

House

Dr. Spain (applying for a position on Dr. House's team): You know, I really admire the way you don't care what anyone thinks. You just do what you want, the way you want.

Dr. Wilson (Dr. House's best friend): So, you went to Hopkins for both undergrad and med school?

Dr. Spain: That's right.

House: He's in a band.

Dr. Spain: You into music?

House: Totally. What kind of music do you play?

Dr. Spain: Um, mostly blues, you know. James Cotton, some original stuff.

House: [pops a Vicodin] Oh, dude. You are so hired.

Dr. Spain: Really?

House: Not a chance.

Dr. Spain: Why?

House: Tattoo. [Dr. Spain turns his right arm to reveal a kanji symbol on his forearm.]

Dr. Spain: Wow. I thought you'd be the last person to have a problem with nonconformity.

House: Nonconformity, right. I can't remember the last time I saw a 20-something kid with a tattoo of an Asian letter on his wrist. You are one wicked free thinker. You want to be a rebel? Stop being cool. Wear a pocket protector like he[Wilson] does and get a haircut. Like the Asian kids who don't leave the library for 20 hours stretches, they're the ones who don't care what you think. Sayonara. [Dr. Spain leaves.]

Wilson: So should I go through all the resumes looking for Asian names?

House: Actually, the Asian kids are probably just responding to parental pressure, but my point is still valid.