 | | January 30, 2013 |  | By Jonathan V. Last | |  |  |  |  | | COLD OPEN |  |  | I'm often struck by the dichotomy of liberal impulses. Liberals have long sought to ban smoking tobacco, but they want to legalize smoking pot. They don't want America fighting wars, but they want American servicewomen in combat. They're against the death penalty for society's worst criminals but in favor of abortion for society's most vulnerable and innocent lives.
But every once in a while liberalism provides a window into understanding these contradictions.
Last week a writer named Mary Elizabeth Williams penned an essay for the liberal web magazine Salon in which she explained, in great detail, why she is absolutely convinced that life begins at conception, that every fetus is really just an unborn child, and that women should be free to kill this life, via abortion, at any point during their pregnancy. It's one of the most bracing pieces of writing you'll ever see. You should absolutely read the entire thing, but here's a flavor of it, just so you'll believe me:
Here's the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That's a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She's the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.
When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of "scraping out a bunch of cells" and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of "the baby" and "this kid." I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can't we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it's pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn't the same? Fetuses aren't selective like that. They don't qualify as human life only if they're intended to be born.
When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn't involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there's a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you're born? Only when you're viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?
And then there's this:
I'm a mom who loved the lives she incubated from the moment she peed on those sticks, and is also now well over 40 and in an experimental drug trial. If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I'd have an abortion. I'd have the World's Greatest Abortion.
The instinctual conservative, pro-life response to Ms. Williams seems to be horror and outrage. And I understand that, on an emotional level. Yet intellectually we ought to welcome Williams's important essay—even be grateful for it. Because she is one of the first "pro-choicers" to engage in the philosophical foundations of abortion honestly. She is performing a valuable public service, and she ought to be engaged thoughtfully and respectfully.
Because here's the thing: The argument Williams sets forth has always been the foundation of the abortion-rights movement. But the partisans in the movement never had the confidence or forthrightness to say so out loud. Instead, they constructed a series of tangential barricades—about privacy or viability or super-duper stare decisis—all of which obscured the real core of their beliefs. And these Potemkin arguments made it difficult to have an honest national debate about the extent to which America would, or would not, make its peace with abortion.
And the truth is, if the pro-life movement and Mary Elizabeth Williams both present their cases to the American public, and the public sides with Williams, then so be it.
If you scroll through the comments to Williams' piece—there are almost 500 of them—you'll notice something interesting. Most of the liberal, pro-abortion responses are horrified by her essay and try desperately to paint her as a crazy extremist. This is, I think, a sign of how deeply afraid they are of ever having a debate about abortion on intellectually transparent terms.
And while we're at it, we should be grateful to Ms. Williams for something else: She very neatly resolves the liberal dichotomy by explaining that, for much of liberalism, the paramount intellectual question remains the same as it was for V.I. Lenin: "Who? Whom?" |  | | LOOKING BACK |  |  | "Mike Nifong's handling of the case was clearly outrageous. But he would probably not have gone so far, indeed would not have dared to go so far, had he not been egged on by two other groups that rushed just as quickly to judge the three accused young men guilty of gross and racially motivated carnal violence. Despite the repeated attempts by the three to clear themselves, a substantial and vocal percentage—about one-fifth—of the Duke University arts and sciences faculty and nearly all of the mainstream print media in America quickly organized themselves into a hanging party. Throughout the spring of 2006 and indeed well into the late summer, Nifong had the nearly unanimous backing of this country's (and especially Duke's) intellectual elite as he explored his lurid theories of sexual predation and racist stonewalling."
—Charlotte Allen, "Duke's Tenured Vigilantes," from our January 29, 2007, issue.
Remember you get full access to THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive when you subscribe. | | | | | | | | THE READING LIST | | | | | High school, explained.
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Sharecroppers of the Sea: How solving one economic problem in the world of commercial fishing created another one.
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Understanding "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," 30 years later. |  | | INSTANT CLASSIC |  |  | "We're sitting in the Oval Office, and the president asked [the legislative director] Phil Schiliro — who always could figure out what's that third way — 'Phil, what's the third way?' Phil said, 'Mr. President, unless you're feeling lucky, I don't know what the third way is.' And so the president gets up from his chair and he walks over and he looks out the window, and he says, 'Phil, where are you?' Phil says, 'I'm in the Oval Office.' He goes, 'What's my name?' Phil says, 'President Obama.' He goes, 'Of course I'm feeling lucky.'"
—Valerie Jarrett on the American Narcissus, New York Times, January 18, 2013 |  | | LOOKING AHEAD |  | | | | We'll have articles on Tibet, the debt, and marijuana in upcoming issues of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. |  | | THE LAST WORD |  |  | For the last several weeks, I've been harping about the need for Republicans to adopt a more populist politics, whereby they would turn their back on the Church of Big Business, stop thumping their chests about "we built this," and start championing the kinds of policies that speak to growth and middle-class prosperity and family formation.
Last week, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal gave a speech that was designed, basically, to tickle all of my pleasure centers. It is absolutely worth reading in full because it may be the most ideologically significant speech given by a Republican since Reagan. But here are some highlights:
Balancing our government's books is not what matters most. Government is not the end all and be all.
The health of America is not about government at all. Balancing government's books is a nice goal, but that is not our primary objective.
Our objective is to grow the private sector. We need to focus our efforts on ideas to grow the American economy, not the government economy.
If you take nothing else away from what I say today, please understand this — We must not become the party of austerity. We must become the party of growth. Of course we know that government is out of control. The public knows that too. And yet we just lost an election…
We have fallen into a trap of believing that the world revolves around Washington, that the economy is based there. If we keep believing that, government will grow so big that it will take us all down with it.
If our end goal is to simply better manage the disaster that is the federal government, count me out, I'm not signing up for that. It's not a goal worth attaining.
Which of you wants to sign up to help manage the slow decline of the United States of America? I sure don't. That's what we have Democrats for…
As Margaret Thatcher famously observed —first you must win the argument, then you can win the elections. And by the way, it's time for all of us to remember that we are not in this just to win elections.
We are in this to make America the greatest she can be, to make America the prosperous land of opportunity that she can be. To do this, we will certainly have to win some elections, but first we must win the argument.
If this election taught us anything — it is that we will not win elections by simply pointing out the failures of the other side. We must boldly paint the picture of what America can be, of just how incredibly bright America's future can be…
We must compete for every single vote. The 47 percent and the 53 percent. And any other combination of numbers that adds up to 100 percent. President Barack Obama and the Democrats can continue trying to divide America into groups of warring communities with competing interests, but we will have none of it. We are going after every vote as we work to unite all Americans…
We must quit "big."We are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, or big anything. We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive. We are the party whose ideas will help the middle class, and help more folks join the middle class. We are a populist party and need to make that clear.
Wow. I don't know about you, but I need a cigarette.
Because that is the way forward for both conservatism and the Republican party. If only we'd had a nominee in 2012 who understood it.
But better late than never.
I'll see you next week; as always, keep calm and carry on. And remember, you can follow me on Twitter @JVLast or email me with tips, thoughts, etc., at editor@weeklystandard.com.
Best,
Jonathan V. Last
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