Let's Get Real

Pat Buchanan, in his column in today's paper, points out the stark differences between Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin on the issue of abortion, and says -- this is the title of the column -- "Fate of Roe in the balance", i.e. "If Obama-Biden wins, Roe is forever. If McCain-Palin wins, Roe could be gone by the decade's end." This assumes, of course, that Supreme Court vacancies really do occur at some point in the next four years -- a likely scenario, but far from assured. It also assumes that those vacancies would be filled, by McCain, with strict constructionists and pro-lifers in the mold of Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. But how pro-life is McCain, anyway? No one seems to know. And it assumes that a justice who talks the talk (during confirmation hearings -- and, BTW, how is a pro-life justice going to be confirmed by what will surely be a Democratic Congress for years to come?) is also willing to walk the walk. These assumptions, while they all might come to pass, are, again, far from assured, given the sad history of "conservative" appointments to the Court. Something funny always seems to happen on the way to Capitol Hill, like a scene out of a "body snatchers" movie -- the justices show up for the first day of work strangely changed, and suddenly sympathetic with all kinds of special pleading on the part of social-change promoters, liberals, "humanists", and the like. The metal detectors at the doors of the Supreme Court Building have yet to register a metal plate or other foreign object embedded in the skull of a justice, but it's clear that something, indeed, does happen -- to most if not all of them.

But even if this long string of "what ifs" yielded up one or more new bonafide pro-life justices, is there any guarantee that they would get the opportunity to reconsider Roe v. Wade? Remember, the justices don't bring cases before themselves, someone else has to do it. This is something liberals and conservatives alike invariably fail to understand. They think that when the pro-life contingent on the Court reaches the magic number 5, Roe vs. Wade goes out the window, just like that. Not true. Someone has to sue someone, and the suit has to have merit, and it has to work its way up the judicial totem pole, a process that can take years. And yet Pat Buchanan says that "this election is America's last hope to reverse Roe v. Wade." Well, maybe and maybe not. Every election that comes along, right down to deciding who's going to be dogcatcher in Wahoo, Nebraska, is "the most important election ever", and "will determine the future of our nation", etc.

Finally, Buchanan wants the Catholic hierarchy in this country to provide "moral counsel" to Catholics regarding the election -- presumably counsel to vote for McCain, or to not vote for Obama, based on the abortion issue. Of course, they can't recommend or dis-recommend any specific candidate by name, or there goes the tax-free status of the Church (not that it ever has this effect on black churches, of course). But they can, at least, strongly recommend voting for pro-life candidates and not for "pro-choice" candidates; the IRS doesn't seem to have a whole lot of trouble with that idea. Of course, it's hard to see how a bishop or cardinal who serves communion to a "pro-choice" politician on Sunday is going to come out against them, or their position on abortion, on Monday -- this is a bit of "going along to get along" that the Church hierarchy is a long way from remedying.

But even that isn't the point. The Church -- as represented by the Pope, if not the American hierarchy -- has come out, repeatedly, against the war in Iraq as being unjust, according to centuries-old criteria for "just war". The war is known, by now, and by anyone with a grain of sense, to be not only illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional, but to be, basically, a hoax and a fraud, the main purpose of which is to make a lot of people very rich, and secondarily to "spread democracy" (as if that were an absolute moral value), and "protect Israel" (ditto). (The so-called "Global War on Terror" has nothing to do with it, for the simple reason that the Global War on Terror is, itself, a hoax.) So we have that, and we have two candidates who not only see nothing whatsoever wrong with the war, but want to escalate it, extend it into perpetuity, and clone it as many times as possible. McCain is not the least bit bothered by the prospect of our being over in Iraq for 100 years, and Palin is chomping at the bit to get into a nuclear showdown with Russia over Georgia. And these are the people Buchanan wants to put into office in order to overturn Roe v. Wade? Believe me, if these maniacs get into office, abortion will be the very least of our worries. We've already aborted our economy with this damnable war, and are well down the road to miscarrying the rights of our own citizens. And the moral catastrophe of the Iraq war is, in fact, threatening to eclipse that of Vietnam. In the name of all that is holy, this war has to come to an end. Now! Today! But Buchanan chooses to ignore the issue based on a long, drawn-out, and highly speculative chain of events that "might", someday, have an impact on Roe vs. Wade.