Divided We Fall, Rights and All

UPDATE: Either someone at La Casa Blanca is reading BtB or they've noticed that the The Won's approval rating is tied with that of George Bush, because Jay Carney just announced that Obama has canceled his keynote address at Planned Parenthood:

.... He attributed the schedule change to Mr. Obama’s desire to spend more time at a memorial service in Waco, Texas for family members of the victims of the fertilizer plant explosion.

Mr. Carney said the president will still address Planned Parenthood and its supporters Friday morning. Still, the shift to a lower-profile address at a more low-key morning event, rather than an evening gala fundraiser, is significant.

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In the midst of learning the ghastly goings-on at a Philadelphia abortion clinic through testimony in the Gosnell trial, we hear that The Won is giving the keynote address at Planned Parenthood's annual fundraising gala tomorrow night.

Given the "choice," our Divider-in-Chief always chooses to drive any wedge ever deeper.  As I think back to his "House on a Rock" (or "Pile of Sand") speech, in which he retold this parable from the Sermon on the Mount, I am stunned by the glaring hypocrisy of his actions.

Now, there's a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men.  The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was soon destroyed when a storm hit.  But the second is known as the wise man, for when "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."

 

I understand the speech was about the economy, but the analogy holds for our culture as well. For the president to speak at Planned Parenthood at this moment in time puts our national house on sand.

There is nothing wise or rock-like about this man, and I live in fear of the consequences.

 

Of the three unalienable rights specified in the Declaration of Independence - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - it is liberty that causes the most confusion and conflict. Conservatives often focus on protecting and defending life while liberals concentrate on their various pursuits of happiness. And that would be okay, in and of itself, except that the two sides substantially disagree about the actions to which we are entitled by virtue of our Gd-given liberty. 

Candidate Obama thought it "above his pay grade" to speak to the question of when life begins. I'm just sorry that he and his followers have since chosen to ignore modern science in this regard and have so arrogantly appropriated unto themselves the right to decide for all of us, that whatever they want to do is automatically their "right."

 

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Many years ago, George Steiner -- in his classic "Language and Silence" -- wrote brilliantly about the utter degradation the Nazis had wrought upon the German language. As one of his examples, he used the German "spritzen" -- "to spatter or spray" -- and asked how it was possible ever again to use the word innocently since, during the Holocaust, it had become an SS code-word for placing a pistol against a Jew's head, pulling the trigger, and then enjoying the sight of a once-human brain spattering in all directions. I thought of Steiner's example while reading your post, Yael, and realized that the once-innocent "gala" -- "a festive celebration" -- is now used to describe a fundraiser for money to be spent in building abbatoirs and butchering babies. Our culture is doing to the English language precisely what the Nazis did to German. And those of us who cherish the language are helpless to do anything about it. After all, the Planned Parenthood event will be festive, large sums of money will be raised, and the crowd will be in a celebratory mood -- especially when Obama delivers one of his stemwinders. So the word "gala" truly applies, doesn't it? But we're still stuck with the nagging question: Can a people survive such corruption of their language? The glib answer, of course, would be that the Germans survived and so will we Americans. But in what sense did the Germans survive? To this day, Germany is largely a nation in denial of its past. Is that what's in store for us? As the members of Planned Parenthood traipse off to their gala, and as our Fundraiser-in-Chief prepares himself to bask in the glow of the tumultuous applause he'll receive, this question should haunt all of us: What are we -- the American people -- doing to ourselves? Can we truly survive when a "gala" becomes a celebration of murder?