Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Kondracke Blows the Call; Life, Sex, and Success

Last night's Fox Roundtable included the Usual Suspects, which means Mort Kondracke was there.

And he did something ineffably stupid, for Mort. He said that The Pregnancy 'shows us that abstinence-only sex ed is a failure.'

That was a jaw-dropper to everyone on the panel. What Mort Kondracke knows about Bristol Palin's education would not fill a thimble. His comment was not only offensive, but born of complete and total ignorance of the facts and circumstances.

But he echoes some other voices--so let's start from Square One--the Chesterton quote I used just last week:

CARLYLE said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men.

Girls get pregnant. They get pregnant because they and their boyfriends make mistakes. Mistake-making, just like pregnancy, is a consequence of Original Sin--and of being born into mankind.

But what Mort Kondracke said reveals something else, and that 'something' is far worse than merely discussing mistakes.

Kondracke's statement shows us the Liberal Project's Principal Sin: it arrogates to itself the powers reserved to God.

The logic is clear: Bristol Palin's "mistake" was not the sin of fornication. The sin was 'fornicating without a rubber.' The unforgiveable, to Kondracke and his ilk, was to get pregnant before marriage.

Another way to put it: the unforgiveable was a failure to interfere with nature (and nature's God.)

This is not a first for Mort. He is a supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, too.

Mort's endorsement of ESCR came while he was dealing with his wife's Parkinson's, which eventually killed her. All of us wish that there were a cure for Parkinson's. But using ESCR is to justify the means by the end, which cannot be allowed by right-thinking people. It is a manipulation of nature (and murder); it is arrogation of God's power over life and death, not only at the beginning (the embryo) but hopefully at the end (preventing death).

That's Part One.

The other part is a bit less controversial, but part of the very same Project.

In the Modern Project's attempt to re-define life, it has been determined that Life = Material Success (or at least, not Material Failure.) The eschatology of The Project conincides perfectly with death. After you're dead, there's nothing.

Having babies before College and a Career will most likely reduce one's Material Success--in effect, slapping the Project's definition in the face.

Thus, the Project tells us with great gravity that one's contribution to society is impaired by unwed motherhood. Exactly the same is said or implied about people who have lots of children--their Material Success is impaired with all those mouths, etc.

Unless you count adding humans to the population, which actually was God's intention.

No, this is not an endorsement of unwed motherhood, nor of unwed fatherhood. It is not to say that humans should not pursue scientific remedies for suffering, assuming that the foundations of such science are licit.

It is, however, important to acknowledge the first things--the Author that The Liberal Project most wishes to replace, and the reality that men are equal in being fools.

"How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?"--Mt 16/11

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