The Life You Vote For May Be Your Own

In a democracy, 'people get the government they deserve.' This should give any American pause. It's easy to say 'It's the economy, stupid!' Yet 'What shall it profit a man,' (or a nation) 'if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' (Mark 8:36). A separate question is whether this economy can be credited to the current president.

In any case, this is not about a president but about Americans. Voters.

Hypocrisy is becoming the only vice acceptable to condemn, forgetting that hypocrisy lies not in failing to practice what you preach ('All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God' - Romans 3:23), but in not believing what you preach.

What if fear of being a 'hypocrite' or 'judgmental' keeps us from doing the right thing? As for 'judgmental,' judge deeds, not doers; we must distinguish right from wrong. But a conscience in denial perceives accusation everywhere, and seeks to deflect it with accusations of its own.

Recent years have seen various horrors passed off as 'progress.' A story surfaced about five years ago concerning small, early term aborted babies being eaten in China and promoted as 'health foods.' The name for this is cannibalism.

Then came 'partial birth abortion.' The name for this is infanticide. This 'procedure' has no legitimate medical indication for the life of the mother.

More recently, we have reports of cases of 'failed' abortions where the child is 'mistakenly' born alive, where the abortionist either issues orders for the child to be deliberately neglected, or personally strangles or drowns the child with his own hands. These reports come from nurses - seasoned abortion assistants beginning to crack over what they have witnessed.

These cases appear connected with the growing trade of harvesting fetal organs for profit. People who do this used to be called 'ghouls' in less 'progressive' times.

If you can judge a society on how it treats its weakest members, we are in severe, rapid decline. At the end of the century of the greatest medical advances in history, people with doctorates in medicine kill people because letting them live, or keeping them alive is too 'inconvenient,' be they unborn, seven-eighths born, 'too' infirm, old, depressed or 'dying anyway.' We are assessing which 'life is unworthy of life' (to borrow the title of the 1920 German book which greatly influenced Adolf Hitler).

That an evil like partial birth abortion should even come to the floor of Congress, much less fail to be banned, falls on all of our heads. We do the voting, or at least should be doing the voting. A people who kills its young, or old, or sick cannot stand.

Yet still I believe in the fundamental goodness of Americans.

Elites seeking control of others' lives are offended by creche scenes in the public square, yet they defend horrors like partial birth abortion. The image of a simple, humble Holy Family worshipping The Child who defeated death stands between them and their agenda.

Will the collapse, which is inevitable if things do not turn around, be the legacy of the century in which we went from horse and buggy to the moon?

Next year, the life you vote for might be your own.

John Mallon is contributing editor for Inside the Vatican magazine and a member of The Daily Oklahoman's Opinion Board of Contributors. Reprinted with permission. This article originally appeared in The Daily Oklahoman on 12/17/1999.