Life

On January 14th of this year time Magazine ran a headline: 40 Years Ago Abortion Rights Activists Won an Epic Victory with Roe v. Wade: They've been losing ever since.
The article follows the Red River Women's Clinic in North Dakota, the last clinic in a state that is one of two that is trying to rid themselves of all clinics, and one of four where only one clinic is still open. According to the Time article, regulations are tightly restricting the clinics, and thus women's access to an abortion. The regulations are hard to fight and referendum, such as one that ordered the hallways be 5 feet wide, which those who do not work at the clinics do not realize the implications on the construction and shut down time, thus only pro-lifers vote for the regulations.
The article also states that the young are not as interested in fighting for what they think are their rights as the older generation is. To gain more steam, they have renamed their movement the Reproductive Justice Movement. To paraphrase their views: Pro-choicers say let us make abortion more accessible, pro-lifers say lets make it less accessible, while the new movement will say lets do away with unplanned pregnancies in the first place.
Also, lawmakers such as Rand Paul are working desperately for legislation in congress demanding the right to life for unborn children.
Recently there was the Gosnell case, a case in which an abortion doctor was found guilty of the murder of babies on whom abortion attempts had failed. The clinic in which the murders were committed was unlicensed, Gosnell claiming he was meeting a necessary need of the women who were unable to afford or have easy access to abortions, thus causing them to seek back ally ones, one of which, at least, went wrong with the mother dying. Many have said that the restriction of abortion will lead to the return of the pre-Roe days in which many women died of malpractice abortions.
Their argument assumes that a woman has a right to an abortion, which assumes that the fetus is not a child. It is a child, there is no argument, the constitution demands that children, as persons, can not be deprived of life without due process. While everyone feels a great deal of empathy for those women who were victims of rape, if it is murder in one instance it is also one in another. The Reproductive Justice Movement is unfortunately also falling short of the demands that a free and just society protect life.

Andrew C. Abbott

It Can Be Done

Cedar Lake Indiana – The Systems of Economics in countries change constantly.

In the 1930s if a man with a bar of gold in his pocket and a man with a bottle of liquor under his arm walked down the street together, the one with the liquor was a criminal and the one with the bar of gold was a good citizen.

In the 1970s if a man with a bar of gold in his pocket and a man with a bottle of liquor under his arm walked down the street together, the one with the gold was a criminal and the one with the bottle of liquor was a good citizen.

At one time one thing may be outlawed, at another time something else. In Europe, in some countries it is against the law to name your child Smelly Head, in America it is against the law to sell raw milk to you neighbors.

Today anyone arguing seriously for legalization polygamy would be laughed at, while “gay rights” is on the march. At one time there was fear that polygamy, through the push of activists, might become a legal institution. That is gone now, the battle is over.

Stopping the political trains that are rolling onward seems impossible. So did something like the United Nations at one time. We were once told man would never get off the ground in “flying machines.”

Ending things like the Federal Reserve can happen if men and women are willing to fight for it. Change really can happen, it has in the past. We are all the products of some revolution.

Monoliths can be brought down. It happens slowly, and that is how all large revolutions happen, through slow work by dedicated minorities.

Say we want change will do us no good unless we know what change we want. Progress is not useful unless we know what we are progressing towards. And the reformation cannot only be in government.

Government is the last symptom to change once the disease permeates the rest of the national body. People, communities must be reached with the Gospel of Christ, which is a part of the Great Commission. All things brought under subjection to Him.

 

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott

 

 

The Forgotten Man

Cedar Lake, Indiana – Quite often A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall do for D. D is the forgotten man.

We often forget that when we take from Peter to give to Paul, Paul suffers. In France the Supreme Court struck down the attempt to take 75% of the rich’s income through taxing. We may forget that the “1%” are still humans.

Not all men are equal in what they get out of life, but they are also unequal in what they put into it. In the book The Richest Man in Babylon, one chapter mentions that the men who the richest man in the city is attempting to teach how grow their wealth, do nothing, but wish that he would divide his success with them. The rich man had begun in their shoes, but through hard work had succeeded.

Everyone wants to help the poor people who have nothing, but The Forgotten Man is the one who must have some of his money taken from him to give to the others. While there are those that truly cannot prosper because of genuine circumstances that make it difficult for whatever reasons, there are also freeloaders on the system.

When John Smith, arrived in Jamestown in 1607 made a rule “He that does not work does not eat.” There had been those that had been building houses and growing food, while the others lived off of their sweat, thinking they were too good. When John Smith instituted his new rule they suddenly felt motivated to work.

The Forgotten Man is the man that often pays the burden for lazy men. It is easy to say that the poor man should be given a dollar by the millionaire, yet we forget that wage laborer that works for the millionaire loses the dollar; The Forgotten Man.

When a man works he should be rewarded for that. We believe in high grades for students who work hard, and low ones for those that do nothing. There is equal opportunity, but not equal outcome. The American Dream is that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish things. But if we take the dollar from the hand of The Forgotten Man, he cannot invest it, which may have allowed him to build a business, and thus hire the poor beggar, who we all feel so badly for.

There are ways to help the beggar, especially if he is handicapped, but not by forcefully taking the money from the millionaire. And if we still want to take the dollar from the millionaire, let us not forget The Forgotten Man.

 

Andrew C. Abbott

The Long and Holy War: part 3

In 1946 World War II was over. After many years of bitter struggle, Europe lay in ashes. All over the vast countryside bodies lay rotting in the steaming sun. London has been bombed into rubble. Tanks lay strewn about on beaches, useless black shells, lying as monuments to a war that has claimed millions of men. Craters and fox holes dotted hillsides and bluffs, weapons lay strewn about after a war that had spanned, in some way or another, from preparation to fighting, six continents, had finally ended.

The social atmosphere of the world was tense; the Cold War was already beginning before the last of the soldiers had returned home. With the end of the Second World War, the last gasps of European Empire were fading away. As the years rolled on, nations began to give up their territories and bring their men home.

The empire phase of history was over for the moment. However, the Holy War continued. In 2001 the world was made strikingly aware of the fact that the problems were still there when 19 hijackers took control of four planes and slammed them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Immediately President George Bush declared a global war on terrorism.

It is still going on. But what has the end of all of this been? Just recently there was the bombing in Boston, which, we are told, was done by Islamic Militants. But why, is the question that must be asked, why are two world, East and West, so antithetical to each other? Although only about seven percent of Muslims, as of 2005, consider themselves Radical, all those who are not intending to blow up Americans still have an Islamic mindset. But what is the outcome of the Islamic ideal?

The countries are poor and dirty, with high mortality rates in many places and unemployment rates at staggering levels. Women are treated badly, as evidenced strikingly in places like Egypt. They have little freedom, and are essentially property, while men can have multiple wives.

Billions of dollars has been poured into these countries for their oil, but it has not changed the life of the people of the streets of Islamabad. They are still poor. This is not because of any racial or ethnic grouping.

Men such as Alhazen, a Muslim man who lived in Egypt about a thousand years ago, were quite brilliant, Alhazen did studies in optics, which were never put to use by the nations and cultures there because of the lack of initiative.

Islam must take because often it cannot make. It needed Egypt, so it took it. The nations it took it often took to survive because of either overcrowding or famine. The sad truth of their societies is that they cannot exist indefinitely because of the lack of productivity. 

But for all of that failure Islam has made its way into the West. A million Muslims live in London alone, giving it the nickname Londinistan. The world, according to Wikipedia, is 23 percent Islamic.

On the other hand the Western World has prospered. From the time of Rome the west has done better. For the most part hygiene was looked upon as more useful and necessary, productivity was both encouraged and engaged in.

New instruments were made for navigation, printing presses were used for ideas, and optics, once discovered, were used.

Trade flourished and cities like Vienna were able to grow rich because of their hard work. Nations built massive amounts of wealth and prosperity through hard work and productivity.  There are hardworking Muslims, and there are lazy Westerners, however, the Western ideals, built on Christianity, of “Go to the ant though sluggard, consider her ways and be wise” have always triumphed over their rivals, even when those rivals looked as if they would destroy them.

The Long and Holy War will continue, it must, because two cultures cannot last upon the earth is eternal peace. It will not always be a war of guns, but it will always be a war of ideas. How long into the future the Islamic ideal will survive we cannot tell, but we can say with certainty that either it, or the gates of Hell, will ever prevail against true Christianity.

Through His Strength We Will Conquer,

Andrew C. Abbott