Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-27-22

Certain events in my life have caused me to dread headlines – not every day; and for years as a newspaperman it was my business to write headlines – but we all have been conditioned to expect surprises. Weather, wars, assassinations, disasters. I was just beginning a new job in San Diego, living amidst boxes in my new home, when the TV showed the breaking news of what we now call 9-11.

That I knew that Manhattan neighborhood well, and had been to the top of the Towers, added but little to the shock. Even today, almost every time I turn on the TV news in the morning, I wonder whether a similar headline will confront me.

In a similar way, and not only as a student of history, there are events that I would happily anticipate as headlines – hopes and dreams that might be fulfilled some day. Usually these thoughts are futile. But sometimes they happen: dreams do come true.

I was astonished, for instance, that “the Wall fell,” and Communist governments not only collapsed across Europe – one after the other, like dominoes – but that hardly a drop of blood was shed! Oh, maybe someone hurt themselves as the Berlin Wall was razed; and excepting the Romanian thug Nicolae Ceauşescu and his immediate family there were no fatalities, either by regimes’ defenses or by freedom fighters. (Strangely, in college I briefly had dated the daughter of the government minister who fleetingly tried to assume power in the dictator’s wake.)

My point is that a headline, “Communist Governments Overthrown, Bloodlessly; Democracy and Capitalism Come to Europe,” was one I never expected.

A similar headline – “Roe vs Wade Overturned and Invalidated by Supreme Court” – is one I dreamed of for half a century, and simply never believed would happen. Indeed as with the subsequent “Casey” ruling, I was certain that America would continue down (!) the path of disrespecting and dismantling our cultural heritage. Declining. What I have called “The Culture of Death.”

My friends know that in the days of “Roe,” those almost nihilistic times, I was untroubled by the idea of abortion… unpersuaded by opposing arguments… and approving of its legalization. Those views and actions are never merely abstract in debates and events; when you choose sides in such matters you become a complicit enabler. There are few things from which I have reformed that have caused such bitter tears and prayers for forgiveness. So I became an activist on the “pro-life” side.

… and therefore I was, frankly, astonished to learn that Roe vs Wade has been overturned. And without violence or bloodshed (except, that is, for the 63-million babies that have been killed since the Court decided it).

Growing from my concern and activism, in 2005 I managed to secure a magazine interview with Norma McCorvey, the “anonymous” Jane Roe (a female “John Doe”) of the landmark case. She was famously reclusive and granted few interviews. Her own baby (of the case’s focus) in fact never was aborted, but was given for adoption. After her “win,” she worked in abortion clinics… was disgusted by what she witnessed… became a Christian… and then worked to counsel other women.

That interview will soon appear in a national magazine, and I will share it here, too, in coming weeks.

But let us not celebrate too soon or too enthusiastically. Just as Communist governments fell, but Communism lives on – in other governments; in academia; in the media; in “progressive” politics – so abortion will continue. Sobering facts to realize and remember:

• Overturning Roe and Casey does not end abortion in the United States. It merely lets states accept or reject the practice. Some do, some don’t; more will, more won’t. Just as drug laws are local, so will legal abortions be available here and there. I have been to “dry” counties and towns in Kansas and even California – where alcohol is outlawed – but people drive a little bit; and they will for abortions too. Vacation packages might be designed around abortions.
• Abortifacients will abound; “morning after” drugs probably will become more common than weed; and even in proscribed locales, “procedures” likely will become as common as Botox treatments. They always were, of course: what has really changed in our lifetimes is this: what people once whispered about, many people these days brag about. Savage, but true.
• Is the Court’s decision, therefore, futile? No. Societies define themselves by laws, art, and literature. So the “overturn” might in a larger sense be a codification of our nation’s essential standards. IF it stands, or holds. No sure thing.
• So the “fights” will continue, but in state capitals, in town councils, in local elections. That is the point of the Court’s reversal: the Framers meant that some matters (not only concepts and technologies they could not anticipate) are best decided in communities. Of, by, and for communities. We might not be perfectly united, but we are states.

There is another point that might not be appreciated going forward… but it is a lesson in democracy. For all the tumult and shouting about guns and abortions, and about election frauds and discredited stories about Russian collusion, “impossible” dreams do come true. Communist dictatorships did collapse. The guarantee of self-defense according to the Second Amendment finally seems secure. And contrary to social drift in America, and standards in other countries (our abortion policies are generally more permissive than dozens of other countries’ around the world)… we are in fact reading headlines that bring hope on the issue of infanticide.

Other battles remain to confront us: crime; abuse; drugs; the breakdown of the family; education reform… but we can sense redemption from pessimism!

And perhaps the most unlikely surprise among startling news is the “vessel” who successfully carried water on these issues. The Bible has many examples of unlikely or unknown or untested people who God used to exercise His will. In a future generation, Americans will read in history books, not only newspapers, the headline: “Orange Man Good.”

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Music Video Click: Unplanned

9-12-16

Anniversaries are convenient things to help us remember and commemorate what we ought. The 15th anniversary (integers are cooperative) of the 9-11 attacks will evoke appropriate tears, and possibly inspire people to actions of some sorts. This week – and I hope not lost in the political rhubarbs and 9-11 remembrances – we lost another iconic American Tower, so to speak.

Phyllis Schlafly has died.

Of course there will be people in 2016 who don’t know her name, but many do; and virtually every American has been affected by her work, her dedication, her crusades, the force of her personality. For more than half a century, this elegant bulldog of a lady changed politics and public policy in America. She inspired millions; she caused laws and regulations to be enacted, and – doing what even King Canute of legend could not – she withheld many waves of political “change,” for instance almost single-handedly preventing the requisite number of states to make the Equal Rights Amendment part of the Constitution.

I was an impressionable teenager in 1964, persuadable by both sides in that momentous presidential election. Until, that is, I read two books: Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of Conservative, after which I became one of “Barry’s Boys; and Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice, Not an Echo, a history of American politics and a tocsin about the Current Crisis. Hers was an informed, logical blueprint: appreciating the genius of the American Experiment; learning the nature of threats to the Republic; and the essential importance of activism.

Nothing, for me, was the same after that. Advocacy in high school; engagement in college (in Washington DC during the Vietnam era); community work in local politics; work as a newspaper columnist and political cartoonist. Phyllis taught me, and uncountable others, what we could do and should do if we want to rescue, redeem, and restore traditional and vital American principles.

She did this through the most minute efforts, the old-fashioned neighborhood work of persuading neighbors, attending meetings, writing to officials. And, in “major” ways, she wrote almost two dozen books, founded the advocacy group Eagle Forum, established Stop ERA, which battled the radical-feminist attempt to add an intrusive amendment to the Constitution – despite massive push-backs and abuse, her efforts stopped the states’ passages of the Act at 35 when 37 were necessary. Eventually, thanks to Phyllis, five states even rescinded their approval. She championed the Defense of Marriage Act, and many other pro-life and pro-family initiatives.

President Reagan appointed Phyllis to commissions in honor of her ability and accomplishments (by the way, she was a practicing lawyer, and received a Masters degree in Government from Harvard) (and not by the way, she was also a mother of six children). In his diaries there are notes of his breathless admiration of her work and dedication. I remember a column by Bob Novak, written during Platform deliberations at the 2004 – usually dry sessions, devoid at attention – when he encountered Phyllis Schlafly, alone in a vast side-room. The 80-year-old bulldog was going through drafts line by line, determined as always to find devils in details, to keep politicians’ feet to the fire.

All politicians. All their feet. All the fires.

Obviously, she was a heroine to me. I followed he through her long-running newsletter. Through her weekly newspaper column. Through the five-day-a-week radio commentaries. Seeing her on C-SPAN, making speeches, testifying before Congress. I once interviewed her, by phone, for a magazine I edited, the late lamented Rare Jewel, published by Tim Ewing.

But I never met her until we both attended a conference conducted by Dr D James Kennedy. And it was like this: I walked into the hotel’s breakfast room, and there sat Phyllis, alone. We both were earlier than our appointed breakfast-mates.. There she was, in person, and I suddenly realized her resemblance to Margaret Thatcher. Without the overbite. With preternaturally and, seemingly, permanently coiffed hair. Warm smile and steely eyes. Yes – Phyllis was American politics’ “Iron Lady”: how she would have done if we had a parliamentary system and she stood at Question Time! Her last book, by the way, was the recent Conservative Case for Trump.

I nervously introduced myself, and explained that I merely wanted to tell her what a difference she made in my life, and continued to; and how I could attest to what I hoped she knew, that there were many, many committed warriors like me. Like her, if we could manage.

With genuine humility she thanked me but then asked what I did, where I worked, how things were going, what was next… and suggesting even moiré ways I could be engaged. Amazing. A general with the passion of a recruit, and the enthusiasm of a common foot-soldier.

I have not yet mentioned what motivated Phyllis Schlafly. A love of America, certainly. But she was a committed Christian… and she willingly admitted – insisted – that her faith informed her patriotism. Christianity was the foundation of her concerns. The essential urgency she continuously evinced was of a kind with an evangelist’s zeal.

She was the person who put “Christian” in the Christian Right, and “Right” in the lexicon of Christian patriots. As the culture rapidly grew more and more secular, she was the girl with her thumb in the dike, fighting the good fighting at same time as alerting the rest of us to the tides of opposition. Amazing.

To the extent the crisis in our culture has involved secularism in all spheres, she said to me in my magazine interview: “I think the secularists have mounted a force on every front. You see this in the attack on the Pledge of Allegiance, the attack on the Ten Commandments, the attack on any public acknowledgment of God.

“What they want to do is treat Christians like smokers. ‘You can do it in the privacy of your own home, maybe down a dark alley, in a little corner somewhere, but not out where anyone can see you.’ … We have a big battle in the political sphere, in the cultural sphere, and the spiritual sphere.”

And who responds to battles? Soldiers. We have lost a mighty soldier in our society’s wars. But Phyllis Schlafly was a von Clausewitz, a Sun Tzu, a Saint Paul: equipping us for the tough work ahead. With the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in her other, Iron Lady Schlafly, dignified yet ferocious, showed us the way. We should all be, not followers, but actual leaders in her fashion.

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Click: Mozart’s Lacrimosa