Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Prepare for a world after Roe v. Wade

Patrick Deneen asks a good question:
Has any "pro-life" Republican President been preparing the ground for a post-Roe future, much less seeking to repair the culture of our Roe-governed present?

...the jury is still out (as it were) whether any candidate is prepared to use the bully pulpit and educative role of the Presidency to move the polity away from our half-century of libertarian self-indulgence and to urge self-governance in all its forms. Such admonishment will have to encompass not only "social" issues but "economic" issues as well, since the two are ultimately deeply and intimately connected.

Deneen thinks too many people trust in constitutional law to solve the problem of abortion. In practice this means waiting for one Supreme Court decision to do the hard work we should be doing right now.

At the same time, I don't know how people would respond to a president paternally lecturing Americans about how to put the country back on track without the aid of the federal government. Such a vision seems like it's from the Eisenhower era.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember a guest from "Life Principles" on ewtn speaking about the 4 levels of happiness.
How abortion will continue even if it were overturned due to living on our more selfish levels of "happiness"