Carry a bigger stick:
Carry the truth.

STRAYS
Guest Commentary & Current Issues
Guest Commentary may or may not reflect the views of Foamy Dog Magazine.
Presented for your consideration.

The Lost Generation: 31 Years of Roe v. Wade
by Hans Zeiger

In a sad sort of way, I am blessed to have survived the year 1985. That was the year I was born, and the year that 1.6 million of my fellow American citizens were murdered in abortion clinics.

1985 was the year that more abortions were performed than in any other year before or since except 1988 and 1990. Numbed by the widespread cultural acceptance of abortion, I lack the emotional regrets that old soldiers have when they reflect on their friends lost in battle. But the year I was born, abortion claimed more of my peers than all of the deaths in all of America's wars combined.

In the 31 years since January 22, 1973, abortion has become one of the most common surgical procedures performed, and it is done in the safety and serenity of modern, plush clinics operated by exceptionally profitable non-profits like Planned Parenthood. Since Roe v. Wade, government social service agencies have taken advantage of the legality of abortion to add it to the list of public services provided to low-income citizens. Today, three of ten abortions are taxpayer-funded. Since 1973, one in four pre-born children have been numbered among the victims of the war against life.

If we accept the obvious, the most recent World Almanac should have listed the leading cause of death as "abortion." I once heard someone reflect on the terrible, hypothetical concept that certain great men and women of America's past had never been born. Flip through a history book and begin crossing out the names of the presidents, the pioneers, the inventors, the writers, the scientists. Spread black ink over the photographs and paintings and names of Washington and Jefferson, of Edison and Ford, of Lincoln and Martin Luther King.

We have witnessed a purge of horrific proportions within the past couple of generations, and abortion's count in America alone is around 43 million. But I don't suppose that young Americans, born in the past thirty years, have taken much time to reflect on the idea that a great number of their generation has already departed from this world. 43 million souls is quite a significant number. But since they aren't really souls, as we're told, it doesn't matter. They are fetuses; they are tissues; they are inconveniences. We are better without them, say their killers.

Even if we accept the humanitarian justifications of the burgeoning abortion industry, that my late peers were mere fetuses that lacked any type of spiritual dimension, there is no reasonable person who doubts that they were once living human beings. The great national debate no longer questions the definition of life, it questions whether there is any value in life at all.

Abortion doctors and pro-choice activists know quite intimately the fact that pre-born children are alive from conception. The contention of the pro-abortion movement is that life has no intrinsic value, and if possible, we ought to avoid it. Indeed, if the fetuses butchered around me in 1985 were simple organisms taken mercifully from this world to spare them from the hardships of life, and to make the burden less stressful for society, we owe our prosperity and our low poverty levels to the unborn generation.

But what if my missing contemporaries were souls created by and in the image of an Almighty God?

I reflected on this question when I protested at the grand opening of a Planned Parenthood teen clinic in my hometown a few weeks ago before returning to college for the new semester. I watched as young people drove up to the clinic and filled the parking lot to capacity. I have seen that the abortion industry has done the necessary work to maintain itself for yet another generation.

But can America survive?

Can America continue to exist through the dilation and evacuation procedure during which a crushing instrument is inserted into a mother's uterus and pieces are pulled off of the child and assembled on a sterile, white table to make sure they all came out? Can America continue to endure the ammonite burning of children by saline amniotic infusion that concludes in a hopeless struggle against the severe pain of arsoned lungs and skin?

Today, 43 million ghosts of infanticide walk the fields and roads and city streets of America. Victims of murder, their invisible presence moves hauntingly, silently through our nation. The abject condemnation of life, legalized and advertised since 1973, thrives and grows in every state. But the innocent ghosts of infanticide cannot speak for themselves. We must do all we can to speak for them.

How do we speak for the dead? We join the pro-life movement as Americans joined the abolitionist movement of the 1850s. We speak and we write, we rally and we minister, we encourage and we contribute, we pray, until every life in every place of America is legally - and culturally - protected.

The Life War has gone on for too long. For the 43 million dead, we must carry on the fight.

Hans Zeiger is president of the Scout Honor Coalition, he writes a weekly column, and he is a student at Hillsdale College. Contact: hazeiger@hillsdale.edu

Reply to these articles in the Rant Forum!

Visit The Junkyard for Rantware!

The ACLU is Going Down,
and Taking a Few of Us With it.
By Justin Darr

For years the American Civil Liberties Union has pushed its agenda as to what the Constitution "really says," and what freedom "really means" through judicial extortion. In 1978, the Supreme Court exempted the ACLU from the "ambulance chasing" prohibitions that apply to nearly every other lawyer in the country. Over the years this has enabled the ACLU's legions of pro bono attorneys to specifically target various organizations they feel are vulnerable to their lawsuits, dredge the ranks of the "offended" until they can find someone who will agree to let the ACLU stick their name at the top of a case, and then attempt to force a group's acquiesce to their demands by threatening a costly legal case they usually cannot afford. Many who have dared to stand up against the ACLU might have won the battle in the court room, but lost the war as their organizations were driven into bankruptcy under crushing legal bills.

However, in the last few years the tide has started to turn. Alternate civil liberties groups, such as The American Center for Law and Justice, conservative radio commentators, and even some in the media, have drawn attention to the ACLU's pattern of abuses, fanatic beliefs and outright hypocrisy. For the first time the ACLU is faced with legitimate public outcry over their tactics and slowly those who once would quietly give up their freedoms have been instilled with the will (and pro bono legal support) to fight. In addition, despite the efforts of obstructionist liberals in Congress, the court system is being given a much needed infusion of new judges who recognize that their interpretation of the Constitution should in some fashion be similar to those who wrote it. The ACLU understands its days of forcing Christianity, traditional values, and freedoms out of American public life are numbered.

Out of a sense of desperation and frustration toward this new threat, the ACLU has recently begun to change the target of their court cases to include the leaders of public groups and the private individuals who are leading the charge against them.

The best known case involves popular talk show host Sean Hannity. While interviewing volunteers of the Minuteman Project last April in Arizona, Hannity inadvertently crossed the US/Mexico border for a few minutes then immediately returned. It was a simple mistake and easily understood in light of the pathetic security of our borders. However the ACLU, which led the good fight by trying to obstruct the Minutemen and goad them into conflicts while enabling the rampant invasion of illegals into our nation, decided this was an offense that could not be tolerated. Apparently upset at Hannity's drawing interest to the good work of the Minutemen, Arizona State Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, under the auspices of the ACLU, demanded Hannity's arrest.

It is quite obvious that Sinema and the ACLU were not motivated out of a sense of respect for immigration law or fairness, but out of personal hatred toward Sean Hannity. The ACLU does not like what Hannity has to say, so what better way to silence him than by having him embarrassed and thrown in jail. But this is a larger issue than just the ACLU trying to embarrass Hannity. It is indicative of a terrifying new trend from the ACLU where they are attempting to hold individual citizens legally liable for doing nothing more than thinking they are wrong. With large organizations starting to resist them, the ACLU must now found a new defenseless target unable to afford to fight them: private citizens.

There are several other cases in recent weeks which further illustrate this trend. In Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, the ACLU has called for the arrest of school teachers and administrators because the ACLU does not feel they adequately exorcised all Judeo-Christian influences from their classrooms and cafeterias.

In San Diego the ACLU is suing five local personalities, including Rush Limbaugh sub Roger Hedgecock, because they do not like the wording they have chosen to represent the "Arguments For" section of a local ballot initiative to save the Mt. Soledad Cross. Who cares about freedom of speech and the right to voice your political opinions, the ACLU does not agree with it so it must be Constitutional to censor it. What is next? Arresting talk show hosts?

In the Keystone School District in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, even after the school board caved into the demands of the Pittsburgh ACLU, the ACLU is still suing the district because they felt that some in the community still "hoped" that there would be a prayer offered at the high school graduation. Suing a school district because some people in the community, who have no connection to the actual school district, "hope" something happens? Just what does that mean? Last time I checked "hoping" was still Constitutional. This case is nothing short of the ACLU trying to punish rank and file tax payers for not falling into line with its edicts. Just what will it take for the ACLU to feel adequately comfortable with the average citizen of Clarion County's lack of hope at ever opposing the dictates of the ACLU? Will it be the ACLU individually suing every conservative American until we finally agree to live out our lives as Godless, Socialist drones, or would it just be Brown Shirts and Thought Police?

The ACLU is out of control. They can no longer even pretending to support freedom, the Constitution and Bill of Rights. What once may have been an organization dedicated to high ideals has now degenerated into a literal threat to our liberty. They are going beyond just trying to prosecute every Boy Scout troop and are now moving on to either sue people just like you and me, or actually have us arrested and subjected to criminal prosecution. How ironic it is that a group who thinks terrorists should not be in prison feels that those who disagree with them should. Sounds a little like the ACLU is no longer endorsing civil liberties but political prisoners.

© 2005 Justin Darr justindarr@juno.com
http://justindarr.tripod.com