Keyes On Point Again

This week, Dr. Alan Keyes had another on-point column, pointing out the curious inability of the compromised pro-life community to make coherent refutations of the cogent arguments put forward by him, Judie Brown, Brian Rohrbough (and Colorado Right to Life), and many other prominent uncompromised pro-life leaders against both incrementalism and the fatally flawed Partial Birth Abortion ruling.

He also points to an article I'd forgotten about, by Judie Brown of the American Life League.

Both of these columns are better than Janet Folger's WorldNetDaily column from yesterday which minimizes a serious philosophical divide, dismissing it as bickering. It's more than just talk & backtalk -- it's an issue that's very important to resolve, and we'd better do so to be effective. The way we're going isn't working, and we'd better commit to a real strategy, real soon!

Here's the link to Dr. Keyes' "Bad Fruit" : http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070624

And here's a teaser:

Bad fruit
Rational debate of Carhart called for

Alan Keyes
June 24, 2007

I learned with sadness and chagrin that at the recent convention of National Right to Life, the organization's leadership decided to purge the Colorado Chapter because the chapter took to task the pro-life leaders who applauded Justice Kennedy's reasoning in Gonzales v. Carhart — the recent Supreme Court decision on partial birth abortion. (For my analysis of this decision, please see the article "Gardeners of Evil" at RenewAmerica.us.)

Unfortunately, this news was not my first inkling of the internecine conflict the decision brought to light within the ranks of the pro-life movement. Judie Brown has been one of the critics of the decision's wicked entrenchment of the unconstitutional Roe/Casey jurisprudence. When RenewAmerica published her response to those who have taken such criticisms as personal attacks against themselves, one of the organizations coming in for criticism withheld its support from a Christian citizen mobilization effort I am involved with.

Need for rational discussion

I am of course not surprised or dismayed that there should be disagreement among pro-lifers. I have been deeply disappointed, however, that instead of answering the lucid arguments being made by people like Judie Brown and myself, the Gonzales v. Carhart cheering section has chosen petty maneuvers and power plays aimed at damaging or silencing their critics.

This is the standard response of those who lack the ability to defend their position with good logic and clear arguments. We have suffered this kind of response for years from the proponents of abortion, from their claque in the liberal media and their tools in the political arena. But the rational moral strength of our position has placed pro-lifers beyond the temptation to stoop to such tactics — until now.

To read the rest of the article : http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070624

Bob

Keyes' Gardeners of Evil - On PBA Ban

I'd meant to post this a while back, when I first blogged on the subject. This is a small glimmer of the magnificence which was Keyes' in-person remarks at the Colorado Capitol in April. There's a DVD available from Colorado Right to Life (linked) if you're interested in hearing the whole thing.

I'm posting a teaser for the article, which can be found in its entirety at: http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070428

Gardeners of evil

Alan Keyes
April 28, 2007

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart (the case that involved a challenge to the federal law restricting so-called partial birth abortion), I received an email reporting the decision with a copy of the ruling attached.

Unlike many whom the media identify as leaders in the pro-life movement, I felt no inclination to leap for joy at the news that the Court's opinion upheld the constitutionality of the law.In the first place, I have never been convinced that the legislative action in question had much significance for the pro-life cause. I believe it was mostly intended to provide cover for pro-abortion Republican politicians, who could offer their vote for the PBA restriction as a fig leaf to cover the shame of their supposedly pro-life supporters who put partisan politics above their obligations of conscience. In the second place, it seemed unwise to react to the decision before carefully considering the argument that produced it.

Abominable affirmation

Having done so, I cannot join in, or even understand, the approbation which others have expressed for this decision. It is in fact an abominable affirmation of the Court's unconstitutional decisions in Roe and Casey. With grotesquely meticulous care, the man whose pivotal vote preserved so-called abortion rights in the Casey decision (Justice Kennedy) carves out an exception intended to prove and strengthen the rules set forth in Roe and Casey.

As my good friend Judie Brown put it recently (at a Colorado Right To Life dinner in Denver), Kennedy played the part of a skillful gardener, cutting back the evil planted by Roe/Casey in order to strengthen and extend its roots, hoping no doubt to make it harder to overturn in any subsequent ruling. While allowing for a state interest in restricting one brutal way of murdering the nascent child, he makes it clear that this restriction is tolerable under Roe/Casey only because abortionists still have access to other equally brutal modes of killing.

At one point, with what seems like dogged satisfaction, Kennedy describes such an alternative in almost clinical detail, no doubt because he knows that in doing so he implicates all the justices who join his reasoning in explicit support for the right to use this alternative to kill the child, even though it is just as horrendous as the one restricted by the "partial birth" legislation.



To read more of this article, the link is here: http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070428

Bob

Pruning the Abortion Weed

I was first drawn to question what's going on with the Partial Birth Abortion Ban when I saw Dr. Alan Keyes speak (speak, by the way, is understating what he does -- he's an eloquent, rapturous speaker!) at a pro-life event put on by Colorado Right to Life, memorializing the 40th anniversary of the 1st pro-abortion law in the country (signed in Colorado in 1967).

I received my copy of the DVD from that event (ordered through Colorado Right to Life, which is linked to the right of this article) just a few days ago, which prompted me to start this blog. The DVD is great -- has speeches by all the speakers, which were some of the best pro-life messages I'd ever heard. The whole event was really inspirational, and I left determined that I would do more to help the movement. I have a God-given gift for writing, and I'm hoping to use that as my first tool (hence, the blog!).

Keyes had hardly started to talk when he verbally assailed (assaulted -- punctured, spindled, etc.) the Supreme Court for upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban (the federal version -- there are various versions of PBA bans, mostly at the state level, and some are better than others).

Instantly, I had a "say what?" moment. Why would anyone on the pro-life side not want partial birth abortion banned? But at Keyes' speed, it didn't take more than a few seconds for him to allay my questions.

He went on about how the Supreme Court's ruling was evil. How it was really a pro-abortion ruling, which paid homage to Roe v. Wade and all that. He explained in exquisite detail, and it was really eye-opening for me. What hit me hardest was it was so different from what I'd heard for many years from Republicans and recently from national officeholders and even from pro-life leaders! It was like night and day -- someone had the truth, and someone was either mistaken or lying. And, from the depth of information available from Keyes and Colorado Right to Life at this event, it was clear who had the facts on their side.

I don't have time to go on about this right now (I may later), but I want to direct you to Keyes' column on the subject, published just a few days after Colorado Right to Life's "Forty Years in the Wilderness: Coming Back to Life" event.

One of the key points Keyes makes is that these pro-life "regulations" many pro-life groups (and lots of Republicans) love to talk about are really not achieving what they're supposed to. They don't save babies (the PBA Ban, remarkably, does not save one baby's life!), and they actually just attack the abortion industry around the edges. They feed on the "weakest" points of the pro-abortion establishment, not at its heart. And because these regulations eat away only at the edges, they inadvertantly strengthen the "weed" of abortion because they avoid harming the root, which they leave intact and in place.

But even so, this strategy of incrementalist regulation misses the whole point. I play games, and in many role playing games they have "critical hits" -- if you make just the right roll, or score, then something devastating happens to your enemy. And the abortion industry is like a dragon -- it's fearsome, awesome, kills lots of people, and seems impossible to stop. But every dragon has a key vulnerability. That key point -- that "critical hit" waiting to happen -- is Personhood.

Like I said, I'll get to that later, once I can formulate my thoughts. But pro-lifers have to concentrate on establishing Personhood for persons of ALL ages, big, little, strong or frail.

Here's Keyes' take on it:

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070428

And please bookmark this site, if you care about the fight for life for all. Come back and see as this develops.

Thanks!

Bob Kyffin