Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Difference Between Wisdom & Folly

Praise God! A piece of criticism offers opportunity to make our argument more strongly, and move the ball forward toward the Personhood Strategy...

Kevin, a conservative Catholic blogger (I'll not identify him further, so that I don't discourage others from posting criticism -- the point is to dialogue, not to jump on everybody who criticizes, but rather to answer their points), posted this in response to our "Don't Let the Elections Get You Down" message:

"a full 27% of voters in Colorado (where even many Republicans are pro-choice) voted not just to prohibit all abortions, but also to end embryonic stem cell research, some forms of in vitro fertilization, and those forms of birth control that cause abortions,"

One of the few reasons I could bring myself to vote for it was because I didn't want it to fail by too much. What makes you think our society would respect such a law if passed? Amendment 48 backers overreached and wasted resources that would have been better directed elsewhere, such as swinging a few state senate or house races. Why was the effort led by a 21-year-old woman? However articulate she is, that's folly. Pro-lifers can't just pretend that these largely futile efforts are good for the cause. We need to ask ourselves if we are tempting God by our efforts. We sometimes ask too much from a deeply mistaken society. Had the Supreme Court even ruled on Amendment 48, it could have only further enshrined our wicked laws, and probably created a few new ones. What good is it if you have justice on your side, if you don't have wisdom?
We replied thus:

Kevin,

Thank you for your strongly felt opinion. I'm disappointed that you didn't have better reasons for voting for Am. 48, but I trust you mean that you disagreed with the strategy, not with the goal.

Our society will never start to respect such laws until they are passed. Period. We must try, or we will never achieve anything.

We admire Kristi because she had the courage to propose a principled law when so many, even on our side, reject principle in favor of compromise. But Kristi was hardly alone in leading the Personhood effort. Besides CRTL's full-scale efforts, there were many organizers, and 1,000 petition gatherers who moved the fight forward.

You're seeming to think the pro-life fight will be won by a margin of support in the legislature, or in the courts. That's not so.

Truly, it doesn't matter what the courts do yet, because abortion is already 100% enshrined, and today's court won't change that. We either try other means, or we give up.

Look at our $10,000 Challenge -- even if we'd waited for 2 or 3 more conservative Supreme Court appointments before trying this, it wouldn't have given us victory, because none of the Supreme Court justices there already would have supported this.

That doesn't mean victory is impossible. It means we must use other means to achieve victory, or else accept that victory may be 100 years away.

The courts, and the politicians will acknowledge Personhood if the people urgently shout for it! The judges and the politicians will NEVER take up the call for Personhood unless the people do it first.

That's what we've done!

And that's why moving forward from this point is so important. If they aren't paying attention this year, they will when we increase the margin by 10% or 20%. It's a matter of educating the public. That's how we'll achieve victory.

And, frankly, that's wisdom -- finding the way toward victory when other means have failed, and victory seems impossible.

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