R.I.P. Dr. Bernard N. Nathanson M.D. July 31, 1926 – February 21, 2011

Bernard Nathanson was a true hero for our times, who stood up for what he belived, even at cost, and had the courage to change his mind when he discovered he was wrong.

Father Raymond de Souza of the National Post has an excellent summary of his life.

In 1968 he cofounded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (now called the National Abortion Rights Action League), and became a leading campaigner for the unlimited abortion licence in New York and across America. When New York repealed its abortion laws in 1970, he became director of the world's largest abortion clinic. By his own estimate he was responsible for some 75,000 abortions over the next decade, performing 5,000 of them himself. During that period he personally aborted his own child, after impregnating his mistress.

But by 1979, convinced by ultrasound technology that abortion was the destruction of an innocent human life, he stopped doing abortions and became a pro-life activist.

His first book, Aborting America, revealed the advocacy tactics of the abortion industry. The claim he often made that 10,000 women died each year from illegal abortions was entirely fabricated, the true number being around 250. The other effective tactic was make abortion a religious issue, rather than civil rights one.
"We systematically vilified the Catholic Church and its 'socially backward ideas' and picked on the Catholic hierarchy as the villain in opposing abortion. This theme was played endlessly," he wrote. Given that the United States had just come out of the civil rights movement -- led by Christian clergyman -- it was a considerable achievement to persuade America that unlimited abortion should be allowed in part because Catholic doctrine was against it.


In 1985 Nathanson produced the film The Silent Scream, an ultrasound image of an actual abortion. Bringing the reality of abortion to the light caused an enormous controversy, as proponents of the abortion licence had to confront what a child being destroyed in the womb looked like. For the pro-life movement it was a major milestone, as it brought new energy to the cause when many were eager to claim that abortion was a settled issue.




SNIP

In 1996, he was baptized into the same Catholic Church that he had once devoted his prodigious talents to demonizing. When asked why he chose to become Catholic, he said that no religion emphasized the possibility of forgiveness as he found it in the Catholic Church.

"I felt the burden of sin growing heavier and more insistent," he wrote. "I have such heavy moral baggage to drag into the next world that failing to believe would condemn me to an eternity perhaps more terrifying than anything Dante envisioned."

At the threshold of eternity, one trusts that now Bernard Nathanson sees not the terrifying vision of the damned, but rather, as Dante concludes the Inferno, the "Love that moves the sun and the other stars."

Read the whole obituary

Also Dr. Nathanson’s CONFESSION OF AN EX-ABORTIONIST

Grant him Eternal Rest, Oh Lord, and let Your perpetual Light shine upon him.


All Abortion posts

Cause Not Harm
Criss Cross: Democrats Republicans and Abortion
The Least of These
Roe v Wade 2009 - When Oh Lord When


Crisis Pregnancy Resources

Constantine the Great

From the History Teachers at Music for History Lovers


Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus was born on February 22nd possibly in 272, a capable Emperor though a far from a model human being. Famous for his victory at Milvian Badge after a vision of a cross predicting “in this sign you shall conquer”. He issued the Edict of Milan decreeing tolerance of Christians and Pagans alike thus ending the horrific Diocletian persecutions of Christianity. However Paganism remained the official religion until the last part of 4th century and even then a statue of the a Roman Goddess graced the Roman Senate for years. He renamed the city of Byzantium as Constantinople and make it the capitol of the Eastern part of the Empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea which rejected Arianism after which he supported the Arian party and near his death he was baptized by an Arian bishop.


Constantine is blamed by someone or other for every thing wrong or perceived to be wrong from 50 AD to 500 AD, a feat he could only have accomplished with a Star Trek type transporter/time machine.

I WANT ONE!.

Never Again and Again and Again

Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.

In the the February 1, 2011 issue of Policy Review, David Rieff looks at The Persistence of Genocide, “Never Again,” again and again and asks an unaskable question. Is it even possible to prevent future genocides?


. . Bluntly put, an undeniable gulf exists between the frequency with which the phrase [never again] is used — above all on days of remembrance most commonly marking the Shoah, but now, increasingly, other great crimes against humanity — and the reality, which is that 65 years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, “never again” has proved to be nothing more than a promise on which no state has ever been willing to deliver. When, last May, the writer Elie Wiesel, himself a former prisoner in Buchenwald, accompanied President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel to the site of the camp, he said that he had always imagined that he would return some day and tell his father’s ghost that the world had learned from the Holocaust and that it had become a “sacred duty” for people everywhere to prevent it from recurring. But, Wiesel continued, had the world actually learned anything, “there would be no Cambodia, and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”

Wiesel was right: The world has learned very little. But this has not stopped it from pontificating much. The Obama administration’s National Security Strategy Paper, issued in May 2010, exemplifies this tendency. It asserts confidently that “The United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the international community are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass atrocities and genocide.” And yet again, we are treated to the promise, “never again.” “In the event that prevention fails,” the report states, “the United States will work both multilaterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, and — in certain instances — military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”

Of course, this is not strategy, but a promise that, decade in and decade out, has proved to be empty. For if one were to evaluate these commitments by the results they have produced so far, one would have to say that all this “proactive engagement” and “diplomatic, financial, and humanitarian mobilization” has not accomplished very much. No one should be surprised by this. The U.S. is fighting two wars and still coping (though it has fallen from the headlines) with the floods in Pakistan, whose effects will be felt for many years in a country where America’s security interests and humanitarian relief efforts are inseparable. At the same time, the crisis over Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons capability is approaching its culmination. Add to this the fact that the American economy is in shambles, and you do not exactly have a recipe for engagement. The stark fact is that “never again” has never been a political priority for either the United States or the so-called international community . . . . Nor, despite all the bluff talk about moral imperatives backed by international resolve, is there any evidence that it is becoming one.

Read the entire article

HT: Arts and Letters Daily


Analysis.

There is trend to call for handling International Law problems with what can be described as a 911 mentality (phone number - not date.)

If there is a problem in a town some one calls the 911 and a policeman is sent, if he can’t handle it he calls for support, if the support can’t handle it perhaps a SWAT team or whatever. AFTER it is over the courts sort it out. The decisions to deploy the first policeman and the reinforcements based on nominal information.

Contrary wise, if there is an international situation that calls for military force, presumable and quite often there is considerable discovery discussion and calculation as to the practical and moral implications of the intervention BEFORE deployment, even if it held behind closed doors. Hopefully the tenets of the International Law Just War Doctrine were consulted.

More and more, there is a call for international problems to be handled on a 911 basis. In this case, the first preliminary reports of a genocide cause troops to deploy. In Rwanda this would have saved mnany lives. But it would be awfully easy for ordinary street riots or civil unrest to be inadvertently or tactically elevated to “incipient Genocide” and force deployed and used only to find out it wasn‘t justified. In a police 911 situation force is deployed in the confidence that the police can deal with any opposition, but applied to the international community it would mean a policy of going to war before asking if the war can be won.

I think there are things that can be done prevent Genocide and move toward it's elimnation, but making a promise of "Never Again" with no intent or willingness to enforce it is useless.

My Genocide Topic

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Author David Rieff is a New York-based writer and policy analyst who has written extensively about humanitarian aid and human rights. He is the author of eight books, including A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis and At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention, and is currently writing a book on the global food crisis
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Happy President's Day

Whether we love him or hate him, whether he is dumb or smart, good or bad, the President of the United States has a tough job - in fact there is only one job that is tougher.

Black History Month - Influential Black Americans

Rock the Facts brings us another in their series on influential black conservatives.



J. C. Watts ia a Bsptist Minister, former football quarter back, four term Congressman, and now a bussiness man. When he was in Congress he was an effective leader and a voice of commonsense. Here he asks a question tht should be asked more often.



Lets not forget the important stuff


Orange Bowl January 1, 1981 -- University of Oklahoma vs. Florida State

The Cruel War is Raging

I first heard this song by Peter Paul and Mary when I was in high school, I wasn’t even sure who recorded it, in 1968 this struck a responsive note. I thought it was missing a verse.



Like many old folk songs there are many versions.The story sounded like a Civil War song, however The Contemplator at Contemplations from the Marianas Trench has two different American versions dating from the Revolutionary War

I made my decision,
I will join up too,
Oh Johnny, dear Johnny,
I'll soon be with you.

And

Oh why did the army
Take you from my side,
To go into battle,
Away from your bride.

Also Taylor's Traditional Tunebook has the Peter Paul and Mary version listed as English (no date) but adds an additional verse:

They marched into battle, she never left his side
'Til a bullet shell struck her and love was denied
A bullet shell struck her, tears came to Johnny's eyes
As he knelt down beside her, she silently died.

Black History Month - Influential Black Americans

Rock the Facts brings us another in their series on influential black conservatives.



Walter E Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. I have only read a few items of his from following links and hearing him occasionally on the radio. He has talent for explaining things in a clear and convincing manner. As in this discusson of basic economics.

Black History Month - Influential Black Americans.

A great series from Rock the Facts.







Dr. Thomas Sowell is an economist of note, his academic writings are a major contribution to that field but also are readable by mere mortals. They are a complexly different style than his better known and more entertaining/annoying polemical writings.






Recommended reading:
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
A fantastic study. He asks the question why do same people seem to line up on the same side of issues when there is no apparent connection between the issues. His explanation nails it on the head. You can see his explanations at work just watching politics. I found made it easier to see people I disagree with as acting in good faith, a useful study to develop understanding.

When I checked his Web site I learned something new: he is tremendous Photographer. Check them out.