I write this book review of The Shack — from a Christian perspective. I cannot bring myself to see the motion picture because…

A pastor friend of mine met, and interviewed, the author of “The Shack.” The conversation went something like this: Pastor: “Are you Mack?” Answer: “Well, yes and no; my name is not Mack, but I am the Mack in the book.” Pastor: “Did those things actually happen to you?” Answer: “No.” Pastor: “Then it is all fictional?” Answer: “Yes.”

The author obviously has had seminary training (91,) evidenced by his use of certain biblical/theological words, names, and concepts (“the eternal chain of being,” etc), and his theological bent, which often reflects Biblical truth, but leans towards the theological left.

Everybody associated with the book says it is fiction. Fictional writing has the specific purpose (among its many objectives) of reflecting reality by making up a story in what is, actually, an extended metaphor or allegory. It is, thereby, essentially hyperbolic—it stretches, exaggerates, even creates “truth” for effect. “Fiction” covers a wide range of literature from, say, a historical novel, much of which might be true (say, James Michener’s “Texas,”) to pure fantasy (as for instance, C. S. Lewis’ “Perelandra,” which is beautiful, but totally fantastical).

Obviously, the author desires to deal with some of the key issues of human experience: why is there pain and suffering in the world—especially for the innocent, how do we deal with such events, how do we forgive those who have hurt us, what is the nature of God, how do the three members of the Godhead relate to each other, how important are we humans to God, how shall we even conceive of God, what is heaven’s resolution of such conundrums, etc.

If one comes away from the book knowing more about God, loving Him and His creation more, caring more deeply for others, being kinder in the face of the fallibilities (and sins!) of others, being less attached to this life and more attached to the one to come, more able to deal constructively with life’s anomalies and tragedies, how to be more loving and patient, then the book can be a help, as all good parables are.

Fictional literature, however, presents certain dangers. It can only be made to say so much, and no more. It has limits. It can tell some truth but can never tell all the truth. It can be abused and be made to say more than the author/teller intended, or more than truth itself allows. (Theologians call that “making a parable walk on all-fours.”) It may even come to trivialize the very truth the author intended to convey. (I am not sure anyone appreciates Jesus’ humanity more by knowing he dropped the pancake batter!) Most important, the fiction may come to be truth to the reader rather than representing it. The theological truth which lies behind the parable—substantive reality—is, alone, what one can trust. And that is what one has in the Bible, and, ultimately, only there.

Much that the “God” of “Shack” tells us does express some truths about the one true and living God of the Bible, but much there is questionable:

(a) Against God’s wishes, man took “power over the woman” at creation, violating His original intent in marriage (147-8),

(b) “Jesus” tells us that there would be fewer wars if women were “in charge” on earth (147),

(c) The author’s (Jesus’?) gratuitous criticism of the “institutional” church is to be expected, as in common in much “Christian” fiction. There is much that is wrong in today’s churches, but there is much that is right. And to say, as he does, that neither marriage nor the church is an institution, but a relationship is puerile; they are, if biblical, relationships—organisms, not organizations—but they exhibit characteristics of all earthly institutions, positive and negative. If the “institutional” church is so bad, why did the NT writers never counsel people to leave any of the obviously troubled churches in their day?

(d) The author leaves himself open to the charge of universalism, that is, that everybody will someday be saved. He admits that everybody’s path “does not lead to heaven,” but promises that God will never relent in seeking all men. Again, he does not answer the crucial question: does God finally “catch” every man? Is there, for anybody on the planet, a painful eternity? (161-167, 182)

(e) The God of “Shack” might be a pacifist who labels those who “send their little ones off to war” as sinners. (160)

(f) “Judgment” is so re-interpreted as to take it out of God’s hands—which is obviously contrary to what the Bible everywhere explicitly teaches.

(g) He (again, the author or Jesus?) wants us to know that the child-molester was himself molested by someone, who was in turn molested by someone, who was in turn molested, etc., all the way back to Adam—and that, apparently, seriously (if not entirely) mitigates all guilt. (Classic theological liberals have a line: “To understand all is to forgive all,” which, alas, does not pass the biblical test of personal responsibility. Let us admit that in many situations ameliorating circumstances must be considered, but that does not, cannot, relieve us from accepting responsibility for our own actions.)

(h) One of “God’s” weakest attempts to alleviate Mack’s pain in the loss of his child to a bestial pedophile is to assure Mack that, in her last desperate hours, his daughter knew God was with her, and her deepest concern was not for herself but for her parents and siblings and their suffering in her loss. To suggest such a thought on the part of a six-year-old would evoke horror from a loving father, and calls into question the seriousness of the writer. It is impossible to imagine any pastor offering such a “consolation” to a grieving parent in such a circumstance. That sort of theological psycho-babble may well be heard at some funerals, which in turn, causes honorable people to walk out of churches in disgust.

John Milton once famously said that he wished to “assert eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God to man.” In the light of the admittedly incalculable difficulty of that challenge, our author has given a valiant attempt on the “providence” issue, but he has done much less than a stellar performance in justifying the ways of God to man.

Perhaps the essential truth which Mack means to convey is that knowing God intimately, and the importance of walking with Him in that relationship, is the greatest good, the ultimate goal, of human existence. Well and good, if that experience is defined by what, again, is substantive—God’s objective word as illuminated by the Holy Spirit—and not by an emotional experience. Readers should ponder, carefully, what the author says in the foreword: “It’s a little, well…no, it is a lot on the fantastic side. Whether some parts of it are actually true or not, I won’t be the judge.” (12) Later he says, “Do I think that it’s true? I want all of it to be true. (Emphasis mine.) Perhaps if some of it is not actually true in one sense, it is still true nonetheless—if you know what I mean.” (“After Words”) That’s leftist intellectual hocus-pocus. And reminiscent of Alice in her Wonderland who said she tried to believe six impossible things every morning before breakfast. Jesus walked among us and died and rose again to give us something more substantive than that!

Bill Anderson
Grapevine, Texas

I’ve never done it and never thought I would. I am here suggesting that if you are rearing a pre-teen or a teen (or are one!) that you read an article in “Time” magazine article from November 2016 on teen depression. The stats on the subject are truly scary; it is a sad commentary on the effect of modernity on children.

The article is excellent on data—difficult as it is to measure—and has much to say about causes. Glaringly inadequate advice is given. Not much more than “ask the ‘pros,’ check out our website, and ‘be kind to dumb animals.'”

No one will be surprised that neither God nor any idea of life having ultimate significance is mentioned. No transcendence of morals or meaning! You will, of course, find that in God’s manual for human existence, the Bible.

None of that is to deny the value of teaching life-skills, loving care, mentoring, etc., by parents, teachers, coaches, et al. —often good sources of help but hardly enough without God at their center. One notes, in passing, the glaring lack of any reference pastors or rabbis being a part of the healing community.

Had “Time” made any such reference, it would have been kicked out, forthwith, from the pantheon (!) of modernity “intelligentsia,” whose only god is the hapless one in the mirror.
Jeremiah’s word comes to mind here: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns which can hold no water.” (Jer. 2:13)

Countless millions of Americans have watched our quadrennial celebration of the quiet transfer of national leadership, a thing of extreme rarity on the globe.  Predictably contentious—that is part and parcel of being a free society—talking heads, the media commentators, have taken amazingly differing views of the new president’s acceptance speech.  Some have given it high marks, while others were stunned.  Chris Matthews called it “Hitlerian” and Rachel Maddow called is “Putinesque.”  Still others thought it was really bad!

To put things simply: it is easy for critics to find—even in a speech of only sixteen minutes—much to be displeased about when, rightly or wrongly, they hold serious antecedent prejudices against the speaker.

Would there be so much negative screech against Mr. Trump had he said things differently?  What if he had said, for instance:

• “America first?  Nah, fifth or sixth is OK with me.”
• “No country seeks its own best interests, and neither should we.” 
• “We simply must raise, in drastic fashion, our foreign aid to peoples who hate us, and we dare not ask anything of them in return.” 
• “There are some 300 million poor people south of our border, and we are morally compelled to welcome them all in fully funding all their needs.”
• “Wall?  What advanced nation cares about walls anymore; look at Europe!”
• “We must not maintain anything more than a police force as a military lest we be seen as bullying other peoples; enough already with having the strongest military on earth!”
• “Yes, we are twenty trillions of dollars in debt, but I see no deleterious effect in doubling it.”
• “True, some of our cities have become killing zones due to endemic poverty and maladministration, but that’s simply to be expected in an advanced society.”
• “Yes, over ninety-four million Americans no longer look for work, but what’s to worry about?”
• Or finally, “Please forgive the producers of this event for allowing open references God and Jesus so often, and myself as well, for recognizing we exist under His providential care; all of that—as our prescient commentators say about the entire event—was so different from the ‘norm’ for such occasions?”

How about this for a peroration, “Ayn Rand characterized socialism as holding that as long as a Patagonian girl had no shoes, no American girl should have two pairs.  I say (with fitting Trump gesticulations and bluster), “As long as any Patagonian girl has no shoes, neither should any American girl!”

If his speech had gone that way, we’d be, well, precisely where we are—talking heads screaming about the outrage of it all.

It reminds me of the man who was determined to be angry with his wife.  Having told her to fry one egg and scramble another for his breakfast, and upon her graciously obeying his order, he yells at her for “scrambling the wrong egg.”

This is no hagiographical screed for our new president or his team; they may prove to be dramatically less than we hope and pray.  It is to say that, in any and every case, we may daily expect to hear that they have scrambled the wrong egg.

Bill Anderson
Grapevine, Texas

In Bill O’Reilly’s recent book on the defeat of Japan in WWII, he cites an eye-witness at Hiroshima as saying, simply but profoundly, there were no words to accurately describe the scene. It is somewhat the same after the recent American presidential election. I suggest, with deference, a few words on “the strangest presidential election in American history.”

“Shock!” How is it possible that so many pundits, life-long students of politics, got it all so wrong? And for outsiders to beat the massive machine? Pleasurefully or painfully, Americans are sitting in a pool of stun.

“Thanks!” That word goes to many, whether they like or dislike the winner. Here is a partial list: Barack Obama, a do-nothing Congress, Loretta Lynch, Julian Assange, Jonathan Gruber (the Obama Care “architect”), Mary Landrieu (senator from Louisiana who got 4.3 billion dollars Medicaid aid for her state for voting for Obamacare), a woefully inadequate (I kindly suggest) State Department , the liberal press/media, and Hillary. Be proud today; without your help, the news would be strikingly different.

“Maybe!” Is our new president going to lead to substantive improvement? Will he represent America well on the world stage? Will he keep his well-developed gift for invective in check? Will the Congress work together for America’s good? Will the Supreme Court have a deeper respect for our Constitution? Will the professional haters, of every stripe, become less toxic? Will the same justice be meted out to all on the same basis? One can only say, if honest, “maybe!” Perhaps a few have the temerity to say, at the least, “I hope so!” (Not a bad fourth word.)

“Humility!” If there is, indeed, a God who rules the cosmos, and if He told the truth when He said, “Pride goes before a fall,” and “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted,” and “These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look…” (add fifty other biblical proscriptions on hubris), and if that God meant what He said, the “winners” must be extremely careful about crowing.

Perhaps, then, the most important act you personally (!) can contribute to a better America is to humble yourself, repent of your sins (ask Him; He knows!), and persistently—and joyously—obey Him. We have just learned, again, that the act of an individual voting really does count. That is true on earth, but a single act of repentance literally moves all heaven to joy. (Luke 15:10) And has a redeeming effect on earth as well!

You may be very busy, but it would be time well spent to google up Rudyard Kipling’s “Recessional,” a poem of timeless beauty and eternal truth written to Englishmen at the time of England’s world-wide industrial hegemony, when it was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” Then quietly pore over the second stanza, a sobering word amidst “the tumult and the shouting” accompanying the recent election.

Many, millions perhaps, who either have been left out, or feel they have been left out, of American privilege, have a right to rejoice. My counsel is to do so, exuberantly if you wish, but all the while remembering God’s ancient and acceptable sacrifice.

Winston Churchill once said that Russia was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” That could well describe the 2016 presidential election.

I offer some observations which are pertinent to all American voters, especially those who are Christian or are possessed of some semblance of a biblical world-view.

(1) Both candidates are significantly flawed in many ways. Some have contended, perhaps cogently, that both are essentially pagan.

(2) Some say that, since that is true, to vote for either party is to compromise their Christian faith and witness; therefore they won’t vote. That, of course, has the effect of the most secular of the candidates benefitting; not to vote is to vote for the stronger defender of the current American godless zeitgeist. (And to vote for a third or fourth party candidate—who, by the way, may not be paragons of virtue either—has the same effect.)

(3) The point is: if one cannot vote for someone who is, in their view, a thorough-going Christian, perhaps one could with a conscience vote for the one who gives evidence of being more loyal to traditional American values than the other. (As an aside: one wonders how many of our former presidents would have been elected if their private lives had been as open to the public as they are today.)

(4) That would mean, “Vote for the platform!” I have read both party platforms (simply go to the web and google them up; each is about fifty pages long, but worth the read) and am stunned at the differences. It is nothing short of amazing that some of it is admitted publicly.

• The DP (Democrat platform) does not make a single reference to God—in 50 pages—except for two encouragements to pursue “God-given potential,” while the RP makes many references to Him. (That, of course, does not guarantee Republican holiness, but it does give patent and unapologetic recognition of God.)
• The DP does not mention the US Constitution a single time, while the RP is a veritable hand-book of rights and values and desired legislation based on the Constitution, and specifically, the Bill of Rights.
• If you choose not to read both platforms, check out “reproduction rights” in them both. (pp 37f for the DP, and pp. 31f—especially p. 37—for the RP). I ask, simply: would voting for a man who has said unconscionably salacious things about women be worse than voting for one who passionately affirms and supports a process—for any woman who wishes to have it done—to have the brains of their baby sucked out during the birth process, funded by American tax-payers? (Democrats believe that women, worldwide, should be guaranteed such “rights.”)

(5) If anyone you know does not know what socialism is, let them read the DP. Often, throughout the document, one sees some of the long and growing list of government programs (over 1,100 exist already), which must be “fully funded” (and other such language) which, translated, means “funded by an America which will have become a thorough-going socialist country.” Think Greece, Italy, Portugal, or one of many South American countries.

(6) Once more, no thinking American can be very happy with either candidate, and either one of them might well be disastrous. Some issues, however, may be of sufficient import to cause the patriotic voter to vote against, if not for, a candidate. What, for instance, about the next president adding surely one, and very probably more, justices to the Supreme Court? The next justice will dramatically affect American life when the two candidates are long gone from Washington, DC. The next Democrat appointee to the court will determine, for instance, for all Americans, whether marriage is between a man and a woman or whatever connubial concoction the new court happens to choose. (Honestly: do you think we’ve heard the final discussion on that specific subject?)

Telling you how to vote? Not on your life! I am simply asking you to investigate instruments, written for all the world to see, as platforms of performance (one supposes!) by Democrats and Republicans themselves. And besides: it is rather difficult to be salt and light while sitting on the sidelines.

A caveat: if God chooses, through this election, to send severe judgment upon America (evil leaders were a sure sign in the Old Testament of God’s wrath on His people), then Christ-followers will (a) not be surprised, (b) will see it as an expression of the truth Abraham Lincoln borrowed from King David, written three thousand years ago: “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” (Psalm 19:9), and (c) will go into a guerilla mode and live out the faith as God gives grace to do so. Thomas More, the Catholic saint, once said, “The times were never so bad that a good man could not find a way to serve God faithfully.”

Bill Anderson
Grapevine, Texas

In the old days, Dean sang that “you’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you,” but nowadays you’re nobody ‘til somebody hates you. That means (drum roll): you must realize that you are a victim. And having been wronged, somebody has to pay you reparations. (You want to remember that word.)

The LBGT “community” says that they should be allowed to go into any restroom which complies with their most recent genital surgery. Or non-surgical mood. Same-gender couples demand, despite your abhorrence of homosexuality, that your company serve them. Many blacks scream for reparations, as do a few Japanese for WWII internments. Many Native Americans want all non-natives—99.854% of Americans—to leave and give them back their land. All such discontents, grieved at their victimization, demand special treatment, and the ACLU folk and their kin are frenzy-driven to collect for them, knowing that the powers-that-be will wilt before their onslaught.

While contemplating the situation, a stiletto-sharp thought pierced my mind, literally, just yesterday: I, too, am a victim! I have never, ever, before now, once in my entire lifetime, thought of myself as a victim. Despite being born to poor and uneducated parents, losing my dad in an oil-field accident when I was but seven weeks old, living in my early days in a house without electricity or indoor plumbing, and getting through other assorted difficult situations, I always felt extremely privileged to be an American. 

But all that, I have learned, is hocus-pocus. Modern America has taught me the liberating truth that I have been severely victimized, all unbeknownst to me. That knowledge has produced in me a sudden rush of power and privilege. I am due reparations.

Thus, I now see things differently. (a) Two of my grandparents were pure Swedes. But what, I ask myself, has America done specifically for Swedishness recently? I’d say such a genetic burden is worth, say, at least a thousand bucks a month. (b) I am approximately one fourth Swiss. Another five-hundred per month. (c) The other fourth? A mixture of Scots-Irish, and three or four English genes. Again the blistering question burns: what, specifically, has America done to repay a good and patriotic American who has had to suffer under the opprobrium such a genetic hodge-podge, which is obviously no fault of mine? I can already feel my emotional load lifting in light of the readiness of my country to step up and do the right thing for me in light of my obvious victimhood.

Ah, but there’s more: I am left-handed!  Can you imagine my humiliation while sitting in a first-grade room in an American public school room in which no left-handed desk even existed? The sneers! The jeers! The tears! My horrible hand-writing! (Please, dear reader, consider this brief note to serve as an invitation to join ALL, Inc.—American Left-out Left-Handers—and let’s get together and demand what is ours. For starters, we should demand that all automobile key-slots be placed on the left of the steering wheel, that commode flush-handles be put on the left side of all commodes. Et Cetera ! This has simply gone too far. When will it all become totally unacceptable? Let’s march!)

Is there more? Yes, indeed. A fecundity of possibilities arises before my eyes! I am over six-feet tall. Half a ream of paper would be required to describe the embarrassment which all tall people suffer. Then there are my sized…, well, I have large feet. I am thinking here of a hefty leather subsidy. And then there is my color-blindness. Wow! Now, there’s a big one! I am literally disabled from seeing certain flowers clearly! Is there anybody out there who cares? Where’s the mercy? Who feels my pain? Somebody has to be guilty and America must pay! My time has come! More? Of course! I own only two cars, my swimming pool is smaller than my neighbor’s, my grass has to be mowed at regular intervals, the dog next door barks, a hail-storm came through the other night, and not a single one of my favorite athletic teams won a national championship this year. Again, Et Cetera ! It is all unspeakably unfair, and cannot be tolerated any longer. Reparation Time I say!

That is the good news. There is even better news: I suggest this to you quietly, but ponder a demonstrable fact: Voila— you, too, are a victim! You don’t have to become one; you already are one. You haven’t thought about it? Well do so, and do so now. America owes you and has the cash to pay you. And if there is not a sufficient amount in the national treasury today to do so, well, paper and green ink are cheap. I say, let the presses roll and let us victims—all three hundred and twenty millions of us—be given our due and just reward. Immediately. With apologies! 

A puzzling fact, however fleetingly, does occur to me betimes: why did I never hear, from a single member of my scores and scores of forebears, any of them ever having sensing their victimhood. They were universally joyous over the privilege of being Americans. What ignoramuses they were!  The whole lot of them but benighted simpletons! I do miss their bucolic joy, and their gritty independence, but me?, I’m a different kind of American: I’m going for the money!

Bill Anderson

To My Children, Grandchildren, and Great Grandchildren:

On April 19, 1775, in Lexington, Massachusetts, the first shot of the American Revolutionary War was fired and was labeled—in a bit of overstatement—“the shot heard ‘round the world.” Without overstatement, the true “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired on June 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. Actually “shots.” The Supreme Court sent down two rulings which have changed America forever, in fact, which have un-Americanized America.

First the Court said, in effect, to the state of California: “No matter what citizens in a given state vote for (Californian voters had overwhelmingly voted to overturn Prop 8, which eliminated rights for same-sex marriage), we, the Court, may well overturn their vote. Our vote counts; yours does not.”

In a second matter, relating to the Defense of Marriage Act, the vote of the court (in five years or so, say proponents) will legalize same-sex marriage in all states, with such unions receiving all the federal benefits (over 1100 of them) due to traditional marriages today. (A question: now that no law prohibits me from marrying a Cocker Spaniel, if I precede my canine spouse in death, does it continue to receive Social Security benefits?) As an interesting footnote, an echo of Washington, DC, as it were, the Texas legislature—on the same day—in attempting, among other things, to stop abortions in the state beyond twenty-two weeks, was filibustered causing a delay of the vote—by two minutes beyond the legal time-line–requiring that the legislature meet in special session to re-vote. Note: the vote, which was passed too late to be legal, sought only to stop abortions after twenty-two weeks, but the abortionists want more blood, both early and late. Even if they lose now, they won’t later.

I am writing you this note, after eighty years of observing —and loving!—America to say America is no more. America is gone.  We have seen it coming, in spades, since the sixties, but now it has arrived. I mean the America as founded on a constitution and by men who were motivated by conservative values (a “conservative” being a person who wishes to conserve foundational values of natural law, even if not biblical law). Any conservative who denies my assessment needs only to be asked to name the last conservative victory attained at the federal level. Add to that (a) a profoundly distrusted federal government in free-fall, (b) the accruing of an astronomical national debt which is fatally inimical to national health, (c) a burgeoning and rapidly growing underclass which sees itself as entitled to “womb-to-tomb” care by the nation’s tax-payers, (d) a refusal or inability to protect America’s borders (which no nation has survived), and (e) the commonly-and-openly expressed hatred for God, the Bible, and Christians. Malcolm Muggeridge once said of western culture: “…the last foothold of law and order is being dislodged; we may expect the darkness.”

(1)  None of that should surprise us; we have the explicit teaching of the Bible on the subject. (See II Timothy 3:1-5!  And Romans 1:21-32 where God’s life-sized portrait of natural man is displayed. And Revelation 18 which depicts the rapid fall of man’s final society—Mystical Babylon. The rapidity is shocking.)

(2)  None of that should make us think our walk is going be as easy as it was for recent generations—even my own! We have lived in a bubble of God’s protection and gracious deliverances as a nation. Now, things are (and will increasingly become) changed, and we will do what our godly forbears did—and what our contemporary brothers and sisters in Christ are doing around the globe—we shall learn to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. But sing it we shall! (Study carefully Psalm 137 which depicts Israel in such a situation in Babylon.)

(3)  None of that should prevent us from being salt and light in a putrifying and darkening culture. (Matthew 5:13-16) Doesn’t take a lot of salt to save a boiled egg and a flash-light no larger than my thumb allows me to walk safely through a huge building on the darkest night. THAT IS OUR BIG ASSIGNMENT!

(4)  None of that should cause us to forget that there are many truly godly people in America—scores of millions of them(!), and much ministry that honors God, and points others to heaven while helping them in practical and mundane ways to cope with life’s challenges, all of which blesses our country and honors God.

(5)  None of that should steal our joy! Paul spoke in Acts 20:24—as he faced certain death— of “finishing his course, his race, with joy!” (The larger context of Acts 20:17-38 is a rich study, especially fitted for modern saints in Babylon.)

You are my joy!  Know, for certain, that I call your names before God often, and will do so as long as God gives me breath (and sufficient mental acuity to remember!).  I’m glad I have the joy of the journey with you, and that I lived long enough to know each of you!

All love,

DAD/DAH

Bill Anderson,  Grapevine, Texas

Consistency, thou art a jewel” affirmed a prolific writer named Anonymous.  Well, yes, but not total consistency.  I want my car and my computer and my calculator to be infallibly consistent, but not my grand-children.  I like them mostly consistent but not mechanistically so, otherwise they’d be robotic and not real.  No fun hugging a computer. 

First cousin to that fact is this: satire—all of which is based on observed inconsistencies— is a very, very easy genre to write, precisely because we humans are so maddeningly inconsistent. Such an abundance of material!  

Ah, but the difficult thing about satire is just this: addressing inconsistencies is not acting on them, and therein lies our challenge.  A writer can be two quarts low and see them, but setting them right, well, that is another kettle of fish, so to speak.  And setting them right, both in ourselves and others, should be an essential focus for us all.  For a lifetime. It must be obvious, as well, that before we can set inconsistencies right, in ourselves or anybody else, we must recognize them.  Admitting precedes adjusting.  Confessing ere correcting. Etc. 

With those caveats, however, let us sit in a pool of stun by screaming inconsistencies which modern political liberals in America manifest.  (Yes, of course, conservatives have them and need to have such gently and lovingly pointed out, but that’s yet another kettle of fish.)

So, ironies about the abortion issue:

1. The first irony: why do we make the debate between “Pro-choice” and “Pro-life,” when for former means—in every known case in American history—freedom to kill?  Why not say “Pro-abortion,” or more honestly, “Pro-death” since that is demonstrably what it is.  “Pro-life” is OK, but why not simply “Pro-birth?” 
2. A second irony: feminists scream themselves hoarse about “reproductive rights” for women.  What about the reproductive rights of the baby girl who is aborted?   Her single death steals generations of  female reproductive rights!
3. Then this: when the abortionists heard that the Chinese were routinely allowing baby boys, for economic reasons, to live and were aborting girls, they were outraged.  So, one murder is less offensive than another?
4. Yet another: “Anchor babies,” the left tells us, “are precious and must be protected at all costs.”  What about all aborted babies who would be, if born, anchored, not simply to the soil of America, but to life itself.  How does one defend with passion an anchor to America but snub the imponderably more precious anchor to the entire cosmos?  
5. Another “anchor” question: when, precisely, does a new-born illegal immigrant baby achieve anchorhood?  Yes, of course!  Easy question.  But this one is more difficult: why then are we told, by a leading liberal politician, that, for American women, “a baby is a baby when it leaves the hospital?”
6. Think of it: a pregnant woman, if her baby dies by the willful act of a burglar, let us say, on her way to obtain an abortion, knows that the felon can be sent to death row for murder.  She, however, if no such event intervenes, may procede to the abortion clinic, have her baby killed and profit from the sale of its body parts, in which case the life-taker goes free, and both he and the financially-enriched mom are hailed as heroes.
7. Fearful for the future of “Roe,” political conservatives are insistently told they must not make elections  “one-issue” deals; that somehow vitiates the electoral process.  The irony is that single-issue elections are actually very common in America.  “Keep America out of foreign wars!”  “It’s the economy, stupid!”  And how about the presidential election of 1860? Every American voter was forced—yes, forced—to say a resounding “yes” or “no” to one issue: slavery.   All other matters were seriously peripheral. 

A good man’s life will always manifest an inherent moral and rational consistency; an evil man’s life will find everlastingly new ways to manifest moral and rational stupidity. 

Here is the question of the day: if body parts from about-to-be-born or just-born babies, why not from, say, two-year-olds?

Think of the advantages of such a process: mothers could have relief from two-year tantrum throwers.  Poor families, especially single moms, would have fewer mouths to feed.  Unplanned children could be planned out of the way.  Plus, the blessing of the extra money derived from the sale of body parts and from tax breaks as well (based on savings from having to construct fewer elementary schools, provide free lunches, inoculations, etc.).  A regular cottage industry!  Not quite entrepreneurial—the fetal folk have that honor already, but a perfectly natural spin-off from the burgeoning abortion industry.  Any astute business man could see that.  As he does see the abortion industry.

The moral problem?  “Moral,”  patently, for moderns, is whatever I want to do, but for the few right-wing nut-jobs “clinging to their religion and their guns” here is our response: “Women have a ‘constitutional right’ (see Roe, dummy) to do with our bodies or anything in our bodies as we (bleep) well please.  Nobody’s drawn the line as to the exact age of our child when we lose that right, so, who’s to say two is not a good number?  Using our logic, nobody could ever say, ‘Well, the founding fathers certainly did not envision slaughtering two year olds and selling their body parts.’  Aha, but if our forefathers saw a constitutional right—as we know they did because the clairvoyant justices of the Supreme Court said they did!—to kill unborn babies inside, or just outside, our bodies, who’s to say, and on what grounds precisely, we don’t have a constitutional right to do the same to our two-year olds?’  I ask: did the justices (or anybody else!) draw the line at “leaving the hospital alive?”  Nobody has any ground whatsoever for saying no about harvesting two-year olds.  Iron-clad logic, I say.

“Surely, the man jests!”  Indeed, in suggesting such a practice, I am guilty of jesting as cruelly as a man ever jested.   But, honestly, what of the cruelty of selling fetal parts, which is more than cruel or barbaric; it is bestial behavior one associates with hyenas and not humans.  I offer you, dear reader, a poser: which normal human, fifty years ago, in the sixties, would not have thought that the sale of fetal parts was just as incredibly cruel a jest.  For the illuminati of our age, the laughable jest has become legal justice. 

The precise point of my jest: who is it who believes that we have seen the last assault on the helpless for money?  Who believes “this far and no farther?”

Alexander Pope’s memorable lines are apropos here:

In those brief lines, Pope well may have described the process of moral decrepitude and death both of humans and entire civilizations.