It Takes an Autodidact
by Thomas Fleming

Adventures in life-long learning.

VIEWS

The Communion of Saints
by Michael McMahon
Journeying together.

The Autodidact at Work and Play
by Chilton Williamson, Jr.
Reflections on the writerly life.

I'm Just a Travelin' Man
by Derek Turner
Education through wanderlust.

Confessions of an Autodidact
by David Gordon
A place to start.

American Historians and Their History
by Clyde Wilson
Scratching the fleas.

NEWS

Outsourcing Parenthood
by Beverly Eakman
Thou has conquered, O Boomer.

REVIEWS

The Imperial Trajectory
by Jerry Woodruff

Andrew J. Bacevich: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

plus

Derek Turner on Keith Sutherland's The Party's Over: Blueprint for a Very English Revolution

James O. Tate on Ronald and Allis Radosh's Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With the Left

Fr. Michael P. Orsi on Gordon S. Wood's The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin

CORRESPONDENCE

Letter From Queensland: Bland Rube Triumphant
by R.J. Stove

Letter From Alabama: Whose Security?
by J. Michael Hill

VITAL SIGNS

THE COURTS: Crying "Halt!"
by Stephen B. Presser

EDUCATION: You Can't Always Get What You Want
by Nicole Kooistra

COLUMNS

SINS OF OMISSION
by Roger D. McGrath

THE ROCKFORD FILES
by Scott P. Richert

THE AMERICAN INTEREST
by Srdja Trifkovic

IN THE DARK
War of the Worlds
by George McCartney

DEPARTMENTS

POLEMICS & EXCHANGES
AMERICAN PROSCENIUM
CULTURAL REVOLUTIONS

POETRY
On the High Road, Highway
and We Are Here
by B.R. Strahan

ON THE COVER

Cover and inside illustrations by Melanie Anderson. Additional inside illustrations by Elizabeth Wolf.            

It is evident that President Bush owes his reelection, and his grand margin of victory, to support he received from pro-lifers and advocates of traditional sexual morality.  After his sweeping victory, representatives of the pro-life movements that had supported him and prayed for him tired in attempting to persuade him to say or do something that would make it evident that he really understands what America has done to herself by permitting over 40 million abortions since 1973.

Representatives of Care Net, the evangelically rooted organization that, in 2004, helped over 100,000 troubled women and girls to decide not to abort, began to ask him to take a simple action that would, first, make it very evident where he stands and, second, potentially help to change the hearts and minds of the America people, without which judicial and legislative action is hardly likely to succeed.  We asked him to establish a little governmental agency to publish the statistics on abortion, listing how many occurred this past week, how many this year, how many altogether.  We also recommended that this agency report the ages and marital status of the women aborting, how many were repeat abortions, and so forth.  It would be useful to compare the number of people killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001 (3,000), to the number killed “safely and legally” by doctors that same day (around 4,000), and the day before, and the day after, and so on.  It seemed to us that this measure would be hard to oppose.

We wrote directly to President Bush, but, knowing that it was unlikely that he would ever see our letter, we also contacted his liaison officer for faith-related issues, Timothy Goeglein, who recommend that we approach Michael Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services (or is that Sacrifice?), and the Surgeon General.  On our own, we also approached Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), whom some of us know personally, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC and your writer’s own representative), Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN and a physician).

We received nothing from the White House, nothing from the senators, nothing from the congressman, nothing from Health and Human Services.  To Secretary Leavitt, we put the following questions: “Is there any reason why we should not think that you acquiesce over one million abortions annually?  Is there any reason why we should not think that the President acquiesces?”  No answer.  Apparently, there is no reason why we should not think so.

Before the 2004 elections, many pro-life Christians, myself included, worked hard to help the President win reelection.  A letter came from Senator Frist, and another from Vice President Dick Cheney.  An answer?  No, an invitation to a presidential dinner to honor me for my help in the election campaign.  After two pages of praise and exhortation appeared the lines, “Send a check for $2,500 for a seat, or for $25,000 for a table of ten.”  I answered, “We don’t want an honor, just an answer.”  No answer.

This is what the Swiss writer Eric Werner calls la censure molle (soft censorship)—no reply, no argument or counterproposal, nothing.  This is less painful than hard censorship and thought control.  We are not forced to believe that the President and his party have betrayed their professed ideals and those of us who trusted him, but we are increasingly left with no alternative but to think such.  We have reminded them collectively and individually of the proverb, “Hope deferred sickens the heart” (Proverbs 13:12).  Do they worry that voters who are sick at heart may never again flock to support them?  Apparently not.

This article first appeared in the September 2005 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post devoted its energies to trying to determine whether Roberts had ever been a member of the Federalist Society, a subject the Post found far more interesting than the communist affiliations of officials in those presidential administrations of which it approved.  At the time of this writing, what the Post had determined was that Roberts was listed in a Federalist Society directory from 1997 to 1998, even though a White House spokesman told the Post that Roberts “has no recollection of ever being a member” of the society.

None of this reporting was designed to help the readers of the Times and the Post rest easy.  In fact, the day after the nomination, the Times opined that, if Roberts “is a mainstream conservative, in the tradition of Justice O’Connor, he should be confirmed.  But if on closer inspection he turns out to be an extreme ideologue with an agenda of stripping away important rights, he should not be.”  By “important rights,” of course, the Times essentially means abortion, the suppression of Christianity, and “gay rights.”  Unfortunately, the fact that the Times is already worried that Roberts may be an “extreme ideologue” tells us more about how the Times views the tens of millions of Americans who vote Republican and go to church than it does about Roberts.

What the reporting in the Times and the Post actually shows is that very little is known about how Roberts views the most contentious legal issues of the day.  Such a bland public record suggests either that Judge Roberts recognized early on that his extremely impressive legal credentials might one day propel him to the Court, and he desired to avoid the fate of Judge Bork before getting there, or that he has a cautious nature unlikely to produce change on the Court.

In the absence of a strong public record, people on all sides of the debate were reduced to reading the sort of tea leaves the Times and Post kept busy reporting.  Those tea leaves could be read in various ways.  In his confirmation hearing for the D.C. Circuit judgeship, Roberts told the Senate that Roe v. Wade is “more than settled” law.  While working in the George H.W. Bush administration, however, Roberts signed a brief expressing that administration’s view that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.  In addition, his wife has served as an officer and board member of Feminists for Life, which is committed to overturning Roe v. Wade and providing legal protection to the unborn.

As David Kirkpatrick reported in the July 22 New York Times, the White House has been waging a campaign for at least a year to convince conservatives that Roberts is reliable, based on “personal testimonials about Judge Roberts, his legal work, his Roman Catholic faith, and his wife’s public opposition to abortion.”  Kirkpatrick also broke the news that Roberts’ parish priest is against abortion, which caused Austin Ruse, president of the Culture of Life Foundation, to tell Kirkpatrick, “For people like me who are reading the tea leaves, it is another marker that we can breathe easy.”

The desire to read tea leaves is understandable, given the Supreme Court’s transformation from the chief court of what Alexander Hamilton termed “the least dangerous branch” to what it is today: a never ending Constitutional Convention.  Pace Mr. Ruse, however, none of us will really be able to “breathe easy” until Roberts is confirmed and actually proves that he is the sort of “extreme ideologue” the Times fears.

If he is, Bush will deserve immense credit for nominating the type of Supreme Court justice he promised, in addition to the credit he already deserves for ignoring the many public (and no doubt private) calls to nominate someone on the basis of race or sex.  But if Roberts really is “a mainstream conservative, in the tradition of Sandra O’Connor,” Bush will have demonstrated definitively that all conservatives can ever expect from the Republican Party is betrayal.

This article first appeared in the September 2005 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.