Americans seem to be living in a “Pardon me for living!” age. A public figure can hardly make a rational statement without offending someone, and rather than stand by his statement, he must make a groveling and usually false apology to someone who is offended by the truth.
“Quod Scripsi, Scripsi!”
President George Bush, in vetoing a homicidal bill that would mandated the use of federal tax money for the destruction of embryonic stem cells, i.e. human beings in an early stage of development, said something that his press secretary translated into “murder,” a perfectly sound and accurate word. Killing innocent human beings to use their parts is, in fact, murder. No doubt about it.
But the murderers got upset, so Tony Snow felt bound to tell reporters that Bush “would not use that term.” I’ll bet he would, and I’ll bet somewhere along the line he did.
Snow’s original statement was, “The President believes strongly that for the purpose of research it’s inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He’s one of them.”
Well, is he or isn’t he? He sure acted like it, breaking his six-year record of no vetoes. But Snow groveled, and the murderers felt better, and we’ve all slipped back into our little politically correct shells where we can feel comfortable and satisfied that the mountains trembled but brought forth only a mouse.
But we’re looking forward to the day when our leaders will stand by their bold statements. Even cowardly Pontius Pilot stood by the inscription he had placed on the cross when the High Priests insisted that he change it. “Quod scripsi, scripsi!” Pilot said.”What I have written, I have written.” And it proved to be the truth.
The Cult of Self
Speaking of truth, that’s something that means little or nothing to the pragmatists of our age. To those who have no eternal verities, no first principles, no commandments from God, it means absolutely nothing: that we routinely kill 4,000 human beings through abortion every day, that embryonic stem cell research kills innocent human life. It means nothing to them. If it is useful it is good.
I just watched a PBS special showing previously unpublished film footage of the Nazi Holocaust, some of it from Russian sources, others from British and Americans, but stored for fifty years because of its grim content.
I thought I had seen it all. I saw the pictures in the first LIFE magazine edition with the U.S. Army photographs. Through the years I’ve seen films of the stacks of bodies and the bulldozers pushing them into open graves. I spent a day at Dachau. I discussed the camps with Germans on railroad rides through Germany after the war. I’ve been through the Holocaust Museum.
But this special contains footage you can hardly watch. It pictures what happens at the bottom of the depravity barrel, with Nazi Death Squads doing the work of devils. It is a frightening commentary on man’s inhumanity to man! Yet, through all the horror and gore, the thought kept recurring to me even as I witnessed the frozen bodies, the burnt-to-a-crisp bodies of thousands incinerated alive in barns and bunkers and cattle cars: we are doing essentially the same thing every day right here in good old liberty and freedom loving, give-me-your-tired-your-poor-your-huddled-masses-yearning-to-breath-free America!
Smiling, eating out, going to movies, taking the train, enjoying the beach—Americans—supporting the murder of 4,000 children in abortion every day, and clamoring to use helpless, immature human beings in experiments so we might be healthier someday.
Nearly every letter to the editor, every editorial, every secular commentary I have read on embryonic stem cell experimentation says kill ’em! Kill ’em all! I have unloaded boxes of murdered babies in my garage and noticed how all dead bodies look about the same—when the soul’s gone out of them.
The big problem here is the culture of self. What we have in common with the barbarians, the death squads and the killers of every age: self. After all, isn’t that the bottom line in all evil: me, myself and I? When, I wonder, will we learn that the essence of hell is self, me all alone—for all eternity. Just me. Forever.
