The Dread Jurist Roberts

One of my all-time favorite movies is a lighthearted fantasy called The Princess Bride, directed by the talented, hard-left activist Rob Reiner (but I won’t hold that against it). Filled with clever anachronisms and droll wordplay, the tagline for this 1987 comedy perfectly captures its quirky spirit: “Scaling the Cliffs of Insanity, battling Rodents of Unusual Size, facing torture in the Pit of Despair. True love has never been a snap.”

A recurring figure in The Princess Bride is “the dread pirate Roberts,” whom everyone fears. Roberts trolls the high seas looking for booty and is known to kill all his captives. Only thing is, unbeknownst to the film’s characters, the “real” Roberts has retired.

Every time I hear a Democratic Doberman such as Dick (“Gitmo”) Durbin question whether John Roberts is outside America’s “mainstream,” I wonder whether the liberals have fallen off the Cliffs of Insanity. They are trying to paint this highly qualified nominee as the “dread jurist Roberts.”

Actually, Roberts has a resume to die for: He clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, graduated from Harvard Law, and argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court. Approved only two years ago to the D.C. circuit court, what’s not to like now?

But consider the hyperactive imaginations of backers of the Supreme Court’s heavy-handed, ill-conceived Roe v. Wade decision in 1973:

The Human Rights Campaign (a homosexual-rights group) says, “With the Roberts nomination, the right to privacy and the future of a fair-minded court are in grave danger.” The far-left MoveOn.org screams, “[T]he President has turned to a right wing corporate lawyer and ideologue for the nation’s highest court. [H]e is associated with some of the most fringe and extreme views of the Republican Party.”

The National Abortion Federation defines extreme for the rest of us. “Judge Roberts has argued for the reversal of Roe and stated that there was ‘no support in text, structure, or history of the Constitution’ for the reasoning behind Roe.”

The HRC chimes in, “Reversing Roe could undermine fundamental rights to privacy and liberty that are the legal underpinning for the freedom of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. Judge Roberts has advocated for prayer in public schools and for weakening the wall between church and state.”

Let me see if I have this straight. Dick Durbin, MoveOn.org, and the Human Rights Campaign are in America’s “mainstream,” and the “dread jurist Roberts” is trolling the constitutional waters for ill-gotten booty. Right.

Yes, even some Democrats acknowledge that Roberts has an excellent judicial temperament and a first-rate legal mind. But they don’t like his reputation for being a “strict constructionist” or an “originalist” in judicial philosophy (a reputation that will be put to the test quickly). Thus, they plan to grill him on his approach. Some liberals may even believe that Roberts’s Catholic beliefs (and those of his wife, a leader in the Feminists for Life organization) are “fair game” for the confirmation circus.

That’s funny. I don’t recall Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) quizzing Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Clinton’s appointees, about their personal views on issues that might come before the high court.

The Democrats may indeed try to do it this time, though. But I think at the end of the day, their attacks against "the dread jurist Roberts" won't stick, and they’ll be in the Pit of Despair, where they belong.

Keeping Sex “Real”

In running for president, John Kerry stressed he was not pro-abortion, but pro-choice. Of course, saying that you favor “a woman’s right to choose” is an old ploy of the abortion-rights movement. Back before Roe v. Wade, Bernard Nathanson helped to coin high-minded-sounding slogans such as “Women must have control over their own bodies” and “Freedom of choice–a basic American right.”

Nathanson, a medical doctor, was co-founder and first president of NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. Knowing the American people didn’t support their radical agenda, Nathanson and NARAL resorted to the big lie–actually, several.

“We persuaded the media that the cause of permissive abortion was a liberal, enlightened, sophisticated one,” Nathanson told WorldNetDaily several years ago. “We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was one million.”

NARAL also lied about the number of women killed, saying 10,000 per year were dying from dangerous, “back alley” abortions. The true figure, while tragic, was no more than 250 deaths annually.

Later, after the Supreme Court struck down state abortion restrictions in 1973, NARAL renamed itself the National Abortion Rights Action League and became one of the nation’s fiercest advocates of legal abortion. Nathanson eventually repented from his pro-abortion past, but the organization’s propaganda continued.

NARAL tweaked its moniker again, becoming the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Who could be against “reproductive rights,” after all? (NARAL never did explain how abortion–the deliberate killing of human life in the womb–qualifies as “reproduction.”)

Millions of abortions later, NARAL changed its name yet again, to NARAL Pro-Choice America. Gone is any mention of the word “abortion,” supplanted by patriotic, feel-good language about “choice.”

What kind of choice is today’s NARAL defending? Last Thursday, the organization’s Washington state affiliate held a fundraiser called “Screw Abstinence.” Apparently, as many pro-lifers have long suspected, it is choice without responsibility or consequences, a choice that will not even allow others to promote alternative views.

“Tired of Bush & Co. spending your tax dollars on abstinence-only-until-marriage initiatives that promote dangerous misinformation?” NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s website asked. “Let them know you keep it real when it comes to your sexual health and decision making.”

“Screwing abstinence” has led to 45 million abortions; widespread infections of genital herpes, genital warts, chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea; and more than 500,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS. Medical authorities such as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WebMD agree that the only sure way to avoid such tragedies is to abstain from sex or to practice faithful monogamy.

And as the House of Representatives just approved a $10.8 million increase for abstinence education, the evidence continues to roll in. A study reexamining data from the Adolescent Health Survey found virginity pledges helpful in deterring sexual activity.

“Abstinence education is common sense,” said Kristi Hayes of the Abstinence Clearinghouse. “Kids want relationships and security. They want meaning and purpose in their lives. Abstinence education teaches kids how they can have a healthy, happy future. That’s why it works.”

By all means, NARAL, let’s keep sex “real.”

Untethered Moderation

As the skirmishing over George W. Bush’s anticipated Supreme Court nomination heats up, the president has asked special interest groups to “tone down the heated rhetoric.” Some religious conservatives, who powered the president’s electoral victory last November, have a sinking feeling their standard-bearer is looking straight at them and not at liberals such as Chuck Schumer, New York’s senior senator, who was overheard saying that “we are going to go to war over this.”

Facing attacks from liberal political opponents is one thing, but friendly fire is another. Last month, in an op-ed for The New York Times, former Missouri Senator John Danforth, an Episcopal priest, took aim. (Ever notice how the mainstream media always seem to find space for Christians who are criticizing other Christians?)

Conservatives generally respect Danforth, a Republican who stood by Clarence Thomas amid the bloody confirmation hearings during Bush I. Danforth has also played a key role in the current administration’s efforts—aided greatly by religious conservatives—to help bring peace in Sudan. But they couldn’t have been pleased with Danforth’s piece, called “Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers.”

One of the problems with religious conservatives, Danforth said, is that they are too sure they are right: “To assert that I am on God’s side and you are not, that I know God’s will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God’s kingdom is certain to produce hostility.”

Danforth said moderate Christians have the same deep faith, without the hubris. “Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form,” he said, “not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings.”

Then Danforth—citing the Love Commandment as his sole justification—blithely goes on to enumerate just what moderate Christians see as appropriate social policy: (1) allowing the Terri Schiavos of the world to die; (2) supporting (embryonic) stem cell research; (3) keeping references to God out of the public square; and (4) (reading between the lines) opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment.

With a “moderate” agenda like that, who needs liberals?

Yes, Danforth is right to be concerned about those who would impose theocracy in our pluralistic society (though, mercifully, their numbers are few), and his call for humility is a welcome reminder of our human fallibility. (I hope he heeds it.) He is also right to remind religious conservatives that appeals to divine writ won’t fly in 2005.

But most Christian conservatives already know this. As Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania), a Catholic, told me, “It's important to understand proper civil discourse, where people are invited to bring all their ideas, irrespective of their origin, to the public square to be debated and hashed out and for compromises and agreements to be made and the majority to proceed.”

Someone needs to tell the former senator that most religious conservatives are also motivated by love (although sometimes to our shame we don’t show it very well). Take the four issues he raised: (1) it is loving to protect weak and defenseless people such as Terri Schiavo, who are otherwise inconvenient to the rest of the world; (2) it is loving to defend developing human life made in the image of God; (3) it is loving to remind our fellow citizens that liberty without law is anarchy; and (4) it is loving to tell the truth about homosexuality to people trapped in a sad and harmful lifestyle.

Contra Danforth, the ultimate question is not about love, at least not love alone. It is also about truth, truth working with love to bless society. But untethered to truth, love becomes a mushy sentimentality that allows evil to spread.

So does moderation.

Pyrrhic Victory?

After defeating the Romans in a costly battle in 279 B.C., the Greek king Pyrrhus was in no mood to celebrate. “Another such victory over the Romans,” Pyrrhus reportedly said, “and we are undone.”

Last week, after invalidating several Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky (McCreary County, Kentucky v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky), the Supreme Court reaffirmed in a Texas case (Van Orden v. Perry) that some displays on public property are constitutional. However, those who appreciate the nation’s rich Judeo-Christian heritage and seek to protect it from further secular encroachment shouldn’t celebrate just yet.

According to the court, Ten Commandments displays are acceptable only if they convey a secular, historical message, not a religious one. Christianity Today’s Weblog notes, “[I]t sounds like the Court is saying Ten Commandments monuments are okay if no one interprets the government's motivation as being religious, and if the monument has been around for a long time without people objecting.”

Another such victory in the Supreme Court and we may be undone. I wonder whether Moses would agree that you can divorce the commandments from religion. Isn’t the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me”?

Christian activists, while not happy with the Kentucky decision, apparently are willing to go along with increasingly stringent secular tests, as in the Texas case. Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America, is among them. "Posting [the Ten Commandments] on public property as part of a historical display is a legitimate secular purpose,” LaRue said. “The Commandments are an important part of our laws and history.”

But in a dissent to the Kentucky ruling, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said passing a secular test is unnecessary. Scalia noted that state governments do not violate the Constitution’s Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”) by acknowledging God—not just our religious heritage—in the public square.

The federal government, while rightly declining to establish a national church, never has held to a strict neutrality between religion and non-religion. For example, it affirmatively supports religion through tax breaks for churches and the provision of official chaplains for legislatures and our soldiers.

“Presidents continue to conclude the presidential oath with the words ‘so help me God,’” Scalia wrote. “Our legislatures, state and national, continue to open their sessions with prayer led by official chaplains. The sessions of this Court continue to open with the prayer ‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court.’”

Ten Commandments displays used to be more than historical markers, like signs pointing tourists to old Civil War battlefields. They were constructed, with official support, to encourage people to live lives of personal righteousness before the God of the universe. As John Adams once said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Judicial obtuseness in the face of such history, Scalia notes, undermines both the court’s credibility and the rule of law: “What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle.”

Christians, too, need to rethink their principles in supporting Ten Commandments displays. A “legitimate secular purpose” is not enough, nor will it be necessary if President Bush follows through on his pledge to name strict constructionists to the court.

In a country where crime, adultery, and greed run rampant, we need less secularism, and more people following God’s law.