Reflections on Obama's First 100 Days

By Dave Andrusko

Editor's note. I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts on this column. Write to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

"In the severe anti-abortion rhetoric used by many bishops, in the protest against giving the first African-American president an honorary degree at Notre Dame, Church leaders – yourself included – are giving a patina of legitimacy to some of the most destructive voices in America. Continual denunciation of the Obama administration for fostering a 'culture of death' suggests that extreme opposition is legitimate."
     An excerpt from a letter sent to Cardinal Francis E. George, posted on the blog of Commonweal magazine.

"President Barack Obama is a 'very gracious and obviously a very smart man' but he is on the 'wrong side of history' when it comes to his fervent support of abortion rights, Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George told the 2009 Louisiana Priests Convention April 21."
     Lead sentence of a story that ran in the Catholic News Service.

"One needn't be a dedicated pro-lifer to understand the consternation Obama's invitation has caused. He is more radical than all previous presidents on the life issue, with his loosening of federal funding for abortion and embryonic stem cell research, as well as his campaign promise to pass the Freedom of Choice Act."
     From "The Principle at Stake at Notre Dame," by pro-abortion columnist Kathleen Parker, which appears in today's Washington Post.

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There would be no point in belaboring the obvious. The "mainstream media's" sycophantic coverage of pro-abortion President Barack Obama has reached new heights/depths in the run-up to today's 100th day of his Administration. So, I won't.

Nor will I offer a detailed list of the initiatives of a man whose vision of finding "common ground" is to wrap abortion's deadly tentacles around every aspect of American culture and export this swine flu-like plague around the world. In lieu of a laundry list of assaults on innocence unborn human life, I'd like to talk about two things.

1) The Catholic News Service (CNS) story that ran this week that covered some of the comments Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George made in a question and answer session at the 2009 Louisiana Priests Convention. 2) The ever-more-explicit warnings that to criticize Obama is "giving a patina of legitimacy to some of the most destructive voices in America," as a quote from a letter sent to Cardinal George excerpted on the blog of Commonweal magazine asserted.

Cardinal Francis E. George

On the issue of abortion, George said, "I think we're up against something a little bit like slavery."

Quoting from the CNS account,

"These are members of the human family, genetically individuated, (with) a human father and a human mother," he said. "What their legal status is, of course, you can debate, and we have. ... John Paul II says you cannot simply live comfortably with an immoral legal system, any more than you could live comfortably with slavery, and therefore you have to work to change the law.

"It's a society-dividing issue, and on this issue, we're with Abraham Lincoln and he's with Stephen Douglas, and he doesn't like to hear that, but that's where he is."

This argument has particular resonance. Obama is the first African-American president and the famous 1858 Lincoln/Douglas debates to which George was alluding had a first-principle debate over slavery at their very core. But whether it's slavery or abortion, you either accommodate yourself to evil or you work day in and day out to eliminate it.

George's most astute observation may have been that when Obama's position is approximately 13,000 miles away from yours [my words], Obama will "always tell you he agrees with you." But the fact of the matter is, "'No, Mr. President, we don't agree (on abortion).'"

This could not be clearer than on the issue of the Mexico City policy. As one of his first official acts, Obama signed an order to direct U.S. funds to organizations that perform and promote abortion overseas.

As NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented at the time, "President Obama's order will put hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of organizations that aggressively promote abortion as a population-control tool in the developing world. Much of this will consist of money diverted away from groups that do not promote abortion, and into the hands of those organizations that are the most aggressive in promoting abortion in developing countries."

Again, quoting from the CNS story Obama said we weren't exporting abortion," the cardinal said. "I said, 'Yes we are.' He would say, 'I know I have to do certain things here. ... But be patient and you'll see the pattern will change.' I said, 'Mr. President, you've given us nothing but the wrong signals on this issue.'"

George added,

"So, we'll see, but I'm not as hopeful now as I was when he was first elected."

As we've reported often in this space and in National Right to Life News, many, many people have written and called NRLC to express their great disappointment that the man they had persuaded themselves was a reconciler is, in fact, "more radical than all previous presidents on the life issue," as pro-abortion columnist Kathleen Parker wrote this morning. This peaceful army of disaffected former Obamamites was brought into being by Obama's militantly pro-abortion behavior.

Then there is the imaginary violence-prone army. Recently a Department of Homeland Security report on "Rightwing Extremism"--without rhyme, reason, or evidence--included pro-lifers. The aforementioned Commonweal blog entry is steeped in a similar paranoia.

Its target was "Catholic leaders." The writer offered a bizarre comparison to something a Bishop said in pre-World War II Poland that "could be used--and was used--as part of a deeper and darker anti-Jewish scenario which, as we know, was to be carried forward in horrifying reality on the Polish soil of Auschwitz." That was not the Bishop's intention, mind you, but that only made the writer's point stronger (in his own mind).

The connection to present day America? Part of what is causing what the writer called "this rancid and destructive environment" of hate toward Obama "is anti-abortion."

In other words, however scrupulous "Catholic leaders" may be in their opposition to Obama's abortion agenda, these subtleties will get lost in the shuffle as the riffraff talks itself into a justification for "extreme opposition."

Obama has a free pass no matter what he says (or doesn't say) and a supplicant media that gives more attention to his dog than to Republican legislative proposals. But because "Catholic leaders" are unafraid to tell the truth about abortion, the next thing you know Hitler will be making a curtain call?

Obama is among friends in the White House. You couldn't drop a Kleenex without it landing on some minion of the Abortion Establishment. It is both substantively important and deeply symbolic that Kansas' pro-abortion-to-the-hilt governor was confirmed yesterday as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

For the short term it's largely heads, Obama wins, tails, we lose. But that only makes me more determined than ever that, in the end, this guy's policies do not prevail.