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Why Pro-Lifers
are the Best Example of "Inalienable Nation" By Dave Andrusko Full disclosure. Nancy Gibbs, the executive editor of TIME magazine, is my favorite magazine writer, hands down. To borrow from baseball lingo, she is a five-tooler. Gibbs can write gracefully, analyze deftly, weave disparate ideas coherently, make you think subtly, and do all of this tersely. In a January 17 essay titled, "Inalienable Nation," Gibbs debunks the notion that what we've seen over the last year--the vigorous grassroots opposition to ObamaCare, for example--is an expression of alienation. Gibbs uses as a gauge a tool created by pollster Lou Harris way back in 1966--the "Alienation Index." Without rehearsing the entire piece (which you can read for yourself at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2041090,00.html), the important point is that the 2010 Alienation Index was "lower than it has been for most of the past 20 years." Gibbs makes a keen distinction. This is independent of how people feel about politicians in Washington because it "may not matter as much as how we feel about ourselves -- and only 37% of us feel that we are left out of things going on around us, compared with 51% in 1995." The rest of her essay documents that "Every day brings new evidence of a kind of personal empowerment, fueled by technology, that represents the very opposite of alienation. Feel helpless about media bias? Start a blog. Find popular culture coarse? Make your own movies on your smart phone. The iconic tableau of democracy in the new year came not from Washington but from Newark, N.J., where Mayor Cory Booker delivered diapers to a mom after her brother tweeted that she was trapped, snowbound. Suddenly, politics is flat" [as opposed to top-down]. I mention Gibbs' essay for two reasons. First, long before blogs and smart phones, grassroots pro-lifers subscribed to and acted upon the principle that they CAN make a difference. For example, one of Harris's five Alienation Index questions is "you're left out of things going on around you." However much we may have been (and are) frustrated, we believe we are "left out of things going on around" us only if we choose not to be involved. But we choose to be involved, each and every day. And because of that we ARE making unmistakable progress. Second, the seemingly omnipresent "social media," which includes this blog, is the great leveler. Over the last couple of months I have been a whole slew of meetings that have nothing to do with pro-life. But in each case, the use of blogs, and Facebook, and Twitter was revolutionizing the way members of groups communicated, in the process greatly enhancing their effectiveness. That's what is happening with our Movement. When you forward this blog to friends, or post it on your Facebook account, or Tweet about it on your Twitter account, you are passing the message along (essentially cost-free) in a manner that just a few years ago would have cost us a fortune! Oh, by the way, I hope you will post this on your Facebook account and ….. and…. and…. |