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The Impending Collapse "By looking for earthquakes to describe changes in the political landscape, the effects of erosion and drift are easily overlooked, even though the end results can be at least as substantial." -- Greg Adams: "Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution"
First, you'd be pleased, then you'd think about the responses of most of the handful of specialists who were the only ones who were more than casually aware of the site. With monotonous regularity, they had insisted all along that what you'd found to date was trivial - - and that if there was anything of significance in the locale, it would have long ago been unearthed. But with the latest diggings, honeycombed with amazing artifacts, suddenly a larger, more comprehensive picture of the site came into focus, placing what you had discovered previously in a new light as well. Clearly, you are onto a major scientific discovery - - clearly, that is to you, but not to the habitual naysayers who'd always insisted the expedition was a waste of time. Wedded to a position that was growing more untenable by the hour, these "experts" reacted as they always had: by offering lame, beside-the-point excuses in an attempt to explain away what you had unburied. You'd expect that from people whose thinking had long since fallen into an inescapable rut, or who may have had ulterior motives. But once news leaked out, what about those coming fresh to the evidence? How would those not loaded down with the burden of defending an entrenched position for decades evaluate the discoveries, old as well as new? Would they be more receptive to the same old talking points (shouted perhaps a little bit louder), or to the discoveries' soft but clear message? This may, at first glance, seem a stretch, but I honestly think this is where the abortion controversy stands today. In the abortion context, "insiders," such as you and me, on one side, and the we've-never-met-an-abortion-we-wouldn't-condone crowd, on the other side, have been privy to a thousand different discoveries made in the last decade or two. Unbeknownst to most people, there are two dimensions to this, both damaging to anti-life forces: a greater appreciation of the marvelous complexity of the preborn child, and a growing shock as Americans learned to their horror that at 20 weeks, if not earlier, that same unborn baby can experience excruciating pain in an abortion. Even prior to 1973, no sophisticated medical tests or full-color four-dimensional ultrasounds were required to know that pregnant women carried living human beings. Those "discoveries" didn't require a shovel to unearth. They were there, plain as day, for all to see. But in the last decades, an appreciation of what world-renowned geneticist Jerome Lejeune once called the "symphony of life" has increasingly become part of our common cultural literacy. Not so long ago knowledge of the unborn's shared humanity was limited to a select group, rather like the audience that could afford to attend a concert at Carnegie Hall. Now, it's akin to watching Great Performances on PBS. Thanks to medical technology, we can all enjoy the "music." Not so long ago the little ones were dismissed in elite circles as little more than stowaways, if not far worse. We now know that the developmental journey of unborn children is as thrilling as any voyage to a South Sea island written by Robert Lewis Stevenson. Which is merely to say that maintaining the old dismissive orthodoxy is a far tougher sell when a baby's first picture is an ultrasound, held to the refrigerator door with a small magnet, and admired daily. Seeing really is believing. You may know there is an entire school of thought that argues that a major reason the old Soviet Union fell was because computers, e-mail, and fax machines undermined the regime's rigid control of information. Once the corruption endemic to the Soviet State could no longer be hidden, the empire collapsed. This is precisely the fate befalling the Abortion Establishment. The collective impact of numerous pro-life initiatives—especially the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act--and almost magical medical technology, working hand in hand, is to uproot lies and plant truth in its place. I need your feedback on both Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |
Imagine
you are an archeologist working at a famous, well-excavated
site. You've been there for some time, when, seemingly out of
the blue, you start making significant finds every 15 feet or
so.