<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:14pt;color:#794a72;"><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td height="200" bgcolor="#f2fff2" background="cid:1222214129457@dclient.mail.yahoo.com" valign="top"><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td width="10"> </td><td valign="top"><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"><tbody><tr><td height="10"> </td></tr><tr><td><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="3" color="#794a72" style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:14;color:#794a72;"><div style="text-align:undefined;"><font size="3">http://www.thecatholicthing.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=522&Itemid=2</font><br><div> <font size="3"><br><font size="4"><span style="font-weight: bold;">
One Issue Among Many?</span><br style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="small">
By Hadley Arkes</span></font><br><br></font><p class="firstletter"><font size="3"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">We
are now not only in the year, but in the seasons, the days of politics,
marking the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Those
debates marked the gravest crisis in our political history, the crisis
of our “house divided.” For the issues truly ran to the core; they ran
back to what John Paul II called the question of “the human person.”
The question, said Lincoln, is “whether a negro is not or is a man. If
he is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of
self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a
man, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of self-government,
to say that he too shall not govern himself?”<br>
</span></span></font></p>
<p class="indent"><font size="3"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">As
Harry Jaffa pointed out, following Lincoln, the question of whether a
black man was a human being was not a “value judgment.” His standing as
a human would not depend on whether we imputed “value” to his life.
Whether he was a “human” was a question with an objective answer. That
answer did not hinge on the vote of a majority; the answer had to be
clear before we would know just what kinds of creatures are suited for
the life of politics in offering arguments and reasons and casting
votes.<br>
</span></span></font></p>
<p class="indent"><font size="3"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">At
every moment, in the debates these days over abortion, we find the
ground for our argument in the reasoning that Lincoln set in place as
he sought to make his own case compelling to a broad audience. As in
our own time, there was a facile switching of labels: that was not a
man but a “nigger,” not a small human but a “fetus.” And with that
flick of a label a whole class of human beings would be removed from
the circle of “rights-bearing” beings. </span></span></font></p>
<font size="3"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
<p class="indent">In the season of politics upon us now, we are faced
again with the question of explaining why “this issue” - slavery or
abortion - is not just one among several, plausible issues, but the
issue that must be more central than anything else. The word has now
managed to get through, especially to Catholics, that Barack Obama has
the most radical pro-abortion stance of any national Democrat. But even
as our Democratic friends absorb that news, it is not enough to
dislodge them from their vote for Obama. Even certain Catholics are
quick to remind us here that there are many other issues. Why should
they take this one as decisive?</p>
<p class="indent">The late historian J.G. Randall of the University of
Chicago once posed the question of why Lincoln was justified in forcing
a political crisis over that vexing matter of slavery:</p>
<blockquote>
<div>With all the problems that might have been put before the people
as proper matter for their consideration in choosing a senator —choice
of government servants, immigration, the tariff, international policy,
promotion of education, westward extension of railroads, the opening of
new lands for homesteads, protection against greedy exploitation of
those lands ... encouragement to settlers ... improving the condition
of factory workers, and alleviating those agrarian grievances that were
to plague the coming decades—with such issues facing the country, those
two candidates for the Senate talked as if there were only one issue.</div>
</blockquote>
<p class="indent">Read today, that opinion is bound to strike readers
as churlish, even oafish. And yet why? Is it wrong because we have come
to regard that issue now, in our own day, as one we happen to care
about? Or is it because there was truly something more fundamental in
that question of just who were those beings who were the objects of
concern in all of these other issues? Who were the “people” whose
injuries mattered when it came to getting access to western lands? Who
were the persons whose “rights” were being enhanced or denied as people
were admitted to the country as immigrants or suffered from the
conditions of work and pay in factories? In short, who out there
counted as the “persons” whose interests and injuries mattered?</p>
<p class="indent">In politics we are ever dealing with the righting of
wrongs, the relief of injuries, the doing of justice - whether in
health care, the laying of taxes, or hazarding young men in war. Every
one of these issues hinges on the prior question of just what
constitutes the “person” who is the bearer of these interests and
rights - and the object of our concern. The question of slavery was
central in the way that others were not because it touched the core of
the question that <i>affected the rights of everyone else on every other issue</i>.
And yet, 150 years later, a population showing far higher levels of
formal education cannot quite grasp the same point when it comes to
them as a matter of recognizing the human standing of our own offspring.</p>
<p class="indent">In that famous old joke, a lawyer is told by the
Devil that he can have all the women and money he would ever want - and
in return? He would give the Devil his soul. The lawyer, ever wary,
ponders the offer and finally asks, “What’s the catch”? But now large
numbers of people with a college education learn that Barack Obama
would withhold the protections of the law and medical care from a child
who survives an abortion, and they say, “And so? Why should that make a
difference in <i>this</i> election?” In this way, without the least strain or awareness, the soul of a democratic people is gently altered.</p>
<i>Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College.</i><br>
<br>
(c) 2008 <i>The Catholic Thing</i>. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info at thecatholicthing dot org</span></span></font><div><font size="3"> </font></div><div><font color="#0000bf" size="3"><em><font face="comic sans ms"><div><em><font color="#0000bf" face="Comic Sans MS">Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.</font></em></div></font></em></font></div><div><font color="#0000bf" size="3"><em><font face="comic sans ms">Ps 42:1</font></em></font></div><div><font size="3"><em></em> </font></div></div><div><font size="3"><br></font></div></div></font></td></tr><tr><td height="10"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td><td width="10"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br>
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