Charles C. W. Cooke:
We live in a world of soundbites, in which context is breezily relegated to the shadows and hysteria is positively encouraged. As Aldous Huxley observed, “an unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood” — and, in our age, how they are. We are subject, as Huxley predicted, to “the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant.” Take a look, for example, at what Richard Murdock, a Republican running for the Senate from the state of Indiana, said yesterday:Okay! I looked, and he seems like a thoroughly awful human being.I believe life begins at conception. The only exception I have for to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.
Now, compare this with the headlines today:Okay, I looked at those too. They are reasonable.Talking Points Memo: GOP Senate Nominee: Rape Pregnancies Are The Will of God
Salon: Richard Mourdock, misogynist
Huffington Post: Richard Mourdock Slammed For Saying Pregnancy Resulting From Rape Is ‘Something God Intended’
ThinkProgress: GOP U.S. Senate Candidate Calls Rape Pregnancies A ‘Gift From God’
Associated Press: Mourdock: God at Work When Rape Leads to Pregnancy
Daily Kos: Another crazy Republican rape theory
The Atlantic: Republican Senate Candidate Says Rape Pregnancies Are a ‘Gift from God’
BBC: Fury at US candidate rape comment
It was unwise of Mourdock to range into discussion of theodicy in the current environment. He, as Huxley might have put it, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” Nonetheless, it was clear what he was saying. For anyone possessed of even a passing familiarity with the argument against rape and incest exceptions, his point should not have been difficult to grasp. (Therein, one suspects, lies the problem.) To wit: If an unborn child is indeed a life, then how it became one — however ghastly that was — is rendered irrelevant. This position could be summed up by saying that “life is life is life,” and that its sanctity cannot be diminished by the circumstances of its creation.Oh, I get it. This is why the word "plan" does not mean "plan" and in fact a "plan" is irrelevant and THAT is the "plan".
There are myriad philosophical and moral arguments to be offered on this question, but Richard Mourdock has made no secret about the position he takes.It says right there in small print on the label: "*Myriad philosophical and moral arguments may not include those around destiny." SUCK IT MILTON!
This is not news, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. As Mourdock subsequently explained:Glad that's settled. Nothing in there about fore-ordained rape at all. God is a gift-giver, the gift is life, and if his instrument is sometimes a rapist's penis, well, BABY SHOWER!“What I said was, in answering the question form my position of faith, I said I believe that God creates life. I believe that as wholly and as fully as I can believe it. That God creates life. Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think that God pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that. That’s sick. Twisted. That’s not even close to what I said. What I said is that God creates life.”
OKAY THEN UPDATE:
Baby shower as requested.
This is my present to the world.
