Forget people, let's argue about politics!

By W. James Antle III
web posted April 28, 2003

For months, her family and friends waited and hoped. The public
soon became familiar with the image of a young woman with a
big smile. She disappeared on Christmas Eve, her baby was due
on February 10 and the public was watching to see if she would
be found. Then came the news: The bodies of Laci Peterson and
her unborn son Conner were identified after they washed up on
the shore of the San Francisco Bay.

A sad ending to a wrenching news story. But not everyone's
mind was on the sorrow. In a revealing interview with the
Piscataway Daily Record, Morris County NOW President
Marva Stark objected to the double murder charges against the
alleged perpetrator, Scott Peterson, because the unborn child
was included as a victim. "If this is murder, well, then any time a
late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder," she told
reporters.

The national leadership of NOW did not rush to embrace this
position – or to clarify their official stance on fetal homicide laws
- and Stark would later equivocate somewhat in her radical
pronouncement. But the politics of abortion were thus interjected
into this case. Thoughtful pro-life reflections were also then
contributed to the debate by such commentators as nationally
syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher and WorldNet Daily
columnist Joel Miller. Sara Rimensnyder posted a brief,
interesting piece ruminating on the issues raised by the mini-
controversy on Reason magazine's website.

Now, there are many important things that can and have been
written about the legal schizophrenia that criminalizes fetal
homicide yet permits elective abortion, as if "wantedness" was
the determinant of personhood. But it nevertheless seems odd
that we began by looking at a human tragedy and ended up
arguing about politics. It seems all the more odd that this
occurred because a representative of a self-styled women's
rights group looked at a husband accused of murdering his wife
and son and saw only what the ramifications might be for
abortion.

The feminist obsession with abortion above all else is
symptomatic of a culture saturated by politics. As a political
junkie who reads, listens to radio reports, watches television
shows, studies and writes about politics, I am not one who
believes it to be a trivial or uninteresting subject. Nor do I find
anything wrong with taking a current event like the Laci Peterson
case and using it as the starting point of a relevant political
discussion. It's an approach I use in many of my articles. But I
do wonder why the events behind news stories become
crowded about by political arguments as frequently as they do. It
is possible to take one's preoccupation with politics and ideology
to such an extreme that any sense of proportion or reality is lost.

It is increasingly difficult to attend a lecture on a college campus
on a subject other than, maybe, mathematics without some kind
political speechmaking entering into it. University course catalogs
are replete with politicized offerings, animated by feminist
ideology, multiculturalism, critical race theory, radical liberation
theology and a whole host of philosophical underpinnings friendly
to the idea that politics is central to human progress. Campuses
and corporations now introduce speech codes and sensitivity
training that conforms to the latest politically corrects fads. Even
religious services are often intruded by the assumption that
salvation may be found in certain political programs here on
earth, with the preaching of theological liberals politicized at least
as frequently as that of the much-maligned "religious right."

The war in Iraq has generated a lot of debate over celebrity
political activism, with entertainers ranging from country music
stars the Dixie Chicks to actor Tim Robbins inviting criticism for
their antiwar pronouncements. I myself have no problem with
celebrity politicking; I was a strong supporter of Ronald Reagan
and an admirer of Charlton Heston's efforts on behalf of gun
rights. It would thus be hypocritical of me to say that it is not the
place of movie stars and musicians to speak their minds about
politics. But I do marvel at the ubiquity of the practice. It seems
like nearly every major entertainer delves into political
commentary at some point. Concerts by your favorite recording
artists often feature unwelcome and inarticulate speechmaking. It
is a great leap from the ability to play an instrument or act in a
movie to statecraft, yet it is one relatively few entertainers seem
to hesitate making.

Many people actually think the way political fundraising letters
read: If Candidate X is elected, the world as we know it will
come to an end. The people will be enslaved, the poor and
disenfranchised will be slaughtered, and the elderly will be
starved. Locusts will descend upon our land amidst great
weeping and gnashing of teeth. Only a donation to those of us
who defend All That is Good and Right will forestall this misery
and human suffering.

Such letters – and such thinking – may be found even in
campaigns pitting moderate, practically indistinguishable
candidates of opposing parties against each other, or in cases
where the activists are organizing around causes that few people
really care about. The fire and brimstone tends to be
disproportionate to the issues being discussed. Ideology has
taken on a role similar to a crusading religious faith. Nor is this
political obsession limited to liberals. While Russell Kirk warned
against utopian sentiments and described conservatism as the
"negation of ideology," today many on the right seem believe that
political authority backed by military force has an unlimited ability
to remake societies and cultures.

William Anderson reflected on the changes this has wrought
throughout our culture in a column for LewRockwell.com, a
webzine that itself often displays ideological obsession:
"Literature, literary publications, and religion once upon a time
dealt with the weightier issues of right and wrong and the
temporal and the eternal. Today, they are a mishmash of political
pronouncements. For example, even in this century, the
Trotskyite publication The Nation actually devoted many of its
pages to literature and literary criticism. No more. From the
New York Times to the New Yorker (and the New York
Review of Books), we are treated to political discourse. Even
modern poetry is nothing more than a gaggle of political ranting."

Some of this stems from the expansion of government. As
government has become involved in more activities and has
increased its power to redistribute wealth and access, the stakes
of political outcomes have been raised. Despite - or possibly
because of – the public's deep cynicism about politicians and
government (about which entire books, such as E.J. Dionne's
Why Americans Hate Politics, have been written), our collective
faith in what politics is supposed to achieve has increased. In
much of our culture, it is taken as axiomatic that grave problems
ranging from race relations to the provision of health care can
only be solved by government power. Virtually all problems are
viewed as proper objects of public – read, government –
concern. In spite of the tremendous record of innovation within a
spontaneous order being able to meet challenges, government is
viewed as the problem-solver of first resort rather than civil
society, the church or the market. Much of the marked decline in
the civility of political discussions can be directly traced to this
phenomenon: As people have come to believe in messianic
politicians and political programs, their political debates have
been transformed into something approaching the ugliness of
religious wars.

Yet the belief in the centrality of politics is contradicted by the
experience of our daily lives. Political authority is powerless to
truly shape the bonds of family and friendship, our deepest faiths
and our sources of joy. There are a lot of more important things
in life than politics. And much of what makes politics important is
that it enables us to enjoy these finer things. The proper role of
government, as described by the Declaration of Independence, is
to secure and protect the people's inalienable rights. Political
debates properly center on what this means and how it can best
be achieved.
 
But it is always important to remember which is the end and
which is the means. When young lives full of potential are snuffed
out, it is an event to be mourned and reflected upon for its own
sake. It does not need to be tied to some larger causes to make
it so. Serious thought about the affairs of state can be heady
stuff. Those of us with deep political convictions must always
work to avoid giving into the temptation to place politics above
actual people. For when we do exhibit such misplaced priorities,
we are missing the point indeed.

W. James Antle III is a senior editor for Enter Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com