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Does history repeat itself?
Genesis records the fall of the Tower of Babel. Here's the New International Version translation:
"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. ...
"Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.'
"So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
It feels as if we are reliving that moment, all talking past one another. For example, the national conversation is confounded about abortion.
I'm anti-abortion. Yet there is no "right" to "life."
Ninety-six percent of Americans seemingly are untroubled by turning a cow — a life — into steaks. A cow's life is not legally protected (and, MAGA paranoia notwithstanding, won't be).
And there is no such thing as absolute freedom of "choice." My freedom to choose stops at other people's rights.
What defines such rights and their limits? The Fifth Amendment states: "No person … shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…"
Putting on my constitutional lawyer hat, when we recognize an unborn child legally as a person, it becomes constitutionally untenable to deprive that unborn person of life without due process of law.
To do otherwise would give legitimacy to vigilantism.
Conversely, if the unborn is held to be a legal nonperson it becomes logically, ethically, and politically untenable to prohibit abortion. How to resolve this conundrum?
As I wrote here: "Most religions have given thought to this. We, the governed-giving-consent, are not bound by law to our faiths. Yet the thoughts of the spiritual sages enrich our discernment.
"In Roman Catholicism, personhood attaches at conception.
"In Orthodox Judaism, according to the Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 69b, the Sages conclude: 'the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day.' ...
"Protestant views vary. Evangelical Christians trend most protective of the life of the unborn. Meanwhile, for example, Lutherans (contra Martin Luther in his 'Commentary on Genesis,' Chapter 25, verses 1-4) hold that abortion should be permitted prior to the unborn's viability."
"Personhood" represents an ethical assessment, not a scientific absolute. Ethical assessments are the stuff of politics, to which Dobbs has returned the idsue of abortion to the states.
Alas, the anti-abortion forces are fumbling this. Babel.
What's another piece of civic babel? The first clause of the First Amendment — the opening of the Bill of Rights — states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . "
The Constitution contains no "wall of separation between church and state." That's from a letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, which clearly describes the Constitution's protection of the church from the state.
To forbid a religion to formulate and advocate rules of morality would be a prohibited prohibition of the free exercise of religion.
As I wrote in a previous column, whichever party wins the 2024 race will almost certainly not gain a governing mandate. The presidency aside, it seems unlikely that either party will win a big enough majority on Capitol Hill to claim a governing mandate.
It's been a generation since Uncle Sam has enjoyed such a mandate. Gallup finds that 75% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going now, and less than half of the population has felt satisfied for over a generation.
What's next? Great policy comes from a combination of heroism and pragmatism. Perhaps the looming gridlock will generate a heroic new leader: the next Rep. Jack Kemp or Charlie Wilson.
Thus, to restore political and social consensus, let's aspire to unconfuse our language. Let's strive to understand — and respectfully agree or disagree with — our mysterious fellow Americans.
Tiring of Kamala Harris' "word salad" and Donald Trump's "weave?"
With the Lord now being invoked by both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, let us now petition the deity to untie our tongues.
Karl Marx, citing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, was right about only one thing: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
Beginning Nov. 6, let's end the civic farce besetting America. Let's end the fall of the American Tower of Babel.
Let there be light.
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder "The Capitalist League," He's also the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $104T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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