Aborting history:
Jr, David R Carlin
OF SEVERAL HINDS David R. Carlin, Jr. ABORTING HISTORY RESPONSIBILITY & REMEMBERING In the great ages of philosophy, some metaphysicians (e.g., Plotinus, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel)...
...and they cannot understand their republic if they do not know its history, or at least its historical myth...
...In short, he can say that he's not really responsible for the baby...
...This was true in ancient Rome...
...In the twentieth century physicists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking have worked at developing a grand unified theory that would bring all physical knowledge into a single comprehensive system...
...and when it comes to sexual conduct, it is precisely young men they most significantly associate with...
...And that's an act that requires two partners: "It takes two to tango," as people used to say...
...that's bad enough...
...My own systematic ambitions are more modest: I hope to live long enough to systematize my prejudices...
...This latter act is neither a tango nor any other dance with two partners...
...If the abortion culture promotes irresponsibility, the sign of this irresponsibility in young women is abortion itself...
...but they are not...
...But if you have no idea when Thomas Jefferson was going about his business, or what business he was going about, that's far worse: you have a deficit not only in knowledge but also in responsibility...
...Of course, responsibility has never been the strong suit of young men as a class...
...That's why they get in trouble with the police more than any other age/sex group and why their auto insurance premiums are so expensive...
...it only requires that he offer to pay for her abortion...
...I think there is...
...I suppose there has always been a tendency for males to run away from responsibility for out-of-wedlock pregnancies...
...they are intimate associates...
...Historical ignorance and the abortion culture may seem a million miles apart...
...So what does all this have to do with not having the foggiest ideas, for instance, of when Thomas Jefferson was in the White House...
...One of the principal differences between a building and a republic is that the building can survive even if the bricks that compose it are not solicitous for the building's well-being...
...In the old, preabortion era, it required only one decisive act to have a baby the act of sexual intercourse with conception resulting...
...f irresponsibility...
...And since the solo takes place after the duet, it can plausibly be argued by the male partner that the baby was born as a direct result not of their action of conceiving the baby but of her action of refusing to abort...
...And if you don't know your country's history, this is a sign that you don't care, that you don't feel responsible for the well-being of your republic...
...But of all the silly propositions that contemporary secular piety requires us to receive with reverence, the proposition that abortion decision making among the young is conducted in an atmosphere dense with a spirit of responsibility is among the silliest...
...a good superintendent of maintenance with a healthy budget will take care of all that...
...But is there a third something that perhaps causes both...
...But a republic cannot survive if its component parts, its citizens, fail to be solicitous for its well-being...
...A good citizen, then, will know his country's history...
...If you don't know the periodic table of the elements, you suffer from a deficiency of knowledge...
...he can walk away from her and the baby with a clear conscience...
...But what does abortion have to do with an ignorance of history...
...The abortion culture, by contrast, stimulates it, at least as far as sexual conduct is concerned...
...Yet they cannot care for that which they do not understand...
...Mature people should have a well-defined character preferably a good character, but better a bad character than none at all...
...The other day a friend of mine, a teacher, had his day ruined when a student in class opined that Thomas Jefferson was president of the U.S...
...But our abortion culture has given this tendency toward irresponsibility a new and almost infallible rationale...
...There are still young men (victims perhaps of cultural lag) who neither press their girlfriends to he ve abortions nor take a walk on them...
...Of course the tendency toward irresponsibility they acquire in this way cannot manifest itself as it does in their male friends: the girls are not able to take a walk and leave the boys to worry about the pregnancy...
...But to the degree they associate with young men, the habits of these young men will rub off on them...
...It is unlikely that either one causes the other...
...Whether by nature or for some other reason, young women as a rule tend to be more responsible than young men...
...it is true in the United States today...
...That's a perennial by-product of human nature (or Original Sin...
...there are even young women who, whether misguided or not, elect to have abortions in a spirit of responsibility...
...No, but they are able to walk out on the pregnancy in another way by terminating it...
...ABORTING HISTORY RESPONSIBILITY & REMEMBERING In the great ages of philosophy, some metaphysicians (e.g., Plotinus, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel) developed comprehensive explanatory systems to account for the whole of reality...
...It is even true of the world as a whole today: if you mean to be a citizen of the world, a cosmopolitan in the strict sense of that word, you must know the history of the world...
...In one's youth it doesn't matter that one has likes and dislikes that contradict one another...
...and (b) I am greatly annoyed by the immense ignorance of history shown by the typical American college student...
...Now, two of my prejudices are these: (a) I disapprove of the generous tolerance given to abortion in America...
...I realize there are many exceptions to the rules I have just described...
...A id there are still young women who, in a pint of responsibility, decline to terminate their pregnancies...
...Nowadays chivalry no longer dictates that the young man should offer to marry the young woman...
...about twenty years ago...
...They are but two faces of that many-faceted monster who goes by the name of irresponsibility...
...Traditionally we've known about this tendency toward irresponsibility and have tried to discourage it, to keep it under some sort of control...
...If she declines this generous offer, he is off the hook...
...by law only the woman, not the couple, has the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion...
...it is a solo performance...
...But in our abortion culture it requires two decisive acts to have a baby: the sexual act plus the decision not to terminate the pregnancy through abortion...
...But as one grows older a lack of consistency in these things argues a lack of character...
Vol. 117 • May 1990 • No. 9
