Friday, June 13, 2008

To my comrades in the cause of the unborn child

Byhrtwold grasped his shield and spoke.
He was an old companion. He brandished his ash-spear
and most boldly urged on the warriors:
"Mind must be the firmer, heart the more fierce
courage the greater, as our strength diminishes...."

"The Battle of Maldon," Anglo-Saxon poem, translation by Kevin Crossley-Holland

When a cause is losing, that is the very time when it is most worth fighting for. In fact, it may well be that the only causes worth fighting for are those that are, or appear, to be lost in earthly terms. That your side has seen no results of the sort it hoped for, even for many years, is in no way an argument for endorsing the other side. If the Enemy can say that he has won the souls of the last defenders of the innocent, will that not be his greatest triumph of all?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes ma'am. Everything in this and the previous post is pretty near gospel.

Vlastimil Vohánka said...

Lydia and Bill,

What do you think about this desperate decision of a serious pro-lifer to vote for Obama?

"Not because Senator Obama's position on abortion is mine; it is not. Not because I don't believe Senator Obama could improve the articulation of his position; he could, but because I believe that my faith calls upon me at this time to focus on new efforts and untried paths to reduce abortion practice in America."

http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=27820&page=1

Anonymous said...

Sorry, you've discussed it already:
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/mt/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=3&search=kmiec

Vlastimil

Lydia McGrew said...

Hi, Vlastimil. Here's one that addresses your question directly, but in which I didn't name Kmiec:

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/05/what_is_a_vote.html

(If that URL gets cut off, it's my post on W4 called "What is a Vote?" You can find it under my name in the author list.)

Short version (which I say in the post): I think the idea that there can be a "pro-life vote" for Obama is beneath contempt. It's so stupid I hesitated to write the article for fear of making it sound like a respectable idea.

William Luse said...

but because I believe that my faith calls upon me at this time to focus on new efforts and untried paths to reduce abortion practice in America."

Two possibilities come to mind, Vlastimil. Whoever wrote that is either straining mightily to rationalize doing an evil thing, or he's lying. I don't think people who say things like that really care about the abortion issue at all, especially since they know in advance that their desire to blaze new trails is not one shared by their bloodthirsty candidate.