Could the Right be right? Part One Cultural Crisis and the Unraveling of the American Social Fabric copyright 1996 Pierce Brown III

Blogger’s note:   As you can see I originally wrote this in 1996–at the beginning of Bill Clinton’s second term, and at arguably the zenith of Newt Gingrich’s power. This period also marks the beginning of the rightward shift of the center of gravity for the Republican Party, heralding the forceful emergence of what should be called the New Right.  Below I have referenced the “Right” and the “Far Right”  The reader should be advised that I am speaking of a Republican Party that still contained what were at the time referred to as Liberal, Moderate, and Conservative Republicans, mirroring the diverse viewpoints of their Democratic colleagues in a way that is no longer true today.  This is a LONG piece.  I have sub-divided it and will post those segments separately for easier consumption.  I have also resisted the urge to update it.  That I will leave for a future piece, “Multi-Culturalism Revisited: The Idea of America vs Contemporary American Nativism.” 

Much is being said about the state of American Culture, much of it being of limited usefulness. The Far Right is prepared to go to war over Culture, and the Far Left, presumably, is prepared to engage them. And the rest of us will be drawn in, whether we wish it or not, because the Culture they will be fighting over is about each and every one of us. Before becoming too engaged and invested in one side or the other, it is critically important to have a clearer idea of what we will be fighting about–and why–than we will get from either extreme.   As far as the Far Right is concerned the concept of multiculturalism is a plague on the land with no place and less legitimacy in “their” America. There is an essential truth in the Right’s assessment of multiculturalism. However, it is effectively masked by a strident extremism which handicaps the Right’s efforts at making a palatable case to non-believers, while simultaneously blinding the Right to the essential legitimacy in the arguments of their adversaries. Both multiculturalism and its as yet unnamed philosophical antithesis (presumably some form of “Americanism”) represent a voguish tribalism whose allure and power can be traced to the fact that they tap into vital fundamentals of the human psyche–beliefs about identity, feelings of belonging, and notions of safety.  These fundamentals are also, significantly, in intimate proximity to  real and imagined ideas about power and hegemony, ideas which are currently making the rounds on both the Right and Left under the more contemporary euphemisms ethnicity, race, and culture. The capacity of the beliefs erected around these notions to influence the thinking, feeling, and acting of people is profound. The passions unleashed when people’s allegiance to these notions is invoked are notorious for their proclivity at making successful end runs around reason, and are astonishingly skillful at co-opting intellect. They are also, by virtue of their exclusive nature, divisive. This aspect of tribalism is perhaps the most critical where the U.S. is concerned, comprised as it is of virtually every tribe on the planet. Consequently, any manipulation of people via ethnicity, race, and culture is a powerful and potentially dangerous exercise. Dangerous in the extreme.

Next: Original Intent and the American Dilemma–Who Belongs and on What Terms

Coming: From the ‘Great American Melting Pot’ to the Tower of Babel

 

Could the, ‘RIGHT’, be right?  

Cultural Crisis and the Unraveling of the American Social Fabric

Part Four: Too Many Chiefs–Why the “Idea of America” Cannot Survive Multi-”big C” Culturalism

Consider cultural empowerment. It is a term so loaded it literally bristles with essentially martial implications in the contemporary American imagination. It is astonishingly evocative considering its infant status in the American lexicon. This can be traced to what is unconsciously recognized rather than consciously acknowledged about [big-C] Culture, a thing that can be illustrated by using the mathematical principle of association. This principle asserts that if a = b, and b = c, then a = c. Now, consider the following series of associations: if Culture = identity, and 

Identity =  power, then Culture = power. The power of Culture springs from the fact that it dictates behavior by way of identity, for those who accept it. 

Malcolm X is quoted as having said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” This statement, while patently obvious, had a galvanizing effect upon certain segments of the black community, and the quest for Culturally-based power began in earnest. Blacks had demands aplenty. But they had come to the disheartening conclusion that any demand made in the absence of power is an empty gesture, despite its justness, legality, or morality. And the primary demand blacks were making of America was unqualified inclusion in the American “family”. It included an explicit demand that whites surrender ideas about black people which limited and debilitated them in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of their fellow citizens. These ideas (stereotypes, prejudices) were largely homespun, but had significant antecedents in the racial chauvinism of Anglo-Saxon Culture. Long frustrated by the failure of philosophical, intellectual, or humane appeals, blacks turned to what amounted to brute force. Afro/Black/African-American (sub)culture would first proclaim its existence as a Culture, then demand from American (i.e. white/Anglo) Culture inclusion from the position of power implicit in the understanding of having a separate, autonomous Culture. This was believed to have the additional benefit of providing a positive self-image and self-legitimizing dynamic for black people, another function of Culture. 

The insistence of blacks upon the existence and legitimacy of a black Culture has come to be generally (and correctly) understood by white people as a bid for power. However, the underlying purpose or intent for the use of that power has been misunderstood not only by whites, but potentially many blacks as well. At this point a critical addition must be added to the aforementioned chain of associations–if power = control, then Culture = control. Consequently, this assumption of power via the insistence upon Culture has been misinterpreted as a bid for control, when it was essentially a tactical ploy for inclusion. This is what the Cultural Empowerment movement has in common with the Modern Civil Rights Movement, which attained something the Civil War itself ultimately failed to do–to create fundamental and lasting (if for some grudging) changes in how whites interacted with blacks. This was a change in Culture, which is about how things are done socially (not necessarily or even primarily institutionally), and ultimately dictates every aspect of the interactive lives of its members. America’s social landscape has not been the same since. The success of blacks in this regard was not lost on others who considered themselves oppressed. Consequently, the modern Civil Rights Movement has become the stated inspiration of and archetype for empowerment groups of women, Hispanics, Asians, homosexuals, and even, ironically, some white power groups. The mantle has been recently taken up by the more forceful bent of the African-American Cultural Empowerment movement. Motivated by the perception of African-Americans possessing greater power than they actually wield, and the concern over being left behind in the scramble [for power], assimilated white ethnics are increasingly mimicking the Culturally assertive example provided by their African-American countrymen. 

However well-intentioned, African-American Cultural empowerment has in critical areas/ways back-fired, and worse, inspired a host of opportunistic and in some cases patently disingenuous clones. 

Consider the following analogy: The setting is Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. If you are so situated as to have a birds-eye view of all the activity therein, it would appear chaotic. Of course, it is not. There is a fundamental order underlying and dictating the activity of every single individual. The Flight Schedule, you say? No. Not fundamental enough. There is one thing to which even the Flight Schedule is ultimately subject, around which in fact, it is ultimately designed–time. More specifically, Central Standard Time (CST). Every single individual is engaged in an intimate dance with his fellow travelers, directed by the flight schedule but dictated by a concept that each, despite disparate and in some cases unrelated destinations, has in common and more importantly, accepts without question or challenge. One supreme, fundamental way of dealing with the [vagaries] of travel be it locally, nationally, or internationally. Now, consider what would happen if certain individuals, or worse, groups of individuals, were to decide that for them Eastern Standard Time (EST) was a more valid way for them to organize their travel, and insisted upon negotiating the flight schedule accordingly. Now, there is only a one hour difference between CST and EST, and given the [vagaries] of air travel it is almost inevitable that some lucky few EST-ans will make the flights to their desired destinations. However, most will not. Further, let us imagine other groups for whom Pacific Standard Time or Greenwich Mean Time, etc. are considered supreme. And all are trying to board the same flights according to their own [conception of] time. First there would develop pockets of confusion, which would escalate in turn to frustration, anger, and ultimately, action. That action would be driven primarily not by the initial confusion but, significantly, the derivative anger. 

   Anyone who “resides” in O’Hare, for however long, and proposes to take a flight from there, has their “life” directed by the organizing structure which is the flight schedule. They have also surrendered, implicitly, to the underlying “authority” of Central Standard Time. It is the one and only way to acceptably and successfully negotiate the flight schedule and peacefully, co-operatively share O’Hare Airport with all of the others who must also use it. And so it is with society and Culture. Culture is to society what time is to the flight schedule. In the United States any unwillingness to subsume ones native, ancestral, or contrived culture under the American Cultural umbrella is tantamount to a challenge to its authority as well as its sovereignty. 

The essential problem with having a multiplicity of assertive, prideful, empowered Cultures under one roof is that they do not, and by definition cannot, form the foundation for the kind of collective, civilly cooperative action between one another requisite for a safe, effective society. Culture is sovereign, and throughout recorded human history has sought to assert that dominance over any it contacted. And since an arrogant, myopic chauvinism and ethnocentrism are also characteristics of any Culture, confrontation and conflict are more likely than cooperation between different Cultures. Different Cultures imply different ways of doing things, different rules for interaction, different ways of viewing the world and ones place in it. Multiple Cultures mean multiply different ways and rules for interaction–multiple ultimate authorities. Misunderstanding and confrontation are inevitable, chaos, real chaos, a foregone conclusion. One country (i.e. one society) not only implies one Culture, it obligates one Culture by the simple logic that there can be only one boss, one final authority on, how to be acceptably and successfully in that society. For America this obligates that multiple subcultures (or ‘c’ultures) accept the role of influence instead of control. And so it has , historically, until the ascendency of the idea of Multi-Culturalism.  The U.S. has long been multi-cultural, was conceived as such at its birth–myriad “big C” Cultures surrendering their original status, subsumed but also embraced by a new “big-C”–American Culture. Participating in that embrace as a matter of course, American Society.  

Multi-Culturalism = chaos. That is the equation the Right has come up with. If not now then later, if current societal trends persist. They are almost certainly right. 

(*Editors’s Note–It’s later…and now, in fact, matters are worse. See: The Unintended Consequences Spawned by our Culture Wars)

Next: Step Back, Take a Breath–There is Hope for this Grand Social And Cultural Experiment

Part Three:  From the ‘Great American Melting Pot’ to the Tower of Babel

“All men are created equal”.  This concept animated the Founding Fathers and inspired the Western world with its vision that the divisions of class and culture, which had historically so tragically bedeviled Europe, could be overcome. Remember the great American Melting Pot? This expression represented the crowning achievement and practical manifestation of the concept that “All Men are Created Equal”. Drawn by its promise and under its sway new [European] immigrants during the 1830’s and 40’s accepted implicit demotion of their native Cultures (read: “big-C” cultures) to the status of little ‘c’ cultures (read: subcultures) in the context of their presence in America, then voluntarily supplanted any associated identity with a much grander one of, AMERICAN. They typically either modified (Anglicized) their names, or changed them completely. This served to obscure or totally obfuscate their national origins. By the second generation both native language and any associated accent were surrendered. These things served as both gestures of good faith and nominal price for admission to the American “family”. Judging by the evidence, they considered it a good trade. That is to say, they all stayed. Recently the Melting Pot has been replaced with the more “politically correct” Cultural Stew*.  An examination of the symbolism behind the expressions Cultural Melting Pot and Cultural Stew is revealing. The Melting Pot sprang from the optimistic assumption that differences among groups were not so profound that ultimately homogenation was impossible. The Cultural Stew implies that some differences are so significant that assimilation of certain “components” is not possible. They will remain hard, irreconcilable lumps in a perhaps viscous but essentially homogenous liquid. The “component” which has historically held the highest profile and presumed to be the most “resistant” to assimilation have been blacks.

What happened? 

When did our national aspirations retreat from a Cultural Melting Pot to a Cultural Stew, and why? More crucially, where is this trend leading us, to the [societal] rigor mortis of a Cultural Casserole? What, if anything, is inspiring or desirable about such a development, or the preceding one?

The 14th Amendment, and much of the legislation crafted during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Period, were structural attempts to facilitate the assimilation of blacks into the American Melting Pot. This precisely targeted legislation was coupled with stunningly effective enforcement mechanisms. After Reconstruction, southern states either crafted laws to counter act these federal statues, or simply ignored them. The Federal Government turned a willful blind eye to such practices. Structural changes are changes in society, hence neither fundamental nor permanent. And an American Culture which could not abide the full implications and obligations of permitting blacks to melt into what had heretofore been an exclusively white ethnic pot, soon backed away from virtually all of those structural changes, and into Americas’ Jim Crow Era. One hundred years later America would revisit the same issues it shrank from after Reconstruction. The former moral and social cowardice demonstrated by the bulk of her white citizens ultimately bought for the nation a social paroxysm which would yield “new” legislation, and limited but significant challenges at the critical level of Culture. 

Despite this many of the same issues spawned originally by the immediate aftermath of the Civil War would persist into the 1990s. In an irony both tragic and ominous, the comparatively inferior legislation of the 1960’s would likely have been acceptable to the newly defeated Confederacy, while Reconstruction Era legislation would have been more compatible with the [higher] expectations and heightened sensibilities of blacks of the late twentieth century. Consequently, the painstaking and drawn out process which created Modern Era Civil Rights legislation begs the question of precisely what was learned from the earlier effort, and calls into question the intent and will of the crafters. 

 The 14th Amendment swelled the ranks of the American citizenry without disturbing the [relative] tranquility of Ellis Island. But, instead of embracing the former slave as the newest addition to the American “family”, American Culture ultimately chose instead to embrace and internalize the former Confederacy’s ideas about and attitudes towards Negroes. Those ideas were steeped in a contrived racial ideology whose purpose was to create, legitimize, and maintain a gulf between black and white, perpetuating a long tradition of exploitation, aggressive exclusion, and reflexive lower caste treatment. That fateful choice resonated silently down succeeding generations only to explode noisily and tragically after the 1950’s. The riots of the 1960’s, the Modern Civil Rights Struggle and its broad spectrum aftermath were made inevitable not by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society but by what followed the Civil War and Reconstruction–white America’s collective choice of the neo-Confederacy’s Jim Crow over assimilation.

To move from extolling the Cultural Melting Pot to embracing the dubious virtues of a Cultural Stew is disturbing in its implicit retreat from the central idea which so uniquely defined and inspired America as a nation. It replaces the symbolism of unity and commonality implied by a pot of melted components with one which implies perpetual alienation of certain, select components. To attempt painting this as a positive and workable development is dangerously delusional. To return to the symbolism, what is the fate of such unassimilated components in a mixture that is primarily liquid but to gravitate toward the bottom of the pot? That is, unless the pot is periodically subjected to a vigorous stirring. In the history of America that stirring has manifested itself in the form of [post-Civil War] Reconstruction, the Modern Civil Rights Movement and the resultant “New Reconstruction Era”  legislation, the riots of the 1960’s. Are the white frenzy over school integration (during the 60’s in the South and the 70’s in the North) and the tide of [white] social Conservatism (white backlash?) examples of how the enveloping broth of the “stew” will respond to such agitation, and its necessity? How long can a society subjected to such disruptive, periodic agitation survive? The unwillingness of the country as a whole and individual citizens in specific to consistently and comprehensively respect and honor the full rights of citizenship, and by extension society, granted [Negroes] after the Civil War ultimately led to the Modern Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950’s, and the episodic orgies of destructive unrest during the 1960’s and beyond. Continued adherence to traditional ideas about and treatment of blacks is directly implicated in the [reactive] development of the Black Culture movement which is the spiritual inspiration, if not philosophical forebear, of the Multi-Cultural movement. 

*In 1996.  It didn’t last long. Now, of course, neither term is in common use.

Next:  Too Many Chiefs–Why the ‘idea of America’ Cannot Survive Multi-Culturalism

Coming: Step Back, Take a Breath–There is Hope for this Grand Social And Cultural Experiment

Part Five: Step Back, Take a Breath: There is Hope for this Social and Cultural Experiment

If you are a member of the human family–Mankind at large–that is all you need be to become an American. That, and the willingness to be an American, which (historically) ultimately translated to a surrender of the dominance of ones native Culture for that of American Culture. That, essentially, is the “Idea of America”. It was, and is, an experiment that is not yet complete. We are a Culture and society still in embryo–after 220* years America is still in development. This is critically important for all of us to recognize and accept. We have yet to make America the place “on the ground” that it is “on paper”. We deny this to our great peril. For those who think America is a finished product and that we have this experiment mastered, consider this: one year before and twenty-four years after the U.S. successfully and repeatedly landed men on the Moon, that same America also had riots in the same city (Los Angeles), among the same disaffected citizens (blacks), for the same reasons (lack of unqualified inclusion in the American “family”). The idea that all who wish to join are welcome in the American “family”, and the promise of equal treatment implied by the declared equality of Men, remains stubbornly illusive at the private, individual level of how we do, how we interact, how we think of ourselves and one another. This propagates inevitably into our public, collective social lives. It seeps through millions of pores into our public behavior, creating the powerful illusion known as “institutional racism”.  Just to be clear–the racism is real. The illusion is that any institution is in any way responsible for it.  It is  behavior brought to the institution, and there tolerated, giving said behavior collective sway within that institution.  So as it happens, the demand of unqualified willingness to become an American is not enough. Unqualified acceptance must be forthcoming from those who think of themselves as Americans as well.

So, here we are, 215 years after the ratification of the Constitution, flirting with persistent ideas about race both archaic and discredited, yet powerfully evocative and seductive. They are also, significantly, traditional. Virtually all of those traditional ideas (as well as the behaviors they are used to justify) are or stem from purposeful contrivances. More significantly, they are essentially incorrect. And despite protestations to the contrary, America [as a whole] continues to evidence a persistent obsession with and obeisance to these ideas about the idea that is race. The emotional power and allure of these ideas springs from a central one–identity. Identity is essential and determinative. It is intimate with survival, possessing lines of binding obligation linking past, present, and future; that is ancestors, grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. Identity, however, is essentially an idea as well. Its real power, as with any idea, is derived from its acceptance by the many. Simple intellectual adherence and behavioral conformity consistent with an idea can create an illusion of reality as potent in its power to effect as reality itself. For all that any idea, even one as compelling as race, has an Achilles’ heel. Its fundamental vulnerability is the power of the individual to disprove and delegitimize it through the simple act of rejecting it. That is, to not adhere to its attendant behavioral imperatives. This betrays the true nature of race. Being white and being black are ideas created by Man, not independent imperatives spawned by nature. The beliefs associated with them have been variably points of departure, rationale, and justification for more pain and injustice in our country than anyone wants to accept responsibility for.  

America’s social retardation with respect to “ace relations is ultimately a symptom of developmental failure at the basic level of Culture. Specifically, the failure of the basic [components/vehicles] of our Culture, individual Americans, to internalize the value that “All Men are Created Equal”, and the “idea of America”, which is that any who wish to become part of the American “family” need only embrace it to be embraced in return. Consequently, the phenomenon of Multi-Culturalism is better understood as a reaction to stubbornly persistent exclusion of non-whites from the “family”. A society can do little more than its values, taboos, traditions, and prejudices allow. As such the ascendancy of Multi-Culturalism stands as an indictment of traditional American Culture rather than a failure of contemporary American society. 

 As a society we have busily and painstakingly crafted racially specific legislation which has been declared ineffective or worse, the most enthusiastic promoters of this assessment being its original opponents and their ideological heirs. The real inspiration behind the detractors and demonizers of the Great Society notwithstanding, (themselves the spawn and fortunate beneficiaries of Roosevelt’s New Deal, a similarity and irony either lost upon or beyond them) champion an essential, legitimate criticism. New laws, amendments, and special protective legislation were not found to be necessary for Jews, Poles, Irish, or even the Chinese. They should have been no more necessary for blacks (or women or homosexuals). How to interact with members of the American community that were formerly considered not equal is implicit in the declaration that they are equal. Making special exceptions and distinctions based upon race served to allow whites to preserve certain essential and traditional ideas about race. More insidiously it provided cover for those whites who insisted upon behaving in ways consistent with racial taboos, values, and cherished beliefs, while giving the appearance in general of more comprehensive fundamental change than was actually the case. Those traditions, taboos, and values associated with race are nowhere codified, but everyone has learned them, black and white alike; they are not sanctioned by the courts nor were they voted upon by any electorate, but they carry a compulsion to adherence which transcends regional and ideological loyalties with a force far greater than any law. These things have their foundation in Culture. Tradition is Culture by another name. Traditions, taboos, and values are the ways and means, the “laws”, of Culture in specific. The enforcers of these “laws of Culture” are each of its individual members, from children to the elderly. The “Culture Police” are everywhere, and they have far greater discretionary power than their societal counter-parts. Each of us is empowered to act as judge, jury, and if need be, executioner. We have not only the power, but the obligation to punish transgressors of Cultural Traditions, taboos, and values. Nowhere is this better illustrated than as regards Cultural Traditions governing the interaction between blacks and whites. Carefully watch any element of the [purportedly] liberal media–television ads, sit-coms, or movies that are “integrated”–and you will observe taboo obeisance in action. All of these Cultural Laws and behavioral imperatives derive their coercive power, ultimately, from simple conformity. 

Like it or not,  America is multi-cultural by definition, with a demonstrated ability to incorporate aspects of different Cultural groups. But it is imperative that any such group abdicate their native Culture’s sovereignty over their beliefs and behaviors, settling for its having influence rather than control–(sub)culture status. On the other side, contributions [from other cultures] should not only be welcome but recognized as necessary. Otherwise America will become like every other traditional Culture on the planet, and in the process lose its vitality, its allure, and its unique capabilities, eventually degenerating to mediocrity, or worse. The process is already underway. And the reason is not, as one foreign diplomat recently asserted, because America has become “mongrelized”. We have always been mongrelized. That has been our self-acknowledged strength. The decline has more to do with the fact that at a certain point we began in earnest an elaborate and self-defeating process of selectively resisting that mongrelization. As a result we have squandered resources both emotional and physical, willfully interfering with a process that we were not only ultimately powerless to prevent, but one to which we are ostensibly committed to realizing.

The “Idea of America” is as much about letting go as it is about embracing. The idea was as much about creating a new Culture as a new society. That obligates new traditions, new taboos, new values. In America what we have not done is to be consistent, and to follow through. We have insisted upon the existence of a wall (race), rather late in the day publicly declared our intent to scale it, and in the failing declared the wall unscalable. What we have failed (or refused) to do is to notice that the wall, to the extent that it even exists, has a door. It is not necessary to scale it. All that is required is the will to open it, step through, and accept what we find on the other side. Our failure to deal with “the race problem” has not been inevitable, as some on both sides of the color line choose to believe, but willful. The “Idea of America” was a challenge when the experiment began. Blame is easy, responsibility is hard, and blame is what we have reduced ourselves to in America. Blacks blame racism. Whites, ironically, blame (in effect) their own creation, race. Both use blame to avoid responsible action and justify [ultimately] irresponsible, if familiar and comforting, behaviors from transparent prejudice to sociopathy. If America is to survive we must meet the challenge of realizing the “Idea of America” in terms of individual responsibility and commitment rather than relying exclusively and indefinitely upon governmental prescriptions, be they formulations of either the Right, the Left, or the endangered Center. Retreat into collective mutual recriminations is not a viable option, despite being the one Americans are increasingly choosing. 

 

An Open Letter to Women Concerning Roe v. Wade

 It’s about a lot more than abortion, and it’s closer than you think. 

The religious right’s anti-abortion agenda is well advanced.  After the failure of peaceful appeals that ranged from religious arguments to secular morality to simple pedestrian guilt in order to compel the compliance of non-believers, the religious right returned to historically proven basics.  And so abortion providers and their actual and prospective clients were subjected to a generation and more of intimidation, terror, and violence.  A careful survey of news stories from as early as 1976 and as recently as 2009 will yield an appalling amount of violence nationwide perpetrated against property and people, including but not limited to bombings and fatal shootings.  This protracted war of attrition didn’t simply lead to the closing of most existing clinics providing abortions.  The reach of the cold hand of terror caused providers, whether personally targeted or not, to get out of the business, and led most medical schools to stop teaching the procedure altogether.  

Often low-profile but blessed with a relentlessness characteristic of the devout, the religious right movement managed to accomplish in practical terms what it couldn’t via peaceful persuasion.  Consequently today an abortion, while still essentially legal, is very much harder to obtain than you might think.  

And it’s getting harder.  

A successful strategy of incremental erosion is making the legal window narrower in terms of acceptable circumstances and shallower in terms of how late in the pregnancy an abortion may be performed.  If you are poor and living in parts of the rural South, it is virtually impossible to obtain an abortion, regardless of when or why.  And the potential demise of Roe v Wade would NOT be the end of the matter.  It is, in fact only the end of the beginning.  

The religious right movement is opposed to all forms of contraception.  If asked directly its leaders will deny or dissemble, but their movement’s ultimate goal is to eliminate all forms of contraception.  This is clearly exposed by the response of the religious right to Plan B.  Plan B, commonly known as the “morning after” pill, chemically prevents conception if taken within 72 hours of intercourse.  It is officially designated as emergency [oral] contraception.  The religious right has christened Plan B an “abortion pill”, characteristically ignoring the science supporting its clearly contraceptive action.  From the perspective of the religious right this is a distinction without a difference–contraception is abortion.  It also clearly illuminates their end game.  Once abortion is criminalized it will be a relatively simple matter to legally designate all oral contraception as abortion.  All it would take is a bill introduced by any pro-life Congressman (or Congresswoman), and a President willing to sign it.  

No President can guarantee any specific amount of job growth (ask the current one), unless he’s willing to create new job openings in the Federal Government.  Failing that, one highly lauded approach is to attempt to create an environment that will presumably encourage new business formation and new hiring among existing businesses.  Anyone who understands and accepts this should also understand and accept that nothing about these speculative jobs can be guaranteed by the President–not their quantity, not their quality, not their equitable, effective and timely distribution among those who need them.  All these things are in the hands of the private sector, dictated by the market, and at the mercy of its timetable.  In this scenario, aside from providing what big business considers a “business friendly” environment at the Federal level, the President is effectively impotent in terms of job creation.  But the appointment of Supreme Court Justices who will criminalize all abortions, a President actually can do.  A President can sign immediately into law any anti-abortion legislation that comes across his desk, regardless of when he might become aware of it.  Right now, today, the foes of women’s sexual and reproductive freedom have the wind at their backs, and they know it.  They have virtually the entire Republican caucus in the House, along with a significant minority of Conservative House Democrats.  All they need is a willing President. 

The end of Roe v Wade is not simply the end to the legality of abortion; it heralds the end of every American woman’s control over her own reproductive, and yes, sexual life, something which affects every other aspect of her life.  So, women and mothers of daughters, consider this as you consider the merit of Mr. Romney’s economic arguments.  Within 4 years, and at the stroke of a pen, both you and your daughters could find the choices for how you might choose to live and direct your lives circumscribed in ways that your grandmothers would recognize.  The sexual emancipation of women, which led to so much else, could be effectively reduced to the willingness of a man to use a condom. It can happen very much quicker than you might think.  How long it might take to undo it is anybody’s guess.  With a President Romney you won’t get his economic plan without limits to women’s freedom.  The religious right can and will see to that.