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a load of this! An epic struggle looming on the uses and abuses
of political rhetoric; major contenders: Bret D. Schundler ("think
of Schindler's List, then just change Shi to Shu,"
he says affably to the voters who have trouble with his name) vs.
James E. McGreevy for governor of New Jersey. Schundler is a Republican
and a Presbyterian. McGreevy is a Democrat and a Catholic. Schundler
opposes abortion, McGreevy favors abortion.
On Saturday morning, newspaper readers learned that Schundler had
accused McGreevy of 1) a lack of tolerance, 2) a disregard for the
Catholic Church so categorical as to question the qualification
of any Catholic to serve in public office, the whole of which cast
McGreevey as, 3), the equivalent of the ayatollah in Iran.
Well, McGreevey was shocked by this line of argument, as also New
York Times reporter David Halbfinger who, in a story, traced
the syllogisms, and the paralogisms, in this headline encounter.
Nobody disputes that the Catholic Church denounces abortion. Why?
Because, in the understanding of the Church, a fetus is a human
being, to be sure, unborn.
So what do we think of people who care naught for the lives (as
postulated) of human beings? Why they are, Mr. Schundler has been
quoted as saying, not to be distinguished from murderers, Nazis,
and slave owners. Moreover, anyone who denounces a right-to-lifer
as unqualified to serve in government is acting like the ayatollah
and is guilty in effect of religious persecution.
Now on a purely theoretical chart, you have indeed a syllogism at
work. Proposition A: The fetus is a human life. Proposition B: A
Jew is a human life. Proposition C: The Nazis, in killing Jews,
scorned human life. Proposition D: The abortionists, by killing
the fetus, scorn human life. Therefore, the abortionists and the
Nazis have the same views on human life.
But logical caretakers step in and point out that there is an undistributed
middle: Everybody agrees that Jews are human beings, but not everybody
agrees that fetuses are human beings. Under constitutional law,
which is the governing authority, the free-to- choose people are
exercising rights. To call them murderers is to suggest that when
engaged in abortion, they think of themselves as killing a human
being; which, manifestly, they don't think of themselves as doing.
Consider, now, attendant complications which, in the McGreevey-
Schundler contest, illuminate political contentions in America on
a enormous black-white screen.
The man accused of indifference to baby genocide is — a Catholic!
His accuser, a non-Catholic! The Catholic takes a step forward in
the contest and says that nobody who opposes abortion is fit to
serve. The Protestant replies that the Catholic advocating choice
is untrue to his own religion and, derivatively, either an
apostate or an infidel.
Round and round they go. The New Jersey governorship fight is the
most conspicuous political encounter in the United States this November.
And this is so in part because Schundler, who is trying to do for
fetuses what Schindler tried to do for the Jews, is a tough and
very eloquent conservative politician, arrived on the scene fresh
from a stunning victory over Bob Franks, who would have defeated
the Democratic winner in the senate fight of 2000 if Jon Corzine
had had only $59 million instead of $60 million to fight Franks
with. Well, Franks has been a wonderful, graceful loser, joining
ranks heartily with Schundler, and this notwithstanding that Franks
is on the choice side of the abortion question.
Now Schundler is going to have to retreat on the facile charge that
pro-abortion people are like Nazis and ayatollahs. But McGreevey
is going to have to wiggle out of the position that Catholics are,
to the extent they believe in the Church's teaching on abortion,
unqualified to hold office.
Then there is the root question of tolerance. Everybody who aspires
to grown-up thought in politics knows as well as that the sun will
rise tomorrow that a Governor Bret Schundler would be zero menace
to anybody in New Jersey, or Alaska, who wanted an abortion. But
McGreevey has political hay to harvest in suggesting the contrary.
Schundler has to worry that by suggesting that choicers are like
Nazis, he will mobilize against him all who do not fear Schundler,
but don't want someone with his views to succeed politically.
The New Jersey election gives us everything: Catholic non- miscegenation
on the abortion issue, and a challenge to political hygiene.
The ayatollah is looking in; so are Robert's Rules of Order.
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