The Valley of the Shadow of Death: Biblical Theology as a Primer for Anthropology

The hue and cry arose to heaven. 

Raw passion gripped men and women alike.  Dark with human frailty, the architecture of their souls scuttled them from one extreme to another: from wailing grief to insane murmuring, from desperate hilarity to catatonic shock, from enraged cursing to soft choking sobs.

Broken bodies.  Cast off lives.  Stark naked tragedy.  Gore and devastation.  Sadness and sorrow.  There before them was the vexing spector of mortality and the awful stench of death.  It was a gruesome panorama that defiled their senses and haunted their every waking thought.

It was a nightmare come to life. The carnage was beyond their comprehension.  The loss was beyond their measure.  But the memory of it would be carved onto the fleshly tablets of their hearts with a dull familiar blade.

It was an all too recognizable scene.  It still is. 

It could describe for us the savage anguish of Israelite mothers after Pharaoh ordered the deaths of all their male children (Exodus 1: 15-22).  It could describe for us the desperate terror that raged through Gilead after the marauding army of Ammon ripped open their pregnant women and raped their daughters (Amos 1:13-15).  It could describe for us the dreadful pall that gripped the families of Bethlehem after Herod slaughtered all their infant sons in a fit of jealousy (Matthew 2: 16-18).  Or, it could describe for us any one of thousands of other vignettes that litter our cultural subconscious like parched bones in the howling wilderness—from the ovens of Auchwitz to the gulags of Siberia, from the prisons of Teheran to the streets of Beirut, from the hospitals of Bloomington to the abortion clinics of New York.

Indeed, such tragedy is a well worn human landscape.  Such calamity clutters the pages of human history.  Such pathos persistently torments the hodge-podge ideals of human hope.  Replayed again and again and again, it has become a semeiotic symbol of the end of man and the end of his doing.

Like a moth drawn to a candle flame, man deals in death.  He always has.  He always will.  For that is his nature in this poor fallen world.

Sadly, because all men without exception are sinners, the most fundamental factor in understanding anthropology is the thanatos factor.  Very simply, what that means is that all men have morbidly embraced death (Romans 5:12). 

At the Fall, mankind was suddenly destined for death (Jeremiah 15:2).  We were all at that moment bound into a covenant with death (Isaiah 28:15). “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25).

Whether we know it or not, we have chosen death (Jeremiah 8:3).  It has become our shepherd (Psalm 49:14).  Our minds are fixed on it (Romans 8:6), our hearts pursue it (Proverbs 21:6), and our flesh is ruled by it (Romans 8:2).  We dance to its cadences (Proverbs 2:18) and descend to its chambers (Proverbs 7:27).

The fact is, "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) and "all have sinned" (Romans 3:23). “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.  Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace have they not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18). And, “all those who hate God, love death” (Proverbs 8:36).

It is no wonder then that abortion, infanticide, exposure, and abandonment have always been a normal and natural part of human relations.  Since the dawning of time, men have contrived ingenious diversions to satisfy their fallen passions.  And child-killing has always been chief among them.

Virtually every culture in antiquity was stained with the blood of innocent children.  Unwanted infants in ancient Rome were abandoned outside the city walls to die from exposure to the elements or from the attacks of wild foraging beasts.  Greeks often gave their pregnant women harsh doses of herbal or medicinal abortifacients.  Persians developed highly sophisticated surgical curette procedures.  Chinese women tied heavy ropes around their waists so excruciatingly tight that they either aborted or passed into unconsciousness.  Ancient Hindus and Arabs concocted chemical pessaries—abortifacients that were pushed or pumped directly into the womb through the birth canal.  Primitive Canaanites threw their children onto great flaming pyres as a sacrifice to their god Molech.  Polynesians subjected their pregnant women to onerous tortures--their abdomens beaten with large stones or hot coals heaped upon their bodies.  Japanese women straddled boiling cauldrons of parricidal brews.  Egyptians disposed of their unwanted children by disemboweling and dismembering them shortly after birth--their collagen was then ritually harvested for the manufacture of cosmetic creams.

None of the great minds of the ancient world--from Plato and Aristotle to Seneca and Quintilian, from Pythagoras and Aristophanes to Livy and Cicero, from Herodotus and Thucidides to Plutarch and Euripides--disparaged child-killing in any way.  In fact, most of them actually recommended it.  They callously discussed its various methods and procedures.  They casually debated its sundry legal ramifications.  They blithely tossed lives like dice.

Abortion, infanticide, exposure, and abandonment were so much a part of human societies that they provided the primary literary liet motif  in popular traditions, stories, myths, fables, and legends. 

The founding of Rome was, for instance, presumed to be the happy result of the abandonment of children.  According to the story, a vestal virgin who had been raped bore twin sons, Romulus and Remus.  The harsh Etruscan monarch Amulius ordered them exposed on the Tiber River.  Left in a basket which floated ashore, they were found by a she wolf and suckled by her.  Later, a shepherd discovered them and took them home to his wife and the kindly couple brought them up as their own.  Romulus and Remus would later establish the city of Rome on the seven hills near the place of their rescue.

Oedipus was presumed to be an abandoned child who was also found by a shepherd and later rose to greatness.  Ion, the eponymous monarch in ancient Greece miraculously lived through an abortion, according to tradition.  Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire, was supposedly a fortunate survivor of infanticide.  According to Homer's legend, Paris, whose amorous indiscretions started the Trojan War, was also a victim of abandonment.  Telephus, the king of Mysia in Greece, and Habius, ruler of the Cunetes in Spain, had both been exposed as children according to various folk tales.  Jupiter, chief god of the Olympian pantheon, himself had been abandoned as a child.  He in turn exposed his twin sons, Zethus and Amphion.  Similarly, other myths related the fact that Poseidon, Aesculapius, Hephaistos, Attis, and Cybele had all been abandoned to die.

Because they had been mired by the minions of sin and death, it was as natural as the spring rains for the men and women of antiquity to kill their children.  It was as instinctive as the autumn harvest for them to summarily sabotage their own heritage.  They saw nothing particularly cruel about despoiling the fruit of their wombs.  It was woven into the very fabric of their culture.  They believed that it was completely justifiable.  They believed that it was just and good and right.

But they were wrong.  Dreadfully wrong.

Life is God's gift.  It is His gracious endowment upon the created order.  It flows forth in generative fruitfulness.  The earth is literally teeming  with life (Genesis 1:20; Leviticus 11:10; 22:5; Deuteronomy 14:9).  And the crowning glory of this sacred teeming is man himself (Genesis 1:26-30; Psalm 8:1-9).  To violate the sanctity of this magnificent endowment is to fly in the face of all that is holy, just, and true (Jeremiah 8:1-17; Romans 8:6). 

To violate the sanctity of life is to invite judgment, retribution,  and anathema (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).  It is to solicit devastation, imprecatation, and destruction (Jeremiah 21:8-10). “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, whatsoever a man sows, that he shall also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

But the Lord God, who is the giver of life (Acts 17:25), the fountain of life (Psalm 36:9), the defender of life (Psalm 27:1), the prince of life (Acts 3:15), and the restorer of life (Ruth 4:15), did not leave men to languish hopelessly in the clutches of sin and death.  He not only sent us the message of life (Acts 5:20) and the words of life (John 6:68), He sent us the light of life as well (John 8:12).  He sent us His only begotten Son--the life of the world (John 6:51)--to break the bonds of death (1 Corinthians 15:54-56).  Jesus "tasted death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9), actually "abolishing death" for our sakes (2 Timothy 1:10) and offering us new life (John 5:21). “For God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

One of the earliest Christian documents--actually predating much of the New Testament--asserts that "There are two ways: a way of life and a way of death."  In Christ, God has afforded us the opportunity to choose between those two ways--to choose between fruitful and teeming life on the one hand, and barren and impoverished death on the other (Deuteronomy 30:19). 

Apart from Christ it is not possible to escape the snares of sin and death (Colossians 2:13).  On the other hand: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). “All those who hate Christ "love death" (Proverbs 8:36); while all those who receive Christ are made “the sweet savor of life” (2 Corinthians 2:16).

The implication is clear: the pro-life movement and the Christian faith are synonymous.  Where there is one, there will be the other--for one cannot be had without the other. 

Further, the primary conflict in temporal history always has been and always will be the struggle for life by the church against the natural inclinations of all men everywhere.

Death has cast its dark shadow across the whole of human relations.  Because of sin, all men flirt and flaunt shamelessly in the face of its spector.  Sadly, such impudence has led to the most grotesque concupiscence imaginable: the slaughter of innocent children.  Blinded by the glare from the nefarious and insidious angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), we stand by, paralyzed and mesmerized.

Thanks be to God, there is a way of escape from these bonds of destruction.  In Christ, there is hope.  In Him there is life--both temporal and eternal.  In Him there is liberty and justice.   In Him there is an antidote to the thanatos factor.  In Him, and in Him alone, there is an answer to the ages long dilemma of the dominion of death.

Childermas or Kindermord

Often called Childermas or Kindermord, the Sunday between Christmas and Epiphany traditionally solemnizes the slaughter of the children of Judea by Herod. It provides focus for the Christian’s commitment to protect and preserve the sanctity of all human life—thus serving as a prophetic warning against the practicioners of abandonment and infanticide in the age of antiquity, oblacy and pessiary in the medieval epoch, and abortion and euthanasia in these modern times. Generally set aside as a day of prayer, it culminates with a declaration of the covenant community’s unflinching commitment to the innocents who are unable to protect themselves.

“Do unto others as if you were the others.”  Leonardo da Vinci

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every part of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, then I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all battlefields besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” Martin Luther

“All the starry hosts of heaven and of earth declare with one voice the glory bestowed on these sublime creatures of the Living God, these creatures made just a little lower than Himself.  We can do no better than to acknowledge our acceptance of Him by our acceptance of them.” Dympna of Gheel

“The Modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad.  The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.  Thus some scientists care for truth; but their truth is pitiless.  And thus some humanitarians care only for pity; but their pity--I am sorry to say--is often untruthful.” G. K. Chesterton

Born! Thanks Be to God!

Christ, by highest heaven adored

Christ, the everlasting Lord;

Late in time behold Him come

Offspring of a virgin's womb.

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

Hail th' Incarnate Deity,

Pleased as man with man to dwell;

Jesus, our Emmanuel.

Come, Desire of nations come,

Fix in us Thy humble home;

Rise, the Woman's conquering Seed,

Bruise in us the Serpent's head.

Adam's likeness, Lord efface:

Stamp Thy image in its place;

Second Adam, from above,

Reinstate us in thy love.

Hail, the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!

Hail, the Son of Righteousness!

Light and life to all He brings,

Ris'n with healing in His wings.

Mild He lays His glory by,

Born that man no more may die,

Born to raise the sons of earth.

Abortion through the Ages

"For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light." John Calvin

Ordinary Pharmacist; Extraordinary Hero

Samuel Taylor was a proto-typical mild mannered small town pharmacist.  A family man, community leader, and life-long Methodist, he had a natural Midwestern aversion to controversy.  But when the daughter of one of his customers was nearly poisoned by a dose of mail-order abortifacient pills, he sprang into action.  

He discovered that the abortifacient business was booming all over the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century--and that it was an entirely unrestricted, unregulated, and unmonitored industry.  

Without the benefits of a government agency, an institutional largess, or a corporate sponsor, he began a one-man educational campaign--first with his fellow pharmacists, later expanding to physicians, and finally with state legislators--to alert the public to the physical dangers and the moral liabilities of the child-killing trade.  Taylor testified before the Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana legislatures--winning their support for a ban on the sale of all chemical parricides and abortifacients--and he  drafted model legislation that was approved by fourteen other states.

Taylor was a very ordinary man who utilized his very ordinary skills and resources to accomplish something quite extraordinary.

Leslie Printice: Pro-Life Pioneer

Leslie Printice was a young widow in New York City when she first became active in the pro-life movement.  A member of Gardiner Spring's congregation at the prominent Brick Presbyterian Church, she was encouraged by his sermons on child-killing to take a bold and active stand.  

She organized several meetings in her midtown Manhattan brownstone of doctors, lawyers, politicians, judges, and community leaders to hear the facts about the abortion trade.  Under the auspices of the church she set up the New York Parent and Child Committee.  The committee established prayer networks, sidewalk counseling shifts, and even alternative care programs with Christian doctors.  It also organized regular protests in front of Anna Lohman's five area abortion franchises--known professionally as Madame Restell, Lohman was the boldest, richest, and most visible child-killer.  

Tenacious and unrelenting, Leslie led a rally outside Lohman's lavish home on this day that was by turns emotional, physical, and fierce.  When Lohman went to trial for the first time the next year, Leslie was there--despite innumerable threats on her life from a number of the gangsters on Lohman's payroll--to testify with several children "saved from the butcher's knife."  

Nearly half a century later, her efforts were recognized in Albany by Governor Theodore Roosevelt as the primary catalyst for the state's tougher legislation and stiffer enforcement of protections for the essential right to life of all New Yorkers.

Planned Parenthood: Buying Influence

Spending more than $12 million in the 2012 election, Planned Parenthood is now poised to really cash in--with an unprecedented level of new influence. Already the most pro-abortion administration in history, the Obama regime is likely to plunge our nation into even greater depths of brazen brutalitarianism.

Of course, we've seen this sort of thing before--and it wasn't pretty:


"Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood,
who draw sin as with cart ropes,
who say: “Let him be quick,
let him speed his work
that we may see it;
let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near,
and let it come, that we may know it!”
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
and shrewd in their own sight!
Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine,
and valiant men in mixing strong drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of his right!" (Isaiah 5:18-23)

Four Years and Five Million Children

Obama's Judas Kiss

Instead of garnering him electoral support, President Obama's extreme pro-abortion rhetoric and policy-making may be becoming a substantial liability.  

According to a recent Gallup Poll the number of Americans who self-identify as "Pro-Choice" has hit a record-low at just 41%. Meanwhile, self-identifying "Pro-Life" Americans now hold a nine-point plurality at just above 50%.

So, the president's ardent support of Planned Parenthood may well turn out to be the Judas Kiss for his re-election campaign.

Planned Parenthood Triage

Planned Parenthood's Eugenic Agenda

After 96 years, the global abortion conglomerate Planned Parenthood is still targeting the children of minority groups for elimination--remaining true to the Eugenic ideals of its founder, Margaret Sanger, who brazenly dubbed them "Human Weeds."  Indeed, 79 percent of Planned Parenthood's abortion clinics are located in or within walking distance of black and Hispanic communities. “Minority communities are the number one targets of Planned Parenthood,” said Arnold Culbreath, director of Protecting Black Life. “It’s no wonder abortion remains the leading cause of death among African-Americans, higher than all other causes combined. Getting this information to as many people as possible is not only critical, it’s a matter of life and death for countless babies and oft times even their mothers.”

The Courtier's Curses

With the news that Planned Parenthood has launched aggressive attack ads against George Allen and Mitt Romney, I immediately thought of the quip of Thomas Chalmers: 

"There is honor in the distinction of being disdained by the wicked and ignorant, for quoth the poet, 'A courtier's curses are exalted praise.'"

Planned Parenthood is the world's oldest, largest, and best-organized provider of abortion and birth control services.  From its humble beginnings around the turn of the century, when the entire shoestring operation consisted of a two-room makeshift clinic in a run-down Brooklyn neighborhood staffed by three untrained volunteers, it has expanded dramatically into a multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate with programs and activities in 134 nations on every continent.  In the United States alone, it employs more than 20,000 staff personnel and volunteers in 922 clinics and 167 affiliates in every major metropolitan area, coast to coast.  Boasting a national office in New York, a legislative center in Washington, regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco, and international offices in London, Nairobi, Bangkok, and New Dehli, the Federation currently earns more than  $35 million per annum with more than $200 million in cash reserves and another $150 million in capital assets.  With an estimated combined annual budget--including all regional and international service affiliates--of more than a trillion dollars, Planned Parenthood may well be the largest and most profitable non-profit organization in history.  It is undoubtedly Abortion Inc.

But that is hardly all Planned Parenthood is up to.  Utilizing its considerable wealth, manpower, and influence, Planned Parenthood has muscled its way into virtually every facet of modern life.  It now plays a strategic role in the health and social services community--and plans to figure prominently in any and all health care reform implementation and enforcement. It exerts a major influence on education--providing the majority of sex education curricula and programs in both public and private schools.  It carries considerable political clout through lobbying, legislation, campaigning, advocacy, and litigation--coordinating the substantial efforts of the multi-billion dollar abortion industry.  It is involved in publishing, broadcast media production, judicial activism, public relations, foreign aid, psychological research counseling, sociological planning, demographic investigation, pharmacological development, contraceptive distribution and sales, mass advertising, and public legal service provision.

What makes the travesty of this massive enterprise all the more noxious is the fact that a vast proportion of Planned Parenthood's funding at every level--from the local level to the international level--comes right out of the American taxpayer's pocket.  It has become for all intents and purposes an unofficial--and thus unrestrained and unrestricted--branch of the federal government.

We're paying Planned Parenthood's bills while it fulfills its sordid aims and agendas.

Thus in truth, Planned Parenthood is the greatest of all the modern, corporatized, conglomerated courtiers.  And, it is a distinct honor to be singled out for scorn by it and its brazen minions.

The Pro-Abort Attack on Hobby Lobby

A coalition of pro-abortion clergy

 has launched a protest against Hobby Lobby for it's commitment to life. 

Hobby Lobby, which operates more than 500 stores in 41 states, says providing the mandated ObamaCare coverage for "morning-after" abortion drugs violates its Christian owners' "deeply held religious beliefs." So, the company has sought relief in the courts. The company's attorney, Kyle Duncan with the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, says the lawsuit has nothing to do with the issue of birth control -- but rather the requirement that employers must pay for abortion-inducing drugs. "We basically want to push back against the notion that this is about birth control. It's really not," says Duncan. "Hobby Lobby is not trying to control their employees' lives. All Hobby Lobby is trying to say is 'Please leave us out of providing these kind of drugs that our faith tells us is the wrong thing to do."'

Modern Genocide

Turkey's Armenian Genocide: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths
Soviet Union's Ukraine Famine: - 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Japan's Nanking Massacre: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
Nazi's Jewish Holocaust - 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Pol Pot's Cambodian Slaughter: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Rwanda's Genocide: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Bosnia's Ethnic Cleansing: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
Planned Parenthood's Abortion Triage: 1973-2012 - 55,000,000 Deaths

The Origin of PP's Genocide

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Eugenics was perhaps the most revolutionary of the pseudo-sciences spawned by the wild-eyed vision of Scientism—the almost religious belief that somehow science could solve all the problems of humanity.  Having convinced an entire generation of scientists, intellectuals, and social reformers that the world was facing an imminent economic crisis caused by unchecked human fertility, the followers of Malthusianism quickly turned their attentions to practical programs and social policies.

Some of these managerial Malthusians believed that the solution to the immanent crisis was political: restrict immigration, reform social welfare, and tighten citizenship requirements.  Others thought the solution was technological: increase agricultural production, improve medical proficiency, and promote industrial efficiency.  But many of the rest felt that the solution was genetic: restrict or eliminate “bad racial stocks,” and gradually “help to engineer the evolutionary ascent of man.”

This last group became the adherents of a malevolent new voodoo-science called Eugenics.  They quickly became the most influential and powerful of all the insurgent ideologists striving to rule the affairs of men and nations.  In fact, for the rest of the 20^th century they would unleash one plague after another—a whole plethora of designer disasters—upon the unsuspecting human race.

The Eugenicists unashamedly espoused an elitist White Supremacy.  Or to be more precise, they espoused an elitist Northern and Western European White Supremacy.  It was not a supremacy based on the crass ethnic racism of the past but upon a new kind of “scientific” elitism deemed necessary to preserve “the best of the human race” in the face of impending doom.  It was a very refined sort of supremacy that prided itself on rationalism, intellectualism, and progressivism.

This racial supremacy they believed had to be promoted both positively and negatively.  Through selective breeding, the Eugenicists hoped to purify the blood lines and improve the stock of the “superior” Aryan race.  The “fit” would be encouraged to reproduce prolifically.  This was the positive side of Malthusian Eugenics.

Negative Malthusian Eugenics on the other hand, sought to contain the “inferior” races through segregation, sterilization, birth control, and abortion.  The “unfit” would thus be slowly winnowed out of the population as chaff is from wheat.  By the first two decades of this century, according to feminist author Germaine Greer, “The relevance of Eugenic considerations was accepted by all shades of liberal and radical opinion, as well as by many conservatives.”

Some forty states had enacted restrictive containment measures and established Eugenic asylums.  Eugenics departments were endowed at many of the most prestigious universities in the world including Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford.  Funding for Eugenic research was provided by the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations.  And Eugenic ideas were given free reign in the literature, theater, music, and press of the day.  

Ideas have consequences.  When the ideas of Christianity were replaced in our society by the ideas of Scientism, it was inevitable that calamities would result—thus, the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, the Abortion Pandemic, and Planned Parenthood's Ethnic Genocide.

The World's Most Profitable "Non-Profit"

Bishop E.W. Jackson Message to Black Christians

Obama and Child-Killing

Chesterton on Eugenics

‎"The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air. There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists; or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience "Eugenics;" 

and that it ought to be destroyed I propose to prove." G.K. Chesterton

A Proper Multiculturalism

Here is a beautiful example of a proper multiculturalism courtesy of an Orange County Register op-ed piece by Mark Steyn: 

From 1842 to 1849, General Sir Charles Napier was the Commander of the British Army in India. The Hindu priests had long observed a custom of burning widows alive on their husband's funeral pyre. The British had already stopped that custom. When the priests complained to Commander Napier, he replied, "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

Working (and Waiting) for Justice

"Men have never wearied of political justice; they have only wearied of waiting for it." G.K. Chesterton

Planned Parenthood's Eugenic Racism

On this day in 1939, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood announced the organization’s new “Negro Project” in response to requests from southern state public health officials—men not generally known at that time for their racial equanimity. “The mass of Negroes,” her project proposal asserted, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”  The proposal went on to say that “Public Health statistics merely hint at the primitive state of civilization in which most Negroes in the South live.”

In order to remedy this “dysgenic horror story,” her project aimed to hire three or four “Colored Ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities” to travel to various Black enclaves and propagandize for birth control.

“The most successful educational approach to the Negro,” Margaret wrote sometime later, “is through a religious appeal.  We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Of course, those Black ministers were to be carefully controlled—mere figureheads.  “There is a great danger that we will fail,” one of the project directors wrote, “because the Negroes think it a plan for extermination.  Hence, let’s appear to let the colored run it.”  Another project director lamented, “I wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be entrusted with . . . a clinic.  Our experience causes us to doubt their ability to work except under White supervision.”  The entire operation then was a ruse—a manipulative attempt to get African Americans to cooperate in their own elimination.

The program’s genocidal intentions were carefully camouflaged beneath several layers of condescending social service rhetoric and organizational expertise.  Like the citizens of Hamelin, lured into captivity by the sweet serenades of the Pied Piper, all too many African Americans all across the country happily fell into step behind Margaret and the Eugenic racists she had placed on her Negro Advisory Council.

Soon taxpayer-supported clinics throughout the South were distributing contraceptives to African Americans and Sanger’s science fiction dream of discouraging “the defective and diseased elements of humanity” from their “reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning” appeared at last to be on the road to fulfillment.  Planned Parenthood had its first real success in social engineering.

What Choice?

Sex-Selection in America: Undercover in NYC

A Dreadful Anniversary

On this day in 1923, the legalization of an infanticide procedure called “abortion” first occurred in the United States when Governor John Love signed a Colorado bill into law.

Corporate Complicity

A pro-life organization that has spent decades working to try to get corporations to stop giving financial donations to the Planned Parenthood abortion business has released a revised listing of companies backing the abortion giant.

Life Decisions International has released a revised edition of "The Boycott List," which identifies corporations that support Planned Parenthood, which does more abortions than any other business in the nation. Kenneth Garvey, the communications director for LDI, says the boycott has been successful over the years.

“As a direct result of the commitment, action and prayers of pro-family people, at least 281 corporations have stopped funding Planned Parenthood,” he said. “It is estimated that the boycott has cost Planned Parenthood more than $40 million since the Corporate Funding Project (CFP) began. This should serve as a testament to those who think it impossible to change corporate behavior.”

Garvey noted that the great success of the Corporate Funding Project is due to the tenacity of pro-life people who “understand the power of the dollar and are willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of preborn children.”

New boycott targets include Mesa Air Group and Trinity Investments, but the main portion of the boycott list is dedicated to corporations that LDI has been targeting for their Planned Parenthood donations for some time.

Some of the companies that occupy a continued place on the LDI boycott list include:  Adobe, AOL, Bank of America, Bayer, Chevron, Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, etc.), eBay (PayPal, etc.), Laureate Education, Midas, Nationwide (insurance), Nike, Select Comfort (Sleep Number bed), Southwest Airlines (Jet Blue, etc.), Starwood Hotels (Aloft, Element, Four Points, Le Méridien, Sheraton, St. Regis, W, Westin, etc.), Symantec, Wells Fargo, and Whole Foods.

The pro-life group also maintains a list of prominent nonprofit organizations that LDI says “are associated with Planned Parenthood and/or its agenda.” The organizations may not necessarily make donations to the abortion business but may have some sort of relationship with it, such as joint programs, allowing Planned Parenthood leaders access to its members, or in other ways.

That list from LDI includes the following new groups: Comic Relief, Eagles Clubs, Elks Clubs, Elton John AIDS Foundation, and the Red Cross. Continuing members of the list of nonprofits that associate with Planned Parenthood include: AARP, American Cancer Society, Amnesty International, Audubon Society, Boys & Girls Clubs, Camp Fire, Dr. Phil Foundation, Girl Scouts, Girls Inc., Human Rights Watch, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Kiwanis Clubs, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Lions Clubs, March of Dimes, Michael J. Fox Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Rotary Clubs, Salvation Army, Save the Children, Sierra Club, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, YMCA, and YWCA.

The pro-life group says the boycott list “includes corporations that have donated to Planned Parenthood, at any level, in any amount, within the past five years, but whose officials refuse to say donations will not be made in the future. Some officials claim their respective company no longer supports Planned Parenthood. If officials refuse to say donations will not be made in the future, the company remains on a boycott target until grants to Planned Parenthood have ceased for five years.”

That explains how some pro-life people receive information from corporations saying they do not support Planned Parenthood, but see the name of the company listed in the boycott.

“This is done to prevent corporations from donating five times as much money every five years and claiming for four years that they do not support the pro-abortion groups,” LDI says. “We learned early on that corporate leaders will turn to devious methods to continue supporting Planned Parenthood. For example, one corporation had donated $5,000 to the pro-abortion group every year since 1991. After becoming a boycott target, the corporation donated $25,000 and for four years told consumers they do not support Planned Parenthood. Therefore, do not be surprised if a corporation responds that it is no longer supporting Planned Parenthood.”

All corporations listed have received information about Planned Parenthood, along with a request that it stop its donations, LDI says, which could include cash donations, gifts in-kind and matching gifts. LDI does not track donations made to United Way or other organizations that bundle gifts individuals make through a third party.

“A corporate name is added to The Boycott List only if, after a reasonable amount of time, its leaders refuse to change the philanthropic practice,” LDI says. “A company will be dropped as a boycott target if it stops funding Planned Parenthood for at least five years (automatically) or if a corporate official states that the pro-abortion group will be made ineligible for support in the future (immediate removal from The Boycott List). It is the responsibility of corporate officials to notify LDI if a company qualifies for removal from The Boycott List.”

The Closing of the American Mind

“There is a grave danger for American democracy that the two parties not only can't agree, they can't even discuss. Left and right live in their little ghettos of the mind, unwilling to listen to anything that doesn't reinforce their own views. If you only hear what your opponents are thinking through the warp of second-hand caricatures, then there is no chance of understanding their point of view. Thinking gets trapped within a very narrow box--one that often bears little relation to problems in the real world.”  BBC’s Mark Mardell

An Abortion / Breast Cancer Victim

Schaeffer 100 Conference