I recently went to the Spielberg movie about the last few
days of Lincoln’s life. It turned out,
at least for me, to be a story about one man’s fight to remove the practice of
slavery from the relatively new republic of the United States of America.
In today’s world it’s difficult to know the difference
between fact and fiction when watching that type of presentation because of the
propagandic state of our society. We
seem to be pummeled by point of view rather than the facts and we tend to react
like a herd of mental sponges soaking up whatever is spilled in front of
us. Real or fiction this movie did make
my mind whir with a multitude of questions and observations, so many in fact
that it is hard to settle down and approach my thoughts with any real sense of
order.
(part one) POLITICAL PASSION
I was struck
by the passion that Spielberg’s depiction attached to the congressional members
involved in the conflict, and the effort put forward by the Executive as well,
and the depth of purpose behind that effort.
The passion depicted was not that of party politics but of morality, a
passion of the right thing to do versus a status quo. In this portrayal I saw distinct differences
between imagination of what may have been at that critical juncture and the
faux political discourse our government bodies indulge themselves with
today.
The struggle to achieve true
emancipation has been an ongoing problem in our country. That enactment shows the torment involved not
only during the Civil War itself but that of our President to achieve a purpose
worthy of that war. Politicians in today’s
government do not exhibit (as a whole) the resolve of purpose in addressing the
needs of our country. Rather it is the
political stage play that will coerce the public into choosing their party over
the other in the next election cycle.
Unlike the times in which the Lincoln era politicians seemed to be aided
by strong public sentiments forcing them to act, our politicians are acting and
reacting to sentiments of our society that are persuaded and provoked. Their goal seems to be re-elected rather
than the success of our great nation.
The United States of America, a republic formed under the
banner of the Declaration of Independence, had existed in the presence of
hypocrisy. Economics had created the
need for rationalizing among the slave owners and in order to fill their needs
the slaves needed to be dehumanized.
Support for that rationale is and was impossible to find. Slavery has been a part of humanity as long
as man has been a territorial being, but in most instances the slaves were
regarded to be human beings.
Our country
has always been filled with beliefs flowing from fear and fiction but in the
end our collective conscience brings us to differentiating between right and
wrong and a confrontation of fact.
Lincoln was the figure put in place to help power that confrontation. The struggle of conscience for a society
holds a definite similarity with our own individual conflicts of right, wrong,
good or bad. If there is something we
want we will rationalize enough good to counteract any wrong involved grabbing
our goal. Conscience will eventually be
impacted by our choices and to lose that part of our being, as a person or as a
society, is a loss humanity cannot survive.
The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution were not just about right and wrong they were needed for
the survival of our conscience, the victory of fact over rationalization.
(Part two) NATIONAL RATIONALIZTION AND
PERSUASION
I look at
some of the similarities and divergence of our moral pendulum today versus that
time (the Lincoln era) in our history.
Perhaps a different conundrum, different rationalization, but still
about right and wrong and the rationalizations required to deny the existence
of humanity. That instance would be
regarding the fetus as no more than, as one proponent of abortion stated, road
kill. The abortion question allows for
rationalizations on a major scale and the enormity of it will certainly cause a
fracture of conscience within our society.
Part of our society has decided to enforce and strengthen the argument
in favor of all forms of abortion with the rationalization of women’s
rights, the dehumanization of the unborn, the inability to afford, and a mother’s
health (there is an unending list of why’s).
The
supporters of abortion use those rationalizations as speaking points accusing
opponents as being against women in general and specifically against a woman’s
right to control and care for her own body.
The two aspects, a woman’s rights and the rights of the unborn, are
never really viewed as equal points of morality by those in favor of abortion. Disregarding the presence of human DNA at
conception as the beginning of a human life makes it acceptable to take away
the life of the unborn child. Rationalization
and denial of fact makes it easier to hide the conflict of conscience involved
in the act of abortion. Rationalization
circumvents logic when one tries to use the argument that women have the right
to choose. The choice is no less than condoning
the right to murder any other human being in similar circumstance.
Logic
dictates continuity and the logical argument might go as follows:
It is illegal to take the life of another
human being except in the protection of another life.
A fetus is
a human being with all the potential and rights of humanity because of the existence
of human DNA.
Therefore
it is illegal to take the life of a human fetus except in the case of saving
the life of another human.
It seems so
simple excepting when the insertion of partial truth mixed with rationalization
components are put into the mix.
Human
beings are able to think and to act on those thoughts
Fetuses
are unable to think (supposition?)
Therefore fetuses
are not human
Therefore it
is legal to terminate their existence
We are all
too often forced back by arguments filled with innuendo, political correctness
and name calling when we should be demanding the argument be conducted with
fact and logic. The removal of those two
components allow for propagandizing and fabrications that support the factually
unsupportable. The facts may not be
readily available and in the case of deciding at what point in time human life
exists, that is certainly true. Belief
structure calls the shots in those cases and they are swayable in all
directions in favor of what one wants to believe.
The one similarity that I am able to put together in the depiction of the time of Lincoln and today is that passion is weighed in favor of morality questions and has little to do with the facts. Morality is something that can be directed in societies through the beliefs put forward through the education of the children. Conscience can be dampened by indoctrination and propaganda. To quote, "as a man thinketh, so he is."
To expand the thought, "as men thinketh so goes their society". It is truly each man's responsibility not to accept the thoughts of others but to seek truth.
