Coming Home

On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln gave his Second Inaugural Address. The Civil War had raged all throughout his first term, and was winding down. Over 600,000 men died in that war, more than any other in American history before or since. Addressing its causes, purpose, and God’s role in the affairs of the nation, Lincoln said:

…Fondly do we hope–fervently do we pray–that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether”.

It was the great tragedy in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, and it defined us as a nation. It also left a toxic residue of racism, of bitter recriminations that persist to this day, 146 years later.

Indeed, given the appalling casualties, it seems that every drop of blood drawn from the slaves by the lash was replaced by one drawn by the sword in the war to free them.

Today, we are in another civil war. The political climate nationally has become poisoned over the issue of abortion. For both major political parties, it defines who they are. It’s the great litmus test for judicial nominees. It poisons families, churches, friendships, and civics in general. It is our abolitionist movement. And it seems that we can borrow from Lincoln on what to expect going forward.

Divine recompense will not allow us to have butchered 53 million babies without paying in kind. A shooting war will not be how this butcher bill is paid. The bill will be paid in euthanizing the Baby Boomer generation, because we’re broke.

For forty years the Boomers have pushed abortion and contraception, small families and easy living. We have prevented the births of the very workers we’ll need to sustain us in our golden years, to pay for social security and medicare, as well as medicaid which funds nursing home care. Two workers per retiree in ten years is simply impractical. Bringing in increasing foreign workers isn’t the answer. They send too much money home and don’t float the economy.

For twenty years I have strained to hear someone, anyone, propose a workable solution.

Silence.

Lincoln seems to be the only one who comes closest. He paraphrased scripture in his address that seems pertinent to us:

“Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”

Those younger than my generation have been thoroughly steeped in the narcissistic language of my peers, in the philosophy that says economic considerations are sufficient grounds to cut the bonds of love and love’s duty between mother and child, sufficient grounds to employ a physician to murder the baby in cold blood.

Now, should we be at all surprised when our children turn the tables on us, when they use the same economic considerations to sever the bonds of love and love’s duty between parent and child, and give the nod to physicians to murder us in cold blood? It’s de rigueur in the Netherlands and gaining traction in all the nations where abortion has raged like a forest fire out of control.

No doubt the Boomers will all appeal to the ending of Lincoln’s address:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves…”

It would be nice if this story had a happy ending. But ideas have consequences, and my generation, if we are to stand any chance at all in our frailty, had better come around on abortion, and quick.

But I just don’t know…