Inclusion of abortion in an official national healthcare plan is a communal imprimatur, similar to the imprimatur received for gay sex when gay marriage is approved. It does more than increase liberty; it says that nothing is significantly wrong with the act in question.
True tolerance, by contrast, takes no position in favor or against the act or relationship in question. It leaves others with full behavioral liberty to engage in the conduct, without endorsing what they do in any way. Gamblers may be left at liberty without affirming that what they are doing is a good thing. But the legal validation of gambling debts affirms that public policy supports them.
The great political problem is that toleration alone does not satisfy the human heart. John Noonan (in A Private Choice) has reflected upon how slavery and abortion became polity-shattering to the degree that advocates for each cause escalated their demands from simple toleration to universal legal approval. Yet he also recognizes their difficulty in moderating those demands: “[I]n a moral question of this kind, turning on basic concepts of humanity,…you cannot be content with the practical toleration of your activities. You want, in a sense you need, actual acceptance, open approval,…the moral surrender of [your] critics.”
Thursday, July 30, 2009, 5:13 PM
July 30th, 2009 | 11:14 pm
CROMWELL (As to an importunate child): Whatever’s necessary. The King’s a man of conscience and he wants either Sir Thomas More to bless his marriage or Sir Thomas More destroyed.
RICH (shakily): They seem odd alternatives, Secretary.
CROMWELL: Do they? That’s because you’re not a man of conscience. If the King destroys a man, that’s proof to the King that it must have been a bad man, the kind of man a man of conscience ought to destroy – and of course a bad man’s blessing’s not worth having. So either will do.
July 30th, 2009 | 11:33 pm
Now who could possibly be trying to Con Science? :)
July 30th, 2009 | 11:42 pm
As a young girl I visited my extended family in Korea and was asked the question every child hears countless times: “And how old are you?” I didn’t expect there to be disagreement about my answer, but there was– everyone looked startled and insisted that I was in fact a year older, and I insisted that I wasn’t. That’s when I learned that my “Korean age” was different from my “American age” because in Korea they count you as “one” when you are born (rounding nine months up). For the rest of the trip I gave people two different ages (and since then have had a mental asterisk), but I also tried to convert my aunt, explaining that in America they start counting once you’re “out”. Her response made no sense to me at the time: “Horrible things can happen when you count that way!” I wonder how different this all could be if more of us had the mental asterisk.
July 31st, 2009 | 2:00 am
[...] Abortion and Health Care Reform – Joseph Bottum [...]
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