Published in the Spectator (Hamilton College).
In last week’s Spectator, Toby Taylor objected to my support of late term abortion (“The Pious Politics of George W. Bush,” 2/13/2004). From what I and others can piece together, his argument is as follows. Late term abortion is “medically unnecessary” because it takes just as long to abort as to deliver via a cesarean section; so why not deliver?
First, time is irrelevant here; all that matters is the mother’s choice—however long she needs to make it. To be sure, no one advocates abortion as birth control; we who are pro-abortion rights say that it is a mother’s right to choose how to dispose of her body, of which the fetus is necessarily an appendage.
Second, Dr. Taylor says that a “third trimester child . . . no longer has to be a ‘parasite.’” Yes, it doesn’t “have to be”—but it is. Yes, a fetus in the third trimester can live independently, or is “viable,” in the Supreme Court’s definition. But the fact is, It’s not living independently; its vital functions remain an aspect of its mother’s body. And, as Leonard Peikoff has observed, “That which lives within the body of another can claim no prerogatives against its host.”
Rather, as Richard Parker, another M.D., notes: The fetus is “within the mother and connected to her via the placenta and umbilical chord. It is directly physically dependent on the mother for all of its life sustaining needs—oxygen, energy and safety from the external environment.” This is a crucial distinction. It is, in Ayn Rand’s formulation, the difference between the potential and the actual. Life is not personhood, as ReligiousTolerance.org notes.
Third, in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from December 8, 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that only 1.4 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks (the third trimester begins at 24 weeks). Of this 1.4 percent, almost all abortions occur (1) when continuing the pregnancy threatens or aggravates the mother’s health, inducing malignant hyper-tension, uncontrollable diabetes, heart failure, serious renal disease, etc.; or (2) upon discovery of serious fetal anomalies, like genetic disorders, thus inducing a short, painful, and/or impaired life if carried to term.
Finally, Dr. Toby alleges that the American Medical Association recently “condemned” “partial-birth” abortion. But according to its Web site, as of December 17, 2003, the “A.M.A. recommends that abortions not be performed in the third trimester except in cases of serious fetal ano-malies incompatible with life” (my emphasis). The A.M.A. also cautions that the phrase “partial birth” “is not a medical term. The A.M.A. will use the term ‘intact dilatation and extraction’ (or intact D&X).” On the other hand, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (an organization representing nearly 40,000 physicians who provide health care for women); the American Nurses Association (an organization representing the nation’s 2.7 million registered nurses), and the American Medical Women’s Association (an organization of 10,000 women physicians and medical students), strongly support intact D&X.
Addendum (8/18/2005): According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, D&X accounted for less than two-tenths of one percent of all abortions in 2000.
The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazis, never garnered more than 37 percent of the popular vote in a fair election, the last of which came in November 1932. How then, as Elie Wiesel asks, did Hitler, an “Austrian without title or position[,] manage to get himself [appointed] head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission?”[1] As one scholar explains, “The Nazis came to power legally, but they never played politics by the rules of a liberal parliamentary democracy.” Indeed, Hitler became chancellor not by adhering to the principles of the Weimar Republic, which never really took root in a country with little experience or interest in democracy, but through a series of backroom deals, intrigues, and betrayals, all of which entailed massive blunders and naïve miscalculations; via a procession of musical-chair coalitions, sudden governmental collapses, and continual new elections, most of which entailed the invocation of emergency dictatorial powers; and on the heels of his paramilitary, which from its inception had only one goal: power by whatever means necessary.
The first indications of Nazi politicking came in 1921, when other national socialist and volkisch parties sought to join forces with the Nazis to form a united front. Rather than share any power, Hitler resigned in protest. For his return, by now indispensable, he demanded “dictatorial powers,” which he received with only one contrary vote, thus effectively making the Nazi movement the Hitler movement. (It was never a “party,” in that its aims—to restore the German soul—transcended politics.)
In the same year, Hitler began to organize his own army, drawing recruits largely from unemployed former Free Corps veterans. The result was the brownshirted Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers), or the S.A. Trained to vent fury and sow terror, the Storm Troopers broke up meetings of opponents, administered beatings, provoked street fights, staged riots, mutilated bodies and kicked in skulls. Such tactics were so brutally effective that, by 1923, Hitler resolved to privilege arms over elections.
Thus, on November 8, 1923, the S.A. surrounded a Munich beer hall. Pushing forward to the platform, Hitler declared, “The National Revolution has begun!” At gunpoint, he forced the three officials of the Bavarian government into a backroom, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to have them join the putsch. Then, with the aid of General Erich Ludendorff, the new régime would win over the German army, proclaim a nationwide revolt and crush the democratic elements in Berlin. The plot, however, backfired, and ultimately Hitler found himself charged with high treason.
The trial, though it resulted in a sentence of five years, proved to be a turning point for the führer. With judges chosen because they sympathized with the Nazi program, the courtroom became Hitler’s bully pulpit. His jailers further accommodated him with a spacious private cell and a personal secretary, Rudolf Hess.
A few days before Christmas 1924, having served only nine months, Hitler re-emerged with new ideas about the means necessary for his old ends. The Nazis would now use the constitution to destroy the constitution, cloaking their shameless intimidation in legality. Thus, though banned from public speaking, Hitler feverishly reorganized his party. To remedy the failures of the ‘23 putsch, he formed in 1925, under Heinrich Himmler, a special elite corps to supplement the S.A., the Schutzstaffeln (Guard Squadrons), or S.S. Additionally, following the hierarchy of the Prussian military, he transformed the Nazis into a tightly controlled, highly disciplined shadow government, so that when their time came, this regime in waiting could slip into power.
It took five years, but on October 24, 1929, the New York stock market crashed and plunged the world into depression. Recalling the inflation of 1923, Germans were particularly desperate. In the face of mass indigence, the government appeared powerless. Parties in Reichstag splintered into uncompromising factions; so that to break the stalemate, President Hindenburg invoked Article 48 of the Constitution, thus giving himself emergency powers to rule by decree. When that failed, Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections in September 1930. Hitler knew his opportunity had arrived, and the Nazis seized the moment, furiously and ambiguously adapting their master propaganda machine to local concerns.
Before the depression the Nazis had achieved only seven percent of the electorate, in 1924. Now, given the turmoil and despair that makes people vulnerable to radicalism, they captured 18 percent, making them Germany’s second largest party. Yet, knowing that it accrued to their advantage for conditions to worsen, the Nazis withheld their cooperation. While alleging to work within legal boundaries, they worked to undermine the parliamentary system and foment disorder. As obstructionists, Nazi delegates regularly disrupted proceedings with vulgar and rowdy behavior, if they didn’t boycott them. Then, although they instigated civil violence, the Nazis blamed the government for its inability to curb the lawlessness.[2] Meanwhile, they continued to campaign—uniquely, they had never stopped—so that in the run-off between Hitler and Hinderburg in April 1932, Hitler garnered 37 percent of the vote.
Thus a part of Germany’s largest party, the Storm Troopers, who now numbered 400,000 under Ernst Roehm, sprang into action—too much action as it happened for Chancellor Brüning, who banned the S.A. and S.S. shortly after the run-off. As it further happened, though, a scheming general, Kurt von Schleicher, offered to lift the ban if Hitler would support him in a new Reichstag coalition. Hitler agreed, and the Nazis went to work catcalling the “Hunger Chancellor,” who resigned on May 29. Schleicher then ushered in a puppet chancellor, Franz von Papen, who fulfilled Schleicher’s bargain with Hitler. But the two would only offer Hitler the vice chancellorship, which, echoing previous moves, he rebuffed in hope of the chancellorship.
Yet, as the loss of two million votes in the November elections affirmed, Nazi popularity was declining—though this didn’t stop groups of brown-shirts from stalking the streets, provoking violence and simply murdering rivals on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, the situation was so dire that Papen considered reverting to authoritarianism. When that failed, he resigned, and Hitler again demanded the chancellorship. Hinderburg instead appointed Schleicher.
To get even, Papen met sub rosa with Hitler to plot ousting Schleicher. They reached a pact whereby Hitler would become chancellor, Papen vice-chancellor. Conveniently, Schleicher resigned on January 23, though by this time, this Reichstag civil war had exhausted the 85-year-old Hinderburg, whose senility Hitler exploited to demand four additional cabinet posts. Hinderburg was unwilling, however, to appoint Hitler chancellor—until a rumor that in revenge Schleicher would attempt a coup and arrest Hinderburg so alarmed the president that he relented. Fhe former Field Marshall also thought he could control this “bohemian corporeal.”
Thus, on January 30, 1933, Hitler became chancellor of Germany. It was the result, observes the historian Alan Bullock, “not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement . . . nor even of a popular victory, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the ‘Old Gang’ whom he had been attacking for months . . . Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue.”[3]
Once in office, Hitler wasted no time. He dissolved parliament and called for new elections. To the Prussian Ministry of the Interior he appointed Hermann Goering, who forthwith conferred on the Storm Troopers the power of police, with impunity. Another Hitler confidant, Joseph Goebbels, assumed the state-run media, via which he broadcast Nazi propaganda across the nation. Yet despite—or perhaps because of—this reign of terror, the German people denied the Nazis a Reichstag majority. Of course, as Hitler had explained in 1930: “Parliament is for us not the goal, but the means to an end. We are not a parliamentary party out of conviction. . . . but out of compulsion and out of necessity.” Our goals “mean[s] the elimination of democracy.”[4]
And so, with ever-increasing aggression, blackmail and duplicitous promises, the Nazis began legally but undemocratically establishing the state apparatus of totalitarianism. Breaking with centuries of tradition, they ended the independence of local governments and centralized federal power. Armed S.A. and S.S. thugs cowed, replaced or killed the opposition. Finally, Hitler prevailed on the Reichstag to accept an act “for the removal of the distress of people and reich.” By sharing with Hitler the Reichstag’s prerogative to pass laws—especially laws that “deviate from the Constitution”—this so-called Enabling Act would render the parliament irrelevant. With its passage on March 23, 1933, German democracy effectively passed away. In its stead, Germans would swear loyalty to der Führer.
Footnotes
[1] Elie Wiesel, “Adolf Hitler,” in People of the Century: 100 Men and Women Who Shaped the Last 100 Years (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1999).
[2] Jackson J. Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001), p. 60.
[3] Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: HarperCollins, 1962), p. 144.
[4] As quoted in Benjamin Sax and Dieter Kuntz, Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich (Lexington and Toronto: D.C. Heath: 1992), p. 104.
Notes
* The Nazis held out to the electorate something besides material support. They promised the Germans the satisfaction of a special kind of lust: the lust to see their enemies, foreign and domestic, torn into bloody pieces. In this emotionalist country, this kind of lust was the dominant emotion.
* In order to be loyal to the Fatherland, one needed to be disloyal to the republic.
In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Congress amended existing campaign finance laws to limit the amount that could be contributed to, or spent by, political campaigns. The Supreme Court considered these regulations in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and made a momentous hash of the legislation. The verdict therefore both protects and violates free speech rights, though its arguments for the former (expenditures) apply equally to the latter (contributions).
Those who want to limit contributions argue that, in contrast to expenditures, contributions are less connected to my speech; only indirectly does my check, after proceeding through the local campaign office to the national office to an advertising firm, really express my views, or my own voice. Yet, as Chief Justice Burger observes in his dissent, the distinction between contributions and expenditures “simply will not wash.” It is more semantic than substantive. Limits are limits, regardless of their consequences or one’s intentions.
Second, political contributions of any size are still a form of speech, as the Court implicitly acknowledges in allowing up to $1,000 (now $2,000) of it. “Your contribution to a candidate,” notes the radio host Andrew Lewis, “is de facto the publication of your ideas.” Thus, however a candidate uses your money, however it reaches him, however “symbolic” it may be in constitutional parlance, it’s still your money—which means it’s still your speech. If you give money to a candidate, you bolster his candidacy; if you withhold your financial sanction or contribute to another candidate, you implicitly sap the former candidacy. This is how people communicate politically in a representative republic.
Thus, as writer Michael Hurd argues, the “extent to which we ban money from campaigns is the extent to which we ban our . . . ability to express ourselves”;[3] the only proper limits are each individual’s willingness to spend the fruits of his labor. A free society cannot survive as such without the expression of ideas unfettered.
Furthermore, as the Court itself argues regarding expenditure limits, a cap “naively underestimates[s] the ingenuity and resourcefulness” of those who seek vicarious political influence. According to Todd Gaziano, Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, caps are “like trying to dam a stream with a pile of sticks. Campaign spending eventually will flow through the dam, over the dam, or find another path.” Indeed, as Bradley Smith shows in Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform, caps affect the channels through which money reaches political campaigns, rather than the total amount of money.
Still, the Court argues that because its cap still leaves people “free to engage in independent political expression,” pursuing other avenues such as resource-rich advertising, caps do not have “any dramatic averse effect,” like undermining “the potential for robust and effective” campaigns “to any material degree.” But it doesn’t matter if caps preserve some speech. As Barry Goldwater declared, “[E]xtremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” Accordingly—especially as the last bulwark against tyranny—free speech is too sacred to be restrained or subjected to a cost-benefit analysis; it needs no checks or balances, for it is its own.
Finally, the appellants argue that contributions exceeding $1,000 tend toward bribery. Since running for office requires significant donations, politicians increasingly offer pork barrels to those who underwrite their campaigns. Both the “actuality and appearance” of this influence peddling thus “undermine[s]” the “integrity” of and our “confidence” in the government. After all, how can I, a college student with a $25 check reserved for my favorite candidate, compete with Fortune 500 companies that contribute (however indirectly) hundreds of thousands of dollars—to multiple candidates?
Now, concerns that electoral contributions amount to quid pro quos are legitimate. The need to curtail the pressure-group warfare that engulfs Washington is urgent. Yet the criteria the Court use employ the yardstick not of the First Amendment—which should guide all discussion of free speech issues—but of its consequences. Consequences are important, but we cannot eliminate a problem by manipulating its effects.
Rather, we must consider the root cause. The Court believes this cause is unlimited contributions, in which “corruption inhere[s].” But, in fact, corruption inheres in unlimited government, toward which ours increasingly tends. Thus, to take money out of politics, we should take politics out of money. As journalist Frank Pellegrini explains: “The thicket of bendable laws [and] targeted tax breaks . . . are what keeps the campaign checks in the mail and the lobbyists in the corridors of power. When one tweak in one bit of fine print can save a corporation millions, how can we expect them to stop trying to secure that advantage.” Concludes writer Edwin Locke: only when politicians “have no special favors to sell will lobbyists stop trying to buy their votes.”
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