You knew that you were going to get universal public healthcare. The Democrats won the Congressional and Presidential Elections, so now they are implementing their policy, indeed their flagship policy. But at what cost to the MoveOn-ers? No coverage for illegal immigrants, the sheer reach of the Stupak Amendment when set within that of the whole scheme, and the incandescence of those who think that Obama owes even though they never wanted him as the nominee in the first place and went around threatening to vote for McCain. Why aren’t you savoring the moment? When did you last win as big as this?

This leveling of the playing field, so that abortion no longer costs far less than continuing a pregnancy to term, begins to bring America into line with the numerous European countries that either restrict abortion very considerably or, not uncommonly, prohibit it altogether. Why aren’t you pleased? Whenever I hear of “Europeanization”, I wonder if it refers to 12-week limits on abortion, if not to outright bans. America could certainly do with being Europeanized like that. As could England, Scotland and Wales, the pre-1967 abortion law being mercifully still in force in Northern Ireland.

An American paleocon recently told me that he was against nuclear power because it depended on government subsidy. Well, yes. It does. And that subsidy helps to buy national sovereignty, the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community, freedom from Middle Eastern (and other) entanglements and wars, and a redefinition of the relationship with Russia on the basis of the Biblical-Classical heritage rather than the price of gas. How is that anything other than money well spent? How is it morally or politically possible to justify refusing these things by refusing that spending? How is it constitutional, given the federal government’s constitutional duty of defense?

And likewise, how is it morally or politically possible to carry on opposing something that would dramatically reduce abortion, opening the way far more easily to significant statutory protections of the preborn child, such as exist routinely in countries with comparable arrangements? Especially since that something has a pro-life principle written into its fundamental charter, to the furious rage of your bitterest enemies. No putative Democratic nominee for President will ever now be able to avoid giving two assurances: no coverage for illegal immigrants, and no federal funding for abortion. Conservative Democrats, with their long history as the de facto third party in a de facto hung Congress, are now calling the shots. Conservative Democrats are not conservative Republicans; these are people who believe in an activist State where economics are concerned. But you win some, you lose some. And saving the lives of babies is a damn good one to win even if it has to be at the price of certain losses elsewhere.

Would the Founding Fathers have said that a certain reading, even the correct reading, of the Constitution mattered more than protecting the preborn child? Or, for that matter, that that reading mattered more than national sovereignty, the economic basis of paternal authority, freedom from entanglements and wars, or a relationship with Russia based on the Biblical-Classical heritage? If they would have said that, then would they have been right? Among numerous other examples, potential or actual.

Import controls, immigration controls, Buy American requirements, an insistence on the use of English, a ban or other restriction on abortion, the definition of marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman, the hard work necessary to ensure a non-interventionist foreign policy: these and many more are or would be cases of government action. To suggest that any and all such action is bad or wrong, or at the very least regrettable, is untenable from the Classics, from the Bible, from the witness of Christendom, from the Common Law tradition, from the constitutionally binding and other writings of the Founding Fathers, and from sheer common sense. The House, at least, has just voted for such action of a strongly pro-life kind. Just for once, can’t you be happy? You have every cause to be.

Now, while abortion is being dealt with by Stupak and by the Pregnant Women Support Act, about those import controls, those immigration controls, those Buy American requirements, that insistence on the use of English, that definition of marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman, that hard work necessary to ensure a non-interventionist foreign policy…

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