Saturday, January 17, 2009

Democrats Need A New Frederick Douglass

Even before reading The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes, I mentally connected the issues of abortion and slavery as twin evils, pathological blots on our national self-image as a free and just country. During the course of reading the book (which doesn’t mention abortion at all), I found myself wondering if Barack Obama, wont as he is to draw comparisons between Lincoln and himself, might need only a modern day Frederick Douglass to prod him into working to overturn Roe v. Wade--just as Lincoln nullified Dred Scott. Granted, Lincoln was of the same general opinion as Douglass--that slavery was wrong, wrong in every case for moral reasons--whereas Obama has no such common conviction with pro-life supporters. Yet perhaps the argument could be made in such a way as to stroke the ego of our new President to picture himself Lincoln-like for having engineered such a coup, and he would abandon prior “principle” for future historical acclaim.

Were I to obtain the necessary influence to even offer such an argument, it would go something like this:

President Obama, you have much in common, at least in temperament and political philosophy, with former President Lincoln. Certainly, you both seem to have read and heeded Benjamin Franklin, who strongly advised against letting others know what “you really think”, in wise subjugation of ego to potential accomplishment. You also share with Lincoln a justifiably proud sense of your ability to inspire and communicate with your fellow citizens. This gift, combined with your innate ability to constantly redefine and shift the debate (about any subject) and the eager backing of a fawning press, may be all you need to lead the populace where they’re not sure they want to go---without having to overreach your executive powers in time of war as Lincoln did.

Frederick Douglass was a reformer, only gradually converted to the value of politics as an agent of change, while Abraham Lincoln believed that true reform could only occur when the majority of the citizenry was ready for it—even if it must be coaxed and beguiled at every possible opportunity by gifted orators the likes of him. Frederick Douglass made no excuses for the slaveholder; Lincoln made many. Lincoln treated slavery the way the Catholic church today addresses homosexuality—as a sin, but with compassion and accommodation for the sinner (the slaveholder, in Lincoln’s case).

Lincoln had the exigencies of war to help convince the nation of the need to abolish slavery. You have no such platform to abolish abortion, but you do have tremendous political support for whatever agenda you choose to promote. If you really want to distinguish yourself as a new kind of politician, start to slip subtle references to the shadow injustice of abortion into your speeches. Change, almost imperceptibly, your position as an abortion “rights” supporter to a defender of the real rights of unborn children. You and Lincoln, both lawyers and pretty fair writers, share the ability to never pin yourself down to an undeniable, prosecutable position—there is always a possible nuanced interpretation of prior statements that can transmogrify your “beliefs” to match prevailing public sentiment—which you yourself help, in no small measure, to modify.

Democrats in Lincoln’s time were the strongest political supporters of slavery, just as they are now the party that supports abortion. You can change the history of not only the country, but of your party! Relieve yourself and your fellow Democrats of the need to shamefully and awkwardly defend this national blight.

These are the similarities I see between slavery and abortion as political issues:

1. Advocates of slaveholding and abortion “rights” dehumanize the slave and the fetus as not fully human and therefore not deserving of full human rights. Pro-slavery Constitutional authors inserted the provision for slaves to count as only least 3/5ths of a human being, while abortion supporters argue that surely 3/9ths of a human is unworthy of personhood.

Slaveholders said that their slaves couldn’t fend for themselves without the “protection” of the plantation, while abortion rights advocates talk about unwanted children as though they’d be better dead than alive with a mother or a world that doesn’t want them. Both seem to argue that a life controlled (or aborted) by human masters is better than a life “outside” (the plantation or the womb).

2. Politicians of both eras are loath to discuss such a divisive, emotional issue: contemporary Democrats and Republicans both bemoan “one-issue” voters (the distasteful issue being abortion), while pre-Civil War political parties avoided the issue of slavery whenever possible for fear of having to pin themselves down on one side or the other of an issue which might lose them whole blocs of voters. Lincoln himself called the slavery issue a “distracting question” (where have we heard that lately?) in 1847, but by 1859, acutely sensitive to changing public opinion, he sagely noted, "An evil can't stand discussion. What kills the skunk is the publicity it gives itself". (Oakes, page 83)

3. The religious and moral high ground naturally claimed by opponents of both slavery and abortion is taunted by the proponents as being sanctimonious and doctrinaire, and (albeit clumsy) attempts are made to reclaim at least part of that perch for their cause. Justifications of Biblical support for slavery were put forth by nineteenth century pastors who noted that the two thousand year old document fails to condemn slavery and in fact occasionally advises readers on the “proper treatment of slaves". According to Southern pro-slavery advocates, Northern sympathizers of abolition were "hypocrites" who offered only a life of discrimination and misery to Negro "wage slaves" if universal emancipation became law.


4. Hardliners like Douglass (and those to the left of him like William Lloyd Garrison) hated compromise; nothing short of complete abolition and equality would do. Moderates like Lincoln (and perhaps, we’ll see--Obama), as lawyers and politicians, seek just that whenever possible. Pre-war Northern Whigs and Republicans hoped to contain, not eliminate slavery, or at least keep the balance of slave and free states equal. They weren’t, at that point advocating eliminating slavery in the same way that the Northern abolitionists like Douglas would have preferred them to do. Moderates hoped that slavery, deprived of slaveholding soil to expand and flourish, would eventually wither on the vine. Lincoln, before and during the War, hoped to hasten that process by offering to compensate slaveholders for the loss of their “property” should their state self-elect free statehood.

Similarly, the Democrats and Obama’s current narrative on abortion is that, surely we all want to “reduce the number of abortions” (a modest containment, not an radical abolitionist approach) until such time as economic circumstances improve to the point that women can afford to have children as often as they have unprotected sex. As with slavery, sympathy for the economic plight of abortion seekers justifies, in the minds of its supporters, absolution of their actions.

5. Lastly, legal support for both abortion and slavery was obtained at the hands of activist judges, operating with the weakest of legal foundation for their decisions, but with the strongest of biases and personal agendas. “‘Dred Scottism’, said Lincoln, was ‘a burlesque upon judicial decisions’—it covered over slavery with the ‘deceitful cloak’ of self-government in an effort to conceal the ‘hateful carcass’ beneath” (Oakes, p.74). Substitute the word 'abortion' for slavery, and the word 'privacy' for self-government, and how different is ‘Roeism from ‘Dred Scottism’? The 1857 Dred Scott decision, with its overreaching defense of slaveholding, so deeply offended many Northerners like Lincoln that it may have helped awaken in them the realization that slavery was not going to just “die a natural death” without more of a fight. It’s been 36 years since Roe vs. Wade, with no Civil War to overturn it (and none desired by any but the modern-day abortion-clinic-bombing John Browns) but perhaps all we need is our version of Frederick Douglass to shame our budding “Lincoln” into action.

How about this for a legacy, Mr. President---“Obama abolishes abortion in his first term”? Now, that would be audacious!