After the President’s soaringly optimistic paean to all that’s best about an America he obviously loves deeply, as do so many of us who voted him into office, it is jarring, to put it mildly, to return to the darkness which is steadily creeping over our Beloved Nation. But as we have learned time after time, year after year, the magic potion of trying to wish problems away has never worked and will never work, and some of our black holes carry such grave potential as to represent truly dangerous chasms which bode ill for our very existence as a Nation.

Some of them are serious, on varying levels of gravity, and need attention right away.

One of them, represented by the New York law on late term abortion and the attempt at an even more radical law in Virginia, is truly wicked–are evil, barbaric, paganistic, depraved and murderous. These laws, and and the bland, ho-hum attitude some have expressed toward them, cause one to question the basic humanity of some of our fellow citizens. The standing ovation given the “Catholic” Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, was surely one of the most sickening displays of ghoulish cruelty seen since the days of butchers like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. One must ask: how is this different, in principle, from Auschwitz and Berkenau?

I was driven to write this by an ever-strengthening feeling that I needed, on a personal level, to try to get some even partial understanding of how humans can be so driven by — ideology? cruelty? self-absorption? — as to not only approve infanticide, as the act described by Dr. Northam of Virginia can only be called, but to give it a standing ovation, as in the New York legislature. I, quite simply, could not understand this kind of inhumanity and, now, after delving into it much more deeply, more than ever am convinced that there is a kind of rot and sickness growing inside our body politic which clearly has the power to destroy us if not checked, and soon.

It has been said that only  13% of those polled actually favor partial birth abortion, euphemistically all gussied up with the term “late term abortion”, a figure often used to illustrate how unmoored from real Americans many politicians are who pass these laws. My question is: who are these people, apparently fellow Americans, who believe it is just fine to kill a living, breathing, fellow citizen? I’m not good at math, but can there really be 40 Million Americans who are that inhumanly cruel and callous? It seems there must be and, at the risk of not being at all nuanced about it, they are the core of the rapidly spreading growth threatening our country.

It will be, I hope, helpful to take a tour of the writings of some of our most thoughtful essayists on these developments, not all, by the way, of the right or center right.

For example, the “conservative” columnist for the Washington Post– “conservative” in the same sense as the New York Times’ David Brooks— referred recently to “The Banality of Evil, 2019 Version”. She wisely turned to C.S. Lewis for guidance in commenting on the “weird, wicked world we live in”:

“C.S. Lewis was only partly right when he wrote: The greatest evil … is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

Lewis, perhaps, couldn’t have envisioned the day when a law allowing abortion up to the moment of birth would receive a standing ovation, as occurred last month with New York’s passage of the “Reproductive Health Act.”

Upon signing the bill, which also permits some health care professionals who are not doctors to perform the abortions, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered that One World Trade Center be illuminated in pink, hijacking the color associated with saving breast-cancer victims — and the birth of a baby girl.

What a weird, wicked world we live in.”

She went on to discuss the –thankfully!–defeated bill in Virginia, about which more later, and similar bills being considered in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and other states and she made this cogent observation, which perfectly sums up my revulsion at the strangely uncaring attitudes we see all around us:

“More concerning than a possible increase in late-term abortions (now at fewer than 2 percent of all pregnancy terminations) is the clinical way we view and discuss human life. When we use language to disguise reality, we move ever-closer to the dehumanization of us all.”

Several excellent pieces have highlighted the similarity of much of this thinking to that of the eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who, it may be appropriate to note, was one of Hillary Clinton’s icons, who formed two organizations that later merged to become Planned Parenthood. One of the best was an analysis by Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, with a title carrying more than a kernel of truth: “The Thing We Don’t Talk About.” Quoting Gov. Northam’s remarks–sickening to read, even worse to hear the words being uttered by an M.D. (who specializes in Pediatric Neurology!) he showed how this attitude is indistinguishable from that of eugenicism:

“Northam said: “When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.”

The full Northam interview is here, and fuller context do not make his comments any less disgusting – in fact, they make them even more eugenicist. This is not deceptive editing: it is literally a governor of a major state across the river from our capital endorsing infanticide. Northam has dismissed the situation as a frame job, but the video and text speaks for itself. His state isn’t so blue that he can do what Andrew Cuomo did, and brush off all criticism of his abortion regime as mere religious nagging.”

He then illustrated how Margaret Sanger would be proud of her followers:

“But should we be surprised? Are we so sure that the modern left is actually against infanticide? In looking back at the entirety of human history, the vast majority of it has been filled with blood, slavery, and child sacrifice, and the subjugation or disposal of the weaker members of the human race. It is only in the past few centuries, the blink of an eye historically, that we have become more civilized. The forces of eugenics have had to cloak their aims in a scientific-sounding melange, even as they seek what Margaret Sanger colorfully referred to in The New York Times as “the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

The idea that for the sake of the fittest, the weakest among us must be destroyed is not a new idea. It is old as humanity, and it is the law of the jungle. The idea that Northam endorsed – a crying baby, “kept comfortable” as doctors consult with the mother about whether it ought to be revived, is as disgusting a concept as can be vocalized. But it is the reality of the regime we live under, and the regime the left wants us to live under. They will not limit their extremism to New York. They will deliberately spread it across the country, fueled by the elites who still hold Sanger’s views, the murderers who profit from it, and the media who cringes in disgust and turns away from local crime stories.”

Human weeds! This is the modern (?) Democrat Party speaking through the voice, among others, of Sanger, who another article termed:

” … The radical eugenicist — a scientific term for codified racism — founded the organization precisely to provide as many abortions as possible and to push for anti-family policies. She wanted to use abortion to “exterminate” black Americans. That is the term she actually used: Exterminate.

Another word for that is “genocide.” “

Charles Hurt, in one of his typically incisive slices right to the core of the issue, observed, in a piece appropriately entitled “Outrage over blackface, silence over killing babies” :

“For years, we have been chided for talking openly about fearing the Obamacare “Death Panels” that would reign after the government takes over every last corner of our health care system.

Turns out that not only are the Death Panels real, they’re not just for old people and expensive sick people. Democrat politicians want them for newborns, too.

“The infant would be kept comfortable,” the Grand Wizard of Death Squads, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, tells us in chillingly antiseptic tones.”

“Listening to Dr. Death Northam discuss the final solution for troublesome, colicky or, perhaps, wrong-gendered babies is a little like listening to Hannibal Lecter make tender pillow talk before he rapes a woman, skins her and eats her medulla oblongata.

Or Buffalo Bill give skin moisturizer tips.

“It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!”

Perhaps Dr. Death should get himself one of those hoods that executioners have always been so fond of throughout the darkest of ages. It could even be pointy. I bet it comes in white, with convenient, yet fashionable, little eye holes.

Virginia House Del. Kathy Tran introduced the legislation that, she admitted, would legalize “abortion” during actual labor. Among the rest of civilization, this is called “infanticide.” Or, more plainly, “murder.”

But, hey, according to Death Squad Grand Wizard Ralph Northam, the baby will be kept “comfortable” while waiting for his or her death row conviction. You know, toss “it” onto a table underneath one of those french fry lamps.

If that is not Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, then what is?”

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune hit the target in explaining the real reason for why the Democrats have been feverishly fanning the flames of the dumpster fire over the –gasp!–fact that their Governor and Attorney General dabbed a bit of shoe polish on their faces thirty plus years ago:

“The talk of Democrats wearing blackface has all but covered up something else that Northam, a pediatrician, said about aborting a child who had been delivered.

“When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of — obviously — the mother, with the consent of the physicians — more than one physician, by the way. … If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered.

“The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and mother.”

A discussion. You mean the discussion that America isn’t having about the value of human life.”

Several recent events have pointed ujp the sheer madness sof where the far-left has gone on this topic. For example, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-NB, announced he will ask the Senate to consider his legislation, the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act and attempted to use the Rule 14 process to expedite consideration of the bill. That rule requires unanimous consent. It was blocked by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Left Coast).

Also pointing up the bizarre consequences of this left drift into depravity is this story out of New York. A woman, apparently very accomplished and the mother of a 12-year old boy, was stabbed to death by her boyfriend. He was charged with her murder, but could not be charged with “homicide” of the baby in view of new York’s new abortion law, because:

“Even though Irigoyen wanted her baby, it was not considered a life under the new law. A spokesperson for the District Attorney told the Post the abortion charge “was repealed by the Legislature, and this is the law as it exists today.”

As The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo previously reported, the law, called the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), repealed abortion from the state’s criminal code and removed the law limiting abortions beyond 24 weeks. The abortion can be performed by a licensed practitioner in “good faith” up to the minute a baby is born “to protect the patient’s life or health,” yet “health” is not defined in the legislation.

“Ostensibly billed as a “women’s healthcare” law, the RHA states that “”every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion.” Irigoyen didn’t get to make those choices, yet the man who did won’t be charged for ending a pregnancy she wanted.”

There are a number of very good discussions of this moral conundrum and, for convenience of those who may wish to consult the ones I considered the best, they can be found here, here, here and here.

However, one study stands out for me and I strongly recommend that it be read in its entirety as it represents the deepest dive I have seen of the history of infanticide, and, most troubling for our purposes, where it can lead. The author is Georgi Boorman and she entitled her essay “Infanticide is the Historical Hallmark of a Pagan Culture.” To use one of our times’ most hackneyed phrases, “trigger warning”: it is a history which is at times gruesome and painfully explicit. No brief listing of quotes would suffice to convey the chilling, to put it euphemistically, history she outlines–only a full reading will accomplish that. Perhaps her concluding paragraphs will offer a small glimpse of the horror which went before:

“What we are seeing now is a return to a world that does not know God and does not want to know God. This is the consequence of our detachment from Christianity and its moral system. The truth is that you do not attain a culture where human life (albeit born life) is almost universally cherished without the knowledge of the one true God.”

“As the Apostle Paul reiterated from Old Testament writers: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God…Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

“The fact that we are surrounded by a wealth of resources and still 13 percent of all pregnancies in America and 28 percent in the state of New York end in murder should tell you something. This is not a matter of inequality of rights between the sexes or inequality of resources. It is a matter of the heart, and a heart without God is “desperately wicked.” The god of Progress has led its worshipers to embrace death as easily as the Canaanite gods that surrounded the people of Israel.”

I conclude by stating just one of the many seemingly unanswerable questions I have been asking in the days these scenes from Hell have been unfolding: How can we possibly square what is being done to the most helpless among us–our babies — with the fact that our Founding Fathers set out to assure they would have the inalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”? How do we explain to those coming after us, our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, that a large number of their fellow citizens are setting out to “alienate”, in the most horrible and terrifying way, all of those precious rights? I do not pretend to have an answer. Do you?