Say something often enough

And it becomes truth. Especially when powerful politicians and influential media are saying the same thing. Perception becomes reality.

When you start to change reality, however, the truth of the matter is still self-evident, so it takes a while. Abortion advocates did that in the early stage of forming a movement to sell America on the idea that it’s a ‘choice’ and a right, though at that time it ran counter to the Judeo-Christian ethic that grounded American principles from its founding.

One of the starkest descriptions of how this process works is in the now famous September 1970 editorial in California Medicine, the journal of the California Medical Association.

The CMA acknowledged that the traditional Western ethic has always placed great intrinsic value and worth on every human life at all stages, and that such ethic has always been embraced and held sacred by the Judeo-Christian heritage, making it the basis for most laws and social policies. But…

they interpreted new “facts and social realities” as something they needed to control. So here’s what the California Medical Assocation said in 1970:

“It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather than absolute values on such things as human lives… Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra-or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected”.

That’s a parallel to what’s going on now in the effort to redefine America. We’re suddenly hearing that we’re not a Christian nation any longer. From the press to the president.

Obama told an audience of Turkish Muslims that “[Americans] do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

That’s odd. Obama speaks often about reaching out to the “Muslim world.”  The existence of a “Muslim world” suggests there might also be a “Christian world.”  And despite Newsweek’s declaration on this week’s cover (title: “The Decline and Fall of Christian America”), the U.S. remains at the center of the Christian world.  Eight in ten Americans consider themselves Christian, and a majority prays to God and believes in miracles.  A recent Newsweek poll found that at least 62% of Americans do think of the United States as a Christian nation. Is President Obama speaking for only 38% of the nation when he talks overseas?

And where are they getting these numbers? I hosted a radio show in the lead-up to the 2006 mid-term elections and all the reporting then about ‘the religious vote’ placed America’s Christian population somewhere between 82 and 86 percent. Same was true for the ‘war on Christmas’ press reporting during the holidays of the past few years. So did we suddenly shrink to 62 percent? Who are they polling?

Who are they kidding, some writers ask. And at least some of them are probing the coherence of the messages out there.

Obama has in effect declared to Christians in America: either bring your understanding of Christianity into line with my liberalism or don’t bother entering the public square. You want federal money? Well, then perform abortions, distribute condoms, hire homosexual activists, etc., etc. He would never dare talk to Muslims in those terms…

If Muslims had to endure patronizing and lying secularist drivel from him like “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values,” they would riot. Cowed and secularized Christians just nod and offer him an honorary degree.

But that’s another story…