Flatline

In my reading of current events this morning I stumbled upon the news that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) will not seek another term in the U.S. Congress. Rep. Stupak is a nine term Democrat from the Upper Peninsula area of Michigan. While he has dealt with relative anonymity in the House for almost his entire career, he appears to have always been a somewhat popular Congressman in his district. (As American voters, we tend to hate Congress while typically voting for our incumbent Congressmen and Congresswomen...it has something to do with bringing bacon home or something like that.)

Of course, Stupak's life and career changed dramatically within the past few months. He was really the single politician who could best de-rail President Obama's entire domestic agenda (and, therefore, presidency) by influencing a handful of fellow pro-life Democrats to vote against the mammoth healthcare reform package because it did not contain language banning tax dollars from being used for on-demand abortions in the U.S. Out of our entire 535-member, star-studded, bicameral Congress, it was this unknown anomaly from northern Michigan who suddenly held an incredible amount of power.

Stupak became an immediate sensation. The GOP threw their arms around him as he teamed up with Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA) to attach a pro-life amendment to the original healthcare bill. Conservative talk show hosts clamoured to get the old Democrat on the air. The more I read and heard about the guy, the more I really liked him. Like him or not, Stupak was suddenly the picture of principled ethics within the larger sausage-making documentary known as the healthcare legislative process, and our nation loves it when our politicians seem committed to their ethical moorings. Up until the 11th hour, it honestly appeared that Stupak & Co. were willing to put principle above party, loyalty to life above loyalty to president.

Then March 21 came. The calendar said it was the first full day of spring, that season which reminds everyone of new life. As Stupak's group of pro-life Democrats gave a new breath of life to the administration of Barack Obama, it came at a terrible cost: the death of any lingering pro-life movement within the Democratic Party. I fully believe that one day the American pro-choice movement will be derided and placed on the ash heap of our history--right there next to racial segregation and slavery--and the Democratic Party is doing itself few favors by excluding any anti-abortion mentality from its ranks. In the meantime, on March 21, Bart Stupak did himself absolutely no favors by going against his own amendment and voting for the pro-abortion Senate bill.

I suppose we could continue to pile on this man, but I think he's had enough. Stupak is "retiring" (that is, quitting with some trace of dignity) in the same way that LBJ did in the spring of 1968, as a beaten, lame duck politician whose ethical principles vanished we he began to doubt them. Peer pressure is an incredible thing, and is only increased when those in real positions of power begin to lean in on you. We will likely never know what those in power (such as President Obama and Speaker Pelosi) said to Rep. Stupak in the days leading up to the passage of the healthcare package. We will probably never know if hard-line threats to dissolve his political career were made or if bended-knee pleas to save the party and the president were given.

I think that we can be confident of the following: by March of this year Bart Stupak was either going to sacrifice his political career for the principle of the right to life for all or he was going to sacrifice his political career for the life of Barack Obama's fading popularity. He exercised his right to choose and went with the latter. And now his overall quiet, principled political career is a flatline.

Of Nukes and Men

One of the biggest political news items of the day has to do with President Obama's push to limit the accessibility of our nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons for future use. More indirectly, this new course will have our nation's defense eliminate much of the stockpile, unquestionably cutting into US dominance in the arena of nuclear proliferation. And so we approach this issue with the same question that should pervade our examination of any political or cultural question: how should a Christian think about this issue? (Note: the question is not "WWJD?")

This is a tough one. On the one hand, world citizens - let alone Christians - should despise the very notion of nuclear weapons. By mastering the elemental forces of the universe - those elements upon which God chose to found everything in the cosmos! - scientists in the 1940s developed a weapon which could wipe away entire cities in literally half a second. The extensive presence of such weapons has long brought fear into the hearts of well-meaning humans, those who understood that a misunderstanding could eradicate huge chunks of world civilization in mere moments. Those of us living on the other side of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dr. Strangelove, the international reaction to the Reagan build-up, and so on, are familiar with the dangers. Furthermore, those believers who realize that Nagasaki was actually brought to life by the great Catholic missionary Francis Xavier (and, therefore, had the largest population of Christians in all of Japan in 1945) know the long-term implications that the use of nuclear weapons has on the propagation of the gospel.

But I am still left hesitant after reading the story above. President Obama, who received his much-discussed Nobel Peace Prize primarily because of his talk about nuclear limitation in the 2008 campaign, clearly wants our nation to set an example to the world. The question is, does our example matter? When North Korea is spotlighted as a rogue state willing to exchange nuclear material for much-needed supplies? When a schizophrenic and bellicose Iranian government is on the verge of developing their own nuclear weapon? President Obama is correct in his assertion that we no longer need Cold War-style nuclear arsenals, but does his administration honestly believe that our "example" will deter the enemies of our generation: terrorists? People who blow themselves up in an attempt to kill a dozen or two civilians don't value or follow examples.

And so what are we left with? If responsible nations can't keep their leverage with the bomb, then what would prevent rogue nations from investing their technology in radical terrorist groups? (An important note: Iran and North Korea are both exempt from Obama's pledge due to their non-compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation agreement...both are still potential targets of US nuclear weapons.) And what about the Christian witness and example? As a believer, the very presence of nuclear weapons is abhorrent, let alone the use of such weapons; yet, in a nuclear age, if our federal government has been good at anything, it has been in showing reservation and prudence when given opportunities after August of 1945 to use an atomic bomb.

Ultimately, this is a sphere where two worldviews must collide and, I think, remain unsolved. I believe that there is honestly no way to think "Christianly" about the proliferation/use of atomic weapons (or any weapon for that matter!), yet if the government cannot protect its citizens, what is the point of government in the first place? And, perhaps ironically, for millions of American Christians, there is a place where nuclear proliferation means protection from global nuclear war, even in this post Cold War era.