Wendell Berry, in Citizenship Papers<\/em> \u2014 a volume that is not afraid to disagree with government, has a chp called \u201cThe Failure of War.\u201d Here is his essential point: \u201cMilitarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders.\u201d Wendell Berry, in Citizenship Papers \u2014 a volume that is not afraid to disagree with government, has a chp called \u201cThe Failure of War.\u201d Here is his essential point: \u201cMilitarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[476],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nI hope you can read this whole post to consider the questions at the bottom; I think they are good ones. I hope you agree and want to converse about it.
\nNow I\u2019m not sure this is much of a claim, but I don\u2019t want to deal with that part of his chp in this post. But, let me say this: whatever one thinks of war (just way, etc), and I\u2019ve made it clear that I think the pacifist is the most consistent Christian position, apart from some other theoretical basis, Berry\u2019s observation doesn\u2019t hold water. Those who believe that a government has the right to call its citizens into the military, also believe that war may involve restriction of freedoms. Individuals \u201ccede\u201d (that\u2019s a legal word) rights to the State\/Feds in such cases.
\nWhat I\u2019m more concerned with today is that Berry finds a brutal hypocrisy with abortion. Listen to this claim by Wendell Berry:
\nIf you so devalue human life that the accidentally conceived unborn may be permissibly killed [abortion], how do you keep that permission from being assumed by someone who has made the same judgment against the born?<\/em>
\nAbortion-as-birth-control<\/em>, he says, is justified as a \u201cright,\u201d which can establish itself only by denying all the rights of another person [the baby], which is the most primitive intent of warfare.\u00c2 <\/em>
\nIf the creature in a womb is a living human being, and so far also an innocent one, then it is wrong to treat it as an enemy<\/em>.
\nAs for the \u201cright to control one\u2019s own body,\u201d I am all for that. But implicit in that right is the responsibility to control one\u2019s body in such a way as to avoid dealing irresponsibly or violently or murderously with other bodies. Women and men generally have understood that when they have conceived a child they have relinquished a significant measure of their independence, and that henceforth they must control their bodies in the interest of the child<\/em>.
\nHere\u2019s the question: Is it a moral hypocrisy to believe in war and against abortion, or to be against war and for abortion?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"