Texans have a New Abortion Law. Americans have a New Political Reality.

Texans have a new abortion law.

Americans have a new political reality.

The Texas legislature passed the much-ballyhooed abortion law which would require abortion doctors to have hospital privileges and abortion clinics to provide the same health and safety standards as other outpatient surgical clinics. They crossed the finish line on this bill late last night amid what can only be described as a mob assault on the Texas state capitol.

The reason I chose the words “mob assault” is that the focus of at least a good number of the citizens who came to the Texas capitol was to use mob action to shut down the legislative process. Consider, for instance, this statement issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety:

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) today received information that individuals planned to use a variety of items or props to disrupt legislative proceedings at the Texas Capitol.

Therefore for safety purposes, DPS recommended to the Texas Senate that all bags be inspected prior to allowing individuals to enter the Senate gallery, which the Texas Senateauthorized.

During these inspections, DPS officers have thus far discovered one jar suspected to contain urine, 18 jars suspected to contain feces, and three bottles suspected to contain paint. All of these items – as well as significant quantities of feminine hygiene products, glitter and confetti possessed by individuals – were required to be discarded; otherwise those individuals were denied entry into the gallery.

In the interest of the safety and security of Texas legislators and the general public, these inspections will continue until the conclusion of Senate business.

I am all in favor of citizens visiting their state capitols. I think the people of this nation should pay a lot more attention to what their lawmakers are up to than they do now. I believe that every person in this country has a right to talk to their elected officials and to petition them concerning the issues and legislation they are voting on.

We are, every single elected one of us, representatives of the people who put us here. We can’t know what the people who elected us want from us unless they tell us. Polls and things of that ilk are not a substitute for direct personal input with the people themselves.

On the other hand, when a group of people try to use mob action to shut down the legislative process, they are attacking democracy. The people who were so bent on disrupting the Texas legislature would not have needed to be there at all if they had been able to take their cause to the court of public opinion and win elections. By trying to disrupt the legislative session with mob action, they were, in effect, attempting to overturn the elections which put the legislators in that chamber to cast those votes.

If you don’t like what your legislator does with the power you gave them when you elected them, then run against them for election. If  you don’t want to run, then go out and volunteer to help someone else run. Put up yard signs. Make phone calls. Hand out literature. Donate money.

That is the way to change the face of government in this country. It is a power we all have, and which we are giving away to special interests and money men when we don’t use it.

There is a new kid on the political block, and it’s a yammering, spoiled, mean-spirited little brat who wants what it wants when it wants it and doesn’t care what damage it does to this country to get it. The bad behavior of some of the protestors in Texas is paralleled by the sudden rash of elected officials, Attorneys General, in particular, who run for office, get elected, and then find that their superior morality requires them to refuse to do the job they were elected to.

We’re going to have to start arresting these people who come to state capitols and try to use mob action to shut down the legislative process. I don’t want to do that. I want people to feel free to go to their capitols and to talk to their legislators about whatever is on their minds. But we cannot allow mobs of people who cannot win an election try to overturn elections by shutting down the Democratic process by means of creating such havoc that they stop debate.

At the same time, we need to consider impeaching or at least defeating at the polls duly elected chief law enforcement officers who refuse to speak for the people in court. When an Attorney General of a state will not represent the people who elected him or her in court, they are derelict in their duty. They are using a sort of don’t-show-up-in-court-and-deliberately-lose-the-case veto power over the legislative and referendum process. They are making themselves the judge of what it is not their job to be the judge — the will and the power of the people of their state to make their own laws.

Both of these extreme behaviors — the mob actions in Texas and other states, and the newfound desire to veto legislation by not showing up in court on the part of Attorneys General — are attempts to subvert the will of the people, and to nullify the actions of a representative government.

I view both these behaviors as the natural outcome of the moral depravity of the positions some citizens are taking. It corrupts and hardens a person to support killing unborn babies. It scrambles the normal thinking processes to convince yourself of something as stupid as the idea that two men or two women are the same as a man and a woman. This is untrue on its face.

Genuinely pro choice (as opposed to pro abortion) people have legitimate points. Much of what concerns them about the misogynistic treatment of women is well-founded. By the same token, homosexuals have legitimate claims to civil rights and protection under the law. However, the pretense that an unborn baby is not a human being, or that a homosexual union is the same as the marriage between a man and a woman, flies in the face of reality.

Laws enacted according to these fantasies are always going to cause great harm, because they are not based on the reality of the human condition. People who advocate for these positions, will, over time, harm themselves and their thinking abilities.

It saddens me, but it doesn’t surprise me, to see the destructiveness to our political fabric ratcheting up with each twist of the political dial. It is the inevitable consequence of the fantastical thinking many people use in forming their worldview.