The Alt-Right and Life-Style Left Have a Lot in Common

The Alt-Right and Life-Style Left Have a Lot in Common

The Stream - Saturday September 2, 2017

by Jennifer Roback Morse

The dust has settled on the clash between the Alt-Right and the Left in Charlottesville. But the labeling (or libeling) of conservatives will certainly be back. Powerful people and organizations on the Left have every incentive to associate the Alt-Right with the entire Right, as a way of discrediting all conservatives.

I am a Catholic, pro-life, pro-family Christian. No one would ever expect the Left to speak for me. But I am here to say that the Alt-Right does not speak for me either. In fact, I'll say something stronger: The Alt-Right and the Life-Style Left have more in common with each other, than either of them have with me and my friends.

Here is why. My friends and I find eugenics self-evidently repulsive. But both the Life-Style Left and the Alt-Right take the correctness of eugenics for granted.

Eugenics Alt-Right and Left

An article entitled, “The Pro-Life Temptation” published on a website entitled, Alt-Right.com, explicitly defends eugenics. "The alt Right appreciates what is superior in man, in the Nietzschean sense... The pro-life position is clearly dysgenic...."

Leftwing advocates for abortion do not generally promote it as a eugenic measure. But they do promote the idea that a woman may have an abortion for any reason or no reason. And most abortion advocates would consider the desire to avoid a child with a disability a no-brainer of a reason for an abortion.

The Leftist may not have such an elaborate justification as the Alt-Rightist has for why killing a disabled child prior to birth is morally acceptable. But the mother's desires trump all other moral considerations. If she thinks a disabled child would be too burdensome, expensive or painful to raise, that judgment is sufficient to justify killing the child before birth.

Both the Life-Style Left and the Alt-Right take the correctness of eugenics for granted.

You could call it consumer-sovereignty eugenics. Give the customer whatever she wants. If the consumer of child-services wants a healthy baby, she is entitled to one. If she anticipates having an unhealthy baby, she is entitled to dispose of it.

Pro-Life Ethics vs. “Temptation”

The pro-life Christian takes a different view. Each child is an unrepeatable gift from God. We ask ourselves, "What is God trying to say to me, by giving me this particular child?" Christian families of Down Syndrome children, (are there any other kind any more?) and the Santorum family with their Trisomy 18 daughter Bella, have a profound answer to this question. God gave us this child to teach us how to love. This answer is unintelligible to both the Alt-Right and the Life-Style Left.

The author at Alt-Right.com continues with his diatribe against the "pro-life temptation:"

We on the alt Right have an appreciation of tribalism and identity. We realize that people are not just autonomous individuals. Life gains its meaning through connections to other members of our families, tribes, and nations. …

The unborn fetus has no connection to anyone else in the community. If it is not even wanted by its own mother, criminalizing abortion means that the state must step in and say that the individual has rights as an individual, despite its lack of connection to any larger social group. ...

If there were to be a pro-life position that we could accept, it would be based on arguments about what is good for the community. The case would have to be made that abortion is what is decimating the White population and decreasing its quality. While it's true that a blanket ban on abortion would probably increase the White population in their numbers, it would, no doubt, decrease the overall quality, as well and leave all races stupider, more criminally prone, and more diseased. …

The Left Has No Answer to the Alt-Right

It’s true that the Life-Style Left does not generally make this type of pro-abortion argument. But they also have no coherent answer to it. When pro-life legislators try to restrict sex-selective or race-specific abortions, the pro-abortion crowd has nothing to say except, "No! No restrictions on ‘choice!’" Under their breath, we can hear the embarrassed whisper, "No matter how heinous the reason for the choice!"

Each child is an unrepeatable gift from God.

Sex-selection abortion is an odious fact. Some demographers talk about "117 million missing girls," the excess of the abortions of female over male babies. The Life-Style Left surely must know this by now. They tacitly defend it, by refusing to oppose it.

Likewise, they are surely aware that black women have a disproportionate share of abortions. If they weren't aware of it, Pastor Walter Hoye II,President of the Issues 4 Life Foundation, made them aware of it with his billboards showing cute black babies with the headline, "Endangered Species." Or "too many aborted." Reverend Hoye posted these billboards in predominantly black neighborhoods a few years ago, in Oakland and Los Angeles. The pro-abortion people went ballistic.

The Alt-Right supports killing black babies in utero. The Life-Style Left won't come right out and agree with this view. But they refuse to condemn it.

The Christian Pro-Life Position

The Christian pro-life position is completely different. We are not interested in tribal identities. We believe that every human being has a core identity as a son or daughter of God. We really are all equal, in that context, and perhaps only in that context. For every one of us is "wonderfully made." Yes, even the diseased and disabled, whom the Alt-Right considers "unfit." Even the "unwanted," whom the pro-abortion Left literally considers non-persons. The ability to give and receive love is every bit as important to human identity as IQ or health or self-awareness or any of the other arbitrary criteria the pro-abortion people left and right have come up with.

This is why I am increasingly unwilling to position myself anywhere on the Left-Right political spectrum. I am a Catholic Christian. 

This is why I am increasingly unwilling to position myself anywhere on the Left-Right political spectrum. I am a Catholic Christian. I am not at home in either political party, or in any political movement.

Main Stream Media, go ahead and try to pin the "Alt-Right" label on me. Alt-Right volk, go ahead and attack me for being not part of your tribe. I couldn't care less. I and my fellow Christians, are truly "not of this world." "Follower of Jesus" is the only label I want. May I be worthy of it.

 

 

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., is Founder and President of the Ruth Institute, a global non-profit organization, dedicated to creating a mass social movement to end family breakdown. Visit at www.ruthinstitute.org or facebook.com/TheRuthInstitute/. To hear more from Dr. Morse, sign up for her e-newsletter here and receive a free gift.

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