Last year I was there. I couldn’t go this year, but I did go to a rally in Lansing, MI. Somehow this was different than I had expected it to be. A few things hit me.

At one point the director of a local crisis pregnancy center read out the years since the Roe decision, listing the number of abortions for each year. In 1985, the year I was born, about 1,588,600 children were aborted. Today nearly 1 in every 4 pregnancies in the US is ended by abortion. It’s an impossible exercise — mental, economic, or otherwise — to imagine how different the landscape could be sans Roe. Usually when I think about this, I jump immediately to national implications, and then after about 30 seconds of trying to balance the myriad factors in my head and how they would all play against each other, I give up.

But this time I wondered how many of those kids I would have known personally. If I would have studied Shakespeare with her, or sat across from him at Espresso. If I could have called her in the middle of the night, cause she would have been like a sister to me. If I would have fallen in love with him and never fallen out. It’s pointless to wonder. Potential is a funny thing — unquantifiable, unpredictable.

While the crisis pregnancy center director was speaking, and actually during the entire rally, there was another woman going through the crowd, continually introducing herself to the various elected officials, clergymen, and other people of note. She had some leaflets and, from what I could gather, was trying to gather support or recognition for some sort of coalition for mentally disabled people. One look at this woman and it was evident that this was also her personal fight, not just her public activism. And she was gutsy, and persistent. I admired her.

About 90% of mothers choose abortion when fetal tests point to Down syndrome. I wondered if this woman knew that. If she doesn’t know it, I wonder if she feels it when people look at her. I wonder if she feels the weight of society’s collective spite and annoyance toward her. I wonder what it feels like to know that the society in which you live mostly thinks your life should have been taken away before you drew your first breath.

And it made me so sad to think that she is living in a world in which you have to defend yourself for having a Down syndrome child. Part of her pitch was a quote from Sarah Palin about Trig, whom they knew had Down syndrome while Sarah was pregnant. I didn’t get much of it, but I remember the words “beautiful” and “perfect” and I could hear her underlying message — Trig isn’t less because he was born different. And neither am I.

I tried to imagine going through life always feeling like you had to prove you were worth it too, that you deserve to be here and to be respected and cared for — to be loved. The closest analogy I could come up with is if I were somehow dropped into the Davos Forum — everything would be going a bit too fast for me, and the other attendees would look at me askance, or ignore me entirely, and the entire time I would awkwardly smile, wondering why is everything so hard, and why do I keep having to convince everyone that what I know or who I am is enough to justify my presence.

But that’s not the same, and I know it. And I hope that last paragraph doesn’t sound like I’m making fun of her, or mentally disabled people, because that’s the last thing I want to do.

There is a deeper philosophy to those who fight against legalized abortion. Being pro-life isn’t just about saving babies or helping women not make an irrevocable decision they will almost certainly regret. It’s certainly not about men trying to control women, or some sort of religious anti-sex agenda. This is about how we view each other. This is about how we view life, life in each person, life as it is and as it should be lived. This is about making a conscious effort to see every single person as valuable, as having something to teach you, as a person worthy of love.

The prevalence of abortion in our society is merely one symptom of our failure to recognize and treat each other as such. I don’t know if I’m effectively drawing all these strands together, but the dissonance between how people treat a pregnancy when it is wanted and when it is not would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. A choice, not a child? Not a life? This is a farce, a fable that people buy into because it’s easier, because they can. We mistreat each other out of hubris and laziness, we look down on others, we objectify them, we selfishly guard our wants. We convince ourselves that we’re just a little bit better, a little bit more deserving. Did you ever wonder how someone could kill a man with his bare hands, or rape a girl as she screamed for mercy? Or how a man could sell his neighbor into slavery, or walk past another bleeding on the side of the road? It starts with a quiet voice inside that says, “I matter more.” Where does it end?

. . . 50 million . . .

I am so sick of this American election season. Save for a couple weeks in September after the VP announcements, I have basically been disengaged since February. With every passing week I have less affinity for those involved and grow increasingly frustrated with how our system works.

This is why I was so pleased to arrive in Austria when I did, a week and a half before their national elections. An entirely different system, more than two parties from which to choose, and a new cast of national characters to embrace or revile, to admire or disdain

Now news of Austrian politics rarely reaches the shores of America. Archduke Franz Ferdinand aside, on an international scale they have made few waves and produced even fewer memorable figures in the last 100 years. This is why I was surprised when I recognized one of the candidates running for Bundeschancellor, one Joerg Haider.

From my murky recollections of PS 385, I remembered Haider as an infamous far-right figure, drawing equal parts love from his supporters and hate from his critics. A quick glance at his wikipedia entry will suffice to fill you in on his Nazi pedigree, his rise from law school hotshot to internationally sanctioned party leader, and a host of other fascinating tidbits about his life both personal and professional.

Because I had heard of Haider, and because I knew what a controversial figure he struck, I jumped on the chance to see him give a campaign rally in Stephensplatz, the heart of Vienna. As the capital city and metropolitan center of Austria, Vienna leans heavily liberal; thus Haider finds few friends here. So I had the distinct feeling at the rally that many of the people were there to glower rather than cheer.

Still though, there were plenty present whose faces completely lit up when he came on-stage. They clapped and cheered and listened in rapt attention as he laid out his dreams for a better Austria — largely dependent on reduced immigration and the deportation of many newly arrived immigrants. Though my sub-par German listening skills left my mind constantly racing to understand him, at one point I’m almost certain he said something along the lines of [and my friend who attended confirms], “If I could, I would put all the foreigners on a bus right out of Austria.” To which the crowd erupted in applause and adoration. To be completely fair, Haider and his allies aren’t talking about foreigners like myself. They take issue with eastern Europeans like Poles and Czechs, who since the recent European Union accessions may now freely move to Austria. They take equal [but, I was surprised to learn, no greater] issue with Turks and other Muslims. And of course, as a far-right party in Europe, Haider’s crowd quietly but surely harbors great animosity towards Jews.

As I watched Haider and observed the crowd, it was easy to see how this man had managed to convince so many people to believe in him. His charisma was incredible; just the way he would address the crowd, saying “Ladies and gentlemen,” bespoke complete control, absolute confidence, total certainty in self and philosophy. I did not fully understand his words, but I saw in every gesture, every facial expression, the look of a man who knew what he was doing. He breathed out power, and I watched the enticement of the crowd, a people fed-up with paying 50% of their wages in taxes to support people whom they felt did not deserve to even be citizens of their homeland, much less beneficiaries of the extremely generous social system.

In the elections last week Sunday, Haider’s party and the other far-right party together received nearly 30% of the vote. Nearly 1/3 of Austrians voted for the extreme right parties.

Early Saturday morning Joerg Haider died in a car crash, on his way to his mother’s 90th birthday party. As of now, no foul play is suspected. On the news I watched his supporters light candles and weep. “The sun has fallen from the sky,” Haider’s deputy said.

The question now is whether Haider’s death will cue the end of his extreme right-wing populism, or whether his supporters will rally together with ever more strength. I could argue both ways. No doubt Haider was the life force behind his party. Without him it will likely limp on for a few years, then be absorbed into the other far-right party.

However, the rise of far-right parties is a trend across much of Europe right now. As America has slowly shifted to the left the last decade, Europe has quietly shifted the other way. And quietly, quietly, the youth [who voted in great numbers for the far-right] grow up learning precious little about the destruction right-wing extremism once led to.

In Austria, it is illegal to own a copy of “Mein Kampf” or wear a swastika. But schoolchildren learn less about the Holocaust than their American counterparts. So “Never forget” is watered down — only remember you musn’t revere Hitler, you musn’t be a Nazi. And the more important message, indeed one of the most crucial messages anyone can learn, is lost. That you can never allow yourself, not even for a moment, to believe anyone is less of a human being than you are. That the second you see that person as having slightly less value than yourself, or those you love, you’ve taken the first step toward every awful thing humans have ever inflicted on each other. This is a message every generation has to learn for itself, and from my first month here I have no evidence to make me believe this one is learning it.

There’s also a deeper argument here. “They don’t understand war’s horror the way McCain does,” Saletan writes about tomorrow’s army, those who have grown up playing video games with mass senseless killings. In the past, I think a lot of books written about warfare — novels, not actual accounts — were highly romanticized, visions of the noble soldier fighting alongside his countrymen for the safety and justice of those at home. Now war is often skewed through the glorification of violence. Conversely, the proliferation of war photo-journalists has led to an abundance of images, which I think are used to manipulate as often as to clarify reality. The hawks and doves divide, distilled. How do we come to a realistic view of warfare — both from an on-the-ground perspective as well as from an overarching policy standpoint — in ourselves, or the public at large?

On a slightly tangential note, and *please* do not let this derail all the comments, this is part of the reason why I think McCain’s considerable military experience means quite a lot. For certain things, there’s just no substitute for personal experience.

I’ve been working on this event all semester, and don’t you worry, I’ve got a DI column about it coming out next week, which I’ll surely post as well. I just wanted to give you a preview.

Oh, and pertaining to an earlier thread — Billy Joe did in fact donate money to this cause, and I didn’t even have to ask.

Andrew Mason at the DI kindly allowed me the opportunity to do this guest column on Kosovo, and why their recently declared [and acknowledged by Western powers] independence is unfair, historically absurd and without a doubt the precursor to yet more international instability.

Andrew Mason at the DI kindly allowed me the opportunity to do this guest column on Kosovo, and why their recently declared [and acknowledged by Western powers] independence is unfair, historically absurd and without a doubt the precursor to yet more international instability.

Andrew Mason at the DI kindly allowed me the opportunity to do this guest column on Kosovo, and why their recently declared [and acknowledged by Western powers] independence is unfair, historically absurd and without a doubt the precursor to yet more international instability.

The common thread of admiration for me in terms of Buckley and Sontag is their clear insatiability for the riches of knowledge. I admit I’ve read little of the sum of their writings, but what I’ve seen is packed with references – historical, cultural, literary. They were passionate, life-long students of everything they encountered. I applaud their refusal to dumb down their writing or speaking, instead demanding their audience take an active role in listening and learning. Their brand of scholarship is rare, or difficult to find, at any rate.

Buckley’s New York Times obituary referred to him as “sesquipedalian,” a word which I’m not sure I’d ever even heard, and certainly couldn’t have defined. I’ll never forget it now, and I hope you don’t either. Meanwhile, Sontag was called “The Dark Lady of American Letters,” and I hope if you’ve never encountered her, you’ll take a moment to do so now.

My closing words are from Sontag – All my work says, be serious, be passionate, wake up.

Because of an overzealous e-mail from an overly conservative friend last week, I’ve already spent some time on the website of Trinity United Church of Christ.

On their “About Us” page, they first and foremost define themselves as “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” I take issue with this on two levels; 1) nothing about the make-up or character of a congregation should ever take precedence to them being Christians and 2) God never calls for race to be taken into account within the church and it should be the last place we’re emphasizing race.

This connection to Louis Farrakhan is a further example of what I found to be a troubling focus at TUCC on being black rather than Christian, on standing up first for the needs and wants of a black community and seond, if there’s time, for the message of Christ.

I have heard the argument that since racism is about power, the only Americans who can actually be racist are the white majority. If Farrakhan – and those who support him and his message – does not qualify as racist, then what is he? Does it matter at all that Obama has such strong ties to this church and this pastor? How much MORE [and let's not pretend it wouldn't matter in a much bigger way] would it matter if he were white and a Republican who had strong ties to a church that was giving awards to, say, a prominent and openly hateful Zionist?

Finally, if this connection blows up in the press, will Obama’s “nonthreatening black man” status be in danger?