Yesterday afternoon at an event in downtown Chicago (before the bioethics conference of my previous post) I met a man who told me he was running for the US Senate against Dick Durbin, our illustrious "pro-choice" senator from Illinois. He said Durbin needs to be beaten. And he's the only Republican that has a chance to beat Durbin. I said I was glad that he would be bringing "pro-choice" to Illinois, finally, meaning that currently I have no pro-life representatives in Congress to represent my views on the matter. Either he didn't catch my drift or he wanted to straighten me out on the matter: "I'm pro-choice" says the would-be senator. I, with raised eyebrow, was assured that he is personally opposed to abortion but that he, being a realist I think, saw that legalized abortion is just the way things are.
"Well, bad laws make bad men," says I, with a bit, I must admit, of a twist on the word bad.
"What do you mean?" I told him of an ob/gyn, who started doing abortions after Roe v. Wade took down the barriers to the killing. "Why in the world would he do that!" says that shocked candidate. A lesson in the "way things are:" Because his patients wanted him to, and paid him. He said he was a Christian, to boot. Like I said, bad laws make bad men. And I'm supposed to send this man to Washington to make laws?
"bad laws make bad men."
I never heard that before! That's really good. I like it, I like it a lot.
Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | July 13, 2007 at 09:52 AM
"I'm personally opposed to..." is a phrase trademarked, I believe, by Pontius Pilate-Brand Hand Soap ("For that clean-consience feeling - Because There's Nothing You Can Do".). Or, as Kipling put it in reference to a far less obvious case than legalized abortion:
"We are not ruled by murderers, but only...by their friends."
Posted by: Joe Long | July 13, 2007 at 03:53 PM
"bad laws make bad men."
No, but bad laws remove one restraint on bad men . . . and we are all bad men.
To see this better, I am sure we would all reject the corollary, "Good laws make good men." We would, however, recognize that good laws might induce bad men (like us) to behave better than we might have without such laws, fearing the more immediate wrath of men more than the (hopefully) mercifully delayed wrath of God.
Posted by: GL | July 14, 2007 at 01:13 PM
Do not our choices shape what kind of people we become? Do not laws influence our choices?
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | July 14, 2007 at 01:49 PM
Do not our choices shape what kind of people we become? Do not laws influence our choices? Indeed, but so do our choices influence the laws. Laws are not made in a vacuum, but arise from the society in which they are created. There is a feedback loop. Thus, for example, laws legalizing contraception *followed* widespread acceptance and use of contraception by the public; it did not *start* that trend. Now, use of contraception continued to spread after Griswold declared bans of contraception unconstitutional, but I would maintain that this was more because a restraint on bad behavior already desired (and already widely practiced) was removed, not because the bad law made the men bad, only more free to engage in the behavior they were already ready to engage in but for the law.
The reason I take exception with "bad laws make bad men" is because many in the religious right seem to believe that if we could only get good laws, we would have good men. That simply is not true. We might (or might not) have better behaved men, but that is not the same thing as good men. (See Aquinas on imposing "good laws" on men not ready for them.) Reforming men through "good laws" was the religion of the Pharisees, not of Christ.
Posted by: GL | July 14, 2007 at 02:15 PM
Sure, GL - I doubt anyone has a problem with what you are saying. I don't think Mr. Kushiner means that bad men are only made that way because of bad laws, or that bad laws make all men bad, or that bad laws are not made by bad men. He's just highlighting an important and often overlooked consequence of bad laws.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | July 14, 2007 at 04:17 PM
The candidate in question certainly demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the evil in man's heart, if he didn't recognize that if we open doors, some men will go through them.
That being said, I think he deserves to be elected, provided that he said he would vote to confirm justices like Roberts. If he says yes, then his self-described pro-life or pro-choice stance matters very little. And, in the Senate, that stance won't matter much anyway because the Senate is not going to have an up or down vote on making abortion illegal.
It may well be that right now a pro-life candidate in Illinois is unelectable. The perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good.
Posted by: Sam | July 14, 2007 at 11:17 PM