Wretchedness, wantonness, and wackos

By Curtis Dahlgren

"NOW, THEREFORE, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death . . ." — RWR

"I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception." — John Kerry

"As Roe v. Wade made clear, the right to choose abortion is a fundamental right . . . " — the other John Kerry

WHICH ONE IS THE WACKO, and who is calling whom a "fundamentalist extremist"? And if you were an old-fashioned conservative Democrat, would you feel "comfortable" among the Cultural Revolutionaries at the big Boston convention this week?

The specialties of this column are pointing out the paradoxes of life, and finding pertinent but forgotten quotations. There was an extremely pertinent one in the December 19, 1975 issue of National Review: "Throughout the history of the intellectual class, there has been this tension between the superiorcrats and the mediocrats [more conservative-leaning leaders]. This has given rise to a peculiarly Western kind of intellectual who invokes universal values [such as "Rights"] to justify what party bureaucrats do for their own power-motivated reasons, and who thus presumes he has preserved his intellectual independence while acting as an apologist for the party mediocrats."

I don't have the author's name at my fingertips, but the article was talking about the Communist Party and those who apologized for it in the West. However, the same principle applies to the two wings of both major parties in the U.S. right now. Here's an anecdote to explain what I mean:

There was only one example of President Reagan showing anger during his term of office, as far as I know. It happened one day when one of his advisers suggested that he should go easy on the abortion issue, "because the votes are not on our side." Reagan replied angrily that he didn't care about anything except right and wrong. In this example, the adviser no doubt considered himself one of "the best and the brightest" and that his boss was one of the "mediocrats." But it doesn't take any I.Q. at all to just read a poll and base policy on the poll (however flawed it probably is anyway).

On the Democrat side, the "superiorcrats" (no doubt whatsoever) consider Zell Miller a "mediocrat" for speaking at the Republican convention (straying from the "best and brightest plantation"). Likewise, the RINO country club Republicans almost never actually agreed with President Reagan, though basking in his victories (which amazed and puzzled them, I'm sure). By the same token, the Superiorcrats at the New York Times look down on the "Rednecks" in both parties, while puzzling over their declining subscriptions and the general decline in trust in the Big Media among the people.

The preceding thoughts all came to mind after writing my last column and having the Microsoft Word grammar check program indicate that "whoredoms" and "wickedness" weren't really words, apparently because I was quoting an author from the 7th century B.C. (the machine thought that it was the Superiorcrat and I was the Mediocrat). That led to my digging into the roots of those two words, which led me to a few others, including, wretchedness, wanton, and wrong.

In the process, I discovered some more "paradoxes"! In the original Hebrew source, "whoredom" came from the root word zanah, the original sense of which was: "highly fed and therefore wanton."

It's "therefore" because of a correct understanding of human nature: people who are abundantly provided by circumstances with prosperity and sensual stimulation are inversely supplied with self-discipline, character, and common sense. In the words of 600+ B.C., "When I had fed them to the full, then they assembled themselves in troops in the harlots' houses." In the Hebrew, "whoredom" rarely refers to "involuntary ravishment," so Jeremiah is talking about the ordinary adultery so common today.

An explosion of whoredom results in an explosion of unwanted children, so the Supreme Court reasoned to itself that there just had to be legal abortion. How to "word" the official ruling in Roe v. Wade was a bigger problem than coming to the initial premise. They tried to have it both ways; they threw a bone to the Constitution, but mainly based their legalism on "emanations" and ghostly shadows. Those ghosts are growing ever greater in number as the wanton slaughter of the innocent unborn children continues.

The dictionary after "wanton" alludes to such terms as ill-bred or ill-educated, and "to draw" (tempt), and the way we are "educating" our kids, they are spoiled but arrogant.

Interestingly, my 1958 unabridged Webster defines wanton as "wanting or lacking discipline, unrestrained, reckless with an utter disregard of right or consequences, wandering or roving about in gaiety or sport, flying loosely, and luxuriant in growth, overgrown, overfertile or abundant."

This means once again that there are inherent perils in prosperity and abundance, far beyond the obvious obesity and flabbiness. This all harks back to my column last year:

"Can you say 'Jaded,' boys and girls?" The fruits of our post-Christian way of life are not at all a "blessing"! One of the definitions of wretchedness is "deeply distressed or miserable," the antithesis of gaiety, which is the only reason I mention that one.

As for "wrong" (there really is such a word): "not morally right or just; immoral; contrary to truth, fact, etc.; mistaken. Therefore, we can say that a "mistake" by any other name is still simply WRONG!

As I said in the last column, covetousness and cupidity are related words, and even though my computer doesn't want me to use the word wickedness, all of these terms are the quintessential philosophy of many of the wackos who would try to take over the reins of the world's only Superpower this year, and it is beyond me how supposedly "conservative" Democrats can be their "fellow travelers."

That is obviously why Zell Miller is going to speak at the Republican convention. I can't wait for that one! I only hope the liberal Republicans stay awake and get the point!

Jeremiah went first to the common people, and then tried to wake up the leaders who should have known better, but he said, "They are not valiant for the truth, for they proceed from evil to evil."

What're you talkin' about, Willis? Well, for just one example, one week after 9/11/01 Planned Parenthood of NYC advertised "Free reproductive health care," i.e., from the killings to more killings (Faye Wattleton's word for abortion), and anyone who can't call a spade a spade is a "fellow traveler" with the actual abortionists, no matter which way they try to "spin" their "superiority" and "moderation," etc.

Oh, by the way: I forgot to mention this, but Ayto's book of word origins says that "wrong" means, etymologically speaking, TWISTED, and another word in that family means "to wring." Bottom line: the Cultural Revolutionaries are twisted 180 degrees from "truth" and "facts" (and their fellow travelers will also have to answer for their support)!

In other news this week, the USA Today reported that three times as many acres have been burned by wildfires this summer than at the same time last year (an area equivalent to the size of New Jersey), but the news has been overshadowed by the election campaign. Maybe the whole country is asleep. I miss Ronald Reagan more every day, as his country slides more and more into wantonness, self-deception, and self-imposed "misery"!

© Curtis Dahlgren