Know Your Enemy
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How They Did It, Pt. 3: The End of the Beginning
🕑 Added 2022-06-30 01:14:55 +0000 UTCIn the third and final episode in their series on the overturning of Roe v. Wade—recorded on the day it happened—Matt and Sam pick up with 1990s, the George W. Bush administration, and eventually take listeners up to the present. They focus especially on way conservative, mostly Christian intellectuals, many of them connected to the religious journal First Things, brought Catholics and evangelicals together to fight against abortion rights, with figures like Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Robert P. George, and Hadley Arkes providing language and arguments in a more elite idiom—a project that deeply influenced Bush's presidency and helped cement the anti-abortion movement's place not just in the religious right but the broader conservative movement and the GOP.
Sources:
"Killing Abortionists: A Symposium," First Things, December 1994
"Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millenium," First Things, May 1994
"The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics," First Things, November 1996
Damon Linker, The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday, 2006)
Mary Ziegler, Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment (Yale University Press, 2021)
Joshua Wilson, The Street Politics of Abortion: Speech, Violence, and America's Culture Wars, (Stanford University Press, 2013)
Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Eerdmans, 1984)
Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Hadley Arkes, "The End of the Beginning of the End of Abortion," First Things, June 24, 2022
Matthew Sitman, "Reading Left to Right" (review of Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square), Commonweal, August 24, 2015
Tara Isabella Burton, "The Biblical Story the Christian Right Uses to Defend Trump," Vox, March 5, 2018
Comments
Nancy Takahashi
I love the podcast! I get that we’re learning about the ostensible reasons that powerful people act to curtail our rights. But can we keep in mind, please, that we’re discussing what are simply their public justifications? Controlling women’s reproduction means controlling women, which is in the interest of the ruling class. If we’re desperate: poor single moms with few skills, we’ll take any job. If the men in our communities are trained to subconsciously hate and fear our autonomy; to act to curtail our reproductive and other rights, we’re that much more desperate. These are the reasons that the ruling class restricts women’s rights. It has nothing to do with their caring about fetuses.
Ethan Stern
as someone who was in middleschool during the 2008 election and had started being political aware (at least in the sense of conservatives are bad) during the bush admin, I think there's a lot to be said about how online athiesm discourse which is kind of known for being alt right leaning in a hardline anti censorship way these days, really did and in some ways still does (amazing athiest has had a real turn around, anti trump, angry about roe, etc) tack liberal/left and was def a reaction to the feeling of Christian encroachment from an ascendant fox news and bush admin. Hitchens is obviously the kind of exception but he was a unique figure in many ways. Maybe the loss of conservatives in power is what broke so many of their brains and why they ended up hyper focusing on "SJW" culture
Joseph
I thought Sam's comment that people tend to forget about the theocratic tendencies of the Bush administration was interesting because if I think back to why a lot of people I know left the Christian church in the early 2000s or took hardcore antagonistic positions against religion in general, it was because of the evangelical right and its puppetry of Bush as president. I was in my mid to late teens around that time, and this was a time when I remember a lot of people my age becoming totally disgusted by what religious people were doing, and I always remember it coming back to the evangelicals. I would say that consciously or subconsciously, the evangelical fervor around Bush's presidency is what helped to shape the meteoric rise of secularism and alternative religiosity between the year 2000 and now.
Deborah Agre
I’m love you guys but you gotta fix some of your language. Please stop referring to people seeking abortion as “mothers.” Stop referring to people whose actions have caused (contributed to?) an unwanted pregnancy as having “paid for abortions,” as many such people do not even do that. Thanks.
Know Your Enemy
Wow! Ha. See, I'm not making any of this up (Matt)
Sebastian Lecourt
Re: the Yankee Doodle Tap Room -- I lived in Princeton from 2012 to 2014 because of a postdoc. On my first night in town I met a friend at the Tap, where the only other patron was George Will typing on his phone and sipping a martini. I thought: what have I gotten myself into?
Dan
This is a good way to do this. Take a conservative outcome and trace it back in different ways.
Ben Gialenios
Personally I find what Thomas wrote outrageously frustrating for more than one reason. Even if you were to take his bullshit for face value there a pretty big thing missing in his concurrence. He lists all these substantive due process rulings he thinks is a mistake except Loving cause that would effect him. I know the hypocrisy take down is useless, but this one is so ridiculous in its shamelessness. Rights for me not for thee.
Surna
I started drawing conclusions about the efficacy of street protests versus elite persuasion from the stuff about clinic blockades being shut down in the 90's and the pro-life movement winning after the supression of the activist wing the elites found distasteful. Then I remembered that if 80k votes swing in 2016 liberals get the balance of the court and their whole movement is a failure. The whole thing is very contingent.
History Chick
Great series guys! I'm still in shock about the Dobbs ruling even though I've been following the Court for some time and knew that it was eventually coming. And then, of course, there's all of the other really bad decisions that followed. The damage that their rulings will have for our future are incalculable. And that's only the S.C.! I'm wondering if you guys will be commenting on the other SC cases and/or the Jan. 6 hearings! Remember when summers were mellow and carefree? Politics was still there but it was on the back burner while we all took a break. Anyways, I hope you all have a nice 4th of July!
