Bernie Tiede and the Funniest Miscarriage of Justice in Texas History

Like the rest of our state’s urbane filmgoers, I hooted and howled when my wife and I went to Uptown’s Magnolia Theater and saw Richard Linklater’s Bernie.  The documentary-style black comedy was a limited release but became wildly popular across Texas on disc as it told a bizarre, under-the-radar true story from the 90s about Panola County mortician Bernie Tiede.  Mr. Tiede was was sentenced in 1998 of murdering his wealthy companion, 81-year-old widow Marjorie Nugent and hiding her body in a chest freezer.

I hooted and howled in spite of the fact that I was close friends with the victim’s family.

And I hooted and howled even though I found out the Governor’s Film Office had subsidized Linklater’s struggling project, even though Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey had been attached to it.  Based on existing provisions, the Film Office would have ended up giving the project an estimated $300,000 in taxpayer cash, not to mention additional sales tax exemptions provided by the Legislature.

Already filled with an uneasy shame over these facts, and because I had found myself laughing so hard at Linklater’s exploitation of my East Texas kinfolk (many of my ancestors and relatives are buried in Panola County; my mother was born in nearby Nacogdoches), I finally became sick when I heard last May that Mr. Tiede was going to get his sentencing reviewed and that he would be released from state prison where he was serving life.

The movie wasn’t funny any more.  I felt like a sucker, once again, to Hollywood razzle dazzle and the unholy alliance of West Coast-Austin propaganda.  Simultaneously, I began to privately agree with the vitriol of some in our Primary season this past spring that Texas was paying for things “we don’t want and don’t need.”  I thought the film office might be one of these things.

The justification for Mr. Tiede’s release and review goes to a Texas statute that allows for a commuted sentence if things like childhood abuse are not initially reported in the defense, which it was not in the Tiede trial (as were other key facts about Mrs. Nugent’s victimization).  Statute or not, the whole post-conviction appeal reeks of the same old tired, liberal, humanistic bromides that say “no one is really bad, they just had bad things happen to them as a child” and, “Aw shucks, Bernie wouldn’t have been driven to his crime of passion if he hadn’t been stuck in a such a sexually repressive situation.”

What Linklater’s movie completely glossed over was the knowledge in the community of Carthage that Mr. Tiede had active male relationships on the down-low and that he was reportedly giving them gifts out of Nugent’s fortune.  In no way was he this misunderstood, good-hearted, small town “closet homosexual” that McConaughey’s DA, Danny Buck Davidson, describes.

Another key fact about the murder itself that is omitted in the film entirely was that Mrs. Nugent was shot – in the back – by Mr. Tiede as they were going to the bank to discuss financial discrepancies – discrepancies caused by Mr. Tiede!!!  Motive, anyone? (According to DPS records, Mr. Tiede called the bank to cancel the appointment after the time of death).  Mr. Tiede and Mrs. Nugent WERE NOT innocently going to the Mexican food restaurant where Bernie would have to suffer through Mrs. Nugent’s over-chewing of her frijoles.

Earlier this week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (which is Texas’ version of the Supreme Court for criminal cases) has ruled Mr. Tiede could have a new hearing about his sentencing.  The real Panola County DA, Mr. Davidson, will then be able to decide if Mr. Teide must leave his movie-star release accommodations in Austin and return to prison, or if he can spend the rest of his life as the grand marshal of any number of gay pride parades.

Close observers of the case believe Mr. Davidson, relishing his newfound fame portrayed by none other than McConaughey, will likely sentence Mr. Tiede to time served.  Mr. Davidson just got reelected earlier this month, unopposed as a Republican.  If ever any officeholder needed a TEA Party challenger, Mr. Davidson might be one if he chooses to let the sensibilities of Tinseltown betray his duty to the law and the Nugent family.

But I think the real culprits in this case are those of us who took delight in the film and either failed to consider or flat-out ignored the human beings involved.  Even the filmmakers try to put a fig leaf on this sentiment during the opening scene of the film where Jack Black, demonstrating the proper way to seal a corpse’s lips from an accidental post-death smile, remarks, “We wouldn’t want to turn someone’s tragedy into comedy.”

But why would the filmmakers, enslaved to a liberal agenda, really want to cover their tracks at all? Could it because they were going to get taxpayer dollars for their project?

Regardless, the whole movie and its aftermath might represent the funniest miscarriage of justice in Texas history.  Funny because the joke is on all of us who bought a ticket or rented the Blu-ray.

The America First Virus

I am hereby making my break with Ann Coulter official.  I always only just tolerated her, because I’ve always thought of her as one of those conservatives who was deeply insecure about herself and just needed to be loud.  But as the result of her latest article attacking Dr. Kent Brantly for putting himself in harm’s way in Liberia, I feel convicted that I should no longer expose myself to her sanctimonious fits of rage in the name of conservatism.

But don’t misunderstand my break with Ms. Coulter as anything personal against her.  I also do not consider her a sister in Christ, so I don’t feel Jesus’ guidance on how to approach an offending member of the body applies here (the article I’m referencing uses language that makes it clear she is outside the community ofbelievers).  YES, I am judging.  The break is really a need for me, as a Christian whose journey has very much been one of leaving behind the heavy yoke of legalism and embracing a spirit of sacrificial compassion, to don the protective bio-suit from a more rampant disease infecting the church in the United States.

This disease – like all viruses – has always persisted on the countertops of our culture no matter how much disinfectant we may have at times tried to apply to it.  It is the bug of nativist, racist, and miserly ‘America First’ sentiment.  This concept of “taking care of Americans first,” or, as Ms. Coulter prioritized, “converting one Hollywood producer,” is 100% contradictory to the teachings of Scripture.

Ms. Coulter calls Dr. Brantly “idiotic” for going to Liberia and belittles him for not considering the needs first of the sick in Zavala County, Texas.  She tries to ridicule his work overseas and that of countless other American missions as vain “heroism.”  This is the EXACT SAME bitter, selfish attitude that has infested so much of the conservative movement today.  It is the same zombie-like animation that drives so-called Christians onto overpasses in protest of accommodating these Central American kids, gang members or not.

Christianity is call to complete and utter sacrifice on behalf of the destitute – the sinner in his misery.  We as Americans have a tendency to want to modify this call.  We believe we can address “root problems of poverty.”  We believe we can correct bad behavior with rules or more border patrol guards.  We believe we can motivate someone to change by demonstrating perceived rewards.

Ms. Coulter specifically calls foolish the idea that a $2 million plane flight home paid by a mission organization far exceeds any value Dr. Brantly may have given on its behalf.  This is hardcore “economic Christianity,” where service on behalf of Jesus is weighted.  It is a disgusting perversion of the cross.

In his powerful book, The Insanity of God, missionary Nik Ripken (a pseudonym he uses to protect Christians he knows in hostile nations) asks hard, gut-wrenching questions about how God works in countries that truly seem cut off from his grace.  Mr. Ripken saw this first hand as a relief director in Somalia during the mid-Nineties, experiencing not only the abject horror of life in that country after the world’s military and NGOs had abandoned it, but also the tragic death of his son.

After years of God’s work to rebuild his faith after leaving Somalia, Mr. Ripken was able to recall how he discovered the presence of Christ in a place given over to Satan and a deranged humanity.  He was walking through Mogadishu one day and heard intensely beautiful singing.  He zeroed in on the music and found a young woman leading a group of orphans in a crumbling building.  The young woman had lost her own children to starvation, but persisted in her love for Jesus by ministering to some lost children. 

A disease can't kill you if you’re already sacrificing yourself!

In The Beginning

The 'more senior' members of the Bahm Family recently watched Darren Aronofsky's Noah on Blu-Ray.  I kept hearing mixed reviews and reactions to the movie, so I waited until its disc release when I could burn my rental store credits to see it for $1.25.  Plus, I wanted to see it in a more open environment with my 'senior' children so that the 'senior' adults could dialogue with them a little better about it.

I was actually surprised at the pace and craftsmanship of the film.  I was prepared for a sleep-rendering grind, something a'la the old Hollywood sand-and-sandal flops, but Aronofsky is a deft filmmaker.  Crowe was very good, although I was a little worried when he started to sing a lullaby per my previous experience with him crooning during Les Miz.  I was most concerned about the notorious "rock people" so many had ridiculed, especially having interpreted the legend of the Nephilim my own way in The Warrant.  But Aronofsky's "Watchers" were ok to his story if clunky.  I had already dismissed any literal adherence to the biblical account prior to the film (Noah and his family built the ark by themselves over a 120 year period, not ten with the help of the Watchers), so all the other plot devices didn't bother me.  Nor was I bugged by any of the heavy environmentalism of the script and Crowe's Noah's redemption from its radical conclusion; I can see that type of political dogma coming like a huge tidal wave.

But for two days now, something else has been vexing me about the film, and I just now put my finger on it.  In search of what might be troubling me, I did some web-surfing with my Google Ark last night.  I already knew of Aronofsky's cryptic comment prior to the film's initial release that Noah was the "least Biblical film ever made."  I was familiar with the Director's atheism.  I was aware of the face-off between Hollywood and the evangelical community over marketing:  the distributors desperately wanted the Passion of the Christ crowd segment to show up; evangelicals didn't want to help sell tickets by the inevitable and compulsory trashing of an unliteral interpretation, as happened with The Last Temptation of the Christ.  I was tuned in to the loud debate and criticism of the film by young earth creationists.  On the Internet, I found post-release condemnations that Noah was infused with Gnosticism, as well as wild, over-the-top claims that the movie was Illuminati-driven spirituality.  But, none of these controversies were really what were bothering me.

I found the source of what had been bothering me when I looked up Clint Mansell's soundtrack on Spotify.  The first score track is entitled, "In the Beginning There Was Nothing."  This is the line Russell Crowe uses to begin telling the story of creation to his family inside the ark at sea.

Well, that's not what the Bible says.  It says, "In the Beginning God created..." in Genesis and "In the Beginning was the Word" in John's gospel.  There has never been nothing, in other words.  And this is what bothers me the most about any work of art that purports a past point of nothingness:  it is contradictory and hypocritical.  It is pathetically dishonest, not to mention arrogant, for someone like this movie's creator to state that in fact, some time in the past, something was formed out of nothing.  Darren Aronofsky didn't make his movie out of nothing!

Anyway, felt I needed to get this out.  Now I can resume my blog again after my lengthy hiatus.  I was busy trying to win an election, but fell short.  Don't worry about me though; it was nothing.

The Winter Play

Wenceslas Square, Prauge, during the 1968 anti-Soviet uprising

First blog of 2014!

For the past several nights, my subconscious has been bubbling up old images and feelings of all the theater work I did in college.  It finally hit me early this morning after another brainwave performance why this was.

Winter primary season is always my busiest time.  One friend joked to me the other day, "Don't you only work two months every two years?"  It is a very stressful, intense but productive time of packed days and late nights followed by heavy but short sleep.  Joe Klein in Primary Colors describes these types of elections through one of the characters as there being "sleep, but no rest."

The workload and rhythms are strikingly similar to putting on a play.  I talk about this in an interview I recently gave to a career blog.  The muscle memory of my theater days has likely frothed back up due to a unique confluence of thoughts, themes, workload and...cold weather!  In particular, the deja'vu of a play I ran the light board for during the winter of 1991 comes to mind, Larry Shue's Wenceslas Square.

Briefly, Wenceslas Square is a simple arc of scenes about a theater professor from Indiana who returns to Prague a few years after the 1968 uprising against the Soviet Union in the hopes of finishing a book about the city's vibrant, counter-establishment drama community that subtly led the protests against Moscow previously.  Sadly, the professor goes about visiting his old, fellow dramatists only to discover they've either been forced into semi-exile or have become a part of the very propaganda-dishing establishment they tried to subvert.  The story is a serene yet tragic examination not necessarily of just tyranny or revolution but of what fear does to people, and whether or not those with the strongest convictions really have the courage to change and sacrifice.  The play ends with the professor and his student assistant sitting in the famous Square of Prague contemplating whether or not he still has something to write.

What makes the play great is its double-theme about dealing with government authority through story-telling. The actual Wenceslas Square in Prague is named for the early Medieval and canonized king named Wenceslas I, who is very much a Santa Claus-like figure.  His legend is that he came down from his position and braved the harsh winter to help the poor, and that when his protege faltered in the weather, Wenceslas instructed him to follow by stepping exactly where he stepped in the snow.  It's the old footsteps aphorism about being carried by God.

But whereas the fabled king was brave and undaunted in his mission, the professor in the play isn't so sure of himself, especially after he witnesses renewed communist oppression and the weakness of his once-admired friends.  Most troubling to the professor was when he got accosted in a Prague alley by one of the old dramatists who has lost his mind.  What seemed to shake the professor deepest was how the Madman's ideals drove him into insanity once the Soviets had denied him his outlet.  It was this core fear that the professor had to confront.

It's also the subconscious fear that all of us who work in politics for the greater good and in defense of our freedom must deal with.  Are we afraid of truly losing our liberty -- or of just losing our outlet?  In my opinion, most of what animates our country's political discourse today - across the spectrum - is the latter.  Many of us have decided that being heard is more important than what we say.  I am certainly guilty of this.  True liberty lies in the ability to recognize that freedom is a gift from God, empowered by God, and does not need anything external to thrive in a person's soul.  True, speaking out is a natural fruit of this inner freedom, but not if the speaking out is driven by the same fear of losing the ability to do so.  This is the freedom that I want to defend.

But the minute I drift into the dark side of defending form over content, I find myself in a nightmare of anxiety.  Worse, if I am successful in defending that form over freedom by means of fear, I find myself in, to quote another playwright, "the winter of my discontent."  And it didn't go well for that guy.

A Terrifying Reality

As far as it being quality television (an oxymoron, I know), Duck Dynasty is an amalgam of everything wrong with reality-format programming.  This is precisely why Phil Robertson should be regarded as one crying in the wilderness.

Our culture is receiving its end-stage call to repentance.

The very first reality-based television show ever - MTV's The Real World which first aired more than 20 years ago - didn't build a mainstream audience mainly because the real world wasn't interested in a bunch of whiny young adults.  But the real reason MTV's show didn't have a broad appeal was because it, initially, was too raw; in its early years The Real World was much more documentary-style and captured interpersonal drama simply as it happened.

Enter CBS' Survivor in 2000.  The producers of this reality-style game show recognized that in order to be successful using such a format, they nevertheless had to insert a "script" of some kind.  The average viewer may have thought she was witnessing the real reactions of spoiled Americans trying to make it on a deserted isle, but really they were watching spoiled Americans working their way through a maze built by Hollywood programmers.  There is absolutely nothing true about how survivors or real housewives go about their lives in front of the camera; every second of screen time that makes the final cut fits a carefully controlled narrative conceived by the production team.  Dramatic hook has to be created and delivered.

The narrative of Duck Dynasty is no different, and on this point it is actually a somewhat stale, contrived, warm-up-the-leftovers script where the Robertsons are actually in on the showmanship.  The Robertsons are marketers, fundamentally, long before the A&E Network knocked on their trailer door; their sales credentials are as long as their hair.  Willie and his family - especially Si! - are fully self-conscious of the fact that they are putting on a show.  They relish in playing to type.  And they are relishing all the way to the bank.  The truth about the show is that the producers haven't even had to work that hard at sketching out scenarios for the Robertsons to play into, as they are very much actors ready to sell duck calls.

Which is why Phil, the patriarch and recent scorn of the gay community, should be regarded as a 21st Century John the Baptist, anatomical comments and all.  Who was John the Baptist?  He had long hair and wore heavy, outdoor clothing (RealTree).  He was the son of ancient Jewish society's elite (a successful American small businessman).  He was loud and outspoken.  The clean-cut men of Jerusalem came out to the Jordan to see the spectacle more than hear John's rough-hewn call to repentance.  John the Baptist was not a wild, homeless outsider holding a hand-painted sign on the street corner; he was a hyperbole of the culture who dominated the ratings (if you are still bothered by Phil's crude references to female versus male anatomy; John the Baptist was no shrinking violet when it came to calling sexual immorality what it was).

John the Baptist got attention using the most basic, bottomed-out, almost stale program the culture offered - religion.  He paved the way for Christ by making noise and by offering a sharp contrast between religion and faith.  God is using the market-exploited and exploiting Robertsons to accomplish his judgment.  John the Baptist drew people in then knocked them down with his condemnation of sin.  His hearers either walked back to Jerusalem and its compromise with the Romans in the name of power, or they stayed and listened further.

Christ Jesus followed John and enacted judgment and grace simultaneously, as only God can.  Part of the way the Lord did this was by meeting us, the couch potatoes, where we were.  His baptism was an expression of obedience to the Father's will, but it was also a demonstration of his compassion to us very similar to his actual birth -- he was coming down to our level.

The terror of God's call to repentance on us, as the controversy over Phil Robertson shows, is that it is done in absolute passive-aggressive comfort.  Phil's boom-lowering condemnation of sin based loosely on 1 Corinthians 6:10 was given initially to a magazine no one reads anymore - EXCEPT homosexual men!  Then, in perfect modern media fashion, he was dismissed from the show, which suddenly made his comments NEWS!  As they say in Hollywood, there's no such thing as bad publicity.  Only a divine purpose could have orchestrated these events; other than the passion of his convictions, I do not believe Phil Robertson, his son or his agent were calculating enough to know who he was talking to, marketing acumen aside.

And so here we are, an entire society - but especially the conservative segment that largely comprises Duck Dynasty's viewership - being forced to broach the concept of sin.  How odd.  How uncomfortable.

How terrifying.  And a silly man wearing camo has done this. 

A Brief, Pollyanna History of Texas Republicans

National headlines aside, the practical business of campaign season is underway in Texas.  So-called political insiders (of which I am one) are preparing campaigns in anticipation of the primaries next March.  This used to be a very rote process by which one could set his watch.  However, thirty days before candidate filing even begins, debate – and, regrettably, acrimony – has begun between the sub-factions within the Republican Party across the country.  The noise percolates even in the absence of candidates in some parts of the state.  One Facebook post I recently saw made a broad, infantile call for ANYONE to take on “establishment” officials, on the grounds that doing so will “make them listen.”  Whatever.

I will admit that I struggle with resentment over this acrimony.  I used to be a student of it – an objective observer.  But increasingly, I feel as though I and many others are the object of envy.  I have attempted to call these people out, and I have been met not with any correction of the facts as I presented them, but with a blanket attack that I was a liar.  I have been active in Republican politics since I was 16 (that’s 25 years to those of you who don’t know I celebrated the 23^rd anniversary of my 18^th birthday last May).  I have actually had the opportunity to directly shape policy and “make a difference” at the highest levels of federal and state government.  And yet, my contributions are a pittance compared to the time, treasure and life others have put in for many years.  Worse, many of the people attacking us have been working on behalf of conservative principles for a sum total of 30 months.

I am proud to be a part of the establishment.  I am prouder still that my establishmentness is rooted in a correct, holy understanding that our constitutions set forth an incremental approach to change.  I am as proud as the Constitution’s limits on my passion as I am my passion itself.  Still, I want to better understand this hostility toward the establishment.  My inner history nerd cries out to examine its sources, causes.  I guess I feel that if I can better understand the fracture, I can be an agent of healing it.  Call me Pollyanna, but that’s what goes on in the ol’ squirrel cage between my ears.

I have been spending the past several weeks wading through David Halberstam’s 1994 tome, The Fifties.  I saw another recent social media post stating that the national GOP has been in a civil war for the past fifty years.  Really, it’s been sixty years, and Halberstam goes in depth in explaining the two basic camp’s origins:  northeastern interventionist-internationalist vs. Midwestern libertarian/isolationist.  This tension in the marriage only really appeared in the early 20^th century with the arrival of Teddy Roosevelt – the northeastern variety is probably the older spouse, dating back to the abolitionist, pro-government origins of the GOP in the 1850s.

All of this makes for fascinating but lengthy, somewhat dry storytelling (unless you’re a nerd, of course).  What I’m interested in is how this split appears here in Texas.  Besides that of my personal, ethnic Texanism, this importance also comes from the academic theory that however the Texas GOP evolves, so goes the rest of the country.  Texas is in many ways a microcosm of the U.S. 125 years ago during the GOP’s greatest period of hegemony.  We are a place where resources are abundant, where an immigrant workforce does the menial labor while a burgeoning middle class devotes its time to rapid technological advancement, and where the prevailing view is that government should work hard at getting out of the way.

But what makes the Texas GOP unique early in the 21^st Century is just how the aforementioned spouses came to lead it.  The traditional, pro-government, egalitarian, pro-big business Republicanism of the northeast was a transplant.  This is the party of George H.W. Bush who heard about the crude oil plays of the Permian Basin after World War II and struck out with elite, New England financial backing.  The fortune he made enabled him to set up shop in Houston and literally build the party from scratch.  With the exception of maybe one R in North Dallas or out in the Panhandle ranch country, THERE WERE NO REPUBLICANS in the state anywhere prior to about 1965.  It was a dirty word.  To be Republican meant you were a sherry-sipping Episcopalian banker out to screw the hardscrabble, teetotaling Baptist Democrat cotton farmer.

At the same time, however, the excesses of Lyndon Johnson’s back-slapping, double-dealing socialism fomented a rift within his party between those same frugally-minded cotton farmers and an Austin elite who truly practiced what they preached when it came to thinking everyone should get a check from the Treasury.  The Great Society and Vietnam became Texans’ understanding of interventionism and internationalism.  The chief Texan critic of LBJ was historian J. Evetts Haley.  His A Texan Looks at Lyndon:  A Study in Illegitmate Power, gave voice and cohesion to those Baptists who knew something was wrong with the President but felt restrained by the group think to express it.  A Texan Looks at Lyndon became a kind of cherished, underground literature among respectable folks, and although Haley attempted campaigns as a Democrat, his writings matched verbatim in places with the rhetoric of Goldwater, Reagan, Buckley and Phyllis Schlafly.  The conservative Republican movement in Texas was born.

In time, George W. Bush, a Texan who nevertheless held a Connecticut birth certificate, rose to transform the state into a Republican monolith in one fell swoop.  But while he held deep convictions about social issues at odds with much of his northeastern Republican pedigree, W nevertheless advocated interventionism, ranging from ‘compassionate conservatism’ to Iraq.  Had he been successful in these policies, the roughshod conservative wing might not be as noisy as it is today.  But Bush struggled, in spite of his convictions.  And today, what Texas Republicans are left with are lost, confused movement-conservatives firing in all directions and an establishment that is only seeing pitchforks.

How can the tension be resolved?  I think basic principles of respect and honest disagreement can aid in the healing process.  Unfortunately, the frustration and fear emanating from the national situation under Obama has infected the two spouses in the Texas GOP.  The exact same tactics used to attack the President’s policies are being turned on any Republican, usually an incumbent, “establishment” officeholder, who is suspect.  Complex policies designed for complex situations are unwilling to be understood and are lied about.  This is the hallmark of liberals, as we saw last summer with HB2.  (Ironically, that bill's complexity was somehow embraced by conservatives, but that's another subject).

But I think the greater way to overcome the current rift is to first realize that the pie of power and influence isn’t as small as many act like it is.  Everyone has a voice across a huge state Republican apparatus.  Repeatedly, I come across grassroots-types who once felt “unheard," and they admit in so many words that is because they were lazy.  They didn’t go to townhalls, club meetings or rallies and interact with their elected officials.  Instead, they sat at home for years and only listened to the evening news.  On the day they quit complaining and started dialoguing, they saw they could have it both ways:  principles and peace.

In the information age, these same malcontents are absolutely terrified of reading or considering a source that might present reality.  I know of community and party leaders who will not follow the official communications of their representatives on Twitter, but who instead take the emailed musings of some privately-funded activist as gospel.  Many of these people are afraid of consensus.  They don’t want to be confused with the facts, and they feel that to “come up with the best we can” is the equivalent of walking outside in their underwear.  J. Evetts Haley was one of the first to suggest LBJ had a vested interest in the assassination of JFK; today, we prefer the dark narrative of Oliver Stone to simple, boring reports from Speaker Boehner’s office about what’s gettable from the White House.

The good news is that we as Republicans have an equally strong history of allowing our faith to guide us, dating all the way back to abolishing slavery.  Embedded in this same faith is the ability to find humility.  To paraphrase Pollyanna:  “We’re not supposed to be glad we’re very rich, are we?"

The Right to Heal

Ours is in no way a society of oppression.  Our rights here are abundant and generously protected.  The U.S. is so far removed from places like Sudan that we might as well be another planet.  Neither are we anything at all like India, Saudi Arabia or Nigeria where millions scrape by in abject poverty while the elite give new meaning to the term “the 1%” and many must grimly face persecution of various sorts on a daily basis.  Even compared to the more “liberal” countries where economic distress is ebbing, such as China, Indonesia or places in Latin America, our nation just doesn’t possess the man vs. man hardship that plagues the majority of the population.  Regurgitate whatever you want from your pot-smoking, conscientious professor, we just don’t have these problems in any real sense.

There is no amount of inner city chaos you can show me in America that comes close to meeting any standard of true oppression; it’s even rare among criminals.  There is no amount of turmoil among poor whites that rises to this level.  Among Mexican immigrants in the U.S., both legal and not, anything resembling tyrannical depravation is temporal at worst.

All Americans have rich people problems.

At the top of the list of our rich people problems is the unwanted pregnancy (NOTE: there may be an “unplanned” pregnancy, but in the instant it’s unplanned it becomes either wanted or not).  The unwanted pregnancy is a greater shackle on the American mindset than addiction, ignorance, lack of resources, family discord – everything.  Why?  Because the unwanted pregnancy, for either father or mother, represents a human being’s most uncontrollable experience.

The unwanted pregnancy offends a rich society’s ability to chart its own destiny.  But more than this, the unwanted pregnancy is a divine affront to the human ego.  Even Carl Sagan, the renowned atheistic scientist, admitted that sexual reproduction is counter-intuitive to a basic model of evolution, as one or both parents become virtually defenseless against the cold, hard world at some point in the process.

I know a young man who experienced this shaking fear once.  Although an abortion was fairly distant from the mind of this young man and the mother, the affront hurtled the father’s ego into the stratosphere.  As his ego was amputated from his sense of self, shame enshrouded him.  He became a fully justifiable target of anger.  Pain was in his handshake, in his presence; it ground up the hearts of those who loved him the most into hamburger.  Alcohol became the only salve to his mangled dignity, which of course only made things worse, both in the near and long term.

There is an ego in our society – in each of us - that wants to protect itself with the logic of:  it is wrong to bring an unwanted child into the cold, hard world.  By this logic, the perceived oppression around the earth I discussed earlier becomes an excuse for the wealthy.  There is no reason to terminate an unwanted pregnancy in the U.S. – NONE!  For the same reason that we are a grand experiment in listening to our better angels, America possesses the resources for every life to live and excel.

Proponents of abortion try to point out that where there is limited access, there is greater poverty and backwardness, that wealthy societies honor and protect a woman’s right to abort.  Well, the world’s most powerful economic engine, China, also performs the most “legal, safe” abortions (even state-paid and mandated).  In the past 40 years, more than 335 million Chinese babies have been killed.  By contrast, 50 million American children have been killed during the same time period.  Put another way, if none of these abortions would have occurred, China’s population would be 25% larger, while the U.S. would be 16% bigger.

But the truth is that the mark of a wealthy, mature society is that it protects life.  The best case in point is how even the most secular nations of Europe, like France and those of Scandinavia, all ban second and third trimester abortions.

But what about the health of the mother?  Irrelevant and inconsequential.  Pro-abortion advocates are eager to point to a dubious statistic based on a flawed, 75-year-old study which says 5,000 women died of unsafe abortions in America prior to Roe v. Wade.  Do the math.  Even if true (which it isn’t), that’s 200,000 women over 40 years.  Even from a utilitarian standpoint, this is no comparison to what has been done to children in this country.

Putting a mother’s life over a child in this case is completely beside the point.  Life must be protected using the maximum extent of the law.  Is a troubled woman a murderer for the abortion her child?  I would submit that she and the parties involved are guilty of a lesser category of manslaughter, because the circumstances of an unwanted pregnancy are complicated and often murky.  The mother is NEVER the only party involved, obviously.  It is unjust to single her out, even if she is or becomes pathological about obtaining abortions (the statistics on women who get multiple abortions after the first one will take your breath away).

Yet there is a deeper reason why life must be protected.  The power to reproduce is the power to heal.  A family, even in its loosest, most basic definition – a male and female who produce an infant – is 100% influenced by the father – and a heterosexual one at that.  In the past 150 years or so, our society has over-emphasized the mother.  But the presence or absence of the father completely determines the outcome of a family unit and the heart of a human being at all stages of life (the best that scholarly literature can say on the subject of donor inseminated children or the children of same-sex families is that the jury is still out).

The most lost, confused, afraid father has little chance of finding healing and redemption if his child is killed.  The term, right to life, so often used in public policy debate is synonymous with the right to heal.  Recapturing the father is the antidote to all of society’s ills, whether they be real or just rich people problems.  When abortion advocates complain about patriarchy and demand their “rights,” what they are really crying out about is the pain they’ve experienced from bad, weak or misguided men.  Good men can be agents of healing to this hostile spirit.

The young man I mentioned earlier became a father of a son who will be entering high school in the fall.  He is also the father of another son, a daughter, and two stepchildren.  There have been many mistakes, but there have been far greater moments of victory.  Not long ago, the oldest son said something very simple and profound to his father as he walked into church to help lead the youth group music.  "I love you," said the 14-year-old.

For those of us involved in the public square, a fight comes along every now and then that reminds us of why we got involved in the first place.  In Texas, we are poised to pass one of the toughest anti-abortion, pro-women’s health laws in the United States.  HB2 is an elegant blend of law and grace, and it fits within the current Supreme Court interpretations of the aforementioned women’s rights.  True, by next week abortion proponents will be rushing into a friendly federal courthouse for an injunction, which they will probably get.  But with our system, this moment is one for which many of us will be held accountable one day in much different court.  And outside the sphere of lawmaking, all of us will be held accountable for how we defend each other.

Please don’t infringe on my right to heal.