Bob Bird: If you truly want peace, offer a truce to the unborn

In the mid-1980s, we took a sabbatical so that my wife and I could earn Master’s degrees in our respective professional disciplines, she in Music and myself in History. We had moved to Alaska in 1978, but both of us had family in Minnesota, had taught in secondary schools there, and earned our Bachelor degrees. It was always our intention to return to Alaska after a year of serious study. We selected Mankato State, south of the Twin Cities by about 80 miles, because both our families would be close by and our children were mere tots.

I soon discovered that Mankato, or what I called “Cornbelt State College”, did not reflect the surrounding cultural environment at all. It was infested with what is now accepted as “inevitable Marxism.”

Reagan was in his 49-state 2^nd term, the USSR’s propaganda machine and the cooperative US State Department had dictated détente, disarmament, and “peace,” which was obediently filtered down into the campuses of America and the mainstream media.

But the most disturbing element of Mankato State was the existence of a Women’s Studies department. It was filled with revisionist history, pseudo-scientific theories that are now part and parcel of the LGBTQ agenda, neo-pagan courses in fortune telling, self-proclaimed witches in tenured positions and — above all — abortion advocacy. 

The Women’s Studies department sponsored a “Rally for Women’s Lives”, using the university ballroom as a venue to defend Roe v. Wade in the face of Reagan’s prolife policies. This was done under the guise that legal abortion saved women from back-alley procedures. It ignored the statistics that legal abortion, while clinically safer, had become so widespread, that even more women were being killed or seriously injured because of Roe. 

Extrapolating the perhaps ten thousand annual illegal abortions prior to 1973 that led to women being seriously harmed or killed, to the annual 1,500,000, which had fewer percentages harmed, but more individual incidents, and you can make the case that legal abortion made women far more vulnerable. Bernard Nathanson, an atheistic Jew who founded the national effort to legalize abortion, admitted this in Aborting America, the book that began his vitally important conversion to the prolife cause, and eventually to Catholicism.

Thus, the true object of the feminist demand for legal abortion had little to do with being “pro-women”, and more to do with killing the unborn child.

I observed — and occasionally counter-demonstrated against all this while writing my Master’s Thesis, The 19th Century Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion. They didn’t like me.

In the spring, a “Rally for Peace” was held, denouncing nuclear warfare, calling for unilateral disarmament, scolded President “Ronald Ray-Gun” for the so-called Star Wars missile defense system, and support for all U.N. population resolutions.

A huge, inflatable globe was produced, the size of a classic Push Ball, and it was batted about joyously, in what looked like an Earth Worship event. It was a springtime frolic, with modern nymphs and satyrs from the Women’s Studies faculty, dancing around the campus gardens and fountain.

But we prolifers watched silently from the sidelines, and held a large sign reading: “If you want Peace, offer a Truce to the Unborn.”

It had the effect of a dead dog laying in the middle of a wine and cheese party. One male faculty member came up to me and said, “This is really not in the spirit of the thing.”

Indeed, it was not.

Underlying all of America’s violence is abortion. Most of us don’t want to look at these mutilated babies. It is perfectly understandable, but I would suggest that, unless and until our hearts are broken, we cannot begin to evangelize our culture.

I don’t like watching the Twin Towers collapse, but I have watched it, many times. One reminds themselves that many people are dying, people in their prime who awakened to their morning routine with coffee, toast, a commute and office emails.

I watched Charlie Kirk’s murder, the up-close version. Once was enough for me, but it is legitimate to ask, “Do you enjoy viewing the macabre?”

Of course not, but to watch an innocent man instantly snuffed out, in mid-sentence, is a sober reminder of several things, for all of us. Suppressing it will not change the truth:

1. Life is precious.
2. It is extraordinarily fragile.
3. None of us know when or how it will end.
4. And the words of Christ are true: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

The Church is built upon the blood of the martyrs. The word “martyr” means “witness”, but not necessarily death. Thus, Christians are not to seek death intentionally, but to nevertheless be prepared for it. Whether we die peacefully or violently, our lives must bear witness to Christ, and His truth. This was something Charlie Kirk had been doing.

The modus operandi of Divine Will calls for suffering and sacrifice. As Christendom has now been forfeited in our times, all of us are required to bear witness to the One who said, “All those who seek the Truth hear my voice.”

In war, an army has many layers and levels of action. Some are quite humble, but nevertheless are intricately woven into the strategic objective, and we have an omniscient Five Star General who makes the assignments for us. That is where most of us are asked to serve in this cosmic war now upon us. Others will have more visible roles. 

Charlie Kirk is an example of why Jesus was particularly sympathetic towards Samaritans. Jesus united Samaritans and Jews at Jacob’s Well. Charlie Kirk, following Christ’s example, and like C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and G. K. Chesterton, has united Catholics with Protestants in a new evangelization.

There are many true followers of Christ, but we are still separated. But God reads hearts, and John’s vision in the Bible’s final book will hopefully find us all wearing white garments, that were washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Bob Bird is former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.