Current Events in Year Zero

"I think it's different because it's fundamentally a sort of liberal Civil War, in which both parties, that is to say, pro-choice activists and pro-life activists, really think of themselves in an actually remarkably similar way. Both sides think of themselves as human rights Crusaders, who are charged with expanding the frontiers of human freedom, human equality. And so they really think of themselves in some senses, children of the declaration, in that grand liberal heritage and tradition that extends back to abolitionists, that extends back to civil rights activists."

"I think there's something sort of utopian about the pro-life point of view, as well. Right. I mean, I think it asks too much of us in some ways. And that it, in a weird kind of way, it demands a kind of rationalism, that I think is too heavy of a lift. It demands that we, for purely philosophical reasons, really, believe that the tadpole has the same moral status as the, you know, the neonate. And even for folks who can get there philosophically, it's a hard stretch to get there sentimentally, and so we tend to, so I think it's, it's a crusade that I think total victory for them is, in some ways, contrary to our own nature."

"And we know this, lots of pro-choice thinkers think it was bad law. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her way, thought it was bad law. She described the decision as breathtaking. And I think I'm really sympathetic to all of that. I mean, that was a decision that created this, you know, sweeping right to abortion really through all nine months of pregnancy. And, and it really did, I mean, hate to use this word because it gets used incorrectly. But I do think it did sort of disenfranchise a lot of Americans - disenfranchise in the sense that suddenly, you know, in the morning of January 22, 1973, you had lots of Americans who woke up and discovered that they couldn't really vote on this issue anymore."

— Jon A. Shields, Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College

Today’s podcast interrupts the retrospective gaze at the online culture war of the ROAD TO YEAR ZERO series and the pedagogical approach of the SYLLABUS and soon to be launched REMEDIAL READING series to catch up with current events, as we periodically will when current events both become pressing and can benefit from a longer run perspective

Today we’ll be talking with Jon A. Shields about his NYT op-ed on the national compromise on abortion perceptible in the polling data, and about the broader future of the Christian Right at the moment of its triumph.

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