Envy The Dead

There are some things in this world that are more terrifying than others. For instance, a firecracker exploding at one's feet pales in comparison to an atom bomb doing the same. A windstorm with fifty mile an hour winds is troubling, but a hurricane is far worse. One tornado is bad, but being surrounded by multiple tornadoes is panic inducing to the extreme.

The point is, there are often more important things to concern ourselves with than whatever has got our ire up. This is certainly not always reality, but it is quite often the case. I remember hearing a story about a man who chose to weather a hurricane at home rather than evacuate. At one point in the midst of the storm, there was a break in the clouds and the sun shone through. He was on the phone with his son at the time, and complained that the bright sunlight off of the floodwaters was hurting his eyes. He complained about the sun's light, but was surrounded by devastation. As unbelievable as this story sounds, there have been a lot of accounts where people were more concerned with petty inconvenience than with potential destruction.

I was thinking about this because of late, it seems as though we're seeing a storm of "worse." Yet for some reason, everyone is apparently ignoring it to focus on the "bad." What's even more strange is that the "bad" is often a side-effect of the "worse," yet one is still focused on to the exclusion of the other. Tears For Fears had it right: It is a mad world.

The Plight of the Living

Take for example the illegal immigration issue. It's certainly a hot topic these days, and for good reason. No reasonable and rational citizen will argue that the United States was not founded and created by immigrants. Most will also agree that the conditions from which many of these immigrants are fleeing are deplorable. I think one might also be hard pressed to find a reasonable and rational person disagreeing with the sad state of these people when they arrive at the border. However, focusing solely on the people, the conditions they fled and their state upon arrival ignores a fundamental fact: The United States has a process by which all of these people can enter into the country without fear of Immigration Enforcement.

AOC and other deluded members of Congress seem to believe that the definition of the phrase "fundamental fact" is "kook thought." In reality; something which they seem to be wholly out of touch with; it is a foundational truth. Immigration has been provided for by law in this nation since 1791. While opinion on immigration has fluctuated significantly between 1800 and today, there has always been a path to citizenship for any who wish it. To react to news of immigrant caravans as though there is no structure in place is to live in a world of fantasy. Moreover, it does seem as though many legislators have some form of dementia when they begin speaking about this subject.

The Plight of the Unborn

Another example of ignoring the greater threat for the sake of the minor annoyance is the subject of abortion. Since Roe v Wade, there have been over sixty-one million abortions in the United States. There have been over one and a half billion world wide since 1980, and over eight million performed by Planned Parenthood since 1970. At the time of this writing, there have been over one hundred and seventy-seven thousand abortions this year. A little over seventeen hundred were stated to be due to rape or incest. There are no solid figures for how many abortions are done for the sake of the mother's life, but most hover around the one percent mark since 1973.

In the United States, it was initially taught to society that a fetus was nothing more than a blob of tissue. The rhetoric was changed over time to suggest that a fetus was then a parasitic organism, and now they teach that a fetus is... Well, a fetus. An undeveloped baby. Yet in New York, legislators passed a bill later signed into law by Governor Cuomo that allows abortions to be performed by anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason. Many states are now trying to do the same. The inconvenience is that actions (namely sex) have consequences. The greater threat is that the United States, first by ruling of the Supreme Court and now by legislation, has made murder legal.

"Murder" is defined as the termination of life, and "life" is loosely defined as the ability to function independent of aid. A baby is considered to be a live person in the United States when they can live apart from their mother. Over ninety percent can do this at twenty-six weeks, and seventy percent can do this at twenty-four weeks. Thirty-five percent of babies born at twenty-three weeks can now survive, and this percentage is growing every day with the advancement of medical science. Thus, the termination of a viable fetus is by definition murder. It is not considered to be such by law though, because inconvenience triumphs over reality.

The Plight of Society

We live in a mad world. We decry the genocide of third-world dictators, yet approve of the deaths of sixty-one million innocents, even though both are carried out in the name of convenience. We shed tears over the plight of people wanting to move freely into our nation without being inconvenienced by background checks and other safeguards, but we grow angry when acts of terrorism by foreign nationals inflict death and destruction upon us. We want to prevent our feelings from getting hurt, but have no problem in oppressing entire people groups to accomplish this task.

In short, our society in general wants to have life both ways. We want to have our cake and eat it as well. We want to live life free from consequence; we want to be free from the laws of nature by enacting laws of men. There is only one group of the world's population that has found the way to be free of consequence, and that group is growing by the minute. They are the dead, and no more apt a phrase can be applied to the world today than the words penned by the author of Ecclesiastes: