Category: Politics and Morals

These articles cover some moral questions in the political realm. They address issues such as marriage and the right to life.

Letter To Doris Gordon

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Letter To Doris Gordon

W. H. Marshner

May 3, 1990

Dear Miss Gordon:

I have reviewed the material published by Libertarians for Life, including your brochure entitled, “A Wrong. Not a Right: An Atheist Libertarian Looks at Abortion,” and the one entitled “Abortion and the Question of the Person,” by John Walker. In light of these, I have reviewed the correspondence between you and William F. Buckley, Jr.

Before detailing points of contention, let me concur in Mr. Buckley’s overall commendation of the LFL material. It is lucid and deserves to be persuasive. I particularly think that your use of premises drawn from the obligation of parents toward their dependent children, combined with the fact that the existence of such children is a consequence for which the parents are responsible, represents a fresh and important line of justification for the pro-life position. Perhaps you will allow me to illustrate.
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The Counterfeits Of Transcendence

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The Counterfeits of Transcendence

W. H. Marshner

Cultural Conservative Policy Insights
721 Second Street N.E., Washington, D.C 20002
(202) 546-3004
Institute for Cultural Conservatism Policy Insight Number Three
May 12, 1988

Cultural Conservative Policy Insights is published by the Institute for Cultural Conservatism, a division of The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, Inc, a non-profit tax-exempt educational organization, nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the view of the Institute for Cultural Conservatism or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.

In a previous policy insight, entitled “Cultural Conservatism and Transcendent Norms,” it was argued that a high understanding of right and wrong is implicit in the stance of cultural conservatives.

The present essay takes the argument a step further. It deals with the problems of moral relativism, because the relativist position is often based on ideas about culture. Challenging those ideas will expose the dangers which emerge when transcendence is misallocated to sheer “human consciousness,” or to the alleged future of our consciousness, and when transcendent right and wrong are thereby mismanaged. In the hands of cultural radicals, the mismanagement is common and multifarious.

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Cultural Conservatism And Transcendent Norms

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Cultural Conservatism and Transcendent Norms

by W. H. Marshner


Cultural Conservative Policy Insights
721 Second Street N.E., Washington, D.C 20002
(202) 546-3004
Institute for Cultural Conservatism Policy Insight Number Two
April 7, 1988

Cultural Conservative Policy Insights is published by the Institute for Cultural Conservatism, a division of The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, Inc, a non-profit tax-exempt educational organization. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the view of the Institute for Cultural Conservatism or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.

Earlier essays on cultural conservatism have pointed out that a body of Judeo-Christian ethical norms are at the heart of Western culture. We have not dealt with the religious and philosophical grounding of these norms. Their status as transcendent or divine truths has been left unexplored.

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Belief and Public Policy: An Answer To “People For The American Way”

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BELIEF AND PUBLIC POLICY: AN ANSWER TO “PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY”

by William H. Marshner

Family Policy Insights
VOL. V: Number 2
721 Second Street, N.E.Washington D.C. 20002
(202) 546-3004
February, 1986

Family Policy Insights is published by the Child and Family Protection Institute, a project of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt educational organization. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Child and Family Protection Institute or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

In the public-policy debate on family issues, it so happens that religious beliefs and religiously based moral convictions are absolutely crucial to some of us who are parties to the debate. Should we be penalized for that fact? Should we have to play by different rules from other parties in the debate, whose views are more secular?
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The Morality Of Political Action: Biblical Foundations

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The Morality of Political Action:
Biblical Foundations

An edited transcript of 3 lectures held June 22,
June 29 and July 6, 1983 at the Free Congress
Research and Education Foundation

William H. Marshner
Enrique T. Rueda

The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Officers and Board Kathleen Teague, Chairman Dr. Charles Moser, Treasurer Margaret Johnson, Secretary Dr. Robert J. Billings Senator William L. Armstrong William Marshner Michelle Laxalt
Foundation Staff
Paul M. Weyrich, President
Connaught Marshner, Executive Vice President
Eric Licht, Vice President for Operations
Laurie Ramsey, Vice President for Development
John Grecco, Comptroller
The Morality of Political Action: Biblical Foundations
Copyright © 1984—The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation 721 Second Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20002
Library of Congress Catalog Card No: 84-82044
First Printing Price $4.00

The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt, research foundation, engaged in educational projects in two separate areas of concentration.
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The Case For A Two Amendment Strategy

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THE CASE FOR A TWO-AMENDMENT STRATEGY

W. H. Marshner

Abortion and slavery, Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade: how many times have we used that analogy? We have used it for the moral light it sheds on the pro-life cause. May I suggest that it also sheds historical light?

I think it illuminates our political position.

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The Right To Live!

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THE RIGHT TO LIVE!

By W.H. MARSHNER

Published by:
Moral Majority, Inc.500 Alleghany Avenue
Lynchburg, Va. 24501
copyright 1981
Wm. H. Marshner
Wm. H. Marshner is professor of Theology at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. He is a leading articulator of moral and social concerns, important to the ‘New Right’.

The pro-abortion forces and organizations in the United States suffered a bitter defeat in the summer of 1980, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment. They suffered another defeat in the fall of 1980 when a powerful new force emerged in electoral politics, the pro-life and religious Right bloc.

Now the pro-abortionists are preparing their counterattack. A lavish campaign of full-page advertisements in major newspapers, paid for by Planned Parenthood, NOW and the ACLU, reveal the themes which these groups hope to use to demolish the pro-life cause.

The purpose of this booklet is to survey the counter-attack and to evaluate the themes and charges contained in it, as an educational service to all those interested in the abortion debate.

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The Historical Appropriateness of the Human Life Bill

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The Historical Appropriateness of the Human Life Bill (S. 158):

Evidence From the History of Anti-Abortion Policy in the United States

W. H. Marshner

BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE SEPARATION OF POWERS OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
June 1, 1981

The Human Life Bill (S. 158) will be historically appropriate legislation if three claims can be established: (1) that scientific evidence indicating a significant likelihood that actual human life exists from conception was known to physicians and state legislators from the middle decades of the 19th century forward; (2) that the passage of anti-abortion statutes by those legislators in those decades was significantly influenced and motivated by such evidence; and (3) that the medico-moral and legal climate in which the 14th amendment was ratified was therefore a climate in which it was a settled conviction that the unborn human foetus, at every stage of gestation, was a human being entitled to protection of life, and hence a climate in which absolutely no conflicting right having the character of a privacy right of a woman to abort was conceded to exist by any court or any legislature, state or federal, in this country or in any Western nation.

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On The Text Of The Syllabus

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ON THE TEXT OF THE SYLLABUS

Charles Maurras

Translated by W. H. Marshner
Originally appeared in Action française, May 15, 1906

Who is killing you?
Who is leading you?
-Rabelais

Among the various nonbelievers who joined together in the common effort of l’Action française, there were differences of opinion and tendency, to be sure. Yet their stance of seeking the public good, on the one hand, and the pains they took to avoid all preconceived ideas, on the other, have led them on (or led them back) little by little to a plain fact: here in this world (whether it be a question of things spiritual or things temporal, of the moral order or the material one) the views, interests, suggestions, and decisions of Catholicism match up point for point with the essential interests of the French nation and of the civilized world. I speak of interests understood as precisely as possible. I speak of Catholicism taken in strict definition. Continue reading “On The Text Of The Syllabus”

Towards A General Definition Of ‘Ideology’

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Towards a General Definition of ‘Ideology’

W. H. Marshner

Any set of normative or programmatic beliefs about social matters is likely to be called an “ideology” in a neutral sense of the word. For in this sense, ‘ideology’ merely designates the ideas advanced by some social movement. With this sense of the term we have nothing more to do. Rather, we must try to define the stronger and pejorative sense in which some social programmes are called “ideologies” and some are not.
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Contra Gentiles: Integrism In America II

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Contra Gentiles: Integrism in America II

W. H. Marshner

Triumph
Vol. VIII No. 5
May 1973

In the March Triumph, this column argued that “Integrism” in its full, European sense did not and could not exist in America. But it was also argued that there is a narrower sense of the word, a purely ecclesiastical sense, in which there is an American Integrism, perceptibly taking form since Vatican II. Herewith, an attempt to examine this native movement more carefully.

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Ecumenism in Crisis

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Ecumenism in Crisis:

Some Catholic-Political Considerations

W. H. MARSHNER

Triumph
Vol. VIII No. 4
April 1973

The question whether the Catholic Church in this country should join the National Council of Churches is now in the final stages of study. At the same time, all ecumenical undertakings have been given a new cast by the January 22 Supreme Court decision on abortion. These two circumstances define the present moment as uniquely propitious for a careful rethinking of the entire ecumenical engagement.

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Contra Gentiles: Integrism In America I

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Contra Gentiles: Integrism in America I

W. H. Marshner

Triumph
Vol. VIII No. 3
March 1973

If a French clergyman starts talking to you about integrism, you had best discover a pressing engagement elsewhere or at least take two aspirins, because in France the subject is vast and about as tractable as the rights and wrongs of the Dreyfus case. In America, on the other hand (and thank God), the word “integrism” is still but little used, for we seem to be able to smite our theological foemen without the aid of that particular slur. Yet there are cases where even tainted words have a use; and I contend, therefore, that a few moments spent on establishing a clear and just American semantics for “integrism” will not be time wasted. Continue reading “Contra Gentiles: Integrism In America I”

Contra Gentiles: Turning On The Right

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Contra Gentiles: Turning on the Right

W. H. Marshner

Triumph
Vol. VIII No. 2
February 1973

National Review is consistently right about conservatives, as it is right about few things else. It is interesting, therefore, that on December 8 that magazine judged its readership to be ready, at long last, for some advice: soften up on marijuana, and get behind efforts to “decriminalize” its use. Events will soon tell how far the Buckley writ still runs; but if it runs as expected, Catholics will have yet another reason to shuck the “conservative” Movement. Herewith, seven observations. Continue reading “Contra Gentiles: Turning On The Right”

The Bishops’ Strange Love

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The Bishops’ Strange Love

W. H. MARSHNER

Triumph
Vol. VII No. 6
June 1972

As a journalist, I dedicate this report to His Eminence John Cardinal Krol, in gratitude for honest answers to honest questions.

—WM

This is a discussion of the spring meeting of the American bishops in Atlanta. It appears at least a month after other commentators have finished their slight remarks upon the subject, which evidently bored them immensely, and in a magazine which seldom publishes lengthy discussions of bishops’ meetings. These two circumstances seem to make an explanation desirable, if one is to avoid the charge of talking very late about very little. Continue reading “The Bishops’ Strange Love”