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Pro-Life Training Program Series

RADICAL INDIVIDUALISM:  ME FIRST, AT ALL COSTS

By Janet Baker
Treasurer, Pro-Life Maryland, Inc.

As we mentioned before, all facets of the anti-life movement follow two basic strategies:  radical egalitarianism and radical individualism.  Having examined radical egalitarianism last time, we’ll now look at radical individualism.

Radical individualism has as its main goal the removal of as many limits on personal gratification as possible.  It emphasizes individual rights at the expense of collective rights.

There is no distinction between licit rights and illicit rights.  Actually, the term “illicit rights” is an oxymoron, since anything illicit fails the definition of a “right,” which implies legitimacy.  Perhaps “illicit pleasure” might be the more accurate term.

At any rate, radical individualism seeks the promotion of personal freedom – at all costs.  Anything that is deemed an obstacle to such “freedom” is something that the anti-lifer will seek to abolish, or at least to neutralize.  Such obstacles would certainly include the Church, the family, natural law and other institutions.

A false sense of individual freedom induces the anti-lifer to discard all restraints (ever notice how the word “inhibition” is now relegated to the status of a profanity?).  We have seen, and continue to see, how loud but well-organized voices clamor in favor of illicit freedoms; all too often the courts grant such freedoms (often overriding the other two branches of government).

The recent legal victories of sodomites provide a stark example of this trend.  Thereafter, the government has a two-fold stake in protecting these new “freedoms” (“keeping the peace” and justifying its own bad actions).  

In protecting these new “freedoms,” they often suppress legitimate freedoms; a glaring example is the FACE legislation.  Ironically, the people who clamored for these “freedoms” find themselves enslaved by them as they become addicted to sex, alcohol, drugs, etc.

These “freedoms” also lead to more extensive governmental control.  Brian Clowes uses this section to touch on the perils that the United Nations, et al., pose to true freedoms.  While I certainly agree with him, I think other points also need to be emphasized.  For example, how often do we hear that “the U.S. Constitution grants us our rights”?