During the Saddleback Church Forum hosted by Reverend Rick Warren, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama was asked, “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”

“Well,” Obama stammered, “I think that…whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question—with specificity—is above my pay grade.”

Obama, recognizing the flabbiness of his response, “clarified” himself to Judeo-Christian moralists. “If you believe that life begins at conception, and you are consistent in that belief, then I can’t argue with you on that.”

Obama implored the Saddleback congregation to join with the empty nihilists. “… I think we can find common ground. And, by the way, I’ve now inserted this in to the Democratic Platform—how do we reduce the number of abortions?”

Let’s see exactly what Mr. Obama inserted into the 2008 Democratic Party Platform: “The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe legal abortion regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.

“The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to comprehensive, affordable family planning services and age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.”

For the life of me, I can’t find the “common ground” Obama assures the Church is there. Of course, even if Mr. Obama was ever to see the light and became a staunch defender of the innocent, Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. As pointed out by Obama, “…the fact is, although we’ve had a President [George W. Bush] who’s opposed to abortion over the past eight years, abortions have not gone down.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade would require a realignment of the high court, which I’m afraid, could take many decades, if it ever happens at all.

How did it come to this? Why have Americans so obsequiously surrendered the most significant moral decisions of our time into the hands of life-tenured appointees to the bench?

Why would the United States Congress, supposedly jealous of its legislative prerogative, allow the judicial branch to usurp its exclusive constitutional power?

The reason, I’m afraid, is moral exhaustion. If “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” a majority of Americans (and those they elect) just want someone else to deal with and make the hard choices. When stripped to its finery and detail, most of what passes for political debate concerns the naked question of which politician can be trusted to rule over us. We would like them to raise and educate our young, keep them healthy, occupy them with after school programs and care for them in old age. And when the soulless bureaucratic monster of the nanny state produces a generation of soul-damaged nihilists, we shrug perplexedly and resume watching American Idol. If the Supreme Court decrees that it will determine when life begins and how to terminate it, well, good for them—we have better things to do.

What was so disheartening about the Saddleback Church Forum was that it was held at all. That a strong church allowed itself to become the venue for the weak spectacle of lowbrow political claptrap, only served to elevate the secular over the divine, and in no small measure, undercut Christian moral authority for the sake of a tawdry “fifteen minutes of fame.”

--Mr. Curmudgeon