Christian charity requires that we forgive others and thereby refrain from making proverbial mountains out of molehills.
Still, having acknowledged our Christian duty, who can fail to recognize the deeply spiritual element in our modern political contests?
According to CBS News, Usha Vance, wife of Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, received a stunning reply in November when she asked members of Vice President Kamala Harris’ staff about childproofing the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence in Washington, D.C.
“The questions were initially rebuffed by a Harris political appointee,” per CBS.
Yes, you read that correctly. A Harris appointee “rebuffed” questions about making the residence safe for children.
The Vances have three children — Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel — all under the age of eight.
The house at Number One Observatory Circle has served as the vice president’s private residence since Congress agreed to refurbish it for that purpose in 1974, per the White House. Meanwhile, the Naval Observatory itself still functions as a hub of astronomical and navigation-related research.
Thus, fortunately, officials from the U.S. Navy stepped up before Christmas and helped the incoming second lady.
Nonetheless, the Harris appointee’s initial rebuff of Usha Vance requires explanation.
Is it surprising that Harris’ team ignored the needs of the Vance children?
One possibility lies in the combination of incompetence and hubris that defined Harris’s failed 2024 presidential bid. After all, her campaign squandered approximately $1.5 billion and has since made no apology for it. Why should we expect competence and courtesy?
The most likely explanation, however, runs much deeper and has much darker implications.
Something about this otherwise petty act of discourtesy calls to mind the relationship between powerful Democrats and children in general.
Democrats have spent generations encouraging women to celebrate killing their unborn children. They call it a “right” and raise political funds by fear-mongering over the prospective loss of that “right.”
Likewise, if a child expresses the sort of confusion and despair that often accompanies adolescence, some powerful Democrats will call the child “trans” and then promote genital mutilation.
When you think about it this way, a powerful Democrat’s indifference to the welfare of children makes perfect sense.
Moreover, the incoming vice president personifies the chasm between conservatives and woke liberals on questions involving families.
Recall, for instance, that during the campaign Democrats made a giant fuss over J.D. Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment.
But Vance, of course, did not mean to denigrate women who physically could not have children. Nor, I think, would he exempt childless men from his broader point.
As a childless man myself — not by incapacity but by a series of foolish choices — I wholeheartedly endorse that point. Namely, whether we admit it or not, women or men who choose not to have children have lost something irreplaceable. We have lost the one chance, offered by God, to truly live for something larger than ourselves.
Of course, if we recognize our self-obsessed manner of living, we have other ways of fighting against it. But we have squandered by far the most powerful one.
And self-obsessed living has a destructive effect as a multiplier. An entire society of childless, self-obsessed adults will collapse beneath the weight of its own collective narcissism. Moreover, if that society worships itself, then it will distance itself from God. That is the fundamental point.
Thoughts of this kind undoubtedly occur to many conservatives when they learn that yet another Democrat has treated children and families with indifference, or worse.
Thus, as mild as the word “rebuff” might sound, it really reflects something far deeper and more spiritual.
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