Quote: “This is our time.” South Dakota State Representative Roger Hunt.
Term: kairos (KIE-ros), the art of seizing the moment.
South Dakota’s governor signed a scorched-earth abortion law that jails doctors who end pregnancies unless the mother’s life is threatened. No exceptions for rape, incest, or girls raped by fathers. The law’s sponsors are banking on the retirement of moderate-left Justice John Paul Stevens before the almost-certain showdown in the Supreme court.
Rep. Hunt brings up the ancient rhetorical factor called kairos (occasio in Latin), which means both the opportunity and the ability to spot and exploit it. The Bible’s Ecclesiastes is a poem to kairos.
Not all abortion opponents are singing hosannas, though. What if Stevens doesn’t retire, the Supremes knock the state’s law on the head, and an aroused pro-choice public elects the wrong person for president?
The Romans actually had a god called Occasio. He was athletic in front, balding behind (get it?), and, we imagine, had fingernails bitten to the quick.
Snappy Answer: “And 2008 won’t be?”