Ampersand of Alas, a Blog has a useful chart. It convinced me.
As long as we’re going to argue about the issue of women aborting pregnancies, and god knows we’re going to argue about it, it makes little sense unless we put the debate in the right sociopolitical context. For example I’ve always wondered why people who claim to hate abortion also hate sex education. Why oppose a policy that can dramatically reduce unwanted pregnancies by reducing risky behavior? I can appreaciate the general ickiness of sex but we’re talking about preventing murders. Priorities, people. Then an amazingly-effective vaccine for human papillomavirus, a primary cause for cervical cancer, came out and the religious right went apeshit against it. Even then everything didn’t became clear until some doofus went out and said what was on the religious right’s mind (via):
Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available.
“We would have to look at that closely,” Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and a former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. “With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition” – a medical term for the absence of fear – “would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care.” Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control’s Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations.”
They would oppose an HIV vaccine because it might disinhibit people from having sex with each other. Does that sound reasonable to you? It might or might not be fair to point out that these nimrods run the country, that depends on the president’s degree of born-againness (I would wager that he’s pretty far gone) and the degree to which the president rather than Cheney runs the country.
Pooh
I simply don’t have much in the way of a non-snarky response, so I’ll just say that I agree – there are a whole range of things that should come along with a purportedly ‘pro-life’ position which seem to be ignored. The idea that if we don’t talk about sex, kids won’t do it is just crazy. The Catholic school-girl cliche is a cliche, but there had/has to have been some truth to it.
Fred
The contradictions you point out reaffirm my notion that the Christian Right is waging this anti-choice crusade not merely on the moral grounds of preventing “the slaughter of the innocents,” but as a form of social control/engineering. So many walls have been broken down with the freedom given women, they just want things to go back to the way things were (never was). Isn’t that the definition of Conservative anyways?
Strange parallel here with the way Liberals try to regulate gun ownership and the way the Right tries to regulate a women’s body. In either case if the persons involved want to find a way, they will.
KC
Tim F., great post. What’s so funny to me is that most people will write this stuff off until it’s too late.
Otto Man
Great post. That chart is pretty damn convincing.
Steve
The standard line is “we really do believe abortion is murder, but we realize there are political limitations, so we take what we can get.”
What this obscures is that while you can get a decent percentage of people to agree that “abortion is murder,” the percentage of Americans who really would agree with sending a woman to prison for having an abortion is miniscule. It’s an extremist position that you’ll never get anything close to a majority to agree with.
That’s why laws like in South Dakota are such a boon for the pro-choice movement, because they force people to actually think about the tough questions. Thousands of voters are realizing “I think abortion is wrong, but wow, I really don’t agree with letting the government put people in jail for it.” And that’s how we end up at a consensus pro-choice position – not because a majority of people love abortion, but because people realize the only alternative is letting pandering politicians control your most basic family decisions.
The only reason the Republicans have been able to demagogue the abortion issue so successfully is by characterizing Democrats as the “abortion on demand” party. Once the pro-life movement gets actual political power and starts deciding to pass laws, however, the debate shifts, and not in a good way for them. Now the focus is on a different kind of extremism.
Perry Como
Abortion is murder. That is why any woman who has an abortion and any doctor that performs an abortion should be charged with 1st degree murder. Any staff complicit in the act and any family members or relations that supported it should be charged as accessories.
Premeditated acts of violence cannot be given quarter in an enlightened society. An unborn child has every right to life, so any termination of life should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Bruce Moomaw
While this is without a doubt the single most appalling and grotesque comment ever to come out of this administration — which is saying something — I can’t resist noting that “the Rev. Reginald Finger” sounds like something S.J. Perelman would have come up with.
Mr Furious
A Heaven filled with those assholes sounds pretty much like Hell to me.
EL
I’m curious, so I hope you’ll elaborate for me. Where do you draw the line from a medical perspective? Ectopic pregnancy is 99% plus fatal for the pregnant woman – do you sanction abortion in such cases? How about other medical conditions where the pregnant woman has a lower, but still significant risk of death? What percentage risk is “acceptable”?
Richard 23
Since sex for reasons other than procreation is a crime, reducing God’s own punishment aspect (via HPV / AIDS vaccine) is naturally going to cause a sexual crimewave which will spiral out of control.
Similarly if you legalize drugs, everyone will use them, not just the “cool kids.”
Gotta love them Catholic school girls. Back when I was a teenager anyway, they really knew how to party!
Perry Como
EL,
If the baby isn’t viable then it isn’t murder. God has a plan for all of us. Killing our young is something I missed in that plan.
rilkefan
This line is entirely clueless, I think. Those opposing sex ed believe (claim to believe, have brainwashed themselves to believe, etc.) that sex ed will lead to greater promiscuity and other bad consequences, and if not then they oppose utilitarian arguments which trump morality (as almost all people do to some degree – e.g. eugenics, torture [if it were shown to be effective and life-saving], euthanizing the infirm, etc.).
Pb
The Christian right stole the “culture of life” rhetoric from the Catholic church long ago. The difference here is, Pope John Paul II actually meant it. If you want to try to reason with religious pro-lifers, start with the rational Christians who might support sane positions that also happen to reduce the amount of abortions, suffering, injustice, poverty, etc., in the world–not with the crazies who just mouth the words to justify the bigotry that cannot be spoken in an election.
The Other Steve
I’m still trying to figure out why bible thumpers, and pro-lifers are more likely to father children out of wedlock, cheat on their wives, and have an obsessive interest in deviant sexual acts.
Once I figure that discrepancy out, then I’ll try to understand how their abortion arguments don’t add up.
Pb
Tulkinghorn
And Perry, this is the whole point here. You declare “abortion”(“X”) to be murder and verboten, but you never define (X).
Once you can put a law into effect about (X) you have to define it with precision, and it becomes clear that a) there is no consensus on the pro-life side about what exactly they mean by (X), b) the voting public does not agree with your definition of (X), and c) the voting public does not agree with the proposed remedies and penalties for the crime of committing (X).
Al Maviva
EL I think the morbidity rate for ectopic pregnancy is actually roughly 1.4%, with around 108,000 cases anually, and roughly 1,500 deaths for the latest data I could find (1992). Considering that there were an estimated 4200 pregnancy related mortalities between 1992 and 1999, the numbers have dropped a bit since that figure was published, or perhaps that the 1992 figure was a bit of an estimate by epidemiologists – note the “limitations” discussion on the second linked document. Still, even under the 1992 figure, 1.4% is a long way from >99%. But hey, I wouldn’t know math from nothin’. I’m just a ranting theocrat waging an anti-choice crusade by picking at your assertion there.
Still, it’s an understandable mistake that you made. 1.4% sure does look a lot like >99% to most people.
Santa Claus
Well, how about if “X” is defined as “the intentional or knowing termination of a pregnancy?” Back when America was a decent Christian country, before Roe v. Wade, the abortion statutes used language to that effect.
spoosmith
“Still, it’s an understandable mistake that you made. 1.4% sure does look a lot like 99% to most people.”
The whole point is that, according to the South Dakota law, risk of death is the only way someone would be able to get an abortion. Problem is, is it allowed if there is a 51% chance? 50.001%? 90%? If you’re a doctor facing possible jail time, what number do you use? Shouldn’t the woman have some say if her life is threatened? Jeeez.
Rusty Shackleford
Perry Como Says:
EL,
If the baby isn’t viable then it isn’t murder. God has a plan for all of us. Killing our young is something I missed in that plan.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:14 am
What Perry Como is saying is that “Abortion is murder,” except when God commits it.
Tim F.
Of course, that’s an incoherent position. You basicallly said that they oppose sex ed because they oppose sex ed. Utilitarian arguments can be easily made which rule out both torture and eugenics as acceptable behaviors.
Tulkinghorn
Then please define “pregnancy.”
The medical definition of preganancy is not the same as that used by much, if not most of the hard core abortion opponents.
And if you think Roe v. Wade is soe sort of dividing line between this being a decent Christian country, then you are reading some strange history books.
Steve
I suspect you could have made your point without behaving like an ass.
It seems pretty frickin’ obvious that he meant UNTREATED ectopic pregnancies are usually fatal. And in almost all cases, treatment for an ectopic pregnancy requires terminating the pregnancy. The whole reason the actual mortality rate is 1.4% is because we allow abortion as a solution.
I don’t know how many people are actually wingnutty enough to want to forbid abortion in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, but the fact is that if we didn’t allow abortion in such cases, the mortality rate might indeed be in the 99% range.
Krista
Basically, when it comes down to brass tacks, you’ve got people who are against abortion, against sex ed, against birth control, and against nationalized child care.
I try to see good intentions in people, but it’s hard to interpret this as meaning anything other than that they think that only married, Christian, well-to-do, heterosexual couples should be having babies, who will then be raised by their stay-at-home mommy.
Everybody else should just keep their heathen legs tied together. And if they don’t, it’s their own fault if they can’t afford to feed themselves and their children. Why should wealthy Christians waste their beautiful minds thinking of such unpleasantness?
canuckistani
I think you’ll find that left untreated, the morbidity rate is much higher. Lucky thing abortions are still available, eh?
Al Maviva
Okay, Spoosmith. I see. You don’t have to base the argument on true facts, you can just suggest some “true-ish facts” that sound too good to be false, and that’s good enough to make your case. That’s an interesting rhetorical model.
Tim F.
An ob-gyn friend recently told me that was fairly accurate. They don’t allow ectopic pregnancies to progress because the baby won’t live and it often takes the mother with it.
Jill
Al…from your link:
“Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the first trimester, and it is a cause of significant morbidity. It is responsible for 10% of maternal deaths.”
That number would be higher if abortion was illegal.
When I was pregnant my husband and I had a discussion where we decided that my life was the life to be saved in any situation.
canuckistani
What Perry Como is saying is that he knows what God’s plan is for all of us, presumably because he has broken the Bible Code, or because God speaks to him personally. He therefore already knows that part of God’s plan for me is that I show him the finger, and tell him not to force the rest of the world to live by his delusions.
Nikki
So, Al…you just glossed over this tidbit?
Tulkinghorn
An improtant aspect of this is that the availability of abortion, sex education, contraception and publich health care regarding women’s health is that it all comes as a package. When it is available, there are fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer abortions, fewer high risk pregnancies untreated until the later months, and fewer ectopic pregnancies that are not addressed until it is too late.
It may make us an indecent, unchristian country in the eyes of some, but you can’t dismiss a utilitarian argument and policies that save the lives and health of millions.
Unless you really don’t care about the lives and health of millions. That is not a smarmy, glib liberal point, but a valid Christian one.
Krista
That’s why I find it so frustrating to have all of these faux-Christian men loudly spouting their opinions and determining policy when it comes to this. Their lives are not at risk. Their health is not at risk. Ours are. Who the hell are these men to try to tell me that if my life is being threatened by my pregnancy, oh well, too bad, hope you have a nice funeral?
Tulkinghorn
Al, it is called a hypothetical.
It is a useful way of applying possible and plausible factual scenarios against a proposed law or regulatory scheme in oreder to see if rational and sensible results would ensue.
If you can’t give a coherent response to a simple hypo like that then you have not thought out the ramifications of your argument. That is an indication that you have lost the argument already, which is why spoosmith did not even need to honor your retort with a reply.
Just thought I would clue you in.
Davebo
None of it sounds reasonable.
But this is the issue a reasonable person would be screaming about.
Sadly, there’s not one to be found here.
Jill
Davebo is right. But us “reasonable” people sometimes become outraged by the stupidity and utterly shocking statements that come out of Christian men.
CaptainComeback
As I have said all along, it really only comes down to this: they believe sex to be for procreation purposes only between a man and a woman. They also believe that sex is basically a taboo, it should not be discussed because it’s something that is done behind closed doors 3 times a year between a man and a woman.
That being said, abortion would violate this belief because sex was not used for the sake of procreation.
The morning after pill would violate this belief because the sex that took place was not used for the sake of procreation.
Sex-ed would violate this belief because sex is not to be discussed out loud.
Gay sex would really violate this belief, because not only is it not between a man and a woman, but also it’s impossible to procreate.
An HIV vaccine would violate this belief also because, in all likelihood in their minds, HIV was contracted via gay sex, which would violate their belief, and if the vaccine worked and was readily available like the morning after pill, it may encourage others to engage in sex that violates their beliefs.
I really do not think it’s more complicated than that. They have a “moral” vision for themselves and the rest of the nation, and they believe it to be just and correct. They want this model and mindset to be placed on everyone else. Nothing can be more arrogant, repugnant, and self-righteous as this, but they are trying each and every day for this to be the standard for all Americans, either by means of conversion, or by forced legislation.
zzyzx
I think I saw a post on prolifeblogs a few weeks ago saying that, but I’d have to do a lot more searching to find it than my interest in doing so would allow.
Seriously, I suggest that everyone who thinks abortion and/or birth control should be legal read that site. Know your enemy.
Al Maviva
Steve, acting like an ass would have entailed calling El a liar or throwing some nasty invective. What I said was fairly mild sarcasm directed at a relatively gross misstatement(or perhaps outright fabrication). The facts appeared pretty central to El’s argument.
Really? It seems pretty frickin’ obvious that the untreated morbidity rate is lower than that. The morbidity rate in the 19th century of completely untreated ectopic pregnancy – an era with fairly lousy medical treatment all around – was 33% according to this, the one reference figure I could find on it. Sorry, but I can’t find reference to any newer studies, probably because there have been a number of treatments for ectopic pregnancy for quite a while, and most doctors would feel ethically compelled to treat it if diagnosed, so the existence of newer studies is unlikely. Even given a pretty-bad case scenario, and assuming modern medical care could do no better than mid-19th century medical care in cases of a ruptured / hemorraged ectopic pregnancy, 33% is still a pretty far cry from >99%. But it’s okay, stick with the 99% figure. It’s true-ish. And I found a survey study suggesting the overall death rate is actually closer to 400 per year than the 1500 per year of the earlier study I cited, but hey, if 33% morbidity is the same as “usually fatal” is the same as 99%+ morbidity, then 1500 is pretty much the same as 400 and I’ll concede the other 1100 to you.
My own feelings on the topic of abortion are kind of irrelevant to this particular discussion – I’m only taking issue with El’s over-the-top assertion of fact and the kind of silly rush to defend it.
Al Maviva
That is a hypothetical, huh?
I must have missed where El wrote “suppose ectopic pregnancy is 99% plus fatal…”
Brian
The subtext of this post, to my conservative eyes, is that as long as the left can focus their ire on the views of Christian fundamentalists regarding sex, they can hopefully scare the rest of America into embracing their own views at the opposite end of the nimrod spectrum.
Christian fundamentalists, my dear friends, are not “The Right” or “America”. It is important to understand this when trying to debate an issue like abortion or HIV. Only when that is understood can a real debate occur.
Oh, and it’ll also help when you can be honest about stats (as Al has helpfully pointed out).
Steve
Doesn’t it seem a little implausible to you that the death rate from a ruptured fallopian tube, in the early 19th century, would have been only 1 in 3?
I agree with you regarding the reasons why there are no modern sources for this number, because no one in their right mind would let an ectopic pregnancy go untreated, but I don’t see that as a reason to rely on an obviously absurd figure that turned up from Google.
The point you’re glossing over is that you were in such a hurry to make a snarky comment that you ended up proving the polar opposite of the anti-abortion case, to wit, the survival rate is quite high if a doctor is allowed to terminate the pregnancy.
BIRDZILLA
The same ones who support abortion are the same ones who have SAVE THE REDWOODS,SAVE THE WHALE or SAVE THE RAINFOREST,SAVE THE PRARIE DOG, bumper stickers or they belong to PETA,SIERRA CLUB,GREENPEACE,WORLD WILDLIFE FUND,NATIOAN WILDLIFE FEDERATION, etc
Krista
I’m a bit dubious about that figure as well. I can probably be safe in assuming that autopsies were not performed on all women who died at a young age.
Krista
Actually, I was thinking of getting a “Save the BIRDZILLA” bumper sticker for my car. You’re obviously a rare enough bird to be considered an endangered species.
Steve
Clearly, it will take more than one state banning abortion, another state banning distribution of birth control at public facilities, the appointment of Christian fundamentalists to set government policy concerning issues like Plan B and the HPV vaccine, and consultation by the White House with Jerry Falwell on Supreme Court nominations to persuade Brian that the fundamentalist view is more than just an extreme position that can be safely ignored. That’s fine. I’m sure these are isolated developments that won’t go any further.
But remember, the Islamofascists are on the verge of establishing a worldwide Caliphate ANY DAY NOW.
Ancient Purple
Yet, the conservatives are more than happy to embrace them when they need the votes to get elected, promising to help further their agenda.
But for all the talk of Christian fundamentalists not being The Right or America, a lot of credence is paid to them from the conservatives.
It must be nice having a proxy to do your dirty work.
Larry
Really going to miss this kind of thing after The Rapture.
Less traffic too.
canuckistani
I used to really look forward to the Rapture, until I realized that most of these fundamentalists are at the lower end of the economic scale, and there aren’t going to be all kinds of mansions with pools and cool cars lying around for us to pick up. All we’ll get is plastic Jesi and Kincaid paintings… and maybe some peace and quiet.
Al Maviva
No Steve, I wasn’t trying to prove or disprove anything about abortion. I was calling out El for makin’ shit up, and instead of having a relatively sarcastic and light touch, I probably just should accused El of lying. No snark there. And now I’m laughing at you grasping at straws to somehow find a way to creatively interpret El’s comments into truths, or at least to repudiate whatever position it is you think I hold. I happen to think that as a bare minimum abortion has to be available to protect the life of the mother; not only from a legal standpoint but from a moral standpoint too. I happen to think that the jackass cited in the article Tim links has no business setting public health policy. But you seem to think I’m supporting Perry Como’s troll notion of abortion as murder 1, and puttin’ fire & brimstone preachers in charge of the CDC, and that appears to be motivating you. Whatever.
One other thing. Questioning a factual assertion because I used Google to surface references to that study (including CDC papers), is like saying that Darwin’s theories are now discredited because we found reference to them on Google.
Krista
canuckistani – surely Pat Robertson has some spare dosh he won’t be needing when he’s up there informing God that He really should be doing more smiting if he wants to be taken seriously.
mark
it seems to me that the same people who feel this way about sex are also the same people who are against evolution because they reject that humans and animals are related in any way. Yet what creatures on earth only have sex for the purpose of procreation…yep, animals. So does this mean they think humans really are animals, but wait, we were created out of mud by god in his image so we can’t be animals. But the sex and procreation thing….man this is so complicated.
physics geek
I’m a religious conservative/libertarian, but anyone who opposes a workable HIV vaccine because it will reduce the fear of having sex is freaking insane and should be ostracized and ignored.
Oh, and I did mention that he’d be a moron, too?
Steve
You seem really, really proud of your opinion that the death rate for untreated ectopic pregnancies is not literally 99%. If you really want to claim the big Internet “W” on that basis, be my guest.
I believe the actual rate, if there were any scientific way to measure it, would be far closer to 99% than the 1.4% you tried to peddle off as the correct figure, when you were pretending El was talking about the death rate given proper medical treatment. Tim’s OB/GYN colleagues agree with me, but yeah, you have those completely implausible results from the early 18th century. So I guess you are the champion of truth today. Hooray.
Ancient Purple
And in related news, the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation has thumbed its nose at South Dakota and may open a Planned Parenthood clinic on its reservation.
The money quote (from the tribal leader):
Link.
Excellent news indeed!
CaptainComeback
it seems to me that the same people who feel this way about sex are also the same people who are against evolution because they reject that humans and animals are related in any way. Yet what creatures on earth only have sex for the purpose of procreation…yep, animals. So does this mean they think humans really are animals, but wait, we were created out of mud by god in his image so we can’t be animals. But the sex and procreation thing….man this is so complicated.
Fundamentalists and evolution don’t really fit into my simple run down on all things in the culture wars. I do have trouble grouping it with abortion and HIV vaccines. But maybe is should be classified into a greater group.
In actuality, one would think that they would fall all over evolution because it has elements of the free market in it. Those who adapt the best usually survive and become successful, much like the free market. Yet many have spoken about their reservations about evolution because, if it is true, then the world is a pretty harsh and unforgiving world where the losers are left behind in the evolutionary game. These reservations are thinly constructed because, if they were honest for one moment, they would indeed fess up to the whole charade – evolution can prove the Bible wrong, or at least, knock down the literal interpretation of the Bible.
I think I give fundamentalists too much credit. Their ideas and values stem from a traditional idea of what a family and how to create that family, which stem from usually the King James Bible. If evolution is true, and to them, the Bible isn’t literally true, therefore their ideas and values of the traditional family fall apart. I can see how evolution is terrifying to them.
Brian
Not necessarily, but I do believe that they pose a much greater threat to America, and the west, than a home-grown religious group freely exercising its religious expression. They are not my “proxy”, as much as you’d like to label them as such. They’re arguably fringe elements, like Communists, anarchists, and Louis Farrakhan are to the far Left. (If you’re going to tie people like Falwell, or David Duke, to the Right, you should at least be willing to acknowledge your own fringe elements.)
We can contain any “radicals” within our society, whether they be from the Right or the Left. We live with them out of respect to our Constitution. On the other hand, we cannot contain in the same fashion the enemies of our country and liberties. Hopefully, you can recognize the difference in these ideological battles, and place your allegiances accordingly.
Despite any arguments over topics like abortion of AIDS, it is a foregone conclusion that we can engage in these arguments democratically, if also angrily, while also remaining unified against an enemy that cares nothing of democracy or “tolerance of ideas”.
EL
AL – Sorry I was asleep and missed the discussion.
Firstly, the 1.4% figure is from an article that assumes when ectopics are found they are treated (read the article and you’ll see). The treatment is guess what – terminating the pregnancy, just what Perry Como says he opposes. My answer quoted Perry’s post demanding that any doctor performing an abortion, or woman obtaining one, be prosecuted for murder; therefore I assumed readers would view ectopic pregnancy mortality in the light of Perry’s desired “no abortions ever.”
The other study you quoted, from the early 19th century, predates ultrasound. For that reason, the accuracy is poor, since it only considers women who survived long enough to be diagnosed. I was taught it was 99% fatal. I admit that I’m having trouble finding statistics now, since it is always treated when found. The best I’ve found is “usually fatal” “nearly always fatal” and “frequently fatal.”
So I apologize for using a statistic I didn’t verify. But the point remains – it is usually fatal without an abortion. Would you or Perry Como like to address that point?
rilkefan
Tim F:
No, those are two distinct positions. One, that sex ed is counterproductive by our standards. The other, that sex ed may reduce pregnancy but has unacceptable side-effects.
Note that you missed the premise of my torture argument, and I rather doubt your premise re utilitarianism holds for all plausible versions of reality or utilitarians.
EL
My point is that medicine isn’t so clearcut, most of the time it involves percentages of risk, not black and white answers.
And if you’re going to use viability as the issue, what about anencephaly? Fetuses who don’t have a brain are clearly not going to be viable babies, (For Perry Como, reference here) but my understanding is that anti-abortion groups oppose aborting anencephalic fetuses also.
As for “God has a plan for all of us” I obviously can’t answer for that personally. But I can say that many who studied and thought deeply about God’s plan, like St. Augustine, or Thomas Aquinas, didn’t agree with you completely. They, along with many other religious figures, saw circumstances for abortion as long as it was before “ensoulment,” which was considered to be at quickening, or after a set amount of time.
jg
I’m fairly certain Perry is just trolling. He does a good job DougJ-ing the conservative side. Al, unfortunately, seems to seriously be trying to pass off stats from Civil War era as proof of something. Its sad really. Now I’m not sure if I should believe anything he writes and he was one of the conservatives who’s position I respected.
SeesThroughIt
Wow. Rock the fuck on, Oglala Sioux tribe!
Steve
There are plenty of fringe elements on the political left, but they have practically no political power in this country, other than the ability to occasionally command a good seat at the Democratic convention. Jerry Falwell, on the other hand, actually gets called by the White House to solicit his input on Supreme Court nominations. That’s why I’m not agreeing with the equivalence you draw between the two extremes.
Davebo
Wait,
So now I can gamble, get laid, and have an abortion all at an Indian Reservation?
Wow!
I gotta trace some Indian blood into my family tree.
Brian
I think you meant James Dobson, but I get your point. However, I do not accept that his opinion is the sole opinion that matters. Two well-qualified jurists were accepted to the Supreme Court, period. They weren’t planted, nurtured, and plucked from Bob Jones University, and if they were, they never would have been seen as acceptable by the country at large. Even the GOP has members that can tell a religious nut from someone who’s devoutly religious in a pious way.
There may be a few comparisons between American fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists, but the Islamist radicals are rightfully seen as the single greatest totalitarian threat to the world in this era, so they command greater the respect of our attention. The same cannot honestly be said of Christian fundamentalists.
Steve
No, I meant Jerry Falwell. Dobson gets his calls too, of course.
If the issue is whether Osama bin Laden or Jerry Falwell is a greater threat to America, hey, you’ll get no argument from me. But I don’t think that means we should ignore everything other than bin Laden. Heck, if we have time to worry about gays destroying the institution of marriage, we have time to worry about Christian fundamentalists setting government policy on Plan B.
gratefulcub
you don’t remember the massive communist GOTV effort of 2004?
MI
“..force people to actually think about the tough questions.”
I’m pretty sure that covers about 99% of the issues that the left and right go back and forth on. People are against high quality special education until they have a mentally challenged kid, or they’re against universal health care until their child gets some rare disease that costs a fortunate to treat, or they’re against gay marriage until their son comes out of the closet, or they’re against the government implementing high safety standards in the work place until miners from their town die tragically, or they’re against abortion until their daughter gets pregnant, and on and on. Taxes is probably the biggest issue that works the other way, with people wanting to endlessly tax the rich until they come into a few bucks themselves.
gratefulcub
Not even the ones bombing abortion clinics?
I know that is the fringe of the fringe, but so is Osama
Kirk Spencer
re Bible’s literal accuracy, I’ve always had a simple challenge: Resolve, please, the conflict of what happened to Judas after the betrayal.
Matthew 27 says he flung the silver at the priests and went and hung himself. The priests, not wanting the blood money, used it to purchase a potter’s field in which to bury strangers, and it so became known as the Field of Blood.
Acts 1, on the other hand, says that Judas took the money and purchased a field into which he fell headlong, so severely that he burst open (implying quite a height), and so the field became known as the Field of Blood.
So, did Judas give back the money or buy the field, and did he die by hanging or falling and bursting open?
So much for literal accuracy of the Bible. Off to a couple of other secondary threads.
re ectopic pregnancy and the death rate – there is very little out there of the rate for untreated EP. As Al noted, there’s a report that says a study from the 18th century ago had (of about 100 women) 1 in 3 die when surgery wasn’t conducted. (The surgical death rate was significantly higher). On the other hand it fails to remark on the fact these women were in a hospital and being treated for the resulting complications. For what it’s worth it appears it’s these subsequent complications that make the thing even nastier. Basically, it’s the equivalent of being gut-shot with various fluids getting past the protective linings. Not completely equivalent, I note, as it’s not getting feces and there’s no external bleeding. Instead it’s a chunk of meat of some size (depending on when it burst the tube) that begins to decay – to rot – inside the body. (gangrene) But there is still internal bleeding and shock and significant pain. Conventional wisdom of the pre-19th century battlefield was that gut wounds were essentially guaranteed death. Reality is that some survived, but it’s by miracle not action. For these reasons I suspect but cannot prove that the ectopic death rate pre-19th century was of similar status — EL’s 99% vice Al’s 33%.
Finally to the main topic. I disagree with the original chart slightly, but it’s the premise that the goal is to ‘punish women for having sex’. That’s a secondary. The goal – the intent – is to ensure that all sex is in marriage only WHERE in a he-says/she-says debate “because I’m the husband” is the debate-closer. Oh, yes they’ll (they being the ones wanting this) agree that playing it too much and/or too heavily is an abuse that should be stopped, and they’ll note that just because he won “this” debate by command instead of reason doesn’t mean she can’t get him back, but notice none of these are saying the position is wrong, just that it’s not unrestricted.
A boy and a girl have sex, and she gets pregnant. What are the respective consequences? Well, until the child is born all medical burdens are the girl’s – all the bills, all the visits, all the risks. The boy? Nothing, not by law. There may be societal and family pressures, but there is zero practical or legal obligation. The first obligations occur after delivery. And those obligation vary from state to state ASSUMING paternity is demonstrated. In almost every state, however, the obligation is solely to the child. The definitive phrase is “child support”. That’s it. There is no obligation to pay for the delivery, the prenatal exams and medicines, the post-delivery expenses of the girl, none of it. Just “a portion of the expenses of the child from the non-custodial parent.”
If illicit sex is wrong, why is it only the girl that is guaranteed to suffer the consequences? And why should the boy get authority to decide what consequences the girl the girl will experience?
Al Maviva
I appreciate your honestly El. My point wasn’t that we don’t need existing medical treatments for ectopic pregnancy – we do. Nobody is benefitted by slipshod facts or kneejerk responses though, and to the extent facts matter, we ought to try to get them as accurate as possible; the arguments merit actually thinking through and facts sometimes matter. The study cited compared women receiving 1860s vintage pharmacological treatment, surgery, or no treatment whatsoever. The lack of autopsies of the general population wouldn’t be that relevant, since the untreated women were sort of a control group; given the fairly dismal state of medicine back then, it’s likely that the ET morbidity rate would probably be a bit lower today, since even if ET weren’t treated today, the hemorraging, post-rupture surgery and sepsis are a little more treatable. Not that I’m arguing that non-treatment is an option, or that modern methods should be prohibited.
I guess JG didn’t get your memo though, El. I’ve lost apparently lost any respect I had around these parts by citing to a study. So instead of zero respect, I’m not actually in negative numbers. That is double plus ungood, and will definitely cause big problems in my ‘hood, where my ability to stay out of trouble depends on JG and Davebo and others giving me much respect. I guess I’m going to have to beat the hell out of some guy from Red State and take his lunch money to get back in everybody’s good graces.
jg
No they’re not. They’re a fucking nuisance. They’re nothing compared to the threat we faced for 50 years during the Cold War yet we never thought we had to turn our security over to the president because we’re so damn scared. Stop giving those assholes more power than they deserve. As my man Chuck D once said, don’t believe the hype. They are not a threat to the worlds safety, they are not something to quake in your boots over. A couple thousand clowns living in caves in the middle east isn’t a threat to our security. They want control of the middle east. Since they don’t have an army to go storming into countries with they use ours. we just did what they couldn’t do, get rid of Saddam. Baghdad is was and is the capital of the muslim caliph, thats why Saddam thought he was such a bad ass. We have removed the one person standing in the way of a totally theocratic middle east. It really amazes me that people think Osama wanted Kerry to be president. Why would he want the hesitating, calculating democrat over the trigger happy cowboy republican? Makes no sense.
The Other Steve
Freely excercising it’s religious expression by ramming it down my throat at the point of a gun?
Hmm, sounds like the islamofascists to me.
Brian
No, not even them. (When was the last abortion clinic bombing, BTW? Seems rather anecdotal at this point. And, I believe that an abortion bomber was captured last year, and will be appropriately punished.) Even considering abortion bombers as a group, they cannot be said that they’re a threat to worldwide westernized society. Heck, even some of our favorite European countries have abortion laws that are more strict than ours. We’re as liberal as they come on the subject.
Steve, I applaud any effort to expose hypocrisy in politics, especially where it can affect laws that apply to all citizens. And Tim’s post satisfies that effort. Exposing such hypocrisy may eventually get some of those fundamentalists to see the holes in their arguments, or understand the importance of the separation of church and state.
But we should also leave room for democratic outcomes and let the chips fall where they may. See what’s happening in South Dakota. The legislature passes a law outlawing abortions, then the Sioux insist that they’ll place an abortion clinic on their reservation(s). All perfectly legal on both sides. Ain’t democracy wonderful, even with all our crazy fundamentalists and anarchists running around?
Brian
What are you talking about? Whose gun?
Steve
Oh, you had to go there. Now I am going to have to sit here, three blocks from Ground Zero, and listen to the lecture again about how liberals like me don’t understand the lessons of 9/11. A pox on your house, sirrah.
jg
So let me get this straight Al. You don’t care if I respect your opinion? You don’t want to change mine? Whats your point then? Why come here and say anything if you don’t care if anyone hears you? You’ve changed my mind on a few issues previoulsy, I figured this would be good news to you, to see that you are having an effect. Odd that you don’t care.
ET
It is all about sex. Sex is only for procreation. Other than that it is dirty, wrong, and evil.
Brian
The reason that they are living in caves might have something to do with our aggression toward them. But that’s the “leadership” of the movement. The soldiers, like the ones that flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon, are people that blend in. They were not cave-dwellers.
I would really like to discourage you from thinking that they are a mere nuisance. It’s a dangerous attitude to take. My opinions have come from readings of many different viewpoints on the subject, not from some passive, lock-step belief in Bush’s policies.
The speech that bin Laden made before the ’04 election was an effort to give the American people the message that, through their democratic process, they could choose a different path; a path other than Bush. If they chose to re-elect Bush, well….Allah be with them, because they picked their poison. This is all part of the campaign bin Laden follows that satisfies the Islamic religious scholars, who demand that their enemy be given 1) sufficient warning enough to change course and avoind violence, 2) an opportunity to convert to Islam, and 3) warning in advance of mass casualties. If these are not satisfied, he is in violation of Koranic law.
So, every message you see from bin Laden or Zawahiri should be viewed in this context. They warned us they would hit us with increasing frequency if we did not obey their requests, and they followed through in the 90s and up through 2001. 9/11 was not the pinncale of their military efforts, but the small win as a step to the greater goal of a worldwide Islamic resurgence. Thinking that they would have stopped at the borders of the Middle East is dangerously silly.
Al Maviva
JG, if you went to the link and took a look before you proclaimed you lost respect for me, or maybe if it wasn’t clear what I was doing by citing to it, asking me to clarify… But proclaiming on behalf of everybody that I’ve lost everybody’s respect?
The elderly study I cited was old, but probably not useless. I wasn’t really citing it to prove anything in the positive sense but rather to skewer El’s “99%+” statement, which El quite honorably modified substantially when he checked back in here. In the mean time Steve picked up the figure and started waving it around. The existence of that old study – which talks about a 33% morbidity rate for non-treatment – struck me as a fair fact to raise, given that the results of abject non-treatment in 1850 probably resemble the results of abject non-treatment today, though the survival rate today is seemingly a bit higher for ruptured ectopic pregnancies given all the medical advances, and the type of ectopic pregnancy seems to matter a bit. Current medical practice seems to permit “expectant management” of ectopic pregnancy in a number of cases where certain criteria are met, and in those cases there is a low morbidity rate. I know a little about it first hand aside from the Googling; prior to successfully spawning three kids, my sister had a couple ectopic pregnancies that terminated themselves without pharmacological or surgical treatment, and her doc thought it was serious, and worth monitoring, but not necessarily life threatening, subject to the caveat of continued close monitoring.
But that’s beside the point. All I was really doing was bashing the 99% figure El threw out and needling Steve for trying to defend it, apparently on the principle that if Al says something, it is guaranteed wrong. If I’ve lost your respect for it, well, I’m bummed, but I probably didn’t do much to earn your respect if it was that easily lost.
Perry Como
Brian is right. Islamofascists are the greatest threat our democratic republic has ever faced. Box cutter wielding fanatics can single handedly do what the Soviet Union failed to do, with thousands of nuclear tipped ICBMs aimed at us. We need to curtail the freedoms protected by the constitution before the Islamists do it for us.
VidaLoca
Brian, I think you’re letting youself off the hook too easily here:
As I understand the current state of things in SD, there’s only one clinic in the whole state (in Rapid City IIRC) where a woman can get an abortion. That clinic only has a doctor available two days/week, and she has to fly in from Minnesota (this from a program on PBS about a month ago, sorry I can’t provide better cite). Mississippi is more or less the same.
This is the work of home-grown Christian radicals — who are looking to extend their successes in SD and MS to the other 48 states.
Wishing for the best and hoping for “all perfectly legal” solutions where nobody will be greatly inconvenienced and everyone’s rights will be protected in the end isn’t persuasive: these folks are our Taliban, and they’re dangerous.
Sirkowski
When was religion ever reasonable?
Jim Allen
Davebo, if I can correctly read your gender in your name, and you actually do get an abortion, “Wow!” indeed.
Brian
If I’m letting myself off the hook, I must be on a hook. I didn’t know I was on one. Be that as it may…..
I am not throwing my trust to the wind, but trying to demonstrate my trust in our democracy, with all its flaws, in coming to a conclusion. I think that what the SD legislature did was wrong, and will ultimately fail. Sometimes, the pendulum has to swing the opposite way until it finally ends up in the middle. SD has made this swing, but it’s by no means the middle. We both should agree on that. On the topic of abortion, Americans would never advocate a complete ban (the far swing of the pendulum(, but they almost surely would agree on some retraints so that abortion at any time during pregnancy (the middle?). In such a situation, SD will be left to either retain its ill-advised law, or change it to meet the laws in other states.
I don’t for one second believe that all 50 states would embrace SD’s approach to abortion. It will simply never happen, no matter how our Christian fundamentalists try to couch the argument. We’ve come too far for that. It has as much chance of being embraced as slavery thirty years after Emancipation.
Steve
Well, slavery wasn’t allowed in most of the states either, even at its peak. That doesn’t mean that it represented a triumph of the democratic process.
The thing is, even if only one state bans abortion, people like me see it as an unacceptable infringement on personal freedom. Whereas you seem to take the more moderate position that well, it’s only one state, and maybe those folks will come to see the error of their ways in time. In the meantime, though, people end up dead because of laws like this. There’s a real cost to letting the democratic process sort these things out, and I think you would feel differently about the urgency if it was your wife or sister or daughter whose life was on the line.
The issue of whether abortion should be criminalized or not may be one that people can vote on. But the issue of whether it’s a constitutional right isn’t something that’s up to a legislative majority. The only body we have that can determine whether something is a right that ought to be protected from infringement by legislative majorities is the courts. And the courts have said it’s an intimate, personal decision that’s not to be interfered with, much like your right to use birth control, or your right to have as many kids as you feel like. It’s your right to disagree with how the courts interpret the Constitution, of course, but the fact is that a judicial decision is no less “legitimate” than a decision by a legislative majority. Both are wholly appropriate under our constitutional system.
jg
The dangerous attitude to take is the one that makes you paranoid. I’m aware of the threat, its just not as scary as you’ve convinced yourself it is.
You seriously think he wanted Kerry as president? Any chance he was using the fact that we won’t vote for the guy that the terrorist mastermind wants us to vote for? Why would he want a democrat? He attacked us three times under the last dem with no response, he finally gets a response out of an american president and you think he now wants to go back to a dem? I think you’re seriously misunderstanding his intent in attacking us. He wants to control all of the muslim lands in the middle east, get them under one caliph like they had in the past. He can’t just go from country to country knocking off leaders. Its impossible he doesn’t have an army. But if he can get everyone united in struggle (jihad) agaisnt a common enemy he can become the leader he wants to be. Leading his people in victory over a western aggressor. We have become that common enemy. He no longer has to make up stories of US aggression to scare his people, we’re there now, looking under veils and storming mosques. Shia and Sunni love each other like Catholics and Protestants but just as Catholics and Protestants will stand together if the big bad muslim comes for our women the Shia and Sunni will set aside their hatred and stand together to fight us over there. Do you realize that before we went into Iraq and created that lovely situation for the Iraqis no one in the middle east really hated us. Aside from Saudi resentment over our troops being there and the mullahs of Iran needed someone to rail on we hadn’t done anything worthy of hatred. The one country of note on this planet that had never tried to colonise the middle east is now the most hated of all. Thanks George, you’re doing a heckuva job against terrorism.
Brian
Steve, the elected representatives of that state voted in a law. That is the way it works. If the people of SD don’t agree with that law, they will eventually remove those representatives and get the law changed.
The difference between our views can be summed up by your willingness, and preference, to have the courts sort out issues to your satisfaction, bypassing any referendum. I think it should be the other way around in order for all voices to be heard, whether we like them or now. Eventually, the best argument will win. That takes time, but in the long run arrives at a conclusion (and a law) that all can live with. I don’t want courts deciding on the validity of gay marriage, whether it be pro or con. The people should decide it, because it’s a societal issue. Same for abortion. It affects the individual, but it also says a lot about our culture and what we want to be.
I don’t think he gave shit about Kerry. He would much prefer that we throw out the whole system, but I think that a Kerry win might have signaled to bin Laden that maye, just maybe, we were getting his message and were making a course correction. But going for Kerry would not have been the solution, but a tiny positive step, whihc would have been followed by yet more demands on us and our leaders to change our ways.
ppGaz
I’m late to the thread. Can we please start it over?
VidaLoca
Brian,
Yeah the hook allusion was unclear. I meant to say that I thought that in making your argument that AlQuaeda is a threat (a point on which we’re generally in agreement) you were unduly minimizing the danger posed by domestic religious fundamentalists.
In my view the latter, while unlikely to fly airplanes into tall buildings, are indeed a “totalitarian threat” as you put it. For example, as somebody here pointed out in one of the threads a couple of weeks ago, 12 states have legislation already enacted that will immediately criminalize abortion upon the determinaton by the Supreme Court that such legislation is constitutional. That’s 1/4 of the states. And it seems to me in the wake of such a decison that the fundamentalists would be pushing hard to enact similar legislation in the other 3/4.
Of course it’s not a foregone conclusion that they’d succeed but it does seem likely that it would cost a lot of people a lot of time and effort to organize the movement that would reverse that legislation, and that many women could die over the course of that process.
I’m less sanguine about this than you are. At any rate I hope we don’t have to go through the same process to get rid of the Talibanistas that we did with the slaveholders.
Steve
No, that’s not the way it works. You know better than that. The law will immediately be enjoined and struck down by the federal courts, and that’s that.
I’m puzzled by your confidence that in the end, a legislative majority will always end up looking out for the rights of a minority group. The Founding Fathers certainly didn’t see it that way, which is why we don’t have a pure democracy, and why we have checks and balances.
If your argument is carried to the logical conclusion, there’s no reason to have constitutional rights at all. Why should a bunch of guys who died two centuries ago be able to tell us that we can’t restrict freedom of speech if we feel like it, or inflict cruel and unusual punishments? Why don’t we simply let the majority decide these things, confident that in the end, the “right” decision will be reached?
Or perhaps you belong to the school of thought that says the rights specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights are inviolate, but everything else is up for grabs in the legislative arena. If you want to take that position, you have to deal with this little annoyance.
Brian
Fair enough. I agree with you on this. It’s also why I would be surprised if the Supreme Court willy nilly reversed Roe v Wade without providing some sunset provision to allow states the time to work through their own legislation. I’m reaching the limits of my legal knowledge here, if I didn’t already reach it further up this thread.
Brian
But who is the minority group? Women? Women who want abortions?
I think a majority of Americans would get behind abortion if it were put to a national vote, or even on a state-by-state basis. Absolutely. That horse has left the barn, and there’s no corralling it now.
ppGaz
I’m reminded of Bill Buckley’s admonition:
Democracy depends entirely upon submission of the minority.
Without that, governing is not possible. The country is going to have to grow up, and the only rational end game is going to be based on a choice model similar to the one you have now. The alternative is the utlimate rejection of every conservative and Republican idea and candidate. People are simply not going to stand for having the country permanently torn apart by moralizing poopheads.
Nobody is forcing abortions on the pro-life crowd. The pro-choice crowd basically just wants to be left alone. Being left alone is a very powerful imperative. Ultimately, it has to win out, or else you end up with coercion and then revolt.
I tell the righties, I won’t be governed by creed-thumping moralists. They seem to think we’re kidding. We’re not.
Part of the problem here is that the issue requires one to process some serious ambiguity. When does a human being exist and therefore deserve protection? Science is not going to tell you, it can only provide information which is just as likely to deepen the ambiguity as it is to clear it up. Religion can’t tell you either.
In the absence of clear guidance, people with agendas are going to rush in to fill the vacuum of decision. Moralizers are going to employ full throated moralization to try to divide and thereby conquer the masses. In the middle of all the noise and power struggles, the rights of the individual get trampled unless they are held up to the highest regard. By highest, I mean, higher than the moralizing desires of the moralists.
If Jesus H. Christ himself came down and said that a zygote was a human being and deserved the full protection of the law, I’d not believe it. I’d figure that Jesus was just another DougJ spoof. Seriously. I am not buying that proposition, and never will.
SeesThroughIt
In the big picture, I pretty much agree with this. The problem, however, is that when you’re dealing with people such as fundies, there isn’t really a compromise or a middle position for the pendulumn. They want abortion gone. Banned. Illegal. It’s kind of hard to approach the bargaining table across from people who have no real interest in bargaining.
EL
I do agree, as I think this blog contains posts many people who do try to argue from the facts, which is why I read it. You can bet I’m fairly mortified that I missed that one – shows what long held assumptions do.
I disagree with this. Ectopic pregnancies were very hard to diagnose prior to ultrasound and serum HCG pregnancy tests, both very recent inventions. I can recall when women suspected of having ectopic pregnancy had to have a long needle stuck behind their cervix to see if there was bleeding. Many ectopic pregnancies were missed, and women died. The study you cite involves only women who the technology of the time could diagnose – even fewer than the diagnose-by-needle era. Many women likely died before they were diagnosed.
Look again at the 19th century study you cited above. It was not 33% morbidity, but 33% survival – 66% mortality: “the survival rate in patients who were left untreated was 1 of 3.”
Brian
Agreed, but they won’t get it. Along similar lines, many people here in SoCal want illegal Mexicans to go back to their homeland, but it isn’t going to happen. Their opinions, while enough to get media attention, won’t sway the country. At least I am confident they won’t.
jg
They don’t have to sway the country, just enough to win elections. Its called a wedge issue. It gets people to the polls who normally wouldn’t bother but they care too much about this wedge issue to not vote. Ohio in 04 is a great example. If gay marriage wasn’t on the ballot its possible a lot of solid republican voters might have stayed home and Kerry wins in a landslide. Deosn’t mean if elected the republicans will actually do anything about gay marriage, I would imagine its not easy to pass legislation that discriminates against some of your citizens. So the issue stays alive until the next election when they can use it again to get people to vote for candidates who aren’t exactly working for them.
Brian
Ah, fuck it. Let’s play Jesus Dress Up.
Brian
And this is even better. Make our own religious signs.
Larry
Yeah, right.
Fringe elements running the Country
Bob In Pacifica
Wilhelm Reich’s MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM goes into how fascism and religion are in the business of anti-sexuality. Throw the anti-papaloma virus thing with Missouri cutting state funding for birth control for the poor. Then you have anti-abortion, anti-sex education, anti-homosexuality, anti-masturbation, anti-stem cell research, and on and on and on. They did the same thing in Nazi Germany, ratcheting up the anti-sex thing.
And what do you have with a population that is sexually repressed? A lot of people feeling guilty about doing what is natural, afraid about God reading their minds or watching over their shoulders and denying them heaven, and ready to find blame with the designated “other.”
That’s why religions and governments (and for most of the history of civilization there wasn’t much differentiation) love to keep the proles sexually frustrated. And that’s why an in-the-closet guy like George Bush is the perfect candidate to lead the parade of sexless fools.
Keep your hands to yourself!
lard lad
As long as we’re hashing out abortion, pro and con, what thinkest thou about this attempt by Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid to stake out a reasonable position on the topic? Let’s hear from the Balloon Juice Irregulars…
http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/press/05/2005317532.html
Brian
I’m not religious myself, but I am not afraid of fellow religious Americans, who also consider themselves conservative like me. I don’t understand the hatred some of you seem to have for people who happen to think differently than you do in a religious sense. They are freely expressing their religion, perfectly compatible with our way of life and Constitution, and have no chance of turning this country into a fascistic state or theocracy, as much as you’d fantasize things to be otherwise.
Speaking of fascism:
Speech codes and indoctrination at universities
Smoking bans (in public and private places)
Media control (legacy media)
Demagoguery (Congressional Democrats)
Ever-increasing taxation to support a welfare state
These are but a few examples of fascism I see on the left. You have your perspective, and I have mine. When it comes to sex, do you really tink we’re sexually repressed here in America? Do we need more sexual freedom than we now have? Has the sexual revolution not been won? And if it has, has it demonstrated results for the better in our society? Or, is it more fun to focus on the proclivities of the far-right GOP and call the leader of the country a closet case?
Brian
This is the kind of religious fundamentalism we should all be concerned about. Ignoring it, and picking on American Christians instead as a form of political sport, means that we are willing to surrender the rights that allow you to criticize your fellow citizens who are simply following their beliefs. You are surrendering them by ignoring real hatreds and being unwilling to fight for the liberal ideas that make this country great.
Bob In Pacifica
Brian, you wouldn’t know fascism if it bit you on the ass. In fact, it may have bit you on the ass and you thought you were being vaccinated.
-Speech codes at universities? Huh? Like that’s really an issue except in a David Horowitz’s diseased brain?
-Smoking bans? Life, liberty and the pursuit of blowing smoking in someone’s face? I’m not sure if smoking bans are on top of the list of things for which fascist regimes are notable.
-Media control. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Except that judging from your espoused belief system you probably don’t even know who owns the media. If you read books, I suggest you find George Seldes FACTS AND FASCISM. It was written in 1943. It’ll help you sort out about the media and fascism.
Demagoguery, welfare state… Brian, you are a witless fuck.
Are you anti-sex? Do you think religious restrictions on someone’s sexual conduct should be imposed by law?
Do we need more “sexual freedom” than we have now? Well, if you are a gay couple who want to get married, I guess the answer would be yes. If sexual freedom means access to birth control and family planning to include abortion if the woman wants, the answer would be yes.
Do you think that U.S. health policy should be to prevent people from having sex and punish people who do?
And what do you think about Jeff Gannon’s two hundred visits to the White House? Could you live with a gay President, I mean, aside from the hypocrisy?
lard lad
Um… tell me, Brian, why is “demagoguery” a specific example of LEFT-WING fascism? I wasn’t aware that being a demagogue was limited to any one political philosophy.
You don’t REALLY want to be blitzed by the denizens of this site with a lengthy list of demagogues of the right… do you?
jg
Well if that was what was happening you’d have a point. The fact that you actually see it that way means there is no point in having a discussion about the religious right. People trying to make their religious views into law isn’t just people thinking differently than others in a religious sense.
Your question:
Sums it all up.
Perry Como
Someone needs to study history a bit more…
Pooh
and a pony
Al Maviva
Okay, El. Now my turn to be mortified.
Perhaps I ought to quit blog commenting and limit my writing to things where I have more than 5 minutes to read things. Or just go back to my usual job of selling shots of ass on the streetcorner in exchange for hits of crystal meth. Jeebus. I apologize.
DecidedFenceSitter
Al,
Can I have your billing address to remit the cost of one (1) Keyboard and one (1) monitor? Both were damaged due to the velocity of coke exiting my mouth due to my spittake.
Santa Claus
You sinful motherfuckers.
Your nation is a cess pool of immorality and indecency, and you bastards spend your time DEFENDING the libertine liberal moonbat maroons who’ve made this hideous nightmare of national decay a reality?
I know some lefties who are getting coal for Christmas. This is one elf who ain’t playing along with your debauched little game anymore. You’re all on notice. Neither shit nor shinola for any of yinz Democrats, when it’s time for me to dole out the goodies again.
And for the record, “pregnancy” could be defined as “being in a state wherein the egg is fertilized.” So RU486 is just as murderous as partial-birth abortion. Problem solved, statute written, let’s see it made law. Or not. What the fuck do I care, I live north of Baffin Island anyway. If you motherfuckers want to be asshole about this, it just makes my toy-route that much shorter.
Bob In Pacifica
Perry Como, the Nazis were big on public health, and looked out for environmental problems like asbestos, for example. Nazi scientists were aware of smoking as a health problem. Then again, so did American scientists at the time, but tobacco companies in the U.S. successfully suppressed the information. The fascists in Italy, on the other hand, didn’t make any effort against smoking.
When the Nazis took over a territory they immediately did two things: they seized the banks and they lowered the price of beer.
However, the Nazis didn’t ban smoking in bars. If you were a full-blooded Aryan you couldn’t marry a Jew, but you could blow smoke into their faces. Considering the ovens, the smoke from cigarettes or lack thereof was not a highlight of those regimes.
Al Maviva
Sure, DFS. Just send an email with your address to: [email protected] and I’ll make sure we send somebody over right away to look at your computer.
Oops, scratch that.
Um, I’m not sending you a new one but you have my permission to write it off on your 1040-A as “business entertainment”. You know, same line item you would normally use for strippers, drugs, golfing with friends, or blackmail payments, which technically aren’t entertainment but are usually affiliated closely enough with entertainment to give you a good argument if audited.
EL
Don’t do that – we’d lose one of the people who tries to argue from the facts – and I think every political discussion needs more of those. Besides, if it rots your teeth, who would pay the dental bills?
Al Maviva
But it keeps me sooooo thin, El. I agree with you about trying to find the facts and respect your emphasis on it. Yeah, I’ll stick around, I guess I’ll have to find another way to get my meth, like brewing it up from cough syrup. Whassat? The government is trying to restrict the sales of cough syrup? Damn you, John Ashcroft! Damn you!
Brian
Easy to be a prick when you’re hiding behind a blog, eh Bob? When we fire up the ovens again, we Nazis will be doing it to roast your useless fat to burn energy for the reading lamp I’ll use to enjoy the Buffoon-Juice Book Club.
I’m not interested in your book suggestion. My reading selection doesn’t include leftovers from a Bay Area book shop.
If you don’t have something useful to say from now on, don’t say anything at all.
tb
Wow, nothing like an abortion thread to bring out the scum of the earth. Here’s an interesting link. Why am I not surprised by the hypocrisy?
Santa Claus
Kiss my plump elven ass, tb.
Santa Claus
Sorry, I just realized that offered nothing substantive to this debate. (Except my behind, which is strictly reserved for Mrs. Klaus.) Your link proves nothing except that some people are hypcrites. It must be wondrous to discover this now. I suppose next week you’ll realize that some people are evil! Truly, a childhood-in-adulthood is a sacred thing, and joyous to behold.
BIRDZILLA
Abortion the ultimate form of child abuse and favored by the wackos who have SAVE THE REDWOODS,SAVE THE RAINFORESTS,SAVE THE WHALE bumper stickers
Santa Claus
Amen to that, Birdzilla.
BTW, your posts are the most interesting haikus I’ve ever read.