by Ugh
Well here we are not even two months into GOP rule and they've racked up quite a record and they haven't even gotten started!
Most recently there is the CBO score of the GOP "replacement" for the ACA, and the Trump WH view which is even worse (or, better, depending on your POV I guess). What do you call 14,000,000 new uninsured by the end of 2018? You know the answer. It also cuts addiction funding, at a time when people are dying from it at such a rate that states are running out of funds to bury them. Takers! Also, too, turn your DNA over to your employer as part of a wellness program or face thousands of dollars being deducted from your salary. Of course, once your DNA is then in the hands of a third party does that mean the government can get it without a warrant under Smith v. Maryland? I'm not sure why not. So exciting.
The bill would also provide almost $600 billion in tax cuts, the overwhelming majority going to…? You also know the answer to this one.
Then we have the "shackles" coming off ICE and the CBP (and they are the most wonderful agencies already). Separating children from families at the border? Check. Sowing fear in children and their families that schools are sending out helpful "know your rights" guides? Check. Massive searches of mobile devices at the border – as many in a month as the entire year of 2015? Check. Deporting victims of domestic violence after being alerted by their abusers? Check. But you carry papers with you at all times showing you're a US citizen entitled to remain in this country, right? Because that might be your only chance to avoid due process-less removal (and even then you better hope you have a well behaved immigration official – it might not be enough).
Then there's the attempt to prevent you from suing people and corporations who have harmed you, or at least limiting what you can recover from them. Lovely!
State department? We don't need no stinkin' state department.
And of course the all-american bombs of love approach to foreign policy has been intensified and extended. Sorry civilians, you shouldn't have been born there.
Decimate net neutrality? Check. Let ISP's sell your personal internet history? Check.
And so many more I can't even count and look up the links (roll back of EPA regulations, giant budget cuts to everything but the defense department, appointment of cabinet secretaries who oppose the mission of the department they're heading, a straight up racist leading the DOJ, the extension of the GOP's disenfranchisement campaign against African Americans, white supremacists holding top POTUS advisory opinions, the border wall, POTUS hissownself etc. etc. etc.).
And all of this is of course accompanied by straight up lying. Not carefully worded statements, not answering a different question than what's asked, or filibustering with non-answers, etc. (though there's all that too). Just straight up lying. From Trump to Steve Miller to Spicer to Speaker Ryan to Chairman Brady. All in the service of the above agenda – but if it's so great, why are you lying about it?
America! By and for rich white people, and fnck the rest of you.
15+ years on and the world’s most powerful country still can’t defeat the terrorust organization that attacked us on 9/11. Perpetual war.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/13/pentagon-military-commanders-temporary-battlefields-white-house
Meant to include this on lifting restrictions on avoiding civilian casualties in the post.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/us/politics/trump-loosen-counterterrorism-rules.html?referer=https://t.co/wkkigKkZrI
Intended destruction of the EPA and repeal of the Endangered Species Act.
Rumblings about withdrawing from the climate accords.
It’s what a lot of people want. Or at least were willing to vote for.
We’ll see if they like it in real life.
Maybe they will.
It’s what a lot of people want. Or at least were willing to vote for.
The Donald’s entire Presidential campaign was a successful troll, in the fishing sense. One flashy overstimulating lure followed another, until the subjects lunged for it.
But the reality is full of big ugly treble hooks.
My sister listened to the “American carnage” inauguration speech.
She thought it sounded hopeful and optimistic.
I am seriously curious to see how people who supported Trump respond to his presidency. My guess is that a lot of them are going to think it’s great.
Where we go from there, I have no idea.
I am seriously curious to see how people who supported Trump respond to his presidency.
because nothing fascinates NPR like the Trump Voter, they’ve been doing stories about them for a year now. this week, they’re going back to people they’ve previously interviewed to see what they think of Trump’s Presidency thus far.
i have no idea what the responses are because there are few things i care less about than the delusions of people dumb enough to vote for that lying, daughter-lusting, pussy-grabbing, bankruptcy-addicted fraud.
This is an interesting take on J.D. Vance, speaking of the fascination with Trump voters.
NPR, NYT, a few thousand bloggers, and all the rest gotta blabber, I guess. (Including me/us. 🙂
I speak particularly of the fascination with Trump voters. It was, IIRC, Tony P. who pointed out here a while back that the biggest predictor for who voted for whom was still (probably as always?) the party designation. I have seen people talk about people who voted for Obama and then Trump, but when pressed they could only point to county-level data, not any polling of individual voters, i.e. these counties went for Obama before, and Trump now. That tells us nothing about individual voters.
If someone votes for an R or a D every time regardless (or perhaps stays home if s/he can’t be bothered for any given election), then I’m not sure what the point is of piling up all this pretend evidence about who they were and why they did it.
because nothing fascinates NPR like the Trump Voter, they’ve been doing stories about them for a year now
I’m waiting for the Viking River tour of the Ohio valley. Pittsburgh to Cairo! See them in their natural habitat. Learn their colorful folkways.
And no, I’m not picking on the “hillbillies”, I’m making fun of all of the liberal elite totebaggers – you know, people like me! – who are suddenly fascinated with all of those worthy hardscrabble heartlanders.
At least we mean well, mostly.
There’s a business opportunity there, someone should jump on it.
If someone votes for an R or a D every time regardless (or perhaps stays home if s/he can’t be bothered for any given election), then I’m not sure what the point is of piling up all this pretend evidence about who they were and why they did it.
It’s true that there isn’t much point in looking at those voters. But there might be a lot of reason to look at the folks who, for example, voted for Obama (twice, even), and then voted for Trump. Understanding why they made the choice that they did could be important in winning in 2020. And even for winning Congressional (and state!0 elections in 2018.
I while back I gave wj some crap about D’s “learning more about conservative concerns”.
My apologies to wj, it’s not his fault. It was 100% reaction to all the “think pieces” about D’s understanding the Trump Voter. And yet zero such pieces about Trump Voters understanding “coastal elite D’s”.
Not his fault, nor our fault. I blame the “liberal” media.
And yet zero such pieces about Trump Voters understanding “coastal elite D’s”.
we need a great American Team Building Exercise!
ok everyone, gather in groups of ten. now everybody shake hands with the person to your left!
the folks who, for example, voted for Obama (twice, even), and then voted for Trump.
In Iowa, which swung 10 points from Obama to Trump, the open Supreme Court seat was a big motivator.
Iowa has many single-issue anti-abortion voters — religious people whose churches have been telling them for decades that abortion is murder, full stop. When abortion’s not really on the ballot, they don’t all vote together, but I know a couple otherwise rational Iowans, who voted at least onece for Obama, for whom this one chance to overturn Roe outweighed all other considerations.
I think that is one of under-discussed influences on the recent regrettable outcome.
And yet zero such pieces about Trump Voters understanding “coastal elite D’s”.
A couple of things. First, we don’t exactly have a plethora of Trump Voters here. So not much point in suggesting they need to build some understanding. They’re not here to hear it.
Second, I’m not entirely sure how to motivate them to such an understanding. The Democrats have an obvious motivation: winning the next election cycle. (Specifically, winning the offices, not just the total votes.) But the only way I see to motivate the Trump Voters kind of depends on them getting hurt enough by Trump’s actions to break thru their information bubble.
everyone, gather in groups of ten. now everybody shake hands with the person to your left!
Why does this sound like preparation for a circular firing squad?
I think that is one of under-discussed influences on the recent regrettable outcome.
I know that some people can’t tolerate Roe v. Wade. But does that really have anything to do with abortion, which is at record lows? If they really cared about abortion, rather than the right of a woman to decide whether to have an abortion, it seems like it wouldn’t be that much of an issue anymore.
Misogyny prevails. I contend that this election was based on misogyny more than anything else.
First, we don’t exactly have a plethora of Trump Voters here.
I think it’s more a matter of pieces in the media at large.
wj: It’s more than “Trump voters” or “Trump voters on ObWi”.
I was hearing the same thing from 2008 to 2016, over and over. “D’s need to understand heartland conservatives”. Never the other way. But perhaps I’m just not immersed in the correct media. Does Limbaugh exhort his listeners to ‘understand liberals better’, and I just missed it?
Now, one could just say “those heartland conservatives? Their ignorance is impregnable!” and leave it at that. But that does seem rather insulting and talking down to them, which I hear is deplorable.
But hey, perhaps heartland conservatives have PERFECT INNATE knowledge of everything in the minds of ‘coastal elites’ (they sure act like it sometimes), so no education about ‘the others’ is needed!
Forming a circle and shaking hands to the left sounds like something you do in a scout troop.
But the only way I see to motivate the Trump Voters kind of depends on them getting hurt enough by Trump’s actions to break thru their information bubble.
I think the pain is probably on its way.
Breaking through the bubble will require seeing that Trump is, in some way, actually responsible for what happens while he’s POTUS.
Don’t know if that will happen. There are too many other folks to blame it on.
If they really cared about abortion, rather than the right of a woman to decide whether to have an abortion, it seems like it wouldn’t be that much of an issue anymore.
IF they really cared about abortion, they would be banging the drums for free contraceptives in every high school. For free contraceptives in every insurance plan. Because nothing cuts down on abortions like contraception.
But somehow they seem to be almost as opposed to contraception as to abortion — especially for teenagers. Not quite, but almost.
Snarki, fair enough. I’d say that perhaps (perhaps!) the Trump Voters could be convinced by the same route as the “liberal coastal elites”, i.e. Democrats): lose elections and figure out that they need to get back to Reagan’s Big Tent approach.
Again, the problem is going to be motivation. Until you have a motivation, saying “You need to reach out, to try to understand the other guys” is going to fall on deaf ears.
Don’t know if that [blaming Trump for the pain caused by the AHCA] will happen. There are too many other folks to blame it on.
I note that Breitbart is already referring to the Republican House plan as “Ryancare”. It appears that the White House is trying to shut off the “Trumpcare” label.
Haha!
Like I said…
I have some other family members who were discussing Trump, and how he has given up his billionaire lifestyle to assume the humble office of POTUS.
Only a man who truly loved his country would do such a thing, said my brother in law.
A lot of folks really, really, really love the guy. He wasn’t joking about the shooting somebody on 5th Ave thing.
But does that really have anything to do with abortion, which is at record lows?
Oh, I agree that deep down it’s about misogyny and slut-shaming.
I think it’s unlikely that such attitudes can be changed, and that’s not the story those people tell when asked.
At the level of narrative and rationalization, they think their religion calls on them to vote against legalized abortion bedcause it’s murder.
I’m trying to explain the shift in the vote (Obama -> Trump); I not intending to analyze the psycho-cultural roots of opposition to abortion (a topic on which non-religious liberals tend to agree loudly and at length)
“Oh, I agree that deep down it’s about misogyny and slut-shaming.”
This is why we don’t communicate. it cant be about what they say it is about, it has to be something we can label them with so we can dismiss them.
It was 100% reaction to all the “think pieces” about D’s understanding the Trump Voter.
Yep. I must have missed all those stories about how rural voters would need to come to “understand” and “empathize” liberals if they wanted to ever win the presidency again back when Obama squeaked through in 2012.
Those were the days.
it has to be something we can label them with so we can dismiss them.
This is tiresome. Which side labels the other side as “murderers”? But yeah, labels.
… it cant be about what they say it is about, it has to be something we can label them with so we can dismiss them.
No. It can’t be about what they say it is about, because what they say it is about isn’t consistent with their other positions.
“… it cant be about what they say it is about, it has to be something we can label them with so we can dismiss them.”
Yes it can. First consistency is not a requirement for humans, it is not even normal. Second, the equivalency I would infer from your statement is not accurate.
So no, you don’t have to be a misogynist and slut-shamer to object to abortion. All you really need is to believe that life begins at conception or quickening or anywhere prior to the abortion.
Marty :
I am arguing
1. Politically, publicly, we should take anti-abortion activists at their word about their motivations. That’s more or less the thrust of my comments in this thread.
2. Privately, in an effort to understand deep motivations, liberals should notice that other expressed policy preferences of at least some of the most-vocal opponents of legal abortion, concerning contraception, rape, women who are sexually active outside marriage, sexual harrassment, war, and the death penalty, tend not to support those “sanctity of life” explanations.
I have no doubt that you are sincere in your convictions.
However, I personally know several fervent abortion opponents who will say out loud that unwanted pregnancy is the appropriate “punishment” for women who have sex without intending to get pregnant.
As I didn’t really want to derail this “what can we do? / how can we explain?” thread into yet another chapter of the abortion flamewar, I will now stifle.
Have the last word if you like.
This is why we don’t communicate
One of 1,000 reasons.
You have a point, so do bobbyp and wj.
I don’t have an issue with people who have religious objection to abortion.
I have a problem with people who insist on, for instance, cutting off all public money to Planned Parenthood, even though only a tiny amount of their budget, and none of the federal money, goes to providing abortions.
I have a problem with people who refuse to contribute to health insurance for their employees if the policy includes coverage for abortion. I’m hard pressed to even trace the connection from their pocket to the medical procedure.
Everybody likes having clean hands. It’s nice to have your preferences indulged. Too bad it’s not available to everyone.
There is a conversation to be had about this topic. And, we’ve been having it for 40 freaking years. I’m not seeing a lot of progress.
Whose fault is that? Damned if I know.
All you really need is to believe that life begins at conception or quickening or anywhere prior to the abortion.
That is surely so.
And among the things that prevents a useful conversation from happening is the inability of folks who do believe that to accept that not everyone shares that belief.
“Misogyny prevails. I contend that this election was based on misogyny more than anything else.”
My brother in law, who lives in Des Moines and has lots of evangelical relatives, said kind of unprompted that the “Hillary hate was just too strong.” Which in my mind means the 25 year campaign to destroy the Clintons finally worked, albeit just barely and with a lot of other help and luck.
Anyway, we will see how the GOP vision for America works out, for better or worse.
Thanks, Ugh. Yeah. I just hope that I live long enough to see them gone.
And among the things that prevents a useful conversation from happening is the inability of folks who do believe that to accept that not everyone shares that belief.
I’m pretty sure that they accept that not everyone shares their belief.
What they cannot accept is that it’s OK for others to not share their beliefs. Certainly not to act on another basis. On this or any other issue. It looks to me like an absolutely binary worldview: my way or evil (probably deliberately evil) — no other option.
I think life begins before conception, but I’m still pro-choice.
hsh, you are not alone
–TP
Lots of people have objections to abortion that are not close to religious, simply because they believe taking that life is wrong. There are those who don’t accept others can believe differently, but lots of people who understand that people can and do.
None of which changes the point that just generically declaring everyone that is anti abortion is really just a misogynist slut shamer is not calling them names for what they believe. It is calling them names that mostly don’t apply to dismiss them as a more universally accepted evil.
Marty,
I whole-heartedly believe in your sincerity, but calling the stance you describe “non-religious” is only confusing things. If you hold the belief “killing is wrong”, and the stance that a fetus is within such a prohibition, you have two metaphysical, ethical statements that are impossible to prove without using similarly unprovable axioms. Such stance (and its counterstance) are a matter of non-rational ethics, and cannot really be considered different from religious beliefs.
In practical life, though, people tend to hold a set of beliefs that is compatible with their social “tribe”. As such, anti-abortion stance is usually linked to a set of disgusting conservative and racist ideas, and you can, with good faith, assume that a person opposing abortion is usually also a racist, a Republican and against social justice.
generically declaring everyone that is anti abortion is really just a misogynist slut shamer is not calling them names for what they believe.
People can believe what they want without being misogynist slut shamers. The misogyny comes into it when they don’t allow women’s beliefs and needs to determine their own fate.
I may be pro-choice, but I’m anti-abortion. I don’t think very many people actually like abortions. Hell, I’m pro-life. I’m even alive, myself!
“As such, anti-abortion stance is usually linked to a set of disgusting conservative and racist ideas, and you can, with good faith, assume that a person opposing abortion is usually also a racist, a Republican and against social justice.”
You can assume anything, but not remotely acting in good faith.
I don’t disagree wih Marty’s point here.
That said, as a practical matter, if you want to engage in conversation with people who disagree with you, you are probably going to have to live with name calling and unfair generalizations and characterizations.
That’s the starting point. Especially online, even in places like ObWi.
It’s not an impediment to conversation, it’s the opening position.
Of course 28% of Democrats are not pro-choice. And not necessarily on religious grounds.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.refinery29.com/amp/2017/01/138071/march-for-life-2017-anti-abortion-democrats
I think that’s what you *think* you need to believe, but I think it’s more complicated than that.
You also need to believe that it’s more important to prioritize the life of that blastocyst->fetus above the well-being of the mother. I am quite happy to believe that “life begins at conception” (or at least at fertilization) — but I don’t think that that life is as important as the mother’s choice of whether to bring a life into the world at that point.
You know that most people who have abortions already have at least one child? You’d think they were in a pretty good position to judge if having another one would be a good idea for them and the baby.
I think people want there to be bright lines in this debate. Really, there aren’t.
It would be easier to accept the claim that “pro-life” is about life if the “pro-lifers” showed any care for any life other than fetal.
But they don’t.
They generally tend to also be pro-gun, pro-war, pro-pollution, and pro-death penalty, while being against things like funding pre-natal care, maternity care, pediatric care, housing, and food assistance.
IOW, IMO, “pro-life” is idolatry, with The Fetus as the worship object.
It’s easy to worship fetuses. They have no personality, no character traits, no agency, no opinions, no ideas, not even much of an appearance. They’re not messy bundles of contradictions, like actual people are. It’s easy to project onto them any ideals you want.
But it has nothing to do with life.
and i’d have a much easier time believing in the deep faith-based opposition to abortion if 80+% of evangelicals didn’t vote for the lying, lecherous, quasi-incestual, fraud-perpetrating, chicken-hawk bankruptcy addict.
If you hold the belief “killing is wrong”, and the stance that a fetus is within such a prohibition, you have two metaphysical, ethical statements that are impossible to prove without using similarly unprovable axioms.
Ok, I’ll bite: killing is perfectly fine and anyone who disagrees is imposing their metaphysical, religious views on the rest of us, which we can assume, in good faith, is being done in bad faith by the religious bigot.
Make sense?
Or, we can say ‘the unjustified taking of a human life is morally wrong’. Then we can ask, is the unborn child/fetus a life? Yes or no. If no, then no conflict with the basic premise. If yes, then, balancing the interests of the woman and the unborn child/fetus, can abortion be justified under some or all circumstances? If no, then *that* conversation is over. If yes, then we progress to: under what circumstances is abortion justified? For all of the talk about pro-choice and pro-life, this is grond zero for the vast majority of people on both sides of the issue. Few argue that abortion is fine anytime, anyway and at any point in the pregnancy. That is an outlier view.
My views are: (1) the right to abortion is not enshrined in the Constitution and is therefore defaulted to the states; (2) if I were permitted to vote on the question, my vote would be to allow abortion in the cases of rape, incest and an identifiable medical threat to the mother’s health (pregnancy per se is not a sufficient threat to health among the general population of pregnant women to justify abortion, although it is a medical certainty that some women are sufficiently at risk of material, adverse health affects to make abortion medically necessary); and (3) I do not favor a constitutional amendment either way on the issue.
I don’t view disallowing abortion for reasons of economics, convenience, timing, social/economic hardship a sufficient basis for overcoming the unborn child’s right to life. I believed that back when I was rolling the dice in the back seat of my car in high school, and I’ve believed it all of my life. Our first child was born while we were undergraduates 7 months after we got married. While I am not indifferent to what women–or men, for that matter–do with their bodies (whether it’s slamming one’s head into someone else’s head as a spectator sport or letting social/sexual pressure force an undesired sexual act or any of 100’s of other examples), I respect the freedom of any adult to live as they choose. It happens that women get pregnant and men don’t. That’s biology and can’t be fixed. If biology is unfair, that unfairness is not corrected at the cost of another human’s life. I’m with with and actively encourage birth control and even sterilization (if that is what someone wants).
I also believe the father has a moral and economic duty to not only the child but to the mother. If there was a way to legislate good parenting and parental responsibility by the father that wasn’t riskier than the father’s defaulting on his obligations, I’d be in favor of that. It is legislatively feasible to compel support payments up to and including a permanent levy on the father’s earnings. I’m fine with that. Make men pay–it’s not their “fair” share, women get the shaft in this deal, but it’s not nothing either–and they will be a lot more careful about how they deploy Mr. Friendly. Right now, there is no downside at all, as a practical matter.
How do I know that a pregnant woman is carrying a human life?
Ultrasound. It’s visual and pretty straightforward.
But they don’t.
The mind reading ability of the SJW class is truly amazing. As is their capacity for reasoned analysis and engagement.
That’s my racist, anti-social justice take on things. Deplort me.
Deplort. I like that. It’s like deplore and deport at the same time. Very apropos these days.
“I think people want there to be bright lines in this debate. Really, there aren’t.”
I don’t think there are any bright lines. I am not even espousing where my vague lines are. I am simply saying that dismissing people who are anti abortion because you’ve(general you) decided they are pro-gun, pro-war, pro-pollution, pro-death penalty, misogynistic slut shamers precludes finding any point of agreement. It is a way to demonize them, by your assumption not by their position.
I’m going to put this out there one more time: I’m pro-choice, pro-life, and anti-abortion. How is that?
Here’s a point of agreement: No one who doesn’t want an abortion is required to get one.
That means, in the continuing discussion, you are pro-choice.
The public argument is about the extent and in what manner government should play a role in the decision.
Being pro-choice and anti-abortion is a common stance.
The public argument is about the extent and in what manner government should play a role in the decision.
Thank you.
I am simply saying that dismissing people who are anti abortion because you’ve(general you) decided they are … precludes finding any point of agreement.
I think this is a fair point.
I’m with with and actively encourage birth control and even sterilization (if that is what someone wants).
I’m down with and actively . . .
The public argument is about the extent and in what manner government should play a role in the decision.
how about: “none”?
in most things, “conservatives” are all about “none”.
take your win.
In other news, the President of the United States “hits back at Snoop Dogg.”
The leader of the Grand Old Party, the free world, and the most powerful person on earth, ladies and gentlemen.
take your win.
Compelling argument. I’m sold. Marty?
I would like McKinney to answer the following questions:
1) Do you have the “right” to donate one of your kidneys?
2) If yes, where do you find it in the Constitution?
3) If no, are you okay with the State of Texas deciding the question?
Note that I am asking McKinney about “rights”, not about “life”.
–TP
I would like McKinney to answer the following questions:
1) Do you have the “right” to donate one of your kidneys?
I don’t have a constitutional right to donate my kidney’s.
2) If yes, where do you find it in the Constitution?
N/A.
3) If no, are you okay with the State of Texas deciding the question?
As long as I’m getting to vote on who makes that decision and to vote them out if I feel strongly enough about it. Your question can be seen in at least two ways. First, am I ok with the state having the police power to regulate organ donations? Yes, I am, provided the regulation is reasonable. Second, am I ok with a specific statutory prohibition on making a voluntary kidney donation to my wife or a friend? No, I am not ok with that.
But, unlike Roe v Wade, I get a vote.
Note that I am asking McKinney about “rights”, not about “life”.
I got that.
On another topic, seriously, WTF?
I think we need a perennial open thread, dedicated to stuff like this, entitled “Trump trolls America”.
My views are: (1) the right to abortion is not enshrined in the Constitution and is therefore defaulted to the states
McKinney, how does the 9th Amendment weigh in this? That is, what would qualify as an unenumerated right which is, however, not left to the states? Seriously, I’m not a lawyer and would like to understand where the line is.
McKinney, how does the 9th Amendment weigh in this? That is, what would qualify as an unenumerated right which is, however, not left to the states? Seriously, I’m not a lawyer and would like to understand where the line is.
The IX, given its plain text, simply means the failure to enumerate a right doesn’t mean the right doesn’t exist. It does not mean: any ‘right’ anyone can conjure up has constitutional dignity. The Constitution does not address assault, rape, robbery or murder, but that failure doesn’t create a right to commit those crimes by inference.
The 10th Amendment is clearer: what isn’t specifically reserved to the Feds or specifically prohibited to the states, is reserved to the states, or to the people. It seems pretty clear to me that the 10th encompasses a whole range of items not within the Federal regime that are appropriate for state action, one of them being abortion. Now, a lot of things seem clear to me in my day-to-day law practice that my opposition finds to be the opposite of clear, or clearly the opposite of what I think is clear, so my ‘clear’ and yours likely are not the same.
McKinney’s positions on contraception and sterilization are more consistent with being anti-abortion (and, by extension, anti-choice, I guess) than are most anti-choice people’s. That’s great, but he is the exception.
If we really want to get into the weeds, we could start by discussing things like Plan B and very precisely when “life” begins. (I thought it began a really long time ago when lightning hit a pond full of organic compounds or something.)
My views are: (1) the right to abortion is not enshrined in the Constitution
What does this mean? That “women have the right to an abortion” or nearly identical language is not written into the text of the Constitution? That a right to an abortion is not clearly subsumed into or a sub-category of some other right? What?
The 10th Amendment is clearer: what isn’t specifically reserved to the Feds or specifically prohibited to the states, is reserved to the states, or to the people. It seems pretty clear to me that the 10th encompasses a whole range of items not within the Federal regime that are appropriate for state action, one of them being abortion.
But not personal action, as in “to the people.” And who keeps the states from acting on what should be reserved for the people to decide for themselves?
McTX: I don’t have a constitutional right to donate my kidney’s.
Your kidney’s what? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
But, unlike Roe v Wade, I get a vote.
You have had “a vote” for 40+ years since Roe. So have I. So have most of us on the shady side of 60. We all continue to have “a vote” (except those of us who are targeted by “voter ID” laws, but let that pass) as long as we continue to have elections. I would have thought that you, as a lawyer, understand that courts including the Supreme one, are an essential part of our system of self-government.
What would it take to satisfy your “process” objection? A national referendum, a la Brexit? Maybe we should do that sort of thing; I take no position on that point.
I do predict that “abortion” will recede as an issue as we boomers stagger nearer to the grave. Sex and pregnancy are fun to discuss, but death affects more people, more and more of who will, in coming years, face the final question: do I have the right to die? Now that’s a question about “life”.
–TP
For the most part I’d agree with McKT here (as expressed in his 10:38 AM). And differences in detail would be open to reasonable negotiation. The problem is not in that general view but in the reality on the ground. When I still went to school this was in essence the legal situation in Germany, but in Southern Germany (Bavaria in particular) this meant a de facto ban on abortions while in the North it was no restrictions in the first trimester, conditioned in the second and emergency-only in the third. So, the spirit of the law got violated everywhere in both directions. In the end we got the dubious compromise of ‘illegal but not prosecuted’ with the Northern way as the default mitigated by a mandatory councelling. But unlike the situation in the US the German Supreme Court made it clear that it would not tolerate any shenanigans by the Southern governments (and Germany is a wee bit smaller and public transportation more or less universally available, so few out-of-reach problems).
Fortunately we lack the organized ‘pro-lifers’ that don’t shy away from arson&murder, and even the RCC has by now made clear that violence gets no support from it (some silent sympathizers among the high clerus are not among us anymore).
than are most anti-choice people’s. That’s great, but he is the exception.
I don’t think this is correct. Other than outliers and the Catholic Church (with millions of practicing dissenters), what identifiable group opposes birth control?
That a right to an abortion is not clearly subsumed into or a sub-category of some other right? What?
That other than compelling a woman, at the risk of her life, i.e. deprivation of life without due process, there is nothing in the Constitution that expresses or implies the right to terminate a pregnancy, whether one favors or disfavors the Roe formulation.
But not personal action, as in “to the people.” And who keeps the states from acting on what should be reserved for the people to decide for themselves?
A fair question. First, the people, over time, can change their minds and, though the franchise, change the law in their state. So, that’s one limit. That said, the people have made some bad laws, which has compelled SCOTUS to find certain elements of fundamental liberty that are either inferred from the Constitution or implied in a system of ordered liberties, e.g. the right to marry, to travel freely on public roads, and others. I concede there is gray area in the 10th. That gray area, however, isn’t so non-gray that it is apparent that the right to terminate a pregnancy was conferred on the people, but not the states.
That said, the people have made some bad laws, which has compelled SCOTUS to find certain elements of fundamental liberty that are either inferred from the Constitution or implied in a system of ordered liberties, e.g. the right to marry, to travel freely on public roads, and others.
One of those others being the right of a woman to choose to end a pregnancy.
In doing so, the court restored something resembling the Common Law at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and based the right on something most men take for granted, the right to make medical decisions for themselves.
I don’t think this is correct.
Maybe you’re right (warning: liberal media villain, Slate). That would be great, especially if it meant that people wouldn’t advocate defunding Planned Parenthood or object to health coverage that included contraception or push for abstinence-only education.
First, the people, over time, can change their minds and, though the franchise, change the law in their state. So, that’s one limit. That said, the people have made some bad laws, which has compelled SCOTUS to find certain elements of fundamental liberty that are either inferred from the Constitution or implied in a system of ordered liberties, e.g. the right to marry, to travel freely on public roads, and others.
I really don’t get this. The people can’t pass laws without the government at whatever level coming into play. They can only regulate their own personal conduct within the bounds of whatever legal prohibitions may be relevant.
I concede there is gray area in the 10th. That gray area, however, isn’t so non-gray that it is apparent that the right to terminate a pregnancy was conferred on the people, but not the states.
Given what you wrote before this, I’m not sure whether you mean the people get to decide for themselves whether a right exists generally or if it is left to them to choose whether or not to exercise whatever right as individuals.
I guess another way of putting would be that Roe didn’t say restrictions on abortion beyond a certain point could only be enacted by referendum and not by legislation. It left individuals to make their own decisions (within certain allowable boundaries that could be established by the states).
In doing so, the court restored something resembling the Common Law at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and based the right on something most men take for granted, the right to make medical decisions for themselves.
Are you saying the common law circa 1789 allowed abortion? Or, that the common law recognized a right to abortion?
If abortion were nothing other than a medical procedure that had no impact on a third person, there would be no debate. Your position elides the core issue: balancing one person’s rights against another’s, assuming one concedes the fetus is a human being.
The people can’t pass laws without the government at whatever level coming into play.
Correct: every law involves action by the people, through their representatives.
I’m not sure whether you mean the people get to decide for themselves whether a right exists generally or if it is left to them to choose whether or not to exercise whatever right as individuals
What I mean is that it is not clear which powers (not “rights” but “powers”) are reserved to the state and which to the people such that the state cannot infringe on those powers reserved to the people.
From Roe itself (my emphasis)*:
3. The common law. It is undisputed that, at common law, abortion performed before “quickening” — the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy [n20] — was not an indictable offense. [n21] The absence [p133] of a common law crime for pre-quickening abortion appears to have developed from a confluence of earlier philosophical, theological, and civil and canon law concepts of when life begins. These disciplines variously approached the question in terms of the point at which the embryo or fetus became “formed” or recognizably human, or in terms of when a “person” came into being, that is, infused with a “soul” or “animated.” A loose consensus evolved in early English law that these events occurred at some point between conception and live birth. [n22] This was “mediate animation.” Although [p134] Christian theology and the canon law came to fix the point of animation at 40 days for a male and 80 days for a female, a view that persisted until the 19th century, there was otherwise little agreement about the precise time of formation or animation. There was agreement, however, that, prior to this point, the fetus was to be regarded as part of the mother, and its destruction, therefore, was not homicide. Due to continued uncertainty about the precise time when animation occurred, to the lack of any empirical basis for the 40-80-day view, and perhaps to Aquinas’ definition of movement as one of the two first principles of life, Bracton focused upon quickening as the critical point. The significance of quickening was echoed by later common law scholars, and found its way into the received common law in this country.
*with the caveat that judges are not historians, despite what Scalia and his still living band of “originalists” would have you believe.
Just for curiosity, McKinney or hairshirt: are you aware of any prosecutions of abortionists ca 1789? Or of statutes pertaining to abortion back then?
I have no reason to believe — or doubt — that abortion was even possible in the late 18th century. So maybe it never arose as a legal question any more than kidney donation or even electricity regulation did.
–TP
people have known how to induce abortion since … forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion#Natural_abortifacients
these pre-medical methods tended to kill women.
You can be damn sure that abortion was “possible” (although horrifically risky) then and for many many centuries before then, for as long as desperate women in desperate situations needed a way out. It was probably a mainstay of various witches’/wise women’s practices, presumably procured mainly by herbal means. Although violent men have also traditionally tried the “kick them in the stomach” route too, probably going back just as far.
Cross-posted with cleek.
Thanks, Ugh, for doing the work!
Your position elides the core issue: balancing one person’s rights against another’s, assuming one concedes the fetus is a human being.
No, my position doesn’t do that. The court in Roe discussed that balancing act extensively, which is why it held that as a pregnancy goes further along, the state’s interest in protecting the life of the fetus becomes more compelling. But it never becomes more important than the duty to protect the life or health of the mother.
Basically, most of the controversy is about protecting embryos. Millions of embryos live in cold storage all over the country, but I don’t see anti-abortion people adopting them and having them implanted. Then, the issue is mostly about abortion in the case of severe birth defects.
I realize that changing people’s mind on this is unlikely to happen, but please don’t pretend that “pro-life” has some kind of originalist Constitutional foundation, or that the fetuses have Constitutional rights.
Ugh, there *is* a difference between abortion being a right and it being an indictable offense, yes?
Just for curiosity, McKinney or hairshirt: are you aware of any prosecutions of abortionists ca 1789? Or of statutes pertaining to abortion back then?
Not in any particular sense other than abortion has generally been a crime; although I’m not sure how it was defined back in the day.
these pre-medical methods tended to kill women.
And the modern version is invariably fatal to the unborn child.
And the modern version is invariably fatal to the unborn child.
How many children are aborted?
What I mean is that it is not clear which powers (not “rights” but “powers”) are reserved to the state and which to the people such that the state cannot infringe on those powers reserved to the people.
I guess I don’t know what a power is when it comes to the people. Or, at least, I don’t know how the people can have a power without thereby having a right.
How many children are aborted?
Depends on whether an unborn child is a child. If the answer is yes, then nearly 60 million so far in the US.
Correct: every law involves action by the people, through their representatives.
This is, I don’t know, cute, I guess. It makes me wonder what all the to-do is about in the constitution in distinguishing between the federal government, the states, and the people. If every law involves action by the people, through their representatives, then the people are doing everything regardless of whether a law is enacted by a state or federal government.
Yeah … by which I mean no.
Ugh, there *is* a difference between abortion being a right and it being an indictable offense, yes?
Under a strict common law system? I’m not sure there is.
Depends on whether an unborn child is a child.
I guess it must be if you’re calling it a child, even with a modifier. I suppose I’m a living corpse.
And the modern version is invariably fatal to the unborn child.
But since desperate women have always tried, and will always try, when abortion is illegal you most often get what I believe you Americans call a “twofer”.
Sorry to be so flip, but since we all understand that abortion involves the destruction of the fetus, what is your point?
And the modern version is invariably fatal to the unborn child.
so, how many years should the woman get for a miscarriage ? or, is it something that should be handled with a fine and some re-education ?
Q: “Just for curiosity, McKinney or hairshirt: are you aware of any prosecutions of abortionists ca 1789? Or of statutes pertaining to abortion back then?”
McTx: Not in any particular sense other than abortion has generally been a crime; although I’m not sure how it was defined back in the day.
Except for abortion was not generally a crime, or at least not early in pregnancy. A large part of Blackmun’s opinion consists of canvassing the history of abortion to show that it was NOT generally a crime.
I’ve been watching Trump’s personal and job approval numbers. They are essentially flat, currently both pegged at 44-50 against in the Huffington Post averages. They’ve been there with only negligible fluctuations since about a week into February–when Trump was inaugurated, a few Democrats gave him the benefit of the doubt for a couple of weeks, but that’s gone.
It’s all polarization. Conservatives mostly like him, nobody else does, and that’s the long and the short of it. I suspect these numbers are going to be hard to budge even by catastrophe.
Not in any particular sense other than abortion has generally been a crime; although I’m not sure how it was defined back in the day.
What does “abortion has generally been a crime” mean?
It was criminalized by state statutes in the 19th century, and when those were finally scrutinized by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, they were held to be unconstitutional.
The court in Roe discussed that balancing act extensively, which is why it held that as a pregnancy goes further along, the state’s interest in protecting the life of the fetus becomes more compelling.
I agree, this is the Court’s ‘balancing act’.
But it never becomes more important than the duty to protect the life or health of the mother.
I agree with this statement, assuming that by ‘health’, you don’t conflate pregnancy itself with a material threat to a mother’s health.
Basically, most of the controversy is about protecting embryos.
This is argument by assertion and unfounded argument at that.
Then, the issue is mostly about abortion in the case of severe birth defects.
I agree this is a very difficult question.
If every law involves action by the people, through their representatives, then the people are doing everything regardless of whether a law is enacted by a state or federal government.
Yeah … by which I mean no.
Then I must have missed your point. The 10th is unclear in several ways, not the least of which is that reserving a power to the people may be synonymous or mostly congruent with, reserving power to the states, the idea being that the state acts through the people.
I’m not saying that is how life works in reality, I’m construing, or offering constructions, of the 10th amendment. We are the opposite of the 10th; we are farther and farther from our government and the laws that are passed everyday.
As for inalienable but un-enumerated powers/rights, I think there are a lot of them, we just take them for granted because they are so mundane, e.g. the right to attend any college that will admit you, the right to watch whatever you want on television, etc.
The 10th is unclear in several ways, not the least of which is that reserving a power to the people may be synonymous or mostly congruent with, reserving power to the states, the idea being that the state acts through the people.
I guess I’ll leave it to the lawyers to fight this one out. I always took it to be a distinction between the states and the people, not making them more or less synonymous.
Now I’m imagining Saul Goodman’s reading of the 10th in his usual manner of speech as follows:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively … or, you know, to the people. Whatever – same thing, more or less. I mean, who’s to say, right? C’mon…
Except for abortion was not generally a crime, or at least not early in pregnancy.
Hence, my comment about how abortion was defined as a crime.
Carnage. At some point there’s going to be a confrontation between federal ICE agents and a very unhappy state judge.
2 years?
10 years?
20 years?
what should the sentence be for women who miscarry and kill the “unborn child” ?
Trump agrees there should be a penalty. what should the GOP put in their bill ?
Me: Basically, most of the controversy is about protecting embryos.
McKinney: This is argument by assertion and unfounded argument at that.
“Embryo: an unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development, in particular a human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization (after which it is usually termed a fetus).”
In fact,
“In 2008, most (62.8%) abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and 91.4% were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation. Few abortions (7.3%) were performed at 14–20 weeks’ gestation, and even fewer (1.3%) were performed at ≥21 weeks’ gestation. During 1999–2008, the percentage of abortions performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation remained stable, whereas abortions performed at ≥16 weeks’ gestation decreased 13%–17%. Moreover, among the abortions performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation, the distribution shifted toward earlier gestational ages, with the percentage of abortions performed at ≤6 weeks’ gestation increasing 53%.”
Most abortions are of embryos. An overwhelming number are first trimester (slightly past embryo stage). Why isn’t there a large movement to support the rights of frozen embryos? Is it because we support people’s choice to have fertility treatments even when some of the embryos are discarded? Why the double standard? I’m sure not everyone has this kind of double standard, but I personally know some “anti-choice” people who have not used all of the embryos from a fertility treatment.
Some states require insurance to pay for IVF.
what should the sentence be for women who miscarry and kill the “unborn child”?
Simple symmetry/justice suggests that the penalty should be 18 years at hard labor plus $250,000 — the current estimated cost to raise a child to age 18 (according to the US Department of Agriculture, and not including allowance for inflation). Plus whatever additional penalty it would take to discourage the potential miscreants.
McTX: The 10th is unclear in several ways, not the least of which is that reserving a power to the people may be synonymous or mostly congruent with, reserving power to the states, the idea being that the state acts through the people.
Is that bolded bit the right way around? I would have thought the correct formulation is that The People act through The State.
Also, I have always thought that people have rights while governments have powers. To the extent we take Tom Jefferson at face value, men are not endowed by their Creator with certain “powers”, unalienable or otherwise.
–TP
Most abortions are of embryos. An overwhelming number are first trimester (slightly past embryo stage). Why isn’t there a large movement to support the rights of frozen embryos?
Ok, I get your point now. Because at or less than 8 weeks the technical description is an embryo and therefore we are talking about protecting embryos. Is an embryo not a human, or a human in process or something that has a lot of human characteristics like human DNA?
Is it because we support people’s choice to have fertility treatments even when some of the embryos are discarded? Why the double standard?
I agree the positions are inconsistent in a number of material ways.
I’m sure not everyone has this kind of double standard, but I personally know some “anti-choice” people who have not used all of the embryos from a fertility treatment.
I’ve known women who struggled to get pregnant and who went through IVF. I’ve never quizzed them on their pro-life/pro-choice views or asked if they appreciated some of the inconsistency or asked how they feel about putting a half dozen embryos in their uterus, knowing that some were doomed. Just like I’ve never confronted a woman who had an abortion and quizzed her on how she felt about it then or now or does she wonder what if would be like to know the child she didn’t have.
A conceit of some in the pro-choice camp–and I’m sure there are corollaries on the pro-life side–is that being on the pro-life side means having no empathy or understanding for those who struggle with having gotten pregnant unintentionally or who struggle to get pregnant.
Our daughter just had her first child (our second grandchild). She remains pro-choice. Pretty firmly pro-choice. She has friends who had abortions while in college and whose lives would have been significantly altered had they not had abortions. For her, that is a huge thing, having one’s life plan derailed by an unintended pregnancy.
I agree it’s a huge thing. I know that because my wife and I experience exactly that thing at a time when marriage was the last thing on our minds, much less having a baby.
I can’t get in the mind of women who desperately want to conceive. From the outside looking in, the desire to have a child is all-consuming or as close to all-consuming as to make no nevermind. It colors nearly every aspect of her life. It is, using my limited abilities to understand a woman in that mode, not unlike the desperation a woman alone and pregnant faces.
Biology isn’t fair. Life is frequently not fair, in a lot of different ways.
The 10th Amendment is clearer: what isn’t specifically reserved to the Feds or specifically prohibited to the states, is reserved to the states, or to the people.
Note the sly insertion of the term “specifically” into the wording. Tenthers just about always try to do this, broaden the meaning of what has become an essentially meaningless Amendment.
As to the use of the term “human life” to apply to embryos, well, there is some dispute about that as well, but McKinney tries to turn it into a demand, “Yes or No”, he cries.
A cheap rhetorical trick.
But if an embryo is a human life, and taking a human life is “murder” then what should be the punishment for the person who commissioned the crime?
There are a very few “pro-lifers” who take this on consistently and advocate jail time or capital punishment (it is willful cold blooded murder is it not?) for the mother.
Very few as in practically none.
The issue is one of power. Who should have the power to make the decision…the mother or the state?
How do I know that a pregnant woman is carrying a human life?
Ultrasound. It’s visual and pretty straightforward.
so, if you can see it in an ultrasound, it’s a human life / fetus. otherwise it’s an embryo ? is this the line?
help us know when you would put women on trial and when to say ‘meh’.
Our daughter just had her first child (our second grandchild). She remains pro-choice. Pretty firmly pro-choice.
Congatulations McKinney! To you and your whole family, and particularly to your daughter, on both counts.
McKinneyTexas,
Ok, I’ll bite: killing is perfectly fine and anyone who disagrees is imposing their metaphysical, religious views on the rest of us, which we can assume, in good faith, is being done in bad faith by the religious bigot.
I consider that killing is wrong. However, I don’t think that there is any rational basis for this opinion. It is simply a commonly agreed moral custom among most people. Yet, I cannot make any rational counterargument to your fictitious argument “killing is right”. Whatever ethical system I use, religious or secular, I end up with some irrational basic assumptions.
However, this does not mean that all ethical discussion would be a province solely reserved for religious bigots. Instead, it means that any laws we make end up forcing at least some irrational moral rules on some people. This is unavoidable. Fortunately, the most basic principles are rather widely agreed upon. Most people agree that killing, stealing or defrauding is wrong, at least when committed against your own people.
Thus, I find it quite OK to force my moral beliefs on the population in general. Any political act, no matter how liberal, is essentially an act of trying to dictate some moral rules on others. Because this is so, it it would be best to have the best morals, that is, my relatively liberal and tolerant morals, ruling over society. 🙂
A conceit of some in the pro-choice camp–and I’m sure there are corollaries on the pro-life side–is that being on the pro-life side means having no empathy or understanding for those who struggle with having gotten pregnant unintentionally or who struggle to get pregnant.
I don’t think that “pro-life” people are generally heartless. I just think that trusting a woman to know what her own circumstances are is the best public policy.
And I’m with you in that I would never quiz someone about their various choices either, but I don’t see the IVF situation as being nearly as controversial as abortion, even though they both involve the destruction of embryos. I don’t see hospitals doing IVF treatments being defunded, for example.
I will also add my congratulations to your family!
McKinney! Also congratulations from me to your daughter, to you and to the whole family.
Ditto! The Dictator (do you still call him that, or has he mellowed?) has some competition.
Congratulations on the new grandchild. I had lunch today with “the girls” — my daughter and her two daughters. The youngest just turned four months. She and I spent much of lunch making faces at each other, which seemed to please her no end.
The Administration says that it will be putting the latest round of CAFE mileage standards on hold. California says that it will press forward with those standards using the part of the Clean Air Act that explicitly gives California the authority to do that (other states may choose between federal clean air standards or California’s clean air standards, but not make up their own). Roughly 40% of cars sold in the US are sold in states that follow California’s rules. This is interesting on multiple levels.
1) Since this will almost certainly go to court, how the courts interpret Massachusetts v. EPA. (Note: Kennedy was the deciding vote in that case.)
2) Other than Volkswagen, the auto industry didn’t fight these CAFE numbers very hard because the numbers brought California and the feds into agreement. Building to two standards is a pain.
3) California’s privilege is embedded in statute, and can’t be taken away by rule-making in the executive branch. Don’t know if the Congressional (R)s might try to take that privilege away. (If that’s a hill they’re willing to kill the filibuster for, I assume the change they’d actually make to the CAA would be “For the purposes of this act, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and may not be regulated by the EPA or the states.”)
Also, I have always thought that people have rights while governments have powers. To the extent we take Tom Jefferson at face value, men are not endowed by their Creator with certain “powers”, unalienable or otherwise.
I agree; however, the 10th A speaks in terms of “powers”.
Note the sly insertion of the term “specifically” into the wording. Tenthers just about always try to do this, broaden the meaning of what has become an essentially meaningless Amendment.
The 10th A speaks in terms of “delegated” and “prohibited” powers which meanings are very similar to if not synonymous with “enumerated” or listed powers, as used elsewhere in the Constitution. The construction I place on these words is pretty ordinary in the legal context. So, nothing sneaky here, just the plainly understood meaning of the words. Nor is the 10th meaningless. It means something, even if that something runs counter to modern, progressive central planning.
As to the use of the term “human life” to apply to embryos, well, there is some dispute about that as well, but McKinney tries to turn it into a demand, “Yes or No”, he cries.
A cheap rhetorical trick.
That’s your formulation and it’s mostly dismissal rather than engagement. If there is some middle ground between what is or is not human life, feel free to enlighten.
There are a very few “pro-lifers” who take this on consistently and advocate jail time or capital punishment (it is willful cold blooded murder is it not?) for the mother.
Very few as in practically none.
Again, this is a common device from the sloganeering quarter of the pro-choice side. Talking about cheap tricks. I address it substantively below.
The issue is one of power. Who should have the power to make the decision…the mother or the state?
This may be the way you see it, as if there is no discussion to be had before deciding who gets to decide. This is more sloganeering, not reasoned analysis. Pretty much every penal law, much of the Family Code and much of tort law–to name three practice areas off the top of my head–turn on ‘who must or must not do or refrain from a particular or general act/omission’. Formulating in your over-simplified way would earn an F in most law schools and ‘denied’ in most courts.
help us know when you would put women on trial and when to say ‘meh’.
In addition to the deficiencies I point out above, this is called changing the subject and makes a number of tendentious assumptions. I might as well ask you why it isn’t perfectly fine to murder a baby who has one foot remaining in the birth canal and judge the entire pro-choice movement on your answer.
If I were drafting a specific statute on the topic, I would outlaw the procedure and penalize anyone performing the procedure. For those charging for performing the procedure, the penalty would be higher. There would be no jail time for a first time offender performing the service for free. I would not criminalize the mother.
I consider that killing is wrong. However, I don’t think that there is any rational basis for this opinion. It is simply a commonly agreed moral custom among most people.
Ok, as a thought experiment, imagine taking the life of another with the same level of detachment as parking your car or having a drink. Let me know if the first comes as easily to you as the last two.
I used to hunt. The farther up the food chain–specifically mammals–the more aware I was that I was taking a life when I pulled the trigger. I was always a meat hunter, so there was no moral issue for me, but I was still aware of what I was doing at a very basic, visceral level.
Now that I’ve quit hunting, I seem to be even less comfortable taking an animal’s life. I had to kill a poisonous snake in our front yard a couple months back. I didn’t like it. It needed to be done because we have a dog and it’s a neighborhood with older people and lots of pets.
So, killing is different in a lot ways. Very different.
I just think that trusting a woman to know what her own circumstances are is the best public policy.
Sapient, we are speaking civilly to one another for the first time in a long time and for that, I am grateful. I agree with your statement right up to ending the life of an unborn child. In every other instance, we are on the same page. Your scale tips in favor of the woman, mine in favor of the child. I’m not a woman, but I’ve been very close to two women who thought they were pregnant by me, one wanted an abortion (I didn’t and would have married sooner and under other circumstances) but turned out not to be pregnant and the other was pregnant and I married her (or, she married me, would be more apt–I got the better end of the deal). In both cases, I was very aware of how hard that experience was for them. So, I don’t come to where I am without having given it quite a bit of thought.
And I’m with you in that I would never quiz someone about their various choices either, but I don’t see the IVF situation as being nearly as controversial as abortion, even though they both involve the destruction of embryos. I don’t see hospitals doing IVF treatments being defunded, for example.
Well, you’re right: IVF, while not without it’s moral dimension, is widely accepted and whatever questions are raised are very muted.
I will also add my congratulations to your family!
Thanks for this, and to GFTNC, Lurker and HSH. And yes, the Dictator still holds sway over the household, even at 4 and a half. My daughter pronounced our Number Two Grandson a terrorist after the first week home. Turned out the formula didn’t agree with him.
The youngest just turned four months. She and I spent much of lunch making faces at each other, which seemed to please her no end.
Thanks for the congrats. My highest and best use seems to be holding James up in the air and making weird noises.
It means something, even if that something runs counter to modern, progressive central planning.
The thing that pisses me off about this statement is the assumption that ‘modern progressives’ are the only folks interested in top-down federal level central planning and regulation.
Progressives have their list of big plans for everyone else, so do conservatives.
Everybody thinks theirs is better, but everybody has ’em.
The House passed a resolution to roll back the recent rule change that put much tighter limits on methane emissions from wells and related infrastructure on federal land. The corresponding Senate resolution has been introduced, but not debated. Colorado College does a large opinion poll in states in the Mountain West each year. That’s the region that will be affected by the change. In the CC poll, opinion is strongly in favor of keeping the tougher rules, in both red and blue states.
If the so-called ‘pro-lifers’ cared as much about the lives of those actually born as they do about those unborn the world would certainly be a better place.
And yes, the Dictator still holds sway over the household, even at 4 and a half.
My other granddaughter is three and a half, and keeps coming up with (largely correct) vocabulary far beyond her age. I’ve been thinking of teaching her to say, “I’ll conform this time, but it’s not a precedent.”
The thing that pisses me off about this statement is the assumption that ‘modern progressives’ are the only folks interested in top-down federal level central planning and regulation.
Progressives have their list of big plans for everyone else, so do conservatives.
Everybody thinks theirs is better, but everybody has ’em.
First, I was responding to BP’s snark. Second, conservatives have a far different take on the 9th and 10th amendments than do progressives. I know of no recognizable conservative movement that believes the 10th A is not an express limit on Federal powers. Are you contending that there is a quarter on the left that agrees with the conservative take on the 10th? I’m sorry my statement was offensive, but I’m pretty confident that it accurately if somewhat snarkily lays out the battle line.
If you can refer me to conservative over-reach that runs counter to the 10th A, I’ll look at it and probably agree with you.
Sapient, we are speaking civilly to one another for the first time in a long time and for that, I am grateful.
Me too. It’s a work in progress.
Now that I’ve quit hunting, I seem to be even less comfortable taking an animal’s life.
See, now that really is good news!
If the so-called ‘pro-lifers’ cared as much about the lives of those actually born as they do about those unborn the world would certainly be a better place.
I agree. But those who insist on categorical imperatives can easily gat tripped up like that.
I would not criminalize the mother.
Then the crime is not murder, and by terming it a crime, you deny agency to women.
If you can refer me to conservative over-reach that runs counter to the 10th A, I’ll look at it and probably agree with you.
Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.
MA currently does not recognize concealed carry permits from other states. Because we like it that way.
Trump wants to overrule that.
Then the crime is not murder, and by terming it a crime, you deny agency to women.
The only way I have been able to process the concept of abortion is that we as a society have defined it as justifiable homicide. For all of those reasons that a woman, with her doctor, might decide that it is appropriate we have accepted their judgement the way we accept self defense.
The limits we have placed on it are arbitrary limits on the Doctor to perform the procedure which should make it a criminal act, Moving from justifiable to some slightly higher form of homicide on whatever that scale is.
New York law defines a difference between the charge for a provider and the mother, I cant square the difference, but I understand the intent. NY Law:
Let me take a wild guess here, sapient: you have no idea what the categorical imperative actually means or how Kant’s moral philosophy permeates modern thinking about ethics and justice.
Ordinarily I would not touch this subject but I have something to contribute regarding killing. McKinneyTexas wrote:
I happened to re-read Rex Stout’s Too Many Cooks recently and in it Stout (as Nero Wolfe) writes:
To me this seems perfectly rational, not just a commonly agreed custom. It specifically addresses murder, but it applies as well to lesser threats. It is the foundation of a society with laws. Such agreements make it possible to live a normal life without the constant threat of arbitrary violence.
[switching topic]
I offer my congratulations too on the second grandchild. My daughter’s family lives with us and the twins are now 18 months old. I’m still adjusting but also loving it.
you have no idea what the categorical imperative actually means or how Kant’s moral philosophy permeates modern thinking about ethics and justice.
Personal, anyone?
My degree isn’t in philosophy, but I’ve done some readings, even lately. Also, I have a law degree, and in law school studied the philosophical underpinnings of our (Anglo-American) legal system. Perhaps you are a better scholar of Kant – my knowledge is superficial (although not Google superficial).
As applied, your purist vision is a loser for anyone who inhabits the planet at the moment. If you think that there’s some kind of future where you can convert our contemporary hordes to pacifism, that’s fine, but without some kind of a plan that you’re willing to articulate, you’re basically opting out.
The Middle East is a complicated place, and the American relationship with Middle Eastern countries has a decades long history. The UK’s goes back way farther. Europe’s too. Peace Now is a lovely bromide, but not actually on the table.
Travel ban is enjoined!
I guess it’s hard to square the so-called “pro-life” crowd’s rhetoric and protest actions about abortion – “baby killers!”, “murderers!,” holding up signs with pictures of dead fetuses, shooting abortion providers, etc. – with what they would do in the event Roe was overturned and they could ban abortion completely.
I mean, no punishment for the woman? The person who went out and procured the abortion in the first place, most likely for money? Really?
That makes people wonder if either “pro-lifers” don’t really think abortion is murder or something else is going on (like, pregnant women are crazy and can’t be held liable for their actions while pregnant).
It really is just bizarre.
The exceptions for rape and incest (for those who would provide them) also don’t make any sense in the context of the pro-life movement’s rhetoric.
The pro-life movement also IMHO gives short shrift to the trauma suffered by a woman forced to carry a pregnancy to term, both physical and psychological.
“When is the blessed event? Oh my don’t you look radiant? You know you shouldn’t ___ when you’re pregnant. Have you picked out a name yet? Are you going to take maternity leave?” and countless other unsolicited questions, advice, and condemnations that people seem to think they can just put before pregnant women out of the blue, all of which assume she is happy to be pregnant and looking forward to childbirth.
Justifiable homicide…that’s an interesting frame, Marty.
But the thrust of the pro-choice argument is again, one of power…who gets to make the choice. The law follows. Justifiable homicide is a concept at law that excuses killing under certain circumstances, usually having to do with self defense, presumed danger, prevent a crime that would harm others, etc. Now if we could consider the totality of the circumstances that led the woman to make this choice in some sense “criminal” then perhaps that would apply. But such a frame would be nonsensical (example: Inability to afford a child is a crime? Does that make society “guilty”?).
I don’t understand all the strum and strang. The overwhelming majority of women are adults with reasonable decision making powers. Do you think, like McKinney does apparently, that women just wake up one morning and say to themselves, “Boy, this would be a great day for an abortion”?
Really?
The limits we have placed on it are arbitrary limits
The key word there is “arbitrary”.
Thanks.
The only way I have been able to process the concept of abortion is that we as a society have defined it as justifiable homicide
if that’s what works for you, go with it.
I don’t understand all the strum and strang. The overwhelming majority of women are adults with reasonable decision making powers. Do you think, like McKinney does apparently, that women just wake up one morning and say to themselves, “Boy, this would be a great day for an abortion”?
Thanks, bobbyp. This is pretty much it. Suppose I am a woman, do I have a conscience about my own body, my own actions, my own circumstances, my own future? Don’t I too love babies, and can’t I imagine how lovely it might be to have one? Or not?
Why does a legislature (right now, mostly men) know better than me?
bobbyp,
The fundamental argument is power, but it is an argument generally reserved for the left. It is representing those who can’t represent themselves in a circumstance where one person has complete power over their very existence.
Travel ban is enjoined
And the judge was pretty blistering, too.
when does a cell become a person?
I don’t know. Do you?
We take our best guess and go from there.
We don’t come up with the same “best guess”, so we all stand around and yell at each other.
The fundamental question is a mystery. Might as well argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
If you’re faced with the situation of having to decide about this stuff, search your conscience and make the best decision you can.
The rest seems, to me, to be noise. Because nobody actually knows. It is beyond our ken.
What I do know for sure is that we have, as a nation, been having this argument for 45 years. I don’t see that any fresh insights are on offer.
And the judge was pretty blistering, too.
sic semper tyrannis
Kevin Drum on abortion issues today
http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/03/sure-lets-be-honest-about-abortion
McKinney,
Perhaps I can raise my grade to D-? Much as I hate to argue from authority, I defer to Scott Lemieux, who is a law professor (believe it or not!).
Part 1
Part 2
The fundamental argument is power, but it is an argument generally reserved for the left. It is representing those who can’t represent themselves in a circumstance where one person has complete power over their very existence.
Marty,
I’m not quite sure of your point, so please explain further.
When it is conceded that rich (generally white) women can effectively (de facto) obtain abortions either here or abroad (“How can we stop it?”, They ask, i.e., the situation pre-Roe), the mockery of any concept of equality or justice is pretty darned well complete.
The fnking law be damned.
From part I of bobbyp’s link:
“it is hard to think of a more fundamental invasion of personal liberty than to tell a woman that she must or may not bear a child”
Said by someOne who thinks Roe was wrongly decided.
Is life a process or an event?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/17/the-fertilized-egg-is-not-a-hu/
And from part II
“abortion laws tend to be a legal, moral, and ethical shambles that are inexplicable unless their primary objective is regulating the sexual behavior of (some) women. Laws designed to protect fetal life have no reason to exclude women from punishment, or contain rape, incest or health-of-the-mother exceptions, or to permit women to obtain abortions across state lines. As the nature of these laws indicate; there is nothing remotely resembling a consensus that a fetus is a human life, and only a tiny minority of the minority that nominally accepts this position acts is a way that is consistent with this belief. For this reason, American abortion laws are directly comparable to Griswold and Lawrence: they are primarily attempts to regulate consensual sexual behavior. ”
It is representing those who can’t represent themselves in a circumstance where one person has complete power over their very existence.
I see now. Well, this is merely another return to the “sanctity of innocent human life” argument.
We’ve already been down that road.
I disagree.
I disagree vehemently.
Donald Trump freaks out.
My anger management technique: Anger go there!!!!
There was never any doubt that Trump would start ranting and raving. The only questions were how soon and in what forum. The smart bets were all under 24 hours.
Legal abortion as justifiable homicide seems to also be the common Jewish position. If the unborn poses a threat to the life and well-being* of the mother**, it can be treated as a persecutor and killed in self-defense up to the moment its head is out of the woman’s body (which at least over here is also the official date of birth in secular law).
*in strictly medical terms, not about happiness or social circumstances
**for lack of a better (short) term
Personal, anyone?
I was posting about a completely unrelated matter (abortion), but you just couldn’t help yourself and had to chastise me for my supposedly ‘purist’ and ‘pacifist’ (I’m neither) views using a philosophical concept you don’t even understand and which I don’t adhere to.
Your follow up post is completely vacuous – “the ME is a complicated place”, really, you don’t say. And then you add that Europe and the UK have also been involved, as if that’s somehow undermining my position, for reasons only you can explain.
Anyway, sorry for the derail, but I wasn’t the one initiating it.
ral,
You make a cogent argument, that people want to live in peace and living in a society of orderly justice and laws is a good way to do this. In fact, I agree. Nonetheless, it simply moves the argument forward: why should you, I or any other person have a right to live in peace, without fear? (My answer is simply, it feels right, but that is not a rational argument.)
McKinneyTexas,
Your argument is perhaps even more compelling: killing feels wrong, i.e, it is against conscience or against our genetic makeup. I agree also with this argument. However, that is a naturalist fallacy. Simply stating that you and all sane people have an inborn reluctance to commit violence, does not mean it would be morally correct. Or you are making a metaphysical argument that your conscience or genetically inheritable moral sense are a competent moral authority (which I hold true, but don’t consider rational.)
This is not my ozwn argument. Bertrand Russel, in the second book of his History of Western Philosophy, makes the same argument. There is no rational basis for any moral system.
Well, to return to the subject of the original post, I would like to express my concern about the state of the US foreign and security policy.
When you look at the reports coming from the State Department, and at the fact that the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were removed from the national security council, it looks like thE US foreign policy is now completely in the hands of White House aides and Mr Mattis.
In practice, it looks very much like the only persons able to give Trump any foreign policy advice were Mattis, Tillerson (alone, without input from his department), a number of aides and a couple of Fox News anchors.
Coupled with the proposal to give combatant commanders the power to designate new areas of hostilies (which may be a Russian information operation, considering how aggressively RT is working on the topic), this looks a lot like a US military takeover of the security policy. The DoD and their combatant commanders seem to be the only officials still in the loop.
In the current situation, the Department of State is off the loop, and any non-US diplomat worth his salt knows that the US diplomats may or may not have the support of their government, as the State Department is often unaware of policy changes, and unable to affect them. Essentially, this means that your best contact to the US government seems likely to be the local military attache or, more likely, the regional combatant command.
Of course, this severely restricts the scope of policy making. In essence, outside of routine or emergency matters, we outside the US are unable to conduct any non-military foreign policy.
To add: With the US government, of course. Naturally, we can conduct foreign policy with other countries as before.
this is called changing the subject
you have told us several times on this very threat that the unborn are “children” and “human lives”. if killing a child or a human life is not murder, then tell us what it is.
how should we punish women who miscarry ? surely that’s murder, or at least manslaughter.
2 years? 20? death penalty?
In essence, outside of routine or emergency matters, we outside the US are unable to conduct any non-military foreign policy.
I think that’s the plan. Other countries will bow before the US’s reborn military might under President Trump. Anything that requires negotiations POTUS will handle personally as the best deal maker in the 28 known galaxies.
How long before Trump tries to order Yellen to keep interest rates flat?
Ugh,
no, the US military really is equipped to handle large parts of US diplomacy. They do have extensive intelligence apparatus, they have liaisons about everywhere, and they have quite a lot of people who have done a lot of negotiating with foreign governments. The current defense minister, Mr. Mattis, is one of the most accomplished military foeeign-poljcy makers you have. The scary part of the issue is that this is not an unworkable plan. It can work, but it means dropping out a number of foreign policy fields that maintain the US dominance in world politics.
ugh,
Are you alluding to the fact that the federal government’s deficit goes up when interest rates rise?
Now that the King of Debt is the twitular head of the enormous borrower known as the federal government, perhaps He wants low interest rates.
On the other hand, His billionaire friends and relatives who always prefer to lend money to the federal government rather than pay money to it in taxes, surely love the prospect of higher interest rates.
So what’s a poor billionaire populist president to do?
–TP
If you have to choose between saving a frozen embryo or a 2-year-old from a fire, is that a hard choice to make?
TonyP – I was more thinking that a rise in interest rates tends to negatively impact employment and wages.
If you have to choose between saving a frozen embryo or a 2-year-old from a fire, is that a hard choice to make?
even Sophie could not make that choice.
Why can’t I be frozen and saved for later use? Seems unfair.
Yesterday was fun. Today, duty calls. I’m confident this subject will come up again. In parting, a few points:
Ral, you quoted Lurker, not me.
BP, sorry, still giving you an F 🙁 even if Lemieux gets a C-. Lemieux does not address the 10th A at all that I could see, but he does concede that, using recognized precedent and recognized constitutional analytical tools, a completely different outcome could have been obtained. This is the fundamental problem with Roe: 7 judges made a policy preference and cloaked it with constitutional dignity and they did so in a democracy.
Ugh and Cleek, no one can keep you from insisting that the only honest position for a pro-lifer is to want to jail the woman who gets an abortion. Have at it. However, when you do that, you are basically having a conversation with yourself. It would be like me insisting that unless you are fine with killing a baby in the birth canal, you have to admit that all abortion is murder.
Finally, IMO, sides-stepping the question of when human life begins is the least effective position pro-choicer’s can take. The rest of the country has seen ultrasounds, so we know what’s in the womb. Telling us a baby in the womb isn’t a person is simply not credible. Raising the volume, repeating over and over again or quoting BP’s “scientist” as some kind of final authority is not persuasive. I will have drinks with three MD’s and one nurse this weekend, all of whom have no trouble with the notion that it is a human life in the womb. My wife’s degree is in microbiology. I don’t have to understand all their words to understand that scientists can and do articulate very fact specific reasons that disagree with the “it’s just too metaphysical for us mere humans to grasp” line of thinking. Plus, there is the ultrasound and my not-yet-failed eyesight–I know what I’m looking at and it’s not a toaster.
The persuasive argument is what I take to be part of Sapient’s position, which I paraphrase like this: whether ‘human’ or pre-human, early in the pregnancy, the embryo lacks sufficient individual form and identity to outweigh the mother’s right to choose for herself whether to carry the child to full term or to terminate. Sapient, I’m not saying this is all of your position nor am I defining “early” for you. I am fairly sure this rationale, or something close to it, informs some portion of the European abortion regimes and probably approximates how my daughter and her friends would describe their thinking.
I’m out early today so y’all have a nice weekend.
I don’t have to understand all their words to understand that scientists can and do articulate very fact specific reasons that disagree with the “it’s just too metaphysical for us mere humans to grasp” line of thinking.
Then they’re smarter than I am.
No comment on requiring MA to grant reciprocal concealed carry privileges?
You asked, I answered. Your turn. You’re not the only busy guy here.
Oops! Excuse me McKT!
Lurker, sure, any logical argument eventually comes down to assumptions. I’m just looking at it from a practical point of view.
no one can keep you from insisting that the only honest position for a pro-lifer is to want to jail the woman who gets an abortion.
it’s a direct consequence of your claim that an abortion kills an “unborn child” or a “human life”.
i certainly get why you want to run away from it.
Finally, IMO, sides-stepping the question of when human life begins is the least effective position pro-choicer’s can take.
That seems to be the very opposite of what people have been doing in this discussion. It seems to be the thing people have been taking head on. Coming up with a different answer to the question is not side-stepping.
There’s also the practical matter of what the law should be that is only partly informed by what one thinks is right morally. Not all morality is enforceable by law, be it for logistical, political, ideological, or other reasons.
And whatever happened to personhood? That seems to be the more appropriate term for a discussion on the legality of abortion. Asking when life, or human life, begins seems to me to make the question unduly binary and definitionalist (as in, “any living cell with 46 chromosomes is human” or some such).
No comment on requiring MA to grant reciprocal concealed carry privileges?
You asked, I answered. Your turn. You’re not the only busy guy here.
Fair point. The constitutional authority for Trump’s position would be the privileges and immunities clause. Whether that is enough of basis to validate Trump’s position on requiring all states to recognize all other states’ concealed carry licenses is a different argument. I come down on your side, as a matter of constitutional law. The states, using their inherent police power (penumbra!), have the right to determine for themselves what criteria to apply to a person who the state is going to license for concealed carry. When the Feds take the position that the state with the most minimal, least substantive requirements can bind the other 49 states, the Feds run afoul of that *meaningless* 10th amendment. A state *could, in theory* decide to allow violent felons on probation to carry concealed weapons based solely on the felon’s promise to behave going forward. There are plenty of good reasons why the other states should not be bound by that level of foolishness. The constitutional reason is that it infringes on a power reserved to the states.
Ugh and Cleek, no one can keep you from insisting that the only honest position for a pro-lifer is to want to jail the woman who gets an abortion.
I just want an explanation why the taking of a human life with malice aforethought in this instance is somehow different from most (if not all) other instances, and so much so that the primary actor should get – at least in your view – no jail time at all.
As I said, ISTM this kind of position if fundamentally different from the rhetoric that the fetus is as “person” and killing it is “murder.”
Fair point.
Thanks for reply McK, much appreciated.
McTx: Lemieux does not address the 10th A at all that I could see, but he does concede that, using recognized precedent and recognized constitutional analytical tools, a completely different outcome could have been obtained. This is the fundamental problem with Roe: 7 judges made a policy preference and cloaked it with constitutional dignity and they did so in a democracy.
I don’t see how the 10th amendment is relevant at all to the abortion debate, at least right now (if the GOP passed a federal law banning abortion it might be relevant).
Part of SCOTUS’s job is to draw the lines delineating where the various rights in the Constitution end and where permissible government action begins. You seem to think that if it’s a close call (or however it should be phrased) then SCOTUS should defer to the government and let it do what it wants, rather than to individuals and let them do what they want.
I just want an explanation why the taking of a human life with malice aforethought in this instance is somehow different from most (if not all) other instances, and so much so that the primary actor should get – at least in your view – no jail time at all.
My interest does not lie in making rhetorical points. It lies in letting unborn children go full term. I’m not mad at anybody and don’t want anyone to be hurt anymore than the already difficult situation causes on its own. I suppose, in a hypothetical case, if a woman was intentionally getting pregnant in order to get an abortion, I would be ok with considering sterilization.
Further, on the legal side of things, there is no malice, much less malice aforethought, if I am recalling my common law definitions correctly, involved on the woman’s part–although there may be abortionists who qualify (I don’t know). Whatever mens rea you want to impute to an woman terminating a pregnancy is your unique take that is not imputable to or binding on anyone else. Among other issues, you assume that the woman intends to take a human life. You assume that she is not under some form of duress that mitigates if not negates sufficient criminal mens rea to warrant prosecution.
You and several others seem to believe the worst about pro-life people. Your caricature requires rendering them as despicable as you can. It’s a form of dismissive argument, not engagement, where you insist, among other things, that their good faith requires meeting your arbitrary standards. I’ve said all I’m going to say on this topic. I categorically reject your arbitrary insistence that I have to meet your standards.
Cleek, this applies to you too.
I don’t see how the 10th amendment is relevant at all to the abortion debate, at least right now (if the GOP passed a federal law banning abortion it might be relevant).
I disagree with you as to the 10th’s relevance, but the issue I was gigging Comrade Bobby about was a side discussion we were having on the 10th A.
A state *could, in theory* decide to allow violent felons on probation to carry concealed weapons based solely on the felon’s promise to behave going forward.
FWIW, there are something like 10 states with no permitting requirement whatsoever for concealed carry. You don’t even have to demonstrate that you know which end the bullets come out of, you can just get a gun and carry it around.
That’s what the folks in those states want, and I have no interest in telling them to do otherwise.
I’m just looking for the same consideration from them.
MA ain’t AK. Or VT or NH, for that matter. Live where the way of life suits you, don’t bring it where it isn’t welcome.
I’m just looking for the same consideration from them.
We are on the page.
You seem to think that if it’s a close call (or however it should be phrased) then SCOTUS should defer to the government and let it do what it wants, rather than to individuals and let them do what they want.
No, I think SCOTUS should follow the Constitution and not make stuff up and then sprinkle it with penumbras and call it a fundamental right. I am very much about individual liberty, far more so than most progressives are in other contexts, and I think I’ve articulated very plainly where I come down and why on abortion.
And now, I am off. Ciao.
My interest does not lie in making rhetorical points. It lies in letting unborn children go full term.
can we agree that killing a child is murder? and we agree that there are serious punishments for murder?
seems simple enough. don’t need a law degree for that.
how is killing an “unborn child” (your term) different than killing a child-child ?
if it’s not (and your words seem to suggest it isn’t), then abortion is murder and mothers who get abortions are murderers. and as such they need to be punished as murderers, right?
this is not a rhetorical trick. this is based on a simple and direct reading of your words. if you don’t mean to say this, maybe you could rephrase it?
Lurker: the US military really is equipped to handle large parts of US diplomacy. They do have extensive intelligence apparatus, they have liaisons about everywhere, and they have quite a lot of people who have done a lot of negotiating with foreign governments.
I’m afraid that you are assuming some things that is not much in evidence. That is, that intelligence from any source, including the military, will impact foreign policy decisions. Or, indeed, that policy decision making will be much beyond gut feel and knee jerk reactions from POTUS, mediated by whomever spoke (or broadcast) to him last. Concern for actual facts seems to be limited at best.**
While Mr Bannon has thought about foreign policy (however daftly), it is not clear that his thought weigh as heavily as whoever is speaking of Fox this morning — his main clout is that he has lots of opportunities to be the last person speaking to the President before a command gets tossed out.
It also assumes that negotiation (by the military or anyone else) is going to be part of our foreign policy. It seems like the plan is to limit “negotiations” to bluster, demands and threats emanating from the White House. Yes, the military has the expertise and experience to do better; but will they be allowed (never mind asked) to do so?
** Witness the “wiretapping” accusation. Where even staunch Trump supporters in Congress are standing up and saying that there is zero evidence that anything like that happened. And the White House continues to insist that it did. Or something….
McK: side-stepping the question of when human life begins is the least effective position pro-choicer’s can take. The rest of the country has seen ultrasounds, so we know what’s in the womb.
So are you saying (here) that abortion should be OK any time before you can make out a form in the ultrasound? I can see lots of arguments about exactly when that is (some people manage to see things in abstract art, after all). But certainly there is nothing to see for the first couple of weeks — i.e. long past conception.
abortion should be OK any time before you can make out a form in the ultrasound?
and does this assume that ultrasound technology will not improve?
Not to mention that, pre-ultrasound, the standard would have properly been different.
You and several others seem to believe the worst about pro-life people. Your caricature requires rendering them as despicable as you can. It’s a form of dismissive argument, not engagement, where you insist, among other things, that their good faith requires meeting your arbitrary standards. I’ve said all I’m going to say on this topic. I categorically reject your arbitrary insistence that I have to meet your standards.
I’m not trying to be dismissive I don’t think, at least not in the discussion about the pro-life rhetoric vs. what the pro-life movement would put in place as a legal structure. And I understand that your interest is not in making rhetorical points and you are not a spokesman for the pro-life movement writ large so I can’t pin what I view as their position on you. I also don’t think I’m setting up arbitrary standards on this particular point. The terms “murder” and “human being” are not empty voids to be filled with whatever meaning the person uttering them wishes them to mean (and particularly not when they do intend to use them in their commonly accepted manner).
I’m just trying understand what I see as a disconnect between rhetoric and action – maybe there’s no disconnect and I’m blind, but again I’d like an explanation about why there is no disconnect or how I’m being blind.
Perhaps this is my answer:
there is no malice, much less malice aforethought, if I am recalling my common law definitions correctly, involved on the woman’s part–although there may be abortionists who qualify (I don’t know). Whatever mens rea you want to impute to an woman terminating a pregnancy is your unique take that is not imputable to or binding on anyone else. Among other issues, you assume that the woman intends to take a human life. You assume that she is not under some form of duress that mitigates if not negates sufficient criminal mens rea to warrant prosecution.
Malice aforethought means in this context the intentional taking of human life. Not an accident, or negligence, or wreckless disregard (mostly), but “I intend to end this human life” or the natural consequences of the actions you are intentionally performing or having performed would end a human life.
I would ask how, if the fetus is legally defined as human, a woman is somehow not “intending to take a human life” by procuring an abortion – absent some form of duress or incompetency as you note. But if this is the justification for setting up a system whereby abortion is illegal but the woman is never punished for procuring an abortion, then it seems you are saying that in every case the woman is either incompetent or under duress.*
Perhaps you are saying that in procuring an abortion the woman merely wishes to no longer be pregnant, and therefore she didn’t intend to take a human life but merely to end her pregnancy and the human life taking was necessary to achieve that end state? I don’t think that mitigates the criminal intent, at least as I understand criminal law. That is, there is a difference between the reason for doing something – wanting not to be pregnant versus wanting to kill a fetus regardless of pregnancy – versus the intent to do something – killing a fetus.
I mean, I don’t think you would get off a murder charge in saying “I didn’t shoot him in the face to kill him, I shot him in the face to steal his wallet. So I’m only guilty of robbery.” No?
don’t think you would get off a murder charge in saying “I didn’t shoot him in the face to kill him, I shot him in the face to steal his wallet. So I’m only guilty of robbery.”
New form of instant divorce also, too.
Ugh, you’re on the right track. The whining and desperate weaseling proves it.
My other example was killing your parents to become an orphan.
Let’s talk about something much less controversial, like the death of Michael Brown.
McTx: No, I think SCOTUS should follow the Constitution and not make stuff up and then sprinkle it with penumbras and call it a fundamental right.
But…your pejorative language aside, isn’t it SCOTUS’s role to “say what the law is” (per Marbury v. Madison) and interpret the Constitution, which when it comes to rights and many other things is written in very broad strokes, both purposely and out of necessity? And if this is the case, and perhaps you disagree, you also have to take into account all prior relevant SCOTUS decisions on the Constitution under our common law system to determine “what the law is” when applying it to the case at hand, and not just the text of the Constitution itself?
Maybe you could have taken that approach in June 1788, but eventually you need to deal with SCOTUS precedent or reject the common law system. And I’m not even sure simply taking the text of the Constitution and applying it to the question of whether there is a fundamental right to an abortion (to accept that framing for the moment) compels a “no” answer.
More broadly, I know you’re busy McKinney and have checked out for at least a little while and, as always, I appreciate your commenting here, I wouldn’t engage if I wasn’t genuinely interested in how you think and connect A to B to C to get to D. The invitation is always open to you do to a guest post on whatever topic you may so chose.
speaking of carnage:
if only Clinton was perfect.
…the question of whether there is a fundamental right to an abortion (to accept that framing for the moment)…
I’m not a lawyer, and I haven’t researched it, but is that what the Roe decision says, explicitly – that there is a fundamental right to abortion? I thought it was that access to abortion could not be unduly restricted without violating some other fundamental right(s) – like privacy, at least.
Not to mention NIH. Not eliminated but proposed cut of 20%.
The syllabus of Roe says:
State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother’s behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman’s health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a “compelling” point at various stages of the woman’s approach to term.
But I note the syllabus is not part of the opinion.
there is no malice, much less malice aforethought, if I am recalling my common law definitions correctly, involved on the woman’s part–although there may be abortionists who qualify (I don’t know). Whatever mens rea you want to impute to an woman terminating a pregnancy is your unique take that is not imputable to or binding on anyone else. Among other issues, you assume that the woman intends to take a human life. You assume that she is not under some form of duress that mitigates if not negates sufficient criminal mens rea to warrant prosecution.
This is gobbeldygook in its purest form.
I don’t think it’s on purpose. I think it’s what McKinney is left with given his sincerely held belief that, at or very soon after the fertilization of a human egg, you have a human being and his unwillingness to criminalize women who have abortions. Those things are logically at odds with one another, so you end up trying to divide by zero without the benefit of the concept of infinity – or something like that. Lines get blurred, wires cross, and so on and so forth.
I wish that McKinney and people who believe what he believes didn’t lead to things like the global gag rule. I mean, it’s bad enough that they don’t trust women to have a conscience, and they don’t allow women autonomy over their own bodies, but basically they kill a lot of people with this b.s.
Also, as I mentioned a few days ago, Texas has an “alarming maternal death rate.”
This argument about fetal lives versus women’s lives is not theoretical, and they seem to think it is.
We seem to be covering a lot of ground in this thread, so why not.
You knew he was a snake, y’all.
He’s gonna bring jobs back to coal country. Selling apples.
I can’t believe how many ways the folks in Appalachia have been screwed. By everyone. Forever.
You and several others seem to believe the worst about pro-life people.
Pot, kettle. When somebody tries to bludgeon me about this issue by leading off with assertions that some/many women could simply care less about the implications and just want it over so they can go shopping, and every ‘consider this’ scenario starts with “imagine the baby’s foot dangling out of the birth canal”, it is difficult to grant much credence to anything else he might come up with.
To add insult to injury, he casually dismisses the opinions on scientists who, you know, unlike him, actually study the biology involved.
And then he gave me an “F”, and not just an “F”, but an “F-“!!!! JFC!!!!
I am so humiliated. It’s as if the entire weight of the federal government’s expansive overreach of the 10th Amendment (despite what OTHER parts of the Constitution say) is bearing down upon my rather smallish shoulders.
You have a good one, Tex. 🙂
…any living cell with 46 chromosomes is human” or some such…
Not broad enough. There are humans with as few as 45 chromosomes (Turner syndrome) and as many as 48 (48,XXYY syndrome). People with 47,XYY and 47,XXX syndromes often have no symptoms and go undetected. Most women with 47,XXX syndrome are fertile and the syndrome can be — although seldom is — passed on to children.
can we agree that killing a child is murder?
I think the regular commenters here do agree on that.
But certain fundamentalist Christians in the US make an exception for their own kids, i.e. they claim that the Bible gives parents the right to kill their own kids for being obstinate under certain circumstances. Plus they claim that their children are their private property and the state has no right to interfere with how people deal with their private property.
I assume that those same guys consider themselves as strongly ‘pro-life’
I do not know whether I have ever met such* guys in the flesh but I have encountered them multiple times in comment threads on the net.
*the ones that claim killing rights. I know quite a few that see the old testament as a good education guide including the ‘he who does spare the rod he does not love his son.’. They do not use the ‘private property’ argument though, this seems to be a genuinely USian thing.
H.U.D.’s Meals on Wheels is zeroed out in the budget as the American bullshit family sits down at the kitchen table and decides to rationalize its spending by removing the feed bag from good for nothing non-ambulatory Uncle Fester in the upstairs bedroom.
The state of West Virginia is about to pass legislation prohibiting its state government from inspecting coal mines and levying fines for mine safety violations. Proud republican Scots-Irish hillbillies look forward to ramping up their opioid addictions to ease the pain of their livelihoods.
In the state of Texas, the backlog of rape investigations is so great because of massive public underfunding that crowd sourcing is now being considered to ease the crunch. Not only that but the rape victims face fewer choices for where to go to treat the stds and the damage done by their rapists in the Texas State house and the governer’s mansion as they plan any parenthood that might result from the crimes.
As a personal matter, I’m against killing fetuses.
In fact, if we expanded the fetal designation to all Americans, regardless of age, fetal meals on wheels recipients, fetal coal miners, and fetal rape victims might fare better under the murderous budget-cutting knives of the killer fetuses in the Republican Party.
There are tens of millions of murderous Republican fetuses who deserve aborting and none of them are precious children.
Starve em all and let God sort it out:
https://twitter.com/axios/status/842461464631885824
Still collecting atrocities, are we? With no state department, I’m getting quite nervous about North Korea.
Was just going to post that NK link sapient. The last time a GOP president decided diplomatic efforts with NK failed they developed nukes. I guess this time they might launch one at one of their neighbors. Good times.
Good times.
Yeah, this is probably what freaks me out more than anything, although I try not to think about it. Sadly, although it may help with some issues to call our Congresspeople, I’m afraid we’re totally helpless with this situation.
So, I wonder, if a disaster occurs (whether man made or natural) what kind of help will anyone get? I mean, if Meals on Wheels “is just not showing any results” are we all just on our own for good?
Countme-in: As a personal matter, I’m against killing fetuses.
Some allegedly reasonable people would tell you there are no fetuses, only babies.
And now for something completely different: I want Schumer and Pelosi to get behind a massive, enormous, yuge tax cut in the form of raising the personal exemption on the 1040 form to $50,000 — just to see how those freedom-caucus babies and their “reasonable” GOP allies react.
–TP
TP: plus change the “death tax” from zero to NEGATIVE.
Hey, zero tax is good, negative must be better, amirite?
Call it a “bounty”, if you will; but to prevent fraud the recipients have to send in the appropriate IRS form with the head stapled on.
(I’m sure that the local RW brigade will call me ‘deplorable’, but *I* wouldn’t be the one claiming that bounty; it would fall to the heirs of the oh-so-family-oriented richie-riches, and they all love each other so very very much, so nothing to worry about, right?)
the DJT administration, in a nutshell:
break stuff
throw a few bones to the nazis
take the money
we got another four years of this. watch your backs.
we got another four years of this. watch your backs.
Can we try to think of ways to get rid of him sooner? This is so disturbing, scary, embarrassing, demoralizing … Not sure that we’ll be able to recover after four years of this.
I actually think that his administration is devoted to ruining us. It’s not an accident; it’s a plan.
his administration is devoted to ruining us.
I have an extremely low opinion of Trump. But I don’t think he personally has the least interest in ruining us per se. Incapable of seeing that will be the result of his actions? Sure. But not his goal.
Bannon, on the other hand, has been extremely clear that’s what he wants to make happen.
Yes, since Trump hired Bannon he is responsible for what happens. But that’s not the same as wanting the result.
I suspect that in DJT’s world, breaking stuff, throwing a few bones to the nazis, and grabbing the money actually is a positive agenda.
It’s his version of the American way.
Maybe I’m naive, but I’m starting to think he’s going fnck over a good number of his core supporters with enough intensity and speed that they’re actually going to notice. If I’m right, it’s going to be like the anti-vaxxers who change their minds after their kids get really sick. What that will actually mean for Trump and the GOP is another question. What that will mean for the nation is even another.
Sean Hannity pulled a gun on Juan Williams in the FOX studios and waved the red laser spotting light up and down Williams’ body.
Williams, who is a dupe pussy for working for FOX in the first place, should have been carrying firepower and shot Hannity in his fuckin face and then hunted down the latter’s cunt conservative wife and children and blown them away too.
There will be killing in this country unlike anyone has ever imagined.
Fuck republicans. Fuck conservatives. Kill the NRA. Shoot it in all of its heads.
Our man Gorka is a fucking signed-up Nazi. Whatsamatta, you conservatives don’t kill Nazis in your government anymore?
Sean Hannity pulled a gun on Juan Williams in the studio.
The rest of this comment written in plain English may be held up in politically correct lalaland.
I guess I wonder why anyone thinks his supporters aren’t thrilled. Cut government waste-check, reduce the size of the federal government-check, reduce regulatoryoverreach-check, take specific action to reduce illegal immigration- check and check, enhance getting from terrorist harboring countries-check,make NATO partners pay their fair share-check, nominate a conservative Sulreme-check, repeal and replace-underway.
I can see where that starts to be overwhelming for people who two weeks ago were talking about how slow and incompetent they were.
But, None of that hasn’t been in a Republican budget lots of times over the years. I still don’t understand the end of the world reaction.
Do we know that the State Department needed a that budget to do its job?
How many of those programs is Congress really going to Cut? What Presidents budget ever got passed without a bunch of changes?
It’s like calling the ACA a tax cut for the rich because it rolls back a tax no Republican would have ever voted for, it simply reverts to the status quo, or more bluntly fixes a huge class based government redistribution.
Which of those things do you think his supporters feel let down by?
Not his supporters – some of his core supporters, as in white, poor, rural people who rely on the programs he wants to cut. And you don’t have to be competent to fnck things up. Maybe you think he’s cutting waste. I think he’s destroying things that make us a civilized nation. I also think he’s hurting the people who voted for him because of “economic anxiety.” Now they can have health, food, and housing anxiety.
Do we know that the State Department needed a that budget to do its job?
Well, we know it more than we know that the Pentagon needs a huge budget increase in order to do its job.
But hey, what could be the downside of having international meetings where we send just a couple of diplomats, while the Chinese send dozens? Why should we be concerned that China’s foreign aid is rising fast, and it is contributing increasingly to the budgets of the UN and other international organizations.
Since we are disengaging from the world, we obviously don’t care that China’s influence is growing as a result, while ours is dropping. Besides, all those generals and admirals who think “soft power” is a good way to avoid unnecessary wars are obviously just self-interested bureaucrats.
I can see where that starts to be overwhelming for people who two weeks ago were talking about how slow and incompetent they were.
I’m tickled by the fact that Marty doesn’t realize one can be woefully underprepared for something and be moving too fast at the same time.
When the Mexican ambassador goes directly to the WH because State hasn’t been staffed, or that Tillerson does not yet have a deputy or that he won’t allow the Nat’l Security Advisor any say in his own staff, not to mention all the firings. But damn, he’s making bold strokes isn’t he? His supporters think, like you seem to, that these offices just run by themselves, which is why cutting their budgets should have been done a long time ago, amirite?
Don’t worry, I’m sure you are still on the fence though…
Actually, I am long off the fence. The majority of everything Trump does is not effective, leadership or policy. I have not moved a bit toward its the “end of our country”.
What are the duties of the deputy of the Secretary of State? How many of those are currently being performed by in place bureaucrats? How many people are employed in the executive branch today compared to when Clinton or Reagan was in office? And of course, other than this reporter’s assumptions, what was bad about the Mexican diplomat talking to Tillerson by phone to set up a meeting at the WH? They had just met two weeks before in person.
And, as for Trumps voters, economic anxiety is not fixed by most of the programs on the block, the people who think it is voted for Clinton.
Marty,
LIHEAP is a program that reduces economic anxiety for actual people I actually know. Perhaps the US nuclear arsenal reduces some sort of anxiety among actual people you actually know.
My taxes and yours pay for both those programs. According to our new OMB director, it is compassionate to cut LIHEAP because it means The Guvmint won’t have to ask you or me or a single mom in Detroit for tax money to pay for it. Nukes are apparently a different story.
The annoying thing about He, Trump and his minions is that they seem to think the average American is an easily-manipulated moron. The worrisome thing is that they may be right.
–TP
cut the NEA….
the NEA’s budget was ~$150M.
that’s equivalent to one day’s worth of the DoD’s proposed increase.
it’s 2 hours worth of the DoD’s current baseline.
there’s no economic justification for cutting the NEA, its just spite.
I think it’s strange that Marty thinks all these unusual aspects of the Trump administration are somehow part of a cogent plan based on some deep insight on how the federal government should work. I think it’s all about as well considered as the wiretapping claim or the assertion that millions (MILLIONS!!!) of people voted illegally for HRC. I’m not entirely sure it’s not just a gag to get everyone riled up.
Hey, why shouldn’t He, Trump stick with what works for him?
Birtherism, for instance.
–TP
One can view Trump’s budget, at least in IMHO, as an expression of the GOP’s view that the only thing the federal government should really be involved in is national defense, certain aspects of the treasury department (the only two departments who have been continually headed by white males since their creation), and a minor role for state. These are also the three original departments created after ratification of the Constitution.
Not helping the poor, not social security or medicare/caid (although no cuts to SS currently), not spending money on basic research, no Department of Labor, HUD, HHS, EPA, Interior, no promotion of the arts, etc. etc. etc. Everything to be either shut down, privatized, or foisted on the states (except where the GOP thinks the federal government should step in and bigfoot the states, like on tort “reform” and I would bet abortion if Roe is overruled, among other things).
It’s your basic drown it in a bathtub stuff, and if you can’t handle it fnck off and die (which was Mulvaney’s underlying message yesterday, maybe even explicit message).
The advantage for them for the programs they defend is that anything that has infrastructure will be much harder to revive if it has been dormant for several years (employees laid off, assets sold, knowledge lost, etc.).
All of this in the context where total US taxes as a % of GDP in the United States are near the bottom of the OECD countries.
Knives are out Paul. I hope the emergency meeting on ACA repeal Monday morning goes well….
the GOP’s view that the only thing the federal government should really be involved in is national defense, certain aspects of the treasury department (the only two departments who have been continually headed by white males since their creation), and a minor role for state
i’d believe that if they weren’t also very interested in making government tell people which bathrooms they can use.
the NEA’s entire budget was less than what we spend on security for Melania and Barron to stay in NYC rather than at the White House.
Think the NEA is just a lot of poncey bullshit for hipsters in Brooklyn and Berkeley? Joke’s on you.
A lot of Trump supporters look at the stuff being cut and think it’s either somebody taking their stuff and giving it to somebody else, or they think it’s the feds meddling in stuff they have no business in.
Either way, they assume it’s nothing to do with them.
Joke’s on them. The rest of us, too. But also them.
Some people don’t have the sense that god gave a squirrel. Unfortunately, a lot of those folks decided to vote last year.
DJT is going to do nothing but damage, and he’s going to look upon it and say that it’s good. A lot of the folks who voted for him are going to do the same.
If they were only harming themselves I’d say so be it. They’re not.
It would be too strong to say I wish that what they have brought down on others’ heads will fall on theirs as well. I will say that I will not think it unjust if and when that happens.
And it will happen.
I don’t think many of them will learn from the experience. As they are prone to do, they will find someone else to blame.
Why not start a war with a nuclear armed state? South Koreans don’t vote, amirite?
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, visiting South Korea, said for the first time that the Trump administration might take pre-emptive action if North Korea’s nuclear threat reached an unacceptable level.
Why not needlessly antagonize on of our staunchest and longest-standing allies? But we’re sorry!
What an effing sh1tshow.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/17/us-makes-formal-apology-britain-white-house-accuses-gchq-wiretapping/
First!
Pro tip: stay away from Tokyo Disneyland when Trump/Bannon/Tillerson decides to give NK a poke.
Dammit!
I’m tickled by the fact that Marty doesn’t realize one can be woefully underprepared for something and be moving too fast at the same time.
That’s just bull (in a china shop!)
How many people are employed in the executive branch today compared to when Clinton or Reagan was in office?
1984 – 2,854,000
2014 – 2,663,000
Creeping socialism if you ask me.
But Hillary Clinton is a hawk.
Italics?
Marty proves, by asking lots of questions that imply things must be terribly awry, that Trump and his people must know what they’re doing.
Here are the opm numbers on executive branch civilian employment since 1940.
That there are about the same number of federal civilian employees (in fact slightly fewer) during Obama’s first years in office than during Reagan is rather remarkable considering the intervening population growth.
And yet we are being oppressed by faceless unaccountable bureaucrats.
Gloves are off everywhere I guess.
Oops sapient already posted that. I need a break…
“And yet we are being oppressed by faceless unaccountable bureaucrats.”
Not included in the ‘head count’, so faceless AND headless. No wonder they’re unaccountable: can’t count them.
Basically, it’s a freaking mess. A great big stinky chaotic mess.
DJT doesn’t have the chops. And he doesn’t know what the chops that are required even are, because they are outside of his experience, and he has neither the interest nor the imagination to consider stuff that is outside of his experience.
Further, he has no understanding of or respect for the traditions and institutions that keep the freaking wheels on and which prevent mere incompetence from driving the bus over the cliff.
Marty says:
It’s not the end of the world. The nation, and the world, has been through really horrendous stuff, I’m sure we’ll all get through this.
It’s just stupid, pointless, reckless, ignorant damage. And we’re going to spend the next generation cleaning it up, if we’re lucky.
So for all the folks who look at what DJT et al are up to and say, “Yay, another item on the punch list checked off!”, I say, pray this shit doesn’t fall on your head.
And if it does, it’s nothing more or less than karma. What you wished to happen to others, is happening to you. All the goodies that you thought everyone else was getting while you were being overlooked, now nobody is going to get. Including you. You get nothing.
Some folks will learn from it, some will just double down.
Good luck everyone!
Why not needlessly antagonize on of our staunchest and longest-standing allies?
Well, if you are going to insult and antagonize the people in your own government who you depend on for (accurate!) intelligence information, why worry about the tender feelings of some dang furriners? Especially since Congress can’t subpoena them for records of the alleged wiretap, so your accusation can’t be disproved.
This is polite.
This here dang furriner has more on the Mercers, from Huffington Post but a long and seemingly well-researched piece, for anybody who is interested and hasn’t seen it already:
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/mercers/
Also, for anybody at all still interested in the ghastly Esterhase/Gorka, a friend sent me this which seems to provide some evidence (hard to judge reliability of source though) that the creep actually swore an oath of membership to the Nazi organisation whose medal he says he only wore to honour his father:
http://forward.com/news/national/366181/exclusive-nazi-allied-group-claims-top-trump-aide-sebastian-gorka-as-sworn/
I do realise that in the grand scheme of things this is completely irrelevant, but since the White House regularly wheels out this guy to speak for them, anything that discredits him and confirms more antisemitism in the group is all to the good.
He (Gorka) denies it, leave out that part. 🙂
TPM is following this pretty closely.
GFNC,
The article on the Mercers was very interesting.* Thanks.
comrade bobby(the leveler)p.
*how do the rich become such twisted f*cks?
I do realise that in the grand scheme of things this is completely irrelevant
Actually, if Gorka is a member of a Nazi-affiliated and -aligned organization, it’s extremely relevant. I’d like him the hell out of government, and out of the damned country. It’s unlikely that he would have been allowed in had he disclosed this when applying for entry.
All assuming he actually is a member.
Even wearing the badge is seriously f’ed up. I’m sure there are Germans living here who hold positions of public responsibility, and whose forbears were Nazis. Not an issue in and of itself, we all have questionable characters in our family trees. Wear a swastika patch on your jacket, however, and people will have an issue.
Correctly so. Right?
it’s extremely relevant.
Republicans are supporting these thugs. People who haven’t actively opposed them have enabled them. If we can’t get them out, it’s just going to get more vile.
how do the rich become such twisted f*cks?
Actually, most of them don’t.** It’s just the handful of very high profile scum who make everybody else look bad.
** I’m not at all sure that there are more, percentage-wise, than at other income levels. They just have more scope to cause trouble.
I just want to know why I haven’t become rich, twisted f*ck that I am.
It goes back to college at least:
https://twitter.com/UweBollocks/status/842772160691261441
wow.
i did not think about Medicaid funding while standing around the keg. i thought about hooking up, like a college age guy is supposed to.
i guess that means Paul Ryan is a bigger geek than i could ever be. and i thought that wearing this shirt put me pretty much unbeatable in that regard.
alas.
Well, if we’re talking geek tee shirts, here is my favorite.
“go back to Mexico,” shouted the 9-10 year-olds at the other 9-10 year-olds and their parents, at the robotics competition.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/03/17/robotics-competition-racism/99301384/
those bad apples have me worried about the rest of the bunch
Gloves are off everywhere I guess.
nothing new
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Sana%27a_funeral_air_raid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37607248
I own a Save Ferris t-shirt.
novakant, the Saudis buy weapons from the UK too. Just sayin’.
I think that part of the Gorka discussion is based on incorrect understanding of immigration law. The order of Vitez is listed as a nazi-affiliated organisation by the Department of state, but that applies to membership during the Second World War. The basis for inadmissibility would be “participation in nazi persecutions” mentioned in INA. It is rather obvious that Gorka cannot have participated in these, even though he likes to cosplay. His membership in the organisation is based on his father’s anti-communist activities in an emigrant group in 1970’s. The guy is an asshole, but not inadmissible.
More generally, this is not something limited to Order of Vitez but rather typical of anti-communist emigrant organizations that were active during the Cold War. Many of those groups did not just denounce communism. They often simultaneously adopted the darkest parts of the nationalist ideology of their respective nations. However, an American cannot really condemn the post-WWII membership in such an organization with good conscience. I would wager that CIA had and probably still has rather strong influence in the organization. These guys are assholes, but they are your assholes.
Why do you assume I would defend the policies of the UK government?
However, an American cannot really condemn the post-WWII membership in such an organization with good conscience. I would wager that CIA had and probably still has rather strong influence in the organization. These guys are assholes, but they are your assholes.
Not defending some of the ugly things the CIA has been involved with over the years, but I think a little more support for this would be appropriate, especially the part about whether the CIA is involved now.
Why do you assume I would defend the policies of the UK government?
Did I say I assume that? Do you think whatever the Saudi government does can be imputed to everyone who’s sold it anything? Does that apply too to other types of trade? After all, any relationship that assists the Saudis in any way also helps them in their ability to conduct war. Do the other countries in the coalition also bear responsibility?
I think that the blame for atrocities belongs on whoever has made the decision to act in the particular operation. In the case you cited, it was the Saudis. In the case in Syria reported today, it was the United States.
Also, if a country is committing atrocities, does the international community have an obligation to stop it? If they don’t, are they also culpable?
Correctly so. Right?
Right, russell. Actually, when I said that in the grand scheme of things Gorka is irrelevant, I admit that I was trying to cover myself for what may (fairly) be being perceived as an obsession with a bit-player. But really, you’re right, and if someone who has pledged allegiance to a nazi-sympathising organisation is connected to the administration, it says something pretty bad about them which needs to be exposed to the light and heavily emphasised.
Also, if a country is committing atrocities, does the international community have an obligation to stop it? If they don’t, are they also culpable?
I have the name of this country on the tip of my tongue….lessee’ here…hmmm? Serbia? Nah. Lybia? Can’t be. Iraq? Never heard of the place.
Congo? Don’t go there.
But I am old and forgetful.
But I am old and forgetful.
Me too. But I can answer the question. Sometimes, it depends.
Also, more same same.
You might want to read the links I provided.
What makes you think I didn’t read them?
Back to t-shirts, in the olden days I had one that had a university crest with “MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY”.
The *most* amusing part was seeing people working in little indy bookstores completely crack up when seeing it.
…ETA: not sure whatever happened to that shirt. Probably eaten by an Old One.
crap, now i want a knuth t shirt.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-yemen-idUSKCN12A0BQ?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/stop-uk-made-weapons-claiming-yemeni-lives
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/saudi-arabia-arms-sale-yemen-war.html?_r=0
Miller and Bannon read something like this, smile to themselves and think “it’s working.” Moronic Brownshirt fncks.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahallam/american-muslims-are-cancelling-spring-break-trips-to-avoid?utm_term=.doQNkXAgq#.xd0ZAqNmK
“Proxy” detention.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/proxy-detention-us-citizen-iraq-glimpse-murky-important-category-detention
As an aside, I hope that all the liberal folk I see on my twitter feed who ISTM are all of a sudden citing the writers at the lawfare blog quite often remember that those same writers are not, for the most part, on those folk’s side.
Just because the lawyers among us deserve a laugh:
http://loweringthebar.net/2017/03/the-oxford-comma-use-it.html
–TP
And then there’s Headline Stress Disorder. Never heard of it before, but I can definitely relate. Somehow I suspect I’m not alone here in that.
The times we live in:
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/03/17/california-restaurant-under-fire-after-asking-4-diners-for-proof-of-residency/
Note that, contrary to the headline, it wasn’t the restaurant which was the problem. More like a rogue employee.
Which raises another question, “If you are an employer, how do you minimize the chances of an employee doing something like that?” Include a question on the employment application about political views? Somehow that seems problematic as well.
Snarki, if it had been an Old One it’s the shirt that would be left behind, not you.
ral: HA! I can run faster than ANY t-shirt!
russell: there are Knuth t-shirts? I have a couple of old cheques from him, but no shirts.
see cleek’s 4:39
off topic….I suggest all (yes, even McKinney and Marty) bookmark this page.
We can all be special snowflakes, if only we would try.
t-shirts! I remember doing tie-dye t-shirts. boy, were they ugly. We also had Rosa Luxemburg shirts and “No Way” shirts. The No Way shirts were to show our disagreement with the Jesus freak “one way” mantra.
Good times.
hang-’em from lampposts bobbyp
The sad thing about the way Murray and Yiannopoulos are treated is that those who shut them down are actually (perhaps unintentionally) saying that their ideas are so attractive, and so impossible to refute, that silencing them is critical.
Whereas if those ideas are wrong, the path of those who are confident of the superiority of their own views would be to let them speak. And then dismantle their claims on their (lack of) merits. Embarrassing for them that they do not — although they apparently can’t see it.
those who shut them down are actually (perhaps unintentionally) saying that their ideas are so attractive, and so impossible to refute, that silencing them is critical.
i guess you could interpret it that way.
i see it more as “you’ve put yourself outside the boundaries of acceptability and so we’re not going to let you use our space to do your shtick.”
My all-time favorite t-shirt, seen on a body in Provincetown one summer long ago:
On the front it said, “Jesus is coming.”
On the back it said, “Look busy.”
Delurkng to say I have mixed feelings about the TNR article about Middlebury. I am not sure there is a need to debate every idea ad nauseam. I don’t know what Murray’s more recent work is — maybe it deserves discussion. Milo’s ideas don’t. I think students have a right to protest the appearance of speakers. They don’t have a right to shut them down.
But the problem at Middlebury ( I didn’t follow what happened in California) is that many of the protestors were violent and even injured the ( liberal ) professor who was supposed to debate Murray, They weren’t being special snowflakes. They were being criminals.
On the front it said, “Jesus is coming.”
On the back it said, “Look busy.”
my wife bought me a shirt that says “I found Jesus. He was behind the couch!” and there’s a picture of Jesus standing up behind a couch, arms raised looking happy to be found.
i wore it once, to a bar, and some giant hulk of a guy was very very very offended by it and started trying to gad me into a fight.
The woman who got a concussion from the Middlebury protestors —
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/opinion/understanding-the-angry-mob-that-gave-me-a-concussion.html?_r=0
I never read the Bell Curve, btw, just articles by Murray at the time. I thought he was a disingenuous racist. He probably still is. Protests are fine. Giving people concussions isn’t.
Showing my age, I used to have a sweatshirt that said, “Free the bound periodicals!”
Whereas if those ideas are wrong, the path of those who are confident of the superiority of their own views would be to let them speak.
Like the GOp held extended hearings on their so-called healthcare plan to debate and see whose ideas are superior? You analysis is great if everybody had equal access to getting their message out…but such an ideal world does not exist.
You cannot abstract from the dimension of power and who gets to wield it.
What i got from the article was that the whole concept of a “marketplace of ideas” is fundamentally flawed.
That’s where the debate should be, not about the protests, yelling, or even the violence.
bobbybringonthedictatorshipoftheproletariatp
It’s not the idea (or ideal) of a “marketplace of ideas” that is fundamentally flawed. It’s the execution.
In the case of presentations at a university, there really isn’t a noticeable difference in the ability of others (absent over-zealous protesters) to get their ideas out to the same audience. Sure, the others don’t have access to talk radio or Fox News. But that’s just not relevant to the question of a presentation to a university audience.
My favorite among t-shirt slogans remains “Jesus saves . . . Moses invests”
OT: Alas, Chuck Berry. Apparently a pretty difficult or even impossible person, but an immortal, surely. Johnny B Goode, one of the great songs. Maybe not OT after all, it’s American Carnage.
Thanks for the link bobbyp here is another by the same author:
https://newrepublic.com/article/133531/free-speech-charade
It’s not the idea (or ideal) of a “marketplace of ideas” that is fundamentally flawed. It’s the execution.
Well, the marketplace of ideas is a metaphor and thus flawed on some level even before discussing it. For example:
As Bloomberg, Koch, and countless other free-speech advocates would have it, the “marketplace of ideas” is actually more like a communist scenario in which all speech units—racist remarks and peer-reviewed studies—have equal value, such that minimizing certain kinds of speech as bigoted or inferior is tantamount to censorship.
…
Thus, when a campus is embroiled in protests (speech) over bigotry or disinvited speakers, the real censorship happens by ripping the debate away from the substance of marginalized students’ concerns and focusing instead on “free speech”—that is, on the sensitivities of those who would rather not have to think about their capacity to hurt or offend. But an intellectually honest free-speech advocate wouldn’t cry censorship; they’d instead address the substance of the speech being censored or marginalized, and argue for why that speech deserves to be heard on a college campus in the first place.
However, that’s the kind of open debate that Bloomberg and Koch don’t want to have, because that would mean forcing them to defend bigoted speech on its own merits.
This is what I was thinking of with respect to Milo and Murray – what, exactly do they have to say that the supposedly close minded liberals on campus should hear? Will it be a learning experience, are they likely to come away enlightened or at least understanding a different perspective? Or were these two invited for the sheer spectacle of it and to “piss off the liberals”? Milo in particular seemed to be there to lob insults for an hour and declare it brilliant.
Of course, Milo did do us one favor by putting the lie to the idea that his conservative fans were oh so concerned about free speech on campus and the threats to “open minds and rational discourse” once he said something they thought was sufficiently offensive. Then all of a sudden disinvitations and shunning were a-ok.
You know the way you protest a speech on campus, you don’t go. If you want to offer an alternative speech, even outside the forum, that’s a goid way to make a point. I find Milo to be a grotesque caricature of what he pretends to be but I haven’t seen him advocate violence.
Excusing physically abusing people because of what they might say is just wrong. In the marketplace of ideas some are bad to begin with some, go bad over time. So don’t buy them.
Or you can go and express your displeasure, even loudly, at a speaker lacking merit being invited to speak on your campus. And I’m not sure anyone here is excusing violence. (If I had the time and energy, I might have gone to my alma mater to protest Snooki from Jersey Shore‘s speaking engagement 5 or so years ago. I mean, seriously?)
my understanding is that the violence at berkeley was mostly, or completely, from an antifascist black bloc. that’s not a student movement, it’s a radical political one. imo the black bloc kids overdramatize everyone they don’t like into the sturmabteilung. it’s like bringing a megaphone and flash grenades to the debate club.
that said, it’s not like the SA is unrepresented. at some point, not actually now, resistance by force may be appropriate.
that’s not a defense, i don’t have a high opinion of the the anarchist and antifascist kids, IMO they make the situation worse than it is already.
middlebury is a different case, people shouldn’t be subject to violence for speaking. full stop. throw the perpetrators out of school.
what i’d really like to know is what kind of band of puerile assholes embraces milo yiannopolis as their spokesperson? the impression i take away from all of it is that the young republicans are a bunch of snotty jerks.
they don’t want to advance their principles,they just want to piss people off. pushing buttons is their contribution to the public debate.
the most appropriate response would be to give them nothing. don’t attend or even acknowledge their public events. treat them like the rotten brats that they are.
Meanwhile, Fearless Leader continues making friends and influencing people. It’s almost as though his words have the opposite effect relative to his intentions. Stupid is as stupid does, indeed.
An “increase in defense spending is unpopular, and so is Donald Trump. By ‘ordering’ Merkel to increase spending, he will make it harder for her to sell that increase at home,” he said. “Nothing would be worse for Merkel than being seen as taking orders from Trump. Ultimately, I predict Germany will increase spending — but at the pace it had already committed to.”
Sapient,
sorry for the slow answer. I could not find anything specific about Order if Vitez, but the following declassified CIA document is a good overview on the topic.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA%20AND%20NAZI%20WAR%20CRIM.%20AND%20COL.%20CHAP.%201-10,%20DRAFT%20WORKING%20PAPER_0009.pdf
In particular, please note the repeated statements that for most East European countries, previous cooperation with nazis was considered evidence of reliable anti-communist stance.
the impression i take away from all of it is that the young republicans are a bunch of snotty jerks.
they don’t want to advance their principles,they just want to piss people off. pushing buttons is their contribution to the public debate.
In short, they are a mirror image (albeit without the violence) of the black block that hsh speaks of.
My, admittedly long ago, college experience was that lots of kids’ approach to politics involved posturing — with or without some level of physical confrontation. For some, the excitement of the confrontation was the whole point; the politics was just an excuse. I heard one kid say, while heading out to a riot that the reason he was going was the excitement. I’m doubtful he even knew what the supposed cause was that nominally sparked it.
An “increase in defense spending is unpopular, and so is Donald Trump. By ‘ordering’ Merkel to increase spending, he will make it harder for her to sell that increase at home,”
For Trump, as for the sophomoric college students, the confrontation is the whole point. Actually accomplishing something is irrelevant.
Thank you for finding this, Lurker. I read it thoroughly, and it’s interesting. I knew that the CIA had recruited ex-Nazis for various purposes after the War, so it wasn’t a surprise, but the details are interesting. I’ll read more.
My quibble with your statement wasn’t so much about post-WWII CIA anti-Communist programs (and Gorka’s father’s participation) but about this statement:
I would wager that CIA had and probably still has rather strong influence in the organization. These guys are assholes, but they are your assholes.
I don’t think that Gorka is “our asshole”. Maybe his father was (in a sense, in that we used these questionable people to fend off what we perceived as the Soviet threat, not that we created them in the first place), but having a blatant Nazi as a National Security Adviser would always have been beyond the pale.
I’m sure, Lurker, that you are acutely aware of what was happening post-WWII. In trying to evaluate the actions of the CIA, it’s important to keep in mind all that had happened, and was happening. The Nazis were seen to be mostly defeated, but Stalin won the war. The Soviet Union was an expansionist great power that was committing horrific violence against its own people in the name of its own extremist ideology. That ideology was being imposed on Eastern Europe, and spreading throughout Asia. Communism wasn’t a compassionate alternative to the Nazis in the form that it was taking. I don’t support or defend many of the US Cold War policies, but the problems that NATO powers were facing in recovering from the war, and opposing Communism (as it had taken shape in the Soviet Union and China), were significant and daunting.
Learning what happened, understanding where it went wrong, and the fact that US policy created its own legacy of problems, all of that is important for policy going forward. I don’t think it excuses having Nazis in office now though, or even explains it.
(emphasis added)
I hadn’t encountered the highlighted statistic before. But a moment’s thought about the post-WWE II era makes it totally unsurprising.
I wonder if it would help Trump accept the merits of aid if someone told him that the Marshall Plan was created by a General. Probably not — since trade seems to be something else that he opposes, why would he care?
Everything is zero sum in Trump’s mind, it seems. He’s not alone in that.
russell: the most appropriate response would be to give them nothing. don’t attend or even acknowledge their public events.
Probably this is good advice. The problem with it is that silence can come across as acquiescence in some cases.
Come across to whom? To the open-minded. To the uninformed. To the currently-apathetic.
The world is complex, and the truth is sometimes counter-intuitive. Humans are often persuaded by the first explanation they hear, given the complexity; they often cling to it in the face of contrary evidence, given that knowing a counter-intuitive “truth” makes us feel smarter than the suckers who believe their own lying eyes.
Decades ago, Erich von Daniken was pushing his “ancient astronauts” theories, Immanuel Velikovsky his “worlds in collision”, and Saint Reagan his “trickle-down economics”. All of those simple, counter-intuitive paradigms had their heyday for a while, in part on the strength of the shout-and-pout technique: I am proclaiming the truth and look how I am being repressed by all those protesters. So I acknowledge the catch-22 here: ignoring bullshit can allow it to spread; vocally opposing it can needlessly publicize it.
My own inclination is to believe in the power of satire and ridicule to counter sober-sounding bullshit. But the satire and the ridicule has to get to the audience somehow, and the problem with invited speeches in academic settings is that decorum is considered a virtue. Also, satire and ridicule are harder to pull off than chants and violence.
All this makes me wish there was a simple, counter-intuitive solution to the problem.
–TP
The core problem with zero-sum, and something I think gets too little attention, is that it means that you can’t win unless someone else loses. Which seems to routinely morph into seeing the other guy lose being the whole focus. That is, I don’t care if I actually win anything, so long as he loses. Sad!
TP: an additional complication is from the long history of outside groups (often in collusion with ‘inside groups’) wanting to have campus events that aren’t a real ‘debate on the issue’, but rather as an ‘event’ that can be later pointed to as if the institution had endorsed it.
The examples that come to mind are anti-vaxxers and young-earth creationists, but I’m sure there are others. And it’s mostly a concern for places like Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, etc., not obscure liberal arts college, because it’s about PR and propagandizing an uninformed public, so name recognition is valuable.
Open debate is good. Being used as a PR prop for some dishonest hacks, less so.
The problem with it is that silence can come across as acquiescence in some cases.
You don’t have to be silent. Just don’t bother showing up at their thing. Hold your own thing the same night, and go to that.
I actually think that would be better than standing outside of their thing and protesting. They love the attention.
Hold your own thing the same night, and go to that.
Like this.
(I will get back to the phrase “from away” some other time.)
Hold your own thing the same night, and go to that.
An event which generates a protest creates all sorts of lovely publicity for your cause. But if you hold an event which draws 10 people, while someone who disagrees with you holds a competing event draws 75? That’s just an embarrassment.
The thread has meandered a lot, so I hope this is not too off-thread (I think it is very germane to much we have discussed about fake news, and the part it and its bedfellows have played in the last election, Brexit etc). It is from today’s Observer, and is by John Naughton, the Professor (more senior than that indicates in the States, normally denotes head of department) of the public understanding of technology at the Open University. It’s interesting to see how the reactions to this issue are developing around the world, I think, and some of you may too.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/john-naughton-germany-fine-social-media-sites-facebook-twitter-hate-speech
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/tomdispatch-dc-congress-defense-international-arms-business
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/obama-international-arms-weapons-deals
If it weren’t for the United States defense industry, novakant, war would most certainly be obsolete, amIright?
If you just pick your facts carefully, you can immediately see a simple solution to any of the world’s problems. Or is that “simplistic”?
Or is that “simplistic”?
Well, whatever, wj, I’m pretty sure the United States is to blame.
Never say that Mr Trump’s people can’t innovate.
OK, it looks a lot like a system of political commissars, which the Russians came up with decades ago. But these folks make ignorance a point of pride, so most likely it’s a case of independent invention.
Have just read a review in the Observer, which review I don’t seem able to link, of a book which sounds extremely good and necessary in these times. It is called “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century”, by somebody (a Yale professor) called Timothy Snyder. The excerpts I read seemed excellent, and important.
The description on Amazon reads:
My mind these days seems full of mush, so it’s possible somebody has already talked about this book on ObWi and I just don’t remember. If so, apologies. If not, maybe some of you will also find it interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119
Thanks GftNC. Timothy Snyder is a must read. His abbreviated Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century have been on his facebook page. He has some interviews posted online.
Timothy Snyder and Sarah Kendzior are two of the most important voices of the Trump era.
Thanks sapient, will check out his Facebook page (if a non-Facebooker can do so).
Haven’t read it yet, though I caught an interview about it on (?) Slate or the Atlantic.
Snyder is a great historian.
Timothy Snyder article in today’s [annoyingly ad-ridden] New York Daily News.
Timothy Snyder and Sarah Kendzior are two of the most important voices of the Trump era.
Well, not quite so fast there….
Not reading the Jacobin. Nope. Not going there. Have fun with that.
On Jacobin’s Jeremy Corbyn. No thanks to the left’s Putin puppets. No, no, no. This is why the post-WWII era was so complicated.
A somewhat critical review of the 20 lessons here.
Not reading the Jacobin. Nope. Not going there.
The great marketplace of ideas takes another hit.
A somewhat critical review of the 20 lessons here.
The idea that we’re immune from a fascist demagogue strikes me as very unwise. Michael Gove resists the comparison with Hitler, but says:
“And, to be fair to Snyder, many of the recommendations he makes on how to maintain the health of a political culture are well-judged. The importance of scrupulosity in the use of language, bravery in standing out against the crowd, energetic participation in civil society and support for a free media all need restating. If more people follow Snyder’s injunctions to read newspapers, avoid falling for contrived online “scandals”, make friends across national boundaries and remember professional ethics then the world will indeed be a better place.”
So let’s just take Snyder’s warnings to heart, and follow his advice. Trump doesn’t need to turn out to be Hitler for the advice to be sound. And maybe by taking Snyder’s advice, Trump won’t turn out to be Hitler. That’s the plan.
The great marketplace of ideas takes another hit.
Nice thing about the marketplace: we don’t have to shop there.
The idea that we’re immune from a fascist demagogue strikes me as very unwise.
Ah, the exhilarating smell of a fresh burning of another straw man….nobody has made that argument, and, yes, the quoted text is sound advice.
Ah, the exhilarating smell of a fresh burning of another straw man….nobody has made that argument, and, yes, the quoted text is sound advice.
Straw man? Maybe it’s as simple as: we agree.
Now just how could this happen? Truly a mystery.
The left’s Putin’s puppets sounds like the left’s Saddam’s puppets
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/03/10-years-right-invaded-iraq
Btw, I am not commenting on whether Corbyn is an electoral disaster. I assume Cohen isn’t making that up.
Thanks for the link, Donald. Cohen raises some points worth considering.
If it weren’t for the United States defense industry, novakant, war would most certainly be obsolete, amIright?
this might serve as an example for what I meant by sapient lowering the level of discourse on this blog – Eisenhower is turning in his grave
this might serve as an example for what I meant by sapient lowering the level of discourse on this blog – Eisenhower is turning in his grave
But you can’t really argue with it.
while not denying that the US is the greatest evil in the world (we’ll let historians decide if it’s the worst right now or the worst ever), i feel compelled to point out that we’re not the only ones making life miserable for others:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/health-care-in-syria-weaponized-by-gov-t-forces-russian-allies-report-1.3331832
Not reading the Jacobin. Nope. Not going there.
The great marketplace of ideas takes another hit.
I don’t have a lot of time, but I (quickly) read the article. From what I can see, it is simply wrong in its counter-assertions.
Snyder demonstrates extremely convincingly in his later book, Black Earth, that the Holocaust was most complete in precisely this states which had previously been destroyed by the Soviets. the data are absolutely compelling, and rebut the Jacobin’s argument about the lack of Soviet responsibility.
He is also entirely forensic about Hitler’s mad ideology in a way which makes a complete nonsense of most of the Jacobin article’s criticisms. He does not equate Nazism and Soviet Stalinism.
cleek-with-a-fake-beard, that sounds like the wet dream of some USians too. Let’s see how many hospitals will close (without application of direct violence) and how many will die as a result when Ryan, Trump and accomplices are through with their ‘reforms’*.
‘Ruinen schaffen ohne Waffen’ is not just popular in the ‘real existierender Sozialismus’ of the late GDR, or so it seems.
[/nasty mood expression, nothing personal against you]
*admittedly they do not (yet) include the licence for ER rooms to reject people that cannot pay in advance. But imo it’s just a matter of time before that idea gets revived too.
I spent a lot of time studying about the Holocaust in Uni, but haven’t kept up with things, so I don’t know if the Jacobin article is correct or not about Snyder, but the summary of the Goldhagen book Hitler’s Willing Executioners doesn’t seem to be related to the book that I read. It did talk about the responsibility of German culture for the Holocaust, but the idea that it was somehow a way to support the better angels of the American psyche, I didn’t see. So I’d be hesitant to accept his conclusions on Snyder.
Snyder demonstrates extremely convincingly in his later book, Black Earth, that the Holocaust was most complete in precisely this states which had previously been destroyed by the Soviets.
Besides Poland, which countries would that be?
I have not read any of Snyder’s work, but found (and read) the Jacobin piece merely as a counterpoint to the total and uncritical adulation heaped on that author by Sapient.
As a holder of a history degree myself, any time I see those kinds of sweeping assertions, I get suspicious. cf Walt Rostow and Francis Fukuyama to proffer just two examples.
Thanks.
bobbyp, I’d say the Baltic states and Ukraine. In the former the local anti-semites had already started the works before even the Einsatzgruppen got ready there. And iirc there was an old rabid and violent antisemitic tradition in Ukraine too (from what I hear even today it is still part of the Cossack culture). As far as Poland is concerned, some rogue parts of the Catholic clerus could give some ME propagandists a run for their money and would end up behind bars in most civilized countries (no support from the last few popes at least but those are heretics anyway).
A friend just sent me this, with the comment that the press has a lot to answer for after their decades-long love affair and donation of free publicity for Trump:
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/jimmy-breslin-s-columns-on-donald-trump-1.13288319
I love Corum’s Law: “A sucker has to get screwed.” Although unfortunately, in this case, the sucker is the US people.
Thanks, Hartmut. But was not the Ukraine a part of the Soviet Union prior to WWII? In what sense does one posit that it had been “previously destroyed by the Soviet Union”?
Oh,well.
this interview does give me some sense of where Snyder is coming from. Very interesting…Hitler as crazed “intellectual”.
Another, perhaps more balanced take on Snyder.
bobbyp, there were several short-lived independent Ukrainian states after the end of WW1 (violently nationalistic with strong emphasis on Ukrainisation) that then got concquered (and in the process devastated) by the Red Army. And then there was of course the Holodomor 1931-1933, the hunger genocide executed by the Soviet leadership against the Ukrainian population. Formally Ukraine was a separate Soviet republic, not part of the Russian one but just in union with it (this is still of importance due to the Crimea question. The peninsula got officially moved from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian one under the legal fiction that they were separate entities.)
I have to add that I have not read any of Snyder’s books and am only responding to the question you posed above. So don’t consider my answer to be taking any position on him or his theses.
Besides Poland, which countries would that be?
The Baltic states – Lithuania being the extreme example. The state having been destroyed twice over, the only ones who survived in positions of power were those willing to collaborate with both Soviet and Nazi regimes.
At the other end of the scale, countries like Italy and France – where the continuing state institutions – among them, citizenship – served (however partially and imperfectly) to delay and frustrate the genocidal program.
Read the books; I thoroughly recommend them. As a historian, Snyder is not a political partisan – except maybe from the perspective of totalitarian apologists.
“The Baltic states – Lithuania being the extreme example.”
Except there was your use of the word “previously”. That is what I am trying to understand.
I would ask you to read the New Yorker piece I cited above…much shorter than the books. 🙂
I would ask you to read the New Yorker piece I cited above…much shorter than the books. 🙂
Gopnik says this:
I didn’t read the book that Gopnik is reviewing, but Gopnik’s failure to mention the Holodomor makes me think that he’s not considering very carefully its horrors. bobbyp, you didn’t seem to be very familiar with it either, which indicates that maybe it was right for Snyder to point it out.
Snyder upholds the value of institutions as a bulwark against authoritarian atrocities (as he indicates in his current warnings against Trump). He blames Stalin’s destruction of institutions as setting the stage for the level of violence. Gopnik addresses this:
But he also says this:
Honestly, I don’t know what point Gopnik is making here – he seems to be saying opposite things. In the case of the Ukraine, that we can’t blame their genocide (only a few years prior) for Ukrainian willingness to kill Jews; and then says that we must blame “war” for the atrocity that was My Lai. (Or what is he saying about My Lai? I confess to being completely confused by what he means that “Americans have not come to terms”.)
I too have a history B.A., and recognize that no historian has a monopoly on the truth of the past. It’s why history is endlessly fascinating. Snyder is a fine historian though, and his warnings are worth heading.
Bobby, ‘previously’, as in the year before the Nazi occupation:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Baltic_states_(1940)
from GFTNC’s link:
Trump’s next book, scheduled for publication any day now, has been held up. It is being edited with flea powder.
god bless jimmy breslin.
the old school cats are dropping likr flies. the world’s a poorer place for it.
By way, once again, of our old pal Gary Farber on FB: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/13/unspeakable-realities-block-universal-health-coverage-in-the-us/#59e50718186a
Excerpt:
“Socialism for white people is all-enveloping, benevolent, invisible, and insulated by the nasty, deceptive notion that we have earned our benefits by our own hand”
Those American Socialists are insidious, aren’t they?
I think the Holocaust discussion is an important one to have, but, not thinking of anyone in particular, people have to come to their own understanding rather than say X is right, or Y is full of crap. It’s similar to gaining an understanding of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Gar Alperovitz book came out and everyone wants to either praise or denigrate Alperovitz. My suggestion is that rather than pick particular facts about these accounts, let’s discuss some of the issues and our own understandings.
I’m pretty sympathetic to the accounts of anti-semitism in the countries that have been named, I certainly don’t think those countries have come to terms with it. When you have national football teams taking the crests and symbols of these groups that aided in the Holocaust, (like the Ustasha and Croatia), it seems like there is something deeper going on. We tend to view the Holocaust from the view point of urbanized Jewry like Anne Frank and all the scientists and artists that came to the US, but the Holocaust (and I don’t want to say the bulk cause I don’t know the figures, but certainly a large portion) was also in these unassimilated communities. Our historical knowledge of this is also warped because the liberated camps that we were most familar with (Auschwitz, Chelmo and Treblinka) were in the west, but there were a number that were liberated by the Soviets that are not really part of common knowledge. In addition, Auschwitz and other camps were labor camps, done with the cooperation of German industry, but the eastern camps were extermination camps, designed to efficiently eliminate Jewry and provide room for the Lebensraum.
Anyway, the position I would stake out is that the Holocaust is the defining event of the 20th century. I take a functionalist view of it, which says that there is not one particular motivating factor but the coming together of a lot of trends in Western society.
It’s a tough subject to talk about, but an important one I think.
I’d agree with a lot of that, lj.
In the interests of accuracy though, I’d point out that Treblinka was the largest of the extermination camps (a book by one of the very few survivors is probably the most harrowing I’ve ever read), and Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets:
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005131
The reason we know so little of the extermination camps is that the Nazis destroyed them.
One of the strengths of the Snyder book is that is analyses in detail the entirety of the Holocaust, from its genesis in Hitler’s lunatic ideology through to the end of the war.
For me, the most notable point of the book is that Snyder demonstrates how little correlation there is between pre-war anti-Semitism in a country, and how complete the Holocaust was – and equally that the ideology did not seem to be important in determining who participated in perpetrating these crimes, and who did not.
Given the right conditions, any society contains those who will participate in atrocities.
Thanks Nigel, I should have checked a little more closely and not relied on memory. I looked at the map at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp
which, amazingly, confirmed my thoughts. A good reason to be always be cautious, especially when talking things of this weight.
I’m probably overstating things, but after googling various things about Synder’s work, I realized that I have a view of assimilated European Jewish populations (think Anne Frank), even though I know that many of the Jews in Eastern Europe were unassimilated, and this otherness often led to pograms and outbursts of anti-semitic violence. With my background and my life experiences, I’ve always been amazed at what a double edged sword assimilation is, in that it holds out the promise of being treated as an equal, but that promise is very rarely realized. Yet the alternative, to maintain one’s own culture in the face of the majority culture is often never really an option. But the Jewish communities that Synder is talking about are those who chose not to assimilate, I think. When a group isolates itself, it is a lot easier to whip up the majority against them, which then leads to people saying that if they had just assimilated… So another two books to add to the reading list.
And I keep misspelling snyder…
A Muslim ban by a thousand cuts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/us-unveils-new-restrictions-on-travelers-from-eight-muslim-majority-countries/2017/03/21/d4efd080-0dcb-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_planeban-605a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.3b215fd553a7
America’s internal gestappo is being used to punish political opponents:
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/judge-ice-said-austin-raid-was-payback-for-sanctuary-policy/89zuwPl00UW7F97QZV9D4M/
This review byTimothy Snyder, written last summer, is another informative read, mostly about Ukraine. The review itself is a foreboding.
We can recognize a lot of what happened there in what’s happening here. We have to stop it.
Given the right conditions, any society contains those who will participate in atrocities.
I feel that was the point Gopnik was trying to make.
In any event, thanks Nigel for your enlightening comments. To enter the historiography of eastern Europe from WW1 to the end of WW2 is to enter a hornet’s nest, and the blood feuds there are as bitter as they are deep.
But there are those who use Snyder’s (impressive) scholarship to buttress their anti-Russian animus and overlook or justify the current political actions of revanchist elements in those very same “bloodlands”.
Given the right conditions, any society contains those who will participate in atrocities.
Snyder certainly doesn’t disagree with that.
But there are those who use Snyder’s (impressive) scholarship to buttress their anti-Russian animus and overlook or justify the current political actions of revanchist elements in those very same “bloodlands”.
I just reread the NY Review of Books article cited above (and here again for convenience), back to back with listening to Adam Schiff’s introduction to yesterday’s hearings.
It’s time to get real about what’s happening to us, with the participation of many of our citizens. Russia is not our friend. Russia is Donald Trump’s friend.
HSH,
That was an interesting little essay. That America’s version of socialism is tied to class and race should come as no surprise.
there are those who use Snyder’s (impressive) scholarship to buttress their anti-Russian animus and overlook or justify the current political actions of revanchist elements in those very same “bloodlands”.
It can be hard to keep all of the political categories straight, and I could be wrong about this. But it strikes me that the revanchist in that part of the world is Putin.
To enter the historiography of eastern Europe from WW1 to the end of WW2 is to enter a hornet’s nest, and the blood feuds there are as bitter as they are deep.
And, as we saw when Yugoslavia broke up, the Jews were far from the only targets that some folks there were enthusiastic about attacking.
Russell,
It certainly can be hard, but read up on some of the latest political developments in Hungary and Poland for example.
I may be mistaken, but these folks cannot just be lightly written of as pawns of Putin. I don’t believe they admire him any more than you do.
Oy vey!
Fewer Americans Would Be Insured With G.O.P. Plan Than With Simple Repeal
liberal japonicus, in Germany the very fact of increasing assimilation of Jews was at the core of the renewed and now racial (not religious) anti-Judaism in the 19th century. For the new anti-semites the true enemy was no longer the ‘Kaftan Jew’ (easily recognisable and therefore less dangerous) but the Jew that could not be immediately recognized as such (and thus able to undermine everything good and noble without getting noticed). And this is not just conjecture but was explicitly stated by the proponents.
The border protection agents take on drinking the koolaid
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/03/21/u-s-border-agents-made-a-mexican-teen-drink-liquid-meth-his-family-won-1-million-for-his-death/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_pn-borderagents-3pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e54be87b7888
Hartmut, great point. At a certain point, successful assimilation becomes proof that the other is a great danger than imagined. America had the ‘one drop of blood’ rule for determining race and during the Japanese internment, orphans with 1/8 ancestry were sent to a specially constructed orphanage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar_Children's_Village
I’m sure, if you dig a little into the anti muslim crap, this would come up too
Speaking of carnage….this could be truly massive.
The Aswan dam may go down as Egypt’s single greatest mistake of the 20th century.
It would be nice to have a functioning government with a serious deliberative and policy focused governing process so things like the below and a million other issues could be debated and decided upon rationally rather than what passes for that sort of thing now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whos-logging-your-face/2017/03/22/47d96142-0e67-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html?utm_term=.8f0981a579ec
Also, too:
https://www.justsecurity.org/39100/preventing-air-panopticon/
And of course the reason for those articles is that there is Hal hearing today on those issues. Probably even mentioned in the articles that I didn’t read all the way through….
From lj’s Wikipedia link:
Even if you bought into the idea that Japanese Americans could be sympathizers with Japan’s interests, how might that work for children living in the United States with non-Japanese-descended foster parents? Would their sympathies be activated by some particular DNA sequence or something?
Good ole fear! It brings out the best and most rational in humans, huh?
Just watched Senator Whitehouse (whoever he is) do an excellent job, in the Gorsuch hearing, of laying out logically, articulately and calmly the corrupting effects of the Citizens United decision, and the three presumptions (as he put it) that SCOTUS relied on when making their decision, all of which he showed had proved faulty. They were a) that there would be transparency to show where the money was coming from, b) that confidence in politics would not be adversely affected and c) my mushy brain cannot now remember what was actually his first of the three – sorry. He wanted Gorsuch to say he would be open to reconsidering the decision, given that these three planks had proved unreliable, to say the least. Gorsuch of course would not exactly say this, he is after all a smooth operator, but it was a telling exchange because of Whitehouse’s clarity of exposition (not altogether typical of the Senators, I think).
how might that work for children living in the United States with non-Japanese-descended foster parents? Would their sympathies be activated by some particular DNA sequence or something?
Yup, exactly a matter of DNA. This, after all, a time when the “one drop” rule was used (at least in the South) to decide if someone counted as black. Got one drop of black blood, i.e. a single ancestor anywhere in the family tree, and you’re black. Blue eyes, blond hair, and all.
The best commentary on the stupidity of that is in Show Boat. The hero pricks the (legally black) girl’s finger and licks off a drop of blood. So he can tell the sheriff that he has at least “one drop of black blood” in him — meaning that it isn’t miscegenation for him and her to be together.
Gotta wonder which bits of our current culture will be regarded with the same amazement at our ridiculousness that we view that.
Ugh, that Washington Post story tells me that there is a business opportunity here, possibly a huge opportunity. Just come up with a methodology for altering the features that facial recognition software checks. Privacy restored!
The DNA and one-drop conversation reminds me of a passage from a novel I read when I was a teenager: Kingsblood Royal, by Sinclair Lewis (not one of his most famous, I guess). The punch line of this paragraph stayed stuck in my mind for all these years:
I don’t have the book, I’m sure I read a library copy as a kid. But thanks to the internet, it’s easily unearthed.
And how quaint it sounds fifty years later….
Gotta wonder which bits of our current culture will be regarded with the same amazement at our ridiculousness that we view that.
The ban on gay people donating blood or organs, I hope.
In the past there was at least a halfway reasonable pretense for that (higher HIV risk at a time when testing was difficult), but the policy is kept up even after that fell away even in some countries with no official legalized homophobia.