Ok. So let me get this straight just so I understand.
Foes of abortion believe that life begins at conception. And they believe that this life should be granted the same rights as the woman within whose body it must stay, at least for a period of time, if it is to develop and grow.
Fine. There is no moral distinction between the fully formed woman and the collection of cells that forms a zygote. From the moment of conception, this life has the same moral standing as a month old baby who sleeps in a bassinette in the nursery or a teen-ager or an old man. Life is life.
Therefore, it must be immoral to allow exceptions to a ban on abortion in the case of incest or rape. Would we kill a month old baby if we found out that it was the result of rape? Would we think that it was ok to smother a 6 month old child if we found out that it was conceived in incest? Of course not. What possible moral difference can it make how the child is conceived if it’s endowed with inalienable rights at the moment of conception? You may punish the rapist or the incestuous relative, but the child’s right to live is inviolable. Life is life.
In the case of choosing between the life of the child and the life of the mother, one is on delicate moral ground if the child is viable outside the womb. It is a Solomon’s choice and one which should probably be left to fate. Doctors may be willing to choose and perhaps husband’s or family, but it is not easy to morally defend.
Clearly, though, if a fetus has the same rights as any other human being, a doctor who performs abortions other than to save the life of the mother must be a murderer. But then, so must be the mother who willingly aborts. The life inside this woman has the same rights as any baby. Therefore, just like Andrea Yates, women who have abortions should be arrested and tried for murder. If found guilty she must go to jail. And those who argue for capital punishment for a mother who kills her baby must also agree that a woman who has an abortion must be tried as a capital murderer. Life is life.
I’m there, so far. But, if the life inside a woman’s body has the same legal rights as a two month old baby, then if a woman has a miscarriage, shouldn’t she be investigated by the authorities? If the fetus has the same rights as the woman who carries it and it suddenly “disappears” the police should be asked to find out whether this woman murdered her baby, just as the authorities would investigate if a woman’s one month old baby disappeared. After all, life is life.
Some jurisdictions are already intervening if women are caught taking drugs during pregnancy. This is the consistent moral stance. If a woman is abusing her body during pregnancy, she is also abusing a distinct human being who exists inside of her and that human being has the same right as she not to be abused by another person. Women must be held responsible for what they do to their babies inside of their bodies, just as they are held responsible for what they do to a 6 month old baby.
Considering these facts, I have to wonder at the moral obtuseness of a pro-life movement that would let murdering mothers go unpunished, negligent mothers go uninvestigated and, worst of all, endorse the legal killing of unborn children simply because they had the misfortune to be conceived in violence or incest. You would almost think that they believe there is a grey moral area on this question rather than the clear bright line of inalienable rights being proferred at the moment of conception. That can’t be right.
Because to allow for exceptions or to ignore the woman’s culpability in murdering or harming her child while it is inside the womb is to create the false impression that gestation is a unique period for the human species in which the woman and the baby are so inextricable that to all intents and purposes they are one person.
And one could then make the immoral assumption that because they are in all practicality one person, the sentient part of this person must be allowed to decide whether this “part of her” should grow and become an individual who is capable of living outside her body. Then no one would suspect her of criminal negligence if she miscarried after falling down the stairs and she could not be a considered a criminal child abuser if she had a glass of wine or a cigarette. Certainly she would not be a murderer if she felt she could not give birth to her own brother or the child of her rapist.
And if she’s not a murderer for aborting her rapists child, then she is not a murderer for aborting any child.
Avedon Carol has an interesting post up about VNS and the strange happenings with exit polls.
I’m not usually too much of a tin foiler, but I find it very strange that the VNS system went kerflooey at this particular moment in time. I hate to be paranoid, but there is such a strong undemocratic streak in the modern Republican party — a partisan impeachment, Florida, Supreme Court intervention in a presidential election, Florida, a professional propaganda operation, Republican corporate media, Florida, coordinated character assassination, GOP partisan ownership in voting systems, Florida etc, etc. that when it comes to elections or issues of political legitimacy I think it behooves everyone to be extremely skeptical of any changes during this administration.
These people cannot be trusted with the fundamental machinery of democracy.
They are the political heirs of Richard M. Nixon — without the brains or the scruples.
“It was opening us up to a broader knowledge of the situation”
During Campaign 2000, the press incorrectly reported Al Gore’s comments about the Love Canal to such an extent that the high school kids who were there felt compelled to issue a press release entitled “Top ten reasons why many Concord High students feel betrayed by some of the media coverage of Al Gore’s visit to their school.”
Now, the campaign against Patty Murray’s supposedly treasonous comments about Osama bin Laden to a senior honors class in Vancouver, Washington has been similarly exposed for the cynical manipulation it was. The students feel so strongly that the story was misrepresented that they also went to the media with a correction.
This seems to be a pattern.
Luckily for the future of the Republic, high school students have a far greater grasp of rational argument than right wing bloggers and Republicans do. It also appears that they are better able to understand the nuances of foreign policy than is the President of the United States. (But then, they are in a high school honors class so it’s probably unfair to make a comparison to the cheerleader legacy frat boy…)
EVERETT — For several days, seniors in an honors American government class at Cascade High School followed the public fury over comments Sen. Patty Murray made about Osama bin Laden to high school students in Vancouver.
Murray was criticized over the airwaves and in reader letters on editorial pages. Some called for a reprimand or censure.
All of which was a little hard for the Cascade students to comprehend.
Murray talked to their classroom in December just about the same time she made similar comments to students at Columbia River High School, according to a transcript. They didn’t see how her comments could be construed to be sympathetic or supportive of the al-Qaida terrorist leader and the main suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
The students considered writing their own letter to the editor but decided, instead, to take up their teacher’s offer to give their perspective in person.
To them, Democrat Murray was merely explaining how bin Laden could gain support in the Middle East.
“She didn’t make him up as some kind of humanitarian,” Ann Topham said.
“A lot of people thought she was forgiving 9/11,” Katie Kelley said. “She wasn’t defending it at all.”
“She was in no way glorifying him,” Becca Reynolds said. “She was just showing us the side we didn’t really see. … It was opening us up to a broader knowledge of the situation.”
That perspective was the fact that bin Laden strategically contributed to causes that helped gain public support in the Middle East, they said. Critics point to Murray’s lack of proof of any bin Laden humanitarian activities.
“He sees how to use his money to tender favor … so he could do what he wanted,” Will Shepherd said.
Students in Mike Therrell’s class were required to work a minimum of 25 hours last fall on political campaigns. Most worked on legislative campaigns, a few on congressional campaigns. Some worked for Republicans, others Democrats, a few for third-party candidates. Murray was not up for election when she visited the class.
“Patty Murray made it very clear that Osama bin Laden was a villain, and the things he was doing to ingratiate himself to the people he was not doing as an act of kindness,” said Therrell, who has been teaching for 35 years. “His ulterior motive was very evil.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t complain too vigorously about this since these politically interested kids will all be able to vote in the next election. They still have some ideals, you see. They still naively believe that silly concepts like intellectual honesty matter.
After seeing the party of honor and integrity up-close and personal, it’s quite likely they will vote Democratic.
If Anyone Was Wondering Why The GOP Is Moribund In California…
Another hilarious example of the comedy stylings of that funny, funny California Republican, Randy Ridgel:
[…]
The letter by retired white rancher Randy Ridgel, a member of the party’s Board of Directors, responds to complaints by state GOP Secretary Shannon Reeves, who is black. Earlier this month, Reeves said that some GOP leaders expect African Americans to “provide window dressing and cover to prove this is not a racist party, yet our own leadership continues to act otherwise.”
In his letter to Reeves, Ridgel, 72, wrote: “At my age, with the distractions of being a detestable, insensitive racist, I grow befuddled from time to time, but I just don’t remember your being hired as our black window dressing.”
Ridgel criticized Reeves for sharing his concerns with the news media and suggested that Ward Connerly, an African American who has led efforts to kill affirmative action programs in California, would be more suitable window dressing.
“Knowing your propensity to avoid public appearances, as the job of black Republican window dressing requires, I would have been inclined to hire someone appropriately black but perhaps more garrulous, than your bashful self — such as Ward Connerly, who, it may surprise you to learn, is not only satisfyingly black but a member of our party too,” Ridgel wrote.
“I don’t know why but I always fall down on my duties as Party Detestable Insensitive Racist when I encounter Ward; I actually like and respect him.”
What a loveable old codger, huh? Nothing like a little bit of rude sarcasm in the middle of a political firestorm to really turn up the heat.
Besides, he likes Ward Connerly. He’s not a racist. In fact, he’s so not a racist that he thinks the one “good” negro he likes ought to replace that big mouthed Reeves who told the news media that he was considered window-dressing. Ridgel doesn’t see him as window dressing. He just thinks he should be quiet and do what he’s told.
That’s why California Republicans are so successful these days. It’s their savvy.
1/25/03: If You are getting this post at the top of the page, please refresh your screen. Blogger is having problems for some people, apparently. There is a lot of recent stuff up.
I just flashed on something. The Republican’s approach to Sadaam’s declaration on his WMD programs is similar to their approach to Clinton’s declaration of his involvement with Monica Lewinsky: no matter what is said, it will not be enough because the Republicans keep re-defining the parameters of what needs to be said. And the fact that Sadaam/Clinton fail to hit a moving target is taken as proof that they are guilty, unremorseful, and will do it again.
This is an excellent observation of a common GOP tactic that the mediawhores just love more than anything. Keep that story spinning at all costs. Nobody will notice that you are constantly moving the goalposts:
“If he comes forth and tells it and does it in the right way and there aren’t a lot of other factors to cause the Congress to say this man is unfit for the presidency and should be impeached, then I think the president would have a reasonable chance of getting through this,” said Hatch, R-Utah.
“I don’t know anybody at the top of the system,” Hatch said, “who really wants to see the president hurt in this matter.”
Weeks ago, Hatch made an offer of consideration for confession, which he repeated in some form in virtually every TV appearance.
[…]
After so much criticism of his promiscuous use of language, Clinton made his basic points very directly. “It was wrong.” “A personal failure.” His observation that even Presidents have private lives was compelling and legitimate–most Americans agree that what goes on in a President’s bedroom is no one’s business but his.
[…]
What a jerk.” ORRIN HATCH, Utah Republican Senator
[…]
Hatch was satisfied with Clinton’s contriteness, but it was the Starr part that got him blustering like a blunderbuss. There are, of course, plenty of reasons for Clinton to bash Starr. But Monday night was for taking responsibility. Hatch is right: getting caught is the chance every “jerk” takes when he cheats, and the guy who catches you is not the biggest problem. You are. That’s true even if your captor is a jerk as well.
Even if Saddam “disarmed” tomorrow, there’s no way in hell that he would do it “right.”
Note: Also read Chris’ outstanding coverage and commentary about the AntiWar protests in Portland and elsewhere.
Jeanne D’Arc makes a very thoughtful point about the prevailing fallacy that the families of victims are somehow cleansed of their pain by the execution of the killer (or so they think) of a loved one.
It occurred to me in reading this article, how much the short attention span of the press does to feed this beast. When perpetrators of ghastly crimes are tried, we almost always hear the victims’ families calls for vengeance. After an execution, family members are trotted out to announce they are happy with the result. And if there is “closure” for anyone at that moment, it seems to be the press — because that’s where the story ends. The only problem is that the victims’ families are still left with the pain, and for all the talk of “caring about the victims,” once they’ve achieved their purpose of helping the prosecutor get his conviction and sentence, and helping the press wrap up a neat story of “justice,” nobody’s terribly interested in them anymore. It would mess up our story if we knew that relief was ephemeral. As everyone, deep down, knows it must be. As Bud Welch says, “God didn’t make normal human beings to feel good out of watching another human being take his last breath.”
It is simply cruel to hold out the false hope that killing the killer will take away the pain. Sadly, I think that these families of the victims are victimized themselves by a rather ruthless prosecutorial ethos that seeks to leverage their rage and feelings of impotence against the obvious logic of accepting the loss and learning to live with it.
It is certainly understandable and even commendable that they use the loved ones as the living face of the consequences of the act during a trial. They represent society and the loved ones represent the human loss. But, using them afterward as poster children for the machinery of the death penalty as if they are the true beneficiaries is cynical and self-serving. By stoking the need for vengeance, they keep the wound open and festering purely for public relations purposes. The families are so caught up in an illogical belief in the emotional catharsis of execution that they remain in a state of suspended animation for years at a time.
Were the death penalty abolished in favor of life without parole, the families’ involvement with the legal system would end on the day of sentencing. And they would be able to begin the painful but necessary process of moving on with their lives. That day always comes eventually and the death penalty system only delays the reckoning.
Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks…
Pentagon officials say orders such as No. 177 are normally reviewed thoroughly in advance and fly across a Defense chief’s desk. But with every step America takes toward war with Iraq, which could be as little as a month off, Rumsfeld is doing things his own meticulous way. Over the past few weeks, he has been holding up deployment papers at the last minute, demanding answers and explanations about which units are going where, why. He has been running similar drills for months on the generals and admirals, reworking the plans to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. General Tommy Franks, the Army four-star who would run the war as head of U.S. Central Command, actually prepared the plan. But as a Pentagon officer points out, “That misses the point. Franks may be the draftsman, but Rumsfeld’s the architect.”
[…]
Retired Army General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the first Gulf War, says he is “nervous” about the control Rumsfeld is exercising over the buildup. “It looks like Rumsfeld is totally, 100%, in charge,” says Schwarzkopf. “He seems to be deeply immersed in the operational planning—to the chagrin of most of the armed forces.”
[…]
Republican Senators complained to White House chief of staff Andrew Card that Rumsfeld was keeping them in the dark about war plans and other military issues. So last week Rumsfeld reported to Capitol Hill for a 21/2-hour kiss-and-make-up session with Senators. Asked later if he had been ignoring his minders, Rumsfeld said, “I don’t think there is a problem.”
It is that truculent attitude that most irritates many military men. Some who have worked with Rumsfeld say his interpersonal skills are shabby, however charming he is on camera. “Rumsfeld’s a bully; he’s arrogant, and he has a huge ego,” says a senior Army officer with more than 30 years’ experience in uniform. The loudest cries come from the Army, where Rumsfeld and his troops have kneecapped the two men in charge. Rumsfeld let it be known last April that the Army’s top general, Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, was a lame duck 15 months before his term was slated to end. “It was condescending and a little bit cruel,” says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general. A month later, Rumsfeld loyalists made it clear that Army Secretary Thomas White, a former Enron executive who vainly tried to thwart Rumsfeld’s decision to kill the Crusader, was one more mistake away from losing his job. “It’s pretty clear that the Army is going to be the big loser,” says Lawrence Korb, a top Reagan-era Pentagon aide.
“If it were not for the war in Afghanistan and the looming war in Iraq, I’m sure they would already be cutting two Army divisions.” Perhaps Rumsfeld is counting on the first war of the 21st century to shake the brass out of its cold war mentality. But it may be that he has already accomplished most of what he came to do: reassert civilian control of a military that had grown used to getting its way. As photocopiers cranked out the deployment orders last week for Rumsfeld to consider at his own unpredictable pace, top military officers admitted they are scrambling to think ahead, no longer waiting for him to O.K. their every move. Any delay, they said, would be risky with a man like Rumsfeld prowling the halls. “We’re sending troops forward without deployment orders,” a top Navy officer conceded last week. “We don’t want to get caught flat-footed when Rumsfeld asks, ‘How come you guys haven’t left yet?'”
Golly, don’t you feel all safe and cozy with a cool head like this in charge?
“Even though progress has been made, there’s more to do,” Bush said.
uh huh.
The State of Texas still recognizes Confederate Heroes Day, originally on Jan. 19 (Robert E. Lee’s birthday) and now on the second Monday in January, shared with observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday.
“The summer of 1963 was a very eventful one for me: the summer I turned 17”
Excerpts from Clinton’s Speech at a Ceremony in Oak Bluff, Massachusetts, on the 35th Anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” Speech
August 28, 1998
The summer of 1963 was a very eventful one for me: the summer I turned 17.
What most people know about it now is the famous picture of me shaking hands with President Kennedy in July. It was a great moment. But I think the moment we commemorate today, a moment I experienced all alone, had a more profound impact on my life.
Most of us who are old enough remember exactly where we were on Aug. 28, 1963. I was in my living room in Hot Springs, Ark.
I remember the chair I was sitting in. I remember exactly where it was in the room. I remember exactly the position of the chair when I sat and watched on national television the great March on Washington unfold.
I remember weeping uncontrollably during Martin Luther King’s speech. And I remember thinking, when it was over, my country would never be the same and neither would I.
There are people all across this country who made a more intense commitment to the idea of racial equality and justice that day than they had ever made before. And so in very personal ways, all of us became better and bigger because of the work of those who brought that great day about. There are millions of people who John Lewis will never meet who are better and bigger because of what that day meant.
And the words continue to echo down to the present day, spoken to us today by children who were not even alive then. And, God willing, their grandchildren will also be inspired and moved and become better and bigger because of what happened on that increasingly distant summer day.
What I’d like to ask you to think about a little today, and to share with you — and I’ll try to do it without taking my spectacles out, but I don’t write very well and I don’t read too well as I get older — is what I think this means for us today. I was trying to think about what John and Dr. King and others did and how they did it, and how it informs what I do and how I think about other things today.
And I want to ask, you all need to think about three things . . . .
No. 1, Dr. King used to speak about how we were all bound together in a web of mutuality, which was an elegant way of saying, whether we like it or not, we’re all in this life together. We are interdependent. Well, what does that mean? Well, let me give you a specific example: We had some good news today. Incomes in America went up 5 percent last year. That’s a big bump in a year. We have got the best economy in a generation. That’s the good news.
But we are mutually interdependent with people far beyond our borders. Yesterday, there was some more news that was troubling out of Russia, some rumor, some fact about the decline in the economy. Our stock market dropped over 350 points. And in Latin America, our most fast-growing market for American exports, all the markets went down even though, as far as we know, most of those countries are doing everything right. Why? Because we’re in a tighter and tighter and tighter web of mutuality.
Asia has these economic troubles. So even though we have got the best economy in a generation, our farm exports to Asia are down 30 percent from last year. And we have states in this country where farmers, the hardest-working people in this country, can’t make their mortgage payments because of things that happened half a world away they didn’t have any direct influence on at all. This world is being bound together more closely.
So what is the lesson from that? Well, I should go to Russia because, as John said, anybody can come see you when you’re doing well. I should go there.
And we should tell them that if they’ll be strong and do the disciplined, hard things they have to do to reform their country, their economy, and get through this dark night, that we’ll stick with them. . . .
The second thing.
Even if you’re not a pacifist, whenever possible, peace and nonviolence is always the right thing to do.
I remember so vividly in 1994 . . .I was trying to pass this crime bill, and all of the opposition to the crime bill that was in the newspapers, all the intense opposition was coming from the N.R.A. and the others that did not want us to ban assault weapons, didn’t believe that we ought to have more community policemen walking the streets, and conservatives who thought we should just punish people more and not spend more money trying to keep kids out of trouble in the first place. And it was a huge fight.
And so they came to see me, and he said, “Well, John Lewis is not going to vote for this bill.” And I said, “Why?” and they said, “Because it increases the number of crimes subject to the Federal death penalty and he’s not for it. And he’s not in bed with all those other people, he thinks they’re wrong, but he can’t vote for it.” And I said, “Well, let him alone. There’s no point in calling him” because he’s lived a lifetime dedicated to an idea and while I may not be a pacifist, whenever possible, it’s always the right thing to do to try to be peaceable and nonviolent.
Half a world away, terrorists trying to hurt Americans blow up two embassies in Africa, and they killed some of our people, some of our best people — of, I might add, very many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, American citizens, including a distinguished career African-American diplomat and his son — but they also killed almost 300 Africans and wounded 5,000 others.
We see their pictures in the morning paper, two of them who did that. We were bringing them home. And they look like active, confident young people. What happened inside them that made them feel so much hatred toward us that they could justify not only an act of violence against innocent diplomats and other public servants, but the collateral consequences to Africans whom they would never know? They had children, too.
So it is always best to remember that we have to try to work for peace in the Middle East, for peace in Northern Ireland, for an end to terrorism, for protections against biological and chemical weapons being used in the first place.
The night before we took action against the terrorist operations in Afghanistan and Sudan, I was here on this island up till 2:30 in the morning trying to make absolutely sure that at that chemical plant there was no night shift. I believed I had to take the action I did, but I didn’t want some person who was a nobody to me, but who may have a family to feed and a life to live, and probably had no earthly idea what else was going on there, to die needlessly. I learned that, and it’s another reason we ought to pay our debt to the United Nations, because if we can work together, together we can find more peaceful solutions. Now I didn’t learn that when I became President; I learned it from John Lewis and the civil rights movement a long time ago.
And the last thing I learned from them on which all these other things depend, without which we cannot build a world of peace or one America in an increasingly peaceful world bound together in this web of mutuality, is that you can’t get there unless you’re willing to forgive your enemies. I never will forget one of the most — I don’t think I have ever spoken about this in public before — but one of the most meaningful personal moments I have had as President was a conversation I had with Nelson Mandela.
And I said to him — I said: “You know, I have read your book, and I have heard you speak.
And you spent time with my wife and daughter, and you have talked about inviting your jailers to your inauguration.” And I said, “It’s very moving.” And I said: “You’re a shrewd as well as a great man. But come on now, how did you really do that? You can’t make me believe you didn’t hate those people who did that to you for 27 years?”
He said, “I did hate them for quite a long time. After all, they abused me physically and emotionally. They separated me from my wife, and it eventually broke my family up. They kept me from seeing my children grow up.” He said, “For quite a long time, I hated them.”
And then he said: “I realized one day, breaking rocks, that they could take everything away from me, everything, but my mind and heart. Now, those things I would have to give away, and I simply decided I would not give them away.”
So as you look around the world, you see — how do you explain these three children who were killed in Ireland or all the people who were killed in the square when the people were told to leave the City Hall, there was a bomb there, and then they walked out toward the bomb?
What about all those families in Africa? I don’t know. I can’t pick up the telephone and call them and say, “I am so sorry this happened.” How do we find that spirit?
All of you know I’m having to become quite an expert in this business of asking for forgiveness. And I —-. It gets a little easier the more you do it. And if you have a family, an Administration, a Congress and a whole country to ask, you’re going to get a lot of practice.
But I have to tell that in these last days it has come home to me again, something I first learned as President, but it wasn’t burned in my bones — and that is that in order to get it, you have to be willing to give it. And all of us — the anger, the resentment, the bitterness, the desire for recrimination against people you believe have wronged you — they harden the heart and deaden the spirit and lead to self-inflicted wounds.
And so it is important that we are able to forgive those we believe have wronged us, even as we ask for forgiveness from people we have wronged.
And I heard that first — first — in the civil rights movement. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
In the middle of the fight of his life, off the cuff, without notes…