Monthly Archives: November 2010

Digby argues here that the new crop of Republican candidates are virulently anti-choice, speculates about possible policies they’ll push and worries that the Dems, as they have in the past, will consider trading away abortion rights a fair compromise in return for Tea Party support on some other matter.
I’m pro-choice. I think restricting abortion and taking the decision out of the prospective mother’s hands is wrong. And I think the argument taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for abortion—even if it’s a federally funded clinic discussing abortion—is bullshit. Lots of taxpayers oppose the death penalty. A majority (according to some polls) opposes waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t see any right-wingers suggesting we should take the public’s wishes as gospel.
Some right-to-lifers genuinely, if illogically, see abortion as murder: Illogical because many of them insist that mothers shouldn’t be prosecuted, that they’re mere “victims” of the abortion industry which manipulated them into rejecting the children they would otherwise have loved.
For others, however, it’s very much wrapped up with their general view of women: They should be home, barefoot, pregnant and submissive instead of out there having sex without “consequences” and being independent. Hence the assumption they’re just sheep being manipulated by the evil abortion industry. Hence the argument I heard back where I used to live, over and over: If some slut doesn’t want to have a baby, she shouldn’t have sex.
Not: She should have used birth control. Just that she shouldn’t have sex. Which is also a false argument: If that was a logical argument then presumably faithfully married women who got pregnant when the condom broke would be fully entitled to an abortion.
But it’s not logical, it’s emotional: For a lot of religious conservatives, women running around having sex outside of marriage are filthy harlots, whores of Babylon and the idea of letting them get away with it by abortion of birth control is infuriating.
One South Dakota state senator, for example, apparently thought it was perfectly reasonable to assert that rape victims were only entitled to abortion if they were virgins when the rapist struck, and if they were planning to remain virgins until marriage. Apparently for anyone else, bearing their rapists child was divine justice.
The point I’m trying to make is that even if they overturned Roe vs. Wade, or wrote so many obstacles into the law that it was effectively overturned, the religious right won’t be satisfied.
There are already groups who oppose birth control; some because they believe (erroneously as I understand it) that the Pill is an abortifacent, some because they object to birth control of any form. Some argue that using contraceptives encourages abortion because if you have sex with birth control, you’ve already decided you don’t want a baby.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum believes that giving the government the power to control everything people do in bed (not just gays, as frequently misquoted) is the only way to stop incest, polygamy, sex with animals, etc., etc. He’s not alone; I’ve read several right-wing columns vilifying the Supreme Court decision that said government had no right to proscribe the use of birth control by married couples (remember, when most right-wingers talk about being in favor of smaller, less intrusive government, they’re lying through their teeth).
So I think we could end up much, much worse than just losing the right of abortion (which would be bad). Conceivably as bad as El Salvador, where police doctors check out women who have miscarriages to make sure they haven’t aborted secretly.
Or maybe added restrictions on what women can drink, eat, or which jobs they can work at when they’re pregnant. Because they can’t be allowed to jeopardize their baby. It’s rights are not only equal to hers, they’re superior. Yeah. That would put those pushy broads in their place.
I’d like to think I’m wrong about how far they’ll go. But I wouldn’t bet one red cent on it.

Some months back, I got into an argument with a creationist who insisted with an air of triumph that “Survival of the fittest is a tautology”—i.e., meaningless.
How do we know they’re the fittest? Because they survive! Why do they survive? Because they’re fit! The terms are never defined, therefore natural selection is based on circular logic, so forget the evidence, natural selection is a myth and evolution is WRONG!
Now I know from experience most creationists aren’t going to be deterred by counter-arguments, but I think it’s useful for evolutionary believers to have an argument handy just in case. So here it is.
Survival of the fittest is not a scientific term, it’s simply a shorthand. And Darwin did not base his theories on such a fuzzy concept (he didn’t use the phrase—borrowed from his cousin Herbert Spencer—until well after he’d written Origin of Species).
Darwin’s theory was that if organism A has an inherited trait that enables it to produce more offspring than organism B, the next generation will include more As than Bs. Then those As will breed more, and the generation after that will have an even greater proportion of As. And natural selection, if the situation continues, will produce an ever-growing number of As overtime while B fades away (it’s slightly more complicated in practice, but not too much).
This isn’t a tautology. And simple observation has confirmed the pattern time and time again. Natural selection works (even a lot of creationists admit this, they just don’t believe anything actually evolves as a result).
So if the subject comes up ….

Once again, someone said it better than I can:
“Here lie officers and men of all colors. Rich men and poor men together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, Jews — all together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith, or despises a man because of his color. Here there are no quotas: how many of each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy.

“Any among us, the living, who fail to understand that, will thereby betray those who lie here. Whoever lifts a hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in a minority, makes of their sacrifice an empty and hollow mockery. Thus, do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle that they began. Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren.”—Roland Gittelsohn, Iwo Jima memorial sermon

I’ve been meaning to post about Limbaugh ever since he appeared last week on Newsweek‘s cover.
Rush Limbaugh spent the 1990s warning us that government was bad, government was evil, government was going to take away our freedom and destroy our rights. He frankly reminded me at times of the Weather Underground, even though he insisted that all the radical leftists who said the same things he was saying back in the sixties were eeeeevil.
Then W got in the White House and Limbaugh spent eight years explaining that government was going to take away our freedom and anyone who said it was was a filthy stinking rotten cowardly Commie Islamofascist traitor who wanted the terrorists to win. Torture? A fraternity hazing! Spying on Americans? Keeping us safe!
Then Obama got in and suddenly we’re back to Government Is Evil again and Limbaugh announcing that “I hope he fails.” If anyone had said that under Bush, Limbaugh would have been calling for a public horsewhipping (one leftwinger said before the Iraq invasion that he did sort of hope it would fail horribly to discourage more invasions—but given what was at stake, he had to hope it went well. Right wingers held this up as proof of how evil liberals were—though I don’t know if Limbaugh weighs in).
Taking Limbaugh’s opinion of anything seriously is a waste of time (taking him seriously, given the influence he has, is another matter). He’s a Republican mouthpiece who by his own admission would sooner see the president fail than fix things, if it’s not a president he supports.
The fact that he’s the icon of the Republican right says more about them than they probably want to admit.