The Land of Opportunity During Civil War

Here is a speech that would never go over with the labor union now.  Even Lincoln could at times speak the language of laissez faire.

The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor -- property is desirable -- is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.  ~ Lincoln, 1864

Ghoulish Paeans to the Destruction of Babies

In spite of the left-leaning population's proud reputation (among themselves) for nuanced "shades of gray" kind of thinking, here is yet another example of the inevitable leftist slide from tolerance to acceptance to embrace to celebration.

I love abortion. I don’t accept it. I don’t view it as a necessary evil. I embrace it. I donate to abortion funds. . . . I love abortion.  . . .  Safe and legal are concepts I fully support, but rare is something I cannot abide. . . . [T]here is no need to suggest that abortion be rare. To say so implies a value judgement, promoting the idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral and should be avoided. *

Well, we can't have the "idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral."  That's judgmental.  If we are going to tolerate something, we should have the decency to suspend all judgment and celebrate it as wonderful!

In another recent article entitled "So what if abortion ends life", a mother argues that unborn babies are human lives, but their worth all depends on whether they are wanted.  So it makes sense to love them and sing to them if you want them; it makes sense to eliminate them with extreme prejudice if you don't. (And by you, she means mother.)

. . . I’m a mom who loved the lives she incubated from the moment she peed on those sticks, and is also now well over 40 and in an experimental drug trial. If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion.  *

Gee whiz! The bestest abortion ever!  We'll throw a big party to celebrate the extermination of the little parasite, because the freedom is just so wonderful!  She loves the smell of saline-poisoned fetus in the morning.  Smells like victory.

Canticles to the death of infants.  Psalms of mutilation.  Ghoulish.  Truly ghoulish.

“Americans have always had a low tolerance for the icky factor related to anything that seems to involve parents engineering their families. . . . Would I be personally horrified to find out a woman and her husband routinely sought abortions of female fetuses? Yes, I would. Would I seek to stop them? No, not beyond any personal counsel or public criticism it’s in my rights to provide. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes, freedom means we have to live with the possibility of icky things.” *

Oh, don't worry.  The icky factor is obviously wearing off, and soon we'll be able to celebrate the abortion of the wrong sort of kid.  It'll be the World's Greatest Abortion.

Eugenics-inspired abortion?  You're just not used to it.  Give it some time.  Eventually, it won't seem so bad.  In fact, it'll be GREAT.  The greatest.

The Liberal Amygdala: This is your brain on politics

Exactly how scientific are the studies 
Quote #1:

Research suggests that liberals are, on average, more susceptible to ignoring danger signals and warning signs than those who identify themselves as conservatives. Looking at MRIs of a large sample of young adults last year, researchers at University College London discovered that “greater liberalism was associated with decreased volume of the right amygdala” (*). The amygdala is a fundamental brain structure that’s critical for social empathy and avoidance of reckless behavior.

Is this a value-free statement?  Is it objective and unbiased?  Is this a statement of science or of 21st century phrenology?  

Do you remember reading the following when George Bush was in office?

Consider for a moment just how terrifying it must be to live life as a true believer on the left.  Reality is scary enough, but the alternative reality inhabited by people who watch Bill Maher, listen to Air America Radio, or think Nancy Pelosi isn’t a joke must be nothing less than horrifying.

What would a left-leaning citizen think reading this?  And what would they think of this as the opinion of someone generalizing about the cerebral differences between conservatives and liberals and what these differences might mean? 

Actually these quotes are not the original quotes. The first quote has been rephrased, and the second quote re-worked in a different manner.

To read the original quotes, go here.

The modern method [of argument] is to assume without discussion that he [the opponent] is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. . . . [It] is a truly democratic game in the sense that all can play it all day long, and that it gives no unfair privilege to the small and offensive minority who reason.  ~ C.S. Lewis 

Update 7/2/2016:
Several papers retracted/corrected that had incorrectly linked conservatism to negative psychological traits. 

Abortion: An American Horror Story

Several spoilers follow for both seasons of "American Horror Story":

In the original "American Horror Story" the featured haunted house that is lousy with demented ghosts is haunted as well by the original owners of the house.  A sort of Victor Frankenstein-like doctor is goaded by his wife to perform quiet abortions for Hollywood starlets who find themselves in a "difficult situation."  One starlet has a husband/boyfriend that considers his baby to have been murdered and retaliates by mutilating and killing the doctor's infant son.  (An anti-abortion activist starts the cycle of violence!)

Everyone that dies in this evil house finds their spirit trapped, including the mangled infant son of the doctor.

In the series a baby dies in the home immediately after being born.  It also is trapped.  Because it has a soul.

Not a single unborn baby's soul is trapped in the home.  You get the impression the show's creators believe that the fetuses never had any souls to be trapped.

Progressive propagandists Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk present a nuanced presentation of abortion in the "reboot" tv series "American Horror Story: Asylum."  In an Akin-esque turn of events, a woman finds herself pregnant after being raped by a serial killer. She goes to have an abortion and decides against it out of compassion.  She has the baby and gives him up for adoption.  This turns out to be a mistake.  Many people die as a result of her compassion, and ultimately she has to kill her son who has followed in his bio-father's footsteps.  Kind of a 200th trimester abortion, if you buy the implicit premise of the story.

"Outlawing" Abortion

I've never understood the line about the pro-lifers that will make the Supreme Court "outlaw" abortion.  Or at least, it's hard for me to understand precisely why people fall for this.

See Newtown and Abortion.  Note: Many
 Democrats are pro-life.

First of all, legal abortion was widespread before Roe vs. Wade.  The Court decision was a way for the federal government to dictate a policy for all the states rather than let them decide the issue for themselves.  The decision was a bit of judicial law-making that made restrictions on states.  Reversing Roe vs. Wade would not in and of itself make abortion any more or less legal.  It would allow the people of each state to decide whether it was right or wrong.

What allows this confusion, intentional or otherwise, are the "trigger laws" that state legislatures (the voice of the people within various states) have passed in case Big Fed ever lets them determine this on their own.  The "loophole" to consider abortion a crime is written right into the ever-revered sacred Roe vs. Wade decision itself.

There is a lot of opposition to personhood legislation within the pro-life community.  (More on that here.)  The arguments are various but mostly I think it has to do with the simple fact that American society is too hardhearted to accept it.  It diverts political energy away from less ambitious legislation that has a chance at succeeding.

The Unheard and Marginalized Pro-Life Democrats

Democrats campaigned desperately on the abortion issue in 2012, not only ignoring the diversity within the Republican Party (or within the pro-life community for that matter) on this issue but pretending that imposing any sort of restriction on abortions is somehow the view of a small group of religious extremists that have hijacked a political party that represents only half (at most) of the population.

The Democrats For Life organization would beg to differ with them:

In 1978, the Democratic Party, held a 292-seat majority in the U.S. House, with 125 pro-life Democrats. Increased partisanship over the pro-life issue—including the rejection of pro-life candidates within the Democratic Party—caused many of the pro-life Democratic districts to elect Republican candidates. In fact, the number of pro-choice Democrats in the House has essentially remained around 167.  It is the number of pro-life Democrats that decreased from 125 to only 17, leaving Democrats overall with only 184 Members.

Here at amazon.com

“If we are going to increase our members and win the majority, we must recognize the contributions of pro-life Democrats within our party and the diverse position of Democrats on the issue of abortion,” said Day.

That diversity of opinion is as follows:

• 61% of Democrats support parental consent for minors seeking abortion (Gallup, 2011);
• 60% of Democrats support a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortion (Gallup, 2011);
• 84% of Democrats support informed consent (Gallup, 2011);
• 49% of Democrats support an ultrasound requirement (Gallup, 2011);
• 59% of Democrats support a ban on partial-birth abortions (Gallup, 2011).

With so many Democrats being for these policies, how come they can't work with Republicans to represent those views in responsible legislation?  Exactly which party has been hijacked by extremists?  Which party has a radical minority that is imposing its views on all party members?

What happened to "safe, legal, and rare"?  When did it change to "I love abortion" and "I'd have the World's Greatest Abortion"?

News here

Rethinking IRV, PR, Range Voting, Election Reforms

My interest in FairVote.org has become more mixed.  I like the idea of Proportional Representation, and have proposed an idea for it recently.  I'm less sure about Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) because I'm not sure it will be as effective as Range Voting at defeating Duverger's Law, but I think even the gesture of IRV might increase the visibility of other political parties. (But I think we might be able to do better.)

Some of the other FairVote reforms, I don't like so much.  First of all, I think the 26th Amendment is not a good thing for several reasons.  One is that it takes power away from the States to decide when their youth are entitled to be part of the decision-making, and rather unnecessarily.  The rationale, I believe, was that those young enough to give their lives were young enough to elect the Commander-in-Chief.  (Young women got this benefit for free, since they were never subject to draft -- and feminism was nary so critical of this.)  This was all right as far as it goes.  I would be all for an Amendment that guarantees the right to vote for those serving or having served in the military.  I would be all for there being a separate vote in the Electoral College for those in military service (makes sense to me) and a legal guarantee that their votes will all be counted.  (Did Al Gore do the same thing?)  I think the general effect of the 26th Amendment is that it adds to the pool of votes those more likely to make decisions based on what they were told about history rather than what they've experienced of history.

Plus, the "old enough to die for their country" argument has, I think, a bit of an insidious implication: that somehow youth are being sacrificed by the older people.  We are generally talking about their parents voting for the Congress that declares war (or in the 21st century, the President that unilaterally declares war).  For most youth (hopefully, still) there are two eligible voters that have a vested interest in them not dying.