Let's look at it this way.
I hold that egalitarian democracy in which everyone has an equal right to having their rights observed by society, including economic justice is the only legitimate and safe government. I hold that people have natural rights, they have a God given right to a vast range of things, beginning with the ownership of their own bodies.
I favor that workers own the means of production that are used to produce wealth by their labor. I would ban the legal fiction of ownership on the basis of lending money to start or expand a business. Investors should have a right to repayment of their investment with a reasonable profit but that should only give them a right to ownership if they are not repaid. There should be no shares that constitute ownership of the business. That's a fairly radical idea, certainly a form of socialism though one that would prevent the horrors of state capitalism such as is generally called "socialism." I would favor a different name be invented for what I favor because the word "socialist" is fatally damaged branding at this point.
I favor the freedom to tell the truth, absolutely. No one should ever be punished for telling the truth. I do not favor the protection of lying, whether by individual or in the media, certainly not by corporations (see below). I favor the ability of individuals to sue when they are lied about and more limited abilities of corporate entities to sue. The individuals have a right to sue those who lie about them, corporate entities not having rights, that ability would be considered a concession or permission but not a right.
Corporations are not persons, they have no natural rights and shouldn't be considered to have artificial rights, especially the scandalous fiction of corporate rights created by the corrupt practices of the Supreme Court.
I favor the radical redistribution of wealth for the purpose of abolishing poverty and preventing the accumulation of power through hoarding massive wealth. Unequal power inevitably leads to the destruction of democracy, the infringement of rights and rampant theft by the rich and powerful. The age of billionaire oligarchs we are living in now proves that billionaires are generally dangerous to democracy and the right of People to government of, by and for The People. The greater the economic disparity, the greater the ability to steal and hoard wealth - something that always accrews to those who already have the most - the more endangered a democracy is. The provision of a decent level of life with an equal right to employment for a fair wage, as good an education as can be managed, with equal access to healthcare and a safe, decent place to live is probably the greatest protection of democracy as can be imagined.
I favor equality under the law, equal rights of people to public accommodation, protection by police and other public entities, and a ban on discrimination on the basis of personal identity, sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, etc. Taking into account that some people by the fact that things like mental incapacity due to youth, lack of intelligence or mental illness makes a persons right to be cared for and protected more important than the claim that they can exercise rights that could endanger them. The reality that you need to have a reasonable mental condition in order to wisely exercise some rights should never be denied because some idiot of a lawyer, judge, social worker, etc. pretends that doesn't matter should never get in the way of people of diminished capacity from being protected when their actions can reasonably be suspected to make them a danger to themselves and others.
The People have the absolute right to have adequate, truthful information as is necessary for them to cast an adequately informed vote. They have a right to live in a country in which a large majority of the population knows the truth and has the moral character to vote of the common good and not out of a belief in lies and appeals made to their worst human weaknesses.
I favor the promotion of the moral absolutes that are necessary for the creation, continuation and protection of egalitarian democracy and the discouragement of vices, sexism, racism, ethnic bigotry, LGBT hatred, etc. But also vulgar materialism, ideological materialism, both the denial of well done science and the superstition of scientism, etc. should be discouraged and should not be taught or promoted in the media. Needless to say I don't think that any broadcast or mass media should promote any vices that are dangerous to democracy. The People have the right to their democracy being protected
I favor a woman's right to own her own body, including deciding if she wishes to become or remain pregnant. I do not "favor abortion" I would like it if there were no abortions but that's not the same thing as thinking the state has either a legitimate interest in preventing a woman from choosing to have an abortion that overrides her right to control her own body. Neither has there ever been a law that bans abortion that didn't lead to many women dying or being maimed or horribly treated when they concluded they had to have an abortion. Abortion should be safe, effective and made rare through providing women and men with the knowledge and means of preventing unwanted or dangerous pregnancies. However, even wanted pregnancies can go horribly wrong and the choice of a safe, medically provided abortion is necessary in those instances. There is no ban on abortion found in the Bible, as an aside.
Men who oppose abortion have as a primary responsibility, promoting sexual responsibility among men, they should never have sex that has the potential to produce an undesired pregnancy and they have a moral duty to discourage such sex among the male gender. That should give them enough to do so they don't meddle in women's rights to make those decisions for themselves and the legal framework for protecting their ownership of their bodies.
I could go on but I think this already makes me a sort of ultra radical. Far more radical than Marxists ever were, certainly in the reality of their governance which always devolved, immediately, into gangsterism.
"I do not 'favor abortion.'"
ReplyDeleteWhy not? Many things chased me from the left, and their, and your, refusal to embrace the evil that you're allowing to happen in the name of progressive politics is one of them.
Look at how the practice of abortion is being used to weed out potentially "inconvenient children" when perfectly manageable mutations like trisomy 21 are detected. Jim Brown once said a liberal is someone who hopes you break your leg so they can give you a crutch, but today they're the people who feign offense when you say the word "retard" but only because they wish they weren't born.
And if your response is about undesired pregnancies and absentee fathers, you know damned well that is not what I'm ranting about. You having a child with Turner Syndrome? Cystic fibrosis? Brown eyes? A girl when you want a boy? Any of those can and are used as examples of "undesired" pregnancies. No, I don't think women who have abortions should be prosecuted nor the laws altered, but power comes with responsibility, and our culture is way too much a slave to convenience to think abortion isn't going to be abused and exploited as much a the 2nd Amendment.
I don't favor abortion because it is, largely, an avoidable medical procedure which, as all medical procedures, carries risks and expenses and uses up medical resources. I don't favor any number of preventable healthcare issues in the same way. I do favor the use of birth control for the same reasons I favor science-based, medically supervised vaccination. with the associated risks to that, it's better than the consequences of not using it. Few if any such comparisons will fit in every detail but I think that's one that is close.
DeleteWhere in the world did you ever come up with the idiotic idea that there was something liberalish or leftist about favoring abortion? Plenty of conservatives have had abortions or encouraged women to have abortions, many used to favor the legalization of abortion, a number still do. And there are actually liberals who oppose legal abortion. I don't agree with them because I think there are far more realistic measures that don't have the state impinging on the personal autonomy of women. The right of the state to regulate what happens in our bodies certainly stops at the skin, in many cases considerably before then.
You know, Liam, I pointed out that men like you and, for example, the US Catholic Conference of Bishops who believe they have a right to say something about abortion that they think matches or surpasses a woman's right to self-determination in regard to her own body have a responsibility to badger their fellow men to avoid unwanted pregnancy, unwanted by both parties, not just by the men involved. The anti-abortion movement, so full of men, should have always focused on the role that men play in abortion, being the cause of pregnancies that lead to abortions, not to mention sex that leads to STDs and so much else that is totally relevant but never focused on in the discussion.
You focus on women when you should be focused on irresponsible, selfish men. I doubt there are many women who would not rather avoid an unwanted or impossibly difficult or dangerous pregnancy if they could avoid it and the more fraught consequences of those, I have known many men who screwed around who weren't concerned about that at all.
Using the law to make abortion illegal isn't any kind of ban on abortion any more than prohibition was a ban on drinking and making pot illegal is a ban on pot use. Your position is in favor of the abortions which will inevitably happen will be illegal, dangerous and exploitation by criminals, organized and singly and hypocrisy all around. Just like it was in the good old days when it was not uncommon for hospitals to deal with the results of such "pro-life" abortions on what was a routine basis.
There is no more widespread resort to convenience in this matter than among men who find it so convenient to not be the ones who have to face pregnancy in their own bodies and lives.
Where did I get the idea that there is something about abortion that is approved by the Democratic Party? I don’t know. I read their website. Though that could have been hacked…
ReplyDeleteOf course I don’t see many Republicans wearing those “I had an abortion” shirts either, so maybe that’s where my misconception comes from. Even most of the Right who support it do so from a Goldwateresque libertarianism. The left has your Gloria Steinem’s and Lena Dunham’s, who want to turn the practice into a right of passage.
“I pointed out that men like you and, for example, the US Catholic Conference of Bishops who believe they have a right to say something about abortion that they think matches or surpasses a woman's right to self-determination in regard to her own body have a responsibility to badger their fellow men to avoid unwanted pregnancy,”
As someone who minored in biology and has forgotten far more about biology than most people I speak with remember, I could spend an entire three posts explaining why the term “her body” when referring to a fetus is a medical misnomer, but for the sake of argument I will concede that point within this context just to note that anyone who knows me knows my feelings on “fathers” (scare quotes because they are certainly not that) who abandon and refuse to assist in the raising of children and support of their mothers are committing an act of child abuse by omission that can cause trauma and damage to a young child as severely as actively abusing them. I know people who came from such situations and the scars, emotional and mental, as a obvious as Michael K Williams’s.
“The anti-abortion movement, so full of men, should have always focused on the role that men play in abortion, being the cause of pregnancies that lead to abortions, not to mention sex that leads to STDs and so much else that is totally relevant but never focused on in the discussion.”
Oh, I concur. Absolutely. But the trouble is, the Pro-Choice movement wants to remove men from the equation entirely and tell them it is none of their business what happens. Unless the baby is born, then it is.
But don’t forget, I talk to young, impressionable and incredibly stupid liberals who think sex and pregnancy are completely unrelated. They look at birth as a process as unnatural as Wi-Fi and that babies are only babies if they meet their criteria. Please don’t think the two are unrelated.
“You focus on women when you should be focused on irresponsible, selfish men.”
No, I focus on both. Both are responsible for the pregnancy (in 90+ % of the cases) so both should be responsible for the result. When the men say, “Not my body, not my business,” well, I can’t bloody well them the Pro-Choice movement is wrong, can I? Then I’m a misogynistic troglodyte who thinks women should be barefoot and in the kitchen.
“Using the law to make abortion illegal…”
What part of my statement, “I don't think women who have abortions should be prosecuted nor the laws altered” was unclear? I think, like drugs or gambling or other activities I don’t partake in but also don’t think should be regulated by the state, that it will be best stopped on the social/personal level.
“Your position is in favor of the abortions which will inevitably happen will be illegal, dangerous and exploitation by criminals, organized and singly and hypocrisy all around.”
What is my position? I think the practice immoral most of the time it is practiced but have said nothing in support of nor will I support altering laws to make those who seek them out criminals.
“There is no more widespread resort to convenience in this matter than among men who find it so convenient to not be the ones who have to face pregnancy in their own bodies and lives.”
Exactly – as Walker Percy noted, Americans (not just American Woman) support abortion because it fits so well into our obsession with consumer need to avoid “unwanted” and “inconvenient” things, and people.
Oh, give me a fucking break. What makes it any more right for the state to regulate the state of a woman's body than it does for the federal government saying that the choice is hers? Your position is the abortion prohibition position for as long as you can't get the Supreme Court stacked with anti-choice thugs. Who will all be men telling women that they have just nationalized their bodies.
DeleteNow you're pulling a switcheroo, you didn't mention Democrats in your first comments, you mentioned "the left". There are Democrats who oppose the legality of abortion, Marcy Kaptur, who I would certainly count as a liberal, has been one.
There is no one who makes resort to convenience in this matter than the men who are the ones who produce the pregnancy, you don't seem to want to address that glaring truth. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if a number of anti-choice men haven't produced such unwanted pregnancies, I would be surprised if the reports that Trump paid a woman to have an abortion were not true, he's exactly the kind of "anti-abortion" man who would do that.
I have no idea who you run into, where you live. I doubt I've ever encountered a young person who is unaware that pregnancy is a result of sex.
I really don't think there's much point in answering everything you said because so little of it responded to what I said.
If you want to cut down the number of abortions, talk to straight men about their role in producing pregnancies that result in abortions. I think you won't do so because you know that they'd tell you to go to hell. Why you think women, who are certainly more at risk than such men are should listen to you or to the Catholic Conference of Bishops (just as the men obviously aren't) when you're unwilling to lecture your fellow straight men about this is something you might want to answer.