 |
Comments |
|
 | Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 6:05:46 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Paula Hall
E-mail: paula.hall(at)live.com
URL: http://www.msthink.com
Amen, Sister! |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 7:12:56 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: carachancho
partial birth abortion isn't a religious issue and is completely pointless. it is no more risk for the woman to have the baby in that circumstance than allow the doctor to kill it. the fetus at that point is much more than a fertilized egg that has only been "ensouled" or is a person for some religious reason.
but yay for defeating the religious right! |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 7:42:36 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/profile
Surely it's the woman's business, with the advice of her doctor, to judge for herself what the risks are? |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 10:33:33 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Flibbert
E-mail: junk(at)treygivens.com
URL: http://flibbertigibbet.mu.nu/
And in accordance with prophecy foretelling the fall of western civilization, Connecticut is now allowing the gays to marry. w00t! |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 10:37:02 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Jeff
Even if the religious right is slightly worst than the socialist left, the defeat of the former by bringing the latter to supremacy is hardly an event worth gloating over.
"Our servitude is not yet abolished, but our master only changed." (Letter from Brutus to Cicero concerning the rise of Octavius and the fall of Antony). |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 15:58:07 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: SurahAhriman
E-mail: SurahAhriman(at)gmail.com
Jeff, let the Democrats have their majority, at least for 2 years. They're promising fixes NOW, or at least in the near future, rather than after you die. Just be prepared and waiting to call them out, and call them out hard when they fail to do so, and above all else, not let them get away with the standard tactic of blaming it all on evil, evil capitalism.
For all the failures of his policies, Obama seems comfortable fighting in the realm of ideas and rationality. Good. Thats our home turf. I'd prefer that to trying to argue with someone whose static defense is that reason is subordinate to faith. |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 16:26:25 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Gina Liggett
E-mail: GLiggett(at)comcast.net
Jeff, Defeats against the religious right ARE worth gloating over, and goddamit I'm going to do it. It's not an endorsement of the left in anyway whatsoever. You underestimate the the fantasy world these religious people live in and their total determination to create a theocracy in America. Check out our blog, Politics without god. |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 16:53:38 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Anonyme
I would recommend caution in your gloating. Given the dismally vile nature of their Leftist opponents, any victory over Christian Conservatives (or at least those on the Right) that cedes power to those opponents is, at best, a Pyrrhic one.
As, no doubt, we shall soon see. |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 18:25:57 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Jeff
I have never met, or heard of for that matter, any popular religious conservative seriously advocate theocracy -- that is to say, the complete overthrow of our constitution and the establishment of another based upon some religion, not merely opposition to abortion and stem cell research. Perhaps, I am just too far removed from the evangelicals down south and out west to notice it, being in New Jersey.
To Surrah,
Obama, for two years straight, filled our ears with dissimulation. In what way is he "comfortable fighting in the realm of ideas and rationality." He deals only with vague generalities that can mean anything, and therefore nothing, used only for the exigencies of his power lust.
What I fear more than a theocracy is a new new deal. Where Obama comes in, declaring that this disaster was caused by the greed of capitalism, then proceeds to usurp every property right he can get his hands on. |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 20:47:21 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: IchorFigure
"Perhaps, I am just too far removed from the evangelicals down south and out west to notice it"
Yes, I would say exactly that. Religious institutions have huge amounts of funding and they mean business. They don't relent with their egregious attempts to of individual rights if you care to look. If you have any doubt just how dishonest and evil religious institutions are willing to be go watch the propaganda film "Expelled". It is dumb as dirt, sure, but it is very obviously aimed at young religious youth naive enough to believe it. The film is brimming with twisted lies upon lies in the name of science and free speech of all things. |
|
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 23:45:17 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Emma B
E-mail: fertilityproject(at)gmail.com
Wait, how are you figuring that the Religious Right lost in the Mississippi Senate? Both of our senators (Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker) are Republicans who were reelected. They both ran against conservative Christian Democrats, but the RR strongly supported the incumbent Republicans. I think you mis-read the linked article, which correctly notes that Wicker had the backing of several RR groups.
I never understood why the Wicker-Musgrove race was a subject of national interest to begin with -- anyone who seriously thought this might go Democratic was deluded. Mississippi is a RR stronghold, and will be for many years to come. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 8:10:11 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Dave B
E-mail: Blankenstein0582(at)aol.com
Surah, are you saying that Obama does NOT subordinate reason to faith? His belief may be in a little different form (e.g. faith in government or in some mystic, disembodied concept of "society") but it is there nonetheless. All we can do is keep up the good fight, regardless of who slithers into power. And I commend all of you for doing just that! |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 9:53:54 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Jeff
To Ichorfigure,
You said, "If you have any doubt just how dishonest and evil religious institutions are willing to be go watch the propaganda film "Expelled". It is dumb as dirt, sure, but it is very obviously aimed at young religious youth naive enough to believe it. The film is brimming with twisted lies upon lies in the name of science and free speech of all things. "
Is this any worst than the throngs of leftists who watch conspiratorial trash, such as Loose Change. Or those who watch Michael Moore's so called "documentaries"? |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 13:55:28 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: IchorFigure
No one is even saying that the left is better. When attempts to infringe on our rights are defeated on the left and the right they should be met with celebration. The fact is religion got its ass handed to it at this moment in time so that is the subject. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 14:32:29 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/profile
Ichorfigure is exactly right about the defeat of right-wing proposals to destroy freedom being a good thing. It's especially true when the vote is not for a candidate to public office (where, for example, the consequence of John McCain not getting elected is that Barack Obama DID get elected) but on a ballot proposition (where, for example, the consequence of California's Proposition 4 being defeated is simply that a bad law was not enacted, not that some other bad law got enacted in its place).
Really, this kind of argument about "don't celebrate the defeat of the right because it means celebrating the victory of the left" is all too much like what Nietzsche called "the faith in opposite values." It makes me think of a comment I made, earlier this year, to a friend in the local science fiction community (not as much of a friend as I thought he was then, I regret to say). He had blogged a copy of some woman's rant about the evil of Islam and America being a Christian nation. I commented that the document on which America was founded, the Constitution, did not mention God or Christ anywhere and mentioned religion only to limit its role in public affairs, and that the "Christian nation" claim was clearly false and should be opposed. He replied by telling me that if I was not an advocate of Christianity in American politics I was supporting the Muslim conquest of the United States. This rather baffled me, as it seemed strange to say that someone who believed in the Enlightenment, religious tolerance, and resisting the legal imposition of one religion would support the legal imposition of a different religion.
On reflection, though, I came to think that he was thinking of this in tribal terms, not in terms of principles. He was loyal to his tribe, Christian Americans. And he divided the world into his tribe, and other tribes who were his tribe's enemies; moreover, he thought that all the people who opposed his tribe, no matter how different their reasons were, were all allied with each other . . . in effect, that there was an anti-American tribe that included Muslims, Marxists, and American secularists. His whole mode of thinking was dominated by the belief in opposite values: the values he supported and the values he opposed. There were only the two options in his view. And "left versus right" is the same kind of thinking.
One of the powerful conceptual schemata that Ayn Rand relied on was looking at seemingly opposed points of view, and showing that in fact they rely on a common premise, and that the real alternative is to reject that premise and the false dichotomy it leads to. This obviously applies to left versus right, but it also applies to more philosophical dualities such as rationalism and empiricism, or sacrifice of self to others versus sacrifice of others to self. But it clearly applies to left versus right. In cheering the defeat of Proposition 4, I am not supporting liberals, or Marxists, or radical feminists, or any other group that happens to be on the right side on this particular issue; I am opposing the people who are on the wrong side.
And, in doing so, I agree with Gina. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 14:46:39 mst
Comment ID: #16
Name: Anthony
The so-called "protection of marriage" amendment passed here in Florida, and one passed in California as well.
What's wrong with parental notification? Do you oppose parental notification for all ages? What about a child under the age of consent? |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 14:55:19 mst
Comment ID: #17
Name: Anthony
The idea that someone could drug my daughter and/or perform surgery on her without even telling me about it, is absolutely hideous. Of course, my daughter is only 2 months old. I haven't studied the issue enough to know where exactly to draw the line, but clearly there is a line to draw. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 15:46:53 mst
Comment ID: #18
Name: Robert Speirs
E-mail: robspe43(at)gmail.com
Unfortunately, one religion that has destroyed the postulated Wall of Separation is the Gaia-loving tree-hugging kind. Global warming baloney, ridiculously uneconomic recycling and the constant exhortation that man is a cancer on the planet and not the ultimate rational animal will, I am afraid, find their way even deeper into our legal system and our cultural mores, with violent prohibitions arising against any dissent to the received wisdom. The clownish politician Gore and vicious propagandists like Michael Moore are far more dangerous to individual freedom than a thousand Baptist ranters.
And anyone who can listen to the speeches of Zerobama and think he will protect the government from religion is living in a fantasy world. The emotion, the cadences, the utter lack of substance are entirely religious. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 16:07:01 mst
Comment ID: #19
Name: Tom Rowland
E-mail: trowland08(at)gmail.com
Jeff re #10:
No one on the electable left used the word "socialist" to describe their views either, until the current crises forced a discussion of both capitalism and socialism that has become explicit and based in a consideration of the ethics of altruism. Never before has there been a presidential candidate that clearly connected advocating socialism with the ethics of altruism. In fact,candidates in the past actively campaigned against any such accusation. But the were counting on the (implicit, often) acceptance of socialist theory as an acceptable test for US law.
Similar considerations apply to the religious right and theocracy. Just as I know of no way to argue the case for a bailout of the banks without involving premises of socialism (altruism, labor theory of value, collective control of the means of production, consumption as the incentive for production),I know of no way to argue the case for a legal ban on abortion that does not involve an appeal to a "higher power" or "higher reality." I think it is impossible to discuss the issue of abortion without coming to a discussion of the special status accorded to the human fetus -- a status that it derives from its status as a member of God's church. Mind you this is a status NOT accorded the mother, who carries the fetus, since the fetus is "innocent" but the mother, by implication, is not. The rallying cry for the anti-life crowd is that you are killing an innocent baby and someone has to speak for the innocent fetus. But the fetus is neither innocent or guilty since it cannot make a moral choice. The fetus, in addition, is only innocent in the context of Original Sin, which the Bible says is a condition of all people , at birth. The fetus, not having been born, is therefore not only innocent, but, by that fact alone, also NOT HUMAN. This is a rationalistic contradiction. And the only answer that I've heard when this is brought up, is "The Lord, works in mysterious ways." That is the essence of religion -- belief without reason or logic or facts. Making such a belief into law is already theocratic in motive and result. It makes belief in a religious doctrine an acceptable test for law.
The tactic is plain, keep talking about the theory without naming the source until the theory becomes so accepted that naming the source becomes almost automatic and off no consequence. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 17:17:18 mst
Comment ID: #20
Name: William H Stoddard
E-mail: whswhs(at)mindspring.com
URL: http://whswhs.livejournal.com/profile
What's wrong with parental notification? Well, let me give you the answer I gave my girlfriend's family about a year ago; it's not an abstract philosophical answer, but I think you can find a philosophical argument embedded in it if you care to.
If a girl in her teens gets pregnant, you can expect that she'll spend a few days in fear and struggle, and then decide to tell her parents and ask them to help her deal with it. Because at that age, in that situation, she'll be in over her head, and kids in over their heads turn to their parents. She may not want to deal with their reaction, she may not be happy to admit that she's gotten pregnant, but she'll decide it's easier than dealing with the pregnancy on her own. That's part of the way families normally work.
So if some particular girl thinks she can't tell her parents, maybe it makes sense to think that she's got a really, really good reason.
You can think of reasons, if you like. Maybe her father (or stepfather) is the one who got her pregnant. Maybe her parents are punitively religious evangelicals and she's terrified of how they'll react. Maybe they're punitively religious Muslims who believe in honor killings; after all, surgeons in the UK are making good money doing hymenoplasties for Muslim women who are terrified of what will happen if their Muslim husbands learn they weren't virgins when they got married.
But really, to me, the decisive point is that if the girl thinks she can't tell her parents . . . I don't think the law should be second-guessing her, and making her take the risk of doing so. She's the one who will pay the price of telling them; she should get to decide if she can afford it. |
|
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 17:55:16 mst
Comment ID: #21
Name: Anthony
"So if some particular girl thinks she can't tell her parents, maybe it makes sense to think that she's got a really, really good reason." Or maybe she's got a really, really bad reason. She's a child. She isn't fully capable of reason. Maybe her father was the one who got her pregnant. Shouldn't her mother be told about this fact? Or who's to say it wasn't a teacher, and the child is too embarrassed by the fact, or was threatened by the teacher? Children aren't fully capable of defending themselves against these types of threats. Their parents need to be given the opportunity to protect them. What age are we talking about? A 9 year old? A 12 year old? A 14 year old? If we're talking about statutory rape, then there absolutely needs to be an investigation, and while I could possibly see keeping the parents out of the loop during the very early stages of the investigation, they have to find out fairly quickly. After the age of consent, I guess I can see an argument against parental notification, but then, I can also see an argument for lowering the age of majority a couple years as well. I'm not an expert on this stuff to the point where I can say exactly what age the line should be drawn at, but I think it is absolutely a violation of *the rights of my daughter* for a doctor to not inform me or my wife before performing an elective medical procedure on her.
If you examine your argument, you're considering what's best for the absolute worst of situations. It's an inherently altruistic argument - you're protecting daughters with evil parents at the expense of daughters with good ones, including my own. The government should come in and take the children away from these evil parents in most if not all of the situations you outline above, but that has nothing to do with the failure to protect the rights of healthy families. |
|
| Friday, November 21, 2008 at 15:48:53 mst
Comment ID: #22
Name: Jeff
To Tom Rowland,
I fully support the absolute right of a mother to abortion, yet this is not the issue. The religious right was rejected, not on the basis of an objective view of the individual rights of the mother, but on the subjective view. By raising the left to prominence, does this temporary victory over the religious right do a greater net good or harm?
The trend in the last six-hundred years has a been away from religion, yet, am I supposed to believe that this trend is completely reversing?
If you say the religious right is more dangerous, on what basis did you decide this? What evidence?
The left controls all those things which may direct the implicit values of a people. They control the two things which Yaron Brook and others at ARI rightly esteem as the most important for influencing a culture, the lower schools and the colleges. |
|
| Friday, November 21, 2008 at 15:59:27 mst
Comment ID: #23
Name: madmax
"The trend in the last six-hundred years has a been away from religion, yet, am I supposed to believe that this trend is completely reversing?"
I ask myself this question all the time. Given the continued weakening of religion is it really the case that America's greatest long term threat is religion. I am tempted to say that it is skepticism which is a far greater threat than religion. Plus skepticism is leading people to embrace religion as the only alternative that they see.
Altruism is killing the West but I'm leading toward the conclusion that it is the secular versions of altruism and collectivism which are the greatest danger we face and not religion although that is of course a great danger too. |
|
| Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 7:21:24 mst
Comment ID: #24
Name: Anthony
"Madmax", how are you defining "religion", and how are you defining "skepticism"? If you define "religion" as "belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason", and define "skepticism" as "the belief that knowledge is impossible", then it's hard to see "skepticism" as anything but a "religion". That said, the dictionary definition of "religion" is "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe". I can't manage to parse that definition, though. The very definition seems self-contradictory. |
|
| Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 11:20:27 mst
Comment ID: #25
Name: madmax
Anthony, I was referring to religion as roughly synonymous with Monotheism but of course it can be much broader than that. When I look at the culture today and compare it with the pre-1960s world it appears much more secular than it ever was. Look at fashion trends, open homosexuality, continued sexual liberation, music, etc. All of this is good. Religion does not dictate terms for the popular culture anymore and this is killing the cultural conservatives who see this as a sign of the fall of the West.
When I look at the secularists on the Left I see a group that is adamantly opposed to the idea of absolutes in epistemology or in ethics. They are so committed to social subjectivism that to challenge them on this is to invite scathing denunciations and ridicule (try mentioning Rand on any Leftist website). They are waging a war against all standards, against standards as such. But it is this outlook which dominates the intellectual and academic world not religion. Many on the Left are waging a battle to abolish Christianity in America. They are doing this while at the same time appeasing Islam. So I see the greatest cultural threat as coming from the secular/empiricist/relativist Left. Religion will capitalize on this to be sure. But that could take generations or longer. |
|
| Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 13:18:09 mst
Comment ID: #26
Name: Jeff
To Anthony,
Religion is not simply that which is irrational. Unlike skepticism, which denies knowledge is even possible, it pretends to knowledge. A religion, therefore, is an organization which pretends to supernatural knowledge. |
|
|
Post Your Comment |
|
|
|
E-mail Gina Liggett
Comments
