Newsgroups: alt.feminism, alt.politics.liberalism, alt.politics.democrat, alt.politics.democrats, alt.politics.libertarian
From: anonymous124…@yahoo.com - Find messages by this author
Date: 21 Jul 2005 05:42:18 -0700
Local: Thurs,Jul 21 2005 8:42 am
Subject: JOHN ROBERTS: A GIFT TO THE DEMOCRATS FROM JESUS
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Halleluyah! Praise Jesus! John Roberts is the best thing to happen to
the Democrats since Nutt Goongrich. Lets see now: We have Georgie
bringing the Supreme Court back to the 19th century with a return to an
8-man, 1-woman court. Clearly, King George believes that the place of
the woman is pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen. With no chance
for an abortion.

Roberts is a judicial activist who has advocated (on record) using the
Supreme CT to overthow Rowe v Wade. The Democrats need to hammer the
message home to every woman of child-bearing age that if Roberts is
approved, they will soon no longer have the right to have an abortion.
Even if they’re raped.

This is an issue so explosive that even church-going women who are
supposedly pro-life will respond to. Most of these women just go along
with the majority opinion but actually want the right to choose.

Democratic obstructionism should be maximized. This is free
advertising for the Democrats. Bush wants to turn the Supreme Court
back to some all-male 19th century creation. He wants to take away a
woman’s right to choose. This could even break apart the uneasy
coalition in the Republican party between the pro-choicers and the
pro-lifers.

This could well be the DUMBEST decision Bush has made so far! Praise
Jesus, and pass the tax-free status. That’s another thing: Time to
examine whether some of these “Christian” conservatives deserve a tax
break.

Maybe if the men arguing for enslavement of women stopped to consider what it would be like if the state made claim on their testicles, they’d maybe learn something.

As for feminists, you can’t paint us all with the same chauvinist brush.

there are pro-life feminists and conservative feminists

who must be very, very lonely.

But those afternoon high teas (i-teas ?) at Lutece’ are to die for.

who must be very, very lonely.

“But turn that around for a second. How do you look at Bush for making you complicit in the Iraq War? Has it occurred to you that maybe some people who view the fetus as a human life look at you the exact same way for wanting to force them to pay for abortions?” - Glaivester

In the midst of those two statements, the poster “Robert” effectively compared (as many pro-Lifers do) the dehumanizing statements of the slavery supporters last century as a slam against those who support a woman’s right to control which parasite leeches nutrients out of her body and which does not. I can’t help but find it sadly amusing that the problem isn’t immediately obvious– even someone who can state the case as clearly as Glaive’s first quote still doesn’t grasp that once you’ve understood that it is slavery for the state to force women to produce offspring against their will, ever, you are not allowed to continue saying “but still women shouldn’t be able to control their bodies because there are *people* eventually coming out of those bodies.”

I was further disappointed in you, Glaive, when, after your diatribe on libertarian economics and the Liberals’ supposed hatred of small-business, you skipped entirely over your fellow business owner (MediaGirl)’s response to why you were entirely incorrect.

I find that when most people stop to sort through most of the propaganda and labels, the intelligent, honest, thoughtful types I speak about these things to tend to find themselves more allied with progressive ideals than they realized at first. The key is to get them to stop proudly proclaiming “I am a ____ican/ian” and start listening to the ideas one at a time, and thoroughly discussing them. To the point of this reply, Glaive, is that I cannot comprehend how someone as intelligent as you can recognize intellectually that abortion prohibition is womb-slavery, and then fail to understand that it then becomes your obligation as a fellow American to help provide the financial, legal, and social support for that to never happen to anyone.

That is what it mens to be a society of liberty.

on the issue of feminism. i really hate when people toss around the word “feminism” like it means one particular thing. it does not. there are many different varieties of feminism. at the broadest level a feminist is someone who believes in the equality of the sexes (politically, socially, economically, etc). it is not necessarily a pro-choice, liberal, socialist thing. there are pro-life feminists and conservative feminists and a million other kinds of feminists.

About the “America: love it or leave it” type jingoism-

That attitude used to make me near homicidal until I read Al Franken’s wonderful take on it. He explains that the love it or leave it folks love America like a three year old loves their mommy. Mommy/America can do no wrong, and can never be criticized because the love it or leave it types are too immature to experience anything but three year old type love. Those of us who dissent and criticize our country, however, have the love for America that is like the mature true love that a grownup has for their long-term spouse. We know that we can love our country, but still find fault with it, and love it while trying to change it for the better.

So now, when I see a bumpersticker that says “America: love it or get the fuck out”, I laugh, seeing the insecure three year old that is driving the car.

[shrug] Can’t help you there, Mr. Eel. I find my philosophy plenty coherent.

To wit: I don’t presume to know what’s best for other women and the children they may or may not have. I respect women’s right to decide for themselves whether or not to have kids. I do not respect unborn zygotes, fetuses, or what-have-you, at the expense of adult women. I expect the same sort of respect from other adults, and I have zero interest in feigning any love for other adults who can’t grant me that simple courtesy.

Whether or not you find that coherent enough is your own damn problem.

As for my use of the word “thing,” I beg your pardon. Do you find that offensive ? Tough. I don’t much care for the notion that a hypothetical fertilized egg gets to be more of a “someone” than I get to be. Shall we split hairs owing to the fact that the English language makes it hard to describe a living thing that is neither purely inanimate nor capable of surviving on its own ? Is it a “thing” in the same way that a sock is ? No. A sock is not alive. But a fertilized egg is also not a “someone” in the same way that I am. It can’t survive outside my body, for one thing.

Don’t agree ? Fine. As I’ve said countless times, sire all the kids you want, and keep your grubby paws the hell off my body and anything that might be in it.

Now, this may give you added fuel for your own smug assertion that pro-choicers are somehow to blame for the fact that we can’t sell your female family members on the notion of feminism. However, I think you know that one left-of-liberal feminist who has no kids and zero patience for your ongoing semantic games does not make up the entire feminist movement. Perhaps they’d respond better to someone like Kim (basement), for instance. She’s a devoted mom with another kid on the way. Or perhaps they’d reject her out of hand, too, for some other reason. I have no way of knowing, and in any case, there’s nothing I can do if they choose not to wear the label “feminist.” I care less about what labels they wear than whether or not they respect my own right to run my life as I see fit, truthfully.

It was you who said in comment #65, referring to the unborn, that “And since that “someone”? is a THING…”

Please acknowledge that this was your statement, or if I have grossly misread what appears to be a relatively simple thesis, provide a correction.

My statement had nothing to do with whether the women in my family had had abortions - or even if they were pro- or anti-choice. My statement was quite simply that the women in my family were repelled by the predominant meme in the hardcore pro-choice element of the feminist movement that fetuses are things, not people.

You may think that this has necessary implications as to their abortion status and beliefs regarding same is obvious; I don’t see it as even being discernable. Sorry. As you say, there are lots of pro-choice moms and pro-lifers with abortion histories.

The amount of joy you so clearly take in messing with feminists’ heads never ceases to amaze me.

Have a logically coherent philosophy and my ability to “mess with your head” disappears.

Nice reversal. :/

One more time, Robert. It was you, not me, who wrote:

“Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”?

IOW, it was you, not me, who introduced into this thread the notion that pro-choicers considered a zygote/fetus/what-have-you to be an object. Furthermore, in your scenario, it is most assuredly implied that conservatives do not sully themselves by aborting, and that this is what keeps the women in your life from embracing feminism. Backpedal all you want, but the implication is obvious, not to mention more than a tad weird, as if no mother were pro-choice and no childfree woman were pro-life. Please. You know better than that, since you read the same threads here that everyone else does.

NOTA, but I wish there was some kind of “Golden Eel” award, for slippery posters, Robert. Because you’d win it hands down. The amount of joy you so clearly take in messing with feminists’ heads never ceases to amaze me.

“…So is marriage and a lot of other things, and we still have state intervention into them, let alone social intervention.”

I don’t see the parallel here, and I’m also not sure what you mean by “intervention.” It would be quite a trick for the state to “intervene” in a marriage while the husband or wife was still a zygote, embryo, or fetus. Are you writing another chapter of the “Terminator” saga, or what ?

Alsis, quoting me: Here: “Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”?

Alsis:If you were not implying that conservative women avoid abortion at all imes, what were you implying, Robert ?

I wasn’t implying anything. I don’t generally imply. I generally come right out and say it. However, your assumption about my implication leaves me scratching my head. I don’t see the connection between what I said and the implication you draw from it.

Are you working from a starting assumption that all women who abort are doing so under your paradigm that a fetus is an object? Because I don’t think that’s the case.

As for the rest, it seems to boil down to an objection that other people’s beliefs have moral penumbras that affect all of our lives, or at least an objection in the case of reproduction. I can see a strong case that abortion is a deeply private matter. So is marriage and a lot of other things, and we still have state intervention into them, let alone social intervention.

My second point was that the a lot of people who resent liberals do so because they feel the liberals want to interfere with their lives, not because they want to interfere with the liberals’ lives.

Again you get back to not liking how your taxes are spent. The fact is that you’re benefiting from living in this society — this Great Society — where if you fall flat on your ass, you get a second chance. The social safety net is what makes our capitalist economy thrive. All you have to do is peek back through time via Dickens to see what capitalism without the social safety net is like.

I’d say more, but you’re a moving target, Glaivester. It’s ludicrous to try to equate your objection to how tax dollars are spent with our objections to enslaving women as breeder slaves or charging women with murder for not putting their bodies, their health and their lives on the line to carry through on a pregnancy.

I am not advocating non-payment of taxes, or saying that people should never be forced to pay taxes for something they find immoral.

I am not saying that only liberals want to force me to pay for social programs.

What I am saying is that it is hypocritical to say that only conservatives want to interfere in other people’s lives, or to argue that forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is not interference in their lives.

You may argue that such interference is a good thing, and like Amp, you may say that the interference is minimal compared to the benefits obtained, but it is hypocritical to argue that liberals are not interfering in other people’s lives.

My second point was that the a lot of people who resent liberals do so because they feel the liberals want to interfere with their lives, not because they want to interfere with the liberals’ lives.

Now if you’re arguing for some sort of line-item veto on how your taxes are spent, well get in line. There’s plenty of crap I don’t want my tax dollars paying for.

But you say I oppress you because you pay taxes? Puhleez!

Media girl, I love you!

Warm fuzzies aside, you made the point that popped into my head.

Property rights and social responsibility can occur in tandem and harmony. Saying that liberals don’t respect property rights is silly. Yeah, maybe Henry David Thoreau didn’t believe in property rights, and philosophically it’s likely that many liberals even admire his logic, that doesn’t mean the majority of US liberals especially are out to take your property. The notion of cherry picking which programs your money should go to is unreasonable. Hell, we’d need to create a department to oversee which people’s taxes went where to make everyone happy, which would make me unhappy, because my tax dollars would be spent paying for such a silly department.

If you tink you’d be better off without taxes, then you’re a bigger fool than you seem already. Frankly, I do not want to live or do business in anarchy. There’s no profit in it. There’s no peace in it.

Now if you’re arguing for some sort of line-item veto on how your taxes are spent, well get in line. There’s plenty of crap I don’t want my tax dollars paying for.

But you say I oppress you because you pay taxes? Puhleez!

Your claim that an embryo or fetus is a child is also unfounded on any sound science. Is your ejaculate full of babies, too? Maybe we should outlaw masturbation? Maybe it should be illegal for any woman to turn away from a gleam in a man’s eye?

Meanwhile the rights of women are well established, and being forced into being a breeder slave of the state is not American. Maybe those of the Old Confederacy might disagree, but I’m sorry, slavery simply is not an option.

What I find interesting is that the highest abortion rates are in these “red states” where everyone is supposedly so moral. Chart here. If conservatives really were serious about reducing the number of abortions, then they would get serious about preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. But that would mean real sex education, making contraception legal and available to teenagers, subsidized for the poor, and stopping this silly and dangerous propaganda programs from the right that put out information like “condoms cause cancer” and “the Pill makes you infertile.”

But we don’t see that, do we? No, that would be too empowering for women and girls. No, if we did that, then women would not be punished for having sex.

So please, spare us all the crocodile tears and come back when you have something rational to propose, instead of a slavery-or-prison option for women who get pregnant.

[snort] I’ve been through variations on what folks like you might mean by “everything” or “survival” in this context about a billion times, Glaivester. So you’ll have to excuse me if I decide to pass on it this time, as I already have a good idea of what you might mean. I’ll leave you free to go reach across that great divide with somebody else. Have fun.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you don’t believe in property rights. Therefore, you can take away everything I have beyond that which is absolutely necessary to survive, and still maintain that you are not interfering with my life.

Which is essentially my point. The reason so many people dislike liberals is that they see the essential liberal philosophy as being that I can only possess material goods at the sufferance of the government. I don’t have any fundamental right to anything I buy, earn, or make; if the government (or whoever is in charge of society) wants to take everything I have, it has every right to do so, and I am a selfish greedy bastard if I object. If I am responsible and work hard, and someone else is irresponsible and decides that they want to have children they cannot afford, I am expected to support them, because I have no fundamental right to the fruits of my labor.

Come on already, the administration is all about tax payers paying huge amounts for all sorts of things that are extremely controversial, and yet you’d have the audacity (yes, sheer freaking audacity) to point at liberals, as if we have some sort of monopoly on the schtick. Take some accountability here, for gosh sake.

I’m not saying that liberals have a monopoly on it. I am saying that conservatives don’t. The general tone of the original post here struck me as “conservatives want to control our lives, liberals want us to be free, and the conservatives hate the liberals because the liberals don’t want the conservatives to control them.” My point is that a lot of conservatives dislike liberals because they see the liberals as wanting to control them.

Both liberals and conservatives want to make taxpayers spend money on stuff that many of them believe in morally wrong. I don’t see why people are so surprised that conservatives resent liberals for it the same way that liberals resent conservatives.

Also, I don’t see why I should take accountability for the actions of an administration that I didn’t vote for and that I actively oppose, just because we both label ourselves “conservative.”

Here: “Neither my wife nor my mother nor my aunt nor my grandmother are feminists, although all are very strong women who believe in equality of the sexes. Why are they not feminists? Because they cannot endorse the idea that the children they bore within themselves were objects.”?

If you were not implying that conservative women avoid abortion at all times, what were you implying, Robert ? Are you implying that it’s all right to abort if one tells herself that fetuses are NOT objects, and that the woman who tells herself this is more moral than the woman who doesn’t spend time reflecting on this question before aborting ? Is there a specific number of times that a woman would have to berate herself as an inhuman murderer before she could be considered “dues paying” in your universe ?

“Is it really so difficult to acknowledge the humanity of our offspring? Does supporting a woman’s ability to choose her own life path require such an absolute derogation of what a fetus is?”

Actually, what I think it requires is for my choice to remain mine, and for your female relatives’ choices to remain their choices. The fetus itself isn’t the primary issue here. The woman who carries it is the primary issue.

That’s why I could never be a pro-lifer, Robert. It seems to require a collossial arrogance that I simply find abhorent. I can read Amp’s links about when an embryo starts to exhibit human characteristics, when a fetus can be said to show brain activity, and so on– until the end of time. What I CANNOT, and will not, try to do, is get inside your wife’s head, my best friend’s head, my neighbor’s head, and tell them that my perception of how important this is overrides their own. I CANNOT, and will not, tell them that it’s all right to abort if you already have six kids, or if this future kid has Downs, or if you’d have to go on welfare for this future kid to eat, and so on, and so on. That’s between them and their partner’s/families/god/whomever, and nothing at all to do with me.

The trouble with your POV, Robert, and with Glaivester’s, is that it implies that the opinion of someone who doesn’t carry the future kid has as much or more influence than that of the person who does. Despite what Glaivester says above, I don’t have any trouble comprehending that people feel that way. Comprehending them, however, doesn’t make me interested in holding hands and singing “kumbaya” with them. There’s a difference.

“I don’t think that it does; of course, such an acknowledgement would mean that abortion would be something that would be hard and confusing and full of nuance and heartbreak.”

You sound like that res ipsa character who was here a month or so ago to prattle about how liberals and lefties aren’t talking to each other about the great importance of “responsibility” vis a vis reporductive choice. No matter how many folks showed up to explain that they DID discuss it, and often, and that there was evidence of such deep consideration on this very space available for the taking, he had his tack and he was sticking to it.

Amazingly enough, Robert, I don’t need you to explain to me that reproduction, or choosing not to reproduce, requires more emotional and logical engagement than does picking a nice place to have pizza for dinner. I could do without the implication from yourself and other pro-lifers that a pro-choice position is synonymous with lack of reflection. In fact, just the opposite is true: It’s the very importance of the question that leads me to heartily wish that people like you and Glaivester would just let me alone to draw the conclusions that will work for me. If you were serious about friendlier relations with the other side, that would be the way to demonstrate it. I’ve spent years thinking over these questions, far longer than I’ve spent actually being physically able to bear children, and far longer than I’ve been sexually active. If I wake up tomorrow with a proverbial blue test, I’ll have more than enough to think about and discuss with my partner and friends without having to deal with your clamor on the subject as well.

You may well yawn; the constant invocation of ideas and concepts that are not only not to be found in my writing, but are explicitly contradicted by that corpus’ plain text, is incredibly boring. However, it’s your fabulation; bore yourself silly.

You, and many other feminists, are welcome to continue to insist that “a fetus is not a full-fledged human” and “a fetus is a THING” are interchangeable concepts, which can be switched between however the tactical political argument is running. But my point - unaddressed by you, other than with a lame digression about your telepathic knowledge of my family’s abortion history - stands: there are a hell of a lot of women who are in agreement with feminist ideals but who will never stand with you while you are dehumanizing their children.

Is it really so difficult to acknowledge the humanity of our offspring? Does supporting a woman’s ability to choose her own life path require such an absolute derogation of what a fetus is? I don’t think that it does; of course, such an acknowledgement would mean that abortion would be something that would be hard and confusing and full of nuance and heartbreak.

Which, I suspect, is how many women do indeed view it. It’s certainly how the women in my family view it. And you will never be able to reach those women so long as you are compelled to dismiss the complexity of their experience with objectification and dehumanization.