This posting got delayed for many reasons. But the first of several topics won't wait. Because next week is Giving Tuesday!
So first off...
Each year I talk about proxy activism. The best way you can, with minimal fuss or even attention, help to save the world (or do good things) by helping others to save the world for you!
Here is an excerpt from a web page where you can learn much more:
Proxy Power is the uniquely convenient — but seldom discussed — ability of a modern person to participate in activism... helping to change or improve the world... by the simple expedience of joining some group that is already vigorously pursuing that part of your personal agenda.
It's simple: you add both your membership dues and the political impact of your membership, in order to get behind people who are striving to save the world for you.
There is a wide and eclectic variety of such organizations to choose from. The groups that you select will, presumably, contain passionate and well-informed people who agitate — or act — in ways that are explicitly laid out in the group's magazine or web site. Hence, you can know in advance how well their program matches your own hopes and goals for the world.
Of course, millions of people already do this. (I deem these NGOs one of the greatest inventions of the 20th Century - and Vlad Putin hates em!)
In fact, the expansive range of activist organizations can be looked upon as a vast market place, selling options on a better world. Every person's own list of memberships will be different, reflecting a particular — or peculiar — set of values and concerns. A set that can adjust yearly, depending on the individual's passion...(environment? space? poor kids? civil liberties?) ...and available cash.
Millions of dollars in membership dues pour through organizations that range from The Sierra Club and Habitat for Humanity to The Planetary Society to the ACLU and Electronic Frontier, from Donors Choose to Doctors without Borders, empowering and encouraging these groups to keep fighting or doing good works... (continues)
Seriously, you can design your list of proxy NGOs to suit all your notions of a better world, efforts that are world, national, or local! (Example: here's one helping expand a crowded elementary school in Tijuana and adding adult education.)
Again, if you have priorities, then someone is working on exactly that. Scan the Proxy Power site for suggestions. But I have confidence you can find more. Ask yourself: "What is a better world worth to me?"
And speaking of saving the world...
== Back to political perspectives, starting with what Biden should do NOW! ==
President Biden turns 81 today. And okay, his age is all folks talk about, trying to divide the only coalition that stands any chance of saving our nation and world. Only dig it: I don't care if he naps! He appointed 10,000 skilled, smart and honest folks to replace 10,000 shills and crooks and Kremlin-agent Trumpists.
That's issue #1 for me. With Austin, Blinken etc on the job, and the intel/FBI/military officer corps now back to doing their jobs, I can sleep nights. And yeah, Kamala too.
But sure, let's confront the age issue head on. HERE'S WHAT JOBEE SHOULD SAY:
"Okay it's totally legit to question whether age affects my sharpness. And so, especially after watching the GOP clown-car 'debates', I want to show that not all politicians are raving ninnies. So let's have Democratic party primary debates!
"For one thing, the contrast will be stunning. It will show how deep our bench is, stuffed with cogent adults from many generations and regions, arguing policy with courtesy and wisdom.
"Sure I plan to be the nominee! But should we turn down free air time and a great platform to show how we Democrats overflow with vigorous, smart NON-clowns? And how we talk real issues, like saving the planet and repairing infrastructure and respecting science and advancing justice and bringing manufacturing back to America, amid the best economy in 40 years?
"So, bring it, kids! Let's have fun showing the nation how grownups argue and learn from each other, with courtesy, mutual respect, humor and wisdom!"
What an opportunity that would be, for a win-win-win. If only.
201 comments:
1 – 200 of 201 Newer› Newest»Dr Brin in the main post:
Because tomorrow is Giving Tuesday!
Isn't that the week after Thanksgiving?
Yes, according to the very site linked here, Giving Tuesday is next week.
John Viril in the previous comments:
Hmmm....this tells me you've never taken a criminal law or undergrad criminal justice course.
Heh. No, but I did have a pre-law friend visit in college. When he went on about how someone isn't guilty of a crime just because he committed the crime, I knew I wouldn't want to be indoctrinated into the mysteries.
One of the first things they pound in your head is that using deadly force in self-defense is a legal privilege, and why that matters.
Ok, then. Same with abortion. But you made it sound as if admitting it is a privilege makes it almost never possible to justify. Self-defense is justified pretty easily, even in dubious circumstances.
It's semantics to you, but for lawyers it's a "term of art" and the difference is significant.
Yes, but most lay people will talk about their "right" to self-defense. The "right" to abortion is thrown about the same way.
If something is a privilege, you bear the burden of proof to avoid prison.
If the fetus is already dead, or a danger to the woman carrying it, that should be legal justification. As things stand now in anti-abortion states, a doctor would be afraid to perform a procedure even in those circumstances.
But I can't think of any circumstances where a citizen has an affirmative right to intentionally kill another citizen.
When the other citizen is putting his life or that of another in danger.
You're arguing as if the point of abortion is to kill the fetus. In many cases, the point is to preserve the life or health of the mother.
* * *
Ummm...speechwriters plus teleprompters can hide a lot.
They weren't hiding it on the House floor during the State of the Union when "Sleepy Joe" negotiated with the congressional Republicans on the fly and got them to agree that they won't cut Social Security.
* * *
How is losing 1.5% of purchasing power possibly good for a lender?
* * *
So, Larry, you're celebrating the unconstitutional deprivation of the voting rights of elected RNC officials in what amounts to a massive voting fraud scheme just because you like the outcome?
Huh?
You're going to have to explain what you're referring to here.
I didn't answer this:
How is losing 1.5% of purchasing power possibly good for a lender?
Better than losing 2% in the mattress.
But I've lost track of where I (or someone else) argued that that circumstance is favorable to lenders. I'm pretty sure I said low interest rates were good for borrowers.
X is suing Media Matters. It does not look good for David Brock.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/21/1214338766/musks-x-sues-media-matters-over-its-report-on-ads-next-to-hate-groups-posts
You can read the full complaint here:
https://www.pacermonitor.com/view/57Y7P3A/X_Corp__txndce-23-01175__0001.0.pdf?mcid=tGE3TEOA
Only 15 pages long, counting the signature page. If the allegations in the complaint are true, I'd say that Media Matters is in serious trouble. I am a lawyer and I have worked on more than a few cases like this. It looks like X will be able to present data showing that Media Matters personnel gamed the system in order to create the create the images that they used to smear X. This case will probably get past the Rule 12 motions to dismiss and then it will be on to discovery. I'd love to be part of the document review team going through Media Matters' internal communications. This lawsuit could put them out of business.
GMT-5
This isn't new for Media Matters. They faked thousands of twitter accounts to make Rush Limbaugh's advertisers think that the StopRush movement was huge https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/09/23/the_hidden_story_behind_stop_rush/ .
I encourage devotees of the Great God Elon to watch some Vaush.
https://youtu.be/QFmfr5JQs1I?si=IcErEp1iyKFzerg7
Heh.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2023/11/15/101/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules of writing:
1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2) Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3) Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4) Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5) Start as close to the end as possible.
6) Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8) Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
“The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor. She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”
Re: rules
Symbolic A.I. once held dominion. Then came the exploding diaper that is black box neural network training. One of the really cool approaches that got abandoned was to flip expert systems around so they'd suss out rules from human knowledge bases. If Vonnegut had embraced Asimov's contemporary love of micro computers, I suspect he would have made bigtime progress. Why do the good ones have to leave us so soon?
"2) Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for."
That's why a stopped watching Yellowstone. This otherwise near perfect neo-western has everything except a hero or a good guy.
IMHO that is why the last 2 seasons of GoT sucked so badly, at the end there was no hero or good guy in all of Westeros.
scidata:
If Vonnegut had embraced Asimov's contemporary love of micro computers, ...
I don't know about that, but they were fellow members of the American Atheist Society (or some name like that). On the old Cerebus list I used to frequent, I knew someone who claimed to have been in the room when Vonnegut gave Asimov's eulogy, beginning with:
"Isaac is in heaven now."
DP:
IMHO that is why the last 2 seasons of GoT sucked so badly,
I gave up in the middle of season 7. And through the previous 6 seasons, I had been a big fan. But it was getting worse than The West Wing after Sorkin left. Or for 80s comics fans, American Flagg! after Chaykin left.
DP:
at the end there was no hero or good guy in all of Westeros.
One interesting aspect of Vonnegut's novels. He doesn't do villains. Just human beings whose motivations are sometimes in conflict.
Proxy Power sounds a bit too much like trying to impose ridiculously expensive 1st world solutions onto 3rd world problems. Perhaps we'd be better off funding 3rd world solutions to 3rd world problems. But then again, I get no satisfaction throwing money at problems. Sweat equity gets you closer. Doing the good yourself, for those deserving of it... that's the real challenge. But for that, you need to get extremely close up, and "live" the problems. Like they used to in the good old days, before we experienced "The Tragedy of American Compassion" (Marvin Olansky).
Larry Hart
"How is losing 1.5% of purchasing power possibly good for a lender?"
Simple question - if it is bad for the lender then why are they lending? (Perhaps of course that the money they are lending is money they are creating out of thin air might be relevant).
reason:
Simple question - if it is bad for the lender then why are they lending?
No doubt, a simple answer too. :)
Earning dollars is still earning dollars, even if you're losing ground to inflation. The alternative is to lose even more ground to inflation.
“If something is a privilege, you bear the burden of proof to avoid prison.”
Well, that sentence in its own right is wrong. But it makes a powerful point, that so many things depend upon the sliding scale of burden of proof. Example: the state has a severe -beyond reasonable doubt burden to prove both the act of homicide and some variant of intent or deliberate neglect, depending on degree. But once that’s done, then the defendant bears a burden of proof in claiming Self Defense.
Some of Vonnegut’s rules are brilliant. At least 2 are utter crap.
“at the end there was no hero or good guy in all of Westeros.”
Like Frank Herbert, George was trying hard to say “See? Feudalism sucks!” Both were frustrated that no amount of vileness could drive that point home. Not so long as the ‘good guys’ were prettier than the villains.
FJDE-MAGA-j said: “Proxy Power sounds a bit too much like trying to impose ridiculously expensive 1st world solutions onto 3rd world problems”
YES! It DOES ‘sound that way,' to an utterly tendentious idiot. Thanks for your honest admission.
Dr Brin:
Some of Vonnegut’s rules are brilliant. At least 2 are utter crap.
I suspect he knew that all rules didn't apply to all stories. The bit about no suspense obviously can't apply to mysteries. The coda at the bottom of his list was an admission of such.
“at the end there was no hero or good guy in all of Westeros.”
Like Frank Herbert, George was trying hard to say “See? Feudalism sucks!” Both were frustrated that no amount of vileness could drive that point home. Not so long as the ‘good guys’ were prettier than the villains.
Be fair. Duke Leto wasn't just "prettier" than the villains, he came across as more humane. The author seemed to be presenting him as such, whether or not he wanted to.
We've discussed this before, but part of the authors' frustration is inevitable, as they spent whole series of books drawing the reader into the POV that those books were presenting. It's no wonder the readers largely didn't go, "Oh, we're not supposed to be rooting for the protagonists." Reading generally doesn't work that way.
The only author whose books I was ever able to enjoy while knowing full well that I disagreed with the authorial POV was Ayn Rand. But that was me disagreeing with her. You're saying that Herbert and Martin wanted the reader to agree with them that they themselves disagreed with the POV inherent in their books? That might just be expecting too much.
Duke Leto was a set piece for nobl;esse oblige... a good man trying to make the best of an outrageously horrible system that he could not (by then) even imagine changing.
Ayn Rand did have one solid work. Despite cartoony-unrealistic-preachy characters, THE FOUNTAINHEAD was an interesting novel with a solid (if crazy) arc and her best (or at least not-execrable) writing. And within the context of JUST art and architecture, fields rife with cheating and villainy, she had a point. A crappy one! But still one could see it. Like her excuse for the rape scene: "I made it very clear that she made it clear, repeatedly, that she wanted it!"
Oy. A sicko. But at least in that book she made her case. All the others are just swill, rants that are almost impossible to even read.
One of the best features of NGOs is their relative transparency. They have little to hide, and actively invite people to join, participate, and advocate. Contrast this with the last few days at OpenAI and Microsoft. The only 'news' coming out of either seems to be warmed-over reposts of the first few stories. A cone of silence has descended over both. Not in the public's interest.
Larry Hart,
if the money was preexisting money there may be alternatives to lending it, and of course the more is lent, the lower the market interest rate (the market interest rate is NOT the same thing as the official interest rate). And rather than lend now at a fixed interest interest rate for the next x years, you could wait and hope the interest rate rises in the future. It is not a stupid question to ask why lenders are asking so little interest for the money they lend.
I didn't take you for an anti-Semite, David. But it is what it is.
You may be extreme, but what makes you dangerous?
It is what it is? You’re not dangerous—you are extremely harmless.
I haven't read The Fountainhead. I saw the movie and it sucked. If Ayn Rand wrote one good thing it was a searing critique of B. F. Skinner, but I don't remember the title of the essay I think it was in Virtue of Selfishness, or maybe it was Philosophy Who Needs It? Any enemy of Skinner is a friend of mine, I suppose.
Lorraine
I thought The Fountainhead was very well done. It's what happens when an author has considerable say about the movie's making.
"Like Frank Herbert, George was trying hard to say “See? Feudalism sucks!”
That's an astute social observation.
But a good story needs a hero, somebody to root for.
When GRRM finally finishes "Winds of Winter" and "Dream of Spring"? they will suck as badly as the last two seasons of GoT and for the same reason - no hero or good guy.
There is one good guy, Sam Tarley - be he's no hero.
The most fascinating character IMHO is Tywin Lannister played by the epic Charles Dance. I would never want Tywin to ever be angry with me.
What makes me dangerous? Maybe you should ask Genocide Joe. He's the one with all the scary stories about MAGA, HAMAS and other such "threats to democracy".
Sigh, I know that wasn't really precise but I was trying to avoid verbiage while getting across that burden of proof is at least related to the difference between a right and privilege.
"You're arguing as if the point of abortion is to kill the fetus. In many cases, the point is to preserve the life or health of the mother."
This argument runs something like this: "my intent is to save the mother's life and any negative outcome for the fetus is an unintended side-effect."
But you're opening a whole can of worms in terms of messy, hard to apply law.
One of the reasons I like my "shifting from right to.prvilege" is that it makes intuitive sense that right would change as you recognize the fetus going from not alive to alive.
It also leads to a clearer conceptualization IMHO and more consistent and predictable outcomes. But that's getting into a subject called "jurisprudence" which is really a law nerd topic.
Re: David's secret ballot idea: interesting. I guess the logic is that the Supreme Court would be reluctant to intervene due to Congress being a co-equal branch of government.
The problem is it feels novel to me. Oh, public voting is INHERENT to our system of government so that constituents know what their elected officials are doing. Star Chamber, ECT. One could argue that the mere fact that u limit it to two months means you know it's illicit, otherwise why not make it permanent? If it's illicit over the long term, why allow it in the short term?
What I would like to see, has it been done before? Maybe at the state legislature level and under what circumstances? Just spit balling here, don't know a blasted thing about the constitutional basis for parliamentary procedure.
Maybe you should ask Genocide Joe.
Ok, Sergei.
So, Larry, you're celebrating the unconstitutional deprivation of the voting rights of elected RNC officials in what amounts to a massive voting fraud scheme just because you like the outcome?
Hmmm...read that too fast. Though Johnson was tricked, not that he screwed up.
That whole thing about the Reichstag fire was to get you to ask me how...and I'd get to have a whole lot of fun showing how a truly evil person could exploit the "For the People Act" the Dems were touting as the savior of democracy
John Viril:
Hmmm...read that too fast. Though Johnson was tricked, not that he screwed up.
I think I know what you were saying now--that I was misguided for being happy that Johnson passed the wrong bill. It would help, however if you at least partially quoted a line or two of what you are responding to. Sometimes, it is not at all obvious.
“It is what it is.”
Right again! In this case what ‘it’ (you sir) ‘is’ is an idiot. Doubling down doesn’t change that blatant fact a scintilla.
As for his other sentence… Jeez, not only does he not think things through. The buffoon doesn’t even know who he is talking to. Pfeh
Oh, my. I said all that before seeing the dope’s later entry. Gevalt. I thought he was an oction. But he’s a momzer.
----
MCS Ayn Rand’s F-head movie pretty did well at what it meant to do. What it meant to do was cartoony and sick… but I found that it hit chords that were at least (volcanically self-righteously) consistent from beginning to end.
“When GRRM finally finishes "Winds of Winter" and "Dream of Spring"? they will suck as badly as the last two seasons of GoT and for the same reason - no hero or good guy.”
I hope he’ll finally make his point explicit and let the Brothers and Sisters Without Banners crush every king and lord. We need reminders that feudalism sucked and that those pushing it down our throats – Putin/Saudis & Murdochs – are enemies of the future.
JV: If the public does not like the fact that their reps turn to secret ballots for one month, in order to get things done, the constituents can vote them out. In fact, given that GOP gerrymandering has made most repub reps terrified of local radicals means that’d likely happen.
“Ok, Sergei.”
Please, I have a 4th cousin named Sergei. Call Kremlin basement/commie shills “Ivan.”
JV. watch for the 2024 version of Reichstag fire... when the oligarch get rid of their former asset - now liability - Howard Beale (Network) style, in such a way as to blame it on libs. God bless the United States Secret Service.
Dr Brin:
I have a 4th cousin named Sergei.
"Sergei" is what Stonekettle calls them.
Jeez, you don't like "Karen" either. There's no pleasing some people.
(I kid because I love)
Kimmel tried for a while to change "Karen" to "kraken." A worthy effort.
JV
The issue is simpler than that - a person has control of their own body - you cannot be told to donate your kidney or spare lung
Even a corpse cannot have its organs taken without prior consent
Even if the Fetus was a person it would NOT have the right to use another persons organs
Lets look at this another way - pregnancy is risky - about the same level of risk as base jumping
We do not have the right to slap a parachute on your back and throw you off a building
We do not have the right to MAKE you do a risky act - if you go into a burning building to save somebody that is an act of heroism
Pushing somebody else into that building to save another person is terrorism
So
(1) We have no right to tell another person to share their organs
(2) We have no right to make another person take significant risks with their own life and health for another person
We do have a CHOICE - we (the woman) can DECIDE to do these things - but NOBODY else has any input at all into that CHOICE
Pro-Choice is the ONLY ethical decision
And calling a clump of cells a "Person" makes no difference to that
Abortion after the fetus is viable
I would argue that if the "giving birth" option is MORE RISKY than aborting then the woman still has the right to make that decision - although nobody would
Same argument - I cannot tell you to do a risky thing in order to save somebody else
Late stage abortion does involve another person - the Doctor - so his/her choice about assisting the woman then also comes into play
Just checking here, but can anyone in this choice/forced birth discussion get pregnant? I'm willing to listen to THEM...I suspect the surreptitious impregnation of a lot of men might not result in many overt changes of mind on the forced-birth* side, but it would probably result in many, many 'trips abroad'.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Re: GOT: Sam Tarly is a hero, by the only definition that matters - being willing to die for his friends and loved ones. IMHO Heinlein was pretty accurate when he wrote that 9 out of 10 men are Medal of Honor material**, if tested to destruction in the right way.
*I obviously have an opinion here, but hearing people who will never have to even consider making the choice arguing to remove it from others bothers me
**most MOH actions have been near-suicidal since the widespread deployment of the machine gun
Dr. Brin:
"Feudalism sucks!"
In the opinion of this history BA and SCA member...
You are exactly right. Only a fool, or a desperate man, would willingly give up their freedom and political rights in exchange for some lord's promised protection.
Avram Davidson wrote that in some times (O tempora! O mores!) a man may feel the need to cling to something, even if it be another man's knees*. I fear we are in such times, and going deeper.
Pappenheimer
* from "Peregrine: Primus"
If one were to ask Biden after showing your comments to him, he’d reply that you are basically a harmless nut.
Noted.
Sigh. Great freaking movie, sad times when you can see multiple ways we could have "Reichstag Fires" projected from current conditions.
Re abortion:
On the one hand, the embryo is human, and has a right to life. On the other hand, the woman is a citizen, and has the right to her most private property. When rights conflict, it's logical and politick to compromise. Oh, if only there were a policy enacting such a compromise. Perhaps dividing the pregnancy by trimesters?
Wait a minute... that compromise policy already exists! It's called Roe v. Wade. I propose re-instating it, as the most 'conservative' thing to do, in the non-Orwellian sense of the word 'conservative'.
In a related development: there also already exists a politick compromise between the individual's right to bear arms, and the public's need for a well-regulated militia. It's called the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, the amendment is written in disjointed fragments, and Scalia's judicial activism in "Heller vs DC" cancelled the 'well-regulated militia' clause. Since then we have labored under a half-repealed Second Amendment, to the gain only of lunatics, seditionists, gun-runners, and organized crime. I propose legislation writing the amendment as a single clause, thus:
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated State militia shall not be infringed."
This unified phrasing explicitly balances rights and responsibilities. I propose it as a 'conservative' measure, again in the non-Orwellian sense of the word 'conservative'.
Dr. Brin, I do recall u characterizing me as being pro oligarch, and I could see why you came to that conclusion, but I do want to say that "labor glut" analysis was to assert that I think there more structural forces pushing us toward a gilded age than most recognize.
I think it matters bc I think it needs to be fixed. If we don't well, we're looking at a big collapse.
In short, too much elite power means elites can pretty much obliterate democratic structures and end up ignoring everyone else. This ultimately leads to collapse, bc a stable democracy rests on the ability to identify unhappy groups and mollify them bf things get so bad that they revolt.
Winning an election is both more cost efficient than launching a revolution, it is also less risky for the leaders. Say you can get 60% of what you wants vs the 100% that you might obtain through a revolt, however the financing cost is --God -- a 1,000x less and there's no risk of death for the leaders.
That stability is important, bc nothing is so wasteful as squandering accumulated wealth than by breaking shit fighting a civil war for control.
Unknown wrote:
Just checking here, but can anyone in this choice/forced birth discussion get pregnant? I'm willing to listen to THEM
I generally don't wade into these conversations much, but as someone who can technically get pregnant (although at my age it's not super likely, just possible enough that I don't feel safe giving up birth control yet), I think my concerns are being represented fairly well by the "nobody has the right to control someone else's body for their own needs" argument.
When the day comes that we have artificial womb technology, then we will have a different conversation, but currently as long as the woman who is pregnant is literally the only one who can keep the fetus alive, I consider it slavery to force them to do so.
"Forced birth legislation" appears to me as the price exacted from the (Formerly) GOP* for continuing "Fundagelical" support, they appear to be impatient for divine judgement and wish to see sinners punished NOW**. I expect further demands to be issued in the future (Note that, IMO, blending religion and politics soils both, but the enthusiasts of the blending don't see it as "Soil"). The chilling bit, to me, is their freedom to worship is not currently in peril, they wish to threaten the liberty of everyone outside their congregations, demonstrating that they haven't learned from history.
*"GOPedo"?
**See Iain M. Banks "Surface Detail".
...I consider it slavery to force them to do so.
yup.
There ya have it.
I'd add that it is useful to remember what newly minted slaves will do to get free again. Breaking shit is just the start of it.
It's refreshing to read an honest take on proxy activism, as described by our host, wherein you (as the modern citizen) simply fund & empower various groups that reflect your personal agenda in order to allow your proxies to save the world (or do other good things) in your stead, for you, without the investment of any pesky personal thought, effort, fuss or even a modicum of attention on your part.
Indeed, most would find this approach to be 'uniquely convenient' because it eliminates the messier & more laborious aspects that one would normally associate with either representative democracy or a well-lived life, such as one's personal, civic, economic & social responsibilities to the body politic, and replaces them with the expert & professional ministrations of an unelected 'appointed' mercenary class that are not accountable (nor answerable) to democratic principles.
It was much harder to live in a classic democracy when the average citizen was expected & required to contribute and 'wear many hats'. On a moment's notice, the citizen had to act as leader, follower, judge, jury, researcher, producer, farmer, herder, tradesman, soldier, peace officer & executioner because that is simply how a citizen lived, as each citizen was the entire community in microcosm.
Under our modern proxy system, however, the modern citizen has become a mere resource. He has become passive, inactive, unfree & non-autonomous. He exists & controls nothing; he just sits on his increasingly fat duff; and he tries to convince himself that his proxy-based hirelings will act in his (rather than their own) best interests.
This type of proxy-based activism leads to certain social death:
It led to the Fall of Rome, as its once great citizenry became inactive, indolent & reliant on proxies. They outsourced their industries to their colonies; they relied on the proxy labour to grow their own food; they hired non-citizen mercenaries to fight all their battles and defend their interests; and they even become reliant on immigration (aka 'proxy reproduction') when they stopped having their own children.
They adopted this 'Proxy Power' lifestyle and they died off, after becoming too lazy, stupid & fearful to live their own lives, and they were just like us.
They were just like us.
Best
_____
At best, the term 'Proxy Power' is an oxymoron, as the term 'proxy' refers to your inaction while someone else acts in your stead, which means that you have rendered yourself weak & servile by yielding your power & authority to someone else (the literal meaning of the 'power by proxy' idiom). See also 'cuck'.
@Cari_B: With your "nobody has the right to control someone else's body for their own needs" argument, you're on shaky ethical ground as your prochoice stance assumes that you have the right to control & compel someone else's consent for your own bodily needs, and that's a circular argument.
It led to the Fall of Rome, as its once great citizenry became inactive, indolent & reliant on proxies.
No.
The main reasons for the decline of the Western Roman Empire were military overfunding, corruption, the devaluation of the currency, excessive taxation, state-imposed price caps, lack of a generally accepted rule of succession, the partition of the realm itself and constant coups and infighting. Also, plumbing with lead and the rise of Christianity are discussed.
Also, inactive and indolent populations are exactly what dictators want...until they need them for Military actions, of course.
In reality, after Odoaker conquered Rome, the city and it's population actually experienced a last surge of restauration until Justinian , Belisarius and the Plague came to end Ancient Rome for good.
The other half of the Roman Empire managed to survive for over thousand years, though it paled in comparison and suffered from the same problems than the Western Empire.
One factor I forgot to mention: the wars at the eastern borders: Parthians and Sassanids (which ended in stalemates), then Arabs and Ottomans. Which showed some of the same weaknesses of those they conquered.
What did those Empires have in common?
Maybe IT was that some simple men rallied around a new, "sexy" idea which allowed charismatic leaders to Push them to build an Empire....until those leaders squabbled among themselves, and ultimately, betrayed them, weakened the very foundation on which the weight of empires resides.
The Fall of Rome is not a tale about "woke" decadence and the dangers of mass migrations, it is one of paranoid, delusional emperors, the inabililty to share and transfer power responsibly, and the dangers of cleptocracy, corruption and nepotism as a style of government.
I presume that includes the efforts of "the blessed of Mammon" to isolate theirselves from the vagaries of the market, that distorts the market for everyone else.
Right again! In this case what ‘it’ (you sir) ‘is’ is an idiot. Doubling down doesn’t change that blatant fact a scintilla.
No. Against the case of the lower case "j" (FJDE-MAGA-j) when all else was upper case. Bigotry lies in the small slights. And you, "sir", are an anti-Semite.
But actually reading arguments against you bias' are obviously not your forte, as you took no objection to my criticism of your throwing money at problems as a preferred approach. "Trust me, I'll solve your problems, just give me money!" "Problems STILL not solved, why there wasn't enough money." "What, I spend most of the money on administrative costs, then I'll need even more money."
Now there's some autopoiesis for you, guaranteed to never achieve a problem's desired resolution.
In other words, a tax on other people's stupidity. The consumerist equivalent of all such cultural capitalism.
btw - Sell many books today?
@FJwhatever...
You have no idea what you're talking about. Dr Brin typically makes more typos in a post than you have letters in your pseudonym. Of all things, that is where you choose to take offense? His finger slipped off the SHIFT key at the end?
I presume you don't even know...but then it probably wouldn't matter anyway.
Pappenheimer:
Just checking here, but can anyone in this choice/forced birth discussion get pregnant? I'm willing to listen to THEM
Well, I can't get pregnant, but as someone who can impregnate a woman, I'm willing to argue that if a zygote is a person, then rape should be treated as child-endangerment and carry appropriate penalties. Rape that results in miscarriage or abortion should be likewise treated as manslaughter and accessory to murder, respectively.
Until then, the fundies are not really about fetal personhood. They're about "right to rape" laws.
@Larry - That would be the charitable interpretation. But was I shown any caritas?
@FJetc.
Since you do seem to be interested in serious conversation...
I once got life-changing advice from a Canadian comics writer named Dave Sim. Essentially, when you walk into a new situation with an established group of people, it's best to listen and get the sense of the place and how one fits in before mouthing off or insisting that the group conform to your peculiarities.
Part of that involves a presumption of the charitable interpretation when multiple interpretations are plausible (until demonstrated otherwise). Instead, you showed up suddenly, flinging a pseudonym designed to challenge, and immediately threw around charges of anti-Semitism at the most trivial of perceived microaggressions. I may have been mistaken, but it came off as "troll", or at the very least "sealion". It's not like we haven't had to deal with those before.
Your entire appearance here seems to be intended to spark a squabble, so why complain when one materializes? And if I'm wrong about that? If you're interested in serious conversation? Maybe try losing the chip on the shoulder.
Sorry, I thought that this blog was entitled "Contrary Brin", not "Love for Brin". And I came to learn what the "literati" were thinking. Apparently they're as stuck in the present and with the same "common" opinions as the average newspaper reader. I had hoped David could be different.
@FJ
So you're entitled to "caritas", but the host and other guests are fair game for gratuitous insults?
Sealion, then. I'm done playing.
Ah -FJ the idiocy is coupled with hypocrisy. He comes in here deliberately braying jibbering nonsense .... AND accusing ME of anti-semitism... then the snowflake yowls "I was being contrarian... and YOU contrarian'd ME! How dare you!"
Dig it fellah, we are an argumentative bunch here, as advertised. You can see it's true and that we manage it with thick skinned courtesy (mostly). But mostly the folks here try to PARAPHRASE what their opponents said in order to BRACKET what the other one was actually... actually... saying in order to argue with that.
Your 'contributions' here bore no relationship to anything I ... or anyone else here... said. It was just nasty shit and it deserved to be treated AS nasty shit, A community of adults deems you to be... at-best ... an ill-raised, cranky child.
I ask yoiu please to go away, spread your sputum where it is welcome. Howl about us and about me. Ankle biting gnat.
JV I will take you at your word that you oppose the current trends toward revived feudalism. And yes, a calm, reformist-moderate ‘revolution’ is a safer bet than an angry-violent one. Which is why today’s world oligarchic putsch is by truly stoopid would-be lords who cannot extrapolate where this all leads.
Like waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. Trying to ‘put in their place’ all the impudent nerds who keep saying “Sir, that’s just not true.” The fact-users who know cyber, bio, nano, nuclear and all the rest, counting on them to cringe like they did before bullies, on the middle school playground.
Riiiight.
Hey I go through the phases of this recurring US Civil War http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/09/phases-of-american-civil-war.html
The violent phases – though necessary – were terrible… and very risky.
Ah, locum’s back. Back home again? Filter your water!
“…without the investment of any pesky personal thought, effort, fuss or even a modicum of attention on your part.”
Ah speaking for yourself, then! Yes, that is what YOU would do, except without the ‘donating’ stuff. Diametrically opposite to what I said, of course. But that’s typical.
In fact, of course, those who join NGOs tend to become MORE active. Those who donate $ to Habitat for Humanity often then go to a build event with hammer & nails. You KNOW that’s the case. Yet, you wrote that crap. Why? For a cheap/dumb snark. Yawn.
Wait, that drive-by twit just doubled down calling ME an “wnti-semite”? I changed my mind. This is amusing. Wait while I get popcorn. Go on, please…
Dr. Brin
Speaking of hammer and nails, here's how steel and wood are fastened using a Hilti gun http://theviews.org/Construction/2019/december-5-2019-the-framing-continues.html
@Dr Brin,
See, he never called you a "wnti-semite" [sic], which proves my point. Typos are your stock in trade. Anyone who has been here any length of time knows to just let it ride.
OTOH, if you asked me (which I know, no one did) I'd sense a whiff of anti-Semitism in attributing to you the comment, "Trust me, I'll solve your problems, just give me money!" moreso than I would from lowercasing a letter in a long, confusing nym.
Tim H: they appear to be impatient for divine judgement and wish to see sinners punished
Remember, if you don't sin, Jesus died for nothing.
- Ricky Gervais
Hey a capital E that's toppled on it's back fron stuopr is a "w".
Enti-semite? Is that a Jewish Treebeard?
scidata, That's a good one, but remember to use from a safe distance ;) .
I'm gone then. Enjoy your echo chamber!
I will see you hang'd like clatpoles ere I come any more to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.
Brin 7:07 pm:
What is an "oction"?
What? Another simp for the Very Stable Clairvoyant 215lb Genius?
True this...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/opinion/sandy-senn-south-carolina-abortion-bans.html
To me, we now need to also take a look at the Equal Rights Amendment. Women really do not have equal rights now, because what the court has given, the court can take away. We always knew that, and now we definitely know it.
Don Gisselbeck:
the Very Stable Clairvoyant 215lb Genius?
Maybe 215 kg?
Cari, depends on the bounds of the discussion. (I am presuming you're female given your point and your name. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
When women huff and say u men have NOTHING to say, they aren't exactly playing fair in many cases.
Yes, there are subjective experiences that men can't grasp bc they've never "been there."
But, when the points of contention are things like "when does life begin?" or "what is consciousness?" pulling that "you're a man, you can't understand" argument is pure sexism. Because there is nothing about possessing XX chromosomes that gives you a natural.monopoly over such abstract, and difficult to define concepts like that.
I can certainly see why u insist that men need to listen, bc it is women that bear the outcome more than any guy. But it still leaves room for men to participate in the conversation within certain parameters.
"oction' = Yiddish for pain-in-the-ass. And I bet I know plenty more than that pretentious zero.
Echo chamber... riiiiight. Dribble dribble dribble dribble drool wheeeee
....to which I respond that... that... zzzzzzzzz
Oh!!!! We're going to talk about the Fall of the Roman Empire....paging Mr. Toynbee.
Well, I like to throw out MY favorite take on this subject that I RARELY ever see discussed. Basically bc it comes from German scholar Hans Delbruk's 1920 four-volume treatise on warfare.
In short, Delbruk contends that Roman legions lost their military effectiveness due to a cascade of effects that started with the crash of the Roman money economy.
Delbruk's analysis goes something like this: Rome started buying up stuff from neighboring empires, which caused it to export a lot of coin. It tried to compensate by debasing it's coin, but it eventually led to a problem of not having enough physical currency to support the trade that maintained the Roman economy.
This meant the empire had trouble paying its troops, which is a REALLY bad idea bc armies are trained to break things and kill people.
Since the Empire couldn't pay them in coin, it started to pay them in kind in land. That's great, but now your soldiers needed to farm that land to get any benefit from it.
This meant your soldiers are scattered all over the heck begone bc you've turned them into full time farmers who can only get together to train on a "weekend warrior" basis.
That completely fucked the Roman legion bc Roman legionnaire tactics required a shitload of coordination and training to execute. I mean, its not damn easy to get thousands of guys armed with spears and swords to execute elaborate battlefield maneuvers while other guys are trying to kill them.
That meant the Roman army went from professional badasses to a feudal mob. Suddenly, they couldn't execute the formations that won them an empire.
Roman armies started to adopt the tactics of the Germanic tribes that opposed them, due to the inability to train together. Eventually, Roman Emperors started hiring Germanic mercenaries, dressing them in Roman uniforms, and sending them out to fight other Germanic tribes that wanted to take Roman stuff. Eventually, the mercenaries figured out they'd make more money by just taking the Roman stuff themselves instead of fighting in return for farmland on the Roman border.
Then came the collapse due to barbarian invasions, which took centuries to play out.
Regarding abortion, I just don't know. I don't like telling other people what they can or cannot do.
I don't know when life begins. As for the argument that the fetus is an unwanted tenant residing in a woman's body, it makes a good point. When a pregnancy is at 3 weeks that issue does not seem to hard. But when an abortion is after 20 weeks, it is a lot harder.
My dad was an OB/GYN and practiced medicine from 1931 until 1979. He performed a small number of abortions. Even when abortions were illegal, the law still allowed them in certain situations. His last abortion (sometime in the late 1950s) involved a late term fetus and it started moving in his hands as he was removing it. He was traumatized by this experience, hence his decision to never perform another one. Lucky for him he retired in 1979. Pity the poor doctor who has a similar traumatizing experience now in one of the jurisdictions where all obstetricians are mandated to perform abortions or else lose their licenses to practice medicine.
Too many people talking about this issue start exaggerating the opposition arguments in order to avoid the hard issues. I was at lunch with some former co-workers and one of them went off describing how crazy anti-abortion people are. I value friendship more than political issues so I didn't engage. Why talk about abortion when we can talk about something fun like tax policy! And yes, for me, talking about tax policy is fun.
I've worked with anti-abortion activists and I understand their arguments. I've worked with pro-choice activists and I understand their arguments. I don't dehumanize any of them. I don't create strawman arguments to discredit any of them.
JV your etiology of Rome was off in some ways. Roman soldiers WERE paid in land... but only after they retired from service. That did mean that once the empire stopped expanding, there weren't new lands to seize and redistribute.
Also -
When Pompei conquered Spain and the Caesar did Gaul, a flood of slaves gave rich Romans huge advantages over regular farmers who had backboned the Army. The reforms of the Brothers Gracchi were about this but they did little to stop it for long.
- The Senate only taxed 1/3 of the empire. The rest belonged to the Emperor himself. An insane situation.
- yes technologies changed... and much else. Frankly it's amazint it all lasted as long as it did! Biggest factor: the Mediterranean gve Rome internal lines of wealth and communication unmatched by any other pre gunpowder empire.
But... seriously? ROME? Did you see this SNL schtick? SO much fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2nWlXlcO5I
Regarding Rome, I enjoyed Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome cycle. The first three books were very entertaining. I loved her take on Lucius Cornelius Sulla. He was selfish, narcissistic, and cruel...but he was also highly competent. She also had Gaius Marius, the protagonist of the first novel, suffer a series of strokes and become a cruel villain. And Gnaeus Pompeius is a hoot...bash and immature, but a competent warrior.
But after Caesar became an adult the books became boring...McCullough had a major crush on Caesar and she turned him into a one-dimensional character who could do no wrong.
McCullough loaded the books with references and lengthy appendices and glossaries. At one point, she changes the timing of two events arguing that the historic order of timing made no sense. Hey, it was fiction. It was fun. And after her detailed descriptions of the workings of the government in the late Republic, I could never really enjoy other Rome epics like GLADIATOR. When the film has Derek Jacobi as a senator and talks about bringing back democracy by restoring the Senate...uh...the Senate was not a democratic body.
"The issue is simpler than that - a person has control of their own body - you cannot be told to donate your kidney or spare lung"
Well, we're not going to agree. I say NO ONE HAS UNLIMITED CONTROL OF THEIR BODY. And I've got 1,057 years of common law to back me up.
And if we were to go into pre-history, back to when Ugaaaagh was fighting with Arrrussh over who ran the savannah, the first tribal legal codes etched into giraffe hides restricted what people could do with their bodies.
(I suspect, thou shalt not mess with my gf was probably on the first hide. And yeah, I suspect it was a patriarchy).
Sorry, Roe is poorly reasoned law built on obvious logical fallacies.
Roe's "fatal flaw" if you will was trying to dodge the "when life begins" question and deciding on "privacy rights." And no, my objection isn't that privacy rights are a legal construct.
The problem is, the first take of the Roe court was the correct analysis. The question must turn on "when life begins." Any other standard just ends up becoming a backdoor answer to that question.
Abortion cannot turn on "Control of my body" bc that standard doesn't balance between the interests of a living fetus and mother. Good abortion jurisprudence must be able to handle this question bc at some point you are going to run into a fetus that is unquestionably alive and a mother that wants an abortion.
The "control" argument only answers the question if you assume the mother's bodily control somehow confers the right to destroy another person's body.
"I control.my body therefore I can dismember you" might as well be the motto for fascism.
"Your entire appearance here seems to be intended to spark a squabble,"
Well, Larry, I know this wasn't aimed at me, but I rather like sparking a squabble. But, i'd like to think I've got a point to make when I do it. And I gather FJ isn't saying anything interesting.
JV
Do you still have both lungs and kidneys??
MURDERER
By your logic you have killed people
If you do NOT have control of YOUR body you are a SLAVE - simple as that
I'm a man but I would fight to keep slavers from controlling women's bodies
The Roman Senate was not democratic, sure. But the plebian tribal assemblies were, after a fashion and for a long time they had real power, electing the Tribunes and passing laws.
My basic positions on abortion combine pragmatism and theology. God made a murky, vexing world filled with quandaries to resolve but only partly, or even never. Attempting to draw firm lines is both crazy and ... heretical! Anyway He (She?) aborts more conceptions than humans ever could.
What I do envision is the world with more love and less crazed resentment and poverty (and dropping xrime rates) that resulted from women getting to choose WHEN in their life to carry a child into the existence. Also how purely evil it is to force a woman to carry an undead thing without a brain for an additional 3 -5 months after anencephaly is diagnosed and proved on ultrasound. Almost all legal late-term abortions deal with horrible tragedies like that. Otherwise, the law already tells the bearer of a viable later term fetus "You made your choice; now there's another human whose interest in a long life outweighs your changing your mind for convenience across a couple of months."
I can well see some zealot using that paragraph against me, some time. Alas, Since we share a common foe of oppressive monsters.
Re: Rome
The sadly truncated adventures of Peregrine, Officially Banished Bastard Son of King Palindrome of Sapodilla (an obscure Roman tributary kingdom in Lower Europe), may provide some insight into the later, somewhat Christianized, Roman Empire. Or it may not, but the author (Avram Davidson) sneaks a lot of detail into his fun - including two scholars trying to decipher an ancient Latin inscription on a sacred rock, deciding that it warns against letting oxen poop near it for fear of bad luck to Rome...which rock can be found in Rome, and actually appears in Mary Beard's popular history.
With regards to "Why Rome Fell," I always remember an author pointing out that Rome fell longer than most states have existed. Beginning and ending Rome have very little to do with each other, except the name.
Comparing the early (Roman) Republican infantry legion recruiting and pay systems to the late Byzantine Theme system, designed to provide professional cavalry with supporting, defensive militia, is pointless. I'd have to reread Delbruck to remind myself of his POV, but he's probably a bit out of date.
Pappenheimer
"Wait, that drive-by twit just doubled down calling ME an “wnti-semite”?"
Well, I have, upon occasion, been called a "white supremacist."
I'm sure this must seem shocking to u, but I have been identified as a RWer, and bc I look entirely white, well...
Always amusing when this happens to me.
I agree with just about everything you wrote, David. And a mother with a fetus suffering from anencephaly should not be forced to carry that fetus to term. But...I think about my sister and the birth of her second son in 1996. She was over age 40 and spent the last month of the pregnancy in a hospital bed because it was a high risk pregnancy.
The delivery was scheduled for the Monday of Thanksgiving week. Gosh...it was 27 years ago! She called me that Wednesday to check up on me (I was in bed suffering from chicken pox...at age 37; no fun) and I asked about how the delivery went and she started crying. There were complications during the delivery and the child probably suffered brain damage. Worse, the child had a congenital birth defect causing significant damage to his heart; he was not expected to survive the week. The doctors were advising her to have life support disconnected. She and her husband decided to wait and see. The child, named Kip, survived the week, much to everyone's surprise. Long story short, he thrived. He still has cardiac problems and will probably need a heart transplant someday, but he is a fully functioning, independent human being still trying to sort out his first job in his first apartment outside of school.
If the ultrasound had picked up Kip's heart defect, the doctors would have told my sister that it was unlikely that he would have survived. Would she have spent that month in a hospital bed? Would she have aborted him? Don't know. And I will never ask her. Don't come down harshly on me. There is a world of difference between Kip and a fetus with no brain (or other horrific deformities for which there is no chance of survival outside of the womb). I absolutely do not want a situation where abortions are absolutely forbidden. I wish I could ask my dad about when abortions were allowed during his medical career: 1931 to 1979. As I wrote above, he performed legal abortions during the time when they were generally a crime. The law allowed exceptions. It still does. I think that the Supreme Court would rule that a woman has an absolute right to terminate a pregnancy in a range of life threatening (or health threatening) situations. I am going to guess that this would be under the Due Process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
John Viril:
"Your entire appearance here seems to be intended to spark a squabble,"
Well, Larry, I know this wasn't aimed at me, but I rather like sparking a squabble.
Exactly, but when you do, you don't whine that a squabble has broken out.
You (though not only you) are proof that this is hardly an echo chamber. Someone who calls himself "MAGA" and complains about an echo chamber is...ironic?
GMT
But after Caesar became an adult the books became boring...McCullough had a major crush on Caesar and she turned him into a one-dimensional character who could do no wrong.
You might enjoy Robert Harris's trilogy of historical fiction about the career of Cicero. Imperium, Conspirata, and Dictator.
Amazon has this to say:
The Cicero Trilogy charts the career of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero from his mid-twenties as an ambitious young lawyer to his dramatic death more than thirty years later, pursued by an assassination squad on a cliff-top path.The extraordinary life that unfolds between these two episodes is recounted by Cicero's private secretary, the law cases and the speeches that made his master's name; the elections and conspiracies he fought; the rivals who contended for power around him - Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Clodius, Catalina, and, most menacingly, Caesar; and, at the heart of it all, the complex personality of Cicero himself - brilliant, cunning, duplicitous, anxious, brave, and always intensely humane.
John Viril:
Good abortion jurisprudence must be able to handle this question bc at some point you are going to run into a fetus that is unquestionably alive and a mother that wants an abortion.
Maybe Republicans would be more sympathetic to abortion if they thought of the unborn as illegal aliens. They're not US citizens, after all. Neither born in the United States nor naturalized.
"you cannot be told to donate your kidney or spare lung
Even a corpse cannot have its organs taken without prior consent"
Hmmm...I think you're wrong about this, but I'm not sure.
See...the most common application is say a DUI, where a court will order a citizen to surrender a blood sample. This is done on a simple balancing test of freedom from search and seizure vs. the states police power and it turns on probable cause. So, see, at least possessing blood isnt an absolute right.
As for organs...don't know of a case FOR SURE about surrendering an organ. However, I can think of a hypothetical that would likely draw such an order.
Suppose Kanye West runs into a room, punches Taylor Swift in the midriff causing a blood vessel to separate from her liver and cause severe damage to the organ.
Since, he caused the harm and has an implied duty for restitution, the I think the court could order him to surrender a piece of his liver to transplant to Taylor, presuming he were a tissue match.
I'm sure Travis Kelce and many millions of Swifies would support such an outcome.
Part of the reasoning is he would only need to give up a small part of his liver (a liver will regrow from a 10% sample, I think). Add the limited impact plus the obligation to fix the harm he caused would seem a sound balancing. The underlying point is that it would be a balancing test, which suggest your absolute bodily integrity assumption isn't sound.
The REAL law school hypo would be if Kanye shot TS and she will die unless she receives a heart transplant.
One could argue that since Kanye is now subject to a capital murder conviction, and we'll presume he's in a state that allows execution, the court could order him to give up his heart to save Taylor's life (presuming he's a tissue match).
Of course, the hypo is absurd bc it would never play out that way in real life. For one, Kanye's lawyer would file an injunction to stay execution of the sentence to appeal the decision on multiple grounds (such as proscription vs cruel and unjust punishment in the construction.)
By the time the court sorted through all that, Taylor would b dead or have gotten another heart.
The point is, my intuition says it's damn well going to be a balancing test so your logic chain fails on the first link I don't KNOW that I court would handle this way, but I'd be going into oral arguments with a lot of confidence in my theory.
One of the problems with Roe v. Wade is that it short circuited the growing political movement to legalize abortion and created a backlash. There was almost no pro-life movement before Roe v. Wade; most Americans did not approve of the Catholic approach to abortion.
IIRC, Roe involved a state law that only allowed abortions in cases of rape or where the mother's life was in danger. The theory behind Roe was one that had first been discussed in academia starting in the mid to late 60s...that the courts could expand the "right of privacy" found in Griswold v. Connecticut to apply to abortion. And the result? The judicial nomination process became hyper-partisan. Maybe that would have happened anyways. Maybe not.
I would love to spend more time on this, but it is after 8:30 pm and I need to finish work so I can spend some time with my wife.
Then you will enlighten we the benighted. For it is your destiny, and nothing shall deter you.
You have been anointed to lead us out of darkness.
Hmmm....it wasn't really my breakdown. Hans Delbruk was a really impressive example of German scholarship, and I have a hard time imagining he got it wrong...save for the fact the last edition of his magnum opus was issued in 1920.
I'm pretty damn sure there was a late empire period where Rome was ceding border territory to German tribes, giving them Roman citizenship, and expecting them to hold off other German tribes.
Remember, the rules of Roman military service changed over time. I do know there was a period where provincials were expected to serve 20 years and we're not allowed to marry until retirement and got paid off in land. However, Delbruk went on and on about the shift in Roman military tactics away from the Marian legion with centuries, to formations that fought like the barbarian tribes. Delbruk attributed this to the inability to train together. The formation differences were clear in the original sources , bc the Marian legion tactics were much more effective if you could execute them. He said the sources started talking about "wedges" instead of "squares" and this happened bc the center would charge and the flanks would lag. Delbruk insisted there was no benefit to "wedges" bc you wanted a front as broad as possible. Ancient military formations were super vulnerable on the flanks. He insisted this was a mark of devolution and lack of discipline and only happened due to lack of training.
He also wrote about legions stationed on frontiers such as Hadrian's Wall in England. The had interspersed fortresses and they would live surrounded by women and their children despite not supposed to be officially married until retirement. And since logistic supply was unreliable with currency limits, they'd drown food. He viewed this as a sort of proto-fuedalism.
Honestly, I don't pretend to know enough military history to dispute him. I've heard people say he's really more essential than von clausewitz, but that he's not nearly as well known in the English speaking world bc his treatise didn't get an English language translation until 1975.
I read him as a kid, because for one thing the English translation is super fucking readable....and I was a really weird child.
GMT a moving tale. Best wishes for family health.
Believe it or not, this is serious: always leave open the possibility that someone may possess special powers. If you do, return here to write that you do—if not, say so.
Thanks Larry. I have a hold on IMPERIUM at my library
GMT -5 8032
There was almost no pro-life movement before Roe v. Wade;
I was too young for politics before Roe, but from what I've read, the religious right took up the abortion issue because their stand on segregation was losing support.
most Americans did not approve of the Catholic approach to abortion.
In 1973, there were no Catholics on the Supreme Court. Now, it's practically a prerequisite.
"Biggest factor: the Mediterranean gve Rome internal lines of wealth and communication unmatched by any other pre gunpowder empire."
Sigh, I wrote a fantasy novel I put on Amazon, that I usually don't talk about bc it sucks, but the whole point was to speculate about the conditions that would cause a city/state to invent a democracy
We don't really know exactly how the early Greek city states went about this. One of my ideas is that it really did need to be a city state on a sea bc I thought u would never get there without a strong middle class with a well developed economy (meaning many specialized interested that would conflict, but no economic group with enough power to subjucate all the others)
That's how you'd get a shared power situation with the different specialized interests wrangling for control.
It needed to be on a sea, bc trade would create the economic diversity that could lead to democracy. Dumbass me also tried to rewrite Sun tzu to fit my concepts about the behavioral underpinnings of warfare based on Sociobiological behavior theories. (Yeah, it was a dumb idea).
One of the interesting ideas I picked up from Hans Delbruk is that the political system affects how armies fight on the field down to the tactical level, which was a mind blowing idea when I was 14. His point was that that this was true bc the army couldnt function in such a way that it would subvert the political system.
He said this was why the Persians fought with nobles and could only field a small fraction of the populace, while the Greeks democratic city states could put a much larger percentage on the field without collapsing their system.
Thus, a city/state could punch above it's weight, which was why the Greeks could hold off the Persians during the Peloponnesian war despite a massive size and GDP disparity.
John Virgil- I didn't say a thing about men not having any right to contribute to the conversation about abortion rights. I was just responding to someone asking if someone who can get pregnant (yes I am a woman) had an opinion on the matter. I had actually thought it a bit odd to watch what seemed to be primarily men (which I realize is the vast majority of the poster base here) discussing something that is so much about the rights of women, so I had considered stepping into the conversation earlier, but I'm traveling right now and it seemed like other folks were making the points I would likely have made.
I don't think men can't contribute to the conversation, just as I don't think non-parents shouldn't have a right to vote for school board candidates. But I do think men should be highly aware that their experience in this isn't the same and they may not be considering things in the same way.
Your hypothetical example where you propose a situation in which a court would order a forced organ donation seems to come more from your feeling of what you personally think would be fair, rather than an actual understanding of how the laws of the country actually work. Not only would a court never order such a thing, the rules of organ donation being voluntary are extremely strict. We don't even have opt-out permission to donate organs after death in this country- you must explicitly opt-in. In fact people in prisons who have sought to do live donations often have difficulty doing so due to legal policies, and in most places I don't believe death row prisoners can direct donations of their organs. There apparently was an attempt to allow prisoners lighter sentences in Massachussets in exchange for organ donation, but this failed due to a large amount of outcry- allowing donation is one thing, but putting incentives like freedom on it is quite another.
The reason the organ donation topic often comes up when discussing women's autonomy over their bodies is because it's probably one of the closest parallels we have legally, where the life of one party can be at stake based on the rights of another. The big difference is that only women's bodily autonomy is at stake in this particular topic, not men's.
I don't generally engage as much on topics of "where life begins" because that is generally a much mushier topic and people will never agree on it. It is also secondary in my opinion to the rights of the person whose body it is and who the fetus can't survive without. Once a baby is born, anyone can theoretically contribute to their survival, but as long as they are 100% dependent on the body of the pregnant woman for survival, her rights need to be weighed very heavily.
I will also note the vast majority of people who want to get an abortion will do it earlier. Slightly later abortions are generally due to people either not realizing they're pregnant (in my case if I did randomly get pregnant I might not realize for months due to how erratic cycles are at this point in my life), or due to logistical issues that make it difficult for people to get abortions earlier (which are often imposed intentionally to make it harder for people who don't have means to get them before the clock runs out legally).
Generally when an abortion is very late, it is due to medical issues involving either the mother or the baby that were not evident at an earlier point, and in my opinion those decisions should be up to the mother and the doctor and not some fuzzy legalese written by legislators.
Another note which is easily forgotten, is the side effects the fuzziness of legality of various medical interventions (for many anti-abortion states this is a feature) relating to pregnancy have had on general medical treatment for women of childbearing age. People with medical conditions that would normally be treated properly have had difficulty getting those treatments because of risk to fetus. People have been forced to carry babies that can't survive to term. Many states are losing medical professionals who are critically needed because they don't feel they can safely practice reproductive medicine. We already have issues with dominance of Catholic hospitals in this country which sometimes refuse to perform procedures such as tying women's tubes. Personally if I was pregnant I wouldn't go near a large number of states currently because I wouldn't trust I could get proper medical treatment.
Another bit that I rarely see mentioned, is many women who do get abortions because the time isn't right for a baby, often go on later to have other children when they are in a much better situation. When one is arguing about the rights of the fetus to be born, it's obviously harder to extrapolate to the future children that might never be born because someone was forced into motherhood before they were ready, but as long as we're talking about potential people it's worth keeping in mind.
Personally I'd like us to spend more effort making sure all children born have the support and resources needed to thrive, which would start with a stronger safety net and better support for child care in this country. If we did a better job of that (and had less people trying to push abstinence education instead of proper sex education), there'd be less people finding a need for abortion.
Well, Gladiator DID inspire me to question the Bread and Circuses interpretation for the Roman Area.
Toynbee portrays the Gladiatorial games as proof of decadence. Conventional wisdom suggests they were little more than a distraction.
That makes no sense to me. Roman emperors would spend hundreds of days in a row at the arena. They had to be managing the empire from their box in the arena. Plus, they frequently did this after the death of the prior emperor.
Stuffy Brit historians seemed to think it was bc they were decadent. Sounds like condescending bs to me.
Think aboutit, the Romans were whacking emperors pretty quickly for long periods of time. Are we supposed to believe a guy that battled his way to the top of the pyramid would suddenly get lazy and decadent and just wait for the next guy to slit his throat?
What if the opposite were true? That holding games helped the emperor run the empire? And not just as a distraction. What really made me think was that they used to say that the Clinton administration was government by focus group. Well, wouldn't the arena be about the closest thing the ancient world could offer a politico? It's not like the Romans could call up people on the phone to run a poll, but they could get a feel for the populace by gathering them in the arena.
So, if you didn't want to get stabbed in your bath maybe you'd float rumors about stuff you'd want to do in the hope you could figure out moves that would piss too many people off.
The Romans used to sit gathered by social class, so using the games as an opinion polling service might work.
Suddenly, the massive portion of their GDP emperors poured into the arena makes more sense than prolific decadence.
The state isn't forcing a woman to do anything. In the normal course of events, a pregnant woman will give birth without any action by the state.
Instead, the state is restricting a behavior. Saying the the state is forcing a woman to give birth is a flat out lie.
That's like saying the state is forcing you to breathe.
Ummm..the state restricts a lot of behavior. For example, you can't drink alcohol until you're 21, drive a car until you're 16, ingest cocaine, take a whole shitload of drugs unless you have a prescription, deny ice cream to Nancy Pelosi during the pandemic...
Let's see, drive a car without a license, sell a house without a real estate license, practice medicine without a license, tear the tags off your mattress, lie to a police officer, tell a federal judge to take a flying leap while court is in session.
In fact, you probably could spend a lifetime writing out in longhand all of the things the code of federal regulations says you can't do, and you'd die long before getting to all of the things municipalities prohibit.
"Persians fought with nobles and could only field a small fraction of the populace, while the Greeks democratic city states could put a much larger percentage on the field"
JV, you cannot be quoting Delbruck correctly, because this completely ignores logistics.
The Persians invested heavily in a road network and supply system allowing their army to mass at the front it was required to operate on - and the Persians had MANY fronts. The Greek city-states seldom fought battles more than a few days' march from home, so they had no supply system*. The Spartans in particular were known for running out of food during a campaign just out of eyesight from home, because they were ALL WARRIORS and apparently no quartermasters. It's not hard to summon a levee en masse if they can all go home for dinner, but tell the Spartans how far the Persian capitol is from the sea and they will blanch.
Pappenheimer
*Athens, of course, being a notable exception because of its investment in naval power and trade, which converted pretty well into a sea-based supply system. The Spartans managed a 'win' of the Peloponnesian War only by becoming, financially, a Persian satrapy
P.S. also, you didn't really need to invest in games to weigh public opinion. Just circulate note-takers in the public baths. They were everywhere, and everyone (free) socialized in them. You could, however, sway public opinion by generously supporting the games - imagine if the NFL and NHL were supported by the RNC and DNC
Cari:
Thanks for your comments!
Pappenheimer
"Not only would a court never order such a thing, the rules of organ donation being voluntary are extremely strict. We don't even have opt-out permission to donate organs after death in this country- you must explicitly opt-in."
I don't think organ donation rules would apply at all. If I recall, once deceased the body becomes chattel property, and I don't think that will at all apply to a living organ situation.
While I admit I don't have any research in this area, bc I'm just spit balling, I'd like to think it's a BIT more than what I think is fair.
Yeah my hypo is flippant. But my theory is built on the concept of restitution. While I'm more familiar with it in the area of contract law, i seem to recall it runs through a whole lot of criminal law jurisprudence.
The basic idea is that inflicting criminal harm would create a duty of restitution running between the perp and victim. Felons do lose some constitutional rights. Those dead organ donor and recipient cases would be different than my hypo bc they lack any duty linking them. Being uniquely able and available to repair the harm they caused would be a compelling argument. Ad in the fact we're in the area of injunctive relief, boy can things get weird.
Heck, I remember an injunctive relief case where the judge ordered a crack addict to get a norplant implant. It was overturned bc reproduction is a fundamental right, but it still happened.
Plus, I'm not sure how you come by your certainty, since I doubt that fact situation has ever been adjudicated. I mean, its pretty damn absurd. Given the sheer number of courts, and some of the nutty things that can happen at some of the lower levels, "you never know what a court will do," is a truism for a reason.
A happy Thanksgiving to my fellow USAans.
Possibly the best holiday on the calendar. Certainly one of the least politicized (notwithstanding conversations at table with members of the party opposite).
"rather than an actual understanding of how the laws of the country actually work."
Well, according to my Restitution Professor Peter Birks at St. Edmunds Hall (Oxford University), restitution is an ancient concept rooted in equity, going back to 16th century decisions of the English Chancery courts. We see early iterations in actions known as assumpsit and in "money had and received."
Frequently, these equitable theory cases came up in the areas of property, criminal, and contract law cases and had blurry descriptive terms like quasi-contract or constructive trusts. Further, though they typically involved money, they also have been applied to property (hence, one would think human organs would fall with in their ambit)
According to Professor Birks, this whole field of law was in crying need of some "common sense" cleanup from legal scholarship. He proposed removing all of these scattered concepts entirely from the realm of equity and moving it into the more familiar ground of tort law, and elucidated 4 concrete elements for his proposed new tort.
English courts began to apply Professor Birks' innovative theory as far back as the early 90s, however these concepts have not, as yet, "crossed the pond."
However, the foundational concepts are very much a part of American legal jurisprudence since US states frequently adopted the common law of England as binding precedent up to the date they joined the union. Thus, the subject of restitution has inspired multiple scholarly treatises in US legal literature, including such luminaries as Allan Farnsworth...
(Ok, u can laugh. My "off the cuff" pompous BS was funny)
JV
"...once deceased the body becomes chattel property..."
Don't know about that, but without proof of the decedent's intent, if even one member of the decedent's family objects, a US hospital won't take donated organs from a body. Ask me how I know. I imagine hospital legal would take one look at "take an organ from a living human WITHOUT their consent" and commit seppuku with a copy of the local state's malpractice law. I can't even imagine a judge intervening in this, either.
I imagine the Burke and Hare thing caused a legal tizzy in Edinburgh, so you might try looking at Scottish case law.
Pappenheimer
Being it is a holiday, will indulge in futile philosophical musing regarding ‘pro-life’; which there is a theological basis for. But such is the extent of it. Mr. Viril provides no new arguments above. (Tearing off tags reading ‘do not remove under penalty of law’ from mattresses is a flippant legalism, considering the topic.)
What has turned me against pro life is due to doubts concerning pro-life activists themselves. Doesn’t change the validity of their positions—however does indeed cause doubt to arise. Many are enthusiastically pro-capital punishment, and not merely deriving from belief that those who take life deserve to have their lives also taken. Pro-capital punishment advocates frequently not only advocate capital punishment as Just penalty and deterrence, but also for the purpose of relishing revenge. Plus it is not unknown for innocent convicts to be executed.
Revenge strongly appears to be a primary motivation for both pro-life and pro-capital punishment. Again, such does not negate the arguments. Yet the ability to convince are somewhat diminished.
the ability to convince IS thereby diminished.
Oh, I just neglected to mention that Delbruk said a huge factor was that the Persians were fighting at the end of what was a long supply line for that time period.
The thing that interested me was the ability of an ancient democracy to field a much larger percentage of its population than a state whose political system was built on a royal caste. Up until I read Delbruk as a kid, I always just assumed that armies fought they way they did bc their leaders thought their methods maximized fighting efficiency. Instead, how armies fight is bound by the constraint of working within the political system that created them.
The idea of using the baths to conduct an informal poll is a good one. I still like the arena, bc all your demographic groups are going to be right there.
I guess my point is that the arena had more benefits to Roman Emperors than chumping the masses. Seems to me the scholars who follow those stuffy Brits need to drop their condescending judgments.
Fun fact, we don't have to imagine that the government generously supports the NFL, NHL, MLB ect. See all those flag-waving military displays? The services pay BIG MONEY for teams to have them. Military recruiters are well aware that fans who cheer for the home team are a ripe ground for finding people willing to die for their country.
Heck, the US government has been tied up with professional sports since the civil war. Ever wonder how baseball became popular? When the Union gathered it's armies before the early civil war battles, the troops were stilling around bored out of their skulls. They started playing a game called base ball bc NYC men's clubs had created a definitive set of rules derived from regional bat and ball games that had come over from England played by immigrants.
The generals though base ball improved morale so they encouraged the troops to play. Union prisoners played the game in prison camps, which got the Confederates playing. Baseball was one of the few things that came out of the civil war that everyone liked.
In fact, there are historians that believe baseball helped unify the country after reconstruction.
Here is Fred Clark's Christian perspective on abortion. Elsewhere he points out that many evangelical Christians had little problem with abortion (life begins with breath) before teh ebul gummint began interfering with racism.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2020/09/02/i-am-a-christian-here-is-what-i-believe-about-abortion/
Well, he is an "extraordinary athlete".
"We already have issues with dominance of Catholic hospitals in this country which sometimes refuse to perform procedures such as tying women's tubes. Personally if I was pregnant I wouldn't go near a large number of states currently because I wouldn't trust I could get proper medical treatment."
A number of years ago, a nun who was the administrator of a catholic hospital in Arizona got excommunicated for allowing a woman whose life was in danger to undergo an abortion procedure that "directly killed" her fetus.
My then over 90 yo father, who is a retired gastroenterologist (and VERY Catholic) grunted and said," She"s either stupid or wants to grandstand. Any executive with an ounce of sense would have just referred the patient to the nearest university hospital. It would be clearly justified, since her life was in danger. How could anyone object to consulting the OB/GYN department head who will surely know the latest therapy?"
Obviously, that person would then inform the patient of all her options and the nun wouldn't have had to commit career hari-kari. It occurs to me that the management team at that hospital must have had a collective single digit IQ. House counsel must have been consulted at some point and likely the BOD. And NO ONE figured out what my ancient father immediately recognized?
Don't know what a real world pragmatist would do in this situation after Dobbs.
Just read it: Clark writes nothing new there; it is more of talking past pro-lifers, although he can sway a few. One could make a case that pro-life is also pro-death; in that scripture unambiguously endorses sacrificing some life.
Killing adults can be perceived as making room for the younger set.
God is (similar to certain eastern gods) seen as being both Creator and Destroyer. Scripturally, pro-lifers are on fairly solid ground—but such is as far as it goes.
AlanB… special powers? More than hypertrophied prefrontals that kinda ache, sometimes?
JV and anyone else who’s a would-be author, again my ‘advice article’ is at http://www.davidbrin.com/advice.htm
Tho I have a lengthy addendum I sometimes share with more advanced….
Re Greek democracy, I assume you’ve seem my howl at that evil-wretched ingrate-traitor Frank Miller and his travesty-lying screech called “300”? http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/11/move-over-frank-miller-or-why-occupy.html
BTW the Persians fought with truly massive numbers of levy troops.
Cari you are always welcome here… and welcome to recruit women to join in! A moderately thick skin is required, but generally things are friendly, as you know.
Again, HClinton said a line that alas is too seldom emphasized… the goal that abortion should be “safe, legal, and RARE.” The counter meme that is too seldom used is that good sex ed and contraceptive care are the things that correlate with lowering the NUMBER of procedure.
Hence the rightsos must make it about qualitative purity. “Better to STRIVE for ZERO, even if we fail and get a lot of abortions, than to reduce the number while accepting the immorality of a few, by law!”
JV: the following is nitpickery to a degree that descends into nuttery. “Saying the the state is forcing a woman to give birth is a flat out lie.”
Pappenhaimer: “The Spartans managed a 'win' of the Peloponnesian War only by becoming, financially, a Persian satrapy”.
And also because Athenians, after reaping the huge advantages of Democracy, also fell for its flaws, massive swings of public zealotry leading to costly mistakes. Sound familiar?
Gladiators? Well fantacize this. Have citizens fill the stands grouped by NEIGHBORHOOD. And then from each they must put forward their own ‘tribute’ a la hunger games, to fight in the arena, to determine which neighborhood gets razed for a big, capital project… boulevard or aqueduct or shopping avenue. The winners get property along LAST year’s new boulevard. So everyone is eager…
“A happy Thanksgiving to my fellow USAans.Possibly the best holiday on the calendar.”
By FAR the best one. Least commercialized. Cleanest. Most fun. Esp if we give a nod to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Joy to you all... and to the world.
What’s his name? The Hebraic MAGA-something. Don’t know him (wouldn’t know him from Adam) so he’d have to explain himself. However, am leaving open the remote conceivability he will reveal that he knows something we don’t. Otherwise none of his posts would be worth a glance.
Loc’s writing has improved, and maybe the MAGA will, as well. Unless he meant it when he said goodbye. Loc’s last couple of comments are comprehensive statements of conservatism—yet also as far as it goes.
"Mr. Viril provides no new arguments above."
Alan, perhaps u missed where I suggested that abortion be a right up to the point a fetus could possibly possess consciousness (I proposed functioning nerve cells as a test for that).
Thereafter, abortion would shift to a legal privilege. I think there are multiple advantages to this approach.
First, it makes intuitive sense. At some point, the fetus must be treated as a human life. As such, it must have interests that are recognized in law. Shifting to from an "affirmative right" to "legal privilege" sorta matches the changing "facts on the ground." To borrow a term from STEM disciplines, I think it's an elegant solution.
Second, you now can harmonize abortion jurisprudence with 1,057 years of Anglo-saxon law, which has weighed legal privileges in pretty much every imaginable field of law. The first obvious analogy is with self-defense against great bodily harm case law.
Third, I also propose a rule of construction in abortion law which favors drawing the line too early over too late. The reasoning seems obvious that, if we cannot precisely determine when life begins, that we would prefer to avoid aborting a baby over forcing a woman to bear and raise a child she does not want. There are multiple ways to minimize the impact of the later situation, but there is no way to reassemble a baby that has been turned into fetal ceviche (with a nod to Shonda Rhimes character Christina Chang from Gray's Anatomy.)
But hey, Alan, you've heard all this before, right? I'm sure Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and Tomi Lahren have a roundtable about this legal regime posted on YouTube.
Cari, on its face, considering the baby's (note, we agree that if the fetus is not alive, abortion is a right. Therefore the fetus MUST be a baby for a dispute between us to exit) dependency on the mother seems to make sense, but I submit its a legal quagmire (dial up parade of horribles argument).
If dependency is a consideration, what weight should it have? If a baby in the womb's dependency is a factor allowing it to be euthanized, why can't a one day old be euthanized? At what point is a dependant baby no longer subject to euthanasia? My cousin has a 17yo 6' 1" 320 lb severely autistic son who is developmentally stalled at 5 yo. He is uniquely responsive to my cousin. Why should he any less subject to euthanasia than a living baby in its mother's womb?
Has my cousin been enslaved by the state of Missouri because the law compels him to feed and clothe his son? If he is not a slave, why is a women enslaved by the state preventing her from interfering with the natural course of events?
Alan,
The maga fool isn't worth your time, but it's not my place to push for that. I could see in his first post that he wanted to sling sh*t and soil the carpet in our collective family room. The attention we give to each other is a gift (especially on holidays), so the most I'll do is encourage you to value the gift you give as we do. 8)
John,
I'm a fan of having an absolute right to my body (like Duncan), but I recognize that it doesn't work in practice and we've all known that for centuries. I'll remain loyal to it as an ideal which we should strive to attain as much as we can, but I'll admit there must be limits because a) we can interact with each other and b) we can abandon the Rule of Law when others anger us enough.
I can see how abortion should shift from a right to a privilege and then be forbidden. I get it. All that's left is to argue about where the lines are drawn, right? Heh. We both know that will involve a few bloody noses.
I don't think much of a 'functioning nerve cell' test for consciousness. All animals have functioning nerve cells and it's only the larger ones that I'm tempted to protect. Even then… not all of them.
The test I consider better is 'viability outside the womb' because that allows those who want to remain loyal to their ridiculously early definitions for when a fetus becomes human an out. They can help fund artificial wombs. If they go down that path, I'd pitch my money into that tech development as well… though for different reasons. The sooner we get there, the sooner we quit fighting over this. There is no way to resolve the ethical conflict between "You would enslave women" and "You would kill baby humans" except by giving both combatants a way out.
Our host's suggestion paraphrasing H.Clinton would minimize the combat, but I think as an old pain becomes rarer our reaction to it can get stronger. When it happens often we can become numb. While I think minimizing the need for abortion would be a net good, I'm fairly sure the combatants won't agree.
Ultimately, though, it was a doctor friend of mine who convinced me to mostly stand aside. He pointed out that a decision to terminate is rarely a trivial thing for the pregnant woman. Some pro-life advocates exaggerate when they make it sound like we kill humans for trivial reasons. My friend suggested that was exceedingly rare and then described how much WORSE we all made it when we kibitzed from the outside. Pregnancy termination decisions are often traumatic enough without the peanut gallery getting involved… so I decided to leave the gallery and leave the decision to the could-be mother and their doctor.
Since John_V 'provides no new arguments' regarding abortion, I take it upon myself to point out that Cari_B's most recent assertion brought a whole metaphorical camel into the prochoice tent when she had the audacity to claim that anti-abortion legislation (and/or any limit on a woman's bodily autonomy) was tantamount to "slavery".
This is an absurd assertion, made no less absurd by All-Taxation-Is-Slavery Alfred's glowing endorsement of said analogy, as it leads to a certain circularity of thought that absolutely destroys any claim of 'bodily autonomy' for both men & women, for if any limit on bodily autonomy is tantamount to slavery (and slavery is both immoral & illegal), then it would follow that any attempt to restrict anyone's autonomous actions is also immoral & illegal, validating Aleister Crowley's infamous satanic motto "Do What Thou Wilt".
So, I ask all concerned, do you really want to go further down this progressive path where EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED including rape, infanticide, murder & child molestation?
Because if you do, then some of us are going to have a really really good time at your personal expense, for one autonomous reason or another.
Best
____
FJ_Dangerous_Maga's blanket accusations of 'anti-semitism' are quite typical for certain conservative jews who are unfamiliar with & unaccepting of the American progressive variant who, like so many rooftop LGBT+ activists for Islam, imagine that they will never suffer the adverse consequences of their poorly conceived actions & their delusional belief systems.
Kudos to Der_Oger, by the way, for detailing the real reasons for the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire in the form of military overfunding, corruption, the devaluation of the currency, excessive taxation, state-imposed price caps, lack of a generally accepted rule of succession, the partition of the realm itself and constant coups and infighting which, by no small coincidence, are additional proxy descriptives of the Modern West, except to the cognitively dissonant.
"JV: the following is nitpickery to a degree that descends into nuttery. “Saying the the state is forcing a woman to give birth is a flat out lie.”
Hmmm...for a normal person yes, but once you become a broken, twisted thing known as a law school graduate...
There are two basic reasons the pro-choice types phrase it in terms of "forcing a woman" to carry an unwanted fetus.
1. It sounds more oppressive. Plus, it invokes that 1,000 year history of systemic oppression suffered by women under the common law tradition, which is unfortunately true.
2. Law generally doesn't impose affirmative obligations on people.
For example, you are restrained from shooting your neighbor, but the law does not compel you to bring her a fire hose to put out a house fire. This rule applies to fire and police services.
For example, two cops could sit in their cruiser and munch a dozen doughnuts while watching a citizen fall beneath the exhaust of a delivery truck as it waits for a shipment of beef to unload from a rail car. The two officers could then take bets whether the citizen will die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Even if the citizen EXPIRES BEFORE THEIR EYES, the cops would bear no criminal culpability or civil liability for their actions. One would hope their police department would fire them, but the department HAS NO LEGAL OBLIGATION TO DO SO.
Thus, the difference between an an affirmative duty and legal proscription is actually a profound distinction in a legal context (which is hard to deny describes the abortion issue). By framing the issue as a state-imposed obligation to bear a child, pro -choice activists can now claim any limits on abortion as a legal oddity, which is a complete distortion of its nature as an exercise of state power.
The real world outcome of this subtle word-twisting by pro-choice advocates could possibly cause the courts to "draw the line too late" in its abortion jurisprudence, a problem which i have covered with nauseating frequency.
Basically, this framing removes abortion law from its proper legal context, which makes it difficult to apply the 250 years of accumulated wisdom we call legal precedent.
I think abortion jurisprudence is challenging enough without adding intentional legal distortions. Still think it's nitpickery?
Alfred and JV
The solution is simple - and is the one used in Canada - there are simply NO LAWS regulating abortion
The decision is down to the woman - with the caveat that she has to get a third part to agree - said third party being her Doctor - who as a medical type is far far far more knowledgeable than any damn legislators
It WORKS!! - it keeps the nosey parkers and the religious nutters out of the equation
AND it operates in line with viability/date - in the early stages you just need a pill - the later that it is happening the greater the medical commitment
By the time that "viability" is possibly an issue it requires a LOT of medical input
And the RESULT is about half as many abortions per 1,000 women as the USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_abortion_statistics
NZ has about the same numbers - it does have "laws" for abortion after 20 weeks
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0006/latest/LMS237600.html
Said laws basically boil down to
"A qualified health practitioner may only provide abortion services to a woman who is more than 20 weeks pregnant if the health practitioner reasonably believes that the abortion is clinically appropriate in the circumstances."
So while laid out in more detail it amounts to the same thing as Canada - you have to get your doctor to agree!!
"Exactly, but when you do, you don't whine that a squabble has broken out."
Larry, my rage at you for snarking at MAGA know no bounds. I mean, where am I supposed to get new hats if he leaves?
But but but I don't get to create hypotheticals about Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Travis Kelce.
What about me??? What am I supposed to do?
I admit a small, itchy fascination with locum. He REASONS okay, most times, and he knows a fair amount. It is the utter, masturbatory wish hallucinations - like this - that make him one crazy-batshit fellah:
“So, I ask all concerned, do you really want to go further down this progressive path where EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED including rape, infanticide, murder & child molestation?”
Say…. What?? Denizens of sepia-flatland can reason, but when faced with ‘up” or “blue” all they can do is fabulate, I guess.
"the rules of organ donation being voluntary are extremely strict"
Apparently you seem ok at compelling the baby to donate it's organs to its mother. That the.mother tosses every organ in the baby's body into the medical waste bin instead of using them is an irrelevant side issue.
Personally, this seems to be an odd bias. Why do you favor compelling an innocent baby to give up the entirety of its body while you balk at compelling a criminal to surrender.10% of his liver to repair the damage he caused to his victim?
The criminal has a legal duty to make his victim whole, while the baby has no such duty to the mother. Yet, why is it the first situation that seems so unimaginable to you?
Could it be you're responding to a familiarity bias bc the second situation has been legal for 50 years?
I'm still traveling so I don't have time to get into too much detail on responses right now, but I did want to answer a few points.
John Virgil wrote:
```
If dependency is a consideration, what weight should it have? If a baby in the womb's dependency is a factor allowing it to be euthanized, why can't a one day old be euthanized? At what point is a dependant baby no longer subject to euthanasia? My cousin has a 17yo 6' 1" 320 lb severely autistic son who is developmentally stalled at 5 yo. He is uniquely responsive to my cousin. Why should he any less subject to euthanasia than a living baby in its mother's womb?
```
As I mentioned previously, there is a significant difference between general dependency and dependency specifically on a single person to survive. Once a child is born (or at least can safely survive outside the womb), that responsibility can be transferred. Until we figure out some form of artificial womb or pregnancy transfer, a fetus is specifically dependent on the service of only one person's body, and nobody else can perform that service. So prior to viability outside the womb, the difference is very substantial. The fuzzy bit may be when the fetus is viable but may suffer greatly from early birth, but abortions at that point are generally performed for medical reasons.
With regards to Catholic hospitals- I don't know about the specific case you refer to, but in many parts of the country, a Catholic hospital may be the only one within a reasonable range. I looked up some of the specifics since it's been awhile since I last read on this issue. The ACLU reported in 2016 that in some states more than 40% of all hospital beds are in a Catholic facility (one in 6 hospital beds nationwide). A lot of people really don't have much choice about where they go for medical care (and this isn't even getting into whether your insurance will cover going somewhere else). When you're experiencing a medical emergency is also generally not the best time to be hunting around for alternative options.
“So, I ask all concerned, do you really want to go further down this progressive path where EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED"
Ummm...God no! But I want to at least go far enough down the path that no one thinks it strange if I want to molest small rodents...
Wouldn’t exiting the progressive path mean lowered standards of living?
Meh. Locumranch can't even remember the buzz phrase for my pseudo-position. Instead he mangles it to make it fit the current discussion thread.
It's "All taxation is theft" and my position is a little too soft for the liking of some of my libertarian friends. I get why they believe it because there is some technical truth to it, but their absolutist approach ignores how the unwritten rules of justice come about.
duncan,
...there are simply NO LAWS regulating abortion
That's my preference, but it must be coupled to a legal regime where a thing is permitted unless it is expressly forbidden.
Canada can get away with that approach. I think it helps that they have far fewer people with guns and ammo.
Alan Brooks:
What has turned me against pro life is due to doubts concerning pro-life activists themselves. Doesn’t change the validity of their positions—however does indeed cause doubt to arise
I didn't do political postings on Thanksgiving. But, I did want to address this direct point from yesterday. Sorry, but too many Republican politicians who insist that the woman's circumstances are irrelevant because the innocent fetus is not responsible for them nonetheless insist that their own pregnant mistresses get abortions rather than deliver the inconvenient fruit of their infidelity.
As you say, that doesn't invalidate their pro-life stance, but it does dilute it from an absolute position to one of "Pro-life for thee but not for me." In my opinion, they've got no business legislating "no exceptions" for the masses but rationalizing exceptions for their own situations. Once someone recognizes the legitimacy of exceptions--say, Rush Limbaugh forgiving his own drug addiction--they've got no moral high ground on which to dismiss exceptions for others out of hand.
John Viril:
The state isn't forcing a woman to do anything. In the normal course of events, a pregnant woman will give birth without any action by the state.
Instead, the state is restricting a behavior. Saying the the state is forcing a woman to give birth is a flat out lie.
Harsh much? Offering an alternative POV is one thing, but a "flat out lie" to describe a difference without a distinction?
In the normal course of events, a person with a cancerous tumor will die. If a theocratic government which doesn't believe in surgery forbids doctors from removing the tumor, then the state is forcing him to die. Yes, it is doing so in an indirect manner, but the effect is the same.
I think abortion jurisprudence is challenging enough without adding intentional legal distortions. Still think it's nitpickery?
It's the intensity of your calling it a "flat out lie." We're not in a court of law here--we talk the way normal people talk. We talk about our "rights" to do things that we only wish were recognized as rights. We say someone who committed a questionable act is "guilty" of committing that act, even if he wasn't found so in a court of law or even if the thing isn't technically a crime. And we say someone is "forcing" us to do something even if what they're doing is preventing us from not doing it.
Again, feel free to explain the legal distinction between "forcing to give birth" and "preventing from doing something to keep from giving birth", but using the one term interchangeably with the other is not a flat out lie. Far from it.
lfred Differ:
The test I consider better is 'viability outside the womb' because that allows those who want to remain loyal to their ridiculously early definitions for when a fetus becomes human an out. They can help fund artificial wombs. I
That might be more theory than practice. In practice, I think it would take a lot more than simply developing a better incubator to successfully transplant an embryo or fetus. And if the technology makes it possible to successfully to so once in a million (say), it might make the public assume that a viable "get out of pregnancy free" card is universally available, and then base future case law on that option.
I'm not saying you're wrong in your preference, but I think it's way further off than it might seem.
Another caution, and this might seem trivial, but I can't help pointing out that widespread use of artificial wombs is very Brave New World. Again, not a reason to forego entirely, but something to keep in mind.
@Alfred Differ,
The post above was meant to be addressed to you. Pretty obvious, but it would evade a text search for your name.
Way, way too long to meaningfully excerpt, but again, no paywall. And here's the punchline:
Next time you wish the U.S. had more parties, think: Is the above [Dutch] situation what you think is ideal? Thirty parties and choice galore?
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Nov23-12.html
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Nov23-11.html
George Santayana once wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We may be getting a real-time demo now. In the late 1960s, millions of young people marched against the Vietnam War chanting: "Hey, hey, LBJ. how many kids did you kill today?" This despite Lyndon Johnson being the most progressive and successful president since FDR, what with the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, consumer protection, and many Great Society programs. All the protests ultimately caused Johnson to drop out of the 1968 election, resulting in Richard Nixon becoming president, the Southern Strategy, and 50 years of predominantly Republican rule (Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and Donald Trump). They carried out policies the protesters abhorred. But they got rid of pointless wars—except for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Salon, a left-wing political website, asks people to fast forward to November 2024 and imagine November 2025. Many young people are now loudly protesting Joe Biden's support for Israel and opposing the war in the Middle East, despite Biden's record of getting out of Afghanistan, ending the pandemic, rescuing the economy, taming inflation, rebuilding the infrastructure, fighting climate change, and bringing chip manufacturing back to America. To quote Yogi Berra, "It's déjà vu all over again."
...
Last night, I had to hear about another poll showing that Biden is losing support among progressives, black men, Latinos, and (as the commentator put it) "Black women aren't far behind."
I'm tempted to throw up my hands in surrender and let them have the world they think they'd prefer with Trump. I mean, if the only people who prefer democracy to strongman-dominated fascism are white, middle-aged, college-educated, non-Christian, English-speaking, fact-believing, moderate liberal, Midwestern believers in the rule of law, then why should the handful of us impose our wishes on a nation which clearly yearns for an authoritarian dictator?
Unless polls a year out from the election are full of shit, of course.
Larry Hart
Clay Travis on the Clay and Buck show Wednesday pointed out that at this same point in 2015, the polls had Hillary up by 4% nationally and she ended up winning the popular vote by 2%, so the polls were really good. There's a reason that she won the popular vote, her campaign actually had that as a goal https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/12/14/unreal-hillary-spent-money-in-chicago-new-orleans-to-run-up-popular-vote-tally-n2259785 .
Imagine an effort to reduce abortions by positive tactics, such as subsidizing prenatal and postnatal care, minimizing the risk of pregnancy, convincing women that the government had their back if they undertook raising a child. Seems to me it might accomplish more than the current approach ... one might get the impression that the cruelty is the point.
Tim H:
one might get the impression that the cruelty is the point.
One already has. :)
Not just about abortion, but their policies on contraception and any non-procreative sex. And not just about sex. Their policies on segregation, immigrant-bashing, work requirements and drug testing for welfare, willingness to hurt the environment, not just to save money but even when it costs money.
Cruelty is the point of the entire modern Republican Party.
I don't normally seek to emulate the Canadian healthcare service, having met too many Canadian doctors & patients who have fled south to balmier climes, but Duncan_C's idea about the adopting certain Canadian healthcare codes regarding abortion is absolutely *brilliant* insomuch as the US could simply outlaw abortion across-the-board, in any & all situations, while simultaneously offering MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying) services to any & all who become depressed or mentally disturbed by said ban. It's win-win!
https://nationalpost.com/health/canada-mental-illness-maid-medical-aid-in-dying
From Alfred, I took liberties by improving his Taxation-Is-Theft motto into a more topically appropriate format, as it's a common libertarian talking point to equate taxation (aka 'the involuntary confiscation of one's labour') with a state of relative slavery, which (I believe) is exactly the point that Alfred & Cari_B were trying to make when they argued that any restriction upon an individual's personal bodily autonomy equaled 'slavery' of some degree or another.
If this was not their intent, then I apologize, but my query still stands:
In your crusade against any & all restrictions upon an individual's personal bodily autonomy (which you call 'progress'), are you prepared to accept a state of total anarchy wherein everyone, no matter how undesirable, is allowed to "Do What Thou Wilt" ?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Best
_____
If & when you give others your 'power by proxy', then you disempower yourself for the enrichment of your designated proxy, who then acts in loco parentis, making you subject to their charity, largesse & judgement, which is the real reason why our professional managerial class wants you to believe that 'proxy power' benefits you when it does not, as it transforms you into your proxy's willing subject & slave, so much so that rule by a professional managerial class is feudalism by another name.
"but using the one term interchangeably with the other is not a flat out lie. Far from it."
As the "normies" use it in conversation it is not. All you're doing is repeating the phrasing you've heard over and over.
But, how, exactly, did that happen?
I submit to you it's because the pro-choice movement launched a deliberate PR campaign to insert that phrasing into public discourse with a clear intent to distort the jurisprudence or subsequent legislation.
Had I not called it a "flat out lie" would there be awareness of this bad-faith PR deception launched by the pro-choice leaders?
Thus is like the secret service noticing some guy dressed in camo hanging around the President and saying, what the big deal? So what if he's clearly trying to escape our notice, we see him so what's the harm?
10 months later, Joe Biden ends up with a hole in his head moments before giving his acceptance speech following his victory over Donald Trump. The SS somehow missed some MAGA moron with a gun made from paper mache, as the press wails, "How could such a travesty of justice ever happen?"
There is probably a memo somewhere in pro-choice movement archives laying out this strategy and funding this campaign with far more dollars than you would expect.
Reply
"Unless polls a year out from the election are full of shit, of course."
Larry, I will remind you Bush I had record approval ratings one year before the 92 election.
Alfred
"I get it. All that's left is to argue about where the lines are drawn, right? Heh. We both know that will involve a few bloody noses."
Well, I think it's worth fighting out the battle to get to this point, bc at least it helps convince the participants that there is good-faith on both sides.
Damn, just at this moment I realized a functioning democracy rests on the same fundamental behavior triggers that rule schoolyard football games ...
John Viril:
Bush I had record approval ratings one year before the 92 election.
And Romney was beating Obama in 2011, and Rudy Giuliani was the Republican front-runner in 2007, and so on. I know polls this far out are meaningless in predictive ability.
My concern is that they are used to influence voters to either drift a certain way (no one likes to be on board the losing horse), to do something stupid (like insist that Biden drop out because any other Democrat will easily beat Trump), or to give up the fight in despair.
John Viril:
Damn, just at this moment I realized a functioning democracy rests on the same fundamental behavior triggers that rule schoolyard football games ...
Yes, it's kind of like Hobbes vs Locke.
Paraphrasing Hobbes, It is not possible to have a football game without referees who can rule with an iron fist.
Paraphrasing Locke, Nonsense, if the kids want to have an enjoyable game, they'll agree among themselves on the rules and how they are enforced.
Larry Hart
"And Romney was beating Obama in 2011, and Rudy Giuliani was the Republican front-runner in 2007, and so on. I know polls this far out are meaningless in predictive ability."
This year really is different. For the first time since modern polling, both leading nominees have basically 100% name recognition and everybody knows everything about them. So, nothing is going to change much before the election, unless the dems figure out how to dump Slo' Joe and change everything, Trump will win easily.
Could only skim along this time. A couple of conclusions from skimming, tho.
1. We should give the abortion thing a rest.
2. locumranch is home now, from California.
Hope it was a pleasant trip! Do filter your water now.
mcsandburg:
So, nothing is going to change much before the election,
Things change on a daily basis. Checked the price of gas or eggs lately? There'll probably be another threat of government shutdown or default on the debt before the election. IIRC, something changed pretty unexpectedly on October 7.
I get your glee at the trending, but, "For the first time ever, the results are already set in stone," is not a bet I would take.
Larry Hart
The worldwide trend is pretty clear. Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Argentina have all rejected the progressive, globalist nonsense https://pjmedia.com/kevindowneyjr/2023/11/24/on-the-shoulders-of-giants-the-world-has-had-enough-of-klaus-schwab-n4924189 and we should too!
The two words that strike panic and despair in GQP hearts: Taylor Swift.
Populism isn't a one-way street.
"Yes, it's kind of like Hobbes vs Locke."
Interesting summation.
My initial, off the cuff take, is to suggest that the referee requires increasing power as the stakes of the game increase.
At the "recess" level, the players can police themselves, but in the Olympic games, the referee will require near autocratic power.
A pro-lifer admitted to me:
“It’s a weapon we have, to use against the government.”
And he is also pro-death, when it comes to capital punishment. There’s no contradiction in his mind:
“God is a destroyer,
destroying those who are wicked.”
Amending: “It’s a weapon we have, to use against the government.”
“It’s a weapon we have, to use against elected, accountable government, so our inheritance-brat/mafia overlords may restore feudalism.”
mcsandberg:
The worldwide trend is pretty clear. Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Argentina have all rejected the progressive, globalist nonsense
Were you also confidently predicting a red wave in 2022? A romp by Putin in Ukraine? Governor Younkin riding a Republican takeover of the Virginia legislature a few weeks ago?
You mentioned universal name recognition of both Trump and Biden as evidence that nothing will change in a year, but that name recognition was also the case at least 2 years ago if not 4, and 2 years ago, Biden was trashing both Trump and "generic Republican" in polls. So what you're saying is that, because everyone already has an opinion of the candidates, nothing can change except Biden can lose ground. Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Or an attempt at putting "body English" on the future election.
At this time, there is no point in arguing guesses about what will be established fact in less than a year.
Alan Brooks:
A pro-lifer admitted to me:
“It’s a weapon we have, to use against the government.”
Was that before or after the weapon kept misfiring blowing his hands and eyes off?
LH, about "moral high ground":
I hear that Anne McCaffrey tried to title a book "Get Of The Unicorn", meaning children of the unicorn; but her copy editor changed that to "Get Off The Unicorn". She tried to change it back again, he corrected it again; and so on until Ann McCaffrey gave up, so "Get Off The Unicorn" it is. I love the sass of the winning title, and I consider it a useful taunt:
"Ahh, get off the unicorn! You're no virgin!"
"Get off the unicorn" = "abandon moral high ground" = "check your privilege".
"See Polemical Judo, by David Brin, if you are among those who still reads."
Well, Dr. Brin, I'm going to have to look at this just to see how much metaphorical resemblance it bears to actual Judo.
Back in the day, I worked out at a Kansas City club that has produced 59 national champions in both Judo and the related sport of Sombo Wrestling.
Btw, almost no one outside of the MMA world has even heard of Sombo wrestling---but MMA guys know this obscure Russian creation bc Sombo wrestlers do shockingly well in MMA.
Btw, another fun fact is that modern MMA, which has turned into a massive worldwide combat sport, was a marketing creation of the Gracie brothers designed to promote their Brazilian jujitsu clubs in California
The term BJJ, btw, is a misnomer. It should be called Brazilian Judo.
Here's the backstory:
Back in the late 19th century, a guy named Jigoro Kano invented a new school of ju jitsu (an unarmed combat system designed to help samuri who had lost their swords survive on the battlefield).
One of his students migrated to Brazil back in the days when Brazil was bringing in a lot of Japanese workers to build their rail system.
This guy started his own dojo and put his own twist on Jigoro Kano's techniques. It got called Brazilian Judo Jitsu bc he started his school when Judo was still a specific school of Ju Jitsu instead of being recognized as it's own separate sport.
BJJ altered the tournament rules to emphasize ground techniques, armbars, and chokes. Meanwhile, traditional Judo favors standing throws, and severely limits pins, armbars, and chokes.
In the last half of the 20th century, Judo was the kingpin Asian martial art, because it had become an Olympic sport in 1964. BJJ was a red-headed stepchild variant.
This all changed when the Gracie's migrated to California and opened a chain of BJJ dojos in California. In 1993, they pushed for something they called UFC 1 (Ultimate Fighting Championship).
The marketing angle was to select 8 representatives of popular combat sports in order to determine which one was the most effective in a real world situation.
I mean, seriously, this was a locker-room penis length contest writ large. The only purported rules were no eye gouging and no crotch shots.But the way the thing was refereed and the pairings played out, it was clearly set up for BJJ master Royce Gracie to win.
As the sport evolved and more and more rules were introduced, it still reflects that BJJ promotion etiology.
Though, the funny thing is that Olympic wrestlers have defied gravity and proven to be the best MMA base martial art. So, if you like an underdog story about defying systemic oppression on the oppressor's own playground, you might like MMA.
"John Virgil- I didn't say a thing about men not having any right to contribute to the conversation about abortion rights"
Sigh, I know teacher came by to say, "no more abortion kickball on the schoolyard," but I can't help but notice I was hoist on my own petard by Cari.
Sigh...the targets aren't supposed to punch back. Maybe u didn't get the memo.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/opinion/blockbuster-supreme-court-administrative.html?searchResultPosition=1
It’s been clear for some time that several conservative justices harbor deep skepticism about the administrative state. That’s perhaps no surprise: The three senior conservatives on this court all cut their teeth as young lawyers in the anti-regulation Reagan administration, and the court’s newer conservatives were appointed by Donald Trump, whose adviser Steve Bannon proudly announced that a goal of that administration was the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Someone should maybe tell Clarence Thomas and company that if they destroy the FDA and such, they won't have a mechanism for regulating misoprostol and mifepristone. Just sayin'
"I would love to spend more time on this, but it is after 8:30 pm and I need to finish work so I can spend some time with my wife."
GMT, why would you want to do that? Haven't you figured out the only way to retain your man-card is to completely ignore her until she divorces you in disgust and takes all of your stuff?
Sheesh, you really need to figure out this husband gig before you get so happy that redemption is no longer possible.
Reply
"The two words that strike panic and despair in GQP hearts: Taylor Swift.
Populism isn't a one-way street."
Hearing that name makes me want to curl up in fetal position and hope to hide from the world. I KNOW she is just WAITING for the Chiefs to get to the playoffs then release the breakup song, completely undermining Patrick Mahomes' one reliable receiver.
One the Chiefs suffer ignominious defeat, she will then reveal herself to be a lifelong Eagles fan all along...
It’s not difficult to communicate with them. It’s about knowing their cosmology: including the politics, naturally.
Eventually it comes down to the city versus the rural. “The urban is dirty and loud, yet exciting. The countryside is clean and peaceful, but often, to many, boring.
The integrity of the Straight and Narrow, versus the prospects for the New and Improved.”
They don’t oppose science, yet they insist that science must serve God. Problem is: whose God? Allah, Yahweh?...
Alan Brooks:
The countryside is clean and peaceful,
Except that it is full of dirt and bracken and bugs and scraggly animals who kill and eat each other.
Problem is: whose God? Allah, Yahweh?..
Allah is the same thing as the Judeo-Christian almighty God. It's just the Arabic name for Him. When Christians act as if Muslims worship an entity distinct from their own, they are either being ignorant or disingenuous.
Yahweh can be interesting if one has read Dave Sim's Cerebus comic. See, the first chapter of Genesis refers strictly to God, but then much of the rest of the Old Testament refers to (in English) the LORD God, which is King James's translation of the Hebrew tetragrammaton, sometimes spelled out as YHWH in English writing.
Dave's theory, which I haven't heard anywhere else, is that YHWH is not God, but only some kind of earth spirit who thinks herself* to be God or maybe who aspires to be God. The ancient Hebrews then intended to worship the one true God, but they were deceived by YHWH into worshiping her* as God.
So Dave gets to treat all the stuff the Bible tells us that God said that he likes as really coming from God, and all the stuff he doesn't like as a trick of YHWH's.
* Yes, Dave posits that this earth spirit would be female in nature.
Problem is: whose God? Allah, Yahweh?
Alan, today, I would provisionally cast my lot with the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
However, if David's thesis proves correct and the Divine Spirit is female...I would immediately fall at the feet of Ms. Scarlett Johansson.
By clean, meant the countryside air is.
A definite disagreement I had with Loc is his belief that rural dwellers possess a higher morality than city slickers.
No, they are down to earth—which is not synonymous with morality.
Have read the entire Koran; found it to be similar to the Old Testament—but not to the New.
I was semi-serious about Taylor Swift. Hundred+ million fans, billion+ dollars, and hugely popular in swing states, and a voting wonk. One well timed political ad could swing millions. There are others too.
Paradoctor,
"Fell off the unicorn" meaning "Lost one's virginity" was SCA parlance back in my college days. And yes, it applied to me. The SCA back then was almost a neurodivergent breeding program.
Larry,
I remember Cerebus walking on the moon with either God or a reasonable facsimile, who was blaming the Earth for not using protection. Ergo, fiat lux. Details fuzzy due to the ravages of Time.
It was impressive to see an artist bend his entirety to producing 300 issues in his own image, but kinda disheartening to see what happened to his mind in the process.
Pappenheimer
Re: God: Long ago, talked to a guy who'd been a missionary to some hill tribes in Borneo (Sarawak, 60's and early 70's, they weren't all wearing Rambo t-shirts yet*). He mentioned seeing things in the jungle that - well, he was still a Christian, but was wary of saying there wasn't anything to animism.
A. Crowley (probably the model for Crawley in 'Good Omens', but Crowley was a bit less trustworthy) prescribed in one his books how to meditate and focus your mind to achieve an immanent state with a deity - and then advised the modern mental equivalent of hitting (CTRL-Z), restarting with a different deity, and making contact with that deity. Suggesting the contact being made was not external, but internal.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Rambo was basically American Heracles to much of Asia in the 80's.
John Viril:
However, if David's thesis proves correct and the Divine Spirit is female...
Just to be clear, the "Dave" whose theory that was is Dave Sim, not our host.
I would immediately fall at the feet of Ms. Scarlett Johansson.
Oh yeah! See, there's at least two things we agree on.
* * *
scidata:
I was semi-serious about Taylor Swift.
Al Franken called that "Kidding on the square."
Paradoctor:
I remember Cerebus walking on the moon with either God or a reasonable facsimile, who was blaming the Earth for not using protection. Ergo, fiat lux. Details fuzzy due to the ravages of Time.
That was The Judge, who told Cerebus that astronauts would walk on the moon in "exactly 6000 years from now." But that part of the series was written when Dave was still a secular humanist, long before he read and fell in love with Scripture.
It was impressive to see an artist bend his entirety to producing 300 issues in his own image, but kinda disheartening to see what happened to his mind in the process.
Of all things, the Cerebus book was probably the one thing that kept Dave sane through all those years. It was his private life and his interactions with the comics community that drove him...whatever you want to call his later state of mind.
As to "300 issues in his own image," yes that was quite an ambition. But I think what he inadvertently proved was that "his own image" in 2004 became something very different from "his own image" in 1977. That it's not really possible for the same author to produce a single story with a unified vision over the course of 26 years, because in that interval of time, he ceases to be "the same author."
LH... fer Gaia's sake, have you forgotten EARTH? Exploring the weak, medium, strong and super-strong Gaia Hypotheses?
--
JV: Despite the movies, the samurai sword was not for war. Sometimes duels. Mostly for crushing, beheading and intimidating the lower orders. Which is why Tom Cruise’s THE LAST SAMURAI was a pile of lying donkey drek almost on a par with “300”. What we should have done in WWII was leaflet every Japanese with repeated jeremiads that “The damned samurai who bullied and beat you and are getting you killed have also captured the Emperor!” It might not have flipped everything. But it woulda scared the shit out of the officers.
"JV: Despite the movies, the samurai sword was not for war. Sometimes duels. Mostly for crushing, beheading and intimidating the lower orders."
Well, isn't that a buzzkill. I was just repeating the Martial Art origin story as it was passed down in the dojo, until the BJJ stuff, which is pretty well known since MMA blew up with in living memory.
I haven't studied Japanese history at all.
"Someone should maybe tell Clarence Thomas and company that if they destroy the FDA and such, they won't have a mechanism for regulating misoprostol and mifepristone. Just sayin'"
Larry, why would Clarence Thomas want to have an effective mechanism of regulating misoprostol and mifepristone?
Haven't you figured out yet that politicians raise money from the suckers by promising to do X. But, once they do X, they have this really big problem: they've lost a proven reason for chumps to give them money.
So, they need to lose to evil party Y, so that they can undo X. Now the rubes will have a reason to get them.elected, so they can pretend to want to do X once more.
The worst thing that can happen to any politician with real ambition is to actually achieve anything the have promised to do, because now they will have to invent a new reason for or the unwashed masses to elect them.
Having to wing it like that is truly scary, bc they just won't have any data about how to make reasonable projections about how much funds they can expect to get from their political ad campaigns. Without those metrics, why, they could LOSE money. Much better for the other party to take power for awhile, wreck everything we've done, and do we can get back to some reliable grifting
Larry, you really wouldn't make it in politics.
The samurai sword lie is blatant:
1. from watching the movies in which the duels are always about who can take a gaudy stance and that swing fast to take advantage of the opponent's mistakes. Do you ever - except in Kill Bill, see a sworder acttually PARRY the other guy usung her own sword to deflect the other? Even in KB it's extremely rare.
2. A 16th Century European mercenary with an epée would cancel a samurai's gaudy stance by plinking him on the wrist or elbow to disarm the screaming showoff.
3. In battle the samurai were HORSE ARCHERS! The older ones waved their sword... threatening to behead any pikemen+arquebusiers who broke ranks.
Dr Brin,
Yeah, Samurai were mounted - unless they were taking part in a naval battle, and jumping and down uselessly on top of Admiral Yu's Korean turtle boat while it sank their ship.
kendo does teach parries, but unlike European fencing lessons, the early (and only) kendo lessons I received involved the three basic attacks, and of course footwork. Everyone teaches the footwork first.
16th century mercenaries' swords weren't likely to be epees - those are European duelling/court dress weapons. a musketeer would have a rapier (shorter and faster than an epee) as a backup weapon, and a pikeman might have a dagger or short sword if he could afford it. They'd be at a disadvantage if they couldn't shoot or stab the swordsman from a distance. Now the landsknecht...
https://www.behance.net/gallery/152557385/Landsknecht
Landsknecht vs dismounted samurai with katana would be an interesting fight - to view from at least thirty feet away. And bring a mop.
Pappenheimer
"Landsknecht vs dismounted samurai with katana would be an interesting fight - to view from at least thirty feet away. And bring a mop."
The statement from pappenheimer has just inspired an epiphany...
I have just discovered my life's purpose. I need to become the oligarch to rule them all. Once I achieve this goal, I will then be able to send my minions in black helicopters across the globe to kidnap ALL of the world's politicians.
I will then provide instruction for them iin the 16th century fighting discipline of their choice and send them into a televised celebrity death match tournament which will play nightly until the entire field is dead and we have found an ultimate champion.
Not only will we have a good idea which combat system would prevail, entertainment choices will also improve by an order of magnitude. Economic prosperity would zoom to unparalleled heights never before seen in human history, because all of the most efficient parasites would be eliminated.
The gene pool would lose 99% of the most toxic allelles, and the following generations will be enabled to create a utopia unimaginable to their forebears.
Inspired this vision, I have set up the following Go Fund Me account....
locumranch,
Nah. You still don't get it, but thank you for trying. Seriously.
Taxation is theft.
Coercion is/becomes slavery.
Theft is not slavery except in how it is enforced... namely coercion since tax agencies have that power. Still... taxation is theft is the primary point.
------
In your crusade...
You are mistaken in your belief that I am part of that crusade. I am not an anarchist. I'm not even a minarchist. I'm closer to what classical liberals advocated.
John Viril,
One the Chiefs suffer ignominious defeat, she will then reveal herself to be a lifelong Eagles fan all along...
Ha!
I hope she places a large bet in Vegas against the Chiefs if she's going to do that. She'd help demonstrate once again how the second billion is easier to win than the first billion.
Not to worry if she does, though. At the rate she is becoming richer, Progressives will soon turn against her arguing that her money is really theirs to direct toward good causes. Your Chiefs would be avenged. 8)
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My father raised me as a Bronco's fan... a team that is often difficult to root for without embarrassment. However, I did get a hoot out of watching the comedy of errors a bit ago when they played the Chiefs. I don't watch often anymore, but the game happened to be on in the pizza joint I was in.
"Taxation is theft.
Coercion is/becomes slavery."
You forgot the bit about, "Government grows out of the end of a gun barrel."
It's really such a white supremacist move to leave out the greatest contribution to human wisdom to ever come from Asia...
Dr Brin:
LH... fer Gaia's sake, have you forgotten EARTH? Exploring the weak, medium, strong and super-strong Gaia Hypotheses?
I've already been thinking it's about time for another re-read.
Dr. Brin
When's the release date for the new version of Earth?
Alfred Differ:
My father raised me as a Bronco's fan... a team that is often difficult to root for without embarrassment.
Try growing up in Chicago some time. I've got the Bears and the Cubs.
"Try growing up in Chicago some time. I've got the Bears and the Cubs."
While Alfred has 3 Super Bowl titles to your 2016 WS win within the last 30 yrs, he has to give credit to horseface John Elway for sll of them.
LARRY you are CLEARLY better off.
Regarding fighting and swordplay, I am not an expert and I did not spend last night at a Holiday Inn - Express; but I was in the SCA for a long time and I vaguely remember discussions of this issue. But I was never a fighter; I joined so I could meet girls and spent a lot of time learning dancing and sewing.
About the katana, it was fast, but it was a light sword meant for slashing. The Japanese retained the lessons for their sword fighting techniques; something the Europeans largely did not do after the use of gunpowder weapons. I remember reading about how someone found a very old training manual for European sword fighting and...a lot of the moves looked similar to those used by the Japanese.
Movies are not reality...so I don't know how to interpret what I saw in Japanese films about swordplay. But in a lot of them (from the 50s and 60s) the samurai were like US old west gunfighters. There was a duel and the battle was won by the person who could draw their weapon the fastest. But in a mass battle? Lots of different weapons in lots of different environments.
Oh...when I was in the SCA, I was running with a group of Landsknecht! Such fun. I still have my 66 inch Flamberge! It had a specific intended use to cut down pikes from behind the front row (IIRC). But a skilled warrior could use it to parry blows from a variety of weapons.
Remember the sword fights in ROB ROY? Such fun. Don't know how realistic they were, but they were fun.
Samurai, Pikemen, Landsknecht. It's like being in a CIVILIZATION chat.
GMT -5 8032:
Oh...when I was in the SCA, I was running with a group of Landsknecht!
Heh. I wasn't in the SCA, but I did hang out with a lot of them in college.
Later on, one of my old SCA friends invited my wife and me to his wedding, which was an SCA-type event at Ann Arbor, Michigan. My wife got into the spirit of the thing, dressing in a Robin Hood type outfit and bringing along her own bow and arrows.
P.S. The parents of the bride seemed a bit abashed, and we originally thought it was because they had no idea what such an event was going to be like. But it was probably due more to the fact that the couple's first child was born significantly less than nine months* later. :)
* My great-grandmother, born before the twentieth century, used to say, "Second babies take nine months. First babies sometimes come sooner."
Just a heads-up, ahead of time for once. We might soon be at 200 comments on this post, which will cause a second page. If you try posting and it just doesn't seem to show up, it's showing up on the next page.
Someone insisted that "tearing the tags off your mattress" was a frivolous example of government restricting citizen behavior give thr context.
Hmmm, would it make any difference if I pointed out it was classed as a felony? This means you will lose your right to vote in most states.
I’m told EARTH should be out by January…
Alfred is normally among the very most sensible. But there ARE rote catechisms that one reciutes – to be faithful to one’s roots. Like Taxation= Theft.
No, it is human. ALL tribes made demands upon their members, in exchange for protection and use of the commons. The other big one was levy labor and soldiering. And occasionally your 1st born for either temple service or sacrifice. And as the tribe enlarged, this could include harem duty for your daughters. The church and nobles were tax-free, of course. And yes, most of it BECAME theft…
But in principle, you are not an island. And when “consent of the governed became a core principle, became about who, what, where, when and how much… not whether.
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Very funny. You DO know "tearing the tags off your mattress" was meant for mattress SELLERS? It became such a harmless joke that they never changed the wording.
https://www.abc27.com/news/consumer/is-it-illegal-to-take-the-tags-off-of-mattresses/amp/
Very funny. You DO know "tearing the tags off your mattress" was meant for mattress SELLERS? It became such a harmless joke that they never changed the wording.
Really? That's what I get for relying on lists of ridiculous examples of government overreach floating around the internet.
How could such a source not be reliable? I guess you learn something new every day...at least if you hang out on CONTRARY BRIN (shameless plug so host doesn't decide I'm the resident Johnny Appleseed of misinformation).
Re: the game TRIBES
- ships only to US?
- is there a computer version?
- is there a discussion group? (gameplay, not Kickstarter)
- any other groups/chats/docs?
Thx Dr. Brin
Liberty is a worthy standard, but a free society would in short order be taken over by Wisefellas.
They are efficient; they can Eliminate the middleman.
John V seriously? Even a nany state has no reason to demand the final user keep a tag.
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