Wow my "Abortion is Murder" diary two weeks ago today really sparked some interest.
I mean, 250+ responses. Damn.
I had no idea it would do that. My main purpose was just to put my thoughts out there with all the hubbub over Alito and the anniversary of RVW. You can read the diary here, but to summarize, I expressed that I'm a Christian - a pierced, tattooed one - and one who supports Choice albeit unenthusiastically. I think preventing a life from being formed is wrong in the eyes of God, but on the other hand, we cannot, cannot, CAN-NOT let the Hypocritical Right overturn RVW. One, they don't care about unwanted children after their born, and two, it's a move to increase religion in the laws of the country.
I attracted tons of hate and support. Thanks to all the supporters but all the opposition as well. I actually felt wanted! Over the past 3 years the population here has expanded so much that a diary usually lasts less than an hour. And I've never been a big-time diairist - my last one was in September - and then I'm never a "Big Ideas" diarist full of DC wonkery like many of the more knowledgeable flock. So once again, I didn't really expect as much response as I got. I posted the diary and signed off and got criticized for not sticking around but like I said, I didn't expect to get that many responses and two, I was planning on getting responses to my diary from conservative web sites and posting the following week. Sorry about the delay but i've been busy.
I posted almost the same diary and got a weak weak WEAK response from "Cicero" before my sham account got deleted. Here's what he had to say. My questions and his responses are in italics. My response to his responses are in bold.
"It's wrong to kill a fetus, but on the other hand its OK to cut social programs that would benefit the poor women who mainly benefit from having choice."
I assume you are refering to Aid for Families with Dependent Children. The conservative response is two-fold. First, AFDC is ineffective. Second, AFDC creates preverse incentives (particularly the anti-father, anti-husband provisions) that results in making things worse. Now no one listened to us when these programs were instituted, but they have been around for almost forty years. Fot thirty years, they existed with constantly increasing expenditures. Yet in all that time the scourge of broken homes has increased in both number and severity of conditions. How much longer do we have to purse a failed policy? We conservatives don't oppose AFDC because we don't care about poor mothers. We oppose AFDC because we do care. It's time people realize that Government (particularly the Federal Government) is a failure at charity programs.
The Federal Government (under Bush) is also a failure at fighting wars, but I don't see you suggesting we end that.
"Abortion is murder, but its OK to cut medicare, food stamps, school lunch programs, etc., etc., while giving tax breaks to the rich."
Medicare and Medicaid are disasterous attempts by the federal Government to correct market failures that were created by other government regulations that date back all the way to WWII. Worst of all, these repeated government interventions have created dependencies.
"Dependencies" in GOPspeak meaning of course, "poor people that we would really rather ignore"
People's lives literally depend upon these government programs. However, at the same time these government programs distort the market so that many other people are seriously harmed, and even die- who would not die otherwise. Thus we have a situation were reform will literaly result in people dying, but not reforming the system will result in even more people dying. I am sure that you want to argue that we should find some way to save all the people- but we simply don't have enough wealth to provide all the care people need. Death comes to all men, and the most we can do is delay it for a little while. As an introduction to this issue, you might want to read M. Friedman, "How to cure Health Care," The Public Interest, Vol 142 Winter 2001.
Food Stamps are actually not a primary target of conservatives (so I am suspicious about where you are getting your info). Not that conservatives approve of Food Stamps, they are subject to fraud and corruption, and every conservative would like for people to move on from government dependency to financal independence. But food stamps are... less harmful than other government programs, so most of us view them as a potential "half-way" program to easy the pain of adjustment from government run charity to private charities.
School Lunch Programs are simply ineffective. Government resources are better spent improving the wellbeing of families, either through proper economic policies, or even through subsidies like food stamps (not a great program, but more effective than school lunches).
"Tax cuts for the rich"- this sounds like liberal talking points. Tell me, who are the rich? Why do they have less right to the fruit their labors than poor people? Do poor people have the right to steal from rich people, just because the rich people are richer?
Perhaps we should discuss specifics- such as the Reagan tax cuts- when the rich were paying over 70% in taxes! Tax rates were so high that the Laffer curve applied. ( http://www.redstate.com/... read this link for more info on the Laffer Curve.) Today the rich still pay more in taxes, not just in absolute terms, but they pay a higher precentage of their income! Because of this, any tax cut will result in a large portion going to "the rich". Furthermore, I am a supply-sider, which does not mean what is commonly believed. (Most people believes it refers only to the Laffer Curve). A supply sider is an economist who believes that wealth can be promoted by the government by influncing supply, rather than demand. The major source of increases in supply come from savings, not consumption. People save money and invest it. Governments spend money, (and usually waste it). So a supply sider generally supports lower government expenditures, lower taxes, and balanced budgets. This will lead to an increase in savings, and within a few years to an increase in wealth and living standards for everyone. However, this increase in wealth will generally start with the rich (because they have more money to save). This is why it is commonly refered to as "trickle down economics". People complain that it isn't fair. Maybe it isn't, but it is the only proven method of consistently increasing the wealth of a society, and thus the standard of living of the members of that society. Thus conservatives support tax cuts (or even better tax reform) to increase the absolute standard of living of the poor, even if that means an increase spread in relative standards of living between the rich and poor. (Furthermore, do you really think the liberals are getting all those donations from rich people and not giving them tax breaks? The difference is that the Democrats write special tax breaks that complicate the tax code and only benefit their friends. At least the Republicans cut taxes for everyone.)
I'll admit some belief in his economic ideas - but that line "an increase in wealth and lving standards for everyone" is a outright laugher. He does what all conservatives do - makes a sweeping generalization of economic ideas that can allegedly make sense in any era for a majority of the population. Utter crap.
"Abortion is murder, but its OK to vote pay raises in Congress and vote against raising the minimum wage while more families than ever join the ranks of the working poor. "
Conservatives are not in favor of pay rasies. (But both Democrats and Republicans do it. At least Newt Gingrich and the 1994 Republicans changed the law so that pay rasies won't take effect until after an election).
The minimum wage harms poor unskilled workers. Any economist worth his salt realizes this. The Minimum wage increase is a way of increasing the wages (which union contracts link to the minimum wage) and employment of skilled workers, while leading to unemployment for unskilled, minimum wage workers. If you really want to help unskilled workers there are two things that would be much more effective. First and best would be to fix our elementary and secondary education systems. The second best thing would be to eliminate the capital gains tax. (Counter intuitive? Perhaps, but the economic equations don't lie- Check an Macroeconomics text book if you don't believe me.)"
More garbarge. "Minimum wage harms poor unskilled workers" is another way of saying "the Wal-Mart guys won't be able to afford new Porsches this year." And "fix our elementary and secondary education systems"??? This from conservatives who are trying to destroy the education system?????
This guy has brass ones.
Abortion is murder, but its OK to be pro-death penalty, pro-hunting, and pro-war. "
Yes I am "pro-death penalty", and if you can't see the difference between Abortion and the death penalty then I begin to doubt your sincerity. Why do I support the death penalty? For deterence? No. For prevention? Not really. I support the death penalty because it is just and it is an enourmous injustice to allow these murderers to live. You want to quote the Bible at me? I can do it too. It is written: "Thou shalt not suffer a murderer to live." People today have no respect for true justice. They try and claim that justice is some Rawlian form of fairness. That is not justice. Justice is the punishment of the guilty, and the protection of the innocent. Our "Justice" system today doesn't do either! A good start would be to impose the death penalty on all murders, not just "heinous" ones- and castrastion for rapists, (not chemical, the real thing!) Then maybe we wouldn't have to be scared of criminals all the time.
That said, I am appreciative of the concerns over making a mistake with the death penalty. I am open to suggestions of requiring a higher standard of proof. Under the law of Moses, a death penalty conviction required two witnesses who agreed, not just one. I would agree to some form of instruction to the jury to after determining guilty to disregard what they consider the major piece of evidence and only implementing the death penalty if the jury would still find him guilty. (So as you can see, I'm not a total barbarian.)
"Pro-hunting"? What's wrong with that? Are you really morally comparing hunting to Abortion?!?! Are you a vegetarian? Are you going to force everyone to be a vegetarian?
I see no problem with being anti-Abortion but pro-War (if you mean the current war). I don't want war, what sane person would? But we would not go and kill our brothers if they would leave us alone. They came to our homes and killed our wives, our husbands, brothers, and sisters. Maybe you don't think this is a defensive war, but I do. So do many Americans. While we may disagree on the issue, I hope you will acquit me of hypocrisy.
Here I should have been more clear and referred specifically to GWB and his "Culture of Life". Also the guy does make allowances the the Justice system is not perfect.
"Abortion is murder, but its the woes of those with dark skin in the Baltimores, Detroits, and Atlantas, with triple digit murder rates hardly rate a mention."
Do liberals even care about the murder rates? Conservatives talk about these murder rates all the time! It's one of the reasons we support the death penalty. In fact, we see these murder rates as a direct result of the past forty years of mismanagement by Democrat party, and the implementation of liberal policies. Who cleaned up New York? Not a Democrat- it was a Republican. We are the ones who are concerned deeply about this issue and want to correct it. We just seem have a hard time convincing urbanites to give us chance.
Total Contradiction!! He just said above that he doesn't believe the death penalty is a deterrence! Now he says crime "is one of the reasons we support the death penalty" What a douche! And yes, Rudy put more cops on the streets but so did, um, who was that guy...oh yeah, BILL CLINTON.
"I don't appreciate abortion, but I will not deny a simple fact: it is inevitable in this society. People drank liquor before, during and after Prohibition. If RVW is overturned tomorrow, people will still be having unprotected sex, women will get pregnancies they don't want and abortions will still be performed. "
Yes- and murders still occur, even though murder is illegal. Maybe we should legalize murder. We don't even have to get that extreme. Why don't we just remove the speed limits? So many people break them any ways, why bother? We should expend police resources on more important things like catching drug dealers. (Please note that all the previous suggestions are satire.)
If you really believe that Abortion is murder- Then I would think it would be a higher priority than some of these other issues.
Actually, I'm a big believer in legalizing certain things that are permanent fixtures legal or not. Drugs. Legalize them. Prostitution. Legalize it. That way, police resources could be REALLY be focused on more important things.
"They should spend energy lobbying THEIR president for greater access to universal health care, day care subsidies and assurances of affordable housing"
I don't want the government running the Health Care system. Do you?"
Not really. But I also don't want them trying to take over oil-rich countries in the name of Halliburton. But I'm stuck with that aren't I?
That is what universal health care means. It means a faceless bureaucrat will decide what health care we can get and when we get it. I don't want that. Things are better for me now. (And don't tell me I don't understand this issue- I have a serious life threatning illness- but my insurance used a loophole to end my coverage and now I can't get any new coverage for a pre-existing condition- so I have to pay for everything out of pocket. So don't say I don't understand. I am still better off than if the government ran everything.)
Conservatives oppose day-care subsidies because it discriminates against stay at home mothers. We feel that it is better for a child to be raised by parents instead of strangers. In the 1920's the Womens Movement was instrumental in increasing wages so that a single wage could provide for an entire family so that women didn't have to work. (Many women worked outside the home in the 1920's, the 1950's were not the way things always were in America). We should focus on the same thing today- improve economic conditions so that a mother doesn't have to work. Or if she wants to work, her job should pay her enough to afford day care.
But you just said you oppose raising the minimum...wage..!
arrggh...head...hurts...arguing...with...conservatives...like trying...to...swallow...grapefruit...whole...
We should give women the flexibility to make a choice- not tell them that the government will only help if they send their kids to day care. (!!! Women getting CHOICE??Good Lord!)
Housing isn't affordable because todays regulations make it expensive to build houses. Furthermore, cities and counties are guilty of using zoning laws to force residental areas out of the areas they are wanted, and replacing them with business zones. Why? Because businesses provide higher tax revenue than affordable housing. The main problems with housing are at a city level, and the federal government can't do anything about it. I might also point out that places with affordable housing issues, are almost all run by liberals, and the problems are almost always caused by preverse incentives created by the government.
Since I posted this diary of course, Ford announced mass layoffs due, largely in fact to the proliferation of health care costs that it can't afford any longer. Soon, as Al Franken stated this week, you're going to see businesses begging the Feddy Gov to stick their noses into the health care. And if he really does have a life-threating illness, and his insurance got cancelled, then he should be at the forefront of a movement to change things. (Unless he's willing to go to his grave - literally - to prove a point. In that case he's not a hypocrite, just really, really stupid)
And while he's right that the state and county level should be the ones dealing with affordable housing, they're doing a good enough job, so maybe - MAYBE - the gov should be sticking their noses in it.
Because these "questions" you have are typical liberal talking points I am going to post this response as a diary, so that it can be easily found by others with the same questions.
http://cicero.redstate.com/...
I hope this point by point explanation will be helpful to you. I have one last thing to say. A common theme of your questions appears to be the assumption that conservatives don't care. This is a dreadful calumny. We care very deeply. Too deeply to accept the pladitudes of liberalism while the condition of the poor in our country steadly worsens. I find myself very resentful of Democrats, usually people born in wealth, who know nothing of poverty, claiming to be the people who care.
I have lived among the poor. I ate at their dinner tables. I played with their children. Sat in their homes and talked with them about their troubles. I've climbed on roofs to patch holes. I've dug ditches for electrical lines. I've seen mothers desperately trying to hold their families together. Grandmothers trying to care for grandchildren, when their daughters are drug addicts. I've been stoned by mobs of truant children. I've cut lawns, fixed doors, and been a freelance secret Santa. How dare you people accuse me of not caring just because I don't vote the way you want. How dare you claim that because I don't think your policies work that I am unfeeling about the plight of the poor. I care very deeply. That is why I oppose liberalism so fiercely. Stop calling conservatives evil just because we disagree."
At least he actually engaged me instead of just calling me a lib asshole like everyone else at RS did. But all he did was offer clinical GOP responses. What I was talking about was exposing the sham that is the GOP's "Family Values" and "Culture of Life" bushwah and he didn't go near that. And he contradicted himself about fifty times in his responses. And of course another sweeping generalization about Democrats "mostly being born into wealth" and all those other Rush/Coulter/Hannity talking points.
I still believe abortion is wrong - but unlike Dobson, Robertson and the rest, I cannot judge others when I have not walked in their shoes. I am concerned with the women (and men) who make the choice. Very few of them, I would imagine, make the choice easily or blithely, and, to state again, I would want to see a religious outreach to them rather than the burning down of clinics. God can forgive killing anyone. But the constant politicizing of His Name is something he has a harder time with, (even though He predicted it would happen), and that's what the Anti-Choice movement has turned into.
There is no perfect solution to this topic. I am convinced though, that, with things as they are, having choice in this country is far, far preferable to the alternative.
And in particular to everyone at DKos, troll me if you want, but my main purpose in this diary and the other one is to present a minority POV that I believe is necessary if we're going to engage the opposition and not just yell at them. Flame me if you will, but the battle is just starting. And regaining support in the south means we have to come to terms with talking about abortion in a meaningful way that doesn't just get into legalese but in ways that talk about the human condition.
Thanks for listening. Now it's my turn. Go ahead and beat me up.