[Peace-discuss] When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?

[Morton K. Brussel]

À bas les gens progressifs!

Down with government managed health care!

  I have no idea who your guy(?) is, but I don't think much of the  
drivel he(?) writes here.

--mkb

On Aug 24, 2009, at 12:55 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> Ah, yes, the great mass of progressives...
>
> And what's the price of admission to that unnumbered throng?   
> Unquestioning fealty to the assertion that theological thinking is  
> irrational?
>
> Uh, if you're considering broadening the membership requirements at  
> all, you might like the new book by the Marxist critic Terry  
> Eagleton, "Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God  
> Debate" (The 2008 Terry Lectures -- delivered at, of all places,  
> Yale).
>
> +++
>
> And now, for Today's Prize (to be announced along with the winner),  
> name the Former Progressive -- now, sadly, apparently no longer a  
> member of the Great Mass -- who recently wrote the following (no  
> googling!):
>
>  "But what is a conservative meant to think? Since the major  
> preoccupation of liberals for 30 years has been the right to kill  
> embryos, why should they not be suspect in their intentions toward  
> those gasping in the thin air of senility? There is a strong eugenic  
> thread to American progressivism, most horribly expressed in its  
> very successful campaign across much of the twentieth century to  
> sterilize “imbeciles.” Abortion is now widening in its function as a  
> eugenic device. Women in their 40s take fertility drugs, then abort  
> the inconvenient twins, triplets or quadruplets when they show up on  
> the scan.
>
>  "In 1972, a year before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision  
> legalized abortion on demand nationwide, virtually all children with  
> trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, were born. Less than a decade later,  
> with the widespread availability of pre-natal genetic testing, as  
> many as 90 percent of women whose babies were pre-natally diagnosed  
> with the genetic condition chose to abort the child.
>
>  "One survey of 499 primary care physicians treating women carrying  
> these babies, however, indicated that only 4 percent actively  
> encourage women to bring Down syndrome babies to term. A story on  
> the CNS News Service last year quoted Dr. Will Johnston, president  
> of Canadian Physicians for Life, reacted to the American College of  
> Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) pre-natal testing endorsement  
> as another step toward eugenics.“The progress of eugenic abortion  
> into the heart of our society is a classic example of “mission  
> creep,’ ” Johnson said. “In the 1960s, we were told that legal  
> abortion would be a rare tragic act in cases of exceptional  
> hardship. In the ’70s abortion began to be both decried and accepted  
> as birth control. In the ’80s respected geneticists pointed out that  
> it was cheaper to hunt for and abort Down’s babies than to raise  
> them. By the ’90s that observation had been widely put into action.  
> Now we are refining and extending our eugenic vision, with new tests  
> and abortion as our central tools.”
>
>  "So if we have mission creep  in the opening round, what’s to  
> persuade people that there won’t be mission creep at the other and  
> the kindly official discussing living wills won’t tiptoe out of the  
> ward and tell the hospital that the old fellow he’s just conferred  
> with is ripe to meet his maker. The author of the provision – now  
> dropped – in the health bill before Congress – for  “end of life”  
> counseling was Democratic Rep Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Blumenauer  
> has denounced the “death panel” description as a  “terrible  
> falsehood.” Maybe so. But Blumenauer is hot for “death with  
> dignity”, as a speech he made in Congress in 2000 makes clear: “A  
> major concern [in an attempted revision of the Balanced Budget  
> Act]is a provision that would criminalize decisions doctors make on  
> pain management for the most seriously ill and overturn Oregon's  
> Death with Dignity Act. Oregonians have twice voted to support the  
> assisted suicide law. H.R. 2614 not only is an attack on the  
> Democratic process, but also threatens to pain management. There is  
> evidence that doctors are increasingly hesitant to prescribe pain  
> medications to terminally ill patients for fear of being accused of  
> unlawfully assisting a suicide. The on-going attempts by Congress to  
> criminalize the doctor-patient relationship are a threat to pain  
> management in all fifty states.”
>
>  "For forty years, every American president has deprecated the  
> powers of government to improve the public weal. Why now should  
> Americans believe that any government-backed “health reform” will do  
> them any good, as opposed to assigning them the appropriate  
> lifespan, relative to their income and contributions to the  
> corporate bottom line, which is what the present system amounts to?"
>
> --CGE (who likes the title of this thread)
>
>
> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>> This statement is what makes it so difficult to strengthen the anti- 
>> war movement.
>> Wayne's (and others') ideas about abortion and what the state  
>> should or should not do about it will never be accepted by a great  
>> mass of progressives. It's one of the destructive/divisive aspects  
>> of theological,
>> i.e., irrational, thinking. --mkb
>> On Aug 24, 2009, at 11:52 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>>> It's pretty hard to imagine that one ought to trust the beneficent
>>> benevolent care of the poor to a coercive government that promotes  
>>> and
>>> funds abortion, imperialism, endless war, corporate malfeasance, and
>>> financial fraud.
>>> The new covenant message is that people would be internally  
>>> motivated to
>>> care for one another.  It's been effective where people dare to  
>>> apply it.
>
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