[Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right

[John W.]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Brussel Morton K.
<mkbrussel at comcast.net>wrote:

A little ad hominem I would say. Is that too academic?  --mkb
>

Well, it IS in Latin, which hasn't been spoken outside of the Catholic
Church and the ivied halls in many centuries.

I meant no harm, sir.  Mea culpa.




> On Jan 25, 2009, at 4:45 PM, John W. wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>wrote:
>
> Indeed, I wish and recommend that discussions of God's immanence, how "we"
>> are a Christian country, and why women's ability to decide their own lives
>> should be forbidden are inappropriate for a peace-discuss list. (I wouldn't
>> recommend Nazi propaganda on the list either, but I suppose to some that
>> would be bigoted.)  --mkb
>
>
> You must have spent a great deal of time in academia, Mort, with its nice
> neat little separate "departments" and classification schemata.  :-)  To me
> we're all just discussing "life" in its various facets and permutations,
> with our quirky individual personalities added into the mix.  If there's a
> topic that you find uninteresting or abhorrent  (I have one or two myself),
> just delete that particular message or message thread and move on.  I fail
> to see the problem.
>
> I'll also add here, completely parenthetically, that I particularly
> appreciate the comments of Ricky Baldwin and Dave Johnson precisely because
> they are relatively non-academic.  These are guys who have lived life out in
> the big, rough, brawling, messy Real World (as I have), and somehow they
> usually manage to see the forest for the trees.
>
> John Wason
>
>
>
>
>> On Jan 25, 2009, at 3:15 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>  This is an assertion of settled religious prejudice, joined to the
>>> anti-liberal view that people who disagree with such bigotry should just
>>> shut up.
>>>
>>>
>>> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>>
>>
>>>  A fine discussion, Ricky, but I for one am less forgiving of the
>>>> religious fundamentalism-ideology that largely supports the
>>>> anti-abortion/anti-contraception/anti-sex education/anti-women's rights
>>>> movement in the USA, and those who now speak up for it on this listserve.
>>>> They are beyond convincing because of their "faith".  I can understand that
>>>> you may not want to get into a discussion of the myths , religiously
>>>> inspired, that form a basis of this movement, a movement largely of willful
>>>> ignorance and lack off empathy for many woman's problems when confronted
>>>> with a pregnancy. They have unreasoning empathy only for the myth of the
>>>> humanity of a sperm which happens, divinely, to meet an egg. --Mort
>>>> I admired your remark: " the values of libertarianism require also the
>>>> values of socialism to be logically and humanly consistent", although I
>>>> think that the libertarianism of Wayne et al. are contradictory to broader
>>>> social(ist) values and responsibilities. And I agree with others that this
>>>> kind of fundamentalism has no useful place on this list.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>> On Jan 25, 2009, at 2:11 PM, Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>  Wayne,
>>>>>
>>>>> I appreciate your concern, as always, for the downtrodden, but I'm
>>>>> afraid it's misapplied here.  Many people I agree with on most issues would
>>>>> dismiss yours and others' anti-abortion views as another example of your
>>>>> religious blinders; I don't.  My guess is that you are both as sincere and
>>>>> as misguided and the many good humanitarians who supported, e.g. the US
>>>>> attacks in Kosovo (to save the ethnic Albanians from Serbian aggression) or
>>>>> the US conquest of the Philippines (to save the locals from Spanish tyranny,
>>>>> etc.) or the British conquest of India (to rid the Indians of superstition
>>>>> and slavery, etc.).
>>>>>
>>>>> But for starters, I think you will have to admit that the ethical
>>>>> question of abortion rights has little to do with Margaret Sanger's infamous
>>>>> Social Darwinism (which is anyway not quite the way her later critics
>>>>> portray it, it seems to me), any more than your own Christian views are
>>>>> questionable in light of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the European
>>>>> 'civilizing' campaigns that masscred millions of indigenous people on one
>>>>> continent after another, or the many other Christian atrocities against the
>>>>> poor and downtrodden of the world.
>>>>> The question of whether abortion is a form of racism, or class
>>>>> oppression, is more complex in some ways, though actually very simple if
>>>>> looked at rightly, I'd argue.  True, abortion has been visited on the poor
>>>>> and people of color in this country and others as an oppressive campaign at
>>>>> times.  We can go further: forced abortions and forced sterilizations have
>>>>> been practised as genocide for at least generations.  Less overtly public
>>>>> welfare policies have targetted oppressed groups in many ways from the days
>>>>> of workhouses, -- up to and including reproductive policies my fellow NOW
>>>>> organizers and I encountered (as an example) in Mississippi in the 1990s
>>>>> whereby the locally administered Medicaid program would pay for poor  women
>>>>> to have subdermal contraceptive Norplant insertions BUT NOT pay to have them
>>>>> removed, regardless of the woman's wishes or even of the side-effects or
>>>>> allergic reactions, which were not uncommon.
>>>>>
>>>>> It may surprise some honest abortion-foes to learn that NOW fought such
>>>>> policies vehemently, by the way.  The reasoning is relevant here.  NOW and
>>>>> other wrongly described "pro-abortion" groups currently working in the US
>>>>> support a basic principle that simplifies the whole issue: the individual
>>>>> liberty, autonomy, freedom, however you want to describe it, of a woman as
>>>>> well as a man to decide what happens to her physically, sexually, and in
>>>>> particular in terms of being pregnant or not.  As such it is the most
>>>>> fundamental libertarian political right.
>>>>>
>>>>> Critics of the "pro-choice" movement rightly point out that such
>>>>> decisions, often difficult enough in themselves, do not happen in an
>>>>> economic vacuum - and so are not truly "free" choices.  Women and their
>>>>> families or support networks (spouses, partners, siblings, parents, close
>>>>> friends) must at times make tough decisions based on economic realities not
>>>>> of their own choosing.  Nowadays there are convincing statistical arguments
>>>>> that women overall have very nearly caught up with men in terms of earning
>>>>> power, and the biggest difference that lingers is that when women hit their
>>>>> child-bearing years they fall behind and usually never catch up again.  Of
>>>>> course some men encounter the same problem, but overall it is women.  For
>>>>> these and many other reasons (oppressive parents, drug-use, birth defects)
>>>>> abortion is not always a "free" choice any more than a large family has been
>>>>> a real choice for billions of women for thousands of years - they do it in
>>>>> part because their choices are severely constrained.  This is not the only
>>>>> reason to support abortion rights of course.  The basic argument for the
>>>>> right is an argument for human dignity and autonomy, as I've said.  But this
>>>>> is the economic context that can't be ignored.
>>>>>
>>>>> So publicly-funded childcare, maternity and paternity leave and other
>>>>> employment considerations, free access to birth control and family planning
>>>>> services, rational sex education, and free abortion on demand are and must
>>>>> be all part of a comprehensive program of human rights that includes women
>>>>> as valued equal members of society and not second-class citizens.  It is
>>>>> part of why I believe the values of libertarianism require also the values
>>>>> of socialism to be logically and humanly consistent.  It is why
>>>>> conservatives who want to say they support women's rights and oppose racism
>>>>> and oppression must pick and choose which freedoms they support, which
>>>>> pieces of the overall reality they bring into their arguement.  And it's why
>>>>> liberals who want to support abortion rights are not always allies in the
>>>>> struggle for women's rights, but their programs do sometimes coincide.
>>>>>
>>>>> Obama's move against the vicious "Mexico City" policy is progress,
>>>>> toward allowing poor women and families in communities whose livelihoods we
>>>>> have wrecked to at least find some maneuvering room in that disaster.
>>>>>  Reagan's and both Bushes' policy of limiting the options of the global
>>>>> poor, often our own victims, is oppression on top of oppression; lifting
>>>>> that ban is at least mild relief.  It isn't enough, but it is a step in the
>>>>> right direction.
>>>>> Ricky
>>>>>
>>>>> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>>>>
>>>>
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