[Peace-discuss] Identity politics

E. Wayne Johnson ewj at pigs.ag
Mon Aug 6 20:42:58 UTC 2018 

Quickening is a "old wives tale" notion that the baby comes to life when 
the first kick is felt.

Quicken is an old English word that means to give life.

The quick and the dead.   Ecce homo.  He was cut to the quick.

The zygote may be sessile but is certainly quick in the sense that there 
is life in it.

Even bacteria have only once cell but they respond to stimuli and have
genes that can be turned on and off and display a sort of intelligence and
irritability.  They are quick.  Fast, too.

It is impossible to make a coherent biological argument in favour of 
killing the
human life form that results from conception.

A reasonable society constructs a system for directing and supporting 
conception and its results.
There is indeed something holy about it.  The sanctity of life.

The matter of the sanctity of life transcends the right of a woman over 
her body.
There is no such thing as the right of a woman to kill her child before 
or after birth
because she would violate the unalienable rights of another human (be-ing).

Punishment?
Mercy and understanding and healing rejoice against judgment.

There is a difference between accidentally backing over the neighbor's 
dog and
corralling all the strays in the neighborhood and dispatching them on the
pavement with a steamroller, George Tiller-style.

Still it's no reason to set up a the moral equivalent of a
sausage grinder at the edge of town for
the disposal of society's non-eugenic culls.
How mulch do you care?
What does pain have to do with it at all?

Dred Scott vs Sanford.  There's established case law for ya.

Dehumanization of the victim.

Job (Jobab) lamented cynically that he would have been better
off if his mama had kept her knees closer together for his contraception.
It turned out that he was not right about that after all.

C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote:
> And I dispute the claim that my granddaughter was not a human being a 
> month (or two, or three…) before she was born.
>
> So we’re debating when this magical transition to humanness occurs 
> (‘quickening," e.g.)? The ability to feel pain?
>
> But there is one point when the transition to humanness occurs, and 
> it’s not magical but quite natural: conception.
>
>
>
>> On Aug 6, 2018, at 9:41 AM, Robert Naiman 
>> <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org <mailto:naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>> 
>> wrote:
>>
>> I dispute the claim that a fertilized human egg is a human being at 
>> the moment of conception.
>> Do you eat meat and cheese? Do you drink milk?
>>
>> Which do you think has a greater capacity to experience pain: a cow 
>> or a zygote?
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 9:29 AM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss 
>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
>> <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     There is more to be said about identity politics - among other
>>     things, it’s a cover for neoliberalism - but your
>>     incontrovertible first line recalls other recent discussions on
>>     this list.
>>
>>     To paraphrase -  “Unborn children are human beings, aren't they?
>>     Does anyone here dispute that unborn children are human beings?”
>>
>>     —CGE
>>
>>
>>>     On Aug 6, 2018, at 5:59 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss
>>>     <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>>     <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Gay people are human beings, aren't they? Does anyone here
>>>     dispute that gay people are human beings?
>>>
>>>     If gay people are human beings, and if human beings have rights,
>>>     then gay people have rights, by virtue of the fact that they are
>>>     human beings.
>>>
>>>     If we claim that our society is based, among other things, on
>>>     "Equal justice under law" - this phrase is engraved on the front
>>>     of the United States Supreme Court
>>>     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_justice_under_law> - then
>>>     if "straight" people have the right to get married to each other
>>>     and derive legal benefits from that, gay people also have that
>>>     right.
>>>
>>>     If a gay person, or if a straight person who believes that gay
>>>     people have equal rights by virtue of the fact that they are
>>>     human beings, advocates that a politician defend the rights of
>>>     gay people to marry, that person is only doing what we would
>>>     normally expect people to do in a society which claims to
>>>     practice "equal justice under law."
>>>
>>>     I have come to strongly dislike the phrase "identity politics."
>>>     It seems to me to conflate two very different things. One is:
>>>     advocating for the equal rights and equal participation of
>>>     people who have been excluded from rights and participation
>>>     based on identity characteristics. And the other is: doing that
>>>     at the expense of advocating for economic justice; putting
>>>     identity politics at the top of the marquee, to the exclusion of
>>>     highlighting economic justice demands.
>>>
>>>     There's no intrinsic reason why identity politics in the first
>>>     sense has to be in existential conflict with advocacy for
>>>     economic justice. Indeed, it seems to me that one of the
>>>     historic tasks of the Left has always been to integrate the
>>>     defense of identity rights into an economic justice framework,
>>>     so that these things will be perceived to be complementary, not
>>>     contradictory. The world in which I want to live is one in which
>>>     gay people, even gay people who are not workers, defend the
>>>     right of workers to organize, both because it is ethically right
>>>     and because they correctly see the organization of unions as an
>>>     important way that gay people defend their rights, because
>>>     unions are defending the right of gay workers to be gay.
>>>
>>>     Rabbi Hillel said:
>>>
>>>     "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
>>>
>>>     If I am only for myself, what am I?
>>>
>>>     If not now, when?"
>>>
>>>     On Sun, Aug 5, 2018 at 8:35 PM, e. wayne johnson via
>>>     Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>>     <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>         It is interesting how RT is so often the voice of truth
>>>         crying in the wilderness.
>>>
>>>         It is also interesting that some of the "identities" are
>>>         actually
>>>         mental illnesses and psychopathologies.
>>>         The Canadian Alphabet soup LGBTQRTS123ZOMFGWTF
>>>         is the ridiculous extreme that some of these cultural fads
>>>         have to go to before people get weary of them.
>>>
>>>         It is also interesting that what  can be dismissed as simple
>>>         fad can have such
>>>         far  reaching  negative consequences.
>>>
>>>         Fags really do doom nations.
>>>
>>>
>>>         >  -------Original Message-------
>>>         >  From: Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss
>>>         <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>>         <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>>
>>>         >  To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net
>>>         <mailto:peace-discuss at anti-war.net>>
>>>         >  Cc: Brussel, Morton K <brussel at illinois.edu
>>>         <mailto:brussel at illinois.edu>>
>>>         >  Subject: [Peace-discuss] Identity politics
>>>         >  Sent: Aug 06 '18 02:31
>>>         >
>>>         >  I fond this a stong analysis, although perhaps the author
>>>         >  overemphasizes the political disorientation of those
>>>         >  promulgating/doing identity politics.
>>>         >
>>>         >  _HOW IDENTITY POLITICS MAKES THE LEFT LOSE ITS COLLECTIVE
>>>         IDENTITY_
>>>         >
>>>         >
>>>         HTTPS://WWW.RT.COM/OP-ED/434924-LEFT-POLICY-IDENTITY-DIVIDED/
>>>         <https://www.rt.com/OP-ED/434924-LEFT-POLICY-IDENTITY-DIVIDED/>
>>>         >
>>>         > -------------------------
>>>         > _______________________________________________
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>>>         >
>>>
>>
>>
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>
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>
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