Despite economic anxiety, social issues keep some areas blue
In quoting Salena Zito’s post on why Wisconsin is in play, Ann Althouse offers an insight into why some Americans continue to support the president despite the down economy:
At first, Jeff Millard was undecided about who to vote for in November.
“I am not particularly happy with Obama,” the retired auto-parts storeowner said of the man he supported in 2008.
His wife, walking beside him on the Military Ridge state trail, overheard him voicing doubt. She let him know it was not an option.
“What about my reproductive rights?” she asked, clearly upset. “No, we are voting for Obama!”
“How old”, Althouse asks, “does a woman have to be before she stops thinking first and above all about her reproductive rights?”
It does seem that when it comes to politics, a good number of people, when learning you’re a Republican, insist on talking about abortion (or, as the woman cited above puts it, “reproductive rights”). For those individuals, it seems, that social issue is the only issue that matters. And for others, another social issue dominates their discourse.
It helps explain although entrepreneurs in this town (Los Angeles — and I’m sure others) complain about state, local and federal regulation making it more challenging for them to run their enterprises, they continue to vote for — and sometimes even support financially — Democrats.
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[...] Despite economic anxiety, social issues keep some areas blue [...]
Pingback by GayPatriot » Wake up, LA! Obama’s policies aren’t helping* — September 24, 2012 @ 3:07 am - September 24, 2012
And exactly how would Republicans by infringing on her ‘reproductive rights,’ beyond, perhaps, insisting that paying for her birth control was her own responsibility?
Comment by V the K — September 24, 2012 @ 5:58 am - September 24, 2012
First of all, that’s a straw man.
Second of all, the progress and elevation of women in our society is directly tied to the protection of reproductive rights, so the abrogation of those reproductive rights translates more or less into a call for stopping the elevation of empowerment of women in our society. Women have been subjugated for most of human history because they weren’t allowed to make their own choices about reproduction. Women being allowed to divorce was an important step in giving them some control over their reproduction. The Industrial Revolution permitted the Demographic Transition which meant women started having 2 or 3 babies instead of 8 or 9. Women earned the right to vote, making them a constituency for the first time and giving them some say in decisions that had always been made for them. The invention of effective, reliable birth control had enormous benefits, and legalized, safe abortion meant that women didn’t have to take their lives into their own hands if they wanted to control their own reproduction. In the aggregate, this stuff adds up to women going to college and women owning businesses and women holding political office and women not being discriminated against and women getting fair(er) pay (still have a way to go here).
So efforts to roll back all these innovations that have had massive and enduring positive consequences for all women are efforts to undermine that progress. When an institution like the Catholic Church throws a fit about having to cover contraceptives for women, we should remember that they were more than a little responsible for the aforementioned subjugation of women for the past few centuries. Organizations like this need to be pushed to the margins and dismissed, not catered to and given special privilege. Abortion is a piece of this, too. Tragic though it may be, it’s at least safe now, and women aren’t forced to do anything drastic or dangerous if they don’t feel like being forced by their community to carry to term. In the right context, abortion could be virtually eradicated by a better healthcare system, yet another innovation that gives women more control over their reproduction.
Regardless of whether Ann Althouse and the Gay Patriots can recognize the connection between reproductive rights and female empowerment, many people do, and that’s why the Republican Party is automatically disqualified by many people and the perennial loser in winning female voters. It also completely undermines much of the conservative platform about independence and self-determination and government interference in people’s private lives. What could be more private than sex and having babies? Yet – here come the conservatives to tell you what you must do.
Dan, even though you don’t spell it out, I assume you bring this up because you think Republicans would do a lot better if they dropped the social issues. While it’s true that there are undoubtedly some fiscal conservatives who are driven away by the social stuff, you can’t pretend like the religious right isn’t a huge influence on the modern incarnation of the GOP. Republicans are nothing if they aren’t savvy campaigners and election strategizers, and I’m sure that if could get the math to work they would drop it. But I think they know that abandoning social issues like gay marriage and abortion would mean a revolt of the religious wing of the party. Social issues generate a lot of turnout and enthusiasm for the GOP, and sacrificing that in the hopes that it would be worth it is risky to say the least.
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 9:30 am - September 24, 2012
AKA, Levi can’t answer the question, so he bloviates on something else.
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 24, 2012 @ 9:58 am - September 24, 2012
Have you noticed the peculiar way in which such issues get labeled? They aren’t really concerned with their “reproductive rights” – no-one is telling them that they cannot reproduce. Instead, what they object to is someone lessening their “right” to murder children for any perceived reason they can think of right up to the moment of birth.
Comment by SailorMan — September 24, 2012 @ 10:29 am - September 24, 2012
People aren’t concerned about reproductive rights because people are telling them they can’t reproduce. The concern is that women would be told that they must reproduce against their will. There are a multitude of reasons why a woman wouldn’t want to be forced to become a parent, none of which include a desire to murder children.
But accusing people that disagree with you of being murderers is what this social issue is really all about, isn’t it? The GOP recognizes the benefits of associating their political opponents with child murderers. And it spreads from this issue as well – what ideological or intellectual credibility could a group of child murderers have to speak about healthcare or the environment or wars or anything at all? The political impetus for Republicans opposing abortion is to allow their constituents to hate Democrats and liberals completely, so that they’re willing to believe anything negative that’s said about them, i.e., they don’t support the troops, they want the government to force people to do things, Barack Obama is a Muslim and a foreigner. This is an old political trick that people have used to prevent their constituencies from hearing anything at all from the other side – the religious used this tactic effectively against freethinkers, heretics, and witches for thousands of years (I’ve been told by complete strangers when reading Hitchens or Dawkins in public that these books are “pretty dangerous stuff.”)
That’s why the Republicans won’t give up the opposition to abortion, that’s why they can’t get it up. It’s a handy shortcut for having to defend your arguments and to present coherent criticisms to your opponents’ – all they have to do is remind their base that these guys are the child murderers and they can move on. Never mind that liberal policies to improve education and provide more comprehensive healthcare to millions of uninsured people would dramatically reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus prevent millions of abortions – liberals are child murderers!
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 11:27 am - September 24, 2012
@SailorMan
Unfortunately yes, it does come down to “I want someone else to pay for my actions.”
No one is talking about the ‘Big three’ being removed. What Sandra Fluke
testifiedlied aboutbefore congressin a choreographed show was women who need contraceptives to treat health issues (which the school covered) and that they didn’t cover it for recreational purposes.If a couple are going to frak, it’s their responsibility to reduce their risks (since they can’t be eliminated). Even then, if a child is conceived, then you take responsibility for your (consentual) actions. If you aren’t willing to do either, then keep your pants zipped. QED.
What the Levi’s of the world want, is to have gratification without cost, because that cost is being bourn (pun intended) by someone else. If people have to die so he doesn’t face the consequences, that’s fine by him.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 24, 2012 @ 11:37 am - September 24, 2012
More cutting-and-pasting by our resident tool. This is getting tiresome.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — September 24, 2012 @ 11:43 am - September 24, 2012
Ah, I see our little fascist posted more prattle.
Don’t be so shy Levi. We’re not accusing you of being a murderer.
We’re just taking you at your own word.
“Better than kill a child, then let the mom deal with the consequences of her actions.” – Levi.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 24, 2012 @ 11:45 am - September 24, 2012
This is classic. The husband has traded his intelligence for obedience to his wife who has henpecked him into her agenda and intends to enforce her will upon him.
The “husband” has lost her respect. After all, why should a wife respect a mouse of a man? So, when he offers some contemplation, she reigns him in and smacks him down.
The Arabs have a proverb about being either a rabbit or a defeated lion. The point is, this woman has put her ovaries on a pedestal and more or less left her husband to play by her rules or go out on the market and handle sex according to his whims and testosterone. A marriage it ain’t.
There are a vast varieties of ways to have connubial bliss without making an overbearing political statement of the whole primitive response to natural callings.
Typically, Levi sees things from the vantage point of rectal-cranial inversion.
To the classic feminist, men, you see, are all rapists at heart and they sew their wild oats hither and yon, but eventually, they take a sex slave to cook and sew and breed progeny. We all know the drill.
Of course, from out of this tale of liberal woe we discover the “emancipated” woman who creates her own chastity belt and unlocks it on her terms and her terms alone. Now, if all women were like this, the men would have acted like the Romans abducting the Sabine women and beat them into submission a long time ago.
But not all women are liberal fruitcakes who think through their ovaries. So, men don’t have to deal with feminists gone whacko unless they care to. However, “politics makes strange bed fellows” and it follows that certain wimps and progressive males would kneel at the alter of sexual feminism and take the henpecking.
Marriage has always been a battle between the sexes. Men have decided to be loyal, monogamous, protective, thoughtful, concerned, and whatever. That is the “price” for bliss. Women have learned to please men in exchange for……. That is the “price” for her bliss. But the habit of marriage is not being at all involved in measuring “cost” or “price” of differences. The habit, is based on love, not hate.
A woman who hates who she is in society is not about to be a happy spouse. Best that her “man” takes his pants off and jumps when told to jump.
So, the woman ordering the man to vote according to her reproductive rights is not really a wife or even a woman. She is just establishing her price for vaginal entry. Politics. That is all it is. She has reduced herself to the sum of one small body cavity. She is a walking, talking, babbling vagina.
Comment by heliotrope — September 24, 2012 @ 11:45 am - September 24, 2012
Levi provides yet more proof, as if we needed it, that liberalism really ISN’T about solutions. It’s about avoiding consequences.
Comment by Bastiat Fan — September 24, 2012 @ 12:42 pm - September 24, 2012
More to the point, Bastiat, liberalism is about forcing other people to pay for your bad decisions.
Comment by V the K — September 24, 2012 @ 12:58 pm - September 24, 2012
Spoken like an old man clinging to his misogynistic religion and aching for false nostalgia. I get it – you hate feminism, and pro-choice women are beneath your contempt. Not surprising given the female-hating morality which informs your beliefs. I suppose you heed the Bible’s warning about avoiding menstruating women? Surely this little bit of divine insight, along with the proclamation that women were created for the sole purpose of entertaining Adam, and Eve’s responsibility for the fall of man and original sin, never, ever contributed to any undue hatred or violence towards women at the hands of the pious, am I right? Hooray for religious morality!
Women need to buck up, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and not complain about a government full of men making decisions about their reproductive systems. If you’re a woman and you care at all about reproductive rights, it can’t be because you have a brain and think about stuff, it’s because you have a vagina and are a whore. Am I right, heliotrope? When will these bitches learn their place?
Whether you can see it or not, men have had almost complete control over a women’s reproductive systems for thousands of years, and the comparably quick process that has shifted that balance has coincided with quite a lot of progress on the political, economic, and cultural fronts. Marriage was frequently a property arrangement that women couldn’t escape from regardless of how abusive the relationship was, and women were relegated to being baby factories because families needed sons to work the fields and so many children died in childbirth (which was also a threat to the mother.) When mechanization of agriculture and industry became possible, as well as significant improvements in medical practices and child-rearing, women started having fewer babies, freeing up their time, permitting them to join the labor force and become active politically. Once contraception became more effective and widely available, women could pursue relationships and careers and plan families on their terms.
The trend is for women to have more and more individual control of their own reproduction, and that generates a roster of opportunities that had previously been unavailable to them. There are many circumstances that can lead to revocation of that control. It happens in agrarian societies, it happens in societies that feature obsolete religious beliefs about women, it happens in places where contraception is unavailable and misunderstood, and unfortunately, it happens in societies like ours where people just want to seize that control. If we want women to continue to move up and if we want women to continue to have new opportunities, we have to make sure that each one of them are empowered to make their own, individual decision about their reproductive system.
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 12:59 pm - September 24, 2012
“Reproductive rights”, here, is just a euphemism for “right to kill an unborn child – and make others pay for it.”
No amount of Levi prattle can change that. That he and other left-liberals can’t face up to what they want to mask with the euphemism, is a moral and human tragedy.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 1:02 pm - September 24, 2012
That’s exactly it, ILC.
Levi wants abortion because he is a malicious little sociopath who doesn’t want to wear a condom, doesn’t want to accept no for an answer, and wants to ditch every single ounce of responsibility he has for a child.
The classic sign of that is how Levi treats women who DON’T support abortion. Levi calls them c*nts, wh*res, and sluts. Levi says they aren’t “real women”, that they’re stupid, and that they’re brainwashed. Levi has NO respect whatsoever for any woman who does not endorse Levi’s demands for unlimited taxpayer-funded abortions.
Never once does Levi recognize being opposed to abortion as a valid choice by a woman. That is because, without abortion, Levi and all other liberal males would have to accept the right of a woman to say no to them or, worse, to demand that they wear a condom. Worse, if women actually HAD the children with which Levi and his fellow liberal males impregnated them, Levi and his fellow liberal males would be socially, legally, and financially responsible for them.
Levi won’t do it. To the malicious little sociopath, women are vaginas. That’s all Levi cares about — having vaginas around for his sexual needs at no cost to him and with no future responsibility. That is why Levi screams and sh*ts himself at anything such as religion that would hold him responsible for his behavior and the children he would produce — AND which also informs him to be responsible.
People have to understand this. Any other type of reproductive management requires self-control, restraint, responsibility, and the acceptance of risk. Abortion requires none of those in exchange for taking a human life. Levi and his fellow liberals are so warped that they would rather murder another human being than be in the least impeded in their immediate gratification.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 1:30 pm - September 24, 2012
I agree that bad decisions often lead to unwanted pregnancies, and that abortion is a solution that allows these people to avoid consequences.
But deciding to have sex is not the same thing as deciding to commit a crime. Sex is awesome and everybody wants to do it. Considering that a consequence of having sex is that you might get pregnant, people should take steps to prevent that pregnancy, but society should not be forcing people that fail to take those steps into parenthood. Getting too drunk or forgetting your condoms or allowing yourself to be pressured into it by your horny boyfriend or the kind of everyday, run-of-the-mill bad decisions we all make, like spending 6 dollars on coffee or watching Jersey Shore. Should these tiny decisions, should some bit of forgetfulness, translate into consequences that completely change your life forever?
Forcing a person to remain pregnant against their will can and does lead to further bad decisions, like self-mutilation, quitting your job, dropping out of school, staying in an abusive relationship, running away from home, leaving your baby in a dumpster, etc. This is the stuff that is guaranteed to happen in the conservatives’ abortion-free utopia, and you guys don’t seem to care about any of it at all. What’s more, even when people are being totally responsible and taking every precaution, they can still get pregnant. Those people can go suck an egg, I guess? And thus we’re left with the very realistic and pragmatic policy of the Republican Party: never have sex unless you’re totally and completely mentally, physically, and financially prepared to have a child, because we’re going to force you to do it anyway.
The pro-choice focus is correctly on preventing unwanted pregnancies. The goal should be to prevent people from making that original bad decision in the first place, not on punishing people after the fact and hoping that others learn the lesson through fear.
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 1:57 pm - September 24, 2012
After endless meandering stream of consciousness babble, Levi finally ends here:
1) “If we want women” ….. Huh? There is a social engineering program afoot to remake women? Who runs it? Who gets to decide? Where is the headquarters? Who is on the board of directors?
2) “If we want women to move up“….. Huh ?, again ! “Moving up” sounds like a destination. Moving up from what? Moving up to where? Who decided the path? etc.
3) “If we want women …. to have new opportunities….” Huh? for a third time. Who designates the “new opportunities” and how does the controlling group get the doors open ? Agains, where is the social engineering blueprint?
4) The essential key to #1, #2 and #3 is to: “make sure that each one of them are empowered to make their own, individual decision about their reproductive system.”
Wow! We have to educate women to put “moving up” and focusing on “new opportunities” we must “empower them” to control “their reproductive system(s)”
So, there it is. Men rape women and keep them in bondage. Only liberals can set women free.
Levi, where do you Sanger-psyched moon bats get the wisdom and authority to manage the womb in name of “progress” for womankind?
Don’t you just hate how your social engineering has failed so miserably among minorities that value families and children? Don’t you think that the government should at least sterilize the poor people? Don’t you just adore the Chinese system of keeping population in check? Aren’t you just a perfect little fascist with all sorts of statist imperatives controlling your dreams of Utopia. Why don’t you just start a local Amazon’s first club and carry their protest vaginas for them.
Comment by heliotrope — September 24, 2012 @ 2:27 pm - September 24, 2012
More proof – if we needed any – that liberalism is a mental disorder.
As is cutting-and-pasting.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — September 24, 2012 @ 2:33 pm - September 24, 2012
Shorter Levi. “I’m just find with killing children to continue my life as I want it.”
Comment by The_Livewire — September 24, 2012 @ 2:34 pm - September 24, 2012
And Death Panels are a solution to the problem of too many old people.
Comment by V the K — September 24, 2012 @ 2:43 pm - September 24, 2012
FTR, I don’t want women, or men, or kids, or any other specific group of people to “move up… have new opportunities.”
Because I want *all* honest and productive people to “move up… have new opportunities.” And a limited government, dedicated to the impartial protection of individual rights to life, liberty and property, is how to make that possible.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 2:59 pm - September 24, 2012
No shit, Sherlock?
I’m not advocating for any policies that specifically favor women at the expense of anyone else. All I have said is that by the simple, moral decision to grant women increasing autonomy over their reproductive systems, many of the institutions and mechanisms that prevented women from having any opportunities in the first place have been destroyed. Rolling back reproductive rights is an invitation for those evil entities to come right back.
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 3:26 pm - September 24, 2012
WRONG.
This is where you show your sick worldview, you little pervert.
The fact that you and your fellow liberals deliberately pressure women into sex shows that you are RAPISTS. You set out to force women to have sex with you, and then you blabber about how there’s nothing wrong with that.
This is where the lies about “empowering” women come right to the fore. You don’t WANT women empowered. You want consequences removed for YOUR pressuring women into sex, YOUR having sex with drunk women, and YOUR “forgetting” your condoms.
All of these things are incredibly disrespectful to women, Levi, and the fact that you equivocate and spin for them shows how much you hate women. You DEMAND women have sex with you when they don’t want to, when they’re drunk, and without a condom. And then you have the disgusting, unmitigated gall to scream about how you’re “helping” them by forcing them to kill their child.
And this is what shows your blather to be lies. You will NOT condemn these behaviors. You scream and cry and spin that there’s nothing wrong with them, that deliberately forcing a woman to have sex with you when she doesn’t want to is on the same scale as overpaying for a latte. You equivocate for raping a drunk woman.
There is no place you can go from here, you pathetic sick loser. You have made the values of the Obama Party that you represent all too obvious.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 3:34 pm - September 24, 2012
What “bad decision”, Levi?
You don’t consider forcing a woman to have sex to be a “bad decision”.
You don’t consider having unprotected sex to be a “bad decision”.
You don’t consider having sex when you’re drunk to be a “bad decision”.
Oh no. These aren’t “bad decisions”; they’re just things on the level of paying a couple bucks more for a latte or deciding to watch bad reality TV.
You honestly expect people to believe your lies about keeping people from making bad decisions when you won’t even admit the decisions are bad in the first place?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 3:39 pm - September 24, 2012
And here’s the latest one: the Barack Obama Party is handing out free abortion pills and abortions to students – without notifying their parents.
Isn’t it interesting how liberals like Levi are always the ones demanding the programs that allow them to have sex with children, dump off the responsibility onto the child, and avoid anyone ever finding out about it?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 3:43 pm - September 24, 2012
Once again, women weren’t exactly dealt the best hand by your perfect religion and its timeless morality, and so as modern moral actors that have largely discarded those ancient and backwards prescriptions for male/female relations, we need to find ways to help women have the same access to opportunity that men have. Well, it turns out that you can take quite a few steps in that direction by simply giving women determination over their own reproductive system. Now, before you go off and accuse me of being a statist, realize that all I’m saying is that we should consider the special circumstances that women have to deal with as the incubators and primary caregivers of the next generation, and that we should trust that they know their own, unique situation better than anyone else and could make a far better decision for themselves and their families than could any one-size-fits-all solution imposed by the government.
It seems to me that this is the exact inverse of the true political dynamic surrounding the issue of abortion these days. I’m not saying I have the wisdom or authority to manage anyone’s womb, you are. I’m willing to let women decide for themselves, and only acknowledging that there are happy side effects of them having that freedom in the form of better education, decreased poverty, fairer pay, better political representation, better health, etc.
You’re the one that’s claiming the wisdom and authority to manage the womb on behalf of women, aren’t you? I mean how can you be getting it this wrong?
…
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 3:57 pm - September 24, 2012
LOL!
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 3:57 pm - September 24, 2012
Got it!
We issue each female a robot to trail her around and help her keep her reproductive rights in focus.
Comment by heliotrope — September 24, 2012 @ 3:59 pm - September 24, 2012
Anyone else notice how Levi was the first to bring up religion and attack it?
Thus Levi supporting killing children who are inconvienent.
But hey, he doesn’t discriminate. Black, while, male, female, gay, straight, sinister or dextros, kill ‘em all, Levi says.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 24, 2012 @ 4:05 pm - September 24, 2012
What are the chances that this woman doesn’t even have reproductive parts at all…never mind the probability that they have long been ‘paused for the rest of her life? Women have had control over their reproductive rights for many generations. It started first with laws against rape. NO means NO, right? then allowing women to file for divorce, to obtain medical care, the Pill, then gaining the right to obtain an abortion. Social programs that will provide assistance to women who do not have any $$ to support their choices, etc. I don’t have to have sex to exist, nor do I have to have babies because someone else told me I had to.
I can be MY OWN advocate for my healthcare, and if third parties stayed the hell out of my bedroom, and my wallet, maybe helped with advocating for affordable care, I would have even more freedom to exercise it as I see fit. No one cares as much for MY body, as me. I can’t even expect my own spouse to care as much as I care whether or not I have any more kids. I don’t expect that woman or any other woman to care…I value my health so much that I refuse to let my gender by batted around in politics, and I refuse to let my shoulder be used to help tow the rather shallow social issue, called “reproductive rights”. It is so shallow they have activists that dress up in Vagina costumes and dance…
The Feds require a mandatory 30 day waiting period and signed informed consent for a voluntary sterilization, but Liberal women are more worried about protecting their rights to abort on demand? Obviously to the GOVERNMENT(Democrats), it is more important to make sure they won’t change their minds about the sterilization. They might not really want to willfully terminate their reproductive right to use their uterus as a cash register. My niece(25yrold) had a Dr that refused to sterilize her after the birth of her second baby. “You might change your mind”. My niece went to a different DR who did it. Now, that is control…a government mandated wait time for something that should be a human right to choose, and available upon the completion of the informed consent paperwork required. Why aren’t women outraged that they can’t have sterilization on demand? Isn’t that a violation of a woman’s right to NOT REPRODUCE?
Comment by 5 * Mom — September 24, 2012 @ 4:16 pm - September 24, 2012
Or so says the amoral rapist who says there’s nothing wrong with pressuring women into sex, getting women drunk and having sex with them, and refusing to wear a condom.
That’s again what makes you funny, Levi. You claim to support women, but insist that raping them is socially acceptable and no worse than overpaying for a latte or watching bad reality TV.
The problem with religion is that it calls you out for being a rapist, for disrespecting women, and for refusing to be responsible for your behavior. You can’t handle that because you are a spoiled, malicious little brat who believe women exist solely for your sexual pleasure and who treats them like trash unless they obey.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 4:33 pm - September 24, 2012
Oh, and it gets better; John Edwards supporter Amanda Marcotte tries the “Missisissippi has more teen pregnancies than New York” line and gets smacked down by conservatives who point out that the difference is in the abortion rate.
So that’s what happens when abortion pushers like Levi get put in charge. They don’t stop having sex with teenagers; they just push up the number of abortions and claim it’s an improvement.
What that demonstrates is that abortion-pushers like Levi demonstrably do not want to reduce the number of abortions. They only want MORE abortions, to push more abortions, and to have more abortions.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 4:46 pm - September 24, 2012
Lie. Because abortion is not contraception – nor abstinence, for that matter. Abortion does not “prevent” unwanted pregnancy.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 5:52 pm - September 24, 2012
FIFY, Levi.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 5:56 pm - September 24, 2012
“Sex is awesome and everybody wants to do it.”
He’s talking hearsay. Newsflash levi, what you do all alone with yourself is not sex.
What kind of mentally underdeveloped individual dates you?
Btw i am all for every possible mean to prevent losers like levi from breeding…
Comment by susan — September 24, 2012 @ 6:01 pm - September 24, 2012
Yes, because it must be for political benefit. There is no other explanation, is there?
Why can’t leftists seem to understand that to deny that actions have consequences is fantasy? Regardless of how enticing an action is, it still has consquences. If those consequences can be avoided in some way, great, provided that a) the action, in itself, is not harmful, and b) other people aren’t forced to pay for those actions. Sex doesn’t meet those criteria when it results in pregnancy.
Comment by Rattlesnake — September 24, 2012 @ 6:50 pm - September 24, 2012
Are you stupid? What am I lying about? I never said abortion prevented unwanted pregnancies. I say that if you reduce unwanted pregnancies, you also reduce abortion. That’s how liberals address the problem, Republicans ignore it so they can scream until they turn purple.
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 7:15 pm - September 24, 2012
@susan,
I have to wonder about Levi’s hypothetical girlfriend.
“Levi, do you love me?”
“Love is nothing but a physiological response evolved to keep men with women. As I enjoy rutting with you, yes, I do love you.”
“Levi, do you want kids?”
“I only want to procreate in such a time as I find it convenient for me. If you desire progeny at this time, then I would ask you to abort the child, as it would prevent me from spending money on myself and having sex.”
“What would you do if we got pregnant?”
“What? You have to ask what would happen if it was unplanned? We’d kill it of course! Why adjust our lifestyle for someone we didn’t plan for!”
I do also wonder if he ran over someone if he’d stop and check or if it would be another “unintended consequence” and he’d keep going.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 24, 2012 @ 7:22 pm - September 24, 2012
If you expect me to buy into the sanctity of life crap, you’re going to have a hard time. This is the party that supports the death penalty, this is the party hates the social programs that would prevent abortions, they also hate the social programs that would provide necessary assistance to the all the babies that would be born in the abortion-free America, this is the party that loves war and shrugs when brown-skinned kids get blown up by our munitions…. nope! There’s no political coherence there.
Another reason you can tell it’s mostly political is how anti-sex it is. People can do all kinds of things to prevent pregnancies that sometimes just don’t work, and conservatives still want to be able to say, “Tough. Raise the baby. You shouldn’t have sex, even protected sex, if you weren’t completely prepared to have a baby and change your life forever.” I don’t deny that actions have consequences, but you are most certainly living in a fantasy world if you think this is a realistic policy.
Comment by Levi — September 24, 2012 @ 7:24 pm - September 24, 2012
If the “prochoice” movement is solely focused on preventing unwanted pregnancies, why is Planned Parenthood telling teenage girls it’s cool to be a slut?
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/09/21/planned-parenthoods-facebook-page-for-teens-stop-the-slut-shaming/
Comment by V the K — September 24, 2012 @ 7:27 pm - September 24, 2012
I have adopted three kids Levi thinks should have been aborted for the economic convenience of their mothers. This issue is personal to me.
Comment by V the K — September 24, 2012 @ 7:33 pm - September 24, 2012
I think the point here, Levi, is that this eunuch’s wife places abortion above all else when it come to the country. Above war and peace, the economy, the people, and the future. She’s consumed with the irrational fear that the conservatives will magically make her pregnant.
Abortion isn’t going anywhere. The fact that so many, especially on the left, treat it as a sacrament is what’s creepy.
If sex were meant to be fun, it wouldn’t have children as penalty. – Phyllis Diller
Comment by SoCalRobert — September 24, 2012 @ 7:45 pm - September 24, 2012
Certainly is personal V,
http://www.vthek.net/2012/09/summers-eve.html
Comment by rusty — September 24, 2012 @ 7:46 pm - September 24, 2012
Thank you, rusty.
No one could have done a better job of making absolutely and completely clear the malicious, destructive hatred that underpins your liberal beliefs.
You see, rusty, you and your buddy Levi CLAIM to care about these children. You whine and cry that you need taxpayer-funded, unlimited abortion because otherwise these poor helpless children will grow up “unwanted” with no one to adopt them.
V the K put his money where his mouth is. He adopted not one, not two, but THREE kids.
He didn’t have to do that. He certainly wouldn’t have done it if his own time or his own money or his own convenience were the most important thing to him. He did it because he thought it was right. He did it because he thought it was necessary. He stepped up when even these own kids’ parents weren’t willing to take care of them.
And you mock him for it and call him a hypocrite.
You worthless, depraved, sick little ass.
You literally do not care about anything other than abortion. You don’t care that these kids, thanks to V the K’s intervention, have an honest stab at life. You don’t care about his personal and career sacrifices that come with raising kids. You don’t care about his taking on kids with problems that other people didn’t want.
You demand that conservatives take care of the children your irresponsibility produces – and then you mock them for doing it.
You’re a bigot, rusty. A disgusting, hatemongering, filthy little malicious bigot.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 8:51 pm - September 24, 2012
Thank you for your defense NDT. I wasn’t intending to draw out the ugliness of the left, but I guess h8rs gotta h8.
Comment by V the K — September 24, 2012 @ 9:04 pm - September 24, 2012
Levi @ #39:
Translation: A maggot is a maggot is a maggot. Step on it and crush it and move on.
Then, at other times, Levi can cry buckets of crocodile tears over how abortion should be rare.
What a guy. Why have principle when pride and prejudice are so natural?
Comment by heliotrope — September 24, 2012 @ 9:41 pm - September 24, 2012
Plenty more from where that came from
http://www.vthek.net/2012/07/almost-first-rate-pron.html
James is a wonderful person for adopting three boys, but what would one say if one of those adoptions was a girl?
Comment by rusty — September 24, 2012 @ 9:41 pm - September 24, 2012
And now for more.
Notice how Levi brings up the death penalty as justification for abortion.
Or, put differently, how Levi insists that babies are as guilty of criminal acts as Charles Manson.
Think about that. The screaming, shrieking Levi and his liberal masses oppose the death penalty for willful murder — but endorse it for babies who have the temerity to result from their irresponsible and promiscuous behavior.
Sick.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 9:46 pm - September 24, 2012
But, rusty, no e of those adoptions was a girl, so your hypothetical is irrelevant.
Furthermore, how many have you and your barebacking friends adopted? Better yet, how much are you and your barebacking adult friends sucking down in “disability” benefits that could be being spent on children who can’t take care of themselves, if you hadn’t been too stupid and lazy to wear condoms?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 9:50 pm - September 24, 2012
Can I add something here, NDT?
Levi is the reason why we have Planned Parenthood in the first place.
And yes, I went there.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — September 24, 2012 @ 9:50 pm - September 24, 2012
In addition, rusty, what’s your argument? Would the pictures be somehow less wrong if V the K supported abortion?
I think we just stumbled on the truth here. Liberals don’t care about degrading women or bad pictures or exploitation if you support abortion. If you support abortion, you can murder, rape, and trash women as much as you want.
Is that it, rusty? Is that your argument? It’s not demeaning to women if you support abortion?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 24, 2012 @ 9:54 pm - September 24, 2012
I don’t believe in the sanctity of life one bit (I don’t believe in the sanctity of anything, for that matter). That doesn’t mean other people get to choose who gets to live. Unless that person has already done that, then they’ve lost their moral right to their own life. The whole point of war is to prevent a greater atrocity (and it doesn’t always succeed, unfortunately). That doesn’t mean people like the thought of people dying in them, or people make the decision to go into war lightly.
Sure there is.
Why is it so hard to understand that some people view the unborn as living organisms with personhood? Is that thought just offensive to you, or something? And do expect those people not to fight for what they believe in?
Since I am very tired of this discussion that we’ve already had several times, I’m not going to say anything else on the matter unless you say something new.
So, it is unrealistic to expect people to accept the consequences of their actions? I disagree.
That comment made something clear?
Agreed.
Comment by Rattlesnake — September 24, 2012 @ 10:21 pm - September 24, 2012
Levi, you said this:
And that’s what I responded to. You know how you can tell, that that is what I was responding to? Because I FREAKING QUOTED IT. You can tell what people are responding to, Levi, when they put it in the blockquote just above.
So, let’s try it again, Levi you unbelievable dumbass. You said this:
To which I respond as follows: That is a LIE. LIE, LIE, LIE. Because abortion – which, by definition, is “the pro-choice focus”; the “choice” that is the focus, so to speak, of the term “pro-choice” – in NO way “prevents” unwanted pregnancies.
Contraception prevents pregnancy. Abstinence prevents pregnancy. Abortion does not prevent pregnancy. And abortion is the “choice” involved in the phrase, “pro-choice”. Therefore, to say that “the pro-choice focus” is somehow to *prevent* pregnancy, rather than abortion, is a FLAT OUT LIE, Levi Dumbass.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 11:04 pm - September 24, 2012
(continued) “The pro-choice focus” is, and always has been, to abort pregnancy after pregnancy occurs. Not to prevent it.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 11:09 pm - September 24, 2012
And (we also see): To use government to rape the pocketbooks of others, forcing them to pay for said abortions.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 11:10 pm - September 24, 2012
If “the pro-choice focus” were somehow “correctly on preventing unwanted pregnancies”, then it wouldn’t be “the pro-choice movement”. It would be the “pro-abstinence and contraception” movement. But it isn’t. Ask Amanda Marcotte.
You know, it’s funny how in all the pro-choice-ry, they never want to consider the child’s choice. Most of the time – not all the time, but most – the child’s life is the one at stake. And most of the time, the law deals with cases where children can’t meaningfully choose yet, or be meaningfully consulted about their choice, by saying: Then the child must be extended maximum protection, until it can choose.
For example: babies. A baby cannot meaningfully say if it wishes to live or die. Therefore, the law assumes that it wishes to live. The same logic that says “A late-term fetus can’t meaningfully choose to live and so has no overriding right to live”, would apply to babies. Therefore, people who support late-term abortion should logically be fine with infanticide. Hey, wasn’t there a thread somewhere where Levi said that he was?
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 11:21 pm - September 24, 2012
Also: as we see, the
so-called “pro-choice” movementLeft does not give a damn about the taxpayer’s choice, whether the taxpayer wants to pay for it.Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 11:23 pm - September 24, 2012
rusty: Not gonna bash you, but I have NO idea what you think your point is. Could you spell it out? You seem to see some sort of conflict between valuing human life enough to adopt unwanted children, and running a laugh blog that sometimes posts pictures of hot people. I truly don’t see it.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 24, 2012 @ 11:31 pm - September 24, 2012
Rusty is just engaging the typical tactic of leftists who are losing an argument, trying to change the subject off their losing argument and onto an alleged moral failing of the person making the better argument. Either that, or he has a Taliban-like aversion to attractive females.
As for Levi, he is a putz who regularly denounces belief in “magical sky gods” but thinks that a mother’s wish alone transforms a clump of cells into a human life.
Comment by V the K — September 25, 2012 @ 6:20 am - September 25, 2012
You know quoting Levi to make a fool of himself is just too easy sometimes.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 25, 2012 @ 8:11 am - September 25, 2012
There are hundreds of anti-abortion laws introduced by Republicans every year in Congress and state legislatures that are designed to restrict a woman’s right to choose. No one is treating it as a sacrament, but liberals do want to defend abortion from these assaults. I think I would speak for most liberals when I say that I don’t want to keep re-fighting this fight, but we have no choice so long as Republicans insist on chipping away at it.
Comment by Levi — September 25, 2012 @ 8:44 am - September 25, 2012
It’s unrealistic to think that people will stop having sex if abortion is criminalized, which seems to be the singular recommendation by conservatives. As usual, conservatives assume that abortion is only for the irresponsible people who don’t care about anything and maybe even enjoy the idea of receiving and giving abortions to one another, but the truth is that a lot of people do take steps to avoid pregnancy and still get pregnant. The absurd response from conservatives is to say that people shouldn’t have sex unless they’re completely prepared to have a child. That’s unrealistic.
And while we’re on the subject of how unrealistic conservatives are about abortion, let’s talk about the abortion black market that would be created overnight by making it illegal. The lessons of the drug war and prohibition are completely lost on conservatives, I guess, who stupidly think that if you ban it, you’ll be saving all the babies because no one will have anywhere to go to get an abortion. That’s completely wrong, because there will still remain a demand for abortion, and just like anything else, enterprising individuals will try to meet that demand regardless of whether or not it’s legal. You hate abortion now? You’ll really hate it when people are becoming millionaires by performing them!
At least in the current set up, we have a rough idea of how many abortions are being performed in the country, and as a society we can take steps to reduce that number. We won’t have that when the abortion black market moves into town, but we will have a bunch of dead girls, because the abortion black market will be inherently less safe. Abortion will also be extremely expensive, but maybe the abortion black market, since its a criminal enterprise, can make arrangements where women seeking abortions can pay by becoming prostitutes or running drugs. Yeah, that sounds preferable to the status quo, if you ask me.
And what is the penalty for performing an abortion anyway? Do the women receiving the abortion get charged with anything? Will we call it first degree murder? Suppose a woman goes to her OB/GYN, who can tell from the scarring and internal damage of her reproductive organs that she’d received a black market abortion. I suppose the doctor would be obligated to call the police and have her investigated?
In truth, if anyone is not willing to think about the consequences of their actions, it’s conservatives. You guys seem to think that all you have to do is pass a law, and the world changes and everything will be okay and all the babies will live! Realistically, you could expect all of hte above and worse.
Comment by Levi — September 25, 2012 @ 9:15 am - September 25, 2012
Thanks for the query ILC, got busy last night with the Hawks-Packers games.
My apologies for popping off, must have been that poltergeist that sometimes slaps folk upside the head, causing disturbing and emotive proclamations.
Some refer it to a Polterbitch, who comes up from behind with thqt slap and causes one to purge with uncivil commentary. I know that a similar comparison would be the blending of pedophilia and such when commenting about the Gheys.
ILC, thanks for the exorcism.
Again ILC, you get my vote for Co Blogger, for what it’s worth!
.
Comment by rusty — September 25, 2012 @ 9:55 am - September 25, 2012
Does Levi even realized that he’s made the argument that anyone who has/performs an abortion has forfitted their right to live themselves?
Comment by The_Livewire — September 25, 2012 @ 10:35 am - September 25, 2012
The pro-choice position is far more comprehensive than simply protecting the right to have an abortion. The term pro-choice is convenient shorthand, but the philosophy behind it is much broader. I don’t need to be told by the likes of you what the focus of the pro-choice argument is. Anyone that describes themselves as pro-choice will tell you that the decision is profound and difficult, so much so that everyone should be free to make that decision for themselves. But that’s only part of it, and the pro-choice argument continues to say that we need people to be better educated and have better access to healthcare so that having to make this profound and difficult choice in the first place isn’t necessary. The better formulation is one you’ve probably heard; ‘Safe, Legal, and Rare.’
The right’s continued hysterics over abortion make it seem like abortion itself is the social problem plaguing the country, but liberals have always recognized the true problem as being that of unwanted pregnancy. That’s what motivates people to get abortions, whether they’re legal or not, and that’s the problem that needs solving. We are consistent and realistic in that regard, as opposed to the pro-lifers who, once again, think that lecturing people about personal responsibility is all that needs be done.
I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I’m not going to let you dismiss the majority of the reasoning behind my argument because you want to constrain me with language. Pro-choice is about much more than abortions, and insistence otherwise is desperate and grasping.
Comment by Levi — September 25, 2012 @ 10:39 am - September 25, 2012
These “anti-abortion” laws Levi decries include measures to subject abortion clinics to the same sanitary and health inspections as other medical facilities and requiring them to have licensed emergency room physicians on site to provide emergency aide when the abortion goes south as other medical facilities are required to have.
Funny how leftists suddenly hate regulations when the activity being regulated is baby-killing.
Comment by V the K — September 25, 2012 @ 10:45 am - September 25, 2012
I didn’t see this particular bit of idiocy when I was responding to the same stupid idea above. Maybe I should argue that one should only consider themselves a Republican if they can demonstrate that they are both “Grand” and “Old.” What’s next, you’ll tell me that because I’m pro-gay marriage, I’m arguing that everyone should be gay-married? Congratulations ILC, you’re arguing like a 5 year old.
Comment by Levi — September 25, 2012 @ 10:53 am - September 25, 2012
Concerning Levi:
Actually, I don’t think that he should be driven off the way the Dems whip away any Conservative who dares to approach them. I disagree with him, but he’s polite and literate and in fact is obviously of the top 03% of the Dem Party – he’s capable of thinking.
Comment by SailorMan — September 25, 2012 @ 11:11 am - September 25, 2012
@Sailorman
You and I have apparently a wide disagreement of being ‘polite’.
If he wasn’t a documented racist, truther liar, and self admitted facist you might have a point, discounting his hostility towards facts and contempt for anyone smarter than him.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 25, 2012 @ 11:45 am - September 25, 2012
@Popeye
There is nothing polite or intelligent about denigrating people’s religious beliefs as being about “invisible magical sky-beings.” There is nothing intelligent about repeating left-wing talking points ad nauseam. There is nothing polite about calling conservatives racists who hate women and whose sole motivation in opposing abortion is to keep women oppressed.
You are correct that Levi is in the top percentile of leftists; but that’s like being the smartest kid on the short bus, the fastest white guy in the Boston marathon, or the nicest guy in New York City.
Comment by V the K — September 25, 2012 @ 11:56 am - September 25, 2012
Yup.
Because conservatives are aware that abortion is not an automatic outcome of sex; therefore, a ban on abortion would not equal a ban on sex.
Liberals, on the other hand, equate abortion and sex. To liberals like Levi, a ban on abortion means no one could ever have sex again, because then people would actually have to think before acting and might — horrors! — choose NOT to have sex because they are not in a position to deal with the consequences.
It’s the difference between responsible and irresponsible. Conservatives are responsible; liberals are irresponsible. Conservatives are realistic people who realize that there are options other than abortion; liberals are irrational and ignorant individuals who cannot conceptualize sex without abortion.
By whom?
Conservatives would not be doing so, because they a) are willing to accept the consequences of their actions and b) know how to limit their risk.
Liberals like Levi, on the other hand, know nothing other than abortion. They are mentally and intellectually incapable of taking steps to limit their risk, and they cannot, WILL not, accept any of the consequences of their actions.
We are aware of that, Levi. No one here realistically believes that you will stop pressuring the girls you pressured to have sex with you in the first place to have an abortion. You will deliberately put women in danger because you don’t want to wear a condom, you don’t want to respect no, and you don’t want to wait for women to sober up before having sex with them. We are fully and completely aware that you are an irresponsible and sociopathic little brat who would rather put your girlfriend through a back-alley abortion rather than wear a condom.
But you know what? Society doesn’t need to cater to irresponsible and sociopathic brats, especially when catering to them results in the murder of millions of innocent babies.
Then let’s move on to the other one. We are well-aware that irresponsible and sociopathic brats like you would leave your children to starve rather than feed them yourself. It’s not a great leap to recognize that if you are willing to kill children IN the womb, that you are more than willing to kill them OUTSIDE the womb. That’s why you scream and demand “social programs”, which are simply forcing other people to pay the bills for the children that you irresponsibly produced.
Again, why should society cater to irresponsible and sociopathic brats at the expense of everyone else? WE know how to avoid getting women pregnant unnecessarily. CONSERVATIVE women know how to avoid getting pregnant. The fact that you and your “girlfriend” are too lazy, immature, and irresponsible to do that is not our problem, not our bill to pay, and certainly not our obligation to look the other way as you two get drunk, have unprotected sex, and then murder children.
You are a worthless, ignorant, lazy, and irresponsible imbecile, Levi. That does not give you the right to reach into other peoples’ pockets, nor does it give you the right to murder others. The fact that you are too malicious and stupid to accept no, not take advantage of women when they are drunk, and to wear a condom is not society’s problem; it is YOUR problem. The fact that you would willingly murder or endanger a child who exists solely because of YOUR choices and YOUR actions and who had no choice whatsoever in the matter only shows what an amoral, sick, twisted little sociopath you are.
Abortion proves what liars you “progressives” are, Levi. The unborn are the most innocent, vulnerable, and helpless of all human life, yet you and your sick twisted Obama Party scream that they are worthless and that they should be executed so you don’t have to waste money on them.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 1:22 pm - September 25, 2012
Unfortunately, stupid Levi, you blew up any chance whatsoever you had of being taken seriously with this argument when you argued that pressuring a woman into sex, taking advantage of a woman when she was drunk, and “forgetting” your condoms and having unprotected sex was the same as overpaying for a latte or watching bad reality TV.
Those are the “choices” that can be made that will stop conception in its tracks. But you don’t want to make THOSE choices. You want to force women to have sex with you, force women who are drunk into sex, and have unprotected sex — and then use abortion to clean up your messes at no cost to you.
ILC is spot-on with this. You oppose, absolutely oppose, ANY choices that require you to moderate, control, or take responsibility for your own behavior. You just want to have sex and abort the consequences. Abortion is the ONLY choice you recognize as legitimate.
Conservatives understand that it is WRONG to pressure a woman into sex. It is WRONG to take advantage of a drunk woman. It is WRONG to be irresponsible, “forget” your condoms, and have unprotected sex anyway.
Liberals do not. Period. To liberals, there is NOTHING wrong with pressuring a woman into having sex, having sex with a drunk woman, and “forgetting” your condoms and having unprotected sex. They are so desperately promiscuous that they completely ignore the wishes, will, and health of their partner to have sex.
Sick.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 1:44 pm - September 25, 2012
I disagree.
In short, Levi is by any evaluation a malicious bigot. His posting here is less about being interested in conservativism than it is an attempt to scream down those with whom he disagrees.
The fact that Levi is even allowed to post here, despite his obvious hatred, bias, malevolence, and constant insulting of the blog owners, demonstrates that conservatives operate in and respect principles far and above individual convenience.
And that is the core difference between liberalism and conservativism. Conservatives believe in alignment with principles and values regardless of personal convenience; liberals believe principles and values are matters of personal convenience.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 2:28 pm - September 25, 2012
Yup. It extends to MAKING OTHERS PAY for the abortion – thus taking away others’ choice about what to do with their money. Impressive.
… for a movement whose primary, defining “focus” is: abortion.
I never said that the so-called “pro-choice” movement couldn’t care about additional stuff in a secondary way (perhaps in a phony way). But to tell us that abortion somehow isn’t the movement’s defining focus, the critical thing that it is concerned to protect with above all else, is beyond absurd: It’s a brazen insult to our intelligence. “Screw you, too.”
Because they know that they are politically required to. They know that they cannnot afford to admit how they really feel.
LIE, LIE, LIE. The pro-choice argument continues to say, rather, not only that abortion should be unlimited in all circumstances, but also that the taxpayer should be compelled to pay for it.
…except it isn’t rare. Also, ‘Safe, Legal, and Taxpayer Funded’ would be a much more honest description of how you abortion advocates really feel.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 25, 2012 @ 2:39 pm - September 25, 2012
I say again:
… because I note, Levi, that you had no real answer to it. (Only more insults.)
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 25, 2012 @ 2:42 pm - September 25, 2012
To clarify something: I agree that the pro-choice movement does sometimes, literally “say that we need people to be better educated and have better access to healthcare so that having to make this profound and difficult choice in the first place isn’t necessary.”
I’m saying that they say it for tactical reasons only. That they say it as a smokescreen. Unlimited (and taxpayer-funded) abortion is what they’re after.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 25, 2012 @ 2:47 pm - September 25, 2012
Agreed. AND, Levi engages in more primitive forms of name-calling, into the bargain. I don’t complain about the latter; my purpose is only to note that the characterization of Levi as “polite” is, shall we say, incorrect. Also, the “literate” and “capable of thinking” parts.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 25, 2012 @ 3:02 pm - September 25, 2012
Bingo, ILC.
And we can see that right here:
Again, consider this statement.
Having sex when you’re drunk, allowing yourself to be pressured into sex, and having unprotected sex all are things that can be linked directly to abortion being necessary.
And when you do these things and have to abort, Levi says you should consider them as no more a bad decision on the order of spending a few bucks on coffee or watching bad reality TV.
Or in other words, you should consider your choice to murder someone for personal convenience no different than your choice to spend money on fancy coffee or watch a show.
Again. This cannot be hammered home enough. To Levi, the choice to abort is no different than the choice to buy coffee or to watch television. Levi considers abortion to be equivalent in importance to your beverage choice or how you spend your leisure time.
Words again begin to fail. To Levi, the choice of a human baby living or dying is on the same level as making the choice between a tall and a venti.
I wonder if Levi’s parents actually know they raised a creature who considers human life of equal or lesser importance than channel-surfing.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 3:03 pm - September 25, 2012
NDT, exactly. “Getting too drunk or forgetting your condoms or allowing yourself to be pressured into [sex] by your horny boyfriend [and then aborting your pregnancy, is] the kind of *everyday, run-of-the-mill* bad decisions we all make, like spending 6 dollars on coffee or watching Jersey Shore.” – Is how abortion advocates really feel. They view abortion as an “everyday, run-of-the-mill” choice – Not as “profound and difficult.” Levi mistakenly let his mask drop, there.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 25, 2012 @ 3:07 pm - September 25, 2012
And the last leads us to this.
Yes we do, Levi.
Because, as you have made clear, you care no more about making an abortion necessary than you do about choosing a beverage or what channel to watch.
You have no regard for human life whatsoever. And you have so little regard for women that you equate pressuring one into having sex, taking advantage of a drunk one, or “forgetting” your condoms and having unprotected sex to be on the same level of poor decision-making as overpaying for a latte or spending an hour watching Snookie.
For those liberals like rusty who are still in denial over the bad choices they made during the AIDS epidemic and are still flipping off pictures of Reagan to make themselves feel better, this might work. They have a vested interest in making sure that promiscuous and irresponsible sex doesn’t have consequences, and they’re just as hungry to feed off the taxpayer trough rather than to wear a condom or lay off the crystal.
But you’re never, NEVER going to pull this one on conservatives, and especially not on conservative gay people.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 3:10 pm - September 25, 2012
what a disgusting pos this troll is. I pity your mother. She should have aborted you.
Comment by susan — September 25, 2012 @ 3:44 pm - September 25, 2012
I won’t go there, susan, because I believe a live child is always preferable to a dead one.
But I will say that liberals’ obsession with “unwanted children” is quite often a projection of how they treat their own.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 3:50 pm - September 25, 2012
The liberal argument is entirely consistent. Unplanned pregnancy is a social problem that has pronounced effects on women and the poor. Liberals argue for safe and legal abortions as a means of addressing that problem, but that isn’t all. Liberals also argue for universal healthcare, better sex education programs, and social welfare programs as ways of dealing with the issue of unwanted pregnancy. Liberals recognize the superiority of the preventive measures I just listed and after-the-fact abortions, and while we would prefer to deal with the problem ahead of time, we also maintain that people should be given freedom of choice.
Of course, the piece of this reasonable and coherent policy suggestion that elicits the biggest reaction from the right is abortion, so a significant amount of energy from our side goes towards defending abortion. It is a piece of a larger puzzle, but whatever, just tell me that you know my beliefs better than I, tell me that I’m animated by a lust for ‘unlimited abortion’ as if I get off on it. You don’t sound paranoid or hysterical at all…
Comment by Levi — September 25, 2012 @ 4:56 pm - September 25, 2012
Oh yeah, I really let my mask drop when you put words in my mouth and completely changed what I said. Try again without inserting your own language and pretending it’s mine, maybe?
Comment by Levi — September 25, 2012 @ 5:01 pm - September 25, 2012
Once again Levi complains that quoting him is taking words out of context.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 25, 2012 @ 5:05 pm - September 25, 2012
I do think that men that bitterly cling to supporting abortions are there, not to protect the rights of the women in crisis, but for them to hopefully avoid an 18 year long payment plan. they aren’t interested in building a lasting relationship, or planning for a real family experience and hope like hell that the chick they hook up with is telling the truth when she says “Don’t Worry, I’m on the Pill.”
Newsflash to ignorant bikini bottom surfers, the day will come when they suddenly get that “I’m Pregnant” and she doesn’t want to kill it talk. Will they just dump her and hope like hell she is pressured into dumping her uterus in a garbage can? Will they get out the checkbook and BEG to pay for an abortion? Will they stay and work on a real relationship and be a real FATHER? Will they thank their lucky stars to be a DADDY, or secretly want to beat the woman until she sees stars?
Women should NEVER EVER use their uterus as a cash register or relationship manipulation tool. That kind of power can destroy futures.
Except for Rape, all other pregnancies are failures to plan, or follow explicit instructions re: birth control. There really is not excuse to have unprotected sex. The point of protecting women’s reproductive choices hinges on the WOMAN’s individual ability to follow HER own plan. If she absolutely doesn’t want to get pregnant, it won’t happen. If she does, then it will probably happen because she will stop trying to prevent pregnancy.
The Dutch have a much lower rate of teen pregnancy than the US, they double down on contraceptive coverage, both genders share the responibility of PROTECTING themselves. Humans can forget. Skipped pills happen, however, there is an entire section that spells out WHAT TO DO to avoid the higher risk of unplanned pregnancy.
Guys should NEVER assume that they don’t have to worry about anything. In fact, if told “not to worry” and she’s vetted your bank acct and job, well, don’t say I didn’t WARN you. If a woman picks a man as a sperm donor, there is little to nothing he can do, he is trapped by a society that will put him in jail if he doesn’t pay. Take away his DL or slam him with child support so high, he lives in a box. For guys, there is NO REAL CHOICE, he is at the mercy of a woman’s whims regarding pregnancy. No wonder it is one of the most dangerous times in a woman’s life, when she is pregnant and the man doesn’t want it…
Comment by 5 * Mom — September 25, 2012 @ 5:16 pm - September 25, 2012
And the tantrum-throwing brat tries to scream he was misquoted.
Choke on this, brat.
How else are you going to stop these consequences from “completely changing your life forever, Levi”? Hm? Planning on rewinding time?
Furthermore, the context makes it even worse. You make it clear that you consider pressuring a woman into sex, getting stupid drunk and having sex, and having unprotected sex — all decisions that result in abortions — to be “tiny decisions” and mere “forgetfulness”.
And that’s what you teach children. You and your fellow sick liberals teach them that unprotected sex is just a matter of being “forgetful”, that having sex when you’re drunk is no biggie, and that pressuring women to have sex is a “tiny” decision.
Why? Because you just use abortion to clean up your messes. And then you scream that others who act responsibly should be forced to pay for it.
You are truly pathological, Levi. Unless you have to deal with the consequences, you will have sex when you’re drunk, you will pressure women into having sex, and you will have unprotected sex. You have demonstrated that you are completely incapable of acting responsibly. You have demonstrated that you have no restraint, no sense of right and wrong, no consideration for the health of others, and certainly no consideration for the life of children.
And that is why laws banning abortion are needed. Liberals and atheists like yourself are completely amoral and irresponsible and will not restrain yourself otherwise.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 25, 2012 @ 5:20 pm - September 25, 2012
Levi is an atheist. Unlike Christians – who view individual lives as sacred and meaningful – atheists view humans as just another species of animal, no more special than pigs or dogs; and thus subject to extermination in service of the “greater good.”
This has what has enabled atheists like Mao and Stalin to slaughter millions. It’s why Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks of abortion as a means of eliminating undesirable “populations we don’t want too many of.”
Comment by Passing Gas — September 25, 2012 @ 6:17 pm - September 25, 2012
Levi is controlled by the Kool Aid. He dare not have a thinking of his own. The party line is holy writ and his “thinking” is limited to repeating it in a multitude (and even contradictory) ways.
He is, in short, a puke. He vomits his progressive agenda without deference to reason or concern for reasonableness. Give him a gun and a party uniform and he will become a butcher.
Comment by heliotrope — September 25, 2012 @ 8:20 pm - September 25, 2012
Exactly, NDT. Quoting Levi at greater length does not improve his position, much less save it:
His argument structure there is:
1) Every day, we all make a stream of tiny decisions, some of which may be poor.
2) Therefore, abortion is justified.
His conclusion does not follow from his premise. *IF* the argument is to make sense (as opposed to being plain gibberish), it implies (or MUST contain) some more premises. This would be the full edition:
1) Every day, we all make a stream of tiny decisions, some of which may be poor.
2) It’s not fair that poor decisions about sex, which are so easy (and so FUN!) to make, should have such dramatically life-changing consequences as, say, parenthood. In other words, it’s not fair that we should have to take sexual decisions seriously. Evolution, or God or whatever, was MEAN when It set things up that way. Anyway, we shouldn’t have to be bound by it. We should be able to fix it so we can make sexual decisions in a completely thoughtless and stupid way, having all the sexual fun we want.
3) Killing a fetus is one way to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.
4) Killing a fetus is no big deal.
5) Therefore, we should be able to kill fetuses to escape the consequences of sexual choices that we have made, not in a serious way, but in an “everyday”, “run of the mill”, “forgetful”, “tiny” way.
6) Therefore, abortion is justified.
Again, the justification for the added premises is the desire to credit Levi with having had an actual train of thought. It’s true that Levi didn’t state the added premises. But he implied them; that is, they are essential (and therefore implied), if his argument is to be even halfway sensible. If Levi did not mean to imply (or does not hold) the added premises, then we can stop talking right now because his argument was pure, blithering gibberish signifying nothing.
Thus: The added premises were contained in what Levi said (or implied by what he said), and you are justified in seeing them and responding to them.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 1:21 am - September 26, 2012
No, actually. It’s a PERSONAL problem. I didn’t make the choice for those 2 other people to hook up, or to be pregnant, or even to be as thoughtless as they are in general.
Exactly as I said earlier:
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 1:40 am - September 26, 2012
Another means of socializing the consequences of bad personal decisions, ensuring that 2 things will happen. 1. More bad decisions will be made as people are insulated from the consequences of their bad choices. 2. The State, using health care costs as justification, will take away choices from people, and subsidize other bad choices in responseto political considerations.
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 6:13 am - September 26, 2012
As an example, NYC is outlawing large beverages (first step to outlawing them entirely) but handing out morning after pills to 14 year olds like they were TicTacs, which may also be outlawed.
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 6:16 am - September 26, 2012
That’s completely different than your earlier mis-characterization of my argument, in which you said that I thought making the decision to have an abortion was no big deal. I do think the decision is a big deal, and that’s precisely why I think women should be making that decision on an individual basis.
This is close enough.
Anytime a conservative begins a phrase with ‘in other words,’ expect bullshit.
Everyone understands that sex is a big part of life. We all feel a lot of internal and external pressure to have it, and we become sexually mature years before we become adults. For teenagers especially, there are lots of hormones and emotions and peer pressure and cultural factors that create confusion and can overwhelm judgment and foresight faculties that aren’t really all that well developed in the first place. Our brains are built to think about sex, our bodies are built to have sex, and so it comes to no surprise at all that sometimes we don’t make the best decisions when sex is involved, and that’s been demonstrated scientifically. Obviously, this is going to lead to a lot of unplanned pregnancies, the vast majority of which people carry to term and enjoy a long life of unexpected parenthood.
However, there are any number of reasons that a person may be unprepared to become a parent, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to let them opt out. Conservatives like to imagine liberals as sexual hedonists who view abortion as birth control, but that’s not the reality for a lot of these people who could have been caught up in what is a compelling and necessary biological instinct. I don’t think that a 14 year old girl who was never taught about sexual reproduction or contraception by her family or school should be forced to be a mother. Granted, there are many women who don’t have that excuse and should have known better, but accidents happen and it doesn’t make sense to force someone who made a slightly irresponsible decision to undertake the biggest responsibility of their lives against their will.
Nobody takes abortion lightly. It’s one of the biggest decisions a woman can make, and that’s why they should decide, not society.
You’ve missed a big one – the reality that even if abortion is illegal, people will still have abortions. The completely unrealistic suggestion of conservatives, to ban abortion and lecture everyone about personal responsibility so that they deny all their biological impulses and never have sex unless they’re physically, mentally, and financially capable of becoming a parent, completely ignores the fact that criminalizing or even reducing access to safe abortion does not prevent women from seeking out and procuring abortions. If you want a taste of what’s to come if conservatives are able to ban abortion, head on over to Kermit Gosnell’s Wikipedia entry. He’s the tip of the iceberg if conservatives get their way, and probably only exists in the first place because he filled a void left by conservative efforts to hinder access to safe abortion in the community that he ‘served.’ Is it better for medical professionals to be administering abortions, or is it better for criminals to be administering abortions? There is no option in which everybody behaves perfectly and nobody ever has an abortion.
Keep it legal, make it safe, do what we can to prevent unplanned pregnancies to begin with, or let the Kermit Gosnell’s of the world get rich off of killing women. Is that supposed to be a difficult choice?
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 9:13 am - September 26, 2012
BUT no “intrusive” sonograms. No alternative concealing, no nothing that will help the mother deal with her pregnancy differently.
Nosiree, once the little mother has decided to dump the hump at Planned Parenthood, her “private” decision must be “respected.” Her decision is just between her and her abortionist.
And, hey, since she is trashing the fetus, why not go ahead a farm it for stem cells and stuff? Waste not, want not.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 9:36 am - September 26, 2012
NO, you miss the big one — Planned Parenthood and federally funded abortions are enticements to making the “easy” choice.
Each state is quite capable of arguing out the issues of abortion. If you end up living in a state that bans them, you will just have to drive to the famous little town just across the border where Dr. Nostalgia will do the job 24/7 at his Humpty Dumpty Clinic and Nose Job Emporium.
So, you wake up from your stupor sex and learn that she is whacked-up and you are a daddy to be. Inconvenient as it will be, you will just have to man up and take her to the licensed baby killer. Sorry, but hangovers can be a bitch.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 9:44 am - September 26, 2012
Uh, yes. Exactly. What’s unreasonable about that? What right do you have to be in the room with her, telling her what to do but offering no support?
Conservatism is such bullshit.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 10:03 am - September 26, 2012
“Nobody takes abortion lightly.” Those festive “I had an abortion!” T-shirts Planned Parenthood sells seem to contradict this assertion.
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 10:10 am - September 26, 2012
It’s not an easy choice, and Planned Parenthood doesn’t pressure anybody one way or the other. Planned Parenthood has also done more to save women from having to make that choice in the first place than any conservative organization. Making abortion accessible is not the same as endorsing abortion.
As I described above, there is already an example of what happens when conservatives successfully reduce access to safe, legal abortions. Lots of states are down to a handful of abortion providers, and many of these have a bunch of stupid restrictions that make the process needlessly complex and inaccessible. Wouldn’t you know, not everyone has a car and not everyone has a job that allows them to drive 250 miles both ways twice in one month to get to their state’s one abortion provider. Complicating abortion access also has the effect of increasing the amount of late-term abortions that are performed, so we have conservatives to thank for a good portion of those, as well.
But who cares, right? A ban makes the problem go away, banning things that have a significant, urgent demand always works.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 10:19 am - September 26, 2012
Sure you take abortion lightly, Levi. Because your very next words are:
(Emphasis added)…displaying your feeling of relief that (in your view) it’s not even your decision. How much more lightly can a person take decision X, than to disclaim all responsibility for decision X?
Wait a minute. Didn’t you JUST say last night, that “Unplanned pregnancy is a social problem”?
LOL
Watch it, Levi. Your asscrack is showing, as you trip all over yourself.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 10:25 am - September 26, 2012
Isn’t there an internal contradiction between “A foetus is just a parasitic clump of cells” and “getting an abortion is not a decision women make lightly.” If a foetus is no different than a fingernail, why should getting rid of it he a big meaty decision?
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 10:30 am - September 26, 2012
Good point, V. You’re talking about something real. Here’s an image, constructed by abortion advocates as something positive, of a smiling woman in an “I had an abortion” T-shirt: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/04/19/article-2132138-12AC2519000005DC-625_233x391.jpg
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 10:32 am - September 26, 2012
Documented facts are prone to disagree with you.
But hey, when all you have is lies… Your name is Levi.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 26, 2012 @ 10:37 am - September 26, 2012
#101 – Yes again.
I’d also like to note that, while it is not accurate to say “Unwanted pregnancy is a social problem”, it is accurate to say “taxpayer-funded abortion is a social problem.” (Since it involves so many more people than the two who got pregnant.)
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 10:38 am - September 26, 2012
So, you tacitly agree that Planned Parenthood is a liberal organization, since you contrast it with “any conservative organization.”
Planned Parenthood is a euphemism for “no unwanted, unneeded, unplanned, inconvenient, unwelcome children.” When the mother goes into planned parenthood to find out if she is pregnant, she is given the test, the clinical results and the “options.”
The options are: kill it or carry it. If the choice is to carry it, the options are to keep it or give it away.
If the mother kills it, she is rid of it. If the mother carries it, it becomes a bit more difficult to ignore its development and the bonding that naturally occurs.
If the mother carries it, there will be expense, responsibility to the new life, inconvenience, and the emotional consequences of the increasingly strong pull of the fact of motherhood.
Planned Parenthood can pop the zit and save all of that for the selfish “mother” who may have the strong backing of the sperm donor at her side.
We really don’t need the likes of Levi telling us about Planned Parenthood and the dearth of any similar conservative organizations. Levi, apparently does not know of the thousands of local organizations who help the usually abandoned by the sperm donor young mother carry her treasure with dignity and bring a healthy and wanted child into the world.
Nope. Levi and Obama are militant “men” who don’t want a woman “punished” by a pregnancy. “Men” who won’t take responsibly and step up to the plate.
Of course, some women become pregnant on a fling and they really don’t need the chump who donated the sperm to hang around. That too is something that a support group can help manage.
It is passing strange to me that Progressive elitists in Planned Parenthood are to be commended and the kindness of strangers who will stand by the mother through the pregnancy are condemned as meddlesome busybodies.
For Levi, it is far easier to kill than to commit kindness.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 10:42 am - September 26, 2012
Ultimately, it is the woman’s decision. I don’t think a boyfriend or a husband is in any better position to force a woman to have a baby than the rest of society. I’m not disclaiming responsibility. If I were in a situation where my input was warranted, I would give my opinion and let the woman decide. I’m not going to force anyone to have a baby and I’m not going to force anyone to have an abortion.
But in sticking with my recent theme about criminalized abortion, I’ll grant that there are very likely a good number of men who would force a woman to have an abortion and do whatever it took to make that happen, regardless of how illegal and inaccessible a medical abortion might be. These are horrible relationships, to be sure, but can’t we at least be thankful that an intimidated, frightened woman has a safe means of having an abortion, versus, say, taking a baseball bat to the abdomen from her asshole of a boyfriend? These are the things you have to think about when you’re talking about getting rid of abortion.
Obviously, they’re only a social problem when they’re unplanned and unwanted. Unplanned pregnancies where the parents decide to have the child aren’t an issue. This happens all the time and is the more frequently decision made. Unwanted pregnancies are another matter, and there is very much a social interest in preventing them from happening in the first place.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 10:45 am - September 26, 2012
A very sad anecdote:
I was doing an all night shift in the emergency room as a patient advocate. If someone came in alone and wanted and needed a human to stay with them through the ordeal, that was me.
A young woman came in with stomach pains. The diagnosis was that her fetus had died and soon would be delivered still born. She was devastated and felt very, very alone. I called for the chaplain and stayed by the girl as a silent being sharing her grief.
The baby’s daddy showed up. The girl looked at him with rage and told him to go away, that he was getting what he wanted: a dead baby.
That was the worst moment I ever had in my volunteer life. A dead baby, a devastated mother who hated the sight of the father and just the interminable wait for the spontaneous abortion to begin.
I could not wait to hand it off to the chaplain. That was the depth of my sense of adequacy in this tragedy.
Others worked with the lady in reconciling her loss, but no one involved will ever forget the Hell of that moment. There is a huge difference between the clinical discussion of killing the fetus and the haunting reality that persists after the “deed is done.”
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 10:55 am - September 26, 2012
Heliotrope,
That sounds like the experience an ex-girlfriend had. a 1 in a million chance of conception, and the sperm donor’s reaction was ‘kill it’.
The baby was born, and died soon after from a heart defect. in his brief (weeks) life he was loved and cared for by her, and her other two children. He touched our lives. (for me, I’d never seen a ‘live’ ultrasound in real time, just the pictures. Seeing the child move, fighting to beat the odds and grow, amazed me.)
Comment by The_Livewire — September 26, 2012 @ 11:07 am - September 26, 2012
Yeah, Livewire, it is all so easy when getting the killing done is like going to the carwash and ordering up the deluxe undercarriage rinse.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 11:17 am - September 26, 2012
Of the kids I’ve adopted, one was born to a married couple who subsequently got involved in drugs and crime and went to prison. Another was born to a woman who was unmarried, homeless, and unemployed. Another went into foster care because his birth parents allowed him to be sexually abused.
Levi and rusty think all of them should have been sliced up and scraped out of the womb.
Their philosophy is that there ought to he no personal consequences for bad choices. But if there are no consequences, what discourages people from making had choices?
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 11:18 am - September 26, 2012
More accurately, Planned Parenthood is a euphemism for providing women’s health services to impoverished, uninsured, and teenage women. They provide contraceptive services and health screenings that by far do more to lessen unplanned pregnancies (and thus the amount of abortions) than any conservative organization, and they also provide prenatal services for expecting mothers. You make it sound like everyone that walks in the door is instantly and constantly bombarded by pressure to have an abortion. Have you ever been into one of these places? Do you think the propaganda you’ve been fed about them is the reality? It’s not.
Look around. We live in a country where abortion is legal, and there are still millions of single moms and deadbeat dads ‘who won’t take responsibility and step up to the plate.’ Do you think that trend is likely to improve when abortion is banned?
I say it all the time, but the fundamental defect of conservatism is assuming that lecturing people about personal responsibility is all we have to do to make this country work. Does it matter that people are shirking personal responsibility and eating themselves into an early grave? Does it matter that people are shirking personal responsibility and loading themselves up with debt that they can’t ever hope to pay back? Does it matter that people are shirking personal responsibility and not using contraception? Should we do anything about any of this? Or should those of us who are personally responsible just allow these problems to swallow us up?
The glaring hypocrisy of conservatives on the issue of abortion is that they hate the social programs that would both prevent abortions from being necessary in the current set-up, or provide assistance to the mothers and children in the preferred conservative set-up. Again, if their concern for the unborn was legitimate, I would expect conservatives to be supporting all kinds of spending on things like social welfare and food stamps and more accessible healthcare. One of the big fears people have about having children is that it’s so expensive – well maybe conservatives could assuage those fears by offering to provide some financial assistance? Maybe if we covered a few of the basics, the women on the fence but concerned about the costs and her job might decide to carry to term?
Instead, we see conservatism line up, across the board, against any kind of social program that would help a poor mother and her child. Kindness of strangers indeed…
Oh, and more gratuitous ‘Levi likes to kill babies’ nonsense – the real reason conservatives have been trained to oppose abortion.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 11:25 am - September 26, 2012
Conservatives believe compassion and charity are personal responsibilities, not excuses for creating vast, expensive, bureaucracies. Levi has quasi-religious faith in the State as Tue solution to every problem. Having seen this bureaucracy close up over ten years as a foster parent, I know that these social programs care nothing for the people they were allegedly see up to serve.
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 11:46 am - September 26, 2012
Having sex is not a bad choice. Having sex without taking any steps to prevent a pregnancy is a bad choice, but why should society insist on punishing that relatively minor bad choice by forcing you to become a parent? People ought to be overjoyed when they find out they’re pregnant, not reluctant and pressured and afraid and hopeless. Do you think that’s the right emotional atmosphere in which to begin a family? Describing becoming a parent as a ‘consequence’ makes it sound like they owe something to society, like they have to something to pay off. What sense does it make to force someone who has demonstrated their irresponsibility in such a minor and barely significant way to assume more responsibility than they ever have before? If you insist on using this crime and punishment formulation, acknowledge that the punishment just doesn’t fit the crime.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 11:49 am - September 26, 2012
Levi: You want abortion to be safe, legal, and funded by compelling other people to fund it. You think it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable way to clean up the aftereffects of what you have called “everyday”, “run of the mill”, “forgetful”, “tiny” bad decisions. You are on the same side as abortion advocates who smile as they wear “I had an abortion” T-shirts.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
I couldn’t say if you actually like to kill babies; but I can say, based on your comments, that you don’t seem to mind killing babies.
Have you? Live Action has. http://www.liveaction.org/ (hat tip, TL)
Oh, by the way, Levi:
Fortunately, I’m not a conservative. And I support abortion in many circumstances. I just recognize that there should be limits. Also, I recognize you, Levi, as one of the most vile B.S. artists I’ve seen in my life. I don’t care if you and I could agree on, say, privately-funded early-term abortion; I’m offended, Levi, by the sheer and constant dishonesty of nonsense you spew. Really, I don’t know how you get up in the morning. Were I you, I would collapse from the shame.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 11:53 am - September 26, 2012
@ILC
Haven’t you heard? Shame and guilt are vestiges of us worshipping sky gods. Levi having declared us untermench is far above the simple and archaeic bounds of morality.
He wants to bring us kicking and screaming into his utopia, just like Mao, Hitler, Stalin and his fellow athiests promised.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 26, 2012 @ 11:58 am - September 26, 2012
The takeaway message from abortion on demand is that inconvenient human lives can be terminated at will and that one should enjoy limitless self-gratification without consequences. This message diminishes the value of human life, and coarsens society as a whole.
When you set aside Levis massive ball of contradictions, the idea that self-gratification and personal convenience trump human lives is all that you are left with.
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 11:59 am - September 26, 2012
Quite clearly, compassion and charity are not enough to solve the myriad of social problems that we’re facing.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 12:00 pm - September 26, 2012
Idiot. You have no way to support such a stupid statement.
Since you hate religion, you have no inkling of who runs abuse shelters, food kitchens, homeless shelters, meals on wheels, food banks, mentoring programs, and thousands upon thousands of caring hands reaching out to touch those in need.
You really are an insular puts on statist steroids. God help you if you ever need to depend on the kindness of strangers and you fight them all the way over their mythical sky creatures. You will get the help, but you will make yourself dyspeptic receiving it.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 12:01 pm - September 26, 2012
A ball so massive, it would take much too long to go through it systematically. No one has that kind of time.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 12:03 pm - September 26, 2012
You’re at least finally correctly re-stating my position.
I don’t have to agree with everything they do. I think the effort to destigmatize abortion and the women who have them is not a bad thing, though it’s not my personality to do in that way.
I don’t think abortion is ‘killing babies.’ You do. Don’t have an abortion. Make up your own mind.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 12:06 pm - September 26, 2012
I’ve re-stated it exactly that way, all along. See comments 14, 56, 57, 74, 79, 91, 100.
Now you’re moving the goalposts. Your claim was this:
I’ve disproven it, with two examples of people who take abortion lightly.
1) You, who take it so lightly that you disclaim all role and responsibility in the decision, viewing it as a perfectly normal and acceptable way to clean up the aftereffects of what you have called “everyday”, “run of the mill”, “forgetful”, “tiny” bad decisions.
2) People who wear “I had an abortion” T-shirts.
You said “nobody”. I disproved “Nobody”, with two counter-examples.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — September 26, 2012 @ 12:14 pm - September 26, 2012
And imagine how much better the effect would be if those shelters and kitchens were supported by robust social programs that provided healthcare and education and job training? In fact, they currently are supported by those kinds of social programs, and conservatives insist on cutting them because they think rich people pay too much in taxes!
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 12:14 pm - September 26, 2012
BINGO! The Mussolini-style F•A•S•C•I•S•T speaks:
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 12:19 pm - September 26, 2012
In 79, you definitely tried to sneak past by pretending that I said abortion was an ‘every day’ bad decision. I never said that it was.
Selling a T-shirt that says “I had an abortion.” does not mean you’re taking abortion lightly. The motivation is clearly to destigmatize abortion and the women who have them. I don’t think it’s the best way to do that, but you can hardly say that it’s an effort to turn the whole thing into some big joke.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 12:21 pm - September 26, 2012
ILC, re: your comments @ #114:
I, too, would permit abortions. Like all prohibition concepts, there is no way to bring about the prohibition. Nor, should we. I suspect a few states might try it.
When I was in high school, there were no abortion clinic and teen-age pregnancy was relatively rare. Girls were known to have gone to live with an “aunt” which was a euphemism for a compound elsewhere where pregnant girls lived out their pregnancies and got schooling and were given proper medical attention for themselves and their developing baby. They usually came home for the next grade with a certain remarkable sense of maturity.
The local lore was that certain procedures by doctors in nearby communities were available. Sort of DADT.
The “pill” was a tacit form of liberation which suddenly branded the girl. Soon enough, guys learned who was “on the pill” and they went sniffing intently around the “safe zone.”
I take deep offense at Planned Parenthood because of their eugenics approach to cutting down our societal problems by killing the probable problem humans. Really, statistically, we would be wise ti kill 75% of male blacks in the womb. It is Levi who is apparently “equipped” to seat that panel of bureaucrats and academicians. The very thought makes my skin crawl. I do not have any affinity whatsoever for Nazi, Mao, Mussolini solutions for what to do to those who are inconvenient.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 12:32 pm - September 26, 2012
Again, the vast majority of work that Planned Parenthood does involves providing reproductive healthcare services to low-income women. The profit-based healthcare system we have in this country leaves a lot of people behind, and Planned Parenthood is a place for some of those people to go. People that want abortions can get them there, but it’s always the patient’s decision. And you’re calling it a eugenics program? Have I ever said anything so crass as “we would be wise to kill 75% of male blacks in the womb” ?
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 12:52 pm - September 26, 2012
Since ILC and heliotrope have both said they would permit abortions with restrictions, I guess I’d like to hear about what they would like to see. ILC clearly has a problem with any public money going towards abortions, so I assume I can take for granted that this would be one of his rules. What else?
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 12:55 pm - September 26, 2012
The motivation behind private compassion is to diminish suffering. The motivation behind social program bureaucracy is to increase and perpetuate it; otherwise, bureaucrats lose their jobs.
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 12:57 pm - September 26, 2012
Do you think it’s fair to compare two things as completely unrelated as compassion and bureaucracy?
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 1:39 pm - September 26, 2012
Actually V, this seems to be a constant in Levi’s belief system. That people won’t take beneficial actions by themselves, they have to be coerced into it.
Like I found this monring on Levi and taxes here.
It falls, in Levi’s world, to government to force people to act a certain way. Free will is a pain to his utopia.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 26, 2012 @ 1:40 pm - September 26, 2012
Which Levi says as he screams that Catholic hospitals and other religion-based groups should be forced to accept and pay for gay adoptions, contraception, and abortions because they are providing social services to the community.
You truly are insane and unhinged, Levi. You and your lying Sandra Fluke are shrieking that conservatives and the religious hate the poor and do nothing for social services at the same time as you are demanding all these conservative and religion-based social services agencies provide free abortions and adoptions to gay couples.
Seriously, are you incapable of recognizing the contradictions in your own rhetoric? You scream that conservatives and religious people do nothing for social services even as you seek to use the law to compel EXISTING conservative and religious social services providers to do your bidding. You are either completely clueless or a malicious lying bigot who will say and do anything to smear conservatives and religious people.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 1:48 pm - September 26, 2012
Yup, since you insist, Levi, that compassion only happens through bureaucracy.
After all, you have stated, Levi, that the only reason people donate to or perform charitable acts is out of selfish ulterior motives, not out of compassion.
Of course, that is because liberals like yourself don’t believe in charity or helping the poor; you believe in taking taxpayer dollars to throw yourself fancy parties and so you don’t have to spend money on your own private jets.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 1:52 pm - September 26, 2012
Yup.
And then there’s the whole galaxy of remarks by “progressives” like yourself about how Trig Palin should have been aborted.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 1:57 pm - September 26, 2012
Slightly better example, from this page.
Levi doesn’t think people who ‘aren’t ready’ to be parents should have kids. (ignoring that, unlike Levi, some people surprise everyone by rising to the challenge). 72% of black children are from single parent families. Since Levi’s said that they should not have kids since (at least one person) ‘wasn’t ready’ to become a parent, QED.
Margaret Sangar would be proud.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 26, 2012 @ 2:07 pm - September 26, 2012
Well, Levi, show me the statist bureaucracy that you can proudly deem a COMPASSIONATE BUREAUCRACY.
Oxymoron, anyone? Really, now, don’t you believe that it is kinder to kill off the poor to help them escape their treadmill of misery? How about Down Syndrome kiddies?
Thank you for the offer to discuss abortion with you, but you are such a bigot concerning religion, people of faith and their charity and moral motivation toward charitable brotherhood that I have no interest is listening to your snark and fulminations.
You have paved the ground on which you stand with such bile that I would demean myself to suffer your pretense as you play your fascist games. You are like a person in the dock at Nuremberg asking for judgement by Third Reich rules. You have locked yourself in your cement cocoon of moral relativism and situation ethics and the only rules you play by are the ones you fish out of your own rectal porthole. Like Obama, it is your way and no other way, particularly if the Judeo-Christian ethic is in play or a conservative is contributing.
Little man, you have made your bed. Now lie in it.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 2:17 pm - September 26, 2012
Lie.
Which made this statement a classic:
WRONG.
You ARE going to force them to have sex with you, have sex when they’re drunk, and have unprotected sex because you “forgot” your condoms. Indeed, you insist that your doing so is “tiny” and no big deal.
Why? Because, as you freely admit, you are incapable of and unwilling to control your sexual desires.
And this is where I simply point out the obvious, Levi; liberals like you are mentally and physically inferior to conservatives.
Conservatives have the same drives, but for some reason, are able to deal with them without having to kill babies. Indeed, conservatives are so mentally and physically developed compared to liberals that they are even able to use protection, avoid sex when it’s not appropriate, respect a woman’s wish to not have sex, and to take care of or adopt the baby when they do have sex.
Liberals, though, as you freely admit, are complete slaves to their biological urges. Indeed, liberals like yourself freely state that their choices to have unprotected sex, coerce women into sex, and have sex when they’re drunk are “everyday” occurrences and are “tiny”, nothing unusual to be concerned or worried about or stop.
So there’s the question, Levi. Conservatives are clearly more intelligent and capable than liberals like you, who are little more than primitive rutting animals who can’t follow instructions, can’t be bothered to use protection, can’t be bothered to take responsibility for the children you produce, and clearly and can’t do anything other than kill children. Furthermore, your inability to control yourself costs us money, since you force us to pay for the contraceptives you don’t use, the education you don’t follow, the abortions we don’t want, and the children you dump.
We’re essentially being punished with problems because you are unwilling and incapable of being responsible. Why should those of us who are personally responsible just allow these problems to swallow us up?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 2:18 pm - September 26, 2012
Can Levi even identify a state-run program that delivers social services more efficiently and effectively than private charity?
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 3:11 pm - September 26, 2012
Correction.
There are a whole lot of LIBERAL men like Levi who would do this.
That’s all that this is about, Levi. You are demanding that we give you abortion on demand or you will take a baseball bat to the abdomen of a pregnant woman.
This is the way that liberals need to be confronted and treated. Every one of their nightmare scenarios should be taken as an admittance that they will do these things. They need to be called on the fact that they are demanding we give them abortions or they will abuse women even more than they already do.
That’s the way you counter this. You make it clear that the violent hatemongering bigot Levi is going to get that baby killed, even if he has to violently abuse a woman to do it. Then you force the little puke to answer why he panders to spousal abusers.
Again, the answer is clear. Levi and his liberal friends do all these things. He and his family members force women into sex, have sex when they’re drunk, “forget” their condoms, and abuse their sexual partners into having abortions. That is why they are so obsessed with finding loopholes and reasons to kill babies. They cannot, WILL NOT, take responsibility for their actions.
When you realize that Levi is a disgusting puke whose only argument for baby-killing is that he forces women into sex, has sex when he’s drunk, and “forgets” his condoms, then insists that he and his idiot friends will abuse women and force them to have back-alley abortions, the whole abortion sham collapses completely. Levi is a piece of shit puke who has no more moral qualms about raping a drunk woman and then hitting her in the abdomen with a baseball bat than he has about paying too much for a cup of coffee. Indeed, Levi openly states that coercing women into sex is for him an “everyday” decision, no different than deciding to watch reality TV.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 3:18 pm - September 26, 2012
Again, religion proves convenient. It looks like you almost got close to agreeing with a point made by an atheist back there, so you better just shut it down and not talk about it anymore!
Remind me, why have I offended you so? Is it because I asked you to make sense? Is it because I asked you not to insist that everyone be subject to laws based upon your religious preferences? Is it because I’ve provided you with demonstrably more plausible explanations of the origin of morality, man, and the universe? Whatever the reason, running away and hiding behind your religion is very productive indeed.
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 3:41 pm - September 26, 2012
And again, what Gosnell proves is that liberals and Obama Party supporters will perform illegal and unsafe abortions, with the full support and endorsement of the Obama Party and local Obama supporters.
Furthermore, Gosnell is an admittance that Levi and Levi’s own Obama Party support and perform unsafe abortions and do so for huge profits even when abortion is legalized.
Again, it’s hostage-taking. Levi and his fellow liberals openly acknowledge and admit that they are irresponsible and promiscuous women-abusers — and then they threaten that they will be even MORE abusive to women unless we not only allow unlimited abortions, but channel taxpayer dollars to cover them.
Again, it never stops. One has to realize that Levi is the worst kind of sociopath. He has no concept of personal responsibility, no concept of restraint, and no sense of right and wrong other than what tickles his immediate sense of self-gratification.
And that is why Levi needs government. No sane or rational human being would agree with his behavior or fund it. No one in their right mind, no charitable organization would accept Levi’s demand that they pay for abortions so he doesn’t have to remember to wear condoms.
So since Levi can’t make a persuasive case for us to fund his irresponsibility and stupidity, he uses government to force us to pay for it at gunpoint.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 3:42 pm - September 26, 2012
No, Levi; it’s because you are an insane, irrational bigot who insists that anyone with religious beliefs is stupid and incapable of providing any of the things for which you ask.
What Heliotrope is pointing out is that you have the morality and mentality of a spoiled six-year-old who has proclaimed that all adults are stupid all the time and demanded that they prove him wrong.
This is, of course, why you run away from me. I show constantly how you can’t even live up to your own words, how you constantly contradict yourself, and how you are incapable of following the rules you lay down for others.
This is why you cower. This is why you won’t answer. I have demonstrated using your own words, direct quotes from you, that you are a hypocritical lying bigot. So you sulk and cry and kick and scream and run away to try to find more compliant targets.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 3:48 pm - September 26, 2012
Oh, you know what? I mean to respond, I really do, I just don’t have the time. I’ll catch up though, really. I will. In the mean time, you just keep accusing me of killing people and raping women and luxuriating on welfare and fighting for Al-Qaeda, and I’ll get right back to you. It’s at the top of my list!
Comment by Levi — September 26, 2012 @ 3:55 pm - September 26, 2012
Awwww poor baby doesn’t like it when he has his own words used against him.
Must be hard to lie when the internet makes it so easy to point out your truther rants and your blatant racism, just for a couple of your ‘greatest hits’. That’s not counting your own lies in this thread alone.
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
Comment by The_Livewire — September 26, 2012 @ 4:00 pm - September 26, 2012
Remind me, Levi, why have I offended you so?
Is it because I asked you to make sense?
Is it because I asked you not to insist that everyone be subject to laws based upon your hatred of and bigotry toward religion? Is it because I’ve provided you with demonstrably more plausible explanations of the failures of your “morality” and how your assertions have no basis in fact?
Whatever the reason, running away and hiding behind lack of time is very productive indeed — especially when one considers that you have found the time to post no less than fifteen times in the past seven hours.
Poor little brat. Once again your parents and teachers who didn’t care enough to teach you leave you looking like a hypocritical idiot.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 26, 2012 @ 4:04 pm - September 26, 2012
Good golly and macaroni.
Levi is so sociopathic that he is unable to understand just how peeing down someone’s front is offensive to the peed upon.
Having been deeply engaged in ethics for eons, I must admit that I have never met any atheist quite so determined to deny the utility of a common code of decency which has developed over the millennia through the merger of similarities in various philosophies all of which had their source in religious belief systems.
Albert Einstein tried hard to deny religion and a common belief system. But, having been chased down for his Jewishness, he was a bitten by the reality of “secular humanism”:
But, in contradiction of his own secular humanism and atheism, Albert Einstein said this of his contemporary, Albert Schweitzer: “nowhere have I ever found such an ideal union of goodness and passion for beauty as in Albert Schweitzer.” … “He is the only Westerner who has had a moral effect on his generation comparable to Gandhi. As in the case of Gandhi, the extent of this effect is overwhelmingly due to the example he gave by his own life’s work.”
Well, now, both Gandhi and Schweitzer were entirely clear on their religious belief systems and obeyed the moral and ethical rules embodied in those systems. They each respected the thought and suffering and martyrdom that was embedded in the development of those systems.
Poor Einstein tried mightily to be above and beyond “god” stuff. But, secular humanism did not really feed his soul.
Others, however, are perfectly comfortable and even feel empowered to attack their ghosts which emanate from religion. They actually hate ethics based on the faith that good men, acting in concert can bring peace on earth and a harmonious relationship known as “goodwill among men.”
Ludwig von Mises noted: “It is futile to place confidence in treaties, conferences, and such bureaucratic outfits as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Plenipotentiaries, office clerks, and experts make a poor show in fighting toxic ideologies.”
Which brings us full circle to: what is an ideology? Secular humanism is one. The Judeo-Christian ethic is another.
Einstein vs. Schweitzer: who has the better track record in history?
The 20th Century brought us two world wars, systematic mass murders, contempt for the dignity and life of human beings and secular humanism and its rebellion against religion.
Time for the secular humanists to make their case for a better world. Somehow, their case is always wrapped up in the religious belief system that “plenipotentiaries, office clerks, and experts” can pull it off.
If you don’t believe it, ask Levi.
Comment by heliotrope — September 26, 2012 @ 6:17 pm - September 26, 2012
Is there really anything so awful and oppressive about not having sex? Why do lefties like Levi act as though compelling people to restrain their libido is akin to torture?
Comment by Passing Gas — September 26, 2012 @ 9:09 pm - September 26, 2012
Arrgh! Floopid Flock Fluppet
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 9:10 pm - September 26, 2012
Anyway, Levi could spare himself typing all of his self-contradicting bullpuck if he just admitted the truth:
1. He supports abortion because he supports unrestricted sexual gratification without personal consequences.
2. He supports Big Government Statism because he sees it as a vehicle for forcing everyone else to accept his personal values.
If Levi could be honest about that, he wouldn’t have to spew all this bullcrap about “Oh, it’s just of clump of cells, but killing it is a difficult decision, but it’s no worse than watching a bad reality TV show, but it’s really the best option for women, and it has nothing to do with eugenics, but it’s good that it’s mostly poor blacks who get abortions, and it’s nothing people celebrate, even though half the DNC convention was devoted to celebrating it, and also we need more welfare programs, but if there were more abortions we wouldn’t need more welfare programs.”
Comment by V the K — September 26, 2012 @ 9:41 pm - September 26, 2012
You’re right in that I’m unable to understand. I don’t suppose there is anything you could say to me that I would take offense to, and yet I’m expected to tip-toe around your nebulous and wacky belief structure lest I be accused of bigotry. Once again, how utterly convenient is this religion that serves you!
As I’ve explained to you, these philosophies couldn’t have had their source in religious belief systems because they predate all extant religions by thousands of years. People knew not to kill each other before the advent of monotheism, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any people around to invent monotheism! And what did these religions contribute to the moral landscape other than magical justifications for slavery, misogyny, and genocide, anyway? The priests and prophets were dedicated to keeping their flocks ignorant and illiterate so they could remain firmly under their control. Religion is the root of authoritarianism in government, and it was the rejection of those ancient superstitions and their moral codes upon which we base our modern morality. The Bible doesn’t say that every person is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the Bible says obey. The Bible says nothing about freedom of speech, the Bible wants to send you to hell for thought crime. Do you mean to tell me you can trace the moral heritage of this country to such garbage?
WWII era Russia and Italy are examples of secular humanist governments? Nobody makes that argument. You’re better off calling all the bad guys atheists, even though you have a fundamental misunderstanding of that term as well.
Atheism isn’t anything other than a denial in the existence of god. It’s not a moral code, and it’s certainly no guarantee of moral superiority or inferiority. Whether you are commanded to worship a god or the state is an insignificant distinction, the problem is that you’re commanded to worship anything at all. In practical terms, that always means granting authority to the clergy or a political party or some other entity, which will invariably abuse that power. This is the real moral legacy of religion, wherein it is okay for the peasants to be forced and intimidated and beaten and tortured and killed to preserve the ruling class, because whenever you can invoke a higher power, the ends always justify the means. Religion is toxic because it overrides our inherent morality and altruism and compassion in service of some set of charlatans who promise you all kinds of goodies so long as you do as you’re told.
Find me the mass graves dug and filled by the secular humanists. Where is the secular humanist that commands people to think correctly? What secular humanist lusts for war with non-secular humanists? Is there anything so nightmarish in the secular humanist vision of humanity’s as the horrifying apocalyptic fantasies that Jews, Muslims, and Christians so eagerly look forward to?
Comment by Levi — September 27, 2012 @ 11:05 am - September 27, 2012
And now, having been beaten into a corner, Levi tries the ‘no true Scottman’ defense.
Amusingly if you look at the List of humanists on Wikipedia (hardly an unbiased source) you find…
Friedrich Engles, Huey Newton, Edward Said, Margaret Sangar, Peter Singer…
Heck, using Levi’s ‘standards’ He’s just shown that, despite his protests, we can lay all of the mass graves of Soviet Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, etc, firmly at ‘Secular Humanity’s’ Feet.
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking
Comment by The_Livewire — September 27, 2012 @ 11:55 am - September 27, 2012
That’s too easy.
WAY too easy.
In short, Levi demonstrates that “secular humanists” like himself are violent bigots who command people to think correctly, want any thought that disagrees with them suppressed, and who want to take violent and hateful public action against anyone who expresses different beliefs.
The entirety of liberalism rests on hypocrisy. Levi doesn’t hate religion because it causes bad behavior; he hates religion because it is a threat to his own belief in his own superiority and his utter moral relativism.
Furthermore, the supreme irony is that Levi tries to invoke the inherent decency of people while simultaneously screaming that, without laws being passed, he and his fellow liberals will lie, cheat, steal, cook books, take shortcuts, and everything of the sort.
Again, it is about power. Levi’s power is threatened by any moral code or standards of behavior over which he does not have complete control, veto, or the ability to dump when it’s convenient.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 27, 2012 @ 1:30 pm - September 27, 2012
But of course, Levi shrieks that fascist government control over everything is necessary because people don’t have inherent morality, altruism, or compassion.
As V the K puts it, Levi’s blabbering and screaming is just a cover for his real goals. Simply put, he wants total control of everyone else’s life and total freedom in his own.
This is beyond childish, but that’s typical of liberals like Levi, who rarely have any real intellectual training beyond spouting leftist tropes and who grew up in households where bigotry and hate replaced reason and facts.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 27, 2012 @ 3:10 pm - September 27, 2012
Shudder.
“these (unidentified) philosophies (……) predate all extant religions by thousands of years.”
What, pray tell, is the meaning of this babble? Which philosophy did not have its source in religion while predating all extant religions by thousands of years.
I will await your increased babbling with extremely low expectations.
Warning: the likelihood that Levi does not know what a philosophy is looms large.
Comment by heliotrope — September 27, 2012 @ 3:36 pm - September 27, 2012
Meh, you’re right, that one sentence is not well said. But you would know my meaning if you read the entire paragraph, in which I lay out that that our morality couldn’t have come from religions and philosophies so late in our development as a species. What informed our morality for the thousands of years prior to the foundation of monotheism? What positive innovations did the monotheisms provide other than to codify some arbitrary local superstitions and prejudices that have infected global politics for generations?
Just because I wrote a shitty sentence doesn’t mean you should ignore the point I’m making.
Comment by Levi — September 27, 2012 @ 5:18 pm - September 27, 2012
You also have sh**ty point. We do not live in pre-montheistic times. So what earthly difference does it make what the Neanderthals used as morality and ethics. Or present day dolphins?
Perhaps you are all hopped up on zen and the harmonics of superconsciousness:
The fact is, we live in 2012 a.d. and our Western culture is the accumulation of roughly three thousand years of recorded and ordered history. From this, we have extracted our morality and ethic. The overwhelmingly greatest influence on who we are as human beings and what we value and what we disdain is drawn from the roots of the tradition, philosophy, study, reexamination, trial and error, rejection and endurance of the Judeo-Christian ethic and moral code.
You, as an almost pre-pubescent denier insist on your flat earth doctrine of denying history, tradition and the very sinew that binds us together.
You have flatly declared that you are correct and Western civilization has got it all wrong.
Yet, in all your majesty of court-jester-become-emperor, you can not reveal your core, your source of principle, your linch-pin that ties you with anyone around you.
You are not even an atom. You DO have a dense central nucleus. And your dense center is surrounded by a gaseous cloud of negativity. But you have NO protons, NO quarks, NO kinetic energy; thus, NO atomic number.
You are a dud atom vainly denying any attachment to a free proton. You can’t decay, because you don’t have substance. You do not have any cosmological reason to exist. You have no stability. You have no chromodynamics. The gluon particle field is oblivious to you.
So you insist that all by your lonesome you are equal to and above the sum total of 3000 years of recorded Western civilization.
Good on you, Levi. You have invented yourself, now prove that you are worth a moment of attention.
Comment by heliotrope — September 27, 2012 @ 6:20 pm - September 27, 2012
The fact is, we live in 2012 a.d. and our Western culture is the accumulation of roughly three thousand years of recorded and ordered history. From this, we have extracted our morality and ethic. The overwhelmingly greatest influence on who we are as human beings and what we value and what we disdain is drawn from the roots of the tradition, philosophy, study, reexamination, trial and error, rejection and endurance of the Judeo-Christian ethic and moral code.
But if religious morality changes all the time, what good is it? I thought this argument we were having was about me being such a moral relativist, and here you seem to be admitting that moral relativity is the key characteristic of the Judeo-Christian ethic. What was with that accusatory tone and all your admonishments about how I make moral decisions based only on what feels good to me? If this Judeo-Christian moral code you’re so proud of has space for reexamination, trial and error, and rejection, than aren’t you the moral relativist? Why would a divinely-inspired moral code need to be rejected, in whole or in part? Gee, do you think it may be because that no human on this planet has ever received a divinely-inspired moral code?
I still contend that our progress as a civilization has been primarily motivated by rejection of religious morality. We’ve very recently enjoyed a tremendous amount of political, technological, and moral development in a very short span of time, and that has coincided with a de-emphasis of religious authority in our public and private lives. We owe our success to our ability to marginalize religion, not elevate it. I can list about a hundred moral prescriptions from religion that humanity has wisely discarded over the years, but I can’t identify a single one that we couldn’t live without. To this day, we still have to suffer a gaudy institution more concerned with protecting itself and its dogma than it is with protecting children from pedophiles or Africans from the AIDS virus. If you’ve got any pull with that crew, I’m quite ready for them to reject those particular bits, but why not do one better and just reject the whole thing?
I’ve told you plenty of times, you just ignore it. I think that consciousness is far more fascinating as something that was gradually, painstakingly, and coincidentally developed over hundreds of millions of years and generations than the idea that it was just breathed into us. I think that our appreciation of the scale of the universe should make us feel hugely important and utterly insignificant at the same time. I like the idea that we are responsible for ourselves and that there is no limit to our potential achievement, which you don’t get in any religious scheme. I think we’re obliged by virtue of our existence and our apparent uniqueness to try to understand as much as we can about the universe, as opposed to going googly-eyed and just making up some story about it.
Better than pretending that some book written by illiterate desert-dwellers in the iron age has some special significance, if you ask me.
…
Comment by Levi — September 28, 2012 @ 2:18 pm - September 28, 2012
It doesn’t. It is glacial in terms of change.
Societies set the morality of the times and I never have said anything different.
What we have here is that you are too stubborn and too dense to understand the blueprint. You deny the source of Western morality and ethic. You are a flat earther.
How you can carry on such inanity is a tribute to your narcissism and adonis like love of your own ruminations. Jr. High School is your perfect playground.
Comment by heliotrope — September 28, 2012 @ 3:13 pm - September 28, 2012
Actually, Levi, church-dominated Africa is doing far better with protecting itself from the AIDS virus than where liberals operate.
Indeed, antireligious-bigot liberals like yourself are actually doing WORSE.
Why? Duh. HIV spread has been directly linked to number of partners and refusal to use condoms.
You and your fellow liberals push promiscuity and insist there’s nothing wrong with coercing women to have sex even if you’re HIV-positive, having sex with women when they’re drunk and can’t object or don’t know you’re HIV-positive, and having sex even when you “forget” your condoms and are HIV-positive.
No surprise. Liberal affiliation absolutely correlates with HIV and other STD incidence. Among heterosexuals, those most likely to have abortions are also those most likely to be infected with HIV.
Isn’t that funny, promiscuous Levi? The very behaviors you push, the very essence of your promiscuity-based morality, accelerate the spread of HIV and other STDs.
Whereas how much do people following Catholic strictures, i.e. avoiding gay sex, abstaining from sex until marriage, and being sexually faithful, spread HIV or other diseases?
Not. At. All.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 28, 2012 @ 4:59 pm - September 28, 2012
NDT,
The majority of this thread is devoted to attempting to reason with a brick. Levi’s bigotry is immeasurably deep and results from the infection of viral Progressivism.
Levi sees everything as an evolutionary continuum in which apes have shed their hair and stupidity and become creators of micro-processors and left their primitive pasts of superstition and rock dumb ignorance for daily exploding scientific enlightenment.
Levi sees religion and religiously informed belief systems as of the neurotic machinations of clingers [Obama's term] who hide from lightning and create a Neanderthal-like, superstition-based response to everything that annoys or scares them.
Levi hopes the extinction of religion is imminent and he encourages the state to make it so in every possible way. If he could, he and his gods of science would produce a vaccine and rid the world of the religious plague.
Religion to those suffering from viral Progressivism is not just childish and unenlightened, it puts blinders on the adherents and interferes with forward motion.
What Levi can not comprehend is that he is more concerned with transgendered paraplegic acrobats than with the common man; and with the all-too-common man in particular.
He tolerates nothing in the way of compromise, understanding, or a differing viewpoint when it come to dealing with his own version of truth. Picture the Hunchback of Notre Dame and you have Levi as the Dean of Enlightenment.
His hatred of religion is not only a neurotic pathology within him, he is dedicated to transferring it those he so hates. For him, virtue is in dissenting from all things commanded by religious faith. I wonder if he knows how readily he would take up the cause of the guillotine if his crowd were to gain control over the “clingers.”
He is the very model of a modern fascist who never spoke more clearly than when he promised to “drag people kicking and screaming into the future.” He knows not only what is ahead, but what is good for everyone and what must be eradicated in the journey. If Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Stalin, Marx, Lenin, Ahmadinajad, et. al come to mind, it is because of the very clear similarity in their minds as to the final solution and how the fundamental transformation must take place.
Comment by heliotrope — September 28, 2012 @ 6:03 pm - September 28, 2012
Heliotrope, I have also contended that Judeo-Christian morality has changed over time. It would help me if you explain what Judeo-Christian morality is. If it would take too long, could you give a brief summary and/or give examples, especially with regard to homosexuality and abortion. Also, do you think the U.S. and/or the Western World is moving toward or away from Judeo-Christian morality. And when do you think the Western World, in general, and the leaders of the Western World followed the ideals of Judeo-Christian morality? Thanks.
Comment by Pat — September 29, 2012 @ 10:32 am - September 29, 2012
Of course you have, Pat.
But as anyone with a sense of logic would point out, you argue that Judeo-Christian morality has changed when you acknowledge that you don’t even know what it is.
In short, you have decided what something has done without even knowing the definition of what it is in the first place.
That is because your interest is not in understanding it. Your interest is in sniping at it, wearing it down, tearing it down, and trying to get it and its followers out of the way. You have already decided that Judeo-Christian morality carries no value, has no worth, and has no usefulness for society, and you want it gone. You, like Levi, see Judeo-Christian morality as a hindrance of which you would like to be rid because it interferes with and represents a threat to your own religion of self-worship.
Especially when, as I pointed out above, it so clearly outperforms your own moral relativity in regard to the metrics that you prefer. Hence, since you cannot challenge the results, you must attack the premise.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 12:33 pm - September 29, 2012
NDT, some things apparently never change. Once again you’ve demonstrated your own unChristian and bratty behavior with your bile, lies, and completely erroneous assumptions about me. Further, my question was not addressed to you. Sure, I would have welcomed an adult, civil, rational answer from someone else, but you couldn’t match any of the three criteria.
You almost made one good point in the remark you bold-faced. When you apologize for your slander, I would be glad to address it. It’s very simple to explain, even to someone like you demonstrates lack of logical skills with most of your posts.
In the meantime, thanks, and do have yourself a blessed weekend.
Comment by Pat — September 29, 2012 @ 1:06 pm - September 29, 2012
Ah, Pat, you are so refreshing in your bigotry-induced cluelessness.
Such as your trying to claim my behavior is “unChristian” after previously admitting you really have no idea what “Christian behavior” or “Judeo-Christian morality” is.
And especially given how Obama supporters like yourself are making governmental sanctions against Christians while supporting violent Islamists and anti-Jewish bigots.
So the message is clear, Pat. You spit on Judeo-Christian beliefs, values, and morality. You mock them in your art, you mock them in your words, and you mock them in your cultural institutions. You openly use governmental power to discriminate against those who hold them.
Their only value to you is as a weapon to attack and shut people up by claiming they’re “unChristian” — and, as you do, to demand that Christians treat you with respect, pay you, and run charities to clean up your messes when you want to dump the “inconvenient” or “unwanted”.
Liberals like you are parasites, Pat. You haven’t an ounce of decency in your bodies. You see Christian charity and you waste it. You see other peoples’ beliefs and you mock them until you need to abuse them to enrich yourself. You and your fellow bigots like Levi have bareback sex, coerce others into sex, and have sex when you’re impaired, and then scream that you’re going to leave the children and the sick produced to die in the street unless we let you kill them, pay every last bit of their bills, and give you your way in every respect.
In short, you and your fellow bigots like Levi are as “unChristian” as they come. And we have come to the realization that your use of the word “unChristian” is just like your use of the word “racist” or “homophobe” — it’s to cow other people into doing what you want them to do.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 1:39 pm - September 29, 2012
NDT, I couldn’t see an apology in your post, so I won’t be able to address the one almost civil point in your posts. However, I did see more excrement emanating from your keyboard laced with more lies and slander. And now you’ve made clear what behavior you believe is Christian. Yikes! I realize you have also appointed yourself this blog’s mindreader, but your assumptions are not even close to being based on reality.
Maybe you can take your stupendous mindreading skills, and bully and harass others as well. However, you should probably be made aware that most people don’t regard it as Christian behavior. In any case, please continue having a blessed weekend. Thanks.
Comment by Pat — September 29, 2012 @ 1:51 pm - September 29, 2012
You still don’t get it, do you, Pat?
Yup. I’ve criticized you, I’ve pointed out how you and your fellow gays and lesbians are abusing governmental power to attack Christians, and I’ve pointed out how your fellow liberal Levi has bareback sex, coerces others into sex, and has sex when he’s impaired, and then screams that he’s going to leave the children and the sick produced to die in the street unless we let him kill them, pay every last bit of his bills, and give him his way in every respect.
Based on your own admission, you don’t know what behavior qualifies as “Christian”, but you clearly “know” criticizing you or your fellow liberals for what you do is NEVER “Christian”.
Hence the point. You scream “unChristian” to force other people to stop criticizing you. It has nothing to do with whether or not they’re actually BEING “unChristian” or not, because you have no concept of what that actually means anyway; it’s just a fancier way of screaming “Shut up!”
And that leads us to this:
Who cares? You and your Obama Party and your gay and lesbian community openly support and endorse those who harass and bully others without a word of criticism.
Invoking standards only works when people recognize that you respect them, Pat. But as I’ve shown repeatedly, you and your fellow Obama supporters respect nothing other than power and getting your way. That’s why your screaming “unChristian” is nothing more than the act of a malicious and deceitful liar trying to manipulate others into doing what he wants.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 2:18 pm - September 29, 2012
Furthermore, Pat, let me point out how your Barack Obama Party, your gay and lesbian community, and you view “acting Christian”:
And:
And this classic:
In short, you, your Barack Obama Party, and your gay and lesbian community blame Christianity and “acting Christian” for all the problems of mankind. You insist that “acting Christian” is the cause of all humanity’s issues. You insist that if people DIDN’T “act Christian”, society would advance faster.
It is clear that you think acting “unChristian” is better in every respect as a belief system, both for society, for humanity, and for morality.
So then, why are you trying to attack people for doing so?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 2:40 pm - September 29, 2012
NDT, now vomit is spewing from your keyboard as well. You refuse to get it, do you? You maliciously lie, and make assumptions based on your flawed mindreading skills that do not reflect reality, and you continue to do it. And then you somehow believe your behavior is Christian. You, on your own, really want to make Christians look bad with behavior that you claim is somehow not unChristian. However, I won’t let your behavior reflect on other Christians. Your evil behavior is your own, not anyone else’s.
You claim that others mock and spit on Judeo-Christian morality, but yet you continue to do that yourself with your continued behavior that only you can regard as somehow not unChristian. Talk about malicious. Yet you continue to blame your own visiously immoral behavior on others. How nice! And now you go on about standards, as if you have any.
I still await your apology. You interrupted this thread once again with your bile. My question was directed to Heliotrope not you. But you insisted that you could read my mind and decided to crap all over another thread with your maliciousness, as is your usual MO. Thanks, and continue having a blessed weekend.
Comment by Pat — September 29, 2012 @ 2:46 pm - September 29, 2012
Mindreading does not involve links and direct quotations, Pat. Both of which I have provided repeatedly with example after example of how you, your fellow liberals, your fellow gays and lesbians, and your Barack Obama Party blame Christianity for all of society’s problems and push laws sanctioning Christians for daring to express their beliefs publicly while openly supporting violent Islamist groups.
The basic problem is that you don’t have the balls to say these people are wrong or acting “unChristian”. Or, as I am starting more to believe, you are a malicious, destructive liar who sees nothing wrong with such abuse and attacks on Christians because it suits your goal of harming them.
Pure hypocrisy and lies, Pat.
You and your fellow bigots like Levi shriek and scream about behavior reflecting on other Christians ALL. THE. TIME.
And how about your screaming and blaming Christians for the suicides of gay teenagers who they didn’t know and with whom they had nothing to do?
And how about yours and Levi’s constant ranting about how Catholics are pedophile supporters?
And how about your constant whining about parents who “excoriate their children for being gay” and demanding that the government punish them?
Your lies and attempts to make yourself look good unravel very easily, Pat. Like the vast majority of bigots and Obama supporters, you have no concept of accountability for your own words and behaviors, so when they’re held up before you, your only response is to throw a screaming tantrum.
You have zero respect for Christianity, Christian behaviors, or Christian beliefs, and as I showed, you openly support a community and a political party that advocate discrimination against Christians for publicly expressing their beliefs and rant how Christianity is to blame for all the problems of society.
This is why I stepped in. You are an abuser, Pat, a sick, destructive abuser like your pathetic friend Levi. You excoriate gays for being Christians and conservatives and people like Heliotrope for daring to practice their beliefs, and then you demand that they prove themselves innocent, just as you and your fellow sick Obama bigots called Mitt Romney a murderer and a tax cheat without a shred of evidence.
You clearly don’t understand or respect anything short of direct confrontation. You clearly have no consideration for facts, truth, or evidence, and will simply repeat lies like you have against Romney, like you did against Richard Grenell, and so forth until you are confronted on them and sent home whimpering.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 3:43 pm - September 29, 2012
And I repeat myself, Pat: you, your supporters like Levi, your Barack Obama Party, and your gay and lesbian community blame Christianity and “acting Christian” for all the problems of mankind. You insist that “acting Christian” is the cause of all humanity’s issues. You insist that if people DIDN’T “act Christian”, society would advance faster.
It is clear that you think acting “unChristian” is better in every respect as a belief system, both for society, for humanity, and for morality.
So then, why are you trying to attack people acting “unChristian”, when you, your supporters like Levi, your Barack Obama Party, and your gay and lesbian community, PREFER that people act “unChristian”?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 3:56 pm - September 29, 2012
Okay, NDT, you get the last word. I will not continue deflecting the continuing lies and evil that you are cowardly spewing at me. Dan has asked you, at least indirectly on this blog, to stop your viscious attacks against others, but you clearly refuse to stop. I cannot and won’t compete with your complete disregard and disrespect that you apparently have for Dan. You apparently rely on others not having your low standards and complete lack of morals into cowering them into submission. Congratulations. I certainly cannot compete with your utter disrespect and contempt for the religion you claim to be an adherent of, as you continue to mock and spit on it. I cannot any longer be a party to your viscious lies, abusive, bullying behavior, and utter evil.
Once again, please continue to have a blessed weekend.
Dan, my apologies for my part in letting this part of the thread getting sidetracked.
Heliotrope, I still hope you consider answering my questions. Thanks.
Comment by Pat — September 29, 2012 @ 4:07 pm - September 29, 2012
You’re right, Pat. You and your fellow liberals and Obama supporters certainly don’t compete with it; you outright surpass it in every respect.
And that’s before we bring out the ones from your community leaders and fellow Obama supporters like Joe Jervis and Dan Savage calling him a “Jewish Nazi” and worse.
Funny, you’ve never called THEM “unChristian”, or gone on about their “vomit”, or saying their words are “lies and evil” and “vicious attacks”, or insisting that they are “harassing and bullying”. But again, your point in calling other people “unChristian” has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with a malicious attempt to control their behavior by exploiting their standards.
You’re right, I do get the last word. You’re not used to that, because you and your fellow liberals are not used to a situation in which rational adults are allowed to overrule children. You’re used to screaming “racist” and “homophobe” until you get your way.
Back when the country was running OK, Pat, we could afford to be kind to indulgent, spoiled children like yourself and hope it was a phase out of which you would grow. But since then, you’ve made it clear that you will abuse government power to harm people based on their religious beliefs, that you will support and endorse abuse of Christians and conservatives like Dan, and that you will demand that we work ourselves to death so that you can sit back and suck down our wealth to which you think you’re entitled.
The United States has reached the point of exasperated parents with a spoiled six-year-old. And what you’re going to see over the next year or so is a series of epic battles in which the adults are going to win — and you and your fellow six-year-olds are going to lose.
You had better think about what’s going to happen when you have to compete in the labor force based on ability and productivity rather than sexual orientation. You had better think about how you’re going to survive when you can’t run screaming to the courts to have a Nativity scene or cross torn down. And you had darn well better think about what’s going to happen when you’ve finally succeeded in completely linking “gay rights” with “failed Obama Party wealth redistribution”.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — September 29, 2012 @ 4:27 pm - September 29, 2012
Pat,
I have been away at busy things today and now I am home and a bit tired. But I will talk your points one by one without going into much detail:
I don’t think it has changed at all. The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule still stand rock solid
See above.
The Judeo-Christian ethic sees homosexuality as lust instead of the biological imperative for propagation. I don’t think that view has changed, except some or even many churches and temples might soften the “in-your-face” aspect of man-with-man and woman-with-woman sexual couplings.
Abortion is not the issue. Life is the topic. The Judeo-Christian morality sees life from conception and considers that life separate and distinct from the life of the mother. Neither Jews nor Christians give dominion to the mother over the life of the fetus.
Pat, societies set the moral code. They rely on some historic, traditional model. The Judeo-Christian ethic has not changed. It is societies that change. The Victorian era was very prim and proper as well as fairly phony. You can pretend to ascribe to high ideals while being fairly course behind the curtains. That is to say that societies sometimes be come more libertine and give a wink and a nod to what was formerly unacceptable. Therefore, it is the society that wanders or “adapts” their interpretation of the Judeo-Christian ethic.
Marx and Hitler set out to abrogate it. That is rather new in world history. Levi, for instance, believes we live in a highly reasoned age of science and all religious belief is a form of neurotic superstition and cowardliness.
The US may very well develop a society that welcomes and celebrates gay marriage. Some weak temples and churches may hop on board. But that does not mean that the Judeo-Christian ethic has caved or even been modified.
All along the path of history, there have been the hard core practitioners of religion who demanded much and accepted little. They over-reacted in the sense that balance is often in flux. Some people like to excoriate the faiths over such things as the inquisitions, the crusades, witch hunts, etc.
These instances are the interactions between the power structures and should be viewed as nothing more or less than common politics.
I am not a rabbi or priest. I suppose that such a person in authority must plan out how to get the reluctant person listening to the lessons is going to receive the message.
I am not gay. I don’t think I would care to hear about being a sinner over and over again. However, the Judeo-Christian morality (ethic) does not celebrate acting on gay impulses as a positive (good) thing.
However, no Jew or Christian is advised to hate, shun, punish or otherwise cast out gays. For that, you must go to Islam.
Comment by heliotrope — September 29, 2012 @ 9:11 pm - September 29, 2012
Heliotrope, thanks for your response. It helps me understand things a little better. However, it also has provoked many more questions and thoughts. And now that this thread has hit the second page, I don’t know how much more of this can be pursued. But here are some of my thoughts and questions for now.
If the Judeo-Christian morality (or ethic) is as you say, then I would agree that it is non-changing. The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule have not changed. I was always under the impression, and still am that there is more to the Judeo-Christian ethic, because historically, there has been more to it. Yes, I get that societies can add to or change the rules, and this, in and of itself, does not change the Judeo-Christian ethic. But it is precisely because, in my view, that the basic rules have been flouted (death and threat of death, for example), that Christianity got to be powerful and widespread as it is today. Fortunately, in my opinion, we get to reap the rewards. Unfortunately, many people also suffered during the journey.
Another reason why I believe the Judeo-Christian ethic is more than the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, is because it is not comprehensive. For example, except for saying adultery is wrong, it says nothing about sex. Okay, the Golden Rule would cover rape. But there is nothing about consentual pre-marital sex, incest, and homosexual sex. And I guess that leads to my only questions for now. What is the basis of your belief that the Judeo-Christian ethic looks at acting on homosexual attraction as negative? And does this “lust” include anyone who acts on their sexual attractions in ways other than for “biological propagation”?
However, no Jew or Christian is advised to hate, shun, punish or otherwise cast out gays. For that, you must go to Islam.
Maybe so. But even today, many Christians still, in fact, hate, shun, etc., including their own children. And as recent as 50 years this was acceptable and the norm, and perhaps even advised. At least today, this type of behavior is seen more as unacceptable amongst Christians.
As for Islam, I have to agree with you. Yes, there are many who don’t hate gays, or even accept them. But the vast majority worldwide are advised to hate, punish, etc. gays, or anyone else, for that matter, who goes against Islam, even if they are not adherents to Islam.
Comment by Pat — September 30, 2012 @ 9:25 am - September 30, 2012
One other point. I agree with you regarding Marx and Hitler, and Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot as well. But, unfortunately, this has been happening for thousands of years. Europe has been in a virtually continuous state of war up until about 1945. Things have finally slowed down. Russia has been an autocratic state, and when Communism took over, they continued it, just with leaders who no longer took the surname Romanov. Yes, Stalin went to new heights with his autocracy, but his two next successors were more in line with the tsars with the amount of blood on their hands (unfortunately, it seems like Putin wants to continue the tradition of being an autocrat, but at least this is becoming rare in the Western World). As for Mao, he followed the long tradition of China, in where few generations of internal peace and stability was followed by mass murder of those competing for power, over and over again. Hopefully, they are done with this traditional pattern.
I guess my point here is that while Hitler and Stalin, in particular, were evil men, Western Civilization has seen its share of evil men throughout its history. It appears, at least for now, we finally have the mechanisms in place where we no longer will be in a continual state of war, at least within the Western World.
Comment by Pat — September 30, 2012 @ 9:41 am - September 30, 2012
Pat,
Your comments indicate that you are on the edge of delving into philosophy. Once one accepts the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, it is necessary to address the “what if’s” and the knotty problems of what constituted actions directed at the “good” and actions that are leading toward evil or are evil.
Most people who give a scant view to religion get all in a huff over the choice being between “good” and “evil”. “Evil” is such a strong word and “good” is not very strong. The reason, however is plain. Do good and perfect your life or do evil and destroy your life.
We all do evil. We must, however, strive to understand it and to resolve to avoid it and to live a good life. That is a key part of the Judeo-Christian ethic.
In reading your comments, I am of the opinion that you do not judge acts of yourself or others as acts of good and evil. When you start writing free passes for evil, you are in the realm of moral relativism and situation ethics.
Dependency is evil, unless the individual is so incapable, so weakened or so crippled that he can not care for himself. At that stage, it is evil not to give aid and comfort to the individual.
Sitting on sidewalk with a paper cup is very often evil. It is a con on the conscience of a good person to offer aid and comfort by playing out a ruse. The beggar might just as well spend his time shoplifting and stealing purses.
There. That is the introduction to the philosophy and parables that has engaged men and women in fleshing out the Judeo-Christian ethic for 3000 years.
Comment by heliotrope — October 1, 2012 @ 11:01 am - October 1, 2012
You pretty much have hit the point, Heliotrope.
As I pointed out above, living under Catholic stricture means that both of the people involved enters marriage having never had sex with anyone else, and then remains faithful to that person for their lifetime.
What does that mean?
- Neither has had unprotected sex or promiscuous sex
- Neither has coerced other people or has been coerced into having sex
- Neither has or has been exposed to any sexually-transmitted diseases
- Neither has produced children out of wedlock
Therefore, if society followed these rules, society would in fact have what has been shown again to be the ideal setup, which is a disease-free and faithful male-female couple, both having entered a sexual relationship freely and of their own consent, with any children produced having both parents and legal status clearly and cleanly identified.
Whereas, as I pointed out above, denigrating marriage, denigrating fidelity, and promoting gay sex have produced exactly the opposite.
The problem is, as you aptly put it, that Pat does not want to designate these sort of things as good — or more specifically, that Pat does not want to say that the outcomes from doing otherwise are less good.
Mainly because, if Pat were to acknowledge that promiscuity and promotion of gay sex were worse, then the argument for gay-sex marriage becomes promoting and giving equal status to something of inferior value for society — which makes no sense at all.
This is really the core of liberalism and liberal thought. It is establishing that there is no right and wrong, that choosing not to work is just as good as choosing to work, and so forth. If your choice carries inconvenient consequences, demand that society pick up those consequences for you by lowering its own standards.
The thing that I think is interesting in all of this is the susceptibility of those societies founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic to this sort of relativism — mainly because, in my opinion, the guidance to Christians is to respect the state and leave vengeance for wrongs in the hands of others, whereas Islam encourages a much more hands-on approach. Hence, those who would preach moral relativism like Pat can thrive in a Judeo-Christian society, while their lifespan would be extraordinarily short in an Islamist one.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 1, 2012 @ 1:37 pm - October 1, 2012
NDT,
The tension between good and evil is quite easy to ignore if you can find a cadre of individuals who encourage you to do so. It is a form of empowerment. Virtues are stern taskmasters. “Comfortable” vices are often preferable to keeping a strong moral and ethical code.
Mae West: “Good girls go to Heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
Oscar Wilde: “I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
There is no open ground between good and evil. However, moral relativists and situation ethics moguls insist there is a huge area between good and evil and that they know it, because that is where they live.
“I can’t help it” is rarely true. It is usually more accurate to say, “I will not choose to keep from doing it.” So, have a second slice of pie and put a scoop of ice cream on the side and maybe some chocolate sauce would be really good on the ice cream.See? Everything is “good” in this scenario, if you misuse the entire concept and ignore vice versus virtue.
Comment by heliotrope — October 1, 2012 @ 3:47 pm - October 1, 2012
The Ten Commandments as a source of morality? Really? The first 4 or 5 have nothing to do with how we are meant to treat one another, and are actually quite incompatible with the first amendment. Am I evil for taking the lord’s name in vain? We finally get to some reasonable stuff in the second half of the list with the prohibitions against murder and theft, but these couldn’t have been innovations of Christianity or Judaism since we know that complex civilizations and social orders existed for thousands of years before them. Regardless, a good amount of the Bible relates how godly people regularly controverted these laws at god’s command and to his extreme delight, revealing again the man-made nature of religion (what perfectly good being would ever order genocide? Why do I think that’s such an immoral act if I’m supposed to have been created by this perfectly good being? Is my sense of morality incorrect because I am repulsed by genocide in every instance?)
Finally, the commandment against jealousy, which is not only an authoritarian and impossible order to control your thoughts, but also means our economic system of capitalism is completely immoral. People are motivated and inspired by the lifestyles and privileges of people that have more than them, often to do great things. Capitalism has lifted millions of people out of poverty and while it has its faults, it’s not an inherently evil system. If we’re not supposed to want what others have, than we’ve been building this country on a very immoral premise for centuries.
Modern American morality features as very important cornerstones the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the recognized right to pursue life, liberty, and justice. All of these things are horrible evils when judged according to the Ten Commandments. The Golden Rule is considerably better, although this is unfortunately gleefully discarded by many figures in the Bible, and history up until the present day is pockmarked with pious men of god who frequently ignored the premise. If you get rid of these filler commandments, you’re left with some basic ethical tenants that every major civilization converged upon. The stuff that was unique to Christianity, about not taking the lord’s name in vain and having no other god and not creating graven images have all been completely abandoned by modern morality. And actually, those characteristics aren’t unique at all, but are common features of many other religions, Islam in particular. No, the Ten Commandments is certainly nothing I’d be all that proud of.
Comment by Levi — October 1, 2012 @ 4:49 pm - October 1, 2012
Yes.
You are showing crass disrespect toward other people for no purpose other than the gross satisfaction it brings to yourself alone. You speak with pride in belittling others and you even rise to denigrating religious belief with verbal anger. You are too slothful to rise above your base and course ways and you are gluttonous because you return to the belittlement of others frequently and with great lust.
You have shut and bolted the door to respecting you time and time again. There is no reason to talk with you on any level or nature about the Judeo-Christian ethic because you have no intention of accepting the views of others. You have declared all that relates to religion in any way to be beneath your contempt.
So, bright guy, what is your game? Cat and mouse?
Comment by heliotrope — October 1, 2012 @ 5:26 pm - October 1, 2012
The first four OR five?
You’re pretending to pass judgment on something in which you don’t even know what you’re talking about?
Post what commandments to which you’re referring, Levi. Show us that you actually have even read the Ten Commandments or have an intelligent understanding of what you’re discussing.
And by the way, failing to do so will immediately get you slapped with one of your previous posts in which you demanded evidence and insisted that failure to provide it meant that the person was wrong.
Next up:
First off, Levi, you are ignorant of the definition of jealousy.
See that first word? “Resentment”.
And do you know what the definition of that is?
Capitalism by itself — the desire to better yourself, to do better, to accumulate wealth — has nothing whatsoever to do with jealousy. Jealousy is about resenting the success of others.
And that is liberalism in a nutshell. Liberals always resent the success of others. Liberals hate seeing other people succeed. Liberals always insist “you didn’t build that” and scream that any success is due to hurting other people.
Moreover, per Helio’s excellent point above, it’s not that you can’t control your thoughts; indeed, liberals are the biggest advocates of political correctness and other forms of thought control. It’s that you don’t want to control your thoughts, and rather than admit that, yourationalize that by stating that it’s “impossible” to do so.
And this was my favorite.
Define “evil”, Levi.
Is it, for example, evil to coerce a woman to have sex?
Is it, for example, evil to have sex with a woman when she’s drunk?
Is it, for example, evil to “forget” your condoms and have unprotected sex?
After all, these are things that you have endorsed and support as being perfectly OK under your liberal morality, no different than paying too much for coffee or watching bad reality TV.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 1, 2012 @ 5:27 pm - October 1, 2012
Actually, heliotrope, the point to be made is this: Barack Obama, the Barack Obama Party, Levi, and liberals have stated openly that it is evil to take Mohammed’s name in vain or to mock Mohammed in any way, shape or form — and have endorsed and carried out government coercion, sanctions and punishment against those who do.
So essentially, Levi and his fellow liberals have made their support of theocracy and anti-blasphemy laws blatant and obvious — when, of course, it applies to their preferred religious beliefs.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 1, 2012 @ 5:35 pm - October 1, 2012
Actually, Levi, you aren’t.
For example, you saw nothing wrong with Saddam Hussein carrying out genocide against the Marsh Arabs, the Kurds, and eventually Shi’ites. Indeed, you argued that Saddam’s genocide was no reason for Saddam to be removed or for people to act to remove him.
With that in mind, Levi, why are you demanding of God a standard which you yourself can’t even keep? Indeed, if you expect God to be totally opposed to genocide in all instances and to take swift action against those who practice it, you are holding God to a higher standard than you demand of yourself.
Furthermore, Levi, this invariably leads to the twisted trap that moral relativists try to set, which is to scream that God should have prevented things like the Holocaust by striking down all Nazis — which, in essence, would be committing genocide to stop genocide. In short, you demand God act, then you criticize Him regardless of what the action is.
Were you just a bigot, Levi, that would be tolerable. But you’re an insecure bigot, which means you have to eradicate and stamp out any opinions different than your own. It is not good enough for you to simply choose not to follow the Ten Commandments; you have to eliminate them completely and destroy anyone who would dare quote or follow them.
This is why you are a fascist.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 1, 2012 @ 5:45 pm - October 1, 2012
Your comments indicate that you are on the edge of delving into philosophy. Once one accepts the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, it is necessary to address the “what if’s” and the knotty problems of what constituted actions directed at the “good” and actions that are leading toward evil or are evil.
Thanks, Heliotrope, for your response. These are some of the things that I have thought about for a while, but obviously don’t have all the answers for.
I have a lot of what ifs, and a lot of questions regarding this topic, but one is homosexuality, and again, I don’t see it addressed in the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule. So, it seems to me, at least, that homosexuality would be neutral.
In reading your comments, I am of the opinion that you do not judge acts of yourself or others as acts of good and evil. When you start writing free passes for evil, you are in the realm of moral relativism and situation ethics.
First of all, I enjoyed your comments about good and evil, and agree with what you say. My questions, for now, at least, have to do with the basis of morality. But I am not afraid to point out evil, as you will see in my next post. However, I do my best in this blog keeping things to myself in the interest of civility, and usually reserve pointing out evil when I am personally and visciously attacked.
Dependency is evil, unless the individual is so incapable, so weakened or so crippled that he can not care for himself. At that stage, it is evil not to give aid and comfort to the individual.
I guess this is covered under the 10th Commandment.
Sitting on sidewalk with a paper cup is very often evil. It is a con on the conscience of a good person to offer aid and comfort by playing out a ruse. The beggar might just as well spend his time shoplifting and stealing purses.
Maybe this is where moral relativism comes in. I do see a difference, i.e., I see one more evil than the other. In the former case, good people have the choice to not follow through with the ruse. Not so with the latter cases.
Comment by Pat — October 1, 2012 @ 8:05 pm - October 1, 2012
Hence, those who would preach moral relativism like Pat can thrive in a Judeo-Christian society
NDT, you are the poster brat for moral relativism. You crapped on this discussion I had with Heliotrope with more lies. Please cease, and desist. Thanks, and have yourself a blessed week.
Comment by Pat — October 1, 2012 @ 8:12 pm - October 1, 2012
Pat,
Homosexuality is a dead end street. It is an answer to lust, but not the propagation of the species. In my opinion, the whole issue got muddied by Freud and the pseudo science of psychotherapy. My Christian view is that homosexuality is akin to obesity from too much chocolate. I recognize the lust as controlling, but not as an essential virtue.
As you know, I am not homosexual and so I can not honestly assess your own sense of self and propriety. That is why, I suppose, I count a number of homosexuals among my close and dear friends. I don’t sit in judgement of how they respond to their inner drives. The one place where I draw the line is at marriage. I do not begrudge my homosexual friends their loving and committed partnerships. But they are not “coupling” in the same manner as the biological imperative brings heterosexuals together.
That is why I have taken the path of promoting civil unions. However, I can not accept an equality of tradition and moral purpose with a couple that will not reproduce because of their choice of mates, when they most likely could reproduce if they mated with the opposite sex.
I suppose you have read Levi’s juvenile middle finger rants. An atheist who is not poisoned by his own bile can take a great deal from the Judeo-Christian ethic without dismissing it all as superstition and ignorance. To cast the greatest thinkers of the Western world onto a dung heap is just plain ignorant.
The homosexual is equal to unfaithful spouse or the person who steals paperclips from the office. Sin is both great and small and we are all sinners in that we are all engaged in life where deceits can be shortcuts and a little lie can be a momentary compliment. Most of us have enough challenge keeping on the “good” road that we do not have the time to run around pointing fingers at others who we think are failing.
Levi can not imagine why taking the Lord’s name in vain is a problem. You have no need to do so or to defend your right to offend others. Therein lies the key to understanding how to overcome evil.
You are homosexual. I accept that. Of course, I do so without any inner conviction that I can do anything whatsoever about who you are. But, I do have plenty of Judeo-Christian-based beliefs about what you do concerning others, such as children, wards and the weak. My feelings are no different than I hold a against a heterosexual and what he does concerning others, such as children, wards and the weak.
Really, I doubt we are much at odds. I am certain you could find a church that would damn you straight to Hell. I am certain I could find a church that would give me the same treatment. Extremes are not the point.
In the end, we are a brotherhood and I seek your love and understanding. But I would not compromise the Judeo-Christian ethic for the sake of political correctness or as a wink and a nod just to make some special group feel good.
Should you “shun” your sexual drives? How the heck am I to know? Can you be a good person and a homosexual? Of course. Is Heaven open to you? Not my call. But a great deal ultimately depends on your soul and your intention to succeed at avoid evil.
Levi is laughing his socks off.
The problem with liberalism today is that it seeks to enforce its belief system with the power of the state to tax and destroy those of us who disagree with statism. We view the Leviathan state (Hobbes) as an ultimate evil in that it destroys individual freedom, initiative and harmony.
In my 70 years, without very much actual statism, I have seen homosexuals become valued and respected members of society. In my mind, that is due more to the Judeo-Christian ethic than anything the state has imposed on the 97% of society that is not homosexual.
That is why I have no real understanding of what the clown section of homosexuals and the Levi’s are up to. Those people seem to be set on riling the overwhelming majority and getting their clocks stopped.
Comment by heliotrope — October 1, 2012 @ 9:52 pm - October 1, 2012
Ah, Pat, you remain as always the perfect dhimmi; never putting right and wrong ahead of personal convenience, weaving elaborate rationalizations of “civility” to cloak inaction, and unerringly placing your ire, not on those who chop off the heads, but on those who are so crass as to criticize the head-chopping.
The reasons why are legion. You have a position to protect. You flinch at the thought of being abused as you see gay conservatives being abused. And for now, the violence of the head-choppers seems focused on the people that you wanted punished and gone anyway. So you bite your tongue, you don’t speak up, and you congratulate yourself on your “civility”.
And then you wonder why the head-choppers get progressively worse.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 1, 2012 @ 9:55 pm - October 1, 2012
North Dallas Thirty,
This is long overdue, but I wanted to express my heartfelt Thank You for your well-researched intelligently thoughtful insights on all the issues raised here at GP. I’m sure I speak for many others here as well.
It’s not often that I see someone as generous with their time as you. Your generosity is proven by the fact that you have been willing to selflessly neglect your own blog (http://northdallasthirty.blogspot.com/) in order to participate here for the benefit of GP and their readers.
But your character attributes that I appreciate the most, by far, are your unswerving honesty and meticulous fact-checking. Thus, I can always be confident that I’m reading rock-solid information and opinion.
Due to your inspiration, a few other commenters here have become ND30 wannabes, but they remain as mere pretenders to your throne. Long live the king!
Thanks again, and God bless.
Comment by Richard R — October 1, 2012 @ 10:00 pm - October 1, 2012
Pat,
I take NDT’s points. He definitely goes for the jugular, but he is keenly attuned to what many on the left think is a “reasonable” compromise with firmly established moral and ethical principle.
Principle is not up for compromise. It it were, it would not be a principle. Under Levi’s foolish attacks on God, it would seem that God would have struck down all homosexuals long ago. That is the kindergarten understanding of the yin and yang of good and evil. Throughout all of philosophy is this eternal pull and adherence of opposites. Those are the two constants.
How you trade the mystery of human life and the force of religion in for Darwin and some pimply geek at MIT is beyond my ability to understand.
This afternoon, I was writing a chapter on my terrace. The Butterfly bushes are in the last stages of bloom. I watched dozens of Monarch Butterflies gathering nectar. Soon they will migrate to Mexico and Costa Rico on frail wings and congregate by the billions to reproduce and continue the cycle. Maybe Darwin and his cousins can explain all of this in cold, scientific and mathematical terms. But they can not explain the awe and the mystery and the beautiful coloring and the odds of it all in any way that make soul satisfying sense.
That is why statism is doomed so long as individuals desire freedom. That is why we mortals know better than to try to outthink God’s plan.
Levi is laughing the skin off his sockless feet.
Comment by heliotrope — October 1, 2012 @ 10:07 pm - October 1, 2012
Heliotrope, I think we are in full agreement that homosexual relationships will not result in propagation of the species. No problem there. I guess what I am missing is how this is related to Judeo-Christian morality as you have stated it. Sure, I could probably have stayed in the closet, married a woman, and got myself to procreate once or more times. But in my view of morality, it would definitely be the wrong thing to do. I’m thinking you would be in agreement with that.
I appreciate the dilemma, as you see it, that homosexuals face. That if we are going to act on our homosexuality, that we do so responsibly. That we can have our relationships codified somewhat, if not marriage. But you seem to base it on the fact that our relationships will not result in procreation. What about a man who knowingly marries a woman who is infertile? Is he giving into his lust, by not choosing to procreate with a woman who is fertile? In fact, we not only tolerate such marriages, we applaud them. I believe that monogamous unions that do not involve procreation set good examples for all. However, just to be clear, I am NOT advocating that infertile straight couples should not marry, regardless of whether same sex marriage happens or not.
Should you “shun” your sexual drives? How the heck am I to know? Can you be a good person and a homosexual? Of course. Is Heaven open to you? Not my call. But a great deal ultimately depends on your soul and your intention to succeed at avoid evil.
That’s fine. And I guess the question is, is acting on homosexuality responsibly evil. I don’t believe so. As such I am not avoiding it. If I’m wrong, so be it, and will accept whatever punishment comes my way. I suppose I have no choice in that matter. Heck, for all I know, failing to act on my homosexuality, and playing the martyr/victim could be evil. (I doubt it, but who knows for sure).
As for Levi, he certainly isn’t the first person who has rejected the Judeo-Christian ethic. Let’s face it, in one way or another 70% of the world does. But I do disagree with him crapping on others’ beliefs with the sky god stuff, and whatnot.
That is why statism is doomed so long as individuals desire freedom. That is why we mortals know better than to try to outthink God’s plan.
That’s fine. But we can study this issue for eternity, and I don’t think we’ll ever know what God’s plan is. There are millions, if not billions different ideas about what that is.
I take NDT’s points. He definitely goes for the jugular, but he is keenly attuned to what many on the left think is a “reasonable” compromise with firmly established moral and ethical principle.
We’ll have to agree to disagree regarding NDT. On this thread alone, NDT stated about 10 lies regarding me. Fine, go for the jugular if one must, but I don’t see how spewing lies (and thinking that linking to these lies can somehow make it the truth) is in anyway moral or ethical.
Comment by Pat — October 2, 2012 @ 8:00 am - October 2, 2012
NDT, your last post bordered on civility, with only one example of name calling, so I’ll respond. This is Dan and Bruce’s blog. They get to decide the rules, and I do my best to follow them. You were called out, at least indirectly, by Dan to knock it off. But after your usual tirade, you basically blew him off on this blog as well. I recall you even used the word “bullsh&t” in your disdain of Dan’s request.
You can make your disagreements with me plain and still follow the rules here. And you don’t have to make up lies about me to do so. I have done my best to avoid interacting with you. In this thread, in fact, I specifically asked Heliotrope a question, not you. If he believed there was an ulterior motive, or believed I am too pathetic of a human to be respond do, he could have made that determination himself.
This is a blog. I am not here to change the world. I’m here just to exchange views. I do my best to not be a finger wagger, as you put it, unless I am personally attacked. I have seen people on this blog say that in the real world, that you are a very nice person. I have no reason to doubt that. I have no idea why you turn viscious and ugly on this, and other blogs. You want to change the world, fine. But it’s not going to happen here. It will happen outside of these blogs.
If I were to follow your suggestion, and damn civility, and speak out when I see any form of injustice, I would be posting continuously about your behavior against anyone you disagree with on this blog. No one, not even Levi, comes close to the bad behavior that you exhibit on this blog. Sure, you and others disagree with this. But if I’m going to act on opinions, it will be on my opinions, not yours.
Anyway, I am willing to wipe the slate clean. If you are too, great. If not. That’s fine too. Thanks.
Comment by Pat — October 2, 2012 @ 8:17 am - October 2, 2012
Absurd! And I think that says most of what needs to be said about the supposed impeccability of the Christian moral code. This is a concern in a world where people are sold into slavery and where wars are being raged? I’m evil because I impinge upon some ancient prohibition that was obviously, obviously designed by normal men who saw religion as a means of dominating economics and politics?
What am I to respect? You have accused me of having no moral code and claim to be guided by the most superior moral code of all time. If I were so inclined, I suppose I could make the case that this was a case of you being disrespectful towards me, but I’d rather we both tried to prove our argument. I’m sure you’ve heard at some point in your life that respect is earned, not given, and I find nothing to respect about religious belief. It has a terrible track record on issues of morality, and it doesn’t seem to me that it contributes in any way to modern Western morality. The Bible isn’t relevant, it doesn’t clarify, it doesn’t simplify. In fact, it seems to add a whole lot of dead ends and hypocrisies that mankind had to struggle for centuries to discard. Are we any worse off because we’ve stopped sacrificing animals and stoning adulterers? What good is a moral code dictated by a supreme being if we have to periodically revise it? Why don’t religious people seem to be any more morally virtuous in practice than godless people?
I’ve said again and again that I don’t care what your religious beliefs are so long as you have the common courtesy to keep it to yourself and not insist that others feel the same way. Unfortunately, and I see that you’ve done it again, you seem to have no problem peddling this idea that homosexuality is an affront to god or is somehow morally defective. As a heterosexual, this probably means very little to you in the long run and you probably can’t imagine that it’s that big of a deal. However, in the real world, where children are brought up by god-fearing adults and just might be gay, this attitude of yours has devastating consequences on people. I can think of three individuals in my personal life off the top of my head who have or have had strained relationships with their parents because they’re homosexuals. In one instance, the entire family abandoned the Catholic church and accepted their son for who we was. In another, the mom insists that her daughter never bring around her girlfriends and routinely attempts to cure her of the gayness. In the third, the daughter has been hiding her lesbian relationship of 6 years. And for what? Because of who they want to have sex with? That justifies a strained family relationship?
There’s nothing to respect there. Perfectly normal people are made to feel guilty and defective and horrible about themselves by your religious attitudes about homosexuality for no reason at all. Religion’s an awful, obsolete convention not only for the violence and real, physical suffering that it can cause, but also, and maybe primarily so, because of the completely unnecessary mental anguish that it puts people through, many of whom prefer to take their own lives because they can’t reconcile their religious belief with their bodily impulses. What kind of supreme being burdens a small percentage of the population with biological urges that it commands cannot be acted upon?
You are working from a completely different premise and are arguing on a completely different set of rules. There’s no way that you’re going to convince someone of the religious argument if they don’t share the same premise and argue with the same rules. Religion has a head start on by science by thousands of years, but your forebears didn’t spend that time well, opting to make your points with torture and violence rather than sound reasoning and real evidence. Religion just can’t produce anything that is convincing to someone who is truly skeptical in these modern times. Religion is also a whole lot easier when you’re surrounded by other religious people who just nod in agreement with whatever absurd or archaic religious mumbo-jumbo is on offer, so you’ll find an excuse to not to talk to atheists about it. This almost always comes in the form of “I’m so offended!”, a last resort that I don’t find all that impressive and am quite proud of never having to invoke.
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 10:03 am - October 2, 2012
My kindergarten understanding, eh? Well, it seems to me that if principles are delivered by god, there should be some kind of otherworldly or extremely prescient quality about them. An example would be a commandment such as this: “Race is an illusory social construct. There is no significant physical difference between the peoples of the world, and no person or group of people may rightly claim inherent superiority over others.” If god were to have slipped something like the above into the Bible and made it a recurring theme throughout, maybe history would have gone quite a bit differently? Instead, we get stories of genocide and fables about being submissive and obedient even to ridiculous extremes.
In fact, principles are up for compromise, and we should all be grateful that we’ve compromised many of Christianity’s principles right into the trash heap.
Well ain’t that something? Of course, it’s only because of rigorous scientific study that we know anything of butterfly life cycles and migratory patterns, questions that religion has no interest in answering. If you’re in awe at the mystery of this or any other natural phenomenon, you can slake your curiosity by visiting a scientist that can tell you anything you want to know. You seem to be suggesting that scientists are nothing but wet blankets with a desire to ruin the mystery for people who appreciate beauty. In reality, scientists are motivated by that same awe, sense of mystery, and beauty, and are so fascinated that they want to learn everything they can. Being able to explain something in mathematical, scientific terms doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the beauty of it and find some satisfaction in studying it. The religious contribution here would be…. nothing! Just look at the pretty bugs heliotrope! Aren’t they pretty! God made them to be pretty for you because you’re the center of the universe!
Indeed I am. What do you mean about not trying to out-think god’s plan? There are hospitals and infirmaries around the world filled with religious people hopelessly struggling to out-think god’s plan. Some will fail, some will succeed, and it will be dependent almost entirely on where you live and what kind of healthcare you have access to. But wait, that’s god’s plan, too, isn’t it? God’s plan is to save some random churchgoer in Tennessee while allowing millions of children to starve to death every day. Yes, it’s all so very funny!
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 10:46 am - October 2, 2012
Pat,
The Judeo-Christian ethic is not a stale statement made a few thousand years ago. It is fleshed out by time and adaptation to societal change. The skeleton of the ethic comes from God, but the morality and understanding of the ethic comes from man. We don’t have a phone line to God by which we can ask his secretary for immediate clarification of our ethical/moral dilemma of the moment.
Societies are political in nature. Societies decide a course based on the weight of the group holding the power and that group’s ability to impose the decision on the society.
Clearly, the church has lost its power position and society smells it as weak. Enter Sandra Fluke.
When the society gives the social morality and ethic over to the political power alone, then the state becomes the source of the ethic and moral code.
Our tradition and history and laws are all based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. They can all be sanitized of any connection, save coincidence, of any relation to the Judeo-Christian ethic.
Your marriage to another man is not my problem or concern. Nor do I feel that it is much of a state problem or concern. What difference does it make if groups of people believe you are a sinner? What difference does it make if you have to win the marriage right at the ballot box? Why are those who vote against you evil?
The infertile heterosexual couple is the exception to the rule of marriage as marriage has evolved in the Judeo-Christian ethic. In other times, the brother was supposed to step up and marry the widow. Men could dump infertile wives. (See the annulment games played by Kerry and Kennedy.)
Getting into the weeds of when those in charge of the religious ethic play games for powerful men who drown, seduce and play around is not the point. That is Levi territory. He keeps track of when the Judeo-Christian ethic goes off the tracks.
I’m done. I have stated my points. I am not the High Poobah who can issue fatwahs, speak in tongues and settle the issue.
I have no point of reference to know if a homosexual man can marry a heterosexual woman and live a fulfilling life. You seen to say that is not the likely case. You seem to say that put your ability to choose and to live out your attractions as being innate and reasonable.
Under those terms, why not several mates. Sounds reasonable to me. And what should society do about people like Jerry Sandusky who are mentoring youngsters?
If you don’t rely on at least the tradition of the Judeo-Christian ethic, where does the common sense toward avoiding “icky” (evil) arise?
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 10:50 am - October 2, 2012
Levi: Race is an illusory social construct.
Yes, it is. And your political circus of clowns keeps it alive and panders to it and keeps it begging you for more Obamaphones. You are the slave masters and right now your party is shilling to the race groups you most need to retain power. You practice the politics of division and dependency and cynical pseudo-science social engineering. And you have the audacity to blame your history of Jim Crow, segregation, lynchings, subjugation and racial tyranny on the Judeo-Christian ethic.
And you want the God you mock to straighten out your history of corruption for you. What is that all about?
Levi: If you’re in awe at the mystery of this or any other natural phenomenon, you can slake your curiosity by visiting a scientist that can tell you anything you want to know.
Yeah, sure. So built me a bat with psychedelic colors and a BMW logo on each wing that comes around and licks my butt so I don’t have to use toilet paper. After all, if there is no mystery left to science, then there is no reason why self programming computers can’t order up a special set of biological protocols and breed them into existence.
Sorry, Levi, but your ozone hole and ice cap melting crowd that has decided cows must not fart is a little to flat earth for my liking. But you go right ahead and Al Gore us to death and sell your bogus carbon credits and play your Grand Poohbah by science games. Your arrogance is well noted. Now go for a walk and bore everyone in sight by explaining away all of life’s mysteries. OK? Are any two Monarch Butterfly wings exactly the same in their markings? Why or why not? (Please be dry and unanimated and absolutely certain.)
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 11:08 am - October 2, 2012
Levi: God’s plan is to save some random churchgoer in Tennessee while allowing millions of children to starve to death every day. Yes, it’s all so very funny!
Levi attended classes with the mock turtle: “‘Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,’ the Mock Turtle replied; ‘and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.’”
So, Levi stands foursquare with Karl Marx: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
The chances that “the random churchgoer in Tennessee” is tied into a Golden Rule network that helps feed, clothe, shelter and care for millions of starving children around the world are far greater than the chance that Levi gets off his sorry butt and does anything remotely as powerful as the tradition of missionary work. He is too busy “reeling” and “writhing” and doing “ambitions” and “distraction” and “uglification” and “derision.”
Who needs God when the Titanic is unsinkable and the UN is on the scene? Men come together all the time and play great music. They don’t need no stinkin’ score. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is just random happenstance. It is all science and harmonics and stuff. The wind goes in and the music comes out. No code, no standards, no nothing. It is all so scientific.
There, now I have mocked your plain brain and its fantasy that your basement of monkeys all slapping randomly at computer keys can undo tornadoes, but not save millions of starving children. Bring on science. Bring on social engineering. Bring on the brave new world.
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 11:59 am - October 2, 2012
But if the Bible has any truth to it, than a good number of people who lived in the Middle East did have a phone line to god who did provide clarifications for their moral dilemmas. So what gives? If you’re telling us that morality works by god giving the broad strokes and letting us figure out the details, why was he giving people the details 2,000 years ago? I don’t think you realize that the implication of what you said is that the Bible ought to be discarded.
This is preferable, at least in political systems that have adopted critical innovations like constitutions and representative government. The authority in these political systems rests with the people, and not with a priesthood caste who invokes a secret, ultimate authority that trumps all other considerations.
Religion would go extinct in a generation if religious people didn’t force their religion on their children. This in and of itself is a horrible practice that belies the insecurity of religious people to convince people of the religious argument on its own merits. As someone who values individual liberty and the right of self-determination, I consider all efforts to control what other people think to be evil, and parents teaching vulnerable and ill-prepared children their own religion is an especially heinous form of that evil. That said, I understand that people are doing it out of concern for their children, and likely only because they were visited by the same pressures when they were children, too. I want to say that’s not excuse, but it actually isn’t a bad one. It’s a hard thing to ask people to overcome such hard-wired brainwashing, especially when it’s perpetuated by your loved ones.
Anyway, brainwashing your children from birth is evil because you don’t know what kind of adult your child is going to grow up to be. When your 12-year old son begins to feel sexual attraction to his male classmate after 10 years of being told that same-sex attraction is a sin, and that sinning is an insult to god, and that god punishes sinners by sending them to hell, than what you’ve done is set him up for an adolescence of torture. Maybe he’ll get through it okay, maybe he won’t, but no one deserves to suffer that kind of anguish, least of all children. That is why it matters when there is a mobilized and vocal group of people who believe that homosexuality is a sin. If I were gay, it would make no difference to me, because I had the good fortune of having parents who didn’t drill all of this nonsense into my head when I was a kid. But there are millions of gay adults in this country who did have that happen to them, and there are millions of gay kids in this country who will continue to have that happen to them.
What difference does it make if people believe you are a sinner for something inherent in you that you can’t control, you ask? Well, the conflict between people’s religious upbringing and their homosexuality leads to depression, anger, guilt, shame, fear, and various other forms of misery. And negative emotions breed negative actions. People kill themselves. People do drugs. People who hate that part of themselves express their frustration and anger by being violent towards others. People sexually abuse children. And if you can manage to square this circle and avoid feeling these things about yourself, you still have to contend with the straight kids who are taught all of the same things about the sins of homosexuality. Maybe it’s not as bad as all that, and you just have to settle for some awkwardness around Thanksgiving.
The point is, it absolutely does make a difference and it’s not as sterile and harmless as you would have people believe. I know that people like you are more concerned with the politically-active gay adults, but those politically-active gay adults were once gay kids, and you’re doing serious harm to them when you go on and on about how homosexuality is evil, a sin, unprincipled, whatever. You can try to play it cool and talk about your gay friends and say that you don’t care if a gay man wants to marry another gay man, but you’re still in a position of responsibility for all the suffering and anguish that your homosexuality-is-a-sin nonsense visits upon the millions of gay kids and teenagers that live in this climate. Demonstrate some awareness for a change.
So it’s time to evolve it again. If it’s evolved before, why can’t it evolve again? How do you know we’ve arrived at the perfect spot to stop evolving the definition of marriage?
Tradition is rarely a good justification for anything.
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 12:04 pm - October 2, 2012
Don’t try to change the subject. I’m just giving you an example of what kind of directives I would expect to be receiving from a perfectly good supreme being. You find nothing absolutely nothing like that in the Bible. What you find in the Bible are things that you would expect regular human beings to write in order to scare or intimidate other human beings into being submissive and obedient.
Again, you don’t get to tell me that I can’t appreciate beauty or mystery because I don’t buy into your fairy tales. I think that the universe is fascinating, I have an inkling that this planet may be the most fascinating part of the universe, and I appreciate all efforts to explore and understand everything that’s in it. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, if we were to conclusively find out that the universe was contracting or expanding, my mind would be similarly blown either way. Asking questions and having them answered doesn’t make the experience any less fascinating, and it’s by answering those original questions that we find new mysteries to explore in the first place. No scientific discipline has yet to say that they’ve figured the whole thing out, that there are no more questions in geology or meteorology or neurology, and every answer we find in those fields spawns a dozen more questions.
Meanwhile, you prefer the alternative explanation that god made the butterfly so you would have something pretty to look at while you were sitting on your porch. And you deign to call me arrogant? Let’s remember the roles here – you’re the one claiming to know all the answers. You claim to have the ultimate truth. You claim to know what’s going to happen to you and I after we die. I will freely admit that I don’t know when I don’t know, but you’re going to sit there and tell me that the creator of the universe made you and your butterflies so you could be happy forever and ever? Do you know what the word arrogant means?
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 12:28 pm - October 2, 2012
Being superior to God as you claim to be must bring you great disappointment. God the dictator is pretty much a shrimp in your scientific world of social Darwinism, man-caused global warming, social engineering, fascism, naziism, Marxism and secular humanism.
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 1:02 pm - October 2, 2012
One more thing. I’d like to apply Ockham’s Razor to the question of why Christianity prohibits homosexuality.
One explanation is that homosexuality is bad because god says it’s bad. God wants people to procreate and homosexual sex can’t lead to procreation. This doesn’t make all that much sense if you think about it for a few seconds, because god has the power to make everyone heterosexuals, but remember that god works in mysterious ways. Some people have easy lives, other people have more difficult lives, and this is god’s will.
OR
Human beings have a sad tendency to stigmatize people that are different.
Which is the simpler explanation? Which requires fewer assumptions? Which has thousands of years of human history as supporting evidence?
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 1:05 pm - October 2, 2012
I’m not superior to god, I simply exist where he doesn’t. The moral teachings that you attribute to god, I attribute to regular human beings that knew less about the world and the universe than any random second grader. I’m not disappointed that this god you’re so enamored with doesn’t exist, and am rather quite relieved.
Again, there are certain things I would expect of a book authored with the aide of divine inspiration, and there are certain things I would expect in a book authored by a group of humans that were trying to establish regional political and economic supremacy. The Bible fits perfectly into one of those categories.
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 1:13 pm - October 2, 2012
Actually, here’s an even better one, Levi.
Or, put differently, homosexuals are far more likely to contract diseases, especially lethal and incurable ones, than are heterosexuals.
Furthermore, those women who then have sex with them as well are at a much higher risk of exposure.
In short, homosexuality is not only more likely to sicken and kill you, it is far more likely to sicken and kill others as well. Not to mention the additional resource expense to society of people who are sickened and otherwise incapacitated, unable to participate in community life, assist with community projects, or help the community survive.
In contrast, abstaining from sex prior to marriage and having sex with only that person is far and away the most effective method of avoiding being sickened and killed in such a fashion. These relationships not only protect those in them and thus enable those people to participate in and support community life fully, they also produce new members of the community, who add to the hands available and perpetuate the community.
This is empirical data, Levi. People have known since antiquity that homosexuals were far more likely to be sickened and die, especially when compared with abstinent, faithful heterosexual couples — and modern science has backed up the fact that homosexuality is far more likely to be damaging and lethal to both its direct practitioners and indirectly to society.
So the overwhelming supporting evidence is that societies opposed homosexuality because it vastly increased the likelihood of people being sickened and dying, it indirectly harmed the community as well, AND it took resources away from relationships that were far more beneficial and protective to the community.
So there’s your question, Levi. Why should parents endorse and support their child indulging in behavior that is forty to seventy times more likely to give them damaging diseases, including one that is incurable, requires lifetime (expensive) medical treatment, and ultimately disables you?
Your screaming and ranting is no different than a six-year-old yelling that his parents are “unfair” for making him go to bed when it’s still light out. You don’t care about the reasons, nor are you mentally capable of accepting any answer other than the one that gives you your way immediately.
Six-year-olds aren’t mentally capable of thinking about the future. They operate solely on biological imperatives, doing what they want when they want, and insisting that they can’t control their behavior.
As you show, merely aging does not grant control of one’s faculties. Parents must teach their children to think about the future and manage their impulses accordingly. Yours did not, as you proudly proclaim; instead, they let a six-year-old be the absolute moral authority of the house.
Hence your worldview. A six-year-old is incapable of calculating consequences; they insist that major disobediences are no different than minor ones because they cannot project, understand or weigh future consequences. This is the reasoning you display with your statements that coercing women into sex, having sex when you are drunk, and having unprotected sex is no different than overpaying for a latte or watching bad reality TV.
That is the cornerstone of liberalism. Liberals know nothing but instant gratification and think nothing of past or future consequences. Liberals live in a world where everyone who came before them is an idiot and no one else was, is, or could ever possibly be as bright and informed on everything as they are.
This worldview invariably backfires, which is why liberals are forever needing conservatives to clean up their messes, give them money, and shut up about their failures.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 1:43 pm - October 2, 2012
Yup.
For example, what book would tell you not to steal from people period, whereas the Levi ethic says it’s perfectly OK to take from others if they have more than you do?
For example, what book would tell you to manage your biological urges and practice fidelity, whereas the Levi ethic says that your immediate gratification is what’s most important, even if it involves coercing a woman into sex, taking advantage of a drunk woman, or having unprotected and irresponsible sex?
What book would tell you to turn the other cheek, while the Levi ethic says that being “provocative” like the Family Research Council justifies shooting them?
When you then look at liberal fascists like Levi, who are trying to establish an all-powerful, dominant State that imposes his political and economic worldview on everyone else in his region and worships himself as the divine knower of all, why wouldn’t it surprise us that he hates the Bible?
The proof of the Bible’s divine inspiration is that the one person who followed it perfectly – Jesus Christ – is far better than any other human has been able to manage.
One wonders if Levi is so uneducated because his teachers figured out quickly that he knew everything, that they knew nothing, and that the cost of contradicting this worldview in tantrums and complaints from outraged parents was hardly worth the effort.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 1:53 pm - October 2, 2012
And there are, Levi, as even you admit.
So it’s…very otherworldly, it would seem…..almost supernatural, beyond human capacity.
And yet, what would happen if we were to eradicate jealousy from society, Levi? Would society improve?
And how about that commandment on adultery?
As you’ve stated, it’s impossible to control our biological compulsions. You would have to be superhuman….or, dare we say, otherworldly…to restrain yourself from having sex with your neighbor’s wife, or with someone else when you were already married.
And yet, what would happen if we were to eradicate adultery from society, Levi? Would society improve?
Hence the point. The problem is not with the commandments, the Bible, or the dictums; it’s with the fact that you don’t want to follow them.
So you make up excuses, you try to attack them, and you try to destroy anyone who does follow them.
The Bible represents a threat to your immediate gratification, Levi. The only reason you attack it and not Islam is because the Islamists do not separate individual action from that of the state, and thus have no qualms about acting as their own judge, jury, and executioner against those who disagree with them.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 2:04 pm - October 2, 2012
People have known since antiquity about the AIDS virus and other sexually transmitted diseases?
Also, think about what you say here for just a minute:
I agree. So why don’t we let gays participate in marriage? It doesn’t make much sense to point out how dangerous homosexuality is and then point out how much safer marriage.
It’s more dangerous partly because religious people are reluctant to have safe sex conversations with their children, particularly if they’re gay, and vice versa. A gay child of anti-gay parents isn’t going to go to their parents for help or to ask questions. Again, the stigmatization is what causes the problem here, it makes people ashamed of how they feel, it makes people feel isolated, and they become desperate. Desperate people aren’t known for taking precautions.
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 2:07 pm - October 2, 2012
Levi:
Followed by this colossal jewel mental constipation and contradiction:
So much for affirmative action, wealth transfer, reparations for whatever, wiping out religion by prohibiting the parents from passing it along, political correctness of all stripes, and on and on and on.
Sorry, little fascist, but you are entirely engaged and infused with concerted efforts to control what other people think. You are the poster child for the “evil” you fingered.
Now, take your atheism and retreat to neutrality. I could care less about Levi the clueless. But you insist on shutting down religion. Your ludicrous hypocritical protestations notwithstanding. What a P•U•T•Z !
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 2:34 pm - October 2, 2012
Yes.
The hilarity of you and your fellow liberals, Levi, is that you worship Stone Age cultures as noble savages and talk about their preventative rituals and herbal cures, but you seem mentally incapable of acknowledging that any other cultures predating you did the same thing.
As Santayana pointed out, those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it. Since you were never educated on the decrees of Augustus, or the decline of Rome, you would be unable to make the connection between similar behaviors among modern liberals that were leading to the impending decay and destruction of the Roman society and economy. Furthermore, since you believe that every society that came before you were primitive and superstitious idiots, you wouldn’t be able to absorb the wisdom of their experience anyway.
<blockquoteI agree. So why don’t we let gays participate in marriage? It doesn’t make much sense to point out how dangerous homosexuality is and then point out how much safer marriage.
Because marriage isn’t the magic, Levi; fidelity, monogamy, and responsibility are.
The gay community would have similar rates of STDs if they practiced similar rules of abstinence and commitment to only one sexual partner. They could do that now without marriage and clearly don’t. The gay community, overwhelmingly liberal, endorses and promotes unprotected sex, coercive sex, and sex under the influence of intoxicants, and states that such ideas as monogamy, abstinence, and faithfulness are “harmful”.
But Levi, you have stated that safe sex is irrelevant. Indeed, you have stated that having unprotected sex, coercing people into sex, and having sex when you’re drunk are no worse than overpaying for a latte or having
Why are you demanding that religious parents emphasize safe sex when you and your fellow liberals tell your children it’s perfectly OK to have unsafe sex, coercive sex, sex under the influence of intoxicants, and underage children having sex as being no big deal?
The answer is simple. Religious parents tell their children not to have sex and to exercise self-control. People who do so are superior to you, since you are unwilling to control your biological urges and argue that your need for sex should outweigh any other considerations, like the other person’s consent, age, or state of intoxication. Hence you have to scream at and berate these parents who are taking the safe, intelligent, and long-term tack because you need society to rationalize your unwillingness to do so.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 3:01 pm - October 2, 2012
None of these things are attempts to control what people think.
I never suggested this. I pointed out that it’s true, and I described it as evil, but I never suggested prohibiting it. You couldn’t do such a thing in a free society. Hopefully, one day indoctrinating your children into your religion will be seen for the horrible assault on freedom that it is, but there’s other ways to accomplish that without regulating parenting.
I know conservatives use political correctness as a battering ram, but were you not just complaining about how offensive and disrespectful I am? There’s nothing less politically correct than criticizing religion, and you’re pretty quick to throw a fit over it. Practice what you preach.
You suck at comparing things.
I have never recommended anything that could be honestly construed as an attempt to control how people think and what they think about. You accuse me of this somewhat frequently, and like to paint nightmare scenarios where I have my way and my faction gets to control everything down to peoples’ thoughts. Unfortunately, this scenario is already the status quo, and it plays itself out in Sunday schools across the country, where children are helpfully programmed to think about their role in the universe in a very specific way for the sake of preserving the large, powerful, and morally bankrupt institution of religion. You know as well as I do there is nothing special about the transmission of religion. It’s passed from person to person and from generation to generation, and the moment that stops is the moment when your religion can be discarded completely. You would accuse me of trying to control what people think because you deliberately misunderstand my politics, but you excuse your religion when they exploit the weakness and gullibility of children for their own selfish purposes.
You know I’m right. No 12-year old that hasn’t suffered through a decade of having their brain scrubbed is going to find anything interesting or inspirational from the Bible. Religious kids are doing sad little impersonations of their parents because they think it will please them and because they’re scared of being tortured forever and because they want to see their grandma that just died. Religion teaches in the language of fear and ignorance, and that’s why it’s possible to introduce the concept to children in terms that they understand. Teaching your children your religion is making a decision for them that is going to affect them for the rest of their life, and that’s why it’s an evil thing to do. People shouldn’t be making those decisions for other people, and children are not the property of their parents.
….
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 4:37 pm - October 2, 2012
The Judeo-Christian ethic is not a stale statement made a few thousand years ago. It is fleshed out by time and adaptation to societal change. The skeleton of the ethic comes from God, but the morality and understanding of the ethic comes from man. We don’t have a phone line to God by which we can ask his secretary for immediate clarification of our ethical/moral dilemma of the moment.
Okay, so the Judeo-Christian ethic does go beyond the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. As such, there have been changes. I guess what makes things murky for me, is exactly what is the Judeo-Christian ethic versus the socially developed moralities.
When the society gives the social morality and ethic over to the political power alone, then the state becomes the source of the ethic and moral code.
I suppose the irony here is that because of the Judeo-Christian ethics, we gradually became freer societies in which freedom and liberty were able to develop, unlike other traditions.
Our tradition and history and laws are all based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. They can all be sanitized of any connection, save coincidence, of any relation to the Judeo-Christian ethic.
Because many of our basic morals today mirrored the morals from 3000 years ago. It’s not a coincidence. There’s definitely a connection.
Your marriage to another man is not my problem or concern. Nor do I feel that it is much of a state problem or concern. What difference does it make if groups of people believe you are a sinner? What difference does it make if you have to win the marriage right at the ballot box? Why are those who vote against you evil?
Good questions. At my age, I don’t care so much who thinks I’m a sinner. It does make a difference if same sex marriage wins at the ballot box, but I’ll be fine either way. No, I don’t believe that those who vote against me are evil (unless they are evil for other reasons). I would call it a difference of opinion.
Under those terms, why not several mates. Sounds reasonable to me. And what should society do about people like Jerry Sandusky who are mentoring youngsters?
If you don’t rely on at least the tradition of the Judeo-Christian ethic, where does the common sense toward avoiding “icky” (evil) arise?
I think people today for the most part are loathe to step on the liberties of two consenting adults. This may well be based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. This clearly does not cover pedophilia, which may be (and usual is) harmful to the child. And people do see harm when it’s incest, even if they are adults consenting (not just genetics, but the familial aspect of it). What about more than two consenting adults? A lot of people view these as unbalanced relationships. People are loathe to outlaw polyamory, but don’t want to sanction such relationships. So, I’ll agree that Judeo-Christian tradition, if not ethic, is all behind this.
Anyway, I know you stated that you were done stating your points. I appreciate the discussion, and it has helped my understanding. Thanks.
Comment by Pat — October 2, 2012 @ 5:57 pm - October 2, 2012
Levi:
Affirmative action is based on what? RACE. There is no race in the scientific world. Science can’t define it. How much RACE do you have to have in you to qualify for Affirmative action? Quadroon, octoroon, mustee, griffe, quintroon, mulatto, terceron, high yellow, passing?
“Nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” So, you move a black person ahead of other people through Affirmative Action and somehow that does not deny any other person of the equal due process of the law. Right? And you can not define what constitutes and “black” person scientifically. Right?
And you say that is NOT a government action that controls what people think? Sorry, little brother of Big Brother, but your Doublespeak world is all about controlling what you DARE think. Ditto wealth transfer based on the concept of someone else’s “fair share.” So is the whole “reparations” hogwash be it for Native Americans, Hispanics or blacks.
You come here spewing your bile about religious belief systems. Fine. But you reveal your statist desires to control people you don’t like and then you say you don’t have any interest in quashing others. You will take their wealth, you will promote a select few over the entire group, you will write out the validity of some belief systems based on your own whims.
You are ignorant, capricious, groundless and without any practical intellectual substance.
I am finished with your festering hatred of religion and bitter insistence that your moral relativism (which can not lay out in any cognitive terms) is worth a tinker’s damn. So many here have given up on your goofy insistence that you have something of substance to say. They are clearly smarter than I. Somehow, I kept to the belief that you had some part of an ounce of reason within you.
Have a wonderful life talking to yourself.
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 6:16 pm - October 2, 2012
You simply lie, Levi.
And of course, the hilarity of that, Levi, is that you and your Barack Obama Party and your fellow liberals are screaming about the necessity of anti-blasphemy laws, condemning as “disgusting” the mocking of Islam, and arresting and imprisoning people who make films mocking Mohammed.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 6:19 pm - October 2, 2012
And before you open your mouth, Levi, realize that ANY criticism you make of Heliotrope for not responding to you will immediately and repeatedly be used to bash you for not responding to anyone else.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 6:21 pm - October 2, 2012
Pat,
I expressed myself poorly about the Judeo-Christian ethic going “beyond” the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. My point is that the Old Testament and the New Testament are full of personalizing the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule and provide the parables and conflicts inherent in fleshing out the simple Cliff Notes. Certainly, you understand that.
Societies adopt religion, not the other way around, unless the religion conquers the society. Some societies have pretty much pushed religion into the position of quaint relic. (Think Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark.) It is possible to take the Judeo-Christian ethic and throw out the stuff you don’t like and do the ecumenical stuff that feels good and is of precious little discomfort. You can have a marriage optional society in which a couple has kids and goes along for many years before they finally decide to get “married” as something to do that is different.
For instance, I can not understand why gays don’t just start their own Scientology-lite “church” and make a mockery of the separation of church and state by using the state to force recognition of the gay religion. There would be no integrity, per se, but it ought to move the gay agenda forward. After all, Major Hasan is sitting in jail with a beard grown in respect of Islam and screwing up the military court by not shaving according to army rules. If you really want to screw the system, build your own God.
The Judeo-Christian ethic asks you to be a good and responsible person. The state more or less depends on that groundwork. However, people without the motivation of the Judeo-Christian ethic look at individual freedom and decide that the meth they cook in their home is their business alone. If they have the neighbors in and an orgy and then disaster result, the only role of the state is to put the fire out, rescue the “victims” and treat them for free and try to get them back on their feet to do it all over again. It is a sort of unintended nihilism, but that is nothing the people who cause the mess understand or intend. They are amoral.
Then you have a sort of breakdown where the people in the city go out on weekends to shoot the Neanderthals in the country for sport. (Think Belgrade and the Croatians.) It is the intellectuals over the primitives. While the carnage ensues, the smart set can ask the victims where their omnipotent God is Tee hee hee. After all, if God is such hot stuff, why doesn’t He set things straight?
I made a feeble attempt to encapsulate a great deal of philosophy and back and forth over many eons. I appreciate your considered and thoughtful response. And I respect your choice in choosing your mate and how you conduct yourself with society as a whole.
This is not a “High Noon” moment for either of us where principle and valor or on the line.
With all sincerity, I wish you a good and happy life. I suspect you feel the same toward me.
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 7:18 pm - October 2, 2012
NDT,
Had we ever come together to play the good cop, bad cop role, I could not have asked for a better prepared or diligent partner.
As the saying goes, “I love you, man!”
Comment by heliotrope — October 2, 2012 @ 7:21 pm - October 2, 2012
Yup. And I stand by it, for all the reasons I cited.
Oh, that’s easy. In fact, you answered it yourself a few sentences later.
And therein lies the key. “Civility” is not a set of principles to you, nor is it a standard of behavior; it is solely your opinion, subject to your whim and your caprices. Hence, I turn “vicious and ugly”, not because I am violating any sort of objective measurement of either, but because I’m criticizing you.
For example, Pat, you have tried to claim that my being banned from blogs like those run by Wayne Besen, Evan Hurst, and Rob Tisinai proves that I am “uncivil”. However, when one considers what is considered civil and intelligent discourse by those bloggers:
None of which merited a response or lecture concerning “civility” from you to any of those individuals or their supporters.
And that is because, Pat, your morality and your sense of right and wrong are based solely on whether or not something is personally convenient for you. If it is not, it will be immoral, and if it is, it will be moral.
Some of us are less frightened of personal inconvenience in the service of objectivity.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 10:19 pm - October 2, 2012
Thank you, heliotrope.
Horse training and dog training, especially teaching it to others, taught me most everything I needed to learn about dealing with liberals.
At the beginning of my classes, I used to show this — all eight-plus minutes of it — as an example.
You will not find a finer methodology. Nowhere is the easy way out taken. Nowhere is the force excessive. Despite horrible and ridiculous provocations, despite the very real threat of personal injury, and despite how simple it would be to simply tie the subject up and force them to do your bidding, over and over again we see the teacher making the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy. Force is matched with force, but never exceeded; opportunities are given to do it the right way, even when those opportunities (literally) are spit back in your face.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 10:27 pm - October 2, 2012
Jesus dude, you are completely off the rails. Even if you describe it in the most horrible, unjustified, evil, racist way possible, affirmative action cannot be honestly called an attempt to control what people think. For what it’s worth, affirmative action is an attempt to counter some of the prejudices present in a culture that’s lived through some tense and violent times that weren’t all that long ago, but it’s not trying to control what people think. An attempt to control what people think would be some kind of attempt to criminalize racism, and that’s not happening nor should it.
I can’t seem to remember any time when I expressed any kind of desire to control people I don’t like. I have enough respect for my fellow man and for the ideals upon which this country was founded for that, and indeed my distaste for religion is an extension of that respect. I think children ought to be given a chance to be their own people. I think that gay children deserve to grow up without feeling tormented by conflicting signals from their parents and their bodies. I think it’s evil to put people through that, and I think your lackadaisical attitude about the role your religion plays in fermenting that torment is especially so. It’s all just so useless – kids get beat up over this stuff, kids drive themselves nuts, kids run away from home and have awful relationships with their parents, all because your religion needs to assert itself on such a stupid, trivial, boring subject. It’s good to know what gets you guys out of bed, it’s good to see what you guys will go to the mat for!
Uh huh. Go ahead and be completely predictable and throw your little fit, just like you were taught.
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 10:33 pm - October 2, 2012
Again, NDT, I wish I had the time to respond to all of your high quality posts in which I’m described as a child rapist Al-Qaida Nazi devil-worshiper on welfare. I just need to finish reorganizing my toenail collection and I’ll be right back with you!
Comment by Levi — October 2, 2012 @ 10:45 pm - October 2, 2012
Too easy.
WAY too easy.
And that leads us to this:
Uh huh. Go ahead and throw your little fit, just like you were taught.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 11:26 pm - October 2, 2012
And there’s more.
Wait for it…..
So Levi is screaming that affirmative action is not thought control while simultaneously stating that all people are prejudiced and racist and need to be taught to think differently.
And then there’s more.
Hah.
You won’t let adults buy a soda that’s too large, but you will allow a six year old to make life-altering choices.
And this was even more precious:
Which of course means that parents should allow children to have promiscuous bareback sex because that’s what their body is signaling them to do, and it is wrong to tell them otherwise.
You continue to amuse, Levi. For a fascist such as yourself who demands that adults be whipped, beaten, dragged, kicked, screamed, and regulated into shape by government because they are too stupid and incompetent to know what’s best for them, your belief that children, who are far less emotionally, physically, and intellectually mature, should be given free rein to do whatever they want with no adult supervision whatsoever crosses well over into the perverse.
Your motivation is clear, Levi. You want to destroy religious belief. That is your sole reason for continuing to post and attack. Your words about how religion would be destroyed in a generation betray exactly why you are screaming about children; you wish to stamp out religious belief completely. You are a vindictive, hateful little bigot who wants to destroy religious belief, abolish churches, and eliminate religion completely.
Why?
Because it shames you. Thoroughly and totally. Religion clearly holds a higher and more beneficial standard to society than your promiscuity-worshiping, jealousy-laden behavior patterns. Religion espouses concepts that are indeed otherworldly and supernatural, and are far better than your petty and base human motivations.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 2, 2012 @ 11:45 pm - October 2, 2012
Yup. And I stand by it, for all the reasons I cited.
So, basically, you are saying bullsh&t to Dan, and you’ll do what you damned well please. And you accuse me of acting according to personal convenience. And you are somehow principled. Maybe Dan communicated to you in private that he wasn’t serious, and that you have free rein here. If that’s the case, so be it.
Hence, I turn “vicious and ugly”, not because I am violating any sort of objective measurement of either, but because I’m criticizing you.
As I stated above, I have no problem with criticism. But when you lace it with name-calling, excrement, and lies, I get offended. Kind of like when you get offended when you are called a self-loather, Nazi, quisling, etc. See how that works. Oh, it’s only justified when you resort to the level of filth of Dan Savage, or your other heroes Joe My God, or the author of the ugly letter about Dan you keep on maliciously posting. No, you have never said you wished someone dead. But short of that, you are no better than those individuals. But you still somehow believe your behavior is acceptable. Go figure.
For example, Pat, you have tried to claim that my being banned from blogs like those run by Wayne Besen, Evan Hurst, and Rob Tisinai proves that I am “uncivil”.
Or Malcontent. I didn’t try to claim, they are facts. Your being banned from these blogs may not prove that you are uncivil. But you are, as demonstrated by your behavior here.
And that is because, Pat, your morality and your sense of right and wrong are based solely on whether or not something is personally convenient for you.
Once again, no basis in reality. On the other hand, you have demonstrated this to be the case for you. For example, Dan has asked you to stop your behavior, but it wasn’t personally convenient for you.
Some of us are less frightened of personal inconvenience in the service of objectivity.
True. Too bad you are not one of them. And too bad you haven’t learned how to follow rules, because it’s too inconvenient for you.
Have a blessed one.
Comment by Pat — October 3, 2012 @ 6:34 am - October 3, 2012
With all sincerity, I wish you a good and happy life. I suspect you feel the same toward me.
Thanks, Heliotrope. I wish a good and happy life for you. Wonderful discussion.
Comment by Pat — October 3, 2012 @ 7:24 am - October 3, 2012
Thank you for doing such an excellent job of proving my point, Pat.
First:
Actually, that is NOT what Dan said, as you even admitted above:
THIS is what Dan said:
You see that, Pat? BOTH sides of the political aisle.
And what did you do with that?
Picked it up and tried to use it as a weapon against conservatives. Not liberals. Only conservatives. Nowhere have you told your fellow liberals to back off. Nowhere have you taken your famous finger-wagging and used it against your fellow anti-conservative and anti-Christian ranters.
This is typical malicious and malevolent liberal behavior. Rules exist for liberals to use to hamstring and punish non-liberals. Liberals have no intention of following them or enforcing them against their fellow liberals.
Want examples? Fortunately, you gave them.
Actually, he asked everyone.
But of course, the law is only to be enforced against conservatives. Pat isn’t about to tell Serenity, or Levi, or Cinesnatch, or anyone else to mind their mouth, or call them “unChristian”, or criticize their behavior, because that wouldn’t be “civil”.
And here’s another:
To summarize that argument:
1) Wishing people dead is no worse than not wishing them dead
2) Those who don’t wish people dead are vilified, while those who do wish people dead are not in the name of “civility”.
It’s the same general theory for why free speech is ignored for posters that anger radical Islamists and invoked for justifying taxpayer dollars for “Piss Christ”.
And then, the last and best example:
Notice this, Pat: nowhere do you say that the quote itself is malicious, or that those like Levi, Evan Hurst, Serenity, Wayne Besen, and others who made it, support it, link to it, praise it, and endorse it are malicious.
Instead you scream that my posting and bringing attention to it is malicious. Not the quote, not the people who wrote it, not the people who said it, not the people who endorse it, support it, and push it as true. Just the person who points it out.
And then to summarize THAT argument:
1) Actually writing, supporting, and endorsing a quote in which Dan Blatt is referred to as a “wretched, illiterate prick” is not malicious or incivil.
2) Pointing out and criticizing the quote, however, is.
In short, Pat, you’ve done a magnificent job of pointing out the fundamental rule of Obama/gay and lesbian community liberalism: rules, principles, morality and standards of decency are meant for restraining other people, and are never expected to apply to you anyway.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 3, 2012 @ 3:42 pm - October 3, 2012
Wow, NDT, you really missed the point, didn’t you. Okay, let me spell it out. When I put Dan Savage, Joe My God, and the author of the quote you keep on maliciously posting, in the same category as you. That wasn’t exactly praise. It wasn’t neutral either. In fact, it’s hard to come up with worse criticism. If you are still missing the point, I think very little of you. So that means that I think very little of them. As I said, you are just as viscious as they are. And yes, your words and actions against me are as bad, if not worse than the quote about Dan you post. It is malicious, because the quote is malicious. Is that clear yet?
I guess your bar of civility is that since you haven’t wished someone dead, you are okay. That’s a pretty low bar, wouldn’t you agree? Or being as malicious as you are, you think being a total prick is okay as long as you don’t wish someone dead.
You see that, Pat? BOTH sides of the political aisle.
And what did you do with that?
Picked it up and tried to use it as a weapon against conservatives. Not liberals. Only conservatives.
Wow, you missed two points on this one.
First of all, in the thread that post is refering to, my recollection was that you were the only conservative that was engaging in uncivil behavior. So when Dan was referring to “both sides of the political aisle” I concluded that you were one of the people Dan was referring to. In fact, you must have realized Dan was talking about you, because you felt the need to defend yourself in the strongest terms, even saying “bullsh&t” regarding Dan’s request.
Second, I stated for a while here that I am only going to defend myself against personal attacks, in order to follow Dan’s request for civility. Since that point, I made every effort to not step in when others were personally attacked. Yes, I’m sure you can find examples where I slipped. For example, I’ve criticized Auntie Dogma and this one other liberal troll (his handle escapes me at the moment, and I don’t think he posts here anymore), even though they never personally attacked me. I have seen other conservatives resort to personal attacks against other posters (although none anywhere to the level that you have personally attacked me or others), but I have always stayed out of it. Funny how you never asked me to step in then. I have seen you pull that sh&tstorm on Lori Heine and others, and I stayed out of it. That was a particularly viscious attack, and believe me, I didn’t stay out of it out of convenience.
Anyway, I am staying away from personal attacks for others. Dan and Bruce don’t need to have this blog polluted anymore with incivility. And I am certainly not going to be your trained seal acting on your orders. You don’t like it? Tough. Complain to Dan and Bruce about it. Perhaps they can do something about it, because you cannot.
Nowhere have you taken your famous finger-wagging
From the finger wagger in chief himself. That was a good one.
Also interesting that you failed to mention your banning from Malcontent. Oh, but that wasn’t your fault either, right? Everybody else makes you behave like an ass. You are never accountable for your own actions.
Anyway, the fact remains that it is not personally convenient for you to curtail your boorish behavior, that Dan has asked repeatedly to be discontinued, since you continue to exhibit such behavior.
Comment by Pat — October 3, 2012 @ 4:44 pm - October 3, 2012
And yet somehow, you can’t find it in yourself to actually criticize them.
Better to make excuses than be called a Jewish Nazi or meth addict, I suppose.
Again, Pat, why not? Joe Jervis is a GLAAD award winner, Dan Savage has Barack Obama’s endorsement and the support of the gay and lesbian community.
I don’t see you impugning their morals, or the values of the gay and lesbian community and the Obama Party that support and endorse them all.
And last, but certainly not least:
Reprinted for posterity.
And:
That’s what your gay and lesbian community call being a traitor and Nazi, Pat.
That’s what your Barack Obama calls being racist.
That’s what you and your friends like Savage and Jervis say should be killed.
And that’s what you’re whining is “incivil”.
In the words of Don Surber:
You chose to pander to the Jervises, Savages, and Obamas of the world, Pat.
Own it.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 3, 2012 @ 10:13 pm - October 3, 2012
NDT, read the post again. I criticized your heroes in no uncertain terms. As I said, you are as bad as them, but I don’t see you impugning your own morals.
Your quote in your previous quote
rules, principles, morality and standards of decency are meant for restraining other people, and are never expected to apply to you anyway.
definitely describes you to a tee as you have demonstrated time and again on this blog.
Also, it looks like you haven’t learned your lesson since your banning from Malcontent.
As for the rest of your shrieking, pointless diatribe, it has nothing to do with me.
Do have yourself a blessed evening. Thanks.
Comment by Pat — October 3, 2012 @ 11:30 pm - October 3, 2012
Actually, Pat, since you support and endorse the gay and lesbian community and the Obama Party that champions their views and supports their behavior, you do in fact support them AND their morals.
I have no illusions about you or what you support. If I were to call Christians awful names, insist that Christian parents should have their children take away, and call for the murder of Republicans like you and your Obama Party and your gay and lesbian community do, I would have your full and overwhelming endorsement of whatever I did, and you would be championing me as a hero.
Once one realizes that liberals like you are malicious, destructive individuals who will say and do anything to get their way without regard for anyone else, it becomes that much easier to respond to you. Since you recognize neither respect, dignity, or moral standards, it becomes quite easy to withhold all three from you and act accordingly.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 6, 2012 @ 1:58 am - October 6, 2012
NDT, If even 1% of what you wrote was true and/or made sense, you might have a point. But none of it is based on any kind of reality. Like Romney (I think) recently said, repeating a lie over and again does not make it true.
You chose to pander to the Jervises, Savages, and Obamas of the world, Pat.
Own it.
I pretty much said the exact opposite. However, you chose to emulate them. So, stick it. And have yourself a blessed Saturday. Thanks.
Comment by Pat — October 6, 2012 @ 1:05 pm - October 6, 2012
Oh, it most definitely is reality, Pat.
Very, very ugly, reality.
And I have to ask: at what point are you actually going to get tired of associating yourself with the community, party, and people who would say and do these sort of things? Or are you already tired of it…..but projecting your anger onto those of us who HAVE left the liberal/Obama/gay community plantation?
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 6, 2012 @ 1:37 pm - October 6, 2012
NDT, since you are criticizing these tactics, why do you continue to emulate those that engage in it? No projection on my part, but I see you are rolling in it.
Comment by Pat — October 6, 2012 @ 2:10 pm - October 6, 2012