Thursday, December 11, 2008

What drives me as a blogger

Vis-a-vis abortion the choicers see it as intensely personal and so case-sensitive. Let's say they may have made this crushing decision they have to live with, it's our own personal hell, don't touch it, don't go there whereas the lifers of whom I consider myself a member rightly see it as a life being taken, for the choicers this is too abstract. I've been told at times I come across as a prosecutor, a good guy at Hannityland once said I had some good points but I come across as shrill. What drives me is pure reason and this goes a long way towards explaining why I push my points more often to the breaking point of my opposite in the debate and I probably do this more than other social conservatives. I am against abortion but even more than this I am passionately against bad thinking. Put it another way even if I was pro-choice I'd still hold my side to task. Take moral relativism and subjectivism, now I understand when you're new to an issue you have the right to think it through but eventually you have to come to conclusions so I'm not against intellectual freedom and using your mind but relativism shows a deep flaw in man's thinking, a mole in his character as Hamlet might put it. With situational ethics (relativism goes by so many different names) there's no foundation to build on, there's no possibility for some real intellectual progress, it's a kind of non-position and this is celebrated as an end in itself by the choicers. It's as if subjective morality is a permanent philosophy. I absolutely hate the illogic of the other side, not them, and it's this permanent mindset that disturbs me. I hate bad thinking and abortion just happens to be a classic example of this, it's the perfect springboard for a much needed foray into logic and to address the common flaws in how people think in general. It sounds hubristic to say one is motivated by pure reason in your blogging style, you demand an answer and if this comes across as confrontational it's simply that pure reason demands better answers than the ones we've been getting and for good measure it's also a game which makes it fun. The challenge for the choicers then is this, come up with an intellectually respectable position buttressed by unassailable points although I don't think it can be done. Abortion is a Rubik's Cube and I'm not afraid to assert I'm right, again nothing personal intended.

36 comments:

  1. Does this seep through your ego maniacal brain. We live in a nation of laws and not a nation of men. And one of these laws say that Abortion is Legal...If you and others who disagree with this fact, Then I would suggest it be incumbent on your part to band together and start your own country somewhere else on the planet. And I wish you well in that endeavour. Because filling the internet web with hateful propaganda is not what ir or this country is all about.
    In short, like it or not, abortion is legal in the United States for two reasons: Because women have the right to make decisions about their own reproductive systems, and because they have the power to exercise that right regardless of government policy.

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  2. "Ego maniacal brain"? I already said that "what drives me is pure reason" is gonna sound just like what you said, that's the chance I took in this here blog but it's the most honest way I can say about what motivates me about blogging. I can write pages and pages of little niggling bits of illogic on the pro-choice side, you'd probably get tired of reading it and after having finished it and gone to bed I'd probably come up with some others. It's just that the pro-choice side is a goldmine of illogic, it never ends. Let me give you another example of what I would consider pure reason. Even if I were on the euthanasia or "right-to-die" side I'd still say the Terri Schiavo case should not be used to further our policy agenda simply because pure reason would dictate that to this day we still don't know why she collapsed and even the New York Times after the autopsy results came out concurred. Pure reason often pushes you to some very unpopular positions, they might even conflict with your own belief systme at times but this is a very important topic this one of right thinking.

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  3. Can you come up with some new arguments though, just for the sake of novelty? It's like hearing "Every Breath You Take" on the radio everyday, I know where you're at but can you take the needle off the skip anyway?

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  4. Sancho, you say we're a nation of laws and abortion is legal, but that doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean it's not immoral, or that I can't wish it weren't legal. Think slavery, once legal but no more. Women not voting, once was the case for our country, but people fought against that and WON, so just saying something is legal does not mean it's forever.

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  5. Given that Ayn Rand cherished the individual over society, enough to note,
    ""One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives."
    — Ayn Rand ["A Last Survey — Part I", The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. IV, No. 2, 1975.]
    ..it would seem difficult to reconcile your apparent disagreement while agreeing with her overall philosophy. (?)

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  6. From the Ayn Rand Institute(which also revealed that Ayn rhymes with "mine" so you learn something new everyday):

    What was Ayn Rand's view on abortion?
    Excerpt from "Of Living Death" The Objectivist, October 1968:
    "An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

    "Abortion is a moral right--which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?"


    However, I think science has changed since 1968, with ultrasound technology where we can see the unborn baby as much more than just "potential life" and also modern medicine giving the chance at life for prematurely born babies, so I cannot see how Rand's view that being born is the only thing that means we are living as if we are not alive in the womb at all!

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  7. the most ridiculous thing the choicers (i love that word you used)have against them in partial birth abortions. they deliver the baby 3/4's of the way and then basically cut its neck. it is not a 'baby' because it was not completely delivered. come on ...are they serious?

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  8. BB and Beth, I'm perfectly aware that Ayn Rand was an atheist and probably not that keen on pro-life to begin with but here's the weird part. After reading Atlas very carefully many of her villainous characters strongly espouse the philosophy of there's no right or wrong. One character even goes so far as to say rational thought is not possible or even desireable but what really inspired me was John Galt's lengthy speech on, well everything. Seems to me although Rand was pro-abortion you might say her points in Atlas apply very well to many of the arguments the pro-choicers constantly make although I'm not even sure she was aware of this at the time. Atlas doesn't even deal with abortion per se of course but I think with the John Galt speech she was saying how man ought to think, how he should properly use his intellect. What I'm saying is if Rand were still alive today would she herself become so exasperated with the growing pretzel of pro-choice reasoning? Camille Paglia has said as a feminist she is also pro-abortion but she absolutely hates the way the choicers present their arguments. Rand was opining about abortion before it became such a major political issue, I can imagine her becoming irritated with the way people think overall.

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  9. I disagree with Daniel about what to do with all those nasty comments in this sense, I believe they have some value. It's like a therapy session, bring out all the anger and hostility. For me the comments are of psychoanalytic interest, there's a therapeutic curiosity about it all so I allow it since free speech is just that, free speech. It's not called moderate speech or filtered speech for a reason. It's like asgardshill is big on the sarcastic jab but in his case he's far more skilled at it than they are and so I laugh. You might call this the defense of sarcasm and I don't think he really got that personal to begin with. Getting back to Rand for a minute sometimes a person is so intellectual they're a bit nuts, their genius goes over the cliff. Did the fact that she wasn't big on charity as a major virtue have anything to do with her views on the unborn? Most of her views had merit imo and were provocative but she seemed to stretch them to a kind of logical absurdity, I mean who can write a book called "The Virtue of Selfishness" and yet be so brilliant overall?

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  10. Kris about those who defend partial-birth and those like Rand who say you have no rights until you're born, now I normally don't get that personal in the abortion debate but the further into the pregnancy you justify or allow abortion you have to have more than a touch of mental illness. The late Congressman Henry Hyde once said if the abortion movement suddenly became aware of what they were doing they'd go insane. It's like Lady Macbeth formulating policy. You said it all, I have no words to add.

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  11. I'm not sure that Rand's atheistic nature necessarily means she would be pro-abortion, I had an old friend at Hannity who was an atheist, but he was pro-life. They actually think that our human life is all there is so I would think for them ending that life is terribly wrong.

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  12. With the caveat that I am not that familiar with Rand, other than her contributions to objectivism, she does seem to strike a chord with those that adhere to libertarionism. Their logic is that the individual takes precedence in social circumstance..thus the right to bear arms equates philosophically to the right to abort, as I understand it. In addition to Beth's quotes, we find,
    "Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable . . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.
    Ayn Rand Letters IV, 2,3.
    ..which strikes me as a bit harsh, but typical Rand. Seems a bid of hedonism in objectivism, but I know too little of her writings to post consistancy, or whether, she
    'went over a cliff'....

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  13. Thanx BB, a fount of information as usual. I may have to throw out my copy of Atlas. She seems to be popular among conservatives so I had thought she wasn't that bad. Reading John Galt's speech it was so logical and so against so many of our current societal trends but maybe she wrote it while she was drunk. I'm wondering since everything she has said about abortion is repeated almost letter for letter by the pro-aborts whether they have a secret liking for her. Now I don't believe in all Marian apparitions but I was googling the matter one day and one seer whom I don't really believe btw said that it was revealed to her that Ayn Rand is in hell but it gave me a chuckle anyway. Atlas into the bonfire it goes!!

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  14. A bit of hedonism in objectivism BB? At last count Dagny Taggart, protagonist in Atlas Shrugged f***ed at least three guys, could never figure out which one she really wanted until the next one came along. So I'm reading it and figuring her relationship with the steel magnate Hank Rearden seems to make sense in a way so as a writer I would've stuck with that but she couldn't resist Wonderboy when he came along and they screwed in the tunnel. OK so that's my own admittedly puritanical take then she seemed to make into villains anyone who espoused we have a social obligation to care for those less fortunate than us, a philosophy of pure evil in her eyes. I think she was a little off her rocker, a selfish old bitch the kind who if you were married to her and just came home from the war impotent and in a wheelchair and you were on a short pier she'd probably push you in the water.

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  15. I think the sex in Atlas was all about getting what you want, not about sharing yourself with someone you care about. So in retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised that Rand is pro-abortion, since sex to her is about taking, not giving. Having a child is about sacrificing yourself for them, so Rand would naturally be for abortion. And the way I see it, sex on demand goes hand-in-hand with abortion on demand.

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  16. Bearing in mind that Atlas is an overly long novel to begin with alot could have been left on the drawing board. Even the thing between Dagny and Hank, now most people have periods when they're not the least bit interested in sex, they're just not in the mood, it's known as waning points when your mind is on World Hunger or something but not our two main players ("she entered the room, he knew he had the right to have her, he started loosening his tie..." - I'm paraphrasing here). That's just bad writing but that's not the reason I threw my copy out this morning. Now sometimes someone is so overly intellectual they're retarded in other areas, now how can Rand even refer to the unborn as "the non-living"? It's her tone like you don't even have the intellectual right to take another position other than hers. Anyway I also had the task just now of going over my blog for the entire past year and deleting any Randian references and comments I made, kind of a half hour task but necessary and I feel better now.

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  17. Learning about Rand's pro-abortion stand really bothered me, too, I think I will toss my copy of the book as well, I'm kinda sorry I bought it in the first place.

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  18. It's more her tone in the quotes cited more than anything. What bothers me about the Ayn Rand Fan Club though is they cling to her every word like it's gospel and isn't this making a god (or goddess) out of a mere human being? With her views on selfishness which to be honest I've had a problem with from the getgo she was a kind of philosophical antichrist, how you don't think? (kidding)

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  19. "Having a child is about sacrificing yourself for them..."

    Since Ayn Rand has been invoked in this discussion herein, as a student of objectivist philosophy myself and for the purposes of the discussion herein, it is appropriate to keep things in that regard in context is it not? That said, you've a gross misunderstanding of precisely what a sacrifice, in the objectivist sense, is.

    Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are making a "sacrifice" in that endeavor.

    A sacrifice is to give up something of a higher virtue/value for something of a lesser virtue/value.

    If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve the career you wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then renounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it to your neighbor’s child and let your own die, it is.

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  20. What's more, what strikes me as peculiar and quite contradictory Beth is your protestation that "Having a child is about sacrificing yourself for them...". That you assert this without then having any compunction whatsoever to then relegating a rape victim to some sort of sacrificial lamb for the sake of your cause is, I would imagine, as difficult for me to stomach as the practice of abortion is for you.

    It is said that contradictions do not exist. When it appears that in fact they do one is suggested to check their premises. Doing so, they will find that one of them is wrong.

    And so I ask that you indeed check yours. Because, if during the course of discussions on the matter of conservatism you assert that one musn't be made to "sacrifice" for the sake of Collectivism or Statism (mind you at the point of a gun), then by what premise can they be then made to "sacrifice" for another by some ill conceived virtue of birthright for a child which they did not wish to carry?

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  21. Soapie, you know that when it comes to a rape victim, I am less inclined to force them to have a child, although I still say the child is being punished here. But if only rape victims were allowed to have abortions, then I could live with that better than abortion on demand, which is what Rand seems to think should be the case up to the time of birth.

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  22. My problem with Rand again is with her tone, to call pro-lifers "vicious" is way over the line, talk about getting personal. Why couldn't she just state her views but as for the whole rape issue I've already said I don't think you'd find any prosecutors in a post-Roe world who would go after a doctor who performed an abortion on a woman who was raped. It's an interesting discussion but I don't draw the same conclusion. My personal view is that the rapist seems to taint not only the woman but the innocent unborn child as well. I also have a HUGE problem with Rand constantly referring to the unborn as "the non-living" this at a time when Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson came out with those first famous and in color images of the unborn we saw in LIFE magazine!!

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  23. Now I'm at the new and completely renovated library in Greenburgh New York, great computer lab I have to say, you can really hunker down and do some work here but before I hit the lab I read some Cliffs Notes on Atlas. Of course I agree totally with her views on socialism and the Notes do a wonderful job of explaining her overall theme of how productivity really suffers under socialism and there's also a great character analysis as well but I think she lost people with her other views most notably regarding pro-life. It'd be like if your parents really love you and are proud of their son's overall political philosophy let's say but at your next family get-together you go "hey everybody I just love the porn, just bought a big plasma tv in fact." I don't think Rand really cared how she came across, she just let it rip but I think that's a big mistake in trying to build up a fan club for yourself so to speak. In short I think she could've been even more popular than she currently is, she poses a definite dilemma for social conservatives who like her views on economics but little else.

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  24. I think you can agree with parts of Rand's philosophy without agreeing with her stance on abortion. I can agree that the individual is paramount, it's just that I believe in the individual from an earlier point of existence than Rand. But I still toss her book out because as Z-man points out, her overly negative tone.

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  25. Well put Beth. For me it's like as an intellectual she had to realize there are differing opinions out there, for God's sake you can't even find two people who think 100% alike but she was so intoxicated with her own views that anybody who deviated from them was no good in her book. I don't think of myself as vicious nor I'm sure do you Beth. When you start to think like Rand you come across as a harpy.

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  26. Having studied her extensively, I found her to be a woman of great conviction. She was unwavering in her philosophy and for that, I admire her immensely.

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  27. Where does Rand think a person like Dagny would come from if she were not a fetus in her mother's womb at one time? Did Dagny just come from spontaneous combustion? Well maybe in Dagny's case, that would make sense (yes I AM kidding).

    But truly, if we each have an individual spirit to us, then how can Rand not recognize that it begins at the moment our very existence began? How does the mere location (outside the womb vs. inside the womb) somehow give value to a life, or actually she considers them non-living until birth?

    It's not consistent, Soapie.

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  28. btw, if Private Line is reading, see this is how people who disagree with one another conduct themselves in an adult fashion.

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  29. Additionally, I find it again to be a bit contradictory here that while the both of you are citing her "overly negative tone" and her apparent "intoxication" [of her own philosophy] to such a degree that "anybody who deviated from them was no good in her book", you both have seemingly invoked a similar practice by throwing out a book because its author (dare I say) deviates from your own beliefs.

    Certainly Z, you must "realize there are differing opinions out there".

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  30. Her Institute or whomever profited from my buying the book is already done, so on principle the only recourse I have is to toss her book, it makes me feel better doing it.

    She can have her belief, I just don't agree with it.

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  31. Another aspect of this discussion that I can't help but ponder is which demographic is accountable for the overwhelming majority of unintended pregnancies in this country?

    I'm not sitting on a plethora of data in this regard but I do think it highly significant to consider it.

    Let us suppose my assumptions are correct in that those on the lower end of the economic and educational spectrum comprise the majority.

    Then the question for me becomes are we really doing the un-born any favors by subjecting them to the consequences of such an environment?

    Does this not foster the cyclic and perpetual welfare environment which is so ubiquitous in society today?? I'm certain it has.

    For me, it is questions such as this and such as the corollary between life and liberty, et al. that a vast majority of Pro-Lifers are not willing to consider. And, it is in my opinion highly relevant to the discussion of advocating for "Life".

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  32. For me she's a mixed bag at best.

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  33. It's like when someone disappoints you, that's the best way to put it.

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  34. Well sure, it's not like you'll find someone who agrees with you 100%, but it's like a weighted average thing for me, if you aren't pro-life, I can tolerate that, but a person who is very pro-life gets bonus points. Those, like Rand, who are vocally pro-abortion, well, as Z-Man says, it is a disappointment.

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  35. For me if you are pro-choice I can tolerate that but if you are very pro-abortion you get some demerits in my book. Reading those excerpts from Rand's letters is like taking your whiskey straight after eating a can of sardines, you suffer the consequences later.

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