A Rare Victory for the Citizenry

Some may call it a victory for gun owners, but that would be imprecise. Gun owners may or may not benefit from a proper interpretation of the Second Amendment, depending upon their own intentions (and legality) in owning guns. That subgroup aside, it is clearly beneficial to all citizens that to keep and bear arms is recognized as an individual right, which can be abridged only when individuals, through their own actions, lose that right through due process of law.

What's really cool is that this ruling came down from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a body that has done its part at times to give liberalism a bad name. Perhaps this liberal ruling augurs a rational turning of the tide.

The Trouble With Opening Up Trade With Cuba

Those wicked-cool old cars will become collector's items and get auctioned off on the Speed Channel and the taxi drivers will all get used Sentras from Mexico.

Vale Chambers

It always surprises me when someone who helped define my world turns out to be more or less my age. As yet of unknown causes, Marilyn Chambers recently died at 56. Ms. Chamber's evidently naive belief that hardcore sex films were part of a natural evolution and would enhance her career as an actress parallels other influences that led me to have a similar outlook. Of course, this outlook coupled with the shyness and social fear that, looking back, I simply can't believe I had, led to enormous frustration. But somehow I've always held a sense that society's progress could in part be measured by sexual openness, quite apart from whether or not I could actually participate.

Of course I still feel that way -- "of course" not because it's obviously the right attitude, but because it is something I grew up with and therefore forms a part of my worldview and is unlikely to change. When the internet came along I thought some of the Reagan-era regression would get corrected, and to some extent it was, but unfortunately a lot of ugliness blew in on the same breeze and society as a whole reactively maintains its conservatism. And now religionism and social conservatism are resurgent, and what healthy openness we have is likely to fade away yet again.

This likelihood is not countermanded by the trend towards gay marriage. My prediction would be that gay marriage will become the norm while the public face of homosexuality becomes more and more conservative. The crazy acting-out antics of the past will fade in memory, and gay couples will be accepted as just as unspectacularly normal as the rest of us. This is fitting, of course. I'm only saying that this trend, and others that also appear to be the dreams come true of us old 1970s Boomers (legal pot anyone?), are easily balanced in the global zeitgeist such that what we used to wish was a license to have more fun will just be another uninteresting life option. Details may change, but the big picture probably will not. Too bad: I like to think that so long as we are open about our feelings, careful with others', and proceed with honesty and integrity, there's no limit on what behavior is acceptable; or at least, exploration of this should prevail in the art world without penalty. But there are penalties, society yet being what it is, and Chambers (and Mapplethorpe and a host of others) can be counted among the unfortunates who have had to learn it.

Swastika

There’s a controversy out there that’s really been bugging me. I’ve no idea if it is well-known or obscure because I don’t watch TV news. The short version:

Some white trash couple in New Jersey named their kids Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell (presumably “Hinler” was meant to be “Himmler”). The news got out when they demanded an “Adolph Hitler” birthday cake. The state came and took the kids away. The parents turn out to be a real pair of douche bags. This part is not a surprise.

This really bugs me because from all the public evidence, there is absolutely no reason for the state to intervene. They've torn that family apart. Done untold damage to the children. Sure, the parents are dopes. But that’s hardly uncommon. Is the state now going to dictate what you can and cannot name your children? Is “Osama” still okay? Would a dictator who literally killed people with his own hands (which Hitler did not) also have a disallowed name – in other words, would it be similarly wrong to give a kid the middle name of “Hussein”?

If you still think there’s justification, my next question is: What if the kid was given the name “Swastika”? I’ve often wondered if there are people out there who would react badly to a person named Swastika. To too many people, the swastika represents fascism, racism, war, and death. It is used by ignorant people to represent some of those things frequently. Go to some eurocentric culture festival out in small towns (e.g. a Highland Games or an Oktoberfest) and you might see a few peckerheads skulking off on the sidelines showing off their swastika tattoos. I’ve been tempted to go up and take their picture (some of the artwork is quite good) and see how they react. But theirs is not the true meaning of the swastika. The true meaning needs to be encouraged so that ignorance and fear can diminish. Anyone who reacted badly to someone named Swastika would be guilty of continuing the ignorance. They’d also be very rude.

I’m drinking a mocha made by a very nice girl whose name tag says “Swastika”. I mean, that’s her name. It’s kind of cool. Her parents bestowed it upon her in India as we would name a child Hope or Faith or Grace. It’s cool because to a Westerner it’s challenging. I like to imagine she has encountered countless people who have gone away wondering about it and as a result became more enlightened. It’s one of my little wishes that the swastika be rescued from its long nightmare of being a symbol for nationalist socialism. Indeed, I’ve considered getting a tattoo of one myself – inverted, with dots, so there’s no misunderstanding. Then maybe I really can go take pictures of peckerheads, show them mine, and who knows, plant a little seed of enlightenment where the light is least.

Never Repent

I supported Iraq (you know what I mean) and never backed down. Now Bush is retreating into history, where the verdicts remain open. Meanwhile, we have a quagmire of another sort looming. Should Obama try to apply the lessons of the Great Depression? He seems to want to. But he must be cautious. Bush (as I saw it) tried to apply the lessons of World War II. But look how well that went. He pretty well proved that big decisions are difficult and risky, even while deferring those decisions is riskier. Neo-neocon sums up the situation nicely (as usual) in "Making predictions about the economy —- or much of anything else".

Confusion of Faith

Slow week: No one in the office, no one asking questions, no one expecting results. So I'm multislacking.

Wrote the following to Taranto wrt his quibbling over points made in debate by fellow non-believers but presumably politically non-aligned Christopher Hitchens and Heather Mac Donald (why else would he distance himself from them?). He writes about it at the bottom of today's BotW.

Summary quote from Mac Donald:

Do modern Christians still believe with the same fervor as in the past all those unyielding doctrines of eternal damnation for the unbaptised and unconverted? They sure don't act as if they do. If they really were convinced that their friends, co-workers, neighbors, and in-laws were going to hell because they possessed the wrong or no religious belief, I would think that the knowledge would be unbearable. Christians surely see that most of their wrong-believing personal acquaintances are just as moral and deserving as themselves. How, then, do they live with the knowledge that their friends and loved ones face an eternity of torment?

She goes on to suggest this conundrum as evidence of a widespread cognitive dissonance. Taranto thinks she's a little bonkers for regarding eternal damnation following the Last Judgment as an empirical matter. I don't.

Mr Taranto,

You are gently pulling Heather MacDonald's leg (and those of your readers) when criticizing her points. Your subtle sense of humor is at work here. I have to conclude this because even what little of her positions you have provided make good sense.

Obviously there will never be experimental evidence of a Last Judgment, so referring to its results as empirical could be described as inaccurate. But it is potentially so to those who truly believe in it. She is therefore asking of believers to own up to their beliefs: Either all your cherished friends and family who do not believe will be forever punished at the end-time, or you don't really believe what you say you do. If the former, you either don't care about their inevitable torment, or are pretending you don't. If the latter, you are being dishonest. Since very few people who are not sociopaths really don't care about the pain and suffering of loved ones, it's sensible for her to conclude that many, perhaps most, people of professed faith are to a degree lying to themselves.

Since you don't highlight this as the fundamental point of disagreement, it seems you are quibbling over whether or not after-life results could ever be verified experimentally. Obviously they could not if there is no afterlife, but it is a valid point for discussing the perspective of those who believe there is. That's why I think you're quibbling, with a bit of tongue in cheek.

By the way, she's right. My grandmother died without ever professing faith, yet those of her family who believed in faith as the escape route from everlasting torment mourned only her passing, and not at all her presumed fate. It would be ridiculously cruel for me to conclude they were indifferent to her suffering. Like most people who profess belief outwardly, in their hearts they just didn't believe in it.

I stretched a little here. My grandmother didn't really have family members who were believers, unless you include a temporary step-grandchild or two, but the point was more important than strict accuracy. Oh, I could have picked another example, but that would take more time. Hey, I'm busy here!

I wish I had archer's brain

I mean, maybe I don't have a sense of humor right now because I'm stuck in a mid-evening phone conference which is mostly in Japanese and thus forcing me to listen without comprehension for that sudden fiercely-inflected interrogative "Don?" that signals a requirement on my part to be alert and knowledgeable and confident but never mind that, even if I carved out a few hours' time and lubricated it with one of my birthday bottles of Patrón there is no way I could make this article about new Christmas children's books that are based on global-warmism any funnier or more satirical than it is, unintentionally, all on its own. They've got it all:

Turn off lights to save polar bears!

Santa as the Global-warming Grinch!

Grand Grifter Gore!

Note, there's nothing wrong with turning out lights and saving energy. I was taught to do that as a kid. But unproven theories that more and more scientists are decrying as bad science and premature alarmism (I'm talking anthropogenic global warming here) is a hilarious way to get a book sold. Hey, it can work, and I wanna be an author too, and we all respect a well-run con game. But geez. I only wish I had the brain right now to expand on the humor in it.

* * *

Speakin' a humor, I think it's hilarious that we tell our large and very demanding (and very quality-driven, please buy their products) customer that "engineering teams" say this or are doing that, when by "engineering teams" we really mean "that guy over in the cubicle by the wall who just got out of college."

(Yes, yes, there are engineering women but let's face it, the females in this profession usually end up in management.)

* * *

All three-part blog posts need a third part, so now I'm writing it. I asked a bunch of fellow anthropogenic-global-warming skeptics why it always seemed to be engineers who were not only conservatively libertarian-minded but skeptical about such crowd-pleasers as anthropogenic global warming and the answer was the very obvious, "Because engineers know how to read and analyze data." Oh. Yeah. I guess one could allege as much.

Ranting because I Looked At the News

Two towns I'm fond of are on the verge of insolvency.

More California Towns Face Bankruptcy

The County can't help. The State can't help. They're all learning the same hard lesson, and on a much larger scale. Let me say it boldly:

IT'S REALLY FUCKING STUPID TO BUILD A BIG-ASS GOVERNMENT ON TAXATION OF BUSINESS INCOME

Simple answer why: Business cycles, income, and tax revenue go down as readily as they go up. Big-ass government assembled by nanny-state do-gooders who think free-for-all government programs are the solution to Mankind's problems cannot be shrunk once it is grown without throwing all the worthless good-for-nothing^{(meant with the greatest affection)} citizens and others who have come to depend on it out into the freezing cold street. Where, the so-called liberal defenders of free-for-all government programs warn, they will turn to crime.

This highlights the difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Liberals think the poor are criminals in waiting if we don't pay them off with bogus programs to set them on their feet that no one ever follows up on anyway. Conservatives think the poor are middle-class people in waiting who simply need all those goddamn regulations that make employment, housing and food so hard to get swept out of the way. (All right, Conservatives also think of the poor as human resources that could be more affordable, i.e. slave labor that would be turning the cranks as soon as all minimum wage laws were set aside but hey, what do you want? Criminals in waiting, or workers that can compete with China?)

Rio Vista I haven't been to much. It's generally on the way to somewhere else, and often as not across the river from the route I'm taking anyway. But Isleton is very cool. Small, but cool. Some abandoned buildings on the main drag that date back to the 1800s, a few bars and general stores that thrive during the Crawdad Festival, streets that are most picturesque when lined with large American motorcycles, a few lawns and fine old london plane and sycamore trees and of course the not-so-mighty Rio Sacramento drifting by across the levee (and occasionally over it).

I don't know what they have in expenses such that a downturn in business has to drive them to bankruptcy, but I bet it's a bunch of social niceness crap imposed by laws written by the usual cabal of nanny-state do-gooders up in the state capitol building. Some of whom might actually be Republicans, who knows.

But anyway, it's clear the time is coming for self-sufficiency. Depending on gov'ment (or anyone) to feed, clothe, house, educate, or protect you is a ba-a-ad idea. It's great when we can afford to take care of everyone. But this economic downturn is either going to

A) Provide the painful lesson that the gifts of government can easily be taken away;
or,

B) Provide the painful lesson that government that can't shrink into its income is destined to become less than worthless.

Are those the same thing? I'm forgetting the new taxes our RINO governor has in mind. What kind of IDIOT would ever think it's possible to tax your way to prosperity? Seriously. 'Splain that one to me. 'Splain to me how taking MORE money from the people who create wealth and dividing it up in programs to protect the people who don't from the consequences of not producing wealth will result in MORE prosperity. That makes sense to a point -- don't get me wrong -- if the money goes effectively to schools, kindy to university, because schools are underfunded (or administered so badly as to be effectively underfunded, whichever). But bah. That's about it. Welfare? Cut it. Prisons? End the drug war, establish drug rehab and interventionist self-esteem programs at a fraction of the cost, problem solved.

Oh, and another thing. Why the FUCK do we have people streaming illegally over the border to work out in the fields, while at the same time we have countless young people in the cities hanging about doing nothing but mutually masturbate in their little gang wars? Maybe if we killed off the welfare state, allowed licensed pharmacies to sell cannabis and coca derivatives at competitive prices, and started sending farm-work recruitment buses into 'hoods full of now-hungry people, we could solve THREE problems for the price of NONE. Just a thought.

Next: Suffrage for property owners only. (Just kidding.)

End the War on Drugs

I guess I'll never be a liberal as defined by the American media (and, in my experience, most commenters, bloggers, etc). When moved to comment on the issues of the day, I trend towards the conservative side. Not to follow an agenda, however; that's simply the way I usually roll when inspired to react.

So anyway, here's a reminder to folks that us bad guys -- conservatives, Republicans, and the Wall Street Journal -- can actually be on the right side of things now and then, with this hair-raising lead:

Of all the casualties claimed by the U.S. "war on drugs" in Latin America, perhaps none so fully captures its senselessness and injustice as the 2001 CIA-directed killing of Christian missionary Veronica Bowers and her daughter Charity in Peru. -- WSJ, 12/14/08

More from us Kool-Aid^® guzzling haters on the subject here: Let's End Drug Prohibition.

Sick Sect Sex Sets Scriveners Squirting

The press is having a vast collective circle-jerk over this shit.

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) -- Young teenage girls at a polygamist compound in West Texas were required to have sex in a soaring white temple after they were married in sect-recognized unions, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday ... Agents found a bed in the temple with disturbed linens and what appeared to be a female hair ... Associated Press

Hard-on city, right, boys? Them Mormons was purty clever to raise them girls that way, huh? Jayziz. The FLDS is fucked up. But the media's restraint hasn't exactly been impressive.

I believe in religious freedom. If multiple marriage works for people, fine. Of course, there's debate as to whether it does. I suspect it generally does not. Not if one is raised to believe it's God's Will or some shit. If you come to polygamy or polyamory naturally because that's just the way you are, great. I don't want any laws to get in your way. But if you're only there because you were raised by a bunch of patriarchal power freaks, forget it. And let's not even waste time discussing children being married off, even to someone their own age, never mind some dirty old bastard my age. I know how those guys think.

Indeed I do. A bed in the temple, huh? Hmmm.

The Penis Mightier Than The Sword

The Spitzer thing had me thinking. It had me thinking about how prevalent hanky panky is, and how no one ever talks about it except when someone juicy gets caught. Every day we love to have our fragile illusions shattered. My God! How could he do such a thing?! And now the great thing isn’t that he really wasn’t the only horndog in Albany getting some on the side -- his replacement had him some girlfriends too, and you don’t have to be legally blind to appreciate them either, and you know damn well everyone else up there is busy too -- the great thing is that he probably was the only one paying for it. Snicker snicker.

And that’s what got me to thinking. Sure, it’s real bad to dishonor your family that way. Especially when Oh my God, he has daughters! For some reason that makes it worse. But what about the prostitute thing? Every man, as is proven time and time and time again, either has to bust out of his seven-year-itch-times-three marriage and fuck someone bad, or he goes crazy. Okay, not every man. Not me, I hasten to add with neither a visible smirk nor easily-discerned irony. But a bunch of them. Especially of the sort that end up in politics. (Avoiding easy side track into why I always hated those fucking frat boys.) And so they do, and their wives are downcast and noble, and on they go into “healing” or whatever can be done at that stage, and everything’s fucked because How could you do this to me? To us? I thought you loved me! Is there really any chance that Spitzer didn’t think of that?

No, there isn’t. But there is a chance that like most guys who are roughly fifty years old, he went insane. Insane enough to have a need he could not dispense with (and don’t talk to me about porn and the M word, guys who jerk off do not become Governor of New York). Insane enough to be a little bit Bill Clinton, a little bit Gary Hart, Jack Kennedy, whomever. And people look at him and say, AUGH, he HAD to pay for it, that dude is UGly! But that’s bullshit, he had him a hot wife -- no one marries Silda Wall by being a dork -- and he was Governor, for heaven’s sake! He did not HAVE to pay for a damn thing. If he was the slick sort of frat boy we often elect to office, he’d have easily snagged all the cooz he wanted. But no, he didn’t. And that’s sort of my point.

You know he just plain needed it. Raise your hand if you don’t know what I mean by that. You liars. And he had a lot of knowledge about a certain sector of the economy, probably a lot of contacts. He figured, Damn, I can’t go manipulating some intern or legislative analyst or whatever they had around there. He just couldn’t. That Would Be Wrong. Wrong to start messing with someone else’s emotions and personal life, making her the next ex-paramour of the man in power. But it wouldn’t be nearly so wrong -- wrong still, but not nearly as much, his lust-addled mind was thinking -- to fuck around with someone for whom it’s just business. Yes, he’d still be cheating and dishonoring and all that, but hell, he did that already in his mind and soul, and some women will tell you it’s a small step for a husband to go from there to the technical matter of having sex. That he needed someone else is often a lot worse, or just about as bad anyway, as if he actually went out and fucked her. So I’m thinking, the poor stupid bastard called up his old buddies in the high-rent call girl scene almost as an act of decency. It kept him out of the life of anyone who actually cared. And when it was over, off she went, no broken hearts. Well, except for the wife and daughters whose hearts he couldn’t keep his stupid self from breaking anyway. But one less, anyhow. (Until she found out there’d be no movie deal.)

So it really comes down to the fact that men are crazy, and prostitution is always going to be highly profitable (barring the costs of legal prosecution) so long as we have societies that pretend men aren’t quite as crazy as they really are. And we have lots of such societies all over the world and always have, because when it comes down to it, men who are old and wise enough to write the law (be it via legislative action or priestly fiat) have learned it’s much more conducive to a peaceful life to keep a house and home and lifelong wife, and just pay for girls when you’re away on business. So long as no one spills the secret or gets his stupid self caught, everyone’s happy.

Remember, this is the theory established by men who are de facto crazy. And though women may have invented civilization when they invented beer and bed linens, this didn’t protect them from being suppressed and commoditized by the arm that wields the sword. Kitchen rules were replaced with the rule of law, law made by men. Sometimes laws are just meant to make people happy that there’s a law, rather than to actually change how they behave. It all works out for those in positions of power and influence. So long as they don’t get caught.

Wednesday Wiggle

So as I crank up what's left of my brain for a new workday, I see in the news that Bush is hailing "victory" in Iraq and how five years ago a tyrant was removed and millions liberated from unspeakable horrors.

What fucking planet is he on?

I supported the war and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. With what I knew back then, and what I thought they knew back then, it made sense to me. In subsequent years, it has made more sense to me to get serious about it now and then (the recent so-called "surge" being one of the few examples I can think of) than to abandon the place to whoever rises above the blood that will flow after we leave. Even yet I can't see why people who want our withdrawal are so eager to witness a foreign bloodbath. However, I admit I cannot easily assert that this long painful bleed-out is any better. (I mean, I could write a justification, but it would have enough holes in it, so never mind.)

I just don't know. But I do know that whatever Bush says about it is unworthy of my attention. The horrors are far more unspeakable today than they were under Hussein.

Part Two

I didn't hear Obama's speech the other night, haven't read a transcript, know nothing about it except what I read in two relatively conservative opinion pieces. Both of those pieces chose to express some slight indignation over Mr. Obama making reference to his white grandmother's occasional lapses into racism, as if those lapses somehow balanced Rev. Wright's deeply divisive and very deliberate theological racism. They objected to Obama's attempt at relativism in this matter, and his "use" of family.

Well, but, so what? First off, if I had a grandchild running for President and he or she wanted to use me to make a point, any point, I'd be all for it. Use me, child, I'm here for you. Second, I understand that Mr. Obama did not distance himself completely from his association with Wright's church, but instead chose to acknowledge publicly that America still has many faces, and that he cannot disavow one in order to please another. (Of course, I am paraphrasing from a very great distance.) I admit to some reluctance here, because I still possess an impulse to be dismissive, but the fact I must admit to is that I respect the decision to take that path, and if Mr. Obama risked his campaign to speak truth to racial politics in this country, he might actually be more than just the opportunistic lightweight I generally take him for.

Section C

Speaking of race, two weird little things that so far as I know only my weird little brain has thought of.

One, I don't blame Obama's grandmother for her anger, if any. Her daughter was seduced while in Hawaii by a handsome and charismatic African who was running off with other women before their child was a year old. Oftentimes when we are angry with someone, it seems natural and even helpful to have racial or religious or other irrelevant qualities to heap onto our invective. So if she referred to that damn n_____ once in awhile, I at least will excuse her humanness. Too bad she wasn't smart enough to keep it away from her grandchild, but maybe it taught him something about understanding those we love.

Two, I've not asked anyone who is African-American about this, but I am curious if Obama as potential President really means something significant, or if there are further steps to take. Well, of course there are further steps to take. It will be best when a black President attracts no notice for being black. But there is another factor. Obama, like Gen. Powell, is not a descendant of slaves. His ascendancy to the Oval Office therefore will not entirely close the wound. It will prove something good about this country, but it will not prove quite as remarkable as when a descendant of slaves rises to that level of power. I'm just curious if that detail will mean anything, or am I just weird. Or both, sure.

Segment Delta

Nah. I guess three things is enough, time to work now.

Choice Day

I wasn't going to blog this week. Too many unbloggable thoughts in my head. But it was Blog For Choice Day, a subject hard to ignore. So I got two basic thoughts on it right now, being as I’m all in favor of life AND liberty and the pursuit of happiness ‘n shit. (And I wrote this knowing that most readers would disagree with me, but oh well. Oh, and the next paragraph was almost an attempt at dark humor I should delete but never mind, it's past my bedtime.)

Is it a Choice, or is it a Child?

In other words, does the kid being got rid of have any rights, or is it really just something the mother can get rid of if she chooses, like, I don’t know, a finger. Well, why not. You have the right to chop off your finger if you want. It won’t grow back but the beauty of a fetus is, even if you do kill it, you can always grow another. Of course, if someone else kills it, say while killing you, they will be prosecuted for two murders, not just one, even in California, and that confuses me.

Anyway, point is, being pregnant when you don’t want to be is very damn inconvenient. Many women have had to dredge up truly heroic proportions of courage to bear a child they have no means to care for. Others have made the enormously difficult decision to terminate (let us not understate that difficulty!). Choices all round. But we don’t make choices in a vacuum. If we are moral people, we must take into account the consequences our choices have for other people. So the question remains, is the fetus someone with rights, or is it not? If you cannot answer that question immediately with unequivocal proof that it is not, then there is doubt, and in every just society I have ever heard of, the benefit of the doubt goes to the living.

Besides, a choice was made when a potentially fertile couple chose to have sex. The risk of pregnancy was known. Kind of like the risk of killing someone is known when you start your car while blind drunk. If there’s a predictable consequence, I’m not sure what makes the choice to ignore that consequence so sacred.

You Can Take My Right To Privacy When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers

Self-determination is one thing we all agree is sacred. Not everyone believes in natural rights, and I’m not eddicated enough to argue for or against the concept, but I’m sure everyone within reading range agrees that each individual at least has the right to express themselves, to say what they want, to have some control over their own privacy. Roe v Wade established a woman’s right to an abortion as an extension of her right to privacy. That pretty much ends the discussion as far as a lot of people are concerned. They aren’t going to let the gummint decide something so important – though how much they object to gummint having authority over public smoking or gun ownership or marijuana use or “hate” speech or control of rents or the sale of sexual services etc. etc. is always to be seen. It appears we all have opinions as to where our privacy really ends and our responsibility to others begins – opinions that differ, because we all differ, because we all come from different backgrounds and have slightly different perspectives on what privacy really means.

In 1973 when Roe v Wade was established, this was in many ways a different country. Rights to privacy and free speech that we take for granted today were not yet established. But they were on the march. Recent years had seen massive movements in defense of free speech, of political opposition, etc. Meanwhile, there were still laws against many consensual sexual acts, against many types of speech we today consider protected, and the last laws against mixed-race marriages were only recently overturned. A momentum had built to relegate all those antiquated laws to history's dustbin. At the same time, the unsafe conditions created by the deadly combination of prejudice against unwed mothers and inadequate abortion facilities had enabled a horrible kind of back-alley slaughter. Scared young women who had exercised their natural rights to sexual activity and wound up pregnant were at risk of being killed by unprofessional abortionists taking advantage of their fear and desperation. Roe v Wade was a natural response to these converging trends. In one stroke, a major blow was made in defense of privacy, of sexual freedom, and of feminine emancipation. What of the child? Well, it was unfortunate, and not everyone agreed that the life was really a life, and in the end privacy concerns trumped the question. I wondered how that was possible, how privacy could be found more important than the question of life, until I remembered more about the early 1970s.

At that time, there was a thing called the Marital Rape Exemption. It was recognized as valid in every state. A man could not be prosecuted for forcing sex on his wife. A woman who was raped had no recourse if the rapist was also her husband. I remember when a wife-rape conviction made the news simply for being a conviction. I believe it was in the late 1970s. Prior to that, this brutal crime and its perpetrator were covered by the right to privacy.

Child abuse was also far more common than it is today. I have no data – just ask enough of your friends who were children then. Look at the wealth of resources available to both prevent and recover from child abuse that didn’t exist just ten or twenty years ago. This is a little more anecdotal, but I’m sure most people would agree that as we go back in time, the prevalence of child abuse is likely to increase. It did not appear as a result of 1960s permissiveness or some such nonsense. Child abuse is a generational issue that goes back and back and back. The past two or three decades have been the first time in human history that there have been effective trends to prevent it. But in 1973 if you saw a bruised face or a burned arm on a child or for that matter a mother slapping her child silly in the grocery store parking lot, chances are you shook your head and regretfully acknowledged a family’s right to privacy. And forget sexual abuse. You know it happened, a lot. You also know it was rarely reported, and reports rarely taken seriously.

Roe v Wade was passed in this atmosphere of respecting privacy. Society has evolved since then, but we still accept Roe v Wade. It’s a complex political issue and as such it is much more difficult to change our attitude towards it than to, say, pass a law requiring teachers to report evidence of abuse. But an entire generation has passed, and in my opinion it may be time, with rationality and compassion, to take another look. Not necessarily to write more restrictive laws, but certainly to reconsider, as we must always do periodically, our underlying assumptions.

UPDATE 1/23: More from a nice Catholic lesbian libertarian down in AZ.

Tuercas Locas

Haven't posted in awhile. Maybe I'll start again. Having been cursed with interesting times and all.

What gets me right now is evidently some Joe in PA has gotten into trouble for posting a sign at his restaurant requesting patrons order in English. I absolutely cannot believe he'd get into trouble for that. Was this not once a free country? If he wants to restrict his business to folks who aren't put off by such a sign, that's his right. The cawing by various lawyers and government officials that his signs "give a feeling of being unwelcome and being excluded" and "discourages customers of certain backgrounds from eating there" is a load of populist mob-rule hooey. Nor do they violate a city ordinance that prohibits discrimination in public accommodation on the basis of race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, as those have nothing to do with language. Indeed, I'd like to know why anyone would expect to be able to order in Russian or Pashtu or Spanish or Chinese or whatever other languages are most common in his neck of the woods in the first place. Complaint over this is the kind of boneheaded nonsense reminds me our country is proceeding to eat itself alive.

To state the obvious, in case anyone is boneheaded enough to miss it: If he or anyone else wants to run their shop in Hebrew or Farsi or Hmong or French, they absolutely have the right to do so. There are plenty of stores in San Francisco without a speck of English anywhere in sight. Is anyone complaining who's worth listening to? Of course not.