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Tribal Loyalty and the Corporatist Agenda: It’s Not Just For Republicans Any More
In 2007, Glenn Greenwald wrote a column about how our political debate was being constrained by the demonization of figures like Howard Dean, Al Gore or Ron Paul who were singled out and labeled "weirdos" for expressing opinions outside of party orthodoxy, even though those opinions may have broad popular support. Noting that Ron Paul shared several core principles with progressives on the issues of civil liberties and his opposition to the Iraq war, Glenn asserted that his participation in the GOP presidential primary gave him an important platform for "expanding the scope of issues we consider and the ideas that are worth hearing."
Glenn's column triggered an ongoing debate, with many "liberals" demanding that anyone who embraced a pro-life stance (as Paul does) must thus be excluded from serious consideration on any issue whatsoever. Glenn noted that Paul's pro-life position was no different from Harry Reid's.
I find Glenn Greenwald's defense of Ron Paul's anti-abortion record deeply bizarre. "Look over here, he likes the Constitution" doesn't exactly respond to concerns that, in a Ron Paul world, tens of millions of women will be forced to use their bodies to bear children against their will. I'm less than pleased that my civil liberties are being abrogated, but I'm not willing to sell reproductive rights down the river for it.
That's an interesting position. Does the health care bill Ezra has been fervently pushing "sell reproductive rights down the river?" Some would argue that it doesn't, but Ezra Klein is not one of them. When the Stupak amendment passed in the House bill, Ezra wrote:
The idea that people are going to go out and purchase separate "abortion plans" is both cruel and laughable. If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.
The abortion language that was ultimately included in the health care bill came from the Senate, which does in fact force women to purchase separate "abortion plans" on the exchange, and allows states the ability to opt out of offering abortion plans on the exchange altogether. Ezra allows Michelle Goldberg to make the argument for him that the health care bill does really good things for women anyway, providing "feminist cover" to support it even though one would have to objectively say that it "sells reproductive rights down the river."
And what about those people who still hew to Ezra's 2007 position, believing that it's not okay to "sell reproductive rights down the river"? When we pointed out that this is in fact what the bill does, Ezra dismissed it as "helping activists kill the bill" rather than "actually informing anyone about what is in the bill." According to Ezra, "the restriction here is not on the right to choose, but on whether primary insurance covers abortion." Therefore, since the goal of the bill is not restricting a woman's right to choose, the fact that it does so anyway is just a coincidence and therefore not a valid reason to object to the bill's passage.
Ezra then went on to write (with no small amount of irony) that poor David Frum had been purged from AEI for his failure to walk in lockstep with the GOP on health care, after Frum pointed out that the foundations of the bill really were conservative. He castigates the party for its unfettered tribalism in shutting down a truthteller like Frum, who he applauds for merely pointing out the obvious conservative intellectual inconsistency. You could give yourself whiplash trying to count all the reversals wrapped up in that one, starting with Ezra's long-held insistence that the health care bill represents a huge progressive victory (though he has been trying to square the two, as if progressive "goals" hadn't been used as bait to neutralize liberal opposition and achieve a drastic corporate agenda).
It's probably unfair to single out Ezra for this rather glaring inconsistency, since he was just one of many who were quick to excoriate "purists" on the left who didn't support the bill and then subsequently leaped to Frum's defense. But if the lesson of the David Frum firing is that it's really bad for a political movement to stigmatize dissent and deviation from the party line, what does it say about those steely-eyed "pragmatists" who castigated pro-choice dissent within their own party when abortion rights were deemed an acceptable sacrifice?
There is no consistent, coherent moral position being expressed here. Rather, a woman's right to choose has value primarily when it can be demagogued to exclude those who don't pass its litmus test of tribal loyalty. Abortion is a core element of the liberal canon that cannot be broached at any cost when it comes to shutting down potential trans-partisan alliances around civil liberties or ending the war that have nothing whatsoever to do with choice. But when it comes to a law that actually seriously impacts a woman's right to choose, abortion rights can be sacrificed for some "greater good," with some feminist cover quickly assembled to affirm that an appropriate standard has been met. And anyone who doesn't arrive at that conclusion at the same time is operating in bad faith and should not be taken seriously.
The abortion issue is emblematic of the way in which appeals to tribal loyalty were used to stigmatize and delegitimize progressive opposition to a radically corporatist health care bill. George Bush couldn't privatize Social Security because of liberal opposition, but liberal resistance to a health care bill authored by the insurance companies was effectively neutralized by a call to Democratic party loyalty. Anyone making a consistent values argument, who didn't immediately fall in line and support the passage of a neoliberal health care bill, was "helping the Republicans" - as if Republican opposition to the bill wasn't the very thing that gave progressives negotiating power in the first place.
In What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank poignantly describes how white working class Americans are tricked by corporate elites into acting against their self-interest through naked appeals to irrational tribalism.
Glad that only happens to Republicans.
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55 Comments so far
Show AllSioux Rose
Massive schizophrenia. That's what it is when those that make abortion their Holy Grail lose no sleep, not even a random, inconvenient thought over all those LIVE children blasted to Hades by one of the endless artillery of weapons this nation invests in most hardily, and jumps at the chance to use!
Until a true respect for life informs this nation's morality, starting with a dis-investment in the military and its countless weapons of mass destruction, using a woman's uterus as the basis for posturing who owns the purest ethos is bull shit of the highest order.
I am reminded of those misogynistic senators who ruled in favor of Blackwater in the awful gang-bang rape case that recently came before their oh, so sagacious minds. So often it is women or women's rights that are first discarded when jaded politicians play hard ball with others' liberties in order to retain the favor of their amoral paying sponsors.
What does abortion cost? $500? This little chess move is just another made to satisfy the patriarchal fathers who rule their congregations with a stern moral fist. They deliver the voters and line up the persons most apt to act like sheep, those wired to follow stern authoritarians. Whether answering to the fundamentalist Christians or the Catholics, it's amazing how many think they gain spiritual brownie points by standing in front of abortion clinics, while they send their sons off to wars that MURDER innocent LIVING children.
The hypocrisy underway truly qualifies as a form of massive insanity.
SR,
You sound as "tribal" and dogmatic as those Ms. Hamsher rejects. To first assume that all who support one oppose the other is laughable. Many seculars recognise the scientifically reasoned truth of actual cost of abortion; a unique human entity is terminated (science also denotes this entity as "LIVE"). Recognizing this reasoned truth, they proceed to morally weigh in the just balance this unique human's right to life against the varying interests of the mother to be. Free thinking individuals can come to morally sound conclusions protecting the innocent, pre or post birth. I am confident in the free will of most men and women, you included, and apparently, so is Ms. Hamsher, as she argues for us ALL, regardless of leaning, to think for ourselves, so to speak.
In the mean time you are badly misinformed if you think that the "patriarchal fathers" either rule their congregations (just aske them), or, as they relate to "the Catholics", support war. Official Catholic doctine is clear and has been against the war in Iraq since the outset.
Truth is true!
Sioux Rose
DPR: Except for principled rebels inside a variety of religious institutions, most stand back and support the various wars, when they're not invoking inquisitions of their own.
If I sound tribal to you, in defending EACH woman's RIGHT to choose... what will ultimately become the fate of her life and body, then you're not someone I could reason with in the first place. Your lack of understanding of patriarchal doctrine does not make ME misinformed. You can't even spell the word ask. Ass is more in your league, troll.
So, on one hand the followers are hearded like sheep in support of the 'fathers' incitement to oppose abortion, but ignore the 'patriarchal doctrine' when they 'support various wars'. Well reasoned and thoughtful.
In any case, most who have come to a reasoned defense of the unborn would fight for your unique human entity just as energetically!
I hope you don't mind if I don't come up with a catchy name to call you.
Sioux Rose
DP: It's herded, not hearded. And you are trying to place my words into YOUR OWN false dichotomy, while you appear to be barely literate. I am not interested in dialog with the likes of you. I take you for one of a handful that post on this site under a number of screen names. You all sound alike, Mr. Smith clones. And you bore me to tears.
ALIEN SOUP: Thanks for trying. It's about as useful as speaking to a rock.
SR, revealing that you are impressed with AS' well articulated position. Perhaps you should not trouble yourself so with typos and focus on literate discussion. Also, revealing is your unwillingness to engage in honest debate, considered by most scholars to be the true route to becoming fully informed. Interacting only with like thinkers is the definition of a closed mind.
As for your implication of falsehood via screen names, I have posted under this name, and only this name, for years on CD. You have leveled this charge on me before, though...talk about paranoia.
Truth is true.
I've suffered the wrath of both the right and left by asserting my right to free thought, and agnosticism when it comes to the most divisive, irresolvable, and manipulable issues - abortion foremost among them. On this issue you are pariah if you don't pick a tribe, and remain loyal to it.
There's an interesting test at politicalcompass.org which plots your political 'position' according to economic and social issues. While I'm sure it is far from a complete means of classification I think it is a little better than the simply 'right/left' pigeonhole system in common use. I checked it out just for fun.
The only reason I bring it up is because, according to this test, I am further to the left than Stalin, and more libertarian than Ghandi who appears to be a veritable conservative by comparison. I would describe myself as having hopes for a society capable of true self-governance with no need for centralized authoritarian forms of government, which would be correctly described as social anarchy. But I am unsure humanity is capable of it. If charity were sufficient there would never have been need to invent government, much less socialism. All governments and laws, are sold as serving 'justice' and 'security' which are utterly socialist notions, or had better be or they aren't justice OR security. So-called 'conservatives' tend to be all too willing to tell us how important 'security' is because there are 'bad people out there who hate us for our freedoms' - then proceed to prove it by taking away freedom, robbing us, and forcing us to subsidize (using our tax funded military) the killing of people for no other reason than that they exist atop a resource they covet, or that the people demand at least the right to subsist.
Having said this, I have always been agnostic on the issue of abortion. I appreciated what you said concerning the scientific or biological understanding of the simple fact that a human at the earliest stage of development is a fetus, and that to terminate it is quite literally homicide. But I have to clarify that this is a scientific, and NOT a moral or legal statement.
I think it so divisive and manipulable precisely because it is such a grey area when trying to reconcile scientific fact with a legal (much less moral) definition of what it means to be a living human, with inherent rights. I do not advocate prohibition of abortion at all, even though I've never been able to tell myself that my own children only became 'people' when they exited the womb. I will say that I find it offensive that so many people throw stones at one another, while one side waves a 'pro-abortion/anti-war' slogan, and the other waves a 'anti-abortion/pro-war' slogan. I find both hypocritical, and both have their militants. This is real tribalism. On one hand conservatives violently oppose taxation being used to fund what they view as the murder of children, yet on the other hand will scream 'traitor' at anyone that uses this same justification in demanding cuts in defense spending, or an end to war-for-profit which kills adult children (our soldiers) and god-only-knows how many other innocent people, young and old. Yet the 'liberal left' viciously rends anyone within their ranks who holds a pro-life position, and tries to claim that if the state doesn't fund abortion that they are outlawing it in all but name. I claim the right to say that both sides are partly correct. I don't want to have to pay for homicide. Period. But I am not going to take a militant stance on this issue, specifically because I absolutely believe that abortion will always be with us, legal or not, as long as there is social and economic injustice. So I would prefer to make sure young women don't have to put their lives in jeopardy in some alleyway when executing their natural (as opposed to moral or legal) right to decide what issues from their bodies. And even Christians would have to agree that God put that power in the hands of women, law or no law. And to this I would say that a truly 'pro-life' person would think and act practically, and would try to make this world a more peaceful, compassionate, and more just, thereby reducing the fear associated with having a child.
It is social and economic injustice which makes abortion necessary. I think it far from the 'best of all possible worlds' to live in a society in which having a child should be anything but a joyous occasion. Instead it is a thing to be (rightly) feared, and primarily because of economic hardship. At the turn of the 20th century religious charitable groups learned a lesson that prohibition only increased social ills, whereas social and economic justice had a far greater effect on reducing such things as prostitution, substance abuse, domestic violence, and unwanted childbirth. It is a shame that it was so quickly forgotten.
It seems to me that if some kind of dialogue isn't established, in a spirit of good will, and which could break through the divisive tribalism which the abortion issue represents, that the corporate coup against our republic will find itself with no opposition whatsoever because we'll accomplish the aristocrat philosophy of 'getting half the poor to shoot the other half'. I would very much like to see unity, at least on issues that people who believe in peace and justice can agree upon. And if we don't there will surely be a lot more death to go around.
Nanoo
Great comment. Another tribal issue, I think is gun control. Locally for myself which is rural, you'll find the majority of men will vote Republican based on that issue alone, even though they don't agree with or seem concerned enough about the rest of the party platform.
My thoughts exactly. Reasoning with black magic she-devils is useless. She always get paranoid and invents false allegations on screen names. She couldn't ever prove her own lying and slandering so she'll try to accuse the other party of doing it and then she'll have a few idiots defending her. I may not agree with everything you say but I like your writing. Don't let Sioux Rose try to exclude you from the forum. She thinks she's the queen of CD. I went insane a few times myself trying to reason with her. You're cool man.
Peace
Also, where in my previous post is my 'lack of understanding of patriarchal doctrine' evident?
If you paid more attention to SR's postings you might get a little more enlightenment as to the spirituality that informs them. Regardless of what "you think" is the beginning of life or whether it is a unique human entity or lump of cells that are "LIVE" in the sense that the sperm going down the drain or into a condom is "LIVE" (and it is not even male or female yet) and how much control "you think" you should have over a woman's right to choose to keep or not, the bottom line is a woman has the right to choose what she does and does not do with her own body and you or anybody else has nothing to say about it, or rather shouldn't. The false morality bullshit that she was referring to and which you just amply showed are what is so infuriating about this debate.
Umm...spirituality? I thought we were having a reasoned discussion. Are you suggesting I should be informed by spirits?
As for what I think; isn't it more reasoned to consider what the scientific evidence reveals? And what is revealed is that within minutes of the sperm and egg merging a unique human entity exists; its genetic code is established. This is just science, and pretty easy science at that. So, what I think is irrelevant.
As for the woman's right, assuming such a right exists (debatable on its face), as with all conflicting rights (of which there are many), a simple application of ethical/moral hierarchies is applied. A reasoned person can easily come to the conclusion that the right to life of the fetus outweighs the interests of the woman. An example of the limits of control a woman has over her body is the choice to self terminate.
As for false morality, that is a slippery slope if ever there was one.
Well articulated argument, though.
I just say: short of three months, kill the little bugger (OK, I don't actually say that). Or maybe two months. This gives plenty of time for the mother/father to make a decision. At two months, a human fetus is the size of a kidney bean, with a brain the size of a mustard seed. Anyone who tells me to grieve for the sentience lost upon such a death has just GOT to stop eating cow for dinner. Cuz, on the sentience-scale, a born cow is Albert Einstein compared to a 2 month old human fetus. But I eat cow all the time, and God will 'eat' us all in the end.
Truth: I don't have a lot of patience for people 'suffering' the unborn child who somehow put up with (and even vote to exascerbate) the very real suffering of actual REAL born human children all over the world, but increasingly right here in America. Case in point: the Catholic Church forbids filipinos use condoms or abortion to control the obvious consequences of sex (a normal human activity). Hence, in the last 40 years the population of the Philippines has gone from 30 million to 90 million (while neighboring Taiwan, which isn't Catholic, and permits condoms/abortions has remained at 30 million that entire 40 year period). The fruitful consequence of this is that filipino women today gleefully sign up for the opportunity to be maids in Asian and Middle-Eastern households, where they have no rights, are subject to enslavement, torture, rape, and murder. Oh, lets all sing the wonders of the born.
Give a God-d(mned for the born, and maybe I'll give a thimble of empathy for the unborn. Until then...
U B rew 1 2,
I say kill the little bugger up to age 4, post first breath (the terrible 2's are just so), then again from 12 to 18 (trust me on this one) (PSYCH!). As for the filipinos, strategic nukes in a few metropolitan areas and we can likely approach Taiwan-like live bodies. What say ye?
As for your patience, it rarely comes up in debate. Go figure.
Something tells me that you don't understand what abortion is really all about. I haven't had a chance to travel around the world but I hear that nations that have some kind of a universal health care system also have fewer abortions. In some of those countries such as Canada, having safe sex education further reduces abortions nationwide. If you had the chance to read the bill and think about the life-threatening situations young women will go through as they limp from doctor to doctor because their "coverage" is useless on abortion along with Bush's "abstinence only" sex education, you might see the situation differently. Add it all up and once again, this nation is an embarrassment not only on health care but the subtle mistreatment of women as disposables. Is that what you are proud of? How about we institutionalize socialized medicine, single payer health care, and safe sex education and watch those abortions decrease?
S79, please, enlighten me as to what this abortion thing is all about! Has this been an issue for very long where you're from?
Why yes, those blithering idiot conservatives bring it up and preach "pro-life" but at the same time preach for more guns, gutting public education especially safe sex education, complain about health care costing the taxpayers, cheer when pharmacists get posted in the newspapers for denying women their birth control pills, say nothing about viagra, cheer for more wars, and need I go on? Go visit the heartland and see for yourself.
I'm confused...I thought you were going to fill in my blanks on this "abortion thing". But you've gone completely off message and now seem like you are using slight of hand to misdirect. What do these other things have to do with abortion?
There is no agreement in science about abortion that you claim. Nor is there agreement in science about the "cost". There is definitely no scientific consensus about a "unique human entity" being terminated.
Scientists agree that within four minutes of conception the genetic material for a unique human entity exists in the fetus; this is established scientific fact, available in many 5th grader's biology textbooks. Since that entity is destroyed it is fair to refer to it as a cost of doing the business of abortion. What weight you attribute to this unique entity's loss is debatable, the rest is not, at least when using scientific reasoning.
"Whether answering to the fundamentalist Christians or the Catholics, it's amazing how many think they gain spiritual brownie points by standing in front of abortion clinics, while they send their sons off to wars that MURDER innocent LIVING children."
Likewise, it's amazing how many abortion-supporters DON'T support the right of our troops to terminate parasitic terrorists who have reached (at least) their 45th trimester.
Isn't it permissible to chose to kill if it enriches you economically?
Individuals should become educated about and support policies, NOT parties or specific people. That is the problem with Organizing for America - they expect people just to do Obama's bidding, without consideration of policies or their consequences. Where there is alignment among seemingly disparate people or groups, certainly come together to support the policy. Where there is not, work to educate and convince others.
Obamabots' blind support of Obamacare has proven that Obamabots are no less faith-based and no more evidence-based than the Dubya faithful were or the tea partiers are.
I should add that this goes even more so for the Palinistas. The true believers stop listening and simply follow what they are told. This is the "Cult of Personality."
"Obamabots' blind support of [fill in the blank]"... Very useful meme. Hopefully those darn Republicans won't steal it and use it too.
The Progressive Caucus should have stood up to Bart Stupak and his anti women's rights position. A badly flawed health insurance bill now gives credence to the Hoyt Ammendment, wich I thought was unsettled law. I can't believe what a mess the health care effort elicited.
Thank you, Jane. Thank you, Thank you.
"liberal resistance to a health care bill authored by the insurance companies was effectively neutralized by a call to Democratic party loyalty. "
Thank you, Jane, for pointing out so astutely how the Democratic Party serves as a ball-and-chain on progressive "HOPE"s.
For a party that supports BOTH women's right to choose AND universal, single-payer healthcare, go to www.gp.org.
Another truth is also self-evident here: this abomination of a health'care' bill was passed so that Barack Obama's presidency could be 'saved'. This was, literally, the pitch that was made to convince Kucinich, among others, to throw away their careers, credibility and good names to vote yes.
Shame piled on shame.
It far worse then people think.
>>March 26 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case.
>>A government list of previously unidentified “co-conspirators” contains more than two dozen bankers at firms also including Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos., Societe Generale, two of General Electric Co.’s financial businesses and Salomon Smith Barney, the former unit of Citigroup Inc., according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24.
Here is the kicker. While the US Government claims ALL OF THESE firms were involved in a Criminal Conspiracy...
>>None of the firms or individuals named on the list has been charged with wrongdoing. The court records mark the first time these companies have been identified as co-conspirators. They provide the broadest look yet at alleged collusion in the $2.8 trillion municipal securities market that the government says delivered profits to Wall Street at taxpayers’ expense
The reason they are not going to CHARGE any of these firms is because in the words of the Columnist, they are TOO BIG TO JAIL. The Government feels that while they have the evidence to suggest these firms were involved in a criminal conspiracy , it would be unwise to lay charges because as one analyst put it...Charging the firms with wrongdoing might cripple the banking industry which only just came out of near collapse.
Ron Paul is an OBGYN who has personally delivered over 4,000 babies.
One might understand if his position is 'pro-life.'
However, his REAL position is this:
Abortion is a State's right. None of the Fed's - or his - business.
His stance on all non-political issues is exactly the same - State issues, not Fed issues.
He's never taken a corporate dime, he voted against all the non-war wars, the Patriot Act, all bailouts...
Yup - he's crazy as hell...
...
He should emphasize his state-right proclivity when running for President. I hear someone say 'we should teach creationism' and I freak out thinking he means the whole nation.
Why should it even be a state's right, not an individual's right? Why should any of the 50 states have the right to tell a woman what she can do with her own body?
Yup, he's crazy as hell.
What makes states so sacred, that everything should be determined by the states? Why not cities / towns / etc? Why not groups of houses? Why not individuals?
And who gets to determine what is a "non political" issue? Let me guess, the people screaming about states' rights.
FDL's gonna lose some funding if Jane keeps this up...:)
Welcome to reality, Ms. Hamsher. It's a bitch. No party loyalty, no cash.
So send her some, if you have it. That's everybody here. We need to defend our own, and drone is right: she's definitely going to catch some grief.
"George Bush couldn't privatize Social Security because of liberal opposition, but liberal resistance to a health care bill authored by the insurance companies was effectively neutralized by a call to Democratic party loyalty."
Don't think SS privatization is out of the woods yet. Read this and weep.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/146183
Read my comment in there as well.
Jane Hamsher is wonderful. Most of the comments here ignored her main point - that we should be reaching out to people like Ron Paul and even the Tea Partiers. They are closer to our side than Obama is, IMO.
Well put. Voltaire: 'the perfect is the enemy of the good'. Thats a common rightwing mistake we dare not make, at this juncture.
The continuation of:
"the war on terror"
"the war on drugs"
extraordinary rendition
targeted assassination
military aid to Israel and Indonesia and who knows who else
and on and on and on...
Failure to even investigate the crimes that led us into war...
Failure to even attempt to challenge the status quo on:
trade policies
wages
health care
energy
agriculture
"There is no consistent, coherent moral position being expressed here."
Yes we can. Sigh.
Of course, Obama's corporate health insurance bill is a sexist horror show for women.. Part of the corporate agenda is scapegoating women so Obama's bill does a great job of scapegoating women.
According to Amnesty International each day 2-3 women die in this country from complications of pregnancy. An Amnesty Report said, " Nearly 13 million women of reproductive age (15 to 44), or one in five, have no health insurance. Minorities account for just under one-third of all women in the US A (32 percent) but over half (51 percent) of uninsured women." Amnesty International report adds, " One in four women do not receive adequate prenatal care, starting in the first trimester. The number rises to about one in three for African American and Native American women."
Also," A shortage of health care professionals is a serious obstacle to timely and adequate care, especially in rural areas and inner cities. In 2008, 64 million people were living in "shortage areas" for primary care (which includes maternal care)."
So what if poor women get corporate health insurance if there are no doctors or nurses or pre-natal care available in their rural areas or inner cities. During this whole debate people made the huge mistake of thinking that health insurance equals health care. It does not.
Lastly, Obama's bill by making it impossible for poor women to get safe, legal abortions means that poor women will increasingly got to bac kalley butchers leading to infections, hospitalizations and even death. As I said, the bill scapegoats women.
dpr "a reasoned person blah blah that a fetus rights out ways that of the woman" and before that " a womans right if she has them" or something......well if the woman doesn't have "rights" how does the zygote have rights? debatable on its non existent face!
Hmmm, after all these decades of agony, by George, bletspleg, I think you've hinted at a compromise worthy of Solomon himself!
Obviously, it breaks down to this: if it's a FEMALE zygote, Mom still gets to make the call.
But if it's a MALE zygote, it has precedence and stays put whether Mom likes it or not.
Oh, it seems unworkable at first, but if it's billed as the Great Compromise of the 21st Century and backed by corporate media it'll sell.
Whew! THAT wasn't so hard! ;)
blet,
misquoting me only reflects badly on you. I did not suggest that a woman has no rights, quite the contrary; I simply questioned a specific assumed right, then went on to argue that there are many conflicting rights in society which must be weighed against one another.
I am impressed, though, with your reasoned and thougtful response.
While many here seem to like this essay, I find it to be rambling and missing the main point - that the so-called "healthcare reform" is just the same old system with more people paying the private insurance companies that profit from limiting care. Sure, there is something in the bill about curtailing the "preexisting condition" scam, but it's eclipsed by locking people into this for-profit health insurance plan. People will be forced to pay for the private insurance companies' products or be penalized under the law. Controls on excessive profits and price gouging are iffy or nonexistent.
Hamsher wants us to find common ground with free-market libertarians and anti-choice social conservatives. It's not real clear from this essay, but she seems to be saying that Democrats should just give up having safe legal abortions covered under Obama-care in return for getting this bill passed.
She fails to note that this is a really bad bill.
By the way, why surrender your principles when you have the majority vote? Is this admirable? Will teabaggers respect you in the morning?
She's picking an argument with herself about tribalism. The vast majority of the American public isn't divided on this issue. They overwhelmingly favor single-payer Medicare-style health insurance funding. It would cut 33 percent of healthcare costs that go to the insurance companies and would provide medical insurance coverage for all. It's very practical and achievable, as seen in Europe and Canada.
It's not necessary to preemptively surrender, as Hamsher argues we should do in this essay. The majority of the public knew what they wanted, had a Democratic majority to get it passed, but they got screwed by Democratic leaders raking in the cash from corporate interests. Why doesn't Hamsher just admit that happened instead of spinning fantasy yarns about agreeing to the demands of antiabortion advocates? She needs to come to grips with the party she supports and its betrayal of the public interest. We're not arguing purity here. We're just arguing for representation. Hamsher doesn't get it that there was no need to compromise on this issue. She's doing a job for the Democratic Party, and getting nowhere.
-TIA
Good review of the article; I agree with you.
You're accusing Hamsher of saying the opposite of what she actually said. Please read more carefully.
No, sir. With all due respect, if you think she wrote the opposite of what I described, then the problem is not with me. Hamsher just didn't express herself well in this essay. And I'm not reading it three times to get her point.
And actually, things are much less complex than what she proposes - whatever it may be. But I don't think she "gets" the party she funds. That's the real problem with her postings here.
-TIA
The rank misogyny of Obama and his followers was evident during the primaries.
In case you missed it, the Obots loved to call Hillary and her female supporters the C word, over and over again. This is when they weren't calling them racists.
Think about it: the Obama people were attacking their fellow Democrats to win a primary. The party is toast until we get rid of these flamers.
Exactly correct. There were red flags all over his primary campaign, but the suckers and least-worst futilists bought his bull anyway.