Necromonicon Rocks

Moral Licentiousness

1) Moral licentiousness and decay weakens a society
2) The left champions moral licentiousness and decay
3) Therefore, the left champions policies that weaken society

If you want to deny the conclusion you must deny one or more of the premises. Which premise(s) do you wish to deny?

I deny both premises. As to #1, and speaking as a father of two teenagers, I think exposure to moral licentiousness and decay are not unmitigatedly bad as it exposes them to the real world and thus innoculates them for the real world. Of course, exposure to such is not the same as consent to such. I take a quasi-Nietschean, social-Darwinian view that a world without evil is a world without struggle and a world without the potential for good.

As to #2, I see that as neither a premise or a fact. To the contrary, who do you suppose it is that owns and manages the vast and effectives engines of moral corruption but rightist business people, most of whom are conservative Christians? Why? Because it is in their financial self-interest to do so. Fox is a stirling example. O'Reilly, who I admire for his tough-minded (albeit wrong-minded) independence of thought (in contrast to Beck who is a lunatic and Hannity whom is a GOP apparatchik) nevertheless almost always has a needlessly salacious segment on his show. But drill down a bit more. Who do you suppose are the people who are having abortions, the people who are getting divorced, the mobsters, the pediophiles, the murderers? They are not just generally Christians but conservative Christians, and repeated statistical studies support this. The denial of this ("No true conservative Christians are morally depraved") is of course the No True Scottsman fallacy, which takes this form:

Argument: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Reply: "But my friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge."
Rebuttal: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

The problem with this argument is that it derives an unproved predicate ("puts sugar on porridge") from the subject ("Scotsman"). The move is from a synthetic-contingent proposition (one that can be falsified by facts) to an analytic-necessary assertion (one that is true by definition but has no relationship to the facts). Now, sometimes the argument is valid as when the predicate derives from the subject, as in "no true vegetarians eat beef".

Okay, so you deny both (1) and (2). Then at least we are clear on where we disagree.

As for the rest, you've simply slipped back into your confusion of description about what people do with what is really at issue here--what people OUGHT to do (or not do, as the case may be). Ethics is a prescriptive enterprise, not descriptive. I'm a moral philosopher, not a sociologist. You're never going to get at how people ought to behave by cataloguing how they do behave.

No. I'm using facts and logic to buttress what all people ought to do, with such implicit rules as:

1. Thou shalt not bare false witness against liberals or consderatives, democrats or republicans.
2. Thou shalt strive for truth in all things though the heavens fall.
3. Think and feel what thou wilt, but above all act and do ethically in all things.
4. Thou shalt embrace reason and live.
5. Tell the truth without fear or favor and let the chips fall where they may.
6. Thinking is hard work, but it is the hard work we must do.

There may be a few others, but the moral rules are mainifestly there.

The Decline of The West

When these debasements that the cultural left champions become mainstream, the society is weakened through moral decay.

This is an opinion that goes back to Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and well beyond that, such as during the corruption of youth trial of Socrates. It could alternatively be argued that it is those cultures that do not embrace ideas with sufficient vigor-- that are insular and conservative-- that are destined to struggle or fade. (A good example is the American Indians and a modern example is the difference in quality of life between South Korea and North Korea.) I'm more persuaded by Toynbee's "creative minorities" argument than Spengler decline of the west pessimisim.

Given the debasement of premise agument, what then? If someone's response is to write books and start ministries, I would say good for them. But if their desire is to take control of public education and legislative policy, are they not embracing that premise that liberals embrace: that social uplift can by obtained through legislation and education?

Consider Yourselt At Home

A wonderful musical. But Jack Wild lived a sad life. Wild, the actor who found fame as the Artful Dodger in the film Oliver! at 16, was a millionaire at 18 and an alcoholic by 21, died after a long battle with oral cancer, aged 53.

Tea Baggers

The teabagger's pledge.

I, ________________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that

I shall strictly adhere to the following:

I will complain about the destruction of 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights by legally but brazenly brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.

I will foreswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls.

Also.

I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:

Social Security
Medicare/Medicaid
State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)
Police, Fire, and Emergency Services
US Postal Service
Roads and Highways
Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
The US Railway System
Public Subways and Metro Systems
Public Bus and Lightrail Systems
Rest Areas on Highways
Sidewalks
All Government-Funded Local/State Projects (e.g., see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations)
Public Water and Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)
Public and State Universities and Colleges
Public Primary and Secondary Schools
Sesame Street
Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children
Public Museums
Libraries
Public Parks and Beaches
State and National Parks
Public Zoos
Unemployment Insurance
Municipal Garbage and Recycling Services
Treatment at Any Hospital or Clinic That Ever Received Funding From Local, State or Federal Government (pretty much all of them)
Medical Services and Medications That Were Created or Derived From Any Government Grant or Research Funding (again, pretty much all of them)
Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape and Velcro (Nazi-NASA Inventions)
Use of the Internets, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for subsequent computer networking
Foodstuffs, Meats, Produce and Crops That Were Grown With, Fed With, Raised With or That Contain Inputs From Crops Grown With Government Subsidies
Clothing Made from Crops (e.g. cotton) That Were Grown With or That Contain Inputs From Government Subsidies

If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forego my VA benefits and insist on paying for my own medical care

I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to:
Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History
The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments
The government-operated Statue of Liberty
The Grand Canyon
The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials
The government-run socialist-propaganda location known as Arlington National Cemetery
All other public-funded socialist sites, whether it be in my state or in Washington, DC

I will urge my Member of Congress and Senators to forego their government salary and government-provided healthcare.
I will oppose and condemn the government-funded and therefore socialist military of the United States of America.

I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of others that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.

I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees.

Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks.

Upon reaching age 65, I will forego Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die.

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF __________ IN THE YEAR ___.
_____________ _________________________

Signed Printed Name/Town and State

D'Souza's Liberalism One and Two

D'Souza makes a distinction between what he calls "liberalism one" and "liberalism two" the the former relating to the rights of man and the later with western decadence. He then admonishes the West to show its traditional face as an antidote to Islamic radicalism. I have my doubts that such a distinction exists. For example, thanks to the freedom of the press, D'Souza publishes his books even while the pornographers publish their books. Further, I would argue, it is not foreign policy conservatism that brought the USSR to its knee and opened the PRC to trade. It was decades of cultural liberalism, especially Hollywood movies but also western-originating jazz and rock music as well as the underground samizdats. I think the People's Republic of China is making valiant efforts to separate political liberalism from cultural and economic liberalism, with, ironically enough, their tolerance towards the latter rather than the former, but I have my doubts as to whether this will last. Freedom is a fragile flower, and when you take away liberalism and liberalism two dies and vice versa. For me, there is a sort of "so what" quality to D'Souza's speculation. Even if radicals were motivated to take up arms against America because of MTV (instead of more plausibly especially if we were to listen to the words of people like Osama our Middle East policies), what then? Do we really want to reign in "liberalism 2" in reaction to extremists who hate us? Short of embracing Calvin's Calvinism as national policy, how in the heck can we?

Mary Travers: 1936-2009

Best Tennis Point Ever

Truthful Propaganda

The best propaganda is propaganda that is 100 percent truthful.

For example, if I was to get an e-mail from Joe that said "Obama is a space alien", because it obviously requires a suspension of belief, Joe can pass it along without an comment, knowing that we would get the joke.

It is quite a different matter if Joe were to send out an e-mail that said "Obama is a Moslem." If Joe were to caveat that e-mail with a preface: "I think this is rubbish, what do you think?" that is one thing. But lacking that caveat, I must conclude "Joe believes that Obama is a Moslem based on the evidence within that e-mail." If the evidence is dishonest, I then further conclude that "Joe is either dishonest or simple or too lazy to fact-check." The focus no longer is on Obama but on Joe, which was never Joe's intent.

In terms of personal credability and integrity, I think this is a huge issue, especially when we become complict in spreading viral lies. Look at the number of people on this thread to which this e-mail has gone. It cheapens the debate, makes the sender look bad, and it is unnecessary in that there is plenty of truth out there that can make exactly the same point.

I don't consider theological or political positions in themselves to be honest or dishonest-- although they can be right or wrong. How we arrive, for example, at a position concerning the death penalty or baptism for most people involves a lifetime of personal experience, reading, and reflection. However, how we promote such a position using either truth or lies can determine whether or not the conclusion that we are hoping to promote is undermined or even nullified.

I

The Permanent Minority party

Karl Rove once dreamed of creating a permanent Republican majority. As often happens to dreams that have their roots in hubris, the opposite now appears to be true. The Republican Party may now become the permanent minority party.

In national politics, nothing is permanent forever, although parties can remain out of power not for one or two election cycles but for decades. I think the Republican Party will enter a long, dormant phase. Much of the reason has to do with the ability of the Democrats to cohere around one common theme: a rejection of the policies of George Bush, combined with the Republican Party's inability to distance themselves from those same unpopular policies.

By contrast, the Republicans consist not of a single party but a half dozen factions, many of which contradict each other. For example, the pro-lifers are at odds with the liberterians, the neo-cons are at odds with the isolationists, the religious right is at odds with the atheist objectivists, and Main Street is at odds with Wall Street. And then of course you have the fringe-- the gun nuts, the militia types, the hospital bombers, the neo-nazis. All of this fuels the perception that Republicans are incapable of governance as they embrace a hashly negative world view-- anti-women, gays, immigrants, education, science, and common sense. It is this ideological incoherence that prevents a conservative leader tapping into the anxieties of traditionalists and translating those anxieties into power.

If there is any future with the Republcians, it will lies in the rise of the fiscal conservatives combined with the rejection of the cultural conservatives, as the latter hold to values that most Americans embrace while the former hold to values that most Americans reject.

It may well be that Republicans would rather be right than have power. But, if that is the case, Republicans may well be right and powerless forever.

Why Boxing Is Not My Passion

Boxers: Before And After The Fights

Killed For Holding A Sign

The Daily Kos has it right.


As does The National Right to Life.

Axiomatic Minds

As I flit from one forum to another across the political spectrum, I'm struck by the paucity of moderate views. Almost everyone writes with little desire to explore complex issues and by inviting dialogue so as to illuminate areas of dispute. Instead, you have people who have axiomatic minds looking for reasons to support their prejudices or reasons to ridicule the prejudices of others. And so we have the clash of ignorant armies on the darkling plain of the internet.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1851)

Innocent Human Life

You may be interested in a web page I built shortly after 9/11/2001. The page on the true believer was my effort to come to grips with the psychological causality of this event. (Skeptic though I may be, I don't embrace David Hume's skepticism on causality!) We may be like blind men around an elephant when it comes to finding the core truth of this event and perhaps there are multiple core truths.

http://www.mymallandnews.com/frame08war.htm

I was thinking about the phrase you mentioned on one of your Face Book responses: "innocent human life" as regards to a human zygote and wondering if that corresponded with something that was real. I have my doubts. It is human and it is life, although it is not a fact that life starts at conception. Rather, life is transmitted to create the union of two gametes from male and female. However, the quality of "innocence" is at best a projection. It is more accurate to say that the zygote is neither innocent nor condemned. It just is, much like my shoe or my cat. When we say the grass is green, we are making a claim to fact imputation asserting that what we see that grass has an objective quality of greenness to it. That I may be color blind is not relevant if accurate instruments are available to confirm the greenness of that grass based on light wavelengths. No such test is available when we come to value judgments as regarding human life. While a human zygote cannot be said to be innocent, nor can it be said that it is mere human life like my finger nail clippings, expendable and without regard to consequences. And here is where the voters, legislatures, and courts step in. And what they have said, broadly, is that because that zygote is potential human life, distinctions must be made to protect that potential human life based on gestation. A rule of no abortions after conceptions is like a rule of death to all killers-- illogical and unjust given the complexity of life. We may see the trimester distinctions as arbitrary and overly broad brushed, but that is our law, which is nothing but distinctions and exceptions. The distinction between misdemeanor theft and felony theft is one dollar. The difference between legal abortion and infanticide is one day. The consensus behind that law may indeed change and perhaps the law relating to human life may change. But what most people see is that life is messy and filled with contradictions and paradoxes no matter how elevated there moral intentions are. I saw this rather brutally in my mother's self-termination last December, whose end was shepherded by militant pro-lifers. In a magical world where conservative shareholders would close down media outlets that create the entertainment that fosters casual sex, where poor women have the same access to information and options as rich women, where all fetus develop so that a mother's life is never endangered, where all children are wanted and are brought into caring, stable two-family households, and where deviance such as rape and incest ceases to exist, perhaps then will abortion be a thing of the past. But we live in the real world, and I think our inability to come to grips with the complexity of life, law, and morality leads to exactly that kind of fanacicism that I refer to in my essay on Hoffer's book.

I think you're confusing legal guilt with moral guilt. Of course the conceptus is not "guilty or condemned" in the legal sense: No judge or jury has pronounced a verdict on it. That's not what we're talking about. What we are talking about is whether or not the conceptus has acted morally (has chosen a mode of behavior) that constitutes rendering the conceptus in a state of moral guilt. (It hasn't murdered or raped or lied or stolen, etc.) It just is. Therefore, it is morally innocent.

But that is what I deny. Or, rather, I affirm that such a value judgment is unfounded. A zygote (let's call it Mary) has the potential of being rational, autonomous, and a full member of the human community after time has elapsed. But should we give Mary at one day the same moral regards-- the same imputation of morality to its essence-- as Mary at two years? You seem to suggest that the lapse of time is irrelevant. Zygote Mary and the toddler Mary are morally equivalent. I understand the passion behind that assertion, but I don't see the moral foundation to it beyond repeated assertions. Thus, I'm not prepared to accept your conclusion: "And since it is wrong to aim at the destruction of morally innocent human life, it is wrong to aim at the destruction of the conceptus."

"What makes the conceptus different from your cat or your shoe is that it is a human life, capable of free choices and moral deliberation. This, at least in part, makes the conceptus to be of infinitely greater value than either your cat or your shoe."

But zygote Mary is incapable for such to which we ascribe moral agency. I would argue that my cat and perhaps my computer are morally superior to zygote Mary.

"As bad as it may be to aim at the destruction of your cat or your shoe, it is of inexpressibly greater moral weight to aim at the destruction of a humanconceptus, a rational being."

We don't know if zygote Mary will be rational and nor does it matter, only that she is-- but from that point when she is no longer a fetus.

"If you deny that the value of the conceptus is in the thing itself and insist, instead, that we merely "gild and stain" it with value, as Hume would claim, then what you're saying is that it is morally permissible to aim at the destruction of one human life (in this case, that of the conceptus in question), but not others. But why do you "gild and stain" some human lives with more value than others? What if I "gild and stain" differently? What if I don't "gild and stain" you with value?"

This is the wedge argument. Thus, the implication is that if you abort babies, next we will be terminate the aged and then the mentally defectives. I gave you the answer--and that is that the law defines sometimes with precision what is permissible. As a citizen you can try to change the law. As a question of ethics and morality, if you cannot change the law, you must try to comport your own actions to your own conscience by never aborting.

"I think that subjectivist approach to value will make hash of ethics. Hume could make it look plausible because he lived at a time and place where shared values were assumed. In an increasingly multicultural world, a world where "value relativism" is gaining ascendency, I think we do not want to be promoting value subjectivism."

Agreed.

"You're not suggesting that value is subjective because we do not have the capacity to measure it empirically, are you?"

No. But lacking a capacity to objectively assess a value, it doesn't follow that I must accept your (what I believe are subjective) values.

"If you really think that a little baby in the womb is equally really blameworthy as, say, Charles Manson, well, then I guess it's at least good that we've cleared up where it is that we disagree."

Charles Manson is morally superior to zygote Mary, because Charles Manson made choices whereas zygote Mary has no capacity for choice. Charles doesn't have better morals than Mary, obviously. But he has the moral agency that Mary does not have.

“I'll explain AGAIN how it is that the conceptus cannot rightly be regarded as morally guilty. It has not chosen any course of action that is morally wrong. Therefore, it is not morally guilty of anything that would merit the death penalty. The conceptus is innocent of any such wrong. Now, perhaps, you will explain to me how it is that you deny this.”

I didn’t know what conceptus meant until you introduced me to the term. Wikipedia defines it thusly: “Conceptus (Latin is conceptio, derivatives of zygote) denotes the embryo and its adnexa (appendages or adjunct parts) or associated membranes (i.e. the products of conception) The conceptus includes all structures that develop from the zygote, both embryonic and extra embryonic. It includes the embryo as well as the embryonic part of the placenta and its associated membranes - amnion, chorion (gestational sac), and yolk sac.”

To answer you question and as I’ve said, the conceptus has no intrinsic morality at all. It cannot be innocent and it cannot be guilty certainly legally but also practically. Is it really your position that a women who takes a day after pill has committed homicide?

“I could say the same thing about you while you are sleeping, or while you are temporarily unconscious because your son threw the baseball at your head while playing catch. Are you suggesting that it would be morally permissible to "abort" you while you are in this state of being "potentially rational"?

Humanity encompasses more than thought. It also implies a certain element of autonomy and life experiences as well as protection and recognition by the community that the I am different from a zygote.

"The lapse of time is irrelevant. If you think the time a human being has been in existence is what constitutes the ground for its being accorded moral rights, then you flat out discriminate on the basis of what everyone agrees is an irrelevant characteristic--age. You're engaging in "ageism." You think the very young have no rights. If you really think this, you'll soon start thinking, if you're not careful, that the very old do not have any moral rights, either."

Human life have a sliding scale of rights, and this is without regard to whether they are living in tribe in New Guinea or in a Manhatten penthouse. I’m not saying that the right of a zygote is nil, but I cannot fathom why the right of a zygote must equal my rights.

"I'll try again:1) Mary is alive2) Mary is a human being3) Mary has done nothing to warrant the death penalty4) We don't execute human beings who do not warrant execution5) Therefore, we (morally) must not execute Mary.Let's just get crystal clear on this. Tell me which of these statements you deny."

I’ll be happy to concede 1-4 . But I reject the conclusion as it does not follow from the antecedent premises. There are times when we must execute ZM for any number of reasons, and our inability to execute with impunity and without guilt increases as ZM matures fetally. You are looking for moral clarity in an issue that rarely is morally clear. Further, you fail to extend that moral clarity to other issues concerning life, such as the death penalty and war. (Not all Catholics do, however. I was impressed by Cardinal Bernandin’s consistentcy on all life issues—he called it a seamless robe. )

I wrote this essay a few years ago.

Easy Answers

Beware when anyone has more answers than questions or answers hard questions with easy answers. For example, let’s consider two issues: the death penalty and abortion. I’m generally opposed to the death penalty, as it appears to me to be a perverse lottery that favors the execution of blacks, males, ugly and unpleasant people, the poor, and folks who live in Texas. On the other hand, I’ve never been a victim of a capital crime, and perhaps my feelings would go in another direction if I were. And I think it is true that the execution of the architect of genocide Adolph Eichmann in Israel and mass-murderer Timothy McVeigh was in some sense a moral victory.

Abortion is far more complex than merely making a simplistic dichotomy between pro-life and pro-choice positions. Few doctors endorse abortion as a means of birth control and such a grave step should never be taken lightly. Doctors, perhaps for insurance reasons, sometimes scare the daylights out of mother-to-be about the health of their child. But doctors are sometimes wrong, and it’s important to trust ourselves in such matters.

I’ve also met few absolutists on abortion, especially when they have to deal with the issue personally, as in a hypothetical in which a baby is an encephalic-- without a brain-- and the mother’s life in danger. Someone wrote to me saying that this “did happen to my closest friends a couple of years ago, and even more ironically, at the time, I was teaching an eight week course on Biblical ethics when the severity of her condition came to light. In a nutshell, she had four small kids at home, pregnant with her fifth, when she started having problems. Doctors said that: a) The baby essentially had no brain, his limbs were severely deformed, and other internal organs where malformed beyond hope. b) Because of some uterine problems, there was a very high chance that sometime in the ninth month she would suffer some major hemorrhage that could prove fatal to her. They of course, wanted to abort right away. She refused, and moreover, wanted to carry the baby full term and have a natural childbirth. (Initially, she actually wanted to give birth at home). For me, I saw the ethical question in a whole new light, now that it had a face on it. The baby had a zero percentage chance of surviving. For a staunch pro-lifer, it was a dilemma acknowledging that the right-to-life can't always be seen as an absolute. It didn't seem right that the mother should possibly lose her life, and four small children lose their mother, when the baby wasn't going to live no matter what. Fortunately, the mother decided to have a C-section at the earliest possible time. (32 weeks or something like that...don't exactly remember) She got through it okay. The baby lived for three days or so.”

God gives us minds and God gives doctors their skill. The point is not to look for rationalizations to support our actions but rather be prepared to acknowledge the complexity of life and that we must adapt moral principles to achieve the most ethical ends A one-size-fit-all principle that all life from conception on must be preserved at all costs can be immoral and even deadly, a principle, by the way, that anti-abortionists rarely extend to embracing military pacifism and mercy to criminals on death row. Especially immoral—and I use that word with precision—is the view that we should simply put our faith in God’s perfect will on all matters of health. Taken to its logical extreme, this claim should cause us to ignore car seatbelts and antibiotics for babies. Some sects have taken this position, bringing misery and death to those they claim they love.

"This implies that the law is arbitrary and that there is no actual moral difference between a law that, say, says it's obligatory to exterminate Jews just because they are Jewish and one that says it is impermissible to exterminate Jews just because they are Jewish. This kind of legal positivism is highly implausible. We do think there are just laws and unjust laws, and the reason we think this is because we do think there is such a thing as justice. Good laws approximate what is just, bad laws do not. Good law is based upon (comports with, reflects) morality. Morality is the basis of good law. If you lived in Nazi Germany, would you follow the law that says it's obligatory to exterminate Jews just because they are Jewish? Why not?"

There is a fallacy or argumentation that suggests any argument that invokes the Nazi era is automatically suspect because that time and circumstances was sui generis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

No matter, I’ll play. Law is far from arbitrary, and the consistency generally of law through time and culture suggest to me that natural law may be valid. I agree that morality informs or comports with good law. We differ however on what we regard as moral. He murder of Jews is categorically different than the killing of fetuses, not because of the laws in play, but because Jewish human and fetal humans are categorically different.

“Of course. You don't have to accept anything. But I assume you respect rational argument, and so the question is which positions are better justified rationally. “

I’m struggling to understand your rationale. I suspect it relates to Majesterium which in turn is based on some kind of a belief that morality derives from the sense that zygote Mary has a soul no less so than toddler Mary. But to me these justify nothing as a reject the Majesterium and have my doubts about the soul theory as least as it applies to a fetus.

Joe Wilson's Free Speech

WASHINGTON – In an extraordinary breach of congressional decorum, a Republican lawmaker shouted "You lie" at President Barack Obama during his speech to Congress Wednesday.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., tried to call Obama to apologize in person, but ended up speaking to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
The contrite congressman, "expressed his apologies" to Emanuel, not the president at whom he had shouted a few hours earlier, Wilson's office said.

Wilson's website has crashed and looks like this:

This site is down for maintenance. Please check back again soon.

Here is Wikipedia's talk page from this evening.

It certainly is different than a heckler at a political rally. The man is a US Congressman! This shout is of historic importance. Literally calling the President of the US a liar during a joint session of Congress is behavior that is, to my knowledge, completely without precedent. Anybody who argues that this event is insignificant is either being disingenuous or has completely deluded himself.RickDesper (talk) 01:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)Rick

Wilson's website has since come up, and he describes his military background as follows.

"Throughout his life, Joe has also had a tremendous passion to serve his country as a member of the United States Armed Forces. After serving in the United States Army Reserves from 1972-1975, he also served in the South Carolina Army National Guard. In the summer of 2003, Joe retired as a Colonel, having served as a Staff Judge Advocate assigned to the 218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade. At the time, he was the only active Guard member serving in Congress.

Joe (has) four sons, all of whom serve in the U.S. military, and the proud grandparents of two boys and one girl. Alan, his oldest son, is a Major in the Army National Guard who proudly served for a year in Iraq; Addison is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a physician who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq; Julian is a Captain in the South Carolina Army National Guard who served on a peacekeeping tour in Egypt; and Hunter is enrolled in Army ROTC at Clemson University and is a Cadet in the South Carolina Army National Guard. Their four sons are all Eagle Scouts."

I wonder what his children think of their father who calls his commander in chief a liar? I wonder what Joe thinks of his governor Mark Sanford's truth?

I think Maureen Dowd nails what really is going on here: "Joe Wilson’s outburst in Congress revealed one thing: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

Obama Punks the Rightwing

With the way some conservative bloggers were carrying on, you would have thought that Obama's speech to kids on their first day of class was an injunction to quit school and start cutting sugar cane for Fidel and the revolution. It is especially annoying that parents are pulling their kids out of school on that day lest their little one's eas burn with talk of socialism.

It is a perversion of education to permit your children to flee from words or ideas that might hurt their lila feeweeings. ;^) And, lacking such critical thinking life skills, such children become prime candidates for cults and bad behavorial choices, such as drugs and premarital pregnancy. Alas, my opinion is a minority opinion even in my family. I asked my two boys (one in middle school and the other in high school), if they would walk out of their social studies class if someone from the KKK was invited to give a rant. They both said yes-- the wrong answer in my opinion. Of course, in the case of Obama, it's 20 minutes of study hard, don't drop out, aim high platitudes. Big deal.

Here are the last two paragraphs of Obama's speech.

"Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

"Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

Liberal indoctrination? I surely hope so. As far as forcing our children to listen as if they were passive sponges, scarcely. As I tell my kids, question everything, but raise your hand.

I think the White House has punked the right-wing. At one time, conservatives stood for something, including a tradition of free speech, rigorous thought and discourse, and the disciplined search for for what is the truth. Now you have sound bites and wedge issues, viral e-mails and FoxNation. It is now the conservatives, not the liberals, who are the rioters and the shouters and the gun-slingers. They are not the vital center, the silent majority of America. Once upon a time, you had Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley and Friedrick von Hayek. Now you have Coulter, Palin, Hannity and all the other know-nothings-- the very flower of the paleo-conservative moment. This episode should show beyond any doubt how intellectually bankrupt the conservative movement has become.

My Left Foot

On Thursday, I took a nasty tumble and twisted my ankle so badly that blood vessels broke. My left foot ballooned with blood and then turned purple and black. It was quite painful. But I decided not to go to the doctor, because I didn't break any bones and I was betting that my body would self-heal. I wrapped my foot in bandages and took aspirin to thin my blood to prevent blood clots. I'm no longer limping quite so badly, and I'm thinking in a few days I should be back to normal.

About twenty years ago, I collapsed at work-- a syncope. I paid $50 for the trip to the emergency room. My son last year went to the emergency room when he had trouble breathing. We paid almost $4,000 for that visit. What accounts for that startling difference in cost?

No one has hymned the praises of capitalism louder than I have. But it is clear that we have a problem with our health system, when our first instinct is not to get professional medical help but to self-medicate. I buy my own insurance, but even with company insurance, there are expensive deductibles. What I see is a collusion between insurance companies and health providers, forcing a continual upward pressure on price, so that health care is rationed by price and the ability for others pay those prices.

As you enter a hospital under an insurance plan, an "insurance optimization specialist" is there to see that you die or are released expeditiously. Meanwhile, hospital management especially in the emergency room try to see if they can detect add on goods and services, much like a crooked car mechanic would do. Whether it is an ache in the ark or a squeak in the axle, the effect is the same: the ignorant but trusting consumer will pay what she or he is asked to pay until the consumer runs out of money.

What is animating this upward price pressure is in my opinion the results of massive law suits against incompetent doctors. That is why tort reform with caps on awards must be an indespensible aprt of any kind of health plan. Howver, since most congresmen are lawyers, I don't see that happening.

Unlike most other goods and services within the market place, there is little pricing information available to the consumer. It is somewhat like going into a grocery stores and filling up your shopping cart with food, but only finding out at the checkout counter whether or not six ears of corn cost one dollar or one hundred dollars.

There must be a better way.

500 Summers

This movie was a slow start featuring unappealing actors with incomprehensible motivations. But it had its moments.

500 Summers isn't the best movie for those with shaky relationships.

Rolling Puppy

Baby Snow Leopard

The week, a zoo in Tokyo allowed for the first public viewing of a baby snow leopard. His caretaker points out that the young cub still has blue eyes, which start to turn yellow at 4 months old, making the viewing extra special.

WATCH:

"You Remind Me of the Collyer Brothers"

When I say that to my boys to try to get them to keep their bedooms at least teenage-neat, this is what I mean.

On April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the body of Langley Collyer just ten feet from where Homer died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers had covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother.