Stem Cell Debate Irrelevant
by neolibertarian
It appears that the same scientist who gave us stem research has now found that inducing adult cells into stem cells is more effective and efficient than destroying embryos to harvest their stem cells. (see: LAT and Weekly Standard) This means that either harvesting or cloning embryos in order to destroy them is not only unnecessary, but less effective than inducing adult cells into pluripotency (the state of being able to morph into different types of cells). The scientist who started the cloning controversy by cloning Dolly, has announced that he will no longer pursue cloning embryos, and instead will advance his research with this new method.
Science has illuminated a path that can offer lifesaving cures without life-destroying treatments. This development leads me to offer three sentiments.
First, that this same process might be repeated on a different but related subject: abortion. It has been my view for some time that eventually science will allow us a path to end a woman's state of being pregnant without ending the life of the developing child. If scientists can remove a heart and implant it into a new person, then surely they can eventually figure out how to preserve the life of a fetus (and eventually an embryo) by shielding them from the outside environment long enough to get them to an incubator of some kind. In this way, women who are frightened of motherhood or too selfish to carry to term and place a baby up for adoption can be relieved of the horrible burden of pregnancy without destroying the life of another person. Of course, it's likely many women abort because they refuse to accept that they might have genetic offspring out there that somebody else adopted, but it's far harder to get a majority of Americans to accept this callous argument. So I think science will provide a solution to the abortion debate, just as it has provided an ethical solution to the stem cell controversy.
Second, I am glad the government was not entirely involved in the research process here. Aside from being slow and prone to corruption, the government makes investments determined by politics and headlines. Unless there are either headlines or regular political pressures from concerned groups, politicians have trouble maintaining focus. They run to the headlines on baseball steroids, on global warming, on whatever issue strikes our fancy, then they forget. Once they forget, the funding is very likely to dissipate. This has been repeatedly pointed out at Coyote Blog; politicians find much more benefit in building new projects than in funding existing projects. Rather than relying on the government, it was good that private efforts were involved. It was private efforts that decided that cloning embryos were both far away from any real treatments (embryonic stem cells are not used in any treatments right now, while adult stem cells are used in many) and would be exorbitantly expensive to offer (the LAT article above suggests a price of $100k per treatment). Private efforts decided to pursue better methods; if government fiat had been involved, then scientists would have pursued an unethical and less-productive avenue of research, simply to get the free dollars from the state.
Third, this new method should therefore NOT be subjected to government funding and intervention. I am sure that Republicans and conservatives will pile on to support it and show that they were not anti-science, but pro-embryo. Well, I am pro-embryo, but I'm also pro-market. The federal government and the states should keep the hell out of science. Governments like to twist science to serve their own ends (see: Nazi racial theory, Soviet Lysenko-ism, and now embryonic stem cell research). Even in this controversy, cloning of embryos was largely pursued just as a fuck-you to the pro-life movement. Cloning embryos was not a very viable path, but once conservatives and religious types voiced concerns the left pounced all over it. So the government (including states like California, which tried to fund this research itself) pushed science along a politically-determined path. But not only can science be led astray by poorly-distributed government moneys, it can also be prevented from good areas when the government decides that A) it has an interest in controlling science and B) it should prevent scientists from research areas deemed frivolous or offensive.
We should vigorously defend the freedom of science from being led astray or from being managed by the government. Even though I have no moral qualms about iPS cell research and I think it's great if it leads to wondrous new cures, I don't want the government involved. Science and markets should guide research to the best and most productive areas.
Gonzales v. Carhart
by neolibertarian
The challenge of the partial-birth abortion ban was rejected and the ban sustained. This means it is now a federal crime, generally, to perform one type of abortion.
Abortion proponents and apologists argue that partial-birth abortion is an inflammatory name for the procedure. So whenever pro-abortion groups issue press releases, pro-choice pundits make arguments on TV, and newspapers or newswires talk about it, they make sure to qualify 'partial-birth abortion' as the name that opponents use for the act. Let's be clear: the child is partially birthed by inducing labor in the mother, then it is aborted before birth is complete. Partial-birth abortion is an absolutely accurate description.
The act of termination is particularly gruesome; scissors are forcefully inserted into the rear base of the child's head. The scissors are spread to make a larger opening. A vacuum is used to suction out the brain matter of the fetus, collapsing the skull and destroying its life.
There's little wonder that nearly everyone who knows the details is opposed to the procedure and consequentially most polls show somewhere from over 60% to nearly 80% of Americans opposed to it being performed.
As to the judicial merits, I'm of course glad the ban was upheld. The whole mess of abortion jurisprudence needs to be swept clean and started anew. The cliches and double-talk and compromise-dominated language make everything extremely unclear. Those opposed to abortion should be motivated by respect for life, but this law only bans the way in which a fetus is aborted. Those supporting abortion say they're motivated by privacy, generally, but Ginsburg's dissent somehow made this about women's right to equal citizenship, as though being inconveniently pregnant negates the benefits of citizenship. More than that, the confusing dictates of caselaw and the puzzling review standard of 'undue burden' show how poorly coordinated the Court's rulings are.
The root problem is that Justice Blackmun's original decision in Roe was arbitrary by his own admission. In his writings to other Justices, Blackmun admitted that the point of viability was arbitrary and he essentially admitted that he was wholly creating law. It's no wonder that the Court remains muddled, autocratic and without a hint of self-consciousness about its own contradictions on the issue.
The larger point shines through to me: one particularly cruel and unusual form of abortion will now rarely, if ever, be performed. Let's hope the law's exemptions are not so wide as to negate the law's effectiveness entirely.
This is a victory for life and freedom, but is a little like telling a murderer he can use a handgun as a weapon of choice but not a bloody axe. In the end, the difference is mostly on the side of those of us who have to perceive the abortion, and not on the side of the child being aborted. Children will still be aborted, even in the second and third trimester, though hopefully this ban will make some fence-sitting parents think twice before ordering an abortion.
Portuguese Abortion Referendum
by neolibertarian
Two weeks ago Portugal had a national referendum on abortion. The question put to the country was whether abortion on demand should be allowed up to ten weeks gestation. Of course, it would only be performed by licensed practitioners.
Currently, abortion in Portugal is allowed to save the life of the mother, or for her physical or mental health up to 12 weeks gestation, or if conceived by rape up to 16 weeks gestation, or if afflicted with incurable disease or deformity up to 24 weeks.
Here's my take on the problems with current Portuguese abortion law.
- The life of mother is almost never threatened by childbirth. The only cases where c-section is unavailable (as a life-preserving alternative to abortion) is ectopic pregnancy, as very small percentage of cases. In those cases, the law should treat fetuses like people; if it's lawful to kill innocent people to save your own life, then that should apply to fetuses. Eventually, with research and development, I firmly believe that science will show there's never an unavoidable medical need to kill a fetus to save the mother.
- "Physical and mental health" is often a smokescreen for social abortion or abortion on demand. Since a woman who doesn't want a child is likely to be upset over staying pregnant, and since bearing a child often involves fatigue and vitamin deficiency, it's easy to meet the often-low hurdles of physical and mental health. We don't let women with post-partum depression kill their newborn babies, and we oughtn't let women with anxieties or even depression kill their unborn babies. They can give the child up for adoption; the problem is that most abortion-seeking moms would rather kill their kids than give them up. Well extremely selfish emotional issues over adoption don't justify murder.
- It's really creepy to think that rape could justify an abortion, because it never has a legal effect on people who are safely born. There's no reason to think that the crimes of the father should reflect on the child (the same is true, I suppose, of the crimes of the mother, since some jurisdictions acknowledge at least the possibility of a woman raping a man - I guess like Lot and his daughters). Rape is a horrible crime, and it's still completely wrong to punish the child for it. No born child is murdered for being the product of rape or incest, and neither should an unborn child.
- What's super creepy is the idea of deformity or disease justifying murder. At least with rape, the exception is meant as a gift to the victim/mother. With the deformity exception, it's meant as a negative judgment on the worth of the child. The disabled have every right to exist, the same as healthy children. If mothers don't want their babies who might have Down Syndrome or spina bifida, then I'm sure there are many people willing to adopt them and charities willing to sponsor their extended medical costs.
So I am very uncomfortable with the abortion statues under current Portuguese law, and of course still opposed to the referendum question.
The Portuguese electorate, fewer than 44% of which turned out to vote on the referendum, disagrees with me. Nearly 60% voted for abortion on demand. Since less than half of eligible voters turned out, the referendum is non-binding. However, the Prime Minister is a Socialist, so the government will still move ahead with the change in law. A similar referendum in 1998 met with a slight-majority voting no, so the change was not made then.
Pro-Choice People Against Choice
by neolibertarian
Pro-choice people are again livid that private organizations have decided to allow individual choice on the controversial issue of abortifacient drugs. Target is allowing their pharmacists to exercise personal choice of whether to sell Plan B or not, and this kind of individual liberty isn't something that self-styled civil libertarians will live with.
Why? Because they see the issue as they always seem to see the issue, in terms of group rights. Rather than genuinely believing that abortion is a right because of individual autonomy, they support it because of women-centered reasons. The group Women deserves access to abortion as a defense from discrimination. Naturally, this means that opposing access to abortifacients, even when done through individual choice, is seen through a lens of attacking groups. Exhibit A:So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:
- Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?
Can you find the one bullet point different from the others? It's the Christian Scientists one, also the most idiotic of the points. In response to this unique argument, I have three things to say. First, why would Target hire somebody who was unwilling to perform the tasks for which he was hired? Refusing to sell a limited number of items is one thing, and a parallel could be found for any occupation, but refusing to dispense medication of any form in a job that's exclusively about dispensing medication is a retarded argument. We are all dumber for having read it. Second, if Target decided to let its employees not do their jobs but still be paid, is that really any business of ours? Only if we've already paid or entered a contract with them and they're in breach. And third, it's obvious that this is simply an excuse to trot out one of the more extreme brands of Christian theology, since it's worthless as regards this discussion.
Every other bullet point is a bad comparison, since they're dependent on the customer and not the product. But the left-wing author failed to realize this critical, defining distinction because he sees the abortifacient-abstentionists as attacking a group, when the actual issue is about the product.
A valid analogy would be if Target allowed vegetarians to not handle meats, vegans to not handle dairy or leather, and so forth. The analogy should be about personal beliefs toward a product, not toward the customers or groups of customers. As far as I know, no pharmacist ever suggested that the private sexual history of patients be examined for approval of the prescription.
In the same post, he posted an e-mail to a Target rep in which he expressed, inter alia, this little gem of freedom-minded thinking:Here's how it works: I have a prescription. You fill the prescription. That's all there is to it and anything else, any hemming and hawing, any refusal based on moral or religious grounds, is not only wrong, but also morally reprehensible.
Patently ridiculous. Businesses don't exist to cater to every demand or whim all in one place. They exist because of a web of individual desires and profits. The investors and shareholders pony up dough to keep the business capitalized. The managers and employees provide labor in exchange for wages and benefits. The customers provide funds in exchange for goods. It does not exist for charity, nor does it exist because somebody wanted to give customers everything they ever wanted.
Moreover, the customers are not there because they want to give charity to the company; at most maybe they want to support the PR-induced image they have of a business, but more likely they want the products and that's why they pay.
This horribly vague and completely undefined moral obligation for companies to meet customer demands is insanely anti-freedom. It doesn't provide for any individual moral choice in the matter, on the part of either companies or individuals. It doesn't explain the limits of provision a business is bound to obey - do businesses have to provide everything related to their products, or is this moral rule hypocritically limited to abortion drugs? I somehow doubt that a liquor department carrying only beer and wine would be chastised for not providing harder liquors, even though the customer might request them.
But I suppose the author wishes to shut down Kosher and Halaal establishments until they offer pork, since they are merely limited by religious morality. No? Well the argument for not selling abortifacients is stronger than not selling pork, since abortion is (at least arguably) malum in se, while dietary rules are generally malum prohibitum.
The fact is that he has no real argument, only outrage and anger. A collective-focused mentality that sees this as a selgith against women and against the non-theistic, instead of a valid personal choice that's been allowed by a private employers. A "pro-choice" person would surely applaud this act of private conviction, yes? Not really.
The actual libertarians who favor abortion's legality tend to be far less enthusiastic about the issue than Democrats and socialists, who see it in more anti-clerical and feminist terms. For a real Libertarian who's pro-choice, abortion is just one on a list of a million different things that are under threat of being illegal or actually are illegal. But Democrats and socialists are more concerned about abortion's social acceptance, not about its legality. Many want it not only legal, but solemnly encouraged and even paid for by the state.
For such types, it's a matter of anti-clericalism or feminism, not liberty or freedom. So of course they don't give a damn about freedom when it comes to choosing to not sell abortifacients.
Here's my take on the issue.
1) People have a right to do or not do as they please. If you don't want to sell certain things, abortion-related or not, then you don't have to. You could be a numerologist and decide that you won't sell products with 13 letters in the name. That's fine; don't sell it.
2) Businesses have a right to do ot not do as they please. If your employer says you have to sell it and you won't, then they can either accept it or fire you. They own the business and the drugs, and if they don't want to pay for your convictions, then take a hike Mr. Catholic, Mr. Hindu or Mr. Numerologist. Sorry, I agree you have a right not to sell stuff, but they have a right to not employ you. For contract employees who aren't at-will (as in, to be fired-at-will) then refer to your contract; if any part of it obligates you to violate your principles, then either do so or accept the contractual penalties.
3) Government can go to hell. The government shouldn't obligate you to violate your moral principles - not for a job, not for jury duty, not for the draft, not for anything. As long as those moral principles aren't conflicting with the rights of others, the government should be a non-issue. And there is no right to make others sell you stuff (though there is a right to buy stuff, so long as somebody wants to sell). Licensing of pharmacies and pharmacists is not an excuse to coerce them into selling anything.
We all exist for ourselves, and if we behave altruistically it should be because we chose it, not because it was forced upon us at gunpoint.
Let this be a lesson: pro-choice often means nothing of the sort. For a long time I've tried to stick to pro-choice as distinct from pro-abortion; it seemed a fairer way to refer to the less aggressive supporters of abortion legality, as opposed to the postive-good cheerleaders fore abortion. But now I think pro-abortion is the more apt term. After all, the state's power would be directed towards keeping abortionists and clinics safe from violence, and it would be a legal right to obtain or perform an abortion.
I wouldn't say that somebody from 1850 who wanted slavery legal but owned no slaves himself was pro-choice on slavery; I'd call him pro-slavery. And so I think that pro-abortion is a fair and sufficient term for someone supporting abortion's legality. I guess that would make me 'anti-abortion' a term long used to spite pro-lifers as not really caring about life, merely about opposing abortion itself. Well, I think I'll continue to simply consider myself an abortion abolitionist.
It's really interesting that when you think about it, the whole debate is really about when life begins, even though it's almost always protrayed as a 'religious tradition versus secular feminism' matter. If life were universally seen to begin at conception, then abortion would be legally murder; if life were universally considered to begin well after conception, then abortion would just be birth control.
Coyote on Roe
by neolibertarian
There's a good piece at Coyote Blog about Roe v. Wade and its position in modern constitutional law. He makes some excellent points about the contradictory (hypocritical) way Roe was decided.
Of course, technically Roe isn't in force any longer. Casey is the reigning caselaw in the matter, and it reworked the standard to be even more confusing. Now not only is abortion jurisprudence an awkward dab of narrowly applied, selectively used liberty, but it's protected under a standard of "undue burden" instead of "strict scrutiny." The difference isn't entirely clear except that, in theory, it's a little looser and allows a few (politically popular) regulations without really reducing access to abortion.
I have to say that I think Roe is a horrible decision because it's nothing more than a cynical attempt to enshrine abortion rights within a framework otherwise hostile to liberty. I think the Ninth Amendment ought to be far stronger in application, literally as strong as the other amendments, and that the privileges and immunities clause needs to be brought up alongside it. But I have to disagree on abortion itself.
Personhood is not bestowed at birth and nothing in the Constitution says so (although it does say birth determines one's state of residence, it does not say birth bestows personhood). Until there's a constitutional amendment denying personhood to those yet unborn, conception - the point at which a human is created - ought to be the point at which personhood rights exist.
But otherwise I agree that unenumerated rights are still rights. The Ninth Amendment was added because the framers believed in an unenumerable liberty. Liberty is anything you have the right to do that doesn't infringe on the rights of others. That comes from Locke's descriptions of natural law and Mill's harm principles. The biggest argument against a bill of rights was that it would suggest that any unlisted rights were somehow not valid or less valid as rights. The Ninth Amendment says that unlisted rights are equally as important as the listed ones. The listed ones are just there establish a basic framework.
Non-Theistically Pro-Life
by neolibertarian
link
The recent spate of arguments equating rejection of a religious Justice-candidate and rejection of a pro-life Justice-candidate have just been another assumption in a long line by left and right to lump abortion into a religious and cultural heading. Religious and pro-life do not align so neatly, nor do non-religious and pro-choice.
The problem is that the more self-righteous pro-choice advocates are very likely to equate being pro-life with being a hillbilly, redneck, yokel Bible-thumper with no capacity for independent thought, and someone who probably doubts the veracity of evolution and the benefits of fluoride, too. Of course, the self-righteous pro-life advocates sometimes have a strong interest in painting pro-choicers as being rationalist, blue-blood, elitist, Manhattan penthouse atheists with no capacity for human compassion, and someone who probably values being gay over being straight, and being Muslim over being American. Okay, so I packed too much into those stereotypical stereotypes, but the point is clear.
The problem is that the more extreme advocates are allowed to set these stereotypes because to some degree they're correct. They are not widely indicative or logically linked, but there is definitely a correlation between geography, culture or religion and one's position on abortion. This is tragic because it ought to be a question of simple science and basic ethical law; in other words, science tells us it's a human, and ethics tells us to ban the murder of humans. Instead, it gets wrapped up in social issues when it's not automatically one.
This is a problem for people like me, who are ultimately disinterested in the stupid struggles of the culture war and unwilling to side with the hypocritical, cross-hating left or the dim-sighted, gay-demeaning right. When I take a survey or poll and it asks me what my most important issue would be, my impulse is to say "abortion." But if that doesn't have its own category, it gets lumped in with gay issues and prayer in school. I am massively disinterested in the school-prayer "controversy" and I don't see any reasonable pretext to treat gay people differently in matters of law.
If I answered "social issues" then I would invariably be lumped in with people who think Mexicans are ruining the country by being janitors and that a big slab of concrete chiseled with ten little rules of courtesy is going to save everything. I'm not a social conservative, though perhaps I sympathize with many of their efforts against an overly-aggressive left. I don't want to be lumped in with them, and I refuse to reduce my principled opposition to abortion into some crude expression of political geography.
Being pro-life is not a religious question, it's an interpretation of facts that leads you to support the necessary, logical conclusion. Either it's a human person that can't be lawfully killed or it's not a human person that can be lawfully killed. Religion need not enter into it at all.
There is a good case to be made that many Democratic activists are hostile towards certain religious viewpoints, but it's a far stretch to say that turning down someone for being pro-life is really an attack on religosity.
The Worst Thing I've Ever Seen
by neolibertarian
Normally I enjoy violence, action movies and war stories. But this video, especially Part Three (on the high-speed side) was just horrible. I feel completely numb.
The video itself wasn't done very well, originally, with jump cuts and actual video and photos put in without warnings. The transfer to computer format wasn't done very well either, as every segment seemed to cut off at least five to fifteen seconds. All the same, it's incredibly horrifying. I literally had to turn away for a good sixty seconds.
So what's it about, then? Abortion. They have just disgusting pictures of the victims dropped unceremoniously in buckets, which I couldn't look at. The video is narrated by Bernard Nathanson, a co-founder of NARAL and an abortionist who ran the largest abortuary in the Western world. After the development of fetology and ultrasound he became pro-life.
What was truly horrifying was in part three where they use an ultrasound to show an abortion taking place. I didn't realize anyone had ever done this, and according to the video it was done by an abortionist and a feminist who I can only assume thought they were doing something good for their side. I really don't think the thing is faked, because it's obviously on a somewhat light budget and it's from the mid 1980s.
They actually showed it. I'm still in shock. I actually saw the 12-week fetus sitting there, moving slightly, suck its thumb. Then the cervix is dilated and the suction comes in. The fetus, still in the amniotic sac, begins to move rapidly and violently. Its directions tended to be up and away from the direction of the tube. They showed how, after the sac was punctured, the fetus was grabbed by the tube. I watched the tube suck all the limbs off. I saw it. It was in front of me.
The head is too big for a tube. It doesn't fit out of the cervix. They have to use a special crusher-tongs device. Then the doctor, who ought to know having aborted hundreds or thousands, that the abortionist and anaesthesiologist have a code to talk to each other. They don't call the head a head, they call it 'number one.' Like they don't know what it is. If it's just a clump of cells, why does it have a head? How many clumps of cells suck their thumbs and can have their heads crushed? It's like they're playing everyone.
They can't just fucking admit that it's a human head they just fucking crushed and now they're yanking it out.
I mean, Jesus Christ, the fucking baby was jumping around and moving for its life. When they finally captured it, the fetus' mouth opened.
Its mouth opened.
It tried to fucking escape. Why would it try to escape if it's just tissue and cells, nothing more? Why would it open its mouth visibily? Why did the heart rate speed up dramatically to 200 beats per minute? Why did it leave?
How the fuck is it that it's legal to take a baby sucking its thumb and rip it literally limb from limb after it moves all around trying to escape? That makes no goddamned sense. Just fuck it all.
Worst thing I've ever seen.
Schiavo, Abortion and Depression
by neolibertarian
link
Basically, I've been too depressed since we allowed Terri to die. That's how important I think the battle was. The extent to which relativism, solipsism, legalism, smugness, politics and utilitarianism have overwhelmed our previously-universal sense of what it is to be human has sent me into profound despair.
It's been depressing for me as well. I'm trying not to read too much into it but I always figured that we'd give "the best medical care" and "do everything we could" before unplugging a living person who hadn't left a request to do so. Considering Terri wasn't allowed even the barest rehabilitation, was never given an MRI or PET, and never left any written, legal or objective request to be unplugged in ANY situation, I don't know what to feel.
If I were taken to criminal court and the Court a) deprived me of the presumption of liberty and innocence, b) reduced the standard from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "clear and convincing evidence" and c) tried to get me killed without a jury as the trier of fact, then the ACLU and hordes of Americans, left, right and center would clamor for me. I would probably be pardoned by 4 out of 5 Governors in America if no solution came within a few weeks.
But somehow, the fact that Terri can't speak lets people be deceived by horribly incomplete medical information. They believe a few pundits and lawyers when it comes to science, even though the typical lawyer probably couldn't identify positive and negative on a car battery, let alone understanding the chemical operations of the human brain. And being deceived by misinformation and lack of information into believing that Terri doesn't have brain activity they then believe she has no quality of life.
And that's okay. That's fine. People are stupid and gullible and pass judgments on the lives of others. Fine. I don't really care.
But then they take their ignorance, snap judgments and personal preferences and carry it over to Terri Schiavo. Just because you or I would hate to be incapacitated, we assume Terri Schiavo would hate it so bad she'd want to die - or that she's already dead. That's simply idiotic.
We ought to take our knowledge and ability to empathize and express sympathy for her condition. We ought to be impelled to try and rehabilitate her, even if it is a slim chance of success. We ought to feel for her and hope she can recover.
But somehow people jump straight to unplugging her, even without her wishes clearly known or her medical condition clearly understood. That's just depressing. I know the CBS polls saying Americans support was horribly biased, as evidenced by the Zogby poll. Zogby found that, when given a correct description of Terri's condition, a strong majority of Americans did not want to unplug her. So really this is media bias.
My problem is not that people seem to support it. My problem is that the legal system does. The legal system is supposed to protect liberty. I know they've completely forgotten about economic liberty ever since 1933 rolled around; I know they never really believed much in the Second Amendment; I clearly saw that the courts had little interest in protecting babied before they're born. For some reason I assumed they still could see that a human, even stripped of clear communicative abilities or mental faculties, was still a human being.
There is nothing in the Constitution that says our rights go away when we're brain-dead or when a majority of people wouldn't want to be in our shoes. Quality of life never appears in the Constitution, yet somehow the right to life and due process walks right out the window once people think you're a 'vegetable.' It's not just about Terri; what about the next person who really IS a vegetable (unlike Terri) and people try to pull the plug without permission from the patient? That's not any better, just because the patient may be even further gone.
I remind myself, though, that over a million in this country alone die annually for the crime of being unborn. In Darfur thousands and thousands are dying every month for the crime of being black. In Florida, Terri Schiavo died for the crime of being disabled. None of this is right; all of it ought to be stopped - by the US government, if nobody else will do it. Putting Terri's death in perspective - 'what's one death against the 40 million killed by abortion' - tends to just further depress me. But it also makes me seek a solution.
Here's my solution:
"Amendment XXVIII
Section 1. No person, except those convicted of a serious crime, shall be deprived of the right to life, regardless of age, illness or condition of mental or physical disability, without prior consent of the person in question, where the existence and validity of such consent must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and in all such cases a jury must be the trier of fact.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
What would this do? I've left the death penalty untouched, though it would be easy to take out that criminal clause. I've covered age, disease and mental/physical disability - meaning old people, brain-dead people and those with Alzheimer's would all be covered, as well as others. This is a broad pro-disabled person section.
I also allow for living wills and assisted suicide, provided it's done with proven consent. But then notice how I apply basic laws that exist for rapists and murderers and merely extended the same protections over to law-abiding citizens. No more probate judges passing judgments of fact with the "clear and convincing" standard. It requires a jury and a standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt."
The only other issue, besides the death penalty issue, is abortion. Technically the Court says that fetuses aren't properly persons; at least they definitely aren't considered persons until around the Third Trimester. But this could be an issue because by removing 'age' as a reason to take a life, I've removed both old age and young age. That means it's possible this might be seen or used as a way to stop abortion - or at least abortion without the fetus' proven consent. I don't think the Court would likely take it that way, considering the lengths they already go to keep abortion legal, but it's possible.
I'd also be willing to add in a section guaranteeing the liberty of people to request assisted suicide in the case of debilitating illness or infirmity, but I don't think it's a great idea. Considering the fact that a) it seems things are mostly fine in that area, or headed that way, b) it would be hard to word it appropriately (who wants a constitutional right for teens with angst to kill themselves?) and c) the political difficulty of alienating the Catholics AND the abortionists with two different sections, I think that's best left for another time.
To clarify, I don't expect this to come to law. It's just my idea of what OUGHT to be. Maybe somebody else will pick it up and a similar idea will gain momentum, but it's already done what I expect of it by allowing me to divert my attentions towards a solution instead of depression.
UPDATE: I've got a new version of the amendment. I've incorporated more or less all of the Sixth Amendment protections. See my website here for the issue article on it (it's under Terri Schiavo III).
Schiavo, Abortion, and the Death Penalty
by neolibertarian
A lot of people are drawing comparisons and insinuations of hypocrisy for those who support Terri Schiavo and oppose abortion: namely, they have to oppose using the death penalty against potentially innocent people.
Personally, I'm never very interested in getting into a death penalty argument. I'm of the opinion that taking the life of a murder, rapist or child molester is in fact a human right, borne of all human beings - even other criminals. Whether you're the victim, related to the victim, or have never met the victim, it's justified (morally, at least) to kill one of these despicable criminals. Of course, this is not an accepted legal remedy, and it removes the ability of oversight and protections in case the individual is innocent - and naturally it's often difficult to know just who's guilty. So there are practical obstacles, but in the abstracted moral sense, it's a natural right to execute the worst offenders against rights.
That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from every body, and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. (emphases his) - Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, s.11
That's basically my opinion. But I don't find much motivation to argue the death penalty outside the abstract realm, because it's full of people who have opinions ten times stronger than they have information. It mostly devolves into an indictment of the justice system itself.
But what I find silly is this idea that if only we stopped the death penalty, then we'd stop potentially killing innocent people. Umm. Was I the only one paying attention in history class? Current events?
When the allies bombed Japan, many thousands of innocent people died. When the British bombed Dresden, many thousands of innocent died. When soldiers accidentally run over people or bomb people, innocents can die. When police accidentally shoot people that appear to be armed, innocents can die. When someones drives a car almost anywhere, innocents can die both inside and outside the car.
If anything, the death penalty - with all its oversights and protections, and despite its flaws - is probably one of the safest places for innocent people to find themselves. Certainly I'd rather have a half-dozen courts reviewing my case and the protections of prosecutorial discretion, legal representation, and the 5th and 6th Amendment on my side than accidentally trip off the sidewalk and get run over by a dump truck. What's my protection there, anti-lock brakes?
Unless we're going to eliminate the army, police departments and other dangerous occupations and devices - like say, nearly every car in America - we're going to run the risk of people dying. The standard is not whether innocent people might be killed, but whether we're respecting the rights of innocent people to life and liberty.
So stow your moral righteousness until you're a pacifistic bicyclist. Of course, then you'll probably be bombed, shot or run over and we won't have to hear it.
UPDATE: Orson Scott Card has a much more thoughtful and better-written piece on Schiavo and the death penalty at RealClearPolitics here. Excerpt:
Yet because life is so precious, decent people are loath to use the death penalty, because it’s possible for the prosecutors to be wrong. Better to keep a thousand perpetrators of evil alive than to suffer one to be executed innocently.
But those who have harmed no one, whose only offense is to remain alive while being helpless, we can kill them.
Peter Singer and Baby Personhood
by neolibertarian
Randy Barnett has linked to a discussion on Peter Singer and the killing of newborns. While it's hard for a pro-lifer to see much distinction between killing a newborn and a later-term unborn baby (they're biologically identical, except location and feeding source), I think I have something to add to the discussion.
Following the chain of links to RightCoast and AmericanDigest, you come to a FAQ on Peter Singer's Princeton site. The third section is on the sanctity of human life, and the first two questions deal directly with terminating newborns.
Singer believes that newborns don't have the proper conscious state of wanting to be alive and having a continuous sense of themselves, and therefore he reasons that they are not persons. Killing them is therefore less wrong than killing a person. Barnett gets a correction and a mild rebuke from readers for posting the RightCoast excerpt.
For the record, the excerpt from RightCoast is correct on quoting Singer (my fingers keep typing 'Sanger' in a Freudian slip), because all the excerpt blames Singer for doing is saying that killing a newborn is not killing a person. That’s really Singer's position, so the excerpt is correct. Unlike the correcting e-mail, Singer includes normal-birth babies as well (see the second question in part III of the FAQ).
He's saying, then, that it's not intrinsically wrong to kill any newborn. It is wrong in Singer's eyes if the baby is WANTED. Killing a wanted baby to Singer is probably something akin to destruction of property. Even if the parents don't want it, it's a waste if others might have wanted the baby. Yes, a waste is the concept he's explaining, and nothing more (again, see the second question I part III of his FAQ). It's a waste of resources, sort of like throwing away an untouched cheeseburger or junking your dependable car is a waste when you could give it to others.
But then, is anyone surprised? He's only taking a pro-choice view to a logical conclusion. It makes no sense that personhood should be based on viability, because there's no substantive change to the child, only to its skin development (it becomes sturdy enough to support itself outside). Viability is just an excuse to bestow greater rights at the point where abortion becomes unnecessary.
A pro-choice point that makes more sense is brain development, because it's at least plausible that being human is based on our brains. I don't subscribe to that view for its horrible lack of specificity and the difficulty of testing for it; it opens up the question to whether those with damaged but functional brains might be partial or lesser humans, as well. Of course, pinning personhood on brain development puts pretty much any late-term abortion out of the question.
I'm strictly a conception/fertilization man - the point at which the gametes cease to be and your DNA is created is the point at which you start. Therefore, all humans are persons - even the weak, the young, the old or the retarded. I could go on for hours about the respect we ought to grant those often denied it (not least of which are the retarded: a largely defenseless, vulnerable minority) but I won't right now. I will leave it to my website issue article on abortion to continue a deeper examination.
So for those who believe that late-term fetuses are humans but not persons, they can't say brain development is the point for personhood. They have to say consciousness development - an even less obvious way to measure personhood. But doesn't it make sense for the sake of consistency? If you're discounting conception and you're going beyond in-womb brain development, why should a newborn be treated any differently than a 7th, 8th or 9th month pregnancy, let alone an overdue 10th month one? There's no substantive change in the brain physiology, only a matter of subtle degrees and development in scope and size. There's not really a major bright line in brain development by this point.
It's simply absurd to place it on a sociological point like birth, because nothing changes about the baby's mind or body, only its environment. Our perception of it may change, but the baby itself is physiologically the same. Therefore, the point of personhood must come before or after birth, not with it.
It's entirely logical for the pro-late-term abortion crowd to come to Singer's position, because he provides a consistent, if stupid, point for life. The problem is that the pro-later-termers usually aren't interested in rights, personhood or consistency, only in cultural politics and access to abortion. Singer is interested in rigorous consistency, if not in particularly believable or credible moral schema. Thus, Singer comes to a consistent but horrid solution while the pro-late-termers come to a slightly more PR-friendly but horribly irrational solution.
I would be surprised if ultimately Singer's position gains wider credibility for one reason - whatever people can tell themselves about abortion rights and feminism and so forth, it's damned hard to kill a baby when you have to look at the truth staring back at you. Everyone has seen a baby, and realizes they are human persons. If only people could look at hyper-accurate pictures to tell that pre-born babies are clearly human persons as well.
The Next SCOTUS Appointee
by neolibertarian
There are names and resumes going around the blog rumor mill on who will replace the much-respected Rehnquist after his predicted retirement this year. I don't have anything to add except that my only heightened expectation is that he be pro-life. Obviously, qualified, intelligent, literate - all these things are a given. Above and beyond these qualifications, the next appointee must be pro-life. Whether it's straight to the top as CJ or to an AJ slot and bumping up a current member, the new person has to be pro-life.
That's not to say I'm making a prediction - more like a demand of sorts. If every Republican nominee had been anti-Roe and every Democratic nominee pro-Roe, then there wouldn't have been the Roe v. Wade decision as we know it (it would've been 6-3 the other way). The same goes for Casey v. Planned Parenthood (it would've been 8-1 the other way). The Court right now has 7 Republican appointees, yet 4 of them back the basic essence of abortion rights and 3 of them think there's a constitutional right to partial-birth abortion.
Now, I realize there are two main responses that pro-choicers will feel here: 1) that I'm a religious nut and 2) that this is political wrangling over constitutional issues.
First - no, I'm not a religious nut. I hold a scientific and ethical objection to abortion. Religion is a red herring issue brought up by people too lazy to adequately explain why some human beings should be allowed to kill and destroy other human beings. The slavery abolition movement was derided by Southerners as religious interference in privacy and property rights; the abortion abolition movement is today derided by the pro-choice and pro-abortion lobbies as religious interference in privacy rights. Religion is irrelevant. I don't have to be devout to oppose murder.
Second - yeah, there's already going to be a political angle to the appointment. People for the American Way already has office space and phones prepared to oppose Bush's next appointee - and they don't even know when that will happen or who it is yet.
As long as there are different ways to rule on court cases, it's appropriate to express an opinion on what method is best - and who is best to execute that method. I'd place the same requirement on presidents in the 1850s and I'd point out the Dred Scott (1857) and Lemon (1860) cases as two important decisions affected by presidential appointments (among others).
Lives are hanging in the balance here. Bush needs to hold the line - it's currently 6-3 on abortion and 5-4 on partial-birth abortion. Letting Rehnquist be replaced by a pro-choice jurist would tip the scales even further and only delay the inevitable end of the abortion-for-profit industry.
Example: Media Bias on Abortion
by neolibertarian
This CNN.com article, about pro-life DNC chair candidate Roemer withdrawing to make Dean the last active candidate, is a perfect example of the subtle bias that exists in many media. I referred to it in this post a few days ago. Here's the relevant section:
Roemer said he hoped to make the party more inclusive, especially on the issue of abortion. He opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest and the health of the mother.
His opposition to abortion rights sparked early opposition in the race from abortion choice advocates.
In the second sentence, Roemer is said to 'oppose' abortion except in some circumstances. That's an accurate and fair summary, but the problem is that it's almost always stated as an opposition. There is never a positive summary of a pro-lifer - "He believes that abortion is an unjust taking of human life" or otherwise stating pro-life beliefs as support FOR something instead of opposition AGAINST something. Being stated in the negative repeatedly has one obvious result: the lack of a coherent program or affirmative idea, just opposition to the status quo or opposition to change. There's a word for the lack of a positive idea yet the presence of a strongly held negative one: reactionary.
Now, obviously, this is a subtle example. The wording of a single sentence in a single article isn't going to trash the entire pro-life movement. However, repeated characterizations from the AP, Reuters, the New York Times and other widely-reported organizations can lead to the impression that the pro-life movement exists in opposition to abortion but without any genuine principled objections or alternatives.
The final sentence: His opposition to abortion rights sparked early opposition in the race from abortion choice advocates.
This one is also factually accurate and hardly significant from one line in one article. However, look at the orientation - again, pro-lifers are 'opponents' while pro-choicers are 'advocates.' The pro-lifers OPPOSE the status quo, while pro-choicers ADVOCATE for their beliefs. If repeated over and over, it sends a subtle, but real message: pro-lifers are reactionary. Again, I don't want to overblow it, but it is a persistent problem.
What if that last sentence had been: His support for the rights of the unborn sparked early opposition in the race from fetal rights opponents.
Notice how, aside from the political change, this sentence does not repeat the word 'opposition' only six words apart. The original sentence awkwardly reused the same word in two different contexts, simply to make sure that pro-lifers could be described as opposing abortion rights. Here's a simple way so that both sides get a positive description:
His support for the rights of the unborn sparked early opposition in the race from abortion choice advocates.
I'm not saying every line of every article has to be perfect. That would be absurd. But when a long succession of articles in a huge number of publications continually refer to pro-lifers in a negative context -anti-abortion, anti-choice, opponents- it cultivates a reactionary image, while pro-choicers get a much more positive context -pro-rights, pro-choice, advocates- it cultivates a principled image.
So I'm not going to say that everybody has to watch every word they type on the subject, but I do think it's clear that the long-term view from media reporting is a subtle, persistent bias against the pro-life position.
Pro-Life Libertarians And The Failings Of Abortion Coverage
by neolibertarian
Dr. Dobson of Focus On The Family was on Cavuto (FNC) tonight. I didn't catch all of it, but apparently they have some program where pregnant women see an ultrasound before they get an abortion and the result is that they decide not to get one. The argument (a very sound one and something I've been saying for a long time) is that women have a strong maternal instinct and if they saw that they have a baby and not just some over-developed gametes they'd realize what a mistake abortion is - and then not have one. He cited a figure of just under 3,000 women who changed their minds about abortion due to the program so far. I don't know quite how they work it or whatever, but it sounds like a pretty damned good idea. So kudos. I could die happy if I averted just one of them (saving a life is a pretty profound experience).
But then they started getting into the issues that you usually hear from Focus On The Family - gays, child-rearing, corrupt media, and so forth. He wasn't as crazy and aggravating as Falwell or as repetitious and insubstantial as Robertson, but I just didn't like the contrast. It felt as though he was the face for all of his issues and that people who might sympathize on one would naturally sympathize on the others. That's in part the flaw of the widely-held misconception that politics is one-dimensional (and even of the online political junkies' mistaken belief that it's two-dimensional) but ultimately it's because people do such a horrible job reporting and discussing the issue of fetal rights.
People suck at discussing it, even people who are self-claimed experts tend to have fairly superficial or convenient views on the political dimensions to abortion. The more objective analysts make it cultural, which seems like a value-neutral way to approach it. In other words one side has a certain belief and the other side has a certain belief, and each side is trying to get its way. The problem with this way of describing it is that it intellectually lends itself to the pro-choice view; if it's merely a contest of two cultures, how much of an argument can the pro-lifers have to force their lifestyle on others? No, that's a bad way to discuss it. If this is a culture war then the ultimate answer is to let individuals choose their own cultural beliefs.
It's not a culture question, though. Not at first, at least. It's a scientific and humanitarian question - like racism, anti-Semitism and sexism. Just as it's not a scientifically valid proposition to assume that all black people or Jews or women have certain expectations, desires and abilities - and should be treated in monumentally different ways as a result - it's not scientifically or morally valid to to advance a similar proposition regarding babies that are not yet born.
It's a question of science, and ought to have no connection to culture or geography. It shouldn't even be a matter of legitimate controversy - at least, not any more than issues like black people not being slaves and women not being legally raped. Rape and slavery are not even remotely legitimate under any just society, and neither should institutionalized murder be legitimate. Of course, we're a ways from that point just like this country used to be a way from near-unanimous public support for black civil rights.
So at least for now there's going to be a lot of discussion on the issue and we can't expect to just dismiss opposing beliefs as dilatory or silly. It's easy to ignore the occasional crackpot who questions the abolition of slavery because they're unlikely to change their minds and unlikely to affect the policy debate in the slightest.
Someone who opposes the abolition of abortion, however, has an opinion that is considered at least somewhat valid by mainstream political and judicial opinion. So while you might never change anybody's mind on the issue, it's important to make the moral and scientific case for abolition.
As a question of scientific fact and ethical deduction, abortion could very easily be an issue that's 95% open and shut (roughly the percentage that are not for rape/incest and are not attributed to medical necessity). It's not, however. It's not understood well and it's not reported well and these two are mutually reinforcing factors.
One vital factor is media influence. It's a little too common for blogs to bash the MSM (I'm guilty) but I think it's clearly a big deal here. Journalists and reporters are largely pro-choice.
A study in 1981 found that 90 percent of 240 journalists in the country's top media outlets favored abortion. A 1988 survey of 151 business reporters working for a variety of highest-circulation publications found that 86% favored abortion. In 1985 a poll of 2,700 journalists from 621 newspapers found that 82 percent of reporters and editors favored allowing abortion. A 1995 study (published in 2001) of "reporters and editors at major national newspapers, news magazines and wire services" reported that 97 percent agreed with a women's right to choose abortion, with 84 percent agreeing strongly.
Not only is that substantially different from the mainstream breakdown of views, but it's nearly unanimous. As a result, reporters are coming at the issue of pro-choicers trying to be fair, rather than undecideds trying to be or pro-lifers trying to be fair. I can't say I expect total equity of beliefs or disagreeing with a viewpoint always leads to biased and poor coverage of a subject. I just think the stark lack of pro-life reporters is the reason why there's such a dearth of good, intelligent reporting on the issue of abortion and a broad subconscious consensus that paints pro-lifers from the perspective of an outsider.
In my experience, reporters are not very knowledgeable about many subjects unless they do a special subject (financial beat, sports reporter, art critic) so when they get to something like foreign policy or abortion they rely on the knowledge of their experts and on whatever innuendo and rumor that has colored their views. This is to be expected, since it'd be very hard for a paper to maintain a staff with an expert on each potential subject. But it does affect the reporting to have to report beyond one's own knowledge.
The personal bias is a factor. Most basically, it colors the language and terminology we hear - such as calling pro-life people "anti-choice" or "anti-abortion" while pro-choice people get called pro-choice. Or how abortion is usually referred to as "a woman's right to choose" while there's rarely mention of "a fetus' right to life." That is especially frustrating to me, since the pro-life movement's premier political lobbying group is actually called National Right To Life Committee.
The blogosphere was lit up back in September of last year when Todd Eastham, the North American Editor for Reuters e-mailed an argumentative and sarcastic reply to an NRLC press release. What's especially embarrassing is the exceptionally poor quality of his arguments, speaking as a person who has argued the issue exhaustively with untold numbers of online debaters.
He ranks in the worst category of pro-abortion people: the population control people who act like abortion is the only thing staving off the inevitable cultural and economic ruin that comes with not murdering innocent people. A pretty despicable way to make a despicable argument (even divorcing it from the pro-choice position, it's despicable). After all, if population control is so pressing, then why make it a choice? Seems like abortions should be mandated if overpopulation is so pressing. And if that doesn't work, is he prepared to see infants and toddlers exterminated to maintain his standard of living? Stupid. The population control argument 1) doesn't stop at choice and goes all the way past supporting abortion to actually necessitating abortion, and 2) doesn't offer any compelling reason why infants or the elderly should be spared if fetuses aren't. (I've spent a huge amount of energy on the subject; to get my take on pretty much all the arguments against abolition, check my article on it here).
Of course, also suspicious was that, the day of the e-mail from Eastham, Reuters released a dispatch about a pipe bomb in a biotech lab near Boston that did a quarter mil of damage. Unlike other news outlets, Reuters' dispatch made embryonic stem cell research opponents appear to be responsible. What's so silly about that is that the lab was involved in only ADULT stem cell research, which has been getting major ass-kissing from pro-lifers as a full alternative to embryonic stem cell research. Only the most wacked out Jehovah's Witness or Christian Scientist would have a problem with adult stem cell research (or a really stupid pro-life terrorist who couldn't be bothered to even research the most basic things about his target). But then they don't believe in blood transfusions or antibiotics either, in some cases, so they're not very representative of the pro-life movement.
The wider bias of reporters means that pro-choice advocates tend to get quoted earlier in articles, get more words in articles and get more representative viewpoints chosen. While it's bad enough that pro-life advocates seem to regularly get the short end of the stick in both chronology and proportion of an article, what's especially insidious is picking bad representatives - intentionally or not.
The best example of bad selection is when a panel show years ago wanted to do a segment on abortion. They called up (I believe) NARAL for the pro-choice side, and for the pro-life side they picked a guy who was once in the KKK and was a racist. No joke. Apparently he was representative of the views of the roughly 40 to 50 percent of Americans who think abortion is not restricted enough.
Just absurd. Most of the picks aren't so bad, obviously (probably in part due to the rarity of available neo-Nazis and Klansmen to do panel shows) but it happens sometimes. What's really a problem is the way in which pro-lifers are cast, and picking representatives is only one part of that. Picking Focus On The Family instead of National Right To Life definitely adds a more conservative-Republican flavor (NRLC is nonpartisan).
Describing conservatives as synonymous with pro-life views, and pro-life views as synonymous with anti-gay marriage views is a big problem from where I sit. I don't care if gay people get married - in fact, I don't care if 27 men decide to marry 117 women and then all have sex in a big pile on their own basketball court while smoking joints and listening to Creedence on the loudspeaker. I think it should be legal, and I honestly don't care - so long as I'm allowed to be anywhere else but there. So I'd say I'm on balance WAY more socially tolerant (apathetic might be a more apt term) than even your typical left-wing national Democrat, all of whom are against polygamy. Yet I'm against all abortion, so I get lumped in with the media censors and marriage-obsessors.
Of course, columnists and reporters seemed to regularly remind us all that there were Republicans against the war in Iraq, but it seems they can't be bothered to even pause to distinguish between pro-life cultural-conservative Republicans and pro-lifers who aren't even conservative at all (a good portion of Democrats, around a quarter to over a third, are pro-life). It's just aggravating, and I think the reason is simple: they are so overwhelmingly pro-choice and they don't see it from a pro-life perspective. As a result, their personal perspectives (that pro-lifers are conservative traditionalists who are still fighting against the 1970s and hate the 19th Amendment) reinforces a simplistic view of pro-lifers, instead of encouraging a more vigorous examination of the pro-life movement.
It's not even like there's a conspiracy. I fully believe most of it's subconscious choices and preferences that lead to a distorted, simplistic view of pro-lifers and slanted overall coverage. It's not like they all want to go out and give bad reports, though.
Hopefully people who strive to be at least a little more intelligent on this issue than Mr. Eastham will stop connecting abortion to conservatism, or assuming that opposing abortion and opposing gay marriage are interchangeable views. Hopefully people will realize that you can a steadfast libertarian and still vigorously oppose abortion.
And hopefully one day this'll be irrelevant because abortion will be lined up next to slavery, Jim Crow, the Holocaust and spousal abuse as a barbaric, backward product of bigoted, selfish thinking.
