Although politicians don’t generally campaign here in Maskachusetts (the outcome of almost every election is predetermined and, in fact, most candidates run unopposed), they do sometimes favor us with letters. Let me share one from Nancy Pelosi!
People tell me it must be a tough job to be Speaker of the House when the president belongs to the opposite party, lives in a world without facts or decency, and has nearly every Republican in Congress marching in unthinking lockstep behind him.
I’ve had a tougher one. I raised five kids born in six years. It taught me that children deserve our love and our caring.
What else did Mom Pelosi learn about children while the five brats milled around her ankles?
Trump and his followers on Capitol Hill want to take away women’s most fundamental rights.
Your generous contribution of $15, $25, $35 or more to the DCCC’s Headquarters Account will help the DCCC sustain and expand Battlestations across the country.
We will not let them end the right to choose in America.
Take it from a mom: We can’t do this alone. Together there’s no limit to what we can achieve.
Then there is a postscript:
The most formative experience in my life has been being a mother to five children.
So half the letter is about how being a mom makes a person (not to foment anti-LGBTQIA+ hatred by saying “makes a woman“, since men can also be moms) better. And the other half is about how babies should be aborted.
Presumably this was tested and actually did result in recipients getting out their checkbooks.
I’m always amazed how “a woman’s right to choose” remains such a core pillar of the Democratic platform. It’s a call-to-arms for a battle that likely never comes. But even the notion evokes a nuclear level reaction on the left.
The Left has been pointing to some of the same monsters under the bed for about 50 years now. They need some new ones.
“Gun Control” and “Abortion Rights” are the two truly constant antipodes of our political system. The psychology is fascinating. Firearms cause many, many fewer deaths than abortion, but here we are.
Actually I should have said “Gun Rights” instead of “Control”. If you tunnel from one side of the world starting at Gun Rights you wind up at Abortion Rights. The difference seems to be that all women come equipped with a vagina from the moment they’re “born”, whereas most people actually have to buy a gun before they can use one.
It could be argued, actually, that widespread gun ownership is much more effective at preserving both groups of “rights” than anything else, but that’s not in vogue right now and is a subject of higher theoretics.
Well, gun confiscation (enabling population control by violent means) an abortion (controlling genetics of population by choosing which babies are born – i.e. eugenics light) are two sides of the same totalitarian coin.
Face it: American Democrats are ideological successors of Nazis. (Though, if you dig deeper you’d find out that Nazis borrowed quite a lot from American left – including the iconic Nazi salute, aka Bellamy salute.) They learned that going all-out violent totalitarian is going to provoke reaction which will see them exterminated, so their metods now are massive lying and soft totalitarianism of controlling information. The foundational idea of State controlling everything and people becoming homogenous mass of equal clones working for State remains the same.
Your numbers are wrong. Firearms cause many, many MORE deaths than abortions. You can’t just make up whatever you want.
JHK raises a good question. How does anyone know reliably how many abortions are done each year in the U.S.? https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states says “Approximately 862,320 abortions were performed in 2017, down 7% from 926,190 in 2014.” So there are at least five digits of precision, but where are the data coming from?
Women have been getting abortions for centuries. Making them legal, or illegal, won’t stop that. I’d wager that just as many republican women have had them as have democratic women. Being affiliated with either party matters not.
Jim: There is a huge disparity in abortion rates by race. Are you saying that Americans of Color are equally likely to be Republican or Democrat? That’s the only way in which your assertion can be correct, I think. See https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-race-and-ethnicity
(An American who identifies as a “woman” and who votes Republican is probably married, incidentally, due to the “marriage gap” (see https://www.npr.org/2018/09/26/651710680/women-voters-marriage-gap-and-the-midterms ). So she is not the most likely person to require an abortion. Having sex with a low-income partner who can’t be tapped for substantial child support is a common scenario in which an abortion might be sought, though I guess some Americans do sell abortions for cash to high-income partners (see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ChildSupportLitigationWithoutMarriage ). Is a Democrat or a Republican who identifies as a “woman” more likely to find herself having sex with a low-income casual partner?)
Please tell me you’re not that naive, Phil.
https://qz.com/857273/the-sharpest-drops-in-abortion-rates-in-america-have-been-under-democratic-presidents/
Horse puckey. Another gigantic pile on the side of Horseshit Mountain.
We’ve been shooting people for centuries, too, and frankly I think we should start shooting a lot more of them.
Yeah, the real world is a tough place.
Jim: It makes sense that abortion rates would drop during times when Democrats control the U.S. because Democrats tend to make collecting welfare more lucrative and having a baby is often the key to successful entry into the welfare system. See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/06/01/book-review-the-redistribution-recession/ for all of the other dramatic changes that Americans made in their lifestyle in response to Obama-era enhancements to welfare.
Phil, I won’t go as far as calling you a racist, but you’re guilty of profiling. And many of the baby-making-welfare-collecting mamas you’re suggesting reside in the states that typically vote republican… in the south.
All I’m saying here is that abortion has been going on for centuries. I didn’t say a thing about shootings, race or welfare.
Jim: It is impossible that I could be a racist. It is people who disagree with me who are racist, sexist, and stupid! Since I always agree with myself (like the CDC and WHO), I cannot, by definition, be racist.
@Jim: You keep having your fun with the noncontributory parasites of the world. Eventually they’ll come for whatever you have, too, and you’ll find out how little good you’ve done anyone.
Alex…yes, we all have brains we haven’t even used yet. And we all think we’re right, all the time. I’m old enough to be getting Medicare and have done well mingling with the “parasites “.
Phil… you are always right. I must be hypoxic from my mask to have doubted you.
Jim: I am always right from my point of view while everyone else is a racist. But that doesn’t stop you from being right from your point of view and everyone other than you (including me) from being a racist (from your point of view)!
Jim is the only intelligent one in this thread.
The lesson should be pretty easy to learn for most people who aren’t stupid: moral absolutes aren’t absolute. Our world does happen to be complex but we should have some guidance. It’s not a complicated thing to understand. We’d have a lot less suffering and more enjoyment of life if everyone could just have a few higher IQ. Luckily the robots are coming to help us.
Hmmm. The idea that there is no universal morality (and thus that morality can be dispensed with if the goals are lofty enough) is what gave us Stalin and Hitler.
The idea that there is one God who gave a moral code to live by (and that even the Big Bosses have to obey it) is what created Western civilization. Which is, to say, the only true civilization humanity ever had (the rest created nothing more inspiring than proskynesis).
Alternatively, if you’re not of a fun of traditional theological discourse, the memeplex of morality (usually embedded in a set of fairly engaging tall tales aka religion) defines the organization of a society. Societies which had crappy moral codes went the way of dodo. The ones which had good ones grew and prospered. The best one so far is Christianity and resulting Western civilization – which came up with awe-inspiring art, science, technology, and industry.
The moral relativism is a hallmark of the collectivist (i.e. socialist) morality, or rather shocking lack of any, as amply demonstrated by the unprecedented cruelty of socialist regimes, which breed people who are nothing more than chimpanzees with firearms (and sometimes nukes) pushing around and killing less fortunate chimpanzees without firearms. The socialist thought contagion is probably the most dangerous pathogen the humanity faced so far. Can wipe all of humanity. Think of chimps with nukes and no moral absolutes like “You shall not kill”.
very good point, fellow college junior