The Seattle Weakly has finally caught on that "progressivism" is the curtailment of liberty -- "Big Nanny Is Watching You"
Stripping, booze, and smoking bans: Seattle's nannies are in full scold mode, and progressives are the biggest party poopers of allOne of the biggest ironies in American politics is that the liberals own the phrase "pro-choice", when in fact there is only one choice they're willing to let people make. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 20, 2006 04:23 PM | Email This
No one should have only one choice and that being someone else's!
I am a conservative! I don't feel I can decide this issue for someone else. I do feel it is cruel to have a child and not provide and give it a dysfunctional back ground. But again it is only my opinion.
Posted by: dcat on January 20, 2006 06:03 PMThe problem with abortion is precisely that it IS one person forcing their decision on someone else. You can even make a case that a woman is not only forcing a decision on the unborn child but also on the child's father.
Also, just because you don't have an abortion and do have the child doesn't mean it has to grow up in poor circumstances. That's what adoption is about.
Third, if you want to justify abortion because the child is actually "better off" being terminated than growing up in what someone else feels would be a dysfunctional situation, then you'd should have no problem with infanticide, or even outright homocide if it means you are "saving" someone from growing up in a dysfunctional environment.
It really has to come down to if you think a fetus is a child or not. If so, it's kind of hard to justify abortion for most any reason. This is coming from someone that really doesn't have that strong an opinion on the issue.
As to the topic of Progressives taking away choice, here are some more: Who you can hire, what you can and can't say (speech codes), deciding to be a union member or not (closed shop). I could go on but I've said way too much.
Posted by: Mark D on January 20, 2006 06:20 PMOnce you settle the issue of the humanity of the unborn child, which science tells us cannot be anything other than human life (unless you think the unborn are gray space aliens or something), then the only other question you need to answer is whether you believe in the concept of equal protection under the law. Having lost all other logical arguments, the pro-abortion argument (and also, in some ways, the so-called "right to die" movement, which is really not so much a person's right to die as it is another's right to say when and how that person will die) seems to be devolving into this: there should be a "right" to premeditated taking of innocent human life. Unless one is a worshipper of Moloch, we could see a problem with this.
Posted by: Interested Observer on January 20, 2006 06:42 PMI think you don't get that most (if not all women) understand there is humanity in an unborn fetus. I think most women who get abortions struggle and struggle with this decision.
But, I would be willing to severely limit abortion, to rape and extreme life-threatening conditions, if all you out there (especially men) go along with my new law. That is the law of "There are two people who make a baby." Under this law, the women delivers the child and names the father and a blood test is done. If she chooses to give the child up to either him or adoption, he has to pay her a fee similiar to what a surrogate would receive (after all, it is her time and her body that bore the child). If she keeps the child, then the man's employment goes into a data file and he automatically has a certain amount of money garnished from his wages every month to support the child under that child is 18. (Doesn't have to visit or anything; just pay up.)
As long as the father is held just as responsible as the mother, you can restrict abortions. Until the day that men are as responsible for pregnancy as women, then women get the choice of what happens within their bodies.
Of course, this is not the case in WA state any longer. So, I guess I'm just daydreaming again.
Westello - what planet have you been on? The state already automatically deducts money from the father's paycheck.
In fact, men have no choice in the equation at all - they can't stop an abortion nor can require one. They can't decide whether or not to put a child up for adoption. They have no say in these things, yet they are required to pay child support for 18 years.
I say, give men a "choice" and then it is OK to make them pay child support. Otherwise, it's extortion.
Posted by: BananaLand on January 20, 2006 07:53 PMWe need better education about the challenges of parenting and to increase the awareness of what can be done to prevent pregnancies. We also need to shut up the celebrity loud mouths who yap about how cool it is to be a single parent. And for those of you wondering, there was a surprise pregnancy in our family recently and she is the most precious baby in the whole world. BUT the baby was surrounded by love and support from immediate and extended family. Not everyone is that lucky.
Posted by: Burdabee on January 20, 2006 08:29 PMWestello....how about this...the father, which btw doesn't need to adopt the baby since it technically belongs to him too (not a lawyer, so I might be wrong, but I would sure as hell take this to court to fight for my right). If the mother gives the child up....and the father takes it, why wouldn't the mother have to pay child support? I suppose this happens, but I've never personally heard about such a scenario.
Now as far as "choice" is concerned, it would seem that more liberals do not want people to have choices that they don't like, than conservatives.
(disclaimer): I voted for the smoking ban. I grew up with a smoker and know how bad it is and I had become tired of going to places and being "smoked out". The law's 25 foot rule is horrible, bars/restaurants that have a deck should be allowed to have smoking there....it's outside and that's fine. Not sure how 'we the people' could help fix some obvious flaws (cigar shop not being able to have smoking is another example), but I hope it happens. I don't trust any politician to come up with something.
I agree with the increasing awareness on what can be done to prevent pregnacies...like abstanance. Not that I abstained, have sex as a 14 year old. However, I did also knew "don't be silly, wrap your willy". This was something that my father taught me early on. He explained the issues that I'd have from both an early pregnacy and the STD that I might get. He didn't want me having sex, but knew it would happen.
That teaching was much more powerful than the sex ed I started receiving from the school district when I was in 4th grade and received yearly until sophomore year in High School.
Congrats on the addition to your family. A joyous time. God bless the new child.
Posted by: Dengle on January 20, 2006 08:42 PM"I don't want to stereotype kids," he said, but then he told me they had chosen kids presumed to be at high risk for bad behavior. "Are they getting bad grades? Do they have people smoking at home? Do they have tattoos already? We're looking for things that might be considered risky behavior, making them susceptible to other risky behavior."
Bad grades? smokers at home? Risky behavior?
Hmm...sounds like a job for CPS!
Coming soon to YOUR demosocialist state.
Posted by: Elmo on January 20, 2006 09:22 PMDnegle: Thanks for your good wishes! My little granddaughter is indeed a great blessing!! Her parents (both in their 20s) were planning on starting a family in about 3-4 years but baby just couldn't wait. And that was inspite of some serious measures taken to delay future babies. The doctor was just as surprised as her parents. :)
Posted by: Burdabee on January 20, 2006 11:12 PMWhat, if anything, do you mean by this?
The term "choice" is used in the context of abortion, where liberals want to give the mother the choice of keeping the baby, putting the baby up for adoption, or aborting the pregnancy. Do you claim that liberals want to make abortions mandatory? Or did you think your readers would fall for a patently wrong assertion just because it sounded cute?
Posted by: Bruce on January 21, 2006 12:37 AMbefore you have a coronary, i personally want to keep abortion legal. that said, i think that adoption is a better "choice."
what you missed, because you're a liberal full of hate for conservatives, is that liberals want to have a "choice" to kill unborn children, but want to deny the rest of us the "choice" to smoke, drink, and enjoy a lap dance.
you're so full of hate for anyone that doesn't agree with you that you can't understand that simple fact. abortions "mandatory." what a joke. your argument falls flat on its face.
you would, and should, have a stroke if a conservative suggested banning certain behaviour. but you're more than willing to ban the same behaviour because you think it's bad and you feel good about molding society, i.e., the rest of us, in your feel good liberal mold.
return to self pleasure to make yourself feel good. don't intrude on my rights.
oops. my mistake. i see that you're from cornell. my apology. i acknowledge that you're an east coast member of the ruling class. i'm not worthy...i look to you for guidance, o superior one.
Abortion is discussed in terms of the cure to a disease.
Pregnancy is the result of an action.
Pregnancy is a consequence of behavior.
The LLL will not dare discuss abortion in those terms.
Those on the left will immediately throw involuntary pregnancy resulting from rape and inc*st on the table. Their logical implies that one rape excuses all of the rest of the voluntary pregnancies from consideration.
Devoid from the abortion debate is the individual's responsibility in becoming pregnant, and I mean both partners.
Sex has become divorced from the consequences of sex. Sex is for the immediate gratification of the individual. The Oprah syndrome If it feels good do it.
The discussion and decision about a pregnancy belongs BEFORE pregnancy.
NOT AFTER!!!!!!!!
Simply put if you don't what to be pregnant.
Don't put yourself in a position to become pregnant.
Before someone does what feels good they should think long and hard on the consequences of "feeling good" for a short period of time.
The entire focus of the left is on avoiding responsibility for ones own actions. The attraction of the left for so many is that they promise no consequence for ones actions. We will take care of you no matter what you do.
The left offers to protect you from yourself.
At the expense of our liberty.
While on the surface the debate is abortion, the real battle is one of liberty vs. the invisible slavery of dependance upon the state.
Posted by: JCM on January 21, 2006 06:40 AM"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."~~Hillary Clinton, 1993
"All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person."~~Vladimir Lenin
Posted by: Jason Woodruff on January 21, 2006 08:34 AMIn short, no one would get off the hook for the choices THEY both made.
Posted by: westello on January 21, 2006 09:03 AMOf course not. But I find it ironic that liberals describe themselves as "pro-choice" when so many other liberal causes related to personal freedoms are about regulating and restricting an individual's choices.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on January 21, 2006 09:12 AMI will give you credit for doing one thing that virtually no other liberal will do: offer to negotiate. That you even say "I'd be willing to restrict abortion...." separates you from the liberal pack who, instead of placing their ambitions, hopes, and dreams at the ballot box, chose to thwart the Will of the People through judicial activism. Bravo to you for that!
I find it immensely entertaining all the gnashing of liberal teeth at the notion that placing someone who respects the law (Roberts or Alito) should spell "the end of the world as we know it" (potentially overturning RvW). Even in the unlikely event of that occurring, what would be the result: returning the decisions to the states (where they belong). Those of you who make every calculation based on "blue state" vs. "red state" still would have the ballot box to turn to (and we've all seen what democraps can accomplish there!).
Stefan is entirely correct when he points out the liberals attempt at co-opting the term "pro-choice". The irony is, as has been expressed so well by others here, is that liberals have demonstrated that they are only "pro-choice" when it comes to murdering babies.......
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 21, 2006 09:35 AMThere are millions of abortions performed each year that these liberals obviously support. Yet 2100 soldiers who volunteer their service to our military die in order to protect freedom and they squeal for impeachment of our President!
Give me a break.
It also amazes me as to how disconnected their thinking is about abortion. Dismembering a defenseless infant in its mothers womb is far more brutal a death than getting hit by an IED serving the Country you love.
That's Goldstein and the HA crowd in a nutshell, as well as most of the Seattle politicians. They know what's best for you, be it Mass Transit, an Alaskan Way Tunnel, Gas Taxes, $11 Million Drunk Shelters, ugly and space wasting Libraries, quotas for UW minorities, exemptions from the WASL, and on and on.
It's do as THEY say and not as they do, while these elitists hob nob with big liberal money and drone on about how they want to restore "fairness" to broadcasting.
Fortunately their overreach is turning off most average Joes and Janes. Progressives are losing power all across the land, and soon, like their Marxist heroes in Eastern Europe, they will be on the ash heap of history.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 21, 2006 12:14 PMThat is your Opinion!
I also think if a woman decides not to have children then she should be granted what she wants and that is a tubule ligation! At any age! Not a ‘oh lets wait and see! Some people don’t care to be strapped to a family situation and it is a choice more people need to make! Not oh amy down the street is having a baby so maybe I should! Usually a woman of this nature won’t wait till 3 weeks to make that choice! Buy all means Mark let's go after the dead beat dad's too!
Posted by: dcat on January 21, 2006 12:57 PMclick: The Reagan Wing
Posted by: Doug Parris on January 21, 2006 01:02 PMShould have done the ****ing writing thing before killing someone!
Posted by: dcat on January 21, 2006 04:48 PMDid they actually believe they could somehow simply walk away from their addiction for their parties communist idea of the "greater good"? ...snicker...Didn't work - did it? Now they have to hide in basements in BellTown and purchase Febreeze and Altoids by the caseload!
Perhaps this is just what was needed for many to see and feel how communist/socialist/progressive Democrat oppression is! Funny how the smoking ban coincided with one of the longest rainy spells on record in Seattle! Those liberal smokers who thought they could beat the ban by smoking outside had 30 full days of drenching! That's a lot of time to really think about one's loss of freedoms and rights!
The problem with communism/socialism/progressive/liberalism is that the oppression, loss of rights and freedoms and strangling control it demands - eventually choke off it's supporters.
It's only a matter of time before liberal Democrat mothers are horrified when their young daughters were whisked off for abortions without their permission or notification - thanks to laws passed by their "party"...
It's only a matter of time before a liberal Democrat is fined for cutting his blackberry bushes without permission or jailed for a hate crime when he parks in his gay neighbors parking space...
Just watch.....it just has to become "personal"...
Posted by: Deborah on January 21, 2006 07:33 PMIt's silly to try to associate "Seattle nannies" with standard political parties. Opposition to "victimless crimes" (I put this in quotes because arguably these do have victims) such as drug use and lap-dancing typically comes from conservatives, not liberals or "progressives".
Many of the things that "nannies" are fighting, such as second-hand smoke and driving while cellphoning, impact the wider community. Fans of these behaviors can cry "nannyism" all they want, but the many victims know the truth and that is why they often succeed in restricting the behavior. There are pros and cons to these restrictions, but I don't think opinions line up with party affiliation.
People say they are "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion" because they want to give women the choice, not advocate abortions. Similarly, people say they are "pro-life" rather than "anti-abortion" because they want to be for something that sounds positive rather than negative. The language battles are peripheral to the real issues.
Obi-Wan, perhaps, as you say, "a liberal will become a conservative when her 12 year old daughter is taken for an abortion by a parent of her 15 year old boyfriend, and the girl's parents are not notified." It's easy to define imaginary scenarios. But if you try to find a real-world incident that's resembled your quote, I suspect it would involve appalling family situations in which notification would have caused more problems than it solved. Oh, and don't infer too much from my email address; I went to Cornell but my only current tie is using that email address in public places like this board to limit spam at my regular address.
Posted by: Bruce on January 22, 2006 11:36 AMI would like to focus on better things to come like CONDI for PRESIDENT!!!
Posted by: dcat on January 22, 2006 12:10 PMThat may be the conventional wisdom, but in the case of the smoking ban it's disingenious at best. While I have no doubt that many Republicans/'conservatives' may have voted for it, the pro-I-901 campaign was primarily backed by a number of large national advocacy organizations and state labor groups with strong Democratic/'progressive' ties. (The pro side outspent the anti side by an over 50 to 1 ratio, 1.5 million dollars to 26,000. The anti supporters consisted of a few small businesses like Diamond Lil's and Freddy's club, and there was NO money from 'big tobacco'.)
And the Washington State Democratic Council explictly endorsed I-901. They contributed their entire voter/supporter database to the pro side. It's listed as an in-kind contribution worth over 10,000 dollars. They were the only political party to contribute.
Check it for yourself:
http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/I901CONT2005.pdf
Posted by: just another lurker on January 23, 2006 01:49 PMMany liberals will soon become conservative when the Democrat oppressions become personal! This is what is happening in "Socialist" countries around the world....The "Nanny" got drunk on power and p*ssed off her voting base...
I see the making of many "moderates" and "moderate conservatives" from former liberals!
Posted by: Deborah on January 24, 2006 12:20 AMEnlightened self interest will overcome petty partisan prejudice as the public actually feels the oppressive influence of the liberal Democrats efforts to control every aspect of their lives.
In days past, conservatism was defined in-part as the “resistance to change.” In his interview with Paul Begala of CNN, Democrat strategist James Carville reveals a trend that all of the rest of us have seen coming for a long time. Only liberals are incapable of recognizing the trend. Liberal resistance to change.
Liberalism is about the most oppressive type of resistance to change. Carville says ”There's a significant part of the Democratic Party that doesn't want to reform anything. We call them the 'Remainderists.' OK? Remainderists are people who say that if you hate them (the GOP)[actually Bush] enough, then we're what remains and then people will vote for us and then we can have our people at the Capital Grill (a popular power restaurant a few blocks from the Capitol). And then we can get more golf trips and bigger steaks."
As remaindersts Carville says "The problem is not that the Democrats don't have any ideas," . . . "They got too many ideas." . . . if "you ask any Democratic think tank or Democratic politician what you think you ought to do about (fixing things), they've got eight ideas!" In his meandering, indecisive, and self revelatory assurances of continued misguided failures, Carville reveals the real problem without saying so.
Liberal "ideas" are not ideas but prejudices i.e., empty icons of utopian fantasies that have been tested beyond any doubt and utterly failed the American people. Indeed, the only changes liberals don't resist are changes the vast majority of American do not want. Many of us including liberal democrats are seeing the writing on the wall and are moving in a different direction. Instead, liberal Democrat leaders and party faithfuls believe that forcing the same worn out things that America doesn’t want, if articulated properly, will succeed. It will not.
Liberal comments made here at SP illustrate this problem on virtually every thread and every subject from education, through voting rights, health care, foreign policy, and the environment. As Deborah says, ”Many liberals will soon become conservative when the Democrat oppressions become personal!” One look at The very real "Bogus" Sex Offender, here at SP where liberals like Goldy, and Ivan Weiss willingly and blatantly endanger their own children's safety for partisan reasons tells the tale. If they'll do it to their own, what'll they do to you and yours?
Institutionalized voting fraud, diminished quality of and access to health care, the risks posed to our survival by another liberal (a la Clinton) foreign policy, and the absurdist policy of placing the status quo of a small isolated wasteland above the usefulness of oil reserves that can reduce our dependency on unstable and dangerous governments, are all evidence of what Carville calls the “remainderst,” resisters of change in the liberal democrat party.
I say, here's to remaindersts.
Like Deborah, I too ”see the making of many "moderates" and "moderate conservatives" from former liberals!”
Thanks Deborah.