Through the Looking Glass

We all have our own particular views and they are certainly not going to be in step with everyone else's. However, there is a point where a viewpoint departs so far from reality that it does no one any good. Case in point is a recent post on the American Thinker blog titled, 'Fluke and Liberals' Bodyguard of Lies'. It touches on the uproar over the contraceptives debate (it is 2012, right?) and the Congressional testimony of Sandra Fluke. As you probably know by now, she's the Georgetown law student that Rush Limbaugh raked over the coals, on-air, for three straight days a few weeks ago. Picking and choosing his words in such a way as to belittle and insult her in every way he could, including referring to her as a 'slut' and a 'prostitute', among others. I had some warning of the kind of piece it was, but wanted to read it anyway. Either I have an insatiable curiosity for the views of others or I'm a glutton for punishment. Probably a little of both. The American Thinker article was indeed pretty eye opening and my amazement, and irritation if I'm to be honest, began with the second sentence, which summed up the author's bias, misinterpretations and a complete misunderstanding of what a Liberal actually is.

"Because liberals are at war with American society and their true beliefs are repugnant to most Americans, liberals constantly conceal the truth of their beliefs with sweet-sounding lies."

I don't know about you, but my first thought was, "Wow!" There is so much wrong with that one sentence that it's difficult to even know where to start. Most surprising to me is that the author obviously, truly believes this. But it's just so . . . out there. When I look for an example of a fringy, right wing, through the looking glass mind set, this would be exhibit 'A'. I give him credit for stepping off with vim and vigor. None whatsoever for accuracy or critical thinking, but boy does he have the unwavering, absolutist swagger down to a 'T'!

I won't play point, counterpoint with the entire post, though believe me I would dearly love to. To be fair to the author, I give him props for imaginative use of rarely utilized metaphors and historical personalities. I mean, really, when was the last time you read something that called out Nietzsche, Caligula or Quetzalcoatl, much less all of them?! Though, to be a bit critical, these and other historical references felt rather forced. More a way to show how well read he was than to actually illustrate or illuminate his point. As such, you will also find references to Communism, Nazis, Roman Emperors, 'true evil' and other pointless and silly hyperbolic statements.

One of the points that the author harps on incessantly, in his aforementioned wild and historically mismatched way, is that it's wrong to require religiously associated, public institutions to offer insurance coverage to their employees that goes against a religious belief of the institution. Specifically that Catholic hospitals and universities shouldn't have to offer contraception coverage for their employees. This is utter, one dimensional nonsense! It only makes any sense at all if these are closed institutions that hire ONLY devout Catholics. Otherwise it is the employees who are having their rights infringed based on a theological tenant that they may not agree with! Does the author think that every employee of these institutions is required to convert to Catholicism as a requirement for employment? If not, then what gives the employer the right to restrict employee insurance options based on their own moral views? By that logic everyone would be beholden to their employer's moral judgements for their medical coverage.

As far as I'm concerned, and I think this fits with the general Liberal viewpoint, I think everyone should be able to practice their faith and live their lives as they see fit. But your right to do that ends when it infringes on my rights. That's what living together in a democracy is all about. We are all different, with different moral foundations and considerations, but we have to live together. The only way that works in a free society is to set the limit of your faith and moral views at the point where my rights begin. I respect Catholics right to practice their faith and live life based on their beliefs, but that doesn't mean they can enforce those beliefs on anyone else, especially non-Catholics.

Contrary to the authors bizarrely distorted theory about Liberals, they aren't trying to force anyone to sell their soul. They just want to limit your ability to force your morals onto someone else in the guise of religious or personal freedom. And that is what this is all about. The author has made the classic mistake of getting so worked up about what he sees as wrong that he's neglected to step back and consider it objectively. He fails to even glance at the other side of the argument. It's so much easier for him to mount his high horse and whine about how horrible Liberals are for saying a religious organization can't force its secular employees to live by its moral code. Boohoo! I'm afraid he has it backwards. But seeing both sides takes so much more energy and is nowhere near as satisfying as a good, full throated pity party!

The author's whole post, while well written and, forgive the pun, liberally seeded with historic markers, is 180 degrees out of line. To claim Liberals are secret totalitarian monsters at a time when the State and Federal government are replete with conservatives attempting to legislate morality is mind blowing. That's why this post was so tough to read. It was like reading an article from an alternate universe, where everything is reversed. And just like Limbaugh, the author seems to have no idea what Ms. Fluke was even testifying about. She spent the majority of her testimony speaking specifically about the use of birth control pills, not for contraception, but as a medical treatment. Even I know that birth control pills are often prescribed for non-sexual reasons! So this is indeed a women's health issue and not, as some brainless prats have claimed, a matter of too much casual sex. As Ms. Fluke stated in her full testimony:

"This is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends. A woman’s reproductive healthcare isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority. These are not feelings that male fellow students experience. And they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder."

Despite using Ms. Fluke's name in just about every paragraph, in the end, the author's post is less about the Fluke/Limbaugh controversy than it is a letter of condemnation, denouncing anyone with the slightest progressive leaning. His accusations of intolerance and "liberal faith" are made up out of his fevered imagination. The piece is muddled even more by his obvious confusion between Liberals and the small group of activist Atheists when he starts blathering about such things as opposition to nativity scenes on public land. Something that only a minority of Liberals give any thought to. Then there is the Sharia law nonsense that only reinforces the author's warped thinking. Yes, there are Liberals who are a little 'out there'. Yes there are Liberals who will fight to stop nativity scenes from going up in front of the county courthouse. But the majority of Liberals are happy to let others live their lives as they wish, unless it infringes on someone else's rights. As I've stated, the author's thinking is way out of whack when compared to reality, but I wouldn't go out on a limb and declare that ALL Conservatives are this, or ALL Conservatives are that. There's a great line from the movie Gettysburg that I've always liked and it seems to fit well here. "Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time." I'm afraid that's exactly what the author of the American Thinker post is doing, judging 'Liberals', as a group, based on his own highly skewed caricature. Reality, you see, is a bit more complex.

A Platform in Knots

I can't be the only one who gets dizzy trying to follow some of the twisted and contradictory Republican policy positions. I've always noted a few that didn't make sense, but it seems to be getting worse. I'm not sure if it's because they are trying to appeal to too many different groups within the party or not, but it sure is confusing.

The backbone of conservative thinking is 'small government'. The idea that the federal government only does the minimum needed. It's generally talked about as keeping the government out of your life. And yet, there appear to be a number of caveats to this idea. They are famously on record for wanting to remove regulations on financial institutions, roll back environmental protections and any number of other corporate related areas. Yet, oddly, the small government zeal ends rather abruptly at the edge of your personal life. And it is odd, since I would think that keeping government out of your personal business would be more important than keeping it out of corporate business.

And yet there are GOP led initiatives to deny, by law, the right of two people who love each other from getting married simply because they are the same sex. The reason for this seems to always boil down to either theological interpretations or just the fact that it makes some people uncomfortable. Neither is a good reason to deny citizens the same rights as their fellow Americans. There are a lot of things in this world that make me uncomfortable, but you don't see me trying to make them all illegal. I've always loosely interpreted the idea of 'liberty' as the right to live your life as you want, as long as it doesn't violate someone else's rights. Two men or two women getting married has no impact on the rights of Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee or any other conservative, as far as I can tell. So, to my mind, it's not any of their business. I'm sorry, but being creeped out by homosexuality doesn't give you the right to make gay Americans second class citizens.

Then we have the fringes of the anti-abortion debate. Since the conservatives haven't been able to overturn Roe v. Wade after 40 years, they decided to make the process as psychologically and physically stressful as possible for any woman attempting to exercise their Constitutional rights. So we end up with bills like the one Virginia proposed recently. It would have had the VA state government dictate medically unnecessary procedures, even against medical advice or the objections of the patient, to include an INTERNAL, vaginal ultrasound. In other words, a state government wanted to force a woman to undergo a procedure whereby she is penetrated against her will. That's what you call a government that's not just small enough to drown in a tub, but actually small enough to fit inside a vagina! The bill was only scuttled, after passing all the way to the Governor's desk, due to a sudden deluge of national attention and outrage. Similar bills, without the penetration component, have already passed in a number of other states. These exist for only one purpose, to coerce and psychologically abuse a woman when she is at her most vulnerable. Sounds exactly like small government to me!

This election cycle we've seen yet another example of twisted policy, this time about birth control of all things. Yes, we are suddenly debating the availability of birth control in the year 2012. When did this become controversial, outside of Vatican City? Condoms have been in use since perhaps as far back as the 15th century, in some form or another, and female contraception has a history that stretches to ancient Egypt. This isn't a 'Liberal' agenda item, it's established and accepted history. One thing it isn't though is the business of any government or faith to dictate! I'm unable to grasp how a party that claims to value individual liberty can turn around and begin making noises about the legality of birth control. But the discussion gets really psychedelic when people like Rick Santorum starts babbling about the availability of birth control being related to increases in abortion rates. Huh?! I'm no doctor, but I'm pretty sure that contraception, by its very design and definition, prevents fertilization of an egg and thus any resulting fetus. If you're against abortion, than you damn well should be Pro-Contraception!! Just trying to parse the conservative logic on this is enough to induce a migraine.

On yet another front is the constant push to wedge theology into government and use that to dictate a specific moral view for the entire country. Santorum, and he's hardly alone in this mindset, recently declared that, "We have Judeo-Christian values that are based on biblical truth. ... And those truths don't change just because people's attitudes may change". First off, who's this 'we' of which you speak? Not sure if he realizes this or not, but America's citizens represent just about every theological point on the compass. In other words, 'we' aren't all 'Judeo-Christian,' shocking as that may be to hear. Secondly, I'm sorry, I was under the impression that the Constitution was based on the laws of man, not a completely unsupported theological text filled with barbaric customs that include stoning, fratricide and slavery, among many others. Shall we bring those back too? After all, they are also "biblical truth," are they not? Oh, I forgot! You get to pick and choose what parts to live by, don't you? Look, if you are for small government, you can't then be for dictating theology as policy or as the basis for national law. Faith is a personal choice and that's where it should begin and end.

It's this sort of contradictory thinking that drives me nuts, short drive that it is. I don't expect absolute consistency, but this is just a spaghetti bowl of random ideas. Maybe it stems from trying to house both ultra-conservative evangelicals under the same roof as secular moderates. But whatever the reason, it's insane. To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite movies, you keep using that phrase, 'small government.' "I don't think it means what you think it means."

Unintentional

Mississippi is set to vote in less than a week on a state amendment that would redefine a 'person' as existing "from the moment of fertilization, cloning or functional equivalent thereof". Yes, it includes cloning. It's the latest round of attempts to undermine the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Keep in mind that Roe v. Wade has been 'on the books' so to speak for almost 40 years now, yet has not been overturned.

Proposition 26 is, pardon the pun, the poster child for unintended consequences. It's one of those ideas that sounds interesting in a philosophical discussion about where life begins, but is a disaster waiting to happen if actually applied. The problem is that it opens the door to all sorts of complications that the simple minded folks who drew it up never considered.

Let's for a moment assume that this proposition was passed. We shall also assume, for the purposes of discussion, that it's not struck down immediately after introduction due to Constitutional conflicts, certainly a possibility. Based on the language, "moment of fertilization," could effectively outlaw some common forms of birth control such as the IUD. Some have even claimed that it could effect the Pill. Now there seems to be some disagreement on exactly where the birth control 'cut off' would be, though at least some personhood amendment supporters have expressed their belief and/or hope that it would ban the Pill. That in itself should worry you as it means that at least some of these people will fight to try and ensure it does include the Pill. Don't even think about any kind of birth control for victims of rape. This amendment would all but guarantee that these brutalized women would be forced by the state to carry their attacker's child.

What about a miscarriage or even a stillbirth? Does that trigger a mandatory homicide investigation? Sounds silly, but think about it. We've already had a woman in Mississippi charged with murder following the stillbirth of her baby, and while she did reportedly use cocaine there was no evidence that this had anything to do with the stillbirth.  So as crazy as it sounds, it's not a hypothetical question anymore. What if a woman smokes during pregnancy, could that be grounds for child endangerment charges?

But let's move outside the semi-obvious for a moment. Depending on interpretations this could effect in vitro fertilization and therefore endanger fertility treatments in general. On the same subject, will fertilized eggs be considered legal people? How will that effect inheritance law? Will this become part of census data, where every pregnant woman will need to note the number of fetuses she's carrying as members of the household? If the woman is injured or ill and you have to choose between her life or the life of her baby, will the judicial system step in to defend the rights of the fetus against the mother? What happens if the husband or her family choose to save the woman at the expense of the fetus? Would that be first degree murder now? While some of these examples may seem extreme, that doesn't mean they won't come into play. After all, we Americans have a knack for pushing the envelope in just about every facet of life.

I know we would all love a chart that clearly noted where 'life' starts, but it's not going to happen. It seems like it should be a simple question, but it's not. It's another of those annoying gray areas where everyone can come up with their own answer and make a case that they are right. This is why the abortion debate will not be solved in our lifetime and probably not for centuries, if ever. This "Personhood Amendment," while it may sound reasonable to the anti-abortion faction, is a bureaucratic, social and judicial land mine. Not only will it not clear up the question, it will muddy the waters far worse that they are now. Sometimes it's just as important to know when NOT to do something as it is to know when to do it. This is a good time NOT to do something.