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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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January 22, 2003
Roe is legal nonsense
The simple fact is that Roe v Wade is nonsense as a legal opinion. It is nonsense to pretend the constitution guarantees a right to abortion; there is nothing in the constitution about abortion. The court just wanted to make policy, so they did. They completely made it up wholecloth. The fact that you can get a half dozen lawyers to agree to the same lie doesn't make it the truth. Ann Coulter really nails the basic blunt legal point brilliantly- and hilariously.
Even if you favor legal abortion, do you think it so important that the ends justify absolutely any means? If the unelected court can just make up whatever laws they want, how good is that going to work? It'll cut back some way you won't like, and you won't have much you can do about it. Such practices are horribly destructive to our whole democratic structure.
Abortion law after the inevitable fall of the meritless Roe
If the public supports your pro-choice position, then take it up in the legislatures like you should. No state would seriously try to completely outlaw the practice at this point, though at least a few would be inclined to put on some regulations and restrictions.
As a libertarian, I tend to be pretty opposed to government regulation, but thinking out specific abortion issues, I have some conflicting urges. For starters, proper libertarian position or no, I'm inclined to favor parental notification laws. Juveniles are not yet deemed ready to make all their own decisions -especially a teenager who has had no better judgment than to get pregnant. The opposition to this amounts to nothing more than presuming to have the federal courts by fiat overrule any parental objection to their child doing something they may well regret for the rest of their life. You don't need to get your parents' permission; WE give you permission.
Also, I can understand a woman insisting that she has a right to get anything or anyone taken out of her own body. However, why would it be unreasonable to expect that a viable fetus be merely kicked out of the womb rather than purposely slaughtered? That is, why wouldn't it be reasonable to expect viable fetuses to be delivered if possible rather than unnecessarily slaughtered? Is that too much to ask? If someone has purposely intruded into your house, you have a right to run them off or have them arrested, but you can't just KILL them. I think even most hardcore libertarians would agree to this. Why shouldn't a small baby who didn't ask to be there get at least the same consideration as a thief?
Am I an ass just for asking?
Just asking.
posted by Al at 1/22/2003 06:45:00 PM
Roe roundup
Good ol' Joshua Claybourn has a Roe anniversary roundup, including comments about our Culpepper entries: "I don't agree with either the post or the song for reasons that have been repeated over and over by pro-life camps."
Now I see not agreeing with the grudging pro-choice position stated in my post. I'm not real thrilled with it myself. But I've taken some kind of political position with which to agree or disagree.
I'm not sure, however, what it would mean to "disagree" with "I'm a Choice, Not a Child." Again, it's really not a political statement; Steve's not staking out a political position, at least not in the song. Joshua's apparently taking it as a pro-choice statement, but I find it rather unlikely that anyone in the pro-choice camp would take aid or comfort from this song.
posted by Al at 1/22/2003 06:01:00 PM
Abortion, a terrible sin.
The topic of abortion tends to very strongly, if in many contradictory ways, strike some emotional hot buttons in nearly everyone. I know it hits conflicting hot buttons for me.
The thing that really hurts my heart is the smug superiority and callousness of many pro-choice advocates. They make many violations of reason and decency, but what really bothers me is their disdain for the little dead babies. They weren't really babies. They were just "choices" for the women to make, and anybody who has any misgivings about our very open abortion laws is HITLER!
You might reasonably say that the fetuses are not really children yet for a few weeks. The fertilized egg ain't really much of a human starting out. The DNA set has been decided; the egg is still more a blueprint than a product, though. You can go into technical moral arguments, but existentially it's not soup yet. Even on fairly strict standards, I'm not inclined to be morally outraged by use of morning after RU486 pills.
However, within a few weeks you are getting to having an actual person in there. A six week old fetus will have arms and legs and a nervous system, and a beating heart.
I think I start putting their personhood on record with the physical development of a nervous system. The seat of consciousness exists, registering memory- and rapidly increasing ability to feel pain.
By that point, you're goddam lying to yourself to pretend that's not a person. It's bad enough that you are arguing for killing babies. [I say that this is not even properly to be considered a loaded phrase, but the most neutral possible way of accurately describing the actual fact.] It's adding disrespect to killing.
Circumstances make a substantial difference. It'd be hard cases for me to judge against a teenaged rape victim who wanted an abortion. I might be more judgmental about some drunk sorority slut or the punk-ass little frat boy who encourages it. Of course, there might be arguments in picking out which category some particular young woman belongs in: rape victim vs pregnant sorority slut vs a little from colum A and a little from column B.
There are so many different extenuating circumstances, I know. What if the woman was... What if she just broke up with the guy cause he was cheating. What if...
I hate to judge unless it is necessary. I want to have empathy. But it's going to take a pretty goddam good excuse to absolve someone for killing their baby. [Again, not inflammatory language, but the simple and most direct description of objective reality, whatever moral judgment you make.]
Still, I tend to favor legal abortion, though reluctantly. As skeptical as I may be about the excuses for abortion, I don't believe in government enough to trust giving them any say on what a person has going on up in them, even if it involves another person.
That doesn't mean that I accept it. I largely feel compelled to tolerate the practice, but that does not mean that I find it to be merely an equal but different lifestyle choice. I tend to think that abortion is a grave moral sin.
I'd say that you'll have to answer to G-d for your sins, but I'm not religious that way. So you can probably skin out of answering to god for your abortions.
You'll still have to live with yourself, though, and I'm not going to aid and abet after the fact by soothing your hurt feelings and telling you that you've done nothing wrong.Labels: god, julie andrews
posted by Al at 1/22/2003 01:31:00 AM
"Mother"
by Gwendolyn Brooks, 1945
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
posted by Al at 1/22/2003 12:43:00 AM
January 21, 2003
Everybody hurts
Contemplating the agony of abortion last weekend as the 30th anniversary of Roe approached, Brother Steve was struck by songs about abortion. He agreed that Ben Folds' "Brick" was a great song, but questioned the viewpoint. "If it was a sad day for the should-have-been daddy, what must it have been like for the "choice?"
Twenty four hours later, he had an answer written and recorded: "I'm a Choice, Not a Child." DOWNLOAD THIS SONG
The song actually truly has NO political content; it's not about public policy one way or another. Inevitably it will be viewed through the ideological lenses of each listener. However, I would urge you to listen to it instead as a song, judging it based on melody and song structure, and soul.
posted by Al at 1/21/2003 04:08:00 PM
January 20, 2003
Fair fighting and stupid tactics
So they're pushing this new software called Microsoft Windows Media Data Session Toolkit. [HERE and HERE for the news story.] Naturally I am skeptical, both as a purchaser of factory CDs and as a user of MP3s.
From the Reuters story:
It enables music labels to lay songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.
The PC layer, laid digitally on the same disc, can be modified by the content provider, so that they could prevent, for example, burning songs onto another CD, said David Fester, general manager, digital media entertainment for Microsoft.
First off, let me say that I support the right of the record companies to put out whatever kind of coding they want to, so long as it is not maliciously taking over people's computers. To some partial extent, the record companies have legitimate concerns about massive downloading of their recent material. I would not support legal blockages against companies encrypting their music software anymore than I would support legal blockages against people encrypting their email.
This sounds like a bunch more crappy, complicated programing to screw up the basic product, though. The record companies seem to think that they'll just get the right technological and legal strokes, and they'll get to keep screwing consumers as hard as they want and as long as they want with quadruple pricing of CDs and endless extensions of copyrights.
Hint: it will not work. Whatever kind of blocking and encryption you come up with will take some high school kid about 20 minutes to bust up, and there won't be anything you or your schills in government can do to prevent it. All you're going to do is to come up with something to cause more problems for paying customers wanting to use your product.
Indeed, this could lead to even MORE and accelerated sucking on their sales charts. I know that I for one will not pay good money for CDs that are screwy. Nor will I pay for them even if this code works smoothly as planned; when I pay money for the CD I absolutely expect to be able to make backup copies or MP3 files or mix tapes for personal use. Damned if I'm going to pay money for something I can't use.
Specifically, if a CD comes from the factory with limiting encryption, I'll not buy such an inferior product. Instead, I'll make a point of getting a nice clean MP3 off the net after someone cracks it, which means the record company gets NOTHING. Then I will laugh.
This is not just me making a political point; it is a practical personal matter to everyone who buys CDs. Stupid encryption programming will motivate even a lot of people who are not particularly interested in the political issues, even wealthy people who don't mind blowing wads of money on the cartel products. Who will pay the bucks to buy a commercial product that is actively inferior to what they can download on the net for free?
posted by Al at 1/20/2003 08:16:00 PM
January 19, 2003
Welcome to my nightmare
Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. This would be his 194th birthday. Of course he famously died pretty much literally face down in the gutter. He was a tortured soul with a rough row to hoe, and problems with booze and dope.
He was, however, one of the top ten or so best users of the written English language ever. He just flat had the skills to pay the bills. He pretty much invented the modern detective story. He wrote exceptionally good, lucid poetry.
He is probably best remembered for some horror short stories, such as "The Telltale Heart" and the supernatural intricacies of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Masque of the Red Death." Stephen King has done some good work, but Poe makes him look like a P-U-N-K. Poe was, among other things, the best fulfillment of a literary gothic tradition. Any little poser goth kids ought to be studying Poe. He is the great role model.
In his life of struggles, Poe was certainly one of the most morbid writers ever to write major work in all of the English language. Perhaps making the point most succintly would come by quoting the whole of one of his most famous poems:
Annabel Lee.
By Edgar A. Poe.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; �
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love �
I and my Annabel Lee �
With a love that the wing�d seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me �
Yes! � that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we �
Of many far wiser than we �
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: �
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee: �
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling � my darling � my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea �
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Finally, there is the Poe grave schtick. Poe is buried in the Old Western Burial Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Every January 19, Poe's birthday, for more than fifty years a man dressed in black and fedora has left cognac accompanied by three red roses on Poe's grave. I can appreciate wanting to memorialize him, but methinks that's just a bit much. It seems a little kitschy gay to me, frankly. Just a tad cheap and tacky for my taste.
posted by Al at 1/19/2003 02:53:00 AM
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