Matt Walsh:
Progressivism is an ideology utterly devoid of intellectual integrity and coherence. It rides a certain argument like a train to Point A and denies there is a Point B, even though Point B is only a mile or two straight ahead and they already built the tracks that will take us there. Of course, Point B is always more horrific than Point A, and Point C more than Point B, so despite the incoherence and dishonesty of it, you don’t necessarily want to stop them from hitting the brakes.
A real world example: It is ridiculous that liberals support abortion but (usually) recoil at infanticide, or any other kind of -cide. If human life is not worthy of basic legal protections from the moment it is conceived, then there is nothing inherently sacred about it. If it can be cut out and disposed of like a plantar wart at 8 weeks or 12 weeks or 20 weeks, then by its very nature it is not fundamentally special or important. Its importance is entirely relative to how useful or desirable it is to others. If that’s the case, then infants — who, next to college students, are the most helpless and unproductive human beings in existence — should not be protected from termination. Neither should the elderly. Neither the sick. Neither the disabled. Neither the Kardashians. And so on.
But do I actually want progressives to follow their principles consistently here? No. Indeed, I live in fear of the day when they decide to be honest on this subject. They’re already starting to apply their pro-homosexual “marriage” arguments more universally, and now we have the mainstreaming of incest, bigamy and pedophilia. They’re taking their “transgenderism” arguments to their inevitable ends, and now we have perverts pretending to live as six-year-old girls and psychotics cutting off their nose and ears to live as dragons. I think I much preferred the more slapdash, incomplete version of progressivism.
Yet, at the risk of giving them ideas, I think we should try to make liberals understand what they’re arguments necessarily justify when taken to their logical conclusions. Not because we desire those conclusions, but because, hopefully, they don’t either.
So what happens when we bring the progressive enthusiasm for “anti-discrimination” laws to completion?
As you’ve heard, several states including Mississippi and North Carolina have recently passed religious freedom laws protecting, among other things, a Christian’s right to follow his conscience in determining who he will do business with, and what that business will entail. Other states like Georgia have attempted to pass similar laws only to have their efforts flaunted when their governors caved to outside pressure. Usually that pressure takes the form of boycotts and other economic threats from prominent figures, major corporations and even the federal government.
The boycotts are what I find especially interesting. Many companies have said they will not conduct business in states where the conscience rights of Christians are protected. PayPal, for example, announced last week that it’s canceling its plans to open an office in Charlotte due to the state’s “anti-LGBT” law. The NFL, Apple, Disney, NBC, etc., have made similar promises.
A few days ago, Bruce Springsteen canceled a show in North Carolina, which caused great distress and disappointment to 65-year-old white dads across the state. Someone named Bryan Adams also announced he will not be performing his two songs in Mississippi. In response, thousands of confused Mississippians typed “Bryan Adams” into Wikipedia. (He’s the “Everything I Do, I Do It For You” guy, by the way, so Mississippi really dodged a bullet.)
The irony here is so thick I might choke on it. These are people and companies choosing not to provide services to a group of people as a means of protesting a law that allows people to deny services to groups of people. They are following their conscience and boycotting to overturn a law that allows people to follow their conscience. They are exercising their First Amendment rights in order to make a statement against First Amendment rights. They are discriminating in response to “discrimination.” What’s next? Will they fly a private jet around the world to lecture people about the dangers of fossil fuel? Oh, never mind.
The contradiction here is impossible to overlook. If the underlying principle is that we may not “discriminate” and deprive others of “services,” then PayPal certainly should not be legally permitted to deprive North Carolinians of jobs because it disagrees with the politics or faith of many of the state’s residents. Bruce Springsteen and Bryan Adams should not be allowed to impede a person’s access to annoying music just because they disapprove of certain religious practices. A Bryan Adams concert is about as necessary and lifesaving a product as a wedding cake. If a baker cannot withhold his services because of his conscience, why should the singer be allowed to withhold his for the same reason?
If progressives wished to be consistent, they’d advocate that these religious freedom laws be abolished, but they’d also insist that, in the meantime, federal law enforcement officers barge into Bryan Adams’ townhouse and Bruce Springsteen’s retirement community and drag both men to their respective concert venues at gunpoint. If homosexuals have a God-given right to pastries and photography, then your aunt in Mississippi certainly has a God-given right to stand teary-eyed in the third row and listen to Bryan Adams croon about the summer of ’69.
But, OK, if the guns and the FBI agents seem a tad like overkill, at least progressives must agree that Adams and Springsteen, along with PayPal and every other offending company, ought to face fines and other financial penalties for greedily withholding their services from an entire group of people. We can’t let folks just follow their conscience all willy-nilly, can we?
As I see it, there are only two ways you can try to make a distinction between Christian business owners choosing not to provide services to gay weddings and liberal businessmen/80′s singers choosing not to provide services to entire states:
1. You can argue that one is discrimination and the other is not.
Let’s check with Webster. The definition of “discrimination” is “an act or instance of discriminating, or of making a distinction; treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit.”
That little boy who stood by when Obama signed ObamaCare?
He’s now identifying as a female.
ObamaCare is aiding him in obtaining proofs of his delusion: pills and surgeries.
We pay for it.
I guess that’s the rub if you’re a libertarian.
It DOES hurt you.
It hurts you in the pocketbook.
Bad.
Now, as for the conscience of the persons involved, the American Left is only following the lead of the European Left.
The right to free speech is being placed UNDER the right of Muslims not to be offended. Germany allows prosecution of comic for insulting joke about Turkey’s Erdogan.
In the UN sub-Saharan African women (non-Muslims) are being forced* to receive a form of birth control most women with a choice refuse. It is sub-cutaneous splinters of hormones. And the babies they never have as a result are termed by the UN as ”lives SAVED!”
Rebecca Oas quoted a joint statement made in March 2015 by philanthropist Melinda Gates and Graca Machel, widow of the late South African President Nelson Mandela. “In fact, if the world extended contraceptive use to only a quarter of the women with an unmet need, it could save the lives of 25,000 women and 250,000 newborns each year.”
The UN considers it a “life saved” when a baby is not conceived.
*They were asked only one question: would they prefer to become pregnant in the next two years. The researchers did not ask if they want family planning.
@Nanny G, #1:
I checked the story out, mostly out of curiousity, and found this:
‘I’m not the Obamacare kid anymore’
I guess my own observation is that it can’t be easy. I don’t understand it, and it’s not my place to approve or disapprove, but surely people wouldn’t go through this sort of transition if they didn’t feel that they had to. It must have something to do with being true to oneself. I don’t think it has anything at all to do with whether someone is a good person or not.
Well, as I DON’T believe that life is “sacred,” then it DOES follow that I don’t believe that a fetus deserves basic legal protections from the moment it is conceived, doesn’t it? There you go – that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Maybe a BETTER title would have been:
“If Christians CAN discriminate, so can Bruce Springsteen, and the people who pressured that CEO to resign over his anti-same-sex-marriage contributions, and bakers and the like who have been bankrupted because of their refusal to serve gays have nothing to complain about.”
Considering how much Republicans have been squawking about the latter, you’d have to conclude that they were in agreement that this right to discriminate DOESN’T exist, yet here they are demanding “religious freedom” laws to protect the very sort of discrimination that they are objecting to.
If numbskull Matt Walsh’s logic works one way, then it has to work the other way, too. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Walsh conveniently ignored that fact, but I won’t.
You can’t pick one discrimination from column A of a Chinese menu to exempt and prohibit the rest. It’s as simple as that.
@Greg: Kids nowadays would do this sort of thing to get attention or to be popular. Many are hammered with indoctrination and propaganda about the gay agenda was well as seeing how much attention celebrities receive when they make such declarations.
If someone has those legitimate feelings, they have my sympathies because that’s just bizarre. However, I am not convinced this is as widespread as we are led to believe.
Since the laws allow anyone whose Birth Certificate says they are male to go into the men’s room and anyone whose Birth Certificate says they are female to go into the ladies room, AND, since people can get their Birth Certificates CHANGED, I don’t see any problem.
The problem is occurring because males are simply CLAIMING to identify as female in order to ogle females of all ages.
I think the Liberals, and even Obama said it best when they said, ”it’s for the children,” and “if it saves just one child, it is worth it.”
Other than babies in changing stalls, men’s rooms are for males and women’s rooms for females.
@George Wells:
Then taking it is no crime.
@Nanny G: The problem, Nanny, is that there are NOW people who decide they are female one day and then male the next. In other words, they are sexual chameleons, changing their identity depending up what advantage or attention it will gain at the moment.
This is but another case where there IS no problem, but the left created one in order to pretend to support some maligned group (that is only maligned in the imagination of those wishing to further damage the nation.)
Saving children or lives in general is not a priority for liberals. Having political divisiveness is.
@DrJohn #6:
I’m REALLY hoping that you appreciate that your line – the second quote above – does not logically follow the first. Your presumably true proposition would be that if something IS sacred, then taking it IS a crime, and the corresponding opposite – that if something is NOT sacred, then taking it ISN’T a crime would also have to be true. But it ISN’T true. Stealing a television is a crime, but the television isn’t sacred. A logical equation has to work in both directions.
The source of your logical error is your confusion with the relationship between sacredness and crime. They are not the same, and one does not relate to the other in the Law, excepting by coincidence. If you believe in God, then you have a rational basis for BELIEVING that life is sacred. But as the Law provides NUMEROUS instances where taking life is “legal,” and scripture provides numerous instances where taking life is morally justified, you cannot make a blanket statement that taking life is a crime. In some cases it is, and in other cases it is not. It isn’t as simple as your statement would have it, and YOU aren’t as simple as you are pretending to be. Why the rouse?
@George Wells: Stealing a television, for instance, is a crime because a person’s personal property is sacred, not any specific item. Life is sacred, even is an embryo isn’t.
Life is taken for a specific reason; self defense or punishment for crime. When it is taken for convenience, as in in the commission or a crime or to take personal property and leave no witnesses, it is murder. When an abortion is committed for convenience, depending on when it is done and your specific ideas about when life begins, it is murder.
@Bill #9:
“a person’s personal property is sacred”
WOW! I learned something new today!
Where the Hell did THAT come from?
Seriously, I’ve NEVER heard that idea voiced in the Law, or offered up in court. The closest I’ve encountered is that odd slogan “a man’s home is his castle,” a concept that isn’t exactly spelled out in any law. But SACRED? Help me out, PLEASE! Where does this idea appear in the Law? Or is it another concept that you have DISTILLED out of your UNDERSTANDING of scripture? Because I’ve never heard the idea trip across the lips of any clergy, and I must have missed the Biblical verse that made the statement. And we’re going to need that, because YOU’VE made it important to your argument.
And since you’ve made fun of John’s typo, why don’t you go ahead and tell us what: “Life is sacred, even is an embryo isn’t” means?
@George Wells: Maybe you should look up the word. Intelligence is not to be overstated.
Were there any specific words you had problems with individually or was it the whole idea? Even if you view the embryo as pre-life, a mass of cells, a blob, a disease, a tumor or whatever makes killing it more acceptable, life itself, whenever it is agreed that it has begun, is sacred. Again, since you have demonstrated a problem with the use of the term, I recommend you look it up.
@Bill #11:
Yes. Your use of the word “is” in “even is an embryo isn’t.” Look again at what you posted. I think it was a typo, don’t you?
This seems to be just YOUR opinion, right? As in, NOT something that I am compelled to agree with?
(Because I don’t.)
SACRED: 1. Dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity. 2. Worthy of religious veneration: Holy, entitled to veneration and respect. 3. Of or relating to religion: not secular or profane.
My UNDERSTANDING of the use of the term “sacred” in the context of the discussion of the taking of life in instances of abortion and capital punishment is that in BOTH cases the expression “Life is sacred” means that life BELONGS to God, and that it is His right and His right alone to give or take life as he pleases.
While I do not personally acknowledge a specific God (I am agnostic) I appreciate that a lot of people do. That does not, however, require me to agree that “life is sacred.” I see no evidence to suggest that it is.
@George Wells:
4.
reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object:
a morning hour sacred to study.
5.
regarded with reverence:
the sacred memory of a dead hero.
6.
secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right:
sacred oaths; sacred rights.
7.
properly immune from violence, interference, etc., as a person or office.
Don’t be so fixated on religion; it clouds your judgement.
So, you are not the vegetarian whose aversion to eating meat is based on how mean it is to animals?
@Bill #13:
The additional contexts you provided to the meaning of “sacred” tend in my opinion to cheapen the term, removing it from its connection with God. Do you sense the same thing? Read them again.
As such, it is difficult for me to attach ANY legitimate significance to YOUR use of the term “sacred,” since you DO seem to be willfully surrendering its connection to God. Once you say that all that is required for a thing to be “sacred” is for PEOPLE to agree that it is, you are pretty much leaving it up to those same people to decide what, if anything, is wrong with abortion… which is exactly MY point. It is a HUMAN decision. There IS no ABSOLUTE right or wrong. Hey, I’m all for taking GOD out of this equation, and thank you very much for agreeing!
And, LOL, no, I’m not a vegetarian.
@George Wells: Ah. So, for convenience sake, we (again) alter the meaning of a word to suit a political position? As I showed, the word “sacred” has meanings other than within the religious realm. Because those making your argument always like to make it about religion, then vilify and demean the religion, you jumped to the conclusion that I somehow meant a person worships a television as a deity (well, maybe sometimes not too far from the truth).
Sorry, I thought it was you that decried the killing of animals for food.
@Bill #15:
Actually, I make up my mind on issues independently of political affiliation. What Republican or the Democratic positions on issues happen to be don’t influence me.
No, Bill, I didn’t. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.
I just personally don’t like the word “sacred” at all, finding its use inescapably associated with a sense of political correctness. When something is “sacred,” you’re NOT supposed to make fun of it. I think that’s BS. For me, nothing is sacred, so it follows that the word has no relevance for me in the real world. I never use the word in conversation for that reason. So if my definitions (that I found in MY dictionary) don’t make you happy, well, tough. Like you said, here’s another word that apparently we can’t agree on a definition for. Big surprise there.
Look at it this way. You BELIEVE that life is “sacred.” Does it actually matter whether your BELIEF is based in religion, or not? What, exactly, distinguishes the secular aspects of “sacredness” that you claim exist from the religious context that I proposed? Aren’t BOTH aspects of “sacred” just different attributions of the same, singular “specialness”? Well, wherever that “specialness” comes from, I don’t accept delivery of that idea. I’m reversing the charges. Sorry.
I DO think that life is “precious,” though only to the entity that has it. For you and for me, life is the most precious thing that we “own,” but YOUR life isn’t worth much at all to me, and mine not to you. Neither is the life of a fetus of any practical value unless there is someone who actually WANTS that fetus to live, and a pregnant woman seeking an abortion clearly DOESN’T want it. And I have to conclude that while a lot of conservatives CLAIM that they DO want those soon-to-be-aborted fetuses, they aren’t wanting them badly enough to step up and adopt them. All they’re willing to do is make the mother carry the thing to term and be stuck with the result. That’s not enough.
@George Wells: I am certainly not going to prolong a discussion on the different meanings and uses of the word “sacred”. You either screwed up and jumped to a conclusion or you made an attempt to tangent off subject.
Yet another example of the left expecting everyone but themselves to clean up the mess their anti-responsibility personal lifestyle leaves behind. Why would it be the sole responsibility of conservatives to take on all the responsibility? Because they are the only ones that recognize the sanctity of life? Besides, how often is the mother willing to go to term and offer adoption? That’s 9 months they can’t smoke, drink, party, screw and get pregnant again… they ain’t got time for that.
I’ll tell you what’s sacred; the left’s worship of abortion is sacred to them because it represents an easy out from irresponsible behavior they are not willing to compromise on. Not even to address when they would be taking a viable life.
@Bill #17:
Well “F” the left. The “left” is not me. It is ME who is talking to you, not the “left.” I’ve given you a rational compromise on abortion, and I’ve made sure to include the taking of viable life in the category of “murder,” and what have you done with it? You’ve ignored it. Thanks a lot. And, YES, those selfish, drug-addled single moms don’t have a compassionate bone in their bodies, and guess what? They SHOULDN’T be allowed to get pregnant in the first place! If I had the ability to turn off people’s fertility, they’d be at the top of the list. But I don’t, and those trash make terrible parents, and I REALLY don’t want to pay for THEIR mistakes, and neither do you.
And hey! The discussion on the word “sacred” was beginning to get somewhere and you up and quit? Why? Was my take on it beginning to make sense? You got a crappy attitude there…
Look, Bill, I’ve put a lot of time and thought into answering your questions, and I get the impression that you don’t appreciate my effort and that you don’t intend to return the favor. If that’s all you’re here for, fine, but count me out. Let me know if you change your mind and decide you’d rather exchange ideas instead of trading insults. We’re both grown-ups, and you don’t have to be a d-ck.
@George Wells: Careful not to get tears all over your keyboard. Sorry you can’t abide my unwillingness to chase various subject through the different rabbit holes you try to take them. Somehow the subject of hypocrisy over needless laws to keep people in the proper restrooms turns to abortion. I asked the simple yet overriding question I always do: if the supporters of abortion do not believe life begins at conception, when DOES it begin and, therefore, when is abortion no longer allowed. i.e., it is taking a life, as in “murder”. You are no better at answering the question than anyone else yet you want to contend that it is NEVER murder (correct me if I am wrong).
It’s not about a comparison to property or nitpicking definitions; when is abortion murder for, by every justification given, life begins SOMETIME prior to exit.
@Bill #19:
Unless there is ANOTHER “Bill” here on Flopping Aces, I have been having this conversation with you on “Trump isn’t the Enemy.” You asked this same question there, and I answered it as follows:
To which you replied:
I AGREE WITH THAT!!!!!
So what’s your problem????
I added:
The addition did not alter my support of YOUR 20 week threshold.
So where IS your problem????
I answered the damn question, and my answer was the same as yours. What more do you want????
The term “murder” does not apply in every instance where living human tissue is caused to die. It has to be viable. If it is NOT viable, then it cannot be murdered. You asked, I answered.
What, you forgot???
@George Wells: Did you not say that abortion is NEVER murder? Your agreement with the 20 week threshold would seem to contradict that.
@Bill #21:
There are MANY people who believe that “murder” is something that can only be done to a BORN human being. I have acknowledged that these people exist, and that their opinions matter, JUST as I have acknowledged that people who believe that “murder” applies to an embryo at the moment of conception also exist and that THEIR opinions ALSO matter. For some people, ALL forms of abortion are “murder”, and for some, none are “murder.”
“Murder” is a more complex and subjective term than is “kill,” with variations of meaning that move away from biological evidence and toward religious judgment, and I find no convenient way to reconcile the differences in its meaning that are held to be important by the various parties involved. I therefore accept the need to compromise on the issue of abortion. There seem to be rational reasons to pick the third trimester – or the 20-week limitation – as the best point of demarcation, and there is more consensus on this limitation than on any other option.
I am a gay man, and abortion is not a hot button issue for me. It is not likely to ever touch my life even indirectly, so I don’t really give it much thought. But you asked the question and pressed me for an answer, so I gave you the best answer I could think of. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other. We don’t need more people. But it IS “nice” if our citizens can reach a consensus on issues like this one that deeply trouble them (not me) so that we don’t back ourselves into another Civil War.
When?
Who knows?
I might have – I have no way of knowing IF I ever said that, or what the context may have been IF I did.
If you know something I don’t, share it.
@George Wells: If you don’t care one way or another, why get so pissed when someone calls you on your position?
I am no anti-abortion zealot by aany means but when I see the extremes the left supports in regards to their worship of abortion, I get pretty pissed myself. Though I am married, I still cringe at the slaughter of an innocent baby; I reall don’t see how that factors in.
Also, US birth rates are down. Sure, we have plenty of illegal immigrants and they have their free, taxpayer-funded babies with regularity here, but that is not exactly preserving our nation. Do you recommend allowing the mur… er, “killing” of those babies, for the greater good of the collective? Maybe those who pay the bills should get to wield the hammer?
That’s where we are headed via your view of “humanity”. If you really don’t care about it, why reveal such a view?
@Bill #23:
Ummmm…. I’m still confused by your failure to accept that I have agreed with you on abortion. What did you miss?
And what is all this nonsense about killing babies? Where did I EVER suggest that killing babies was OK?
You are making up a disagreement that does not exist.
@George Wells: You said you don’t really care or think about it; why do you keep harping on it?
@Bill #25:
Who’s harping? YOU asked the question and I answered it.
I paid you the favor of answering you carefully and thoroughly, and you complained that I was nit-picking over the meanings of words like “sacred.” Hey, YOU used the word, I just wanted to make sure what you meant by it.
Then you got confused when I agreed with you, so I had to straighten that out.
Then you threw in “killing babies,” just to confuse things more. Killing babies and aborting fetuses are two different things. One of your favorite strategies that you use to drag out arguments is to move the goal posts, and I can live with that because I have a sense of humor.
Then you complained that I am harping, when really all I’m doing is answering the moving target that is your idea of how an argument works.
It is a conversation. To keep it going, each person needs to not drop the ball. To end it, one person either has to concede or simply stop responding. Since you do neither, it is safe to assume that you DON’T want it to stop. So I’m doing my part, and it isn’t harping, and it isn’t a big deal.
@George Wells: Uh, YOU’RE harping. If you don’t care about it, why carry on with it? After all, it isn’t gay “marriage”, so the lives of babies carries no significant importance at all, does it?
@Bill:
If MY telling the truth is Harping, what is your lying?
Nobody is talking about killing babies.
Stop lying about that. It has nothing to do with abortion.
Happy now?
@George Wells: “Killing babies has nothing to do with abortion”… and I’M lying.
And back on topic:
If Christians CAN discriminate, then so can Bruce Springsteen, and anyone else who cares to.
@George Wells: Sure they can. And, they can suffer the consequences. Gosh, what a concept.
@Bill #31:
We can then just do away with all laws, and let mob rule settle everything. Gosh, what a concept.
I’m guessing that you already have a stash of guns, ammo, food and old Playboy magazines squirreled away in a hole, and you can’t wait to prove that you can live under ground in better style than Saddam Hussein. Good luck with that.
@George Wells:
Sort of the concept you’ve been promoting… When something does not agree with you, tear it down.
@Bill #33:
Hardly. I’ve NEVER supported the tyranny of the masses. The masses don’t know what’s good for THEM, much less anyone else. Considering that the majority of voters selected BHO TWICE, are you SURE that you’d want that same mob to hold a veto privilege over YOUR civil rights?
@George Wells: No, you support the tyranny of the minority, as long as YOU are part of the minority and as long as addressing that tyranny can be deemed some negative “ism” or “phobia”.