Is there any coherent argument against same-sex marriage? I don't see one!

There are a lot of comments I have seen by opponents of same-sex marriage in the light of the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision, and others that I had seen even before that, attacking the very idea of same-sex marriage, but none of these arguments makes very much sense. It is obviously the case that the people making the arguments against same-sex marriage are simply trying, lamely, to find ways that do not fall afoul of the First Amendment to say “my religion does not accept it; thus it's wrong.”

The most common, but stupidest, argument I have seen is “We are ‘redefining’ marriage, an institution that has remained unchanged for thousands of years.” First of all, I cannot accept that this is a “redefinition of marriage.” If we define marriage as “two persons who love each other agreeing to form a single household” (which to me seemns the fundamental purpose of a marriage), the definition has not changed. All that has changed is that the right to marry has been extended to couples that had not this right in the past. And as I have said in earlier posts, when the right to vote was extended to eighteen-year-olds, nobody considered this to be a “redefinition of voting”! So how can this be a “redefinition of marriage”?

In addition, marriage has been redefined in much more radical ways over the 200-plus-year history of this nation. In the 1700s, being married meant a woman gave up her right to own property, and in fact was considered the property of her husband. This has long since ceased to be the case; and I hope nobody wants to restore that “traditional” definition of marriage.

Some opponents of same-sex marriage make the point that “children who grow up with both their mother and their father in an intact family are most likely to develop into well-adjusted, productive citizens able to sustain and provide for themselves. In contrast, when marriages break down or disappear, economic troubles all too often surface.” But this is really totally irrelevant to the issue of same-sex marriage. A same-sex couple, to be sure, can only have children by adoption; it cannot create one. But the children that couple might adopt would have been given up for adoption in any case. The “family” into which they were born did not break up because the same-sex couple had married; it was broken in any case. And many anti-same-sex-marriage people (probably the overwhelming majority, in fact) are opposed to abortion and favor adoption as a solution. The only way one can reduce the number of children who do not “grow up with both their mother and their father in an intact family” would be to forbid giving up one's child for adoption. And I have not seen anyone favoring such a law.

But how about the argument that “children who have both a mother and a father are better adjusted than children in single-parent families”? This argument could only make sense if there were enough male-female married couples desiring to adopt to take care of all the adoptable children there are, and nobody, I think, believes this is the case. The alternative, for those children who were not adopted by a same-sex couple, is probably not to grow up in a family at all. And I am sure that children with two adoptive fathers or two adoptive mothers are still better off than children with no adoptive parents at all.

So what argument can an opponent of same-sex marriage make? I do not think there is any.

Ireland's gay marriage vote

Ireland yesterday voted — by a 5 to 3 margin — to legalize same-sex marriage. It's hard to believe that a country which is so dominated by the Roman Catholic Church that abortion is still illegal there would vote so decisively that way. (It's been trumpeted as the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. It is the first to do so nationwide. But in the United States, of course, it's a state issue and several states (including my own, Maryland) did legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.We don't have a national vote on issues like this.

But let's not quibble. Congratulations to the Irish people for their stand in favor of freedom, and to the gay & lesbian community in Ireland for their victory.

I'm back! And the recent Supreme Court decisions

It's been a two-month hiatus in my posts — I have been grappling with some medical issues and decided to devote my efforts elsewhere. My condition has not gotten better, but the news I heard today is encouraging enough that I can resume a few other activities that I have put aside.

I am very happy over three decisions that the Supreme Court announced in the past few days. National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning is an amazing sight. Even the two Justices that President Obama appointed, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, agreed that he had gone beyond the bounds of the Constitution. This decision was 9-0, unanimous! Even beyond the rebuke to President Obama, this is a noteworthy decision, because it defines the “recess appointment” power, which had never been treated in any Supreme Court case. The decision did not go as far as some conservatives wanted — they wanted it to restrict the power to filling vacancies that actually happened when the Senate was not in session — but the Court's ruling that when the Senate says it is in session, and is able to conduct business according to its own rules, the President cannot declare them to be in recess and make appointments speaks volumes.

The other two decisions were not unanimous, but 5-4, with all the Republican-appointed Justices in the majority and the Democratic-appointed ones in dissent. Jeffrey Toobin of CNN is right when he says:

Elections have consequences.

That's the message of Monday's rulings from the Supreme Court -- and, indeed, all decisions by nine justices whose ideologies reflect, with considerable precision, the views of the presidents who appointed them. Both the Hobby Lobby case -- which concerned the intersection of women's rights, religious freedom, and Obamacare -- and the Harris case, about the future of labor unions, were 5-4 decisions.

Five Republican appointees for the owners of Hobby Lobby (and against the unions). Four Democratic appointees for the Obama administration (and for the unions). Notably, too, three of those four Democratic appointees are women. (Of 112 people who have served on the Supreme Court, four have been women.)

As in so many cases before the justices, the legal issues in these cases were as much political as legal. Indeed, just like politicians, the justices try to frame the questions before them in as politically appealing ways as they can.

In Hobby Lobby, the issue was whether a privately held company, whose owners have strong religious convictions against abortion, can refuse to pay for certain forms of birth control which they regard as immoral. “The owners of many closely held corporations could not in good conscience provide such coverage,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, and to force them to do so would violate federal law.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for the dissenters, framed the issue in an entirely different way. She and her colleagues saw Hobby Lobby as asking for -- and receiving -- a license from the court to discriminate against women. What, she asked, about companies that have religious objections to treating African-Americans equally -- or gay people? And, she asks, “how does the Court divine which religious beliefs are worthy of accommodation, and which are not?”

The same kind of conflict undergirds the union case. In that case, home care workers who are covered by a union contract demanded the freedom to refuse to pay dues -- which the conservative majority granted them. Is this, as Alito (again) held, simply a matter of preserving the freedom of speech rights of these employees? Or is it, as the dissenters, led by Justice Elena Kagan, said, a vehicle to starve unions of the dollars they need to survive -- and negotiate precisely these kinds of contracts?

…

But no one should be misled. When it comes to the most fundamental issues before the court, the most important factor is not the legal arguments but the identity of the judges -- and the presidents who appointed them. Republicans vote one way, Democrats another. It's true in Congress, and it's true on the other side of First Street as well -- in the marble temple of the United States Supreme Court.

Now I think Toobin favors the Democratic position. But I am very glad, based on these two decisions, to say that I am a Republican. The Hobby Lobby decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., was a blow for religious freedom, and while I would not, in my own religion, see anything wrong with providing contraceptive drugs, the fact that the owners of Hobby Lobby had strong religious beliefs that precluded this must be honored. Another day, it might be anti-circumcision laws, for example, which had been favored by many people in some parts of California. So I want to honor everyone's religous freedom rights, and this decision was a step in this direction. It said that you do not give up your religious freedom by forming a corporation, and one thing Toobin does not mention is that this decision also highlights the anti-corporate attitudes in the Democratic Party.

The other case is about another issue dear to my heart: labor unions' inordinate power. While I wish the Court had gone further and reversed its earlier Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision, in Harris v. Quinn the Court did rein in the power to collect dues from people who choose not to join. If Justice Kagan thinks it is “a vehicle to starve unions of the dollars they need to survive,” who else besides a labor union has the right to demand “the dollars they need to survive” of people who do not believe they are being served in any way by them?

The right to marry advances

Six days ago, a Federal court forced the state of Utah to legalize same-sex marriage, a day after another court decidid the same issue for New Mexico. There are now eighteen states, more than a third of the fifty total, with legal same-sex marriage.

Utah is a major surprise. It is a very conservative state, heavily Mormon, and the Mormon church has strongly opposed the right to marry for same-sex couples. A poll in 2011 found Utah citizens strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. If a judge can legalize same-sex marriage in Utah, it may well be the case that nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage will follow sooner than I would have thought.

The division among the people will still persist, and this may well become as divisive an issue as abortion has become since Roe v. Wade. Yet there is really less reason for that. In the case of Roe, I can really understand some people's conviction that a fetus is a person and abortion is murder — I can understand it, though I think they are totally wrong! But I do not understand how allowing John and Joe (or Jane and Joan) to marry affects anyone else's marriage. No clergyman is forced to perform a same-sex marriage, any more than a rabbi who will not perform an interreligious one is forced to, and if a florist or a baker is made to provide his product for use at such a marriage, he is not being called to recognize such a marriage as a marriage,: he is only selling a bouquet or a cake to some people having a party. I can't see how his religious freedom is being impacted, as some conservative columnists have intimated.

But things are moving faster than 'd expected!

Social conservatism: the curse of the GOP

When we look at the recent elections in New Jersey and Virginia, one factor is inescapable. The embrace by many Republican politicians of a hard right social agenda is empowering Democrats. Look at what Terry McAuliffe did in Virginia. It was by calling attention to Ken Cuccinelli's policies on abortion and such that he built up a 10+ point lead in some polls — and it was only because Cuccinelli managed to shift the dialog to the Obamacare disaster that he made the final result much closer. Imagine what would have happened in Virginia if McAuliffe had not been able to attack the Republican on the social issues? If a moderate were to have had the Republican nomination, and so only the Democrats' weaknesses (especially on Obamacare) had been before the public, we'd have seen a GOP win the Governorship — this is certain to me.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, we had a Republican nominee who was conservative — but not an in-your-face sort of conservative. Chris Christie was not in favor of gay marriage, but when the court said New Jersey had it allow it, he decided not to appeal. He's worked with a Democratic legislature, yet managed to get them to approve a program that is economically (not socially) conservative. That's really the way to get Republican ideas into force — and it's why I have supported Christie for years, even before this month's big election win. He may have some trouble getting the nomination — I saw a headline on a post comparing Christie to “President Giuliani,” and it is this hurdle that worries me, because I think Giuliani would have made an excellent President, but simply could not get through the Republican primaries — but if Republican primary voters want to be able to win in November 2016, they will realize that nobody is better to getting Democrats and independents to vote for a Republican than Chris Christie. And you can't put your prograns through unless you win the election.

Who is trying to get their own way without compromise?

An interesting post was made on The Federalist.com site by David Harsanyi, dated October 2, 2013, called “Guess What? History Didn’t Begin The Day Obamacare Passed: Trying to erase the past to dictate the future.” It deserves reading, and I quote it:

Hitting legend Stan Musial once allegedly declared that the “first principle of contract negotiations is don’t remind them of what you did in the past; tell them what you’re going to do in the future.” That neatly sums up how liberals would like to treat these budget /debt ceiling showdowns. Take for example: (from Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGS 8:06 AM - 2 Oct 2013)

Serious Q: Has any R explained cogently *why* Ds should give Rs unilateral concessions in exchange for funding gov at sequester levels?

Now, if history had kicked off five minutes ago this would be a reasonable question, but since politics is a continuum and Obamacare doesn’t exist in a vacuum it’s a misleading one.

In reality, the only characteristic of the Affordable Care Act that’s “unilateral” is the manner in which it was passed; without consensus and without the minimal compromises that would have rendered long-term Republican opposition to Obamacare untenable. If Democrats had, back in 2009-2010, capitulated on one or two conservative objectives – out-of-state insurance markets or tort reform, for instance – this moment would be impossible.

Today, left-wing pundits wring their hand about partisan inflexibility and conventional wisdom of the media has coagulated around the “hostage taking” storyline. Back then, they were less concerned the health of Washington. Any alleged concessions made by the Administration in 2010 were aimed at corralling wayward Red State Democrats, resulting in the removal of the public option and the adding of bogus guarantees on abortion funding. And any concessions on bringing the price tag below a trillion dollars – a claim that was a specious even then – was necessary to try and close the deal with the public. When one party dictates every term of a massive reform effort, the inevitable result is what we’re seeing today.

Which bring us to a related talking point: Embedded in one of the most painful misinterpretations of the Federalist Papers you may ever read, James Downie of the Washington Post writes:

Here are the facts, Republicans: The legislative branch passed the Affordable Care Act. The executive branch signed it into law. The judicial branch upheld it as constitutional. The American people voted to reelect the president who championed it. Since the act was passed, Americans who favor and/or want the law expanded have consistently outnumbered those who oppose the law. And now Americans are already clearly opposed to Republicans’ shutdown tactics. If this were a game, we’d call the result a blowout.

No doubt many of you may quibble with Downie’s assertion about the law’s popularity, but generally speaking he’s right — and none of it matters.

DOMA passed with a 342–67 margin in the House and a 85–14 margin in the Senate, yet it was consistently challenged in the courts and by politicians. Citizens United was found constitutional and almost immediately the president attacked the Court. (As you know, some decisions are more sacred than others.) Americans twice elected a president who championed the Iraq War and yet progressives never stopped opposing it. In 2001, No Child Left Behind passed the House by a 384–45 and the Senate 91–8 margin. Yet, almost immediately liberal groups, and soon after elected officials, began their attempts to dismantle it.

Democrats had every right to engage in those pursuits. In fact, it’s healthy that they did. Health-care legislation isn’t chiseled into stone tablets and it’s not enshrined in the Constitution. The entire Obamacare legislation was a “concession” by conservatives. So even if Republicans tactics are unwise politics, trying to renegotiate and undo the majority’s will is not unprecedented. And to argue about what’s going without perspective is unrealistic.

It's a valid point. And one worth keeping in mind during this budgeting impasse.

An Ohio First Amendment case that deserves attention

The Wall Street Journal recently posted, on its Website, a column by Bradley A. Smith of Columbus, Ohio, entitled “The Supreme Court and Ed Corsi's Life of Political Crime — How one Ohio man's blog on politics got him in trouble with campaign-finance law.” This is probably the next big First Amendment issue that will be decided by the Supreme Court, so we need to follow it. Here is the article:

In the winter of 2008, Ed Corsi decided that he was tired of stewing about the politics in his home of Geauga County, Ohio, and the country at large. He started a website, put Thomas Jefferson's quote, “The price of freedom… constant vigilance” at the top, dubbed the site “Geauga Constitutional Council,” and set about blogging his thoughts on local and national politics. So began his life of political crime.

Over the next two years, Mr. Corsi and a few friends would sometimes gather to talk politics. He occasionally sponsored meetings featuring speakers (not political candidates) on public policy issues (not elections), and charged a nominal fee for seating to offset his costs. He and two friends passed out political pamphlets they made at the Geauga County Fair.

Mr. Corsi spent $40 a month to maintain his website, and perhaps a couple [of] hundred dollars a year in other expenses. According to the state of Ohio, however, these activities are illegal under campaign-finance laws[,] because Mr. Corsi did not first register with the state, report to the state on his activities, and subject himself to the regulations governing the operation of a state political action committee.

When he was summoned to a hearing before the Ohio Elections Commission in April 2011, Mr. Corsi asked, “Do I have to hire a lawyer to [do] these things?” Commission Chairman Bryan Felmet replied, “Yeah, I guess so. I think that it's very complicated without going to those lengths.” The commission ordered Mr. Corsi to register and report his activities to the state.

When the Supreme Court reconvenes in October, the big campaign-finance case will be McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which nervous censors have dubbed “the next Citizens United.” McCutcheon deals with the ability of affluent Americans to contribute to political parties and candidates. Never mind that the candidates and causes these people support represent the views of millions of citizens. “Reformers” argue, and many Americans seem to agree, that “big money” in politics must be regulated.

It is inconceivable, however, that America's founders thought the First Amendment would allow the government to routinely require citizens to report their political activity, and be subjected to such complex regulations. They wanted to prevent government from doing precisely this sort of thing. Yet Mr. Corsi lost in state court. Now he waits to see if the Supreme Court will agree to hear his case.

The “big money” in politics can afford the accountants, consultants and lawyers needed to cope with campaign- finance law. The burdens frequently fall more heavily on grass-roots politics—the very thing we ought to be encouraging. There also is abundant anecdotal evidence that the main result, if not the purpose, of campaign-finance laws is to allow political insiders and government officials to harass grass-roots activists. The IRS targeting scandals are merely the most prominent example of the way these laws are used by those in power to harass their opposition.

On his blog, Mr. Corsi was critical of Ed Ryder, the chairman of the Geauga County Republican Party and a member of the county Board of Elections, and of various officials and candidates supported by Mr. Ryder. The initial complaint against Mr. Corsi was filed by Mr. Ryder, who admitted spending two months to find out who constituted the “Geauga Constitutional Council,” so he could file a complaint against Mr. Corsi.

In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), and again in Federal Election Commission v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life (1986), the Supreme Court held that the regulatory requirements of operating a political action committee could not be imposed on groups that lacked the primary purpose of supporting or defeating political candidates in elections. But across the country, states are flouting that command, imposing rigid requirements on ordinary citizens who are trying to express their political opinions.

In Colorado, for example, a group of friends calling themselves the Coalition for Secular Government operate a website on which they posted a long policy paper on abortion and church-state relations. The paper concluded by urging Coloradans to vote “no” on a ballot measure. For that, the state says they must register as a political committee and report their activities, income and expenses.

Most state statutes now simply ignore the Supreme Court and require that two or more citizens who spend even nominal amounts on politics to register and report to the government. Even printing yard signs or running an email list can trigger these requirements. In Ohio, a single dollar in expenditures will do, so be careful if you talk politics over a cup of coffee.

As a former commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, I have seen the effects these laws have on citizen participation and civic-mindedness. I have read the plaintive letters from citizens who could not afford a lawyer, and could not believe their government was fining them for political activity.

In the past, both liberals and conservatives on the Supreme Court were sensitive to this problem. Liberal Justice William Brennan wrote the majority opinion in the Massachusetts Citizens for Life case. But that sensitivity appears to be vanishing.

Forty-seven years ago, in Mills v. Alabama, the court struck down a lawprohibiting election-day newspaper editorials, noting, “there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of [the First] Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs."

Is that still true? Will the court leave millions of Americans who want to engage in politics at risk of prosecution? Will it leave Mr. Corsi hanging?

Like the author of that column, I would like to see how the Supreme Court answers these questions.

Lessons from the Declaration of Independence

I used to like to read the Washington Examiner, a free paper which, however, provided all the features one might expect in a real newspaper, without the cost of the two main newspapers in this area. Unfortunately, they ceased publishing last month, which I bemoan. They do, however, still maintain a presence on the Web, and the July 3 virtual issue contained a column by Philip Klein, entitled “What the Declaration of Independence can teach Congress,” which I would like to quote:

As the nation's founding document, the Declaration of Independence produced a number of immortal phrases: “When in the course of human events;” “all men are created equal;” “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But one phrase that tends to be overlooked in popular celebrations is the most important: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”

Each year, July 4^th offers Americans an opportunity not only to celebrate but to reflect upon the nation's founding — particularly the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress.

What's amazing about primary author Thomas Jefferson's writing in the document is that it not only lists the grievances that colonists had with England, but it concisely defines the core purpose of government.

At a revolutionary time, with colonists rebelling against a distant tyranny that overtaxed them and meddled in their lives, it would have been quite understandable if they rejected the idea of government altogether.

But what Jefferson's words instruct us is that even at a time of revolution, the nation's Founders viewed some limited measure of government as not only tolerable, but necessary.

That is, in a state of anarchy, rights couldn't exist. There wouldn't be a military to protect individuals from foreign threats; there wouldn't be police forces to prevent people from harming one another; and there wouldn't be a court system to resolve disputes and exact justice on those who harm others.

Certain functions must be delegated to government because it simply isn't feasible for individuals to handle them by themselves. It doesn't make sense, for instance, that every individual would subscribe to his or her own private army or walk around with a personal bodyguard.

The Founders didn't see much of a role for the government beyond securing the most basic, unalienable rights.

In his First Inaugural Address, Jefferson called for “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

In the intervening centuries, Americans' concept of the purpose of government has grown dramatically, and the Founders themselves are a part of the reason.

Nothing in this nation's history was a more egregious affront to Jefferson's words than the brutal institution of slavery, in which which many of the Founders, including Jefferson, participated. Furthermore, some of the largest expansions of the federal government's role in American history stemmed from the need to end slavery and to deal with its stubborn legacy. In the process, valid arguments about state sovereignty became tainted by those who used them to justify preserving an inhumane practice and continued racial oppression.

Obviously, at this point, there would be no way for the U.S. government ever to return to the limited purpose articulated in the Declaration of Independence. It would require cutting the federal budget by 75 percent or more and scrapping popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

On July 4^th, however, Americans can still reflect on Jefferson's words and the vision for government that they conveyed, even if his own deeds — and those of his generation and succeeding generations — did not live up to them.

Members of Congress should take some time to reflect, as well. And before passing new laws to expand the size and scope of government, they would be wise to ask themselves, “Would this help secure the unalienable rights of American citizens?”

Noble words. But many of the “conservatives” who claim allegiance to Jefferson find it necessary to pass laws restricting abortion, which certainly do not protect anyone's rights (unless you believe an unborn fetus is a “person,” which they claim to do, though I've never seen a one of them hold a funeral for a miscarried fetus, for example!) but do infringe upon the rights of many people, or laws restricting marriage, which again do not protect anyone's rights but seriously restrict the rights of same-sex couples who want to marry. It isn't only Congress who needs to take these words to heart — it is the “conservative” part of the public.

Points about abortion

One reason that, although I am closer to the so-called “pro-choice” side in the debates on abortion than the so-called “pro-life” side, I still cannot accept all the ideas of the former, is that to me the primary issue is not “a woman's right to choose,” as most “pro-choicers” make it. For me, in fact, the big issue is a First Amendment freedom-of-religion issue.

The Catholic Church (and some Protestant groups) wants to impose its view of “personhood” on others. The idea that “human life begins at conception” is clearly the tenet of a particular religious community. (In Judaism, for example, there is a point — not clearly fixed in time — when the neshama [approximately translated as “soul”] is put into the developing fetus by Divine intervention; prior to that it is not considered human.)

Because I see this as a religious freedom issue, I am perfectly willing, say, to accept laws that forbid the State from forcing Catholic hospitals or Catholic medical doctors to perform abortions, because they too have First Amendment rights. Because I see this in other terms than “a woman's right to choose,” I am willing to allow some people other than the pregnant woman to be involved in the decision. (I have no problem with parental-consent laws when the pregnant “woman” is in fact a girl who would not herself be empowered to consent to some other forms of surgery on her body. I honestly believe that, when a married couple conceive as a result of an act entered into voluntarily, if the husband wants the child he should be able to insist that the birth take place.) So I feel uncomfortable with both sides' positions in the abortion debate.

While we have no way of knowing when the neshama enters the fetus, I feel that the best clue to when to consider it a new human being is the viability criterion — if you could deliver it, and it could survive outside the uterus, then it is a new human being; not before. Some argue that technology changes; we could deliver a baby in 2013 that would not have survived in 1963. I say “so be it.” We do not judge the doctors who attended Pres. Garfield as murderers, because they did not conform to modern standards of antisepsis, although it is clear that their filthy hands were actually the cause of his death. Since, at that time, the role of infection was becoming known, they come in for some criticism. But not what doctors in 2013 would incur if they did as those doctors did. The standards of any particulat time must apply.

The Kermit Gosnell decision

Kermit Gosnell has been convicted of murder. And the anti-abortion (or as they would have it, “pro-life”) people are happy with the results. But in fact, the Gosnell verdict was totally in conformity with what I, who oppose them, have maintained. A viable fetus is a real person. Some of these babies were, in fact, already born, not just “viable.”

My reply to the anti-abortion crowd has always been “if this is a baby, deliver it, then see if you can keep it alive.” In this case, several deliveries had been done, and then the babies were killed. So obviously, what Kermit Gosnell did was murder, under my own definition. And I agree with the verdict. But this says nothing about Roe v. Wade. Gosnell's attorney tried to invoke Roe, but the jury didn't buy it. And I think that no appeals court would, either.

Why Matt Lewis could never be a liberal, and my own (general) agreement

Today I saw a post by columnist Matt K. Lewis of The Week's site, entitled “Why I could never be a liberal.” And, although I don't consider myself a “true conservative,” I align myself with conservatives on enough important issues that I estimate my position as more conservative than not. And much of what Lewis said resonates with me.

He begins with a comment, just below the title, but above the column itself:

I get in fights with my fellow conservatives all the time. But I'm not about to switch sides.

I'm not about to quote the entire column (please follow the link if you want to read it) but there are specific points he makes that I would echo:

…though my friends on the activist Right may sometimes drive me nuts, I've never ever entertained the thought of going over to the dark side of the Left. David Brock might have garnered a lot of attention and publicity by switching sides, but for me, the Left is never an option.

This isn't just because I believe conservatism will lead to a more prosperous and virtuous society, but also because — in the unlikely event either side were to obtain carte blanche authority — the Left scares me more than the Right.

There's no shortage of examples. Melissa Harris-Perry, for instance, recently revealed a terrifying tenet of the Left, which says our children belong to the collective, not to parents or families. As I wrote, this sentiment was so feared by George Orwell that he included it in both 1984 and Animal Farm. I should have also mentioned Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Look at extremists abroad: From Stalin to Castro to Chavez, some on the Left have consistently displayed not just a tolerance for heavy-handed authoritarian regimes (as the Right has admittedly sometimes also done) but also an admiration of them.

In recent weeks, some on the Left have mourned the death of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, even while cheering the death of Britain's Margaret Thatcher. And a similar sentiment was on full display when Jay-Z and Beyonce, perhaps naively, enjoyed Cuban hospitality — without noticing the dissidents or the gulags they conveniently avoided on their vacation.

I will skip a couple of paragraphs, with which I don't really agree, about liberals' disregard for the Divine and about abortion, and resume with his next paragraph:

We live in a fallen world. I do not expect any party — or any ideology, for that matter — to have all the answers. I don't put my faith in politics. There will be no utopia on earth. We cannot immanentize the eschaton.

Neither side of the political spectrum has all the answers — and both sides have fringe elements they'd rather not highlight, as well as moments in history they'd rather leave unspoken.

I've probably had more public fights with my friends on the Right than with my adversaries on the Left in recent years. This is probably natural. As Anthony Trollope wrote, "The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without a chance of a quarrel; but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice."

I get in fights with my fellow conservatives all the time. Immigration is but one example. But still, for me, the Left is never an option.

There are specific points where I differ with Lewis. But by and large, I approve this column.

The Kermit Gosnell case

Self-styled “right to life” advocates have been bewailing the lack of media coverage of the trial of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell. They accuse pro-abortion media of suppressing it because of their own biases. The only thing is — the trial is going on, local authorities have charged Gosnell with murder, and even under the standards of Roe v. Wade, if Gosnell is found to have done what he is accused of doing, he will be convicted of murder and possibly put to death. So it is not an instance of the issue they would like to feature, the justifiability of Roe v. Wade. The point is that Dr. Gosnell is accused of ending the lives of babies, already delivered and likely to have survived if the acts in question had not been performed by Dr. Gosnell and his staff. Even if you have the most thoroughly pro-choice mindset, once it passes the threshold of viability, it is not a mere fetus but an independent human being.

There is a question, about which responsible citizens can disagree, as to when the existence of a new human being begins. “Pro-life” people may claim that it is at the moment a sperm unites with an egg, but I've discussed how fallacious I believe this is. It is clear to me that, until a fetus has reached the point where it can be delivered and would survive without being attached to a placenta, it is simply a piece of parasitic tissue in the mother's body, not an independent human being. Where Dr. Gosnell betrayed his oath as a doctor of medicine is that he took the lives of those who, by this criterion, were independent human beings. This has nothing to do with the morality of abortion in general, nor with whether Roe v. Wade is good law — under the Roe decision Dr. Gosnell went too far! So there is no reason to bring up this case in discussions of Roe or abortion in general.

Another GOP senator endorses gay marriage

A while ago, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio endorsed gay marriage, becoming the first sitting GOP senator to do so. He was just joined by Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. This is an important development.

Until Portman, it seemed as though the Democrats had the monopoly on this side of the issue. And it took his son's coming out to convince Portman. Now with Kirk as the second one, the GOP is moving in the direction it ought to: getting rid of the dominance by “social conservatives” — a code word for “religious bigots trying to impose their views on others.” We even have the spectacle of Speaker of the House John Boehner hiring an attorney to defend DOMA before the Supreme Court, because the Obama Administration accepts its unconstitutionality!

The Republican Party is generally the party in favor of freedom of the individual. But because of the “social conservatives'” power, it has taken the wrong stance on issues like abortion, gay rights, and such. That two sitting GOP senators have decided to push against the “social conservatives” can only be praised. Hopefully, they will be joined by more. The GOP needs to stand up to the “social conservatives.”

Newtown and abortion clinics - connected?

Amazingly, Gregory Kane has managed to take the Newtown killings and use them as a basis for a column about abortion. His column in yesterday's Washington Examiner was entitled “Culprit is society that devalues human life” and among the ridiculous analogies he made (addressed to President Obama, if you need to know who the “you” was supposed to mean) was:

On Friday, a gunman walked into the Connecticut elementary school and methodically, fatally shot 20 children and six adults.

He has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who apparently killed himself after the shootings. Now imagine the following hypothetical situation:

Lanza isn't 20, but a 30-something surgeon who, five to 10 years ago, sucked those same 20 children down a tube while they were still in the womb.

Would we be talking about the slaughter of 20 innocent children? Or would Lanza receive praises from you and others like you for being an avid supporter of women's reproductive rights?

How anyone can consider the little bit of tissue inside a uterus of a pregnant woman — which, I concede, has the potential of becoming a human being — as the equivalent of a real living 6-year-old boy or girl is beyond my comprehension. People get over a miscarriage, which is, after all, the death of just such a bit of tissue in a uterus, in a way the parents of the Newtown children will never get over their children's deaths.

But Kane has to make such stupid analogies as an excuse for his anti-abortionism.

The vice-presidential debate last night

As I stated with reference to last week's first Presidential debate, rather than stay up to watch the debates in real time, my practice this year is to read the transcripts, and people's comments on the debates, the following morning. Apparently Vice-President Biden's greater experience showed, in that unlike President Obama, he prepared properly for this debate, and most people judged this debate a draw — one network called it a win for Paul Ryan, one called it a win for Biden, but in neither case the big blowout that Mitt Romney scored over the President last week.

At least one blogger was worried about unfairness, because the moderator, Martha Raddatz, is a very close friend of the Obamas: Obama actually attended her wedding. (Raddatz' former husband has since divorced her, and each has remarried; he is still close enough to Obama that he was appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission by the President.)

But most people do think she moderated the debate creditably. And she seemed to have a balanced approach, as I read the transcript.

Of course, at one point the Vice-President tried to channel Lloyd Bentsen, with his “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy” comment. But that's minor. He did repeat Obama's discredited “$5 trillion” figure, which I guess Obama and Biden will keep trying to foist on the American public.

I have to admit that on one issue (abortion), Vice-President Biden's statement was closer to my position than was Ryan's:

MS. RADDATZ: I want to move on, and I want to return home for these last few questions. This debate is indeed historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time on a stage such as this, and I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And please, this is such an emotional issue for so many —

REP. RYAN: Sure.

MS. RADDATZ: — people in this country. Please talk personally about this if you could. Congressman Ryan.

REP. RYAN: I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, about how to make sure that people have a chance in life.

Now, you want to ask basically why I’m pro-life? It’s not simply because of my Catholic faith. That’s a factor, of course, but it’s also because of reason and science. You know, I think about 10 1/2 years ago, my wife Janna and I went to Mercy Hospital in Janesville where I was born for our seven-week ultrasound for our firstborn child, and we saw that heartbeat. Our little baby was in the shape of a bean, and to this day, we have nicknamed our firstborn child, Liza, “Bean.” (Chuckles.)

Now, I believe that life begins at conception.

That’s why — those are the reasons why I’m pro-life.

Now, I understand this is a difficult issue. And I respect people who don’t agree with me on this. But the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortion with the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

What troubles me more is how this administration has handled all of these issues. Look at what they’re doing through “Obamacare” with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals. Our church should not have to sue our federal government to maintain their religious — religious liberties.

And with respect to abortion, the Democratic Party used to say they want it to be safe, legal and rare. Now they support it without restriction and with taxpayer funding, taxpayer funding in “Obamacare,” taxpayer funding with foreign aid. The vice president himself went to China and said that he sympathized or wouldn’t second- guess their one-child policy of forced abortions and sterilizations. That, to me, is pretty extreme.

MS. RADDATZ: Vice President Biden.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: My religion defines who I am. And I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help.

With regard to — with regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position on abortion as a — what we call de fide (doctrine ?). Life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and — I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.

I — I do not believe that — that we have a right to tell other people that women, they — they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court — I’m not going to interfere with that.

(I emphasized one part because I think that this is the place Biden was really right. But then he followed up those words with:

With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy — any hospital — none has to either refer contraception. None has to pay for contraception. None has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.

And that is total nonsense. The Obamacare requirement that contraception be provided in any health insurance policy does extend to those religious institutions, except that it is covered up — in theory the institution is not paying for the coverage, but in fact the insurance companies would adjust their premiums, because they certainly are not providing insurance free!

Both sides, clearly, continue to maintain their positions. But I think that Romney/Ryan have an agenda that is better for the country. Obama/Biden have been in power for nearly 4 years, and they have made a mess of the economy. We need to retire them!

As a columnist put it, "Nothing scares Obama like truth"

Yesterday I read an article on the Boston Herald’s website called “Nothing scares Obama like truth” by Michael Graham. I found it so apropos that I will repeat it here:

To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are three kinds of liars: Liars, damned liars… and screaming, foamy-mouthed MSNBC hosts watching Paul Ryan speak.

We have now moved into what academics might call the “post-factual” portion of the Obama campaign. For example: Tuesday night Ann Romney gives a warm, charmingly earnest speech. Obama flak Robert Gibbs calls it an “angry” night “full of insults.” What “insults?” He doesn’t say. He just says “Republicans are angry!”

Why? Because he needs them to be.

The RNC features black Republicans like Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Artur Davis and Mia Love. CNN and MSNBC fill their panels with nuts like Toure and the Rev. Al Sharpton decrying the “racism” in Tampa. Their proof? They don’t need “proof.” For Obama to win, they need Republicans to be “racist” — so the pundits say they are.

Republican Mitch McCon- nell quips “Obama hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He’s been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell knows what’s up: “He’s aligning… the lifestyle of Tiger Woods to Obama.”

And in perhaps the most blatant example, DNC spokesflak Debbie Wasserman Schultz used a Los Angeles Times article to claim that Mitt Romney is responsible for the abortion plank of the GOP platform. CNN’s Anderson Cooper confronted her with the fact that the Times article she quoted said the exact opposite — that Romney did not support the plank as written.

Wasserman Schultz’s answer? “Anderson, it doesn’t matter.”

Wow.

Liberal “news” man Howard Fineman did us a favor Wednesday, laying out the Democrats’ strategy: “Prove clearly” that Paul Ryan — and Mitt Romney and anyone else who can do math — is “lying”… whether they are or not.

Why? Because Obama supporters can’t handle the truth. The facts about the Obama record are so awful, so indefensible that the very idea of “facts” must be destroyed.

Here’s a story Ryan told in his speech about a promise Obama made at a Janesville, Wis., auto plant: “Candidate Obama said, ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year.”

It’s an effective metaphor for the many promises Obama has made about the economy that didn’t come true. And that was the problem. It’s too effective. And so the Fineman Effect kicked in: Ryan was declared a liar.

“That plant was already closed in 2008,” screamed Chris Matthews, who nearly had to be placed in Hannibal Lecter restraints for his own protection. Thursday morning, Obama lackeys in the “politi-fact” business jumped in, claiming Ryan’s statement as false

One problem: Ryan was right. Local media at the time reported the factory still making cars in 2009, and even GM, the plant’s owner, has posted on the Web: “Janesville was placed on standby capacity in May 2009.”

After their failure in convincing Americans of a “GOP War On Women,” Democrats have declared their own war: A war on truth itself.

This is why the movie “Obama’s America:2016” got a 1½-star review in the Washington Post, for example. The truth is the scariest thing to Obama — because the more people learn the truth, the less they are likely to vote for him this November.

What is a Person?

So much of the disagreement on abortion hinges on one particular issue: When does a person begin to exist, with all the rights of a person? (Certainly, even the “right-to-life” terminology, taking its words from the Declaration of Independence, with its statement that “all men [we would now say ‘persons’] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” depends on this question as to whether a fetus is a person!) Certainly, my leg or my finger is not a person, though it is alive and all of the cells therein are definitely human, so we have never heard of “pro-life” activists protesting surgical amputations. I have heard that the people who insist that a fetus is a person use, as the basis for this claim, that it has a new genome, different from either parent. The problem with this “independent genome” argument is that by this criterion, two identical twins (the technical term, actually, is “monozygotic” twins) are not separate persons. Their genomes are alike. (I have pointed this out in a previous post, which has been read by many visitors.) This is why I have thought that the “independent viability” criterion is the one to use; if a purported person can be separated from any other human being and can survive, then it counts as a separate human being. The only thing, this definition has problems too. Consider “Siamese” twins. They can usually be separated and both survive. But in some cases, they share a vital organ. One could not separate them without killing one. Yet I certainly would admit that these are two separate persons. (The “independent genome” definition, favored by “pro-lifers,” fails just as well; these twins certainly have a common genome!)

I don't know. How do you define a person in a way that would take care of such a case? I'd be interested in others' ideas.

One difference between Republicans and Democrats

Gregory Kane is a columnist whose column I read in the Washington Examiner a couple of times a week. as you might know, sometimes I agree with his columns, and sometimes I disagree strongly. But a column of his that appeared in yesterday's paper pointed out one important point. Most of the column was talking about Congressman Todd Akin's comment on abortion. And while you can read the whole column, I'm not going to quote anything but the one part I want to emphasize, the end of his column:

Finally, Mr. President, although you tried to lump all Republicans into the Todd Akin bin, I feel compelled to remind you that there are pro-choice Republicans. One of them is former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who heads Mitt Romney's campaign in that state.

Mr. President, can you name one prominent pro-life Democrat?

The point is that the Republican Party still has room for a lot of different opinions. The Democratic Party seems not to.

I am so glad I do not live in Missouri!

I would hate to be living in the State of Missouri this year — as I would have hated to live in Delaware two years ago. As Delawareans did in 2010, Missourians have nominated a Republican candidate who is beyond the fringe of acceptability. To have to choose between a weird Republican candidate who deserves to be deprived of any sort of office of importance and a Democrat who would, if elected, help perpetuate Harry Reid's control of the Senate is the kind of torture I hope never to have to endure myself, and I certainly do not have anything but sympathy for Missourians who have to make this choice in November.

Representative Todd Akin seems to think he is being pilloried for using one word — “legitimate” — to describe rape. But in fact, there is more than just this. If it was just the case of his saying “legitimate rape” to mean “true rape,” I do not think it would be that bad. But it was his expressed belief that a woman who is truly a rape victim could not become pregnant — a bit of idiocy that ill behooves a candidate for the United States Senate.

Then, there is one further position which Todd Akin has taken that would make it impossible for me to support him, if I'd been a Missourian. The fact is that Rep. Akin has made it clear that his main issue is abortion. Now I can support a candidate who is anti-abortion, if this is not his main issue and if, on issues that the candidate and I consider more important, we are in general agreement. But if the main issue on which a candidate is basing his campaign is one I oppose, it is clear that I cannot support him. And my position on abortion is clear. I don't believe in unrestricted abortion on demand with the woman being the only one to make the decision. I believe there should be some restrictions — for example, if she is married and her husband wants the child, he should be able to prevent an abortion — but in general, I am much closer to the “pro-choice” side than to the “pro-life” side in this spectrum. And so Todd Akin is outside the pale for me, while Romney-Ryan (who are “pro-life,” but do not make it one of their top issues) still get my support.

A follow-up to yesterday's post

In the Wikipedia article about Jeff Bezos, he is described as a libertarian. However, the term seems to have many meanings. I consider myself to have a high degree of libertarianism in my political philosophy, but neither Ron Paul, who ran as the Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1988, nor Gary Johnson, who is running this year on the same ticket, closely represents my views. I think that the aspect of my political philosophy that can be described as “libertarian” can be summed up by the sentence, “As long as it harms nobody else, anything should be permitted.” But then there are questions, which seriously divide self-proclaimed libertarians, as to what constitutes “harm,” and what constitutes “somebody else.”

For example, arguments come up on the abortion issue between those who argue that “human life begins at conception” and thus that a fetus is “another human being,” in the formulation of libertarian philosophy, and those like myself that it is not another person until it could be delivered and survive on its own without being in a mother's womb. (See my post dated June 6, 2006 for my own opinion.) Similarly, I differ strongly with other self-declared libertarians on the issue of gun control. (I also described my position on this issue in 2006; see that post.) So “libertarian” by itself cannot fully describe a political philosophy. But I think, based on what I read, and described in yesterday's post, about Jeff Bezos, it is clear that the term describes him well.

Of course, he's opposed Internet sales taxes in the past — but while this can be seen as a “libertarian” position in general, Bezos is hardly to be so characterized for this political stand; it's simply something that personally affects him as the head of Amazon and even a non-libertarian in his position would be expected to take that stand. Just as Barney Frank's support of gay marriage would not classify him as “libertarian,” Bezos' support of freedom of Internet purchases from sales tax does not mean Bezos deserves that label. His being willing to contribute two and a half million dollars to support gay marriage in the Washington state referendum — since he is undoubtedly not going to benefit by it, as he is married to a woman — does, however, point to an underlying “libertarian” philosophy.

And I applaud him for it.