However. I did search Google for "progressive conservatism." Then I had to search Google for "progressive conservatism america" because without that caveat, all you end up with is stuff from Canada and England. And what I found was an article from 2005, talking about what happens when Republican governors try to act a little progressive:
For their efforts, these governors have been met with derision from conservative ideologues insulated from the real world in Washington.For anyone paying attention, the fools vying for control over the Republicon party have decided that they lost the elections in 2006 and 2008 because they weren't conservative enough. Their rising stars and leading lights include Tim Pawlenty, who thinks the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression is the perfect time to push a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution; Mark Pence, whose vision for the Republicon party is crafted of nothing but discredited bunkum; Michael Steele, who had to run from his moderate past to have a snowball's chance in hell at possibly helming the RNC; and too many godsdamned others to name, but who can be found disgracing the pages of Happy Hours past.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform has attacked Daniels as a traitor to the conservative cause in Daniels' hometown newspaper. Riley was hammered by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and his corporate front group in Washington, who held rallies to ridicule the Alabama governor.
The criticism, of course, is not surprising. The ferocity, however, is. Republicans are, after all, the party whose first guiding principle is Ronald Reagan's famous "11th Comandment": Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
But these governors are not seen as mere turncoats to be ignored - they are seen as mortal threats to conservatism itself. Because by embracing progressive policies during their states' budget crises, they are exposing conservatism as ill-equipped to deal with real-world challenges. [emphasis added]
They are, in effect, publicly admitting that while the mantra of tax cuts and less government makes for nice rhetoric in Washington, it is virtually useless in solving concrete problems.
As far as I've been able to determine in months of reading with half an eye out for things useful to debate, the only time "progressive" comes up in a political context, it refers to something Dems are trying to do. If a Republicon sticks a toe over the line and admits that maybe a little progress wouldn't be such a bad thing, the rabid right tries to hack that foot off. The party's moderates have mostly been driven out, with the remaining Cons intent on destroying any one of the party's members who so much as looks in a progressive direction, and Google tells me that if you want progressive conservatism, you have to leave the country to get it.
Mike can attempt to explain to us in comments here why he believes such a thing as "progressive conservatism" is still alive in this country. The rest of you can have fun piling on. For myself, I am done.
56 comments:
Mike came by earlier whining about the fact that I haven't bothered to debate him about his understanding of "progressive" conservatism.
'Whining' huh? I just asked when we were going to have the debate you promised. I'm trying to figure out if it's a superiority complex, a quick temper or fear that makes you so quick to make crappy remarks about people you disagree with.
I tried being nice to you Dana and I thought you were actually up for an intelligent debate. Clearly not.
Mike: I'm willing to give it a shot, though my time is limited so I may not be able to respond to every point.
What would be useful, to start with, is if you could define the essence of what you mean by "conservatism". This is important if we are to understand which elements of conservatism are compatible with progressivism and which are not.
One of my main beefs about conservatives is that they seem to focus most of their energy on belittling other people's ideas while never putting forth any ideas of their own. It's almost impossible to defend against this sort of pot-shot debate tactic, because the best defense against nonspecific criticism is to show how the idea in question is better than the alternatives -- and if a critic won't come out and say which alternatives they actually prefer, then they're safe from any return criticism (regardless of whether their ideas actually have any merit).
Perhaps you can do something to start counteracting this trend.
Woozle,
Thanks for stepping up to the plate.
I guess the first thing we have to assume in this debate is that we are talking about idealized versions of poltiical tendencies. We're talking about a perfect liberalism, uncorrupt and executed flawlessly. We're also talking about a perfect conservatism, free from the above as well. If the conversation devolves into liberalism and conservatism in practice i.e. Democrats and Republicans, then we end up painting both ideologies as flawed for the wrong reasons.
The simplest way I can explain my view is this: Progressivism simply means seeking change. It means acknowldging that society isn't perfect, that it is in constant motion and that we can't just put the brakes on and pretend we live in Mayberry...we must progress or die.
Where I believe conservatives and liberals differ is in the pace, scope and methodology of implementing change. A good example is education. Both conservatives and liberals have the same well-intentioned goals: good schools and quality education for our kids. We just differ on how to get there. The stereotypical liberal plan might involve more money for schools, student assignment plans and more flexibility for teachers on curriculum. The stereotypical conservative plan might be to encourage competition through vouchers or charter schools and greater accountability for teachers. In both cases the sides are seeking change away from the current system towards the same shared goal. Just different approaches. We can debate about which side is more progressive (no surprise where I stand there) but if we trust one another's goals as being similar, we're halfway there in my book.
On other issues each side has differeing degrees of progressivism. I believe conservatives are more progressive on abortion, for example, while liberals are more progressive on gay marriage.
Mike: thanks for your reply.
I think we can talk both about ideals and the less-ideal realities.
For example: in principle, liberals are all about individual freedoms; in practice, some supposedly-liberals fall into the trap of preaching political correctness, which tightly constrains freedom in the name of solidarity (a form of authoritarianism -- and authoritarianism is much more in line with conservative ideals than liberal ones).
Likewise with conservatism, which (as I understand it) is supposed to be about personal responsibility and honor -- both traits in extremely short supply among many of the most ardent proponents of (what they claim is) conservative philosophy. (Yes, Bush -- but also Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, any random group of evangelists...)
So I'll try to make it plain when I'm talking about an ideal versus actual behavior. The key question is whether a given conservative is going against the ideals they argue we should all be following (i.e. being hypocritical) or is simply adhering to ideals which conflict with mine.
That question can only be resolved by discovering what those ideals are, as defined by that person.
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Your definition of progressivism seems like a good start. To elaborate a bit:
At the very least, "You can't not make a choice." -- you can't avoid change by pretending it isn't going to happen, so the best thing is to decide what kind of change you prefer.
Progressives tend to see change as a positive thing, though, rather than a search for the least of multiple evils. The future always has potential to be better than the past.
This is the diametric opposite of the "golden past" mythos, which is embraced by many conservatives (especially evangelicals -- Garden of Eden and The Fall) -- so perhaps throwing out this idea is the key tenet of "progressive conservatism"?
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Re differences: it sounds like you're suggesting the key difference between liberal and (prog-)conservative solutions is that liberals throw money at a problem, whereas conservatives prefer strategic solutions.
Let me know if I'm misreading that, but it certainly seems to match popular conception.
To be more accurate, I think it would be fair to say that liberals aren't afraid to spend money on solutions which they believe will pay for themselves in the long run. There is some evidence for this interpretation in that economic indicators tend to be better (and government expansion is reduced) during democratic presidencies, rather belying the myth that liberals love big government while conservatives fight against it.
My view of conservatives in this regard is that they tend to be penny-wise and pound-foolish -- cheering, for example, the destruction of the Office of Technology Assessment (a miniscule office which provided a very valuable service -- including much of the sort of strategic/low-budget thinking which conservatives claim to favor) while continuing to justify the horrid wastage of the Iraq War and other conservative pet projects.
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And finally... what, exactly, do you mean by saying that conservatives are "more progressive" on abortion? That kind of flatly contradicts what I understand, but maybe those weren't the words you meant...
Woozle, thank you as well.
I think we're basically in agreement on the definition of 'progressive' and you are correct that a key point would be that change is a good thing. The only caveat I would add to that is to say it refers to necessary change and not change just for the sake of change (which I would argue is a liberal pitfall).
I think you misunderstood me on what I see is the differences between the two sides (liberal and conservative) of progressivism. Education is just one example and in that one yes, I believe liberals are more inclined to throw money around verses a free-market approach on the right. In other cases though, money may not be the key component of the solution. Immigration might be a good example of that. While it is certainly an economic problem from most angles (national security being the other major piece), I wouldn't say the liberal solution was to throw money at the problem.
Although I can't take credit, I think the best description of the differences between the two sides came from Benjamin Disraeli when he said, “In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.”
I realize 'customs and traditions' is a loaded phrase that liberals especially like to jump on, but I think a contemporary reading of this is just that we conservatives want change that doesn't seek to remake our society (because we think it's basically pretty good). We also tend to think there is such a thing as an 'American way of life' however silly that may sound to ears on the Left. Of course our pitfall is often an aversion to change to the point where we make ourselves look foolish in the face of overwhelming desire for something new from the populace.
Lastly, on abortion….if we take 'progressive' to mean seeking change, then by definition the conservative position is more progressive at this point in time. The liberal line is quite clear that they want no holes punched in current abortion law, even on something as commonsense as parental notification. Simply, there is little or no wiggle room on the Left. To the contrary there is a growing conservative voice (I would contend a majority) that is willing to compromise to achieve at least partial goals. For example, many of us are willing to make the Big Three exceptions(rape, incest, health of the mother) across all three trimesters. Right now, that is bending farther than liberals will on the issue. There is also a smaller faction of conservatives that might be willing to give up a first trimester ban in favor of 2nd and 3rd. Again, that is more movement than we are seeing from the Left.
The only way liberals can be seen as more 'progressive' on abortion is if we use Dana's definition of 'progressive = uber liberal'
Ok, here we start to get into the meat... (My apologies for the relatively long wait; I got sucked into some other projects last night, and then I ended up ripping out a lot of things I started to write which I eventually realized weren't really on topic.)
So the difference isn't always money vs. strategy -- okay. (Certainly in the immigration example you cite, it's the conservatives who want to throw money at the problem while liberals are more inclined to say "what problem?".)
Disraeli distills it down to principles versus tradition and custom, and I think he may have hit the nail on the head. I've lately been saying that "liberals have principles, conservatives have rules"; to me, the choice is clear as to which one is preferable, but it sounds like you're essentially agreeing that conservatives prefer following rules (because they're based in custom and tradition) over following principles (because being entirely consistent with one's principles may require - gasp - breaking with tradition).
That being the case, "progressive conservatism" now strikes me as an oxymoron: how can you support change while also working to support static rules?
But perhaps I'm being too narrow-minded in my interpretation of "respecting tradition". Perhaps conservatives view "traditions" in much the same way liberals view "principles" -- as goals towards which the rules are intended to move us.
So then it comes down to the same question, again: what are conservative principles? What are these traditions that underlie everything?
You mention "the American way of life", which I gather represents at least a large chunk of the tradition-principles valued by (American) conservatives.
I'll confess to wincing when Superman said (in the first movie, 1978) that what he was defending was "truth, justice, and the American Way", but it also got me thinking about it: I had to reconcile Superman's essential goodness and innocence with this apparent allegiance to Americanism -- which (at the time) I associated with unpleasant conservative habits such as mindless flag-waving. religion, glossy pretense, and wars.
What I eventually came around to was this:
(1) Yes, there is a lot that's good about America. Innovation, tolerance, diversity, liberty, equal opportunity -- these are all American traditions I value. (Some exist more as respected principles than actual phenomena, but as long as the respect is genuine we can make progress towards realization.)
(2) There is also a lot that's bad about America. Poverty, our horrid medical system (the most advanced technology in the world, now available to fewer people than ever before), American imperialism, American litigiousness, violence, evangelism and fundamentalism, bigotry... these are all things which we seem to excel at. Other countries may have them too, but they seem to take root here first. (I'm mainly comparing us to other Euro-centric countries, for now; the whole Western Civ Uber Alles thing is a different debate.)
My point: things which are good about America aren't good just because they're American.
Larger point: traditions aren't always good.
How can we tell the difference between good traditions and bad traditions? I have my own answer, but I'd like to know how a progressive conservative answers this first.
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Re abortion...
First, you define "progressive" as "seeking change", then you use this definition to justify revoking hard-won progress because that's "change". This argument strikes me as intellectually dishonest.
You can't just go back and forth between two states and call it "change". You can't push society back towards the middle ages and call that "change". We "changed" from a state of prosperity and debt-reduction under Clinton to a state of unprecedented indebtedness, economic crisis, and war under Bush. So Bush is a progressive?
In order to have progress, you have to have a goal. What's the goal of conservative anti-abortion activism?
If it's "reducing the number of abortions", conservative policy loses. Outlawing abortions doesn't reduce the number performed, it just makes them more dangerous (increasing the ultimate cost to society). "Abstinence-based education" increases the abortion rate, as does withholding contraceptives or requiring parental consent to receive them. (Does requiring parental consent for teen abortions affect the abortion rate? I suspect it doesn't help, but I don't have time to research it. Some numbers and sources would be helpful; I would think that the main effect would be to increase the teen pregnancy rate and the number of illegal abortions.)
If the goal is "reducing the number of unwanted children", conservative policy loses again for much the same reasons. Conservatives do put some effort towards improving adoption rates, but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount they spend on EPIC FAIL.
Progress towards compromising with people who are demonstrably wrong is not progress in the sense we are talking about.
I might be willing to concede the need for continuing to ban abortion in the 2nd and 3rd trimester, but I would need to understand how it is helpful.
I would disagree that 'principles' only reside on the Left. What I would instead suggest is that conservatives rely on precedent as a guide while liberals rely on reason. That is not to say that there is no logic behind conservative policies, but we do not allow thought to overshadow experience. Example: Conservatives believe that history has shown capitalism to be the best economic system. We rely on experience to show us that we should trust free markets and try not to interfere. Perhaps naively onservatives say, "Give it time, the market will correct itself." while liberals always believe they can reason out a better system so that this won't happen again. That is why there is a constant flirtation with economists and a general love affair with intellectuals on the Left. Liberals rarely believe a policy, system or institution is beyond a little tinkering and they rely on their beloved thinkers to guide them. It's my opinion that this over-reliance on reason leads to a certain 'restlessness' on the Left. I recently heard it described as, "They will always go past a good solution to get to a brilliant one." You also left out the entire line from Disraeli which is, "...in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines." Conservatives have a genuine fear of untested and untried ideas. Liberals, on the other hand would much rather jump in deal with the fallout later.
To address the oxymoron question of 'progressive conservative' it's simple enough to rely on the example of the pendelum. In most cases of societal change, the pendelum must swing both ways before it settles properly in the middle. I would compliment liberals in that they are usually the ones that start the pendelum swinging, because, as we noted earlier, conservatives are often too rigid in our resistance to change. Inevitably though, the pendelum swings too far. That's when conservatives usually step in and try to ratchet it back. Now, at that point, you would say we are halting 'progress' so we can't be 'progressive'. I would say that when the pendelum swings far, progress has stopped. So by trying to move things back towards an ideal solution, we are indeed 'progressive' because we have positive goals that require change from the status quo. Back to our example of education…conservatives believe that changes made in schools during the 1960's were mostly okay, but now things have drifted too far. In our school system here in Louisville, we have several schools that operate under a back-to-basics model that is actually called the 'traditional' model. These schools more closely resemble classrooms of the 1950's than the 1990's but are considered 'progressive' because they are top performers and are moving away from the more widely accepted system.
As to good or bad traditions, that's open to interpretation. You might say spanking your kids is a bad 'tradition' to follow, while I think it's perfectly acceptable. I think we can both agree that a tradition of racial segregation in the South was bad. We might diverge again on the tradition of marriage being exclusively between one man and one woman.
Most of the writing Disraeli did seems to indicate that he wanted his side to be the 'national' party which upheld a sense of patriotism which he believed was vital to the national good. He also suggested that a liberal inclination towards enlightement almost made them a 'group without a country'. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but I certainly believe liberals are too fluid. That's why they tend to attract people of more divergent views than conservatives.
As for abortion, it's the same case of the pendelum again. We went from no legal abortions to a free-for-all. When you look at abortion statistics, it's clear that it's being used as birth control. There HAS to be a compromise. Most conservatives no longer hold the rigid view of an outright ban or nothing. Liberals do not seem as flexible. If one side is willing to walk toward the other, I see that as 'progressive'.
Sorry for the lack of paragraph breaks - I should have checked that before I hit save.
"precedent" vs. "reason"... "reason" is, in turn, based on analysis of data (which includes experience). Are you saying that precedent is a more accurate predictor of outcome than rational analysis of data? Or is there some other consideration which trumps accuracy? How does one use "precedent" as a decision-making tool?
I believe your capitalism argument to be a straw man; liberals are not against capitalism as an economic system, they just favor curtailing abuses. Adam Smith, oft cited as the Father of Capitalism, was a liberal, and capitalism itself was "progress" -- an improvement over earlier systems. I like capitalism, or at least I like it better than feudalism (towards which many conservative policies seem to be pushing us).
Capitalism is a fine and worthy design for an economic engine, but even the finest engine needs regulation and tuning. Unregulated capitalism tends to become economic serfdom, as the powerful gain more and more control.
You're not really arguing against all market regulation, are you? And what's this body of experience which (you claim) shows us that interference is counterproductive?
If you're arguing for capitalism as the antithesis of social welfare, I think the numbers will show that failure to provide social welfare hurts business. (Many business owners are now pushing for universal healthcare for just this reason; the current broken system costs them far more than paying for universal healthcare through taxation would.)
Claiming that liberals happily defer to the judgments of their "beloved" economic thinkers is in stark contrast to the free-flowing governmental criticism I see coming from most blogs. Got an example?
Personally, I'm very suspicious of most economists. Like politicians, many of them have a vested interest in convincing people to do a certain thing, whether or not that thing is really in the people's best interest. There seem to be a few honest ones out there, but overall they're a group to regard with (almost) as much automatic skepticism as one does neocons.
So when I think a piece of regulation is needed, it's not because some econo-guru sold it to me; it's because I've thought about the situation, looked at it from a programmer's point of view ("where are the possible bugs and exploits in this system, and what can be done to prevent them?"), and arrived at an answer. If I then hear that same answer coming from the mouths of people whose opinions I respect, then I'm likely to believe I'm on to something.
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Disraeli: sorry, didn't realize the rest was important; I was going with a charitable interpretation. "Arbitrary and general doctrines" is an accusation that is more properly leveled at conservatism, I should think. Liberal doctrines -- at least, the ones I agree with -- are neither arbitrary nor overly general, but based on what produces the best outcomes. (I'm more of a card-carrying rationalist than a liberal; I just find that liberal ideas tend to be more rational than so-called conservative ones.)
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"Conservatives have a genuine fear of untested and untried ideas." How, then, do you ever try new ideas?
...and I have to ask: Why be afraid?
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"pendulum theory": I think we're again getting closer to the heart of the controversy here.
As I'm understanding it, you see "change" as being part of a process of upset where a large forward motion must inevitably be followed by a series of decreasing forward and backward motions until stability is finally achieved.
That's not the way I see it. The "initial movement forward" is what I would call "progress"; the subsequent backwards motion is what I would call "unfortunate".
Civilization is a gradual process of changing parts we don't like and keeping the parts we do like.
Every now and then it happens that we realize we've perhaps discarded too much of a good thing -- the environmental movement, for example, was a recognition that in our mad push to industrialize and rein in nature, we were losing something of both practical and aesthetic value -- but this is a relatively rare occurrence (and more often due to conservative overenthusiasm, I should think). (Well, not genuinely conservative, obviously... but generally coming from people who call themselves conservatives.)
And even liberals recognize the value of allowing others to hang onto ideas that most of us discard. You'd have a hard time finding a liberal who thinks, for example, that the Amish really ought to abandon their anti-technological ways and get caught up.
I wish I could say that conservatives were as lenient about letting other people move forward before they (conservatives) are ready to do so, but unfortunately they seem to want to keep everyone back.
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The example of "traditional" schools: I need more information about this. My own experience (as a student and in a parental role for 2 kids) is that some people do well with the "traditional" model of one kid per desk, everyone facing the teacher at the front of the room -- while some kids do horribly with this kind of setup. A rational approach (which I would also call progressive) recognizes whatever value can be demonstrated by either system (do we have numbers for this?) and tries to find the best mix.
A conservative approach, however, would rule unilaterally that the "traditional" approach is better just because it's traditional and isn't an utter failure. And of course sometimes even utter failure is insufficient deterrence to overcome this misplaced loyalty; e.g. the continuing 23% support for Bush...
Again with spanking: I've tried it. As far as I can tell, it wasn't the right approach, because other approaches led to far better behavior and discipline. Maybe it works for some kids, though, and I might break with the majority of liberal thought and say that it's not automatically bad -- but I also suspect that it tends to be used far too much, in situations where it causes damage rather than being helpful. Hence the liberal pushback against it, and hence I would also be very leery of using it, especially on a routine basis.
However... backing up to the big picture: You're offering me a lot of individual examples of how traditional approaches might be good (schooling, spanking) or bad (racial segregation), but you haven't explained how you determine which is which.
Going from how you've presented them, though, I think it's fair to say you are evaluating them more or less the same way I do -- by whether they do more good than harm.
In other words: reason.
So... what's the difference between liberalism and conservatism, again? (Or am I misunderstanding something?)
On the other hand, you refer to the "the tradition of marriage being exclusively between one man and one woman." Let's look at that for a bit, as an example of a tradition.
In the Bible, marriage was often between one man and many women. "For most of European history,", quoth Wikipedia ("The Encyclopedia Conservatives Don't Trust"), "marriage was more or less a business agreement between two families who arranged the marriages of their children." "[Greek and Roman] marriage and divorce required no specific government or religious approval. Both marriage and divorce could happen by simple mutual agreement." "Until 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties. ...the presence of a priest or witnesses was not required." In the US, married women were once prohibited from owning property, and married couples were prohibited from using contraception until 1972. Married women were only allowed credit in their own names in 1975.
Why do you not argue as strenuously for a return to each of these "traditional" forms of marriage? Some of them I like and others I don't, but I can at least tell you why; what is it about the monogamous heterosexual nuclear-family affectionate marriage that is so freaking special?
Or are you still waiting for the pendulum to swing back to 1545? Or earlier? Where do you think it should stop, and why?
(Note than I'm not even getting into non-Western ideas of marriage, where a much broader palette has been pretty well explored and none of it, as far as I know, shown to destroy society.)
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The conservative claim that abortion is being used as birth control is... obscene. Back that up with sources, please, right now, or you owe some serious penalty points for helping to spread a malicious lie. (Even some disreputable right-wing sources would help your case; then I can at least imagine that you too were duped rather than being complicit.)
Abortion is an EXTREMELY UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE. No woman in her right mind is going to routinely have abortions just to avoid proper contraception... unless, of course, "abstinence-only education" has deprived her of the knowledge of such. And if she's not in her right mind, do you really want her raising a child?
Yeah, I'm flexible. If you don't want to have a free abortion, I promise not to force you. For the rest of society, it's money well spent (much cheaper than foster care, childhood medical care, proper schooling, proper nutrition) and far more merciful to the would-be unwanted child.
This isn't a case of a compromise between two extremes. Conservatives are welcome to their hetero-only marriages and their 37 beautiful children (be sure to set up some extra foster-care homes to handle those unwanted pregnancies, too); just don't try to force it on the rest of us.
If you can explain to me why that should be negotiable, I'll give a listen -- but I don't see why it should be.
P.S. Where are all these conservatives who are willing to compromise and allow some free, legal abortions? What are their actual positions?
Woozle, I apologize in advance for cherry-picking your questions. They are all interesting, but I just don’t want this conversation to turn into an unreadable display of fisking. (I’d love to have a side conversation on some of those points via email if you’re ever interested). So….
Disraeli: sorry, didn't realize the rest was important; I was going with a charitable interpretation. "Arbitrary and general doctrines" is an accusation that is more properly leveled at conservatism, I should think. Liberal doctrines -- at least, the ones I agree with -- are neither arbitrary nor overly general, but based on what produces the best outcomes. (I'm more of a card-carrying rationalist than a liberal; I just find that liberal ideas tend to be more rational than so-called conservative ones.)
Now wait a minute, how can you argue that liberals prefer principles while conservatives prefer rules, the implication being that liberals are more flexible, and then say that conservatives more accurately prefer ‘arbitrary and general doctrines’ ? That seems contradictory to me. And I also don’t see how liberal doctrines can be based on what produces the best outcomes when you also admit that they are the ones that are most willing to try new, ideas rather than relying on precedent? Liberals base their policies on what they have reasoned will produce the best outcome while conservatives base their policies on what they believe precedent has already revealed to be the best solution. The difference between the two is that for liberals they can never accept a good solution when a brilliant one might be just around the corner.
As I'm understanding it, you see "change" as being part of a process of upset where a large forward motion must inevitably be followed by a series of decreasing forward and backward motions until stability is finally achieved.
That's not the way I see it. The "initial movement forward" is what I would call "progress"; the subsequent backwards motion is what I would call "unfortunate"
So you would contend that backwards movement is never good, nor is it ever ‘progressive’? This might be the nub of our disagreement over whether conservatives can be ‘progressive’.
I thought a lot about this last night and the best example I can come up with is the New Deal, to the Great Society, to Welfare Reform. We start with the New Deal, which was the first real social safety net we had as a country. It was built around the notion of offering citizens a hand-up. It created the middle class, helped us win WWII, gave us a huge post-war economic boom, etc, etc. By the mid-1960’s Johnson believed that the New Deal had failed to reach parts of the population in areas like Appalachia. So he proposed lots of new entitlement programs along a new ‘progressive’ model (indeed Johnson called himself a ‘prudent’ progressive). These programs left the New Deal behind by creating a system that was based more on hand-outs than hand-ups.
Now, like anything, the Great Society programs are still being debated, but I believe the general consensus is that they were a failure. They alienated the working class who resented people being given aid for nothing in return. They facilitated a welfare culture that was compounded by rapidly changing social lifestyles (rise in single-parent families). Great Society programs are blamed for many of the social ills that Nixon successfully ran against in 1968, like the rise in crime and civil disorder.
Fast forward to the Clinton years. With the pressure from conservatives on the Right Clinton signed into law a welfare reform package that is today hailed by both sides as a great piece of legislation. It has done more than experts ever predicted and has been a real step forward. But this was also a step backwards in a sense because it was a step away from the Great Society and towards the New Deal notion of welfare to work. I would say that welfare reform was a ‘progressive’ achievement but it was also more about the traditional American ethic of pulling one’s self up than the ‘reasoned’ approach of heavy government intervention.
The example of "traditional" schools: I need more information about this. My own experience (as a student and in a parental role for 2 kids) is that some people do well with the "traditional" model of one kid per desk, everyone facing the teacher at the front of the room -- while some kids do horribly with this kind of setup. A rational approach (which I would also call progressive) recognizes whatever value can be demonstrated by either system (do we have numbers for this?) and tries to find the best mix.
The ‘traditional’ program our schools offer (which my daughter has been in since middle school) produces the best results in our school district. These schools consistently place at the top on all standardized testing and graduation rates among high school seniors. Since we also offer a more flexible, liberalized classroom setting in our other schools, it would seem after years of having this system in place, we would be seeing similar results in all of our schools. The fact remains though that kids in the ‘traditional’ setting, with high expectations, strict rules and a basic curriculum seem to be our highest achievers.
The conservative claim that abortion is being used as birth control is... obscene. Back that up with sources, please, right now, or you owe some serious penalty points for helping to spread a malicious lie.
I don’t want this very interesting conversation about ‘progressivism’ to spin off into something else, but I will address your charges. To make the claim that abortion is being used as birth control, one need only look at two different sets of statistics. The first is the breakdown of why people are having abortions:
25.5% Want to postpone childbearing
21.3% Cannot afford a baby
14.1% Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy
12.2% Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy
10.8% Having a child will disrupt education or job
7.9% Want no (more) children
3.3% Risk to fetal health
2.8% Risk to maternal health
2.1% Other
1% Mother was raped
As you can see over 90% of abortions in the U.S. are for what experts call ‘social reasons’. Now judging from your remark that abortions serve society well, I have no doubt that you will judge these statistics differently than I do, but when I look at those ‘social’ reasons I hear, “I got pregnant by ‘accident’ and I need to get rid of the child because it will affect my life in a negative way.” I call that birth control. It’s not a women that got pregnant by force or who wanted to have a child and the fetus has severe birth defects….these are women who had sex, weren’t careful and now need a doctor’s help to fix things.
The second set of statistics is also about the circumstances surrounding abortion:
Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently.
Forty-six percent of women who have abortions had not used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.
Eight percent of women who have abortions have never used a method of birth control
And what I consider the most damning statistic:
Each year, about two percent of women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion.
So almost half of the abortions for women 15-44 are the second abortion for these women. 47% of women were able to overcome the ‘emotional pain’ of an abortion to seek out a second one when they found themselves pregnant again.
Reading through all those statistics about not using birth control properly or at all and the fact that nearly half of these women have relied on abortion more than once…how can you not say abortion is used as a means of birth control in this country?
Preface: I can't speak for liberals in general, because I don't necessarily agree with All That Is Liberal. So, if your viewpoint is Progressive Conservatism, let's call mine Rational Liberalism...
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"...how can you argue that liberals prefer principles while conservatives prefer rules, the implication being that liberals are more flexible, and then say that conservatives more accurately prefer ‘arbitrary and general doctrines’..."
I should think that "arbitrary" would be the enemy of "flexible".
An arbitrary doctrine is one which was arrived at through a process that is not well understood. You may have a history of the choices that were made along the way, but no real understanding of why each choice was deemed wise. If you decide you're interested in changing the resulting doctrine, you really have no guidelines by which to proceed; you don't know which choices to override because you don't know (or can't reconstruct, in a way that makes sense) the reasoning that was used.
If you were to rethink each of the decisions that went into this arbitrary process (assuming you have enough documentation to even attempt this), you would (a) end up with a completely different doctrine, and (b) it would no longer be arbitrary but systematic.
I'm arguing that liberal doctrines are arrived at systematically, and conservative ones are generally arbitrary.
Also, I don't think I'd agree that "general" applies to conservative thinking, so perhaps Disraeli got that bit right. Conservatives prefer lots of arbitrary, unconnected, inflexible rules, not general principles. (Am I wrong?)
"I also don’t see how liberal doctrines can be based on what produces the best outcomes when you also admit that they are the ones that are most willing to try new, ideas rather than relying on precedent..."
Because you can't have data on the outcome of an idea if you don't ever try it.
If an idea has been tried, and worked well, then liberalism will embrace it -- with the understanding that in the long run, there will eventually be an idea which works even better, which we will then want to add to our toolkit.
Aside: I've been told that one of the essential tenets of conservatism is that the human condition can never be improved; would you agree with this? (That proposition seems obviously and demonstrably false to me, but it does seem consistent with much of conservative thinking.)
"Liberals base their policies on what they have reasoned will produce the best outcome while conservatives base their policies on what they believe precedent has already revealed to be the best solution."
I said this earlier, but maybe I need to be clearer...
Reasoning is based on data, i.e. past experience. You can't reason about real-world outcomes in a vacuum.
Conservative "precedent" is a kind of experience, but it's not documented well: you don't know why you prefer the style of marriage you do, except that it's part of (your) tradition and therefore must have worked reasonably well in the past -- completely ignoring the fact that there are a lot of ways in which it doesn't work, and that other forms of marriage have been known to work better in various circumstances.
The conservative push to limit marriage to what they think it should be is kind of like someone in 1970 demanding that all cars must have fins and AM radios, because cars have always had fins and AM radios, and anyone who makes a car without fins, or with FM radio, or (God forbid) a cassette player, is trying to "change the definition of automobile".
[pssst, Dana: cats and dogs sleeping together!!]
"The difference between the two is that for liberals they can never accept a good solution when a brilliant one might be just around the corner."
In other words, liberals suffer from "Better is the enemy of good enough" syndrome -- maybe. Can you give me an example?
"So you would contend that backwards movement is never good, nor is it ever ‘progressive’?"
Those are both slippery words, so I think I need to be a little more precise about what I mean.
Let's say you're on an expedition in the jungle. You're trying to get to a mountain, but you can't always go straight towards it because of various obstacles you often can't see until you meet them.
If you start down a path and then realize it's a dead end and you have to retrace your steps and try again, that's not progress. If (alternatively) the dead end puts you on a hill from which you can see where you do need to go, that's progress -- even as you're walking back the way you came.
The difference is this: In the former case, you have no new information except that the trail you were going down isn't going to work (which you half expected, anyway). In the latter case, the "false trail" gave you new information about which way to go -- you're no longer setting out half-blindly but with a clear direction.
To connect the metaphor back to the terminology I'm clarifying: walking back the way you came is always "backwards" movement, but in the latter case it's "progress" and in the former case it isn't.
To connect the terminology to a real-world example: in the case of gay marriage, we have no new information which indicates that we should back off; indeed, the conservative backlash has led to a more intensive investigation of the history of marriage, which reveals plenty of justification for allowing a much wider range of choices with no penalty to society. Backing off, in this case, is not progress.
Another example: the environmental movement. I'd say the extreme back-to-nature, reject technology and move to the country faction of that movement is anti-progress -- but the faction that wants to use technology (alternative-fuel vehicles, solar power, "green" building practices, etc.) to help preserve the environment without significantly de-modernizing everyone's lifestyle is progressive.
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Schools: I'd need to know more about the actual practices of the school system in question, and some numbers relating to performance. For obvious reasons you might not want to divulge where your daughter goes to school, so it's ok if you want to abandon this thread for now; I think we can agree that some traditional schooling practices work better under some circumstances.
Indeed, this is almost inevitable, since some percentage of any set of experimental techniques is bound to turn out to be less effective than more established techniques. That's the price of progress.
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"abortion as birth control": Let's establish some ground rules (let me know if any of these seem wrong to you):
1. You can only claim someone is doing this if they voluntarily obtained an abortion (i.e. no parental or other pressure)
2. You can only claim someone is doing this if they used abortion instead of proper contraception, i.e. the pregnancy resulted from knowingly-unprotected sex
3. You can only claim someone is doing this if they were aware that unprotected sex leads to procreation.
4. Uses of abortion which we both agree are acceptable (yes?) include: rape, incest, threat to mother's health (but you don't agree that "threat to her livelihood" is adequate, right?), threat to child's health (might be born with incurable illness/defect)
Looking at the various reasons for getting abortions, the ones which seem acceptable under these rules are: #4 (12.2%), #7 (3.3%), #8 (2.8%), #10 (1%) -- a total of 19.3% for acceptable uses -- and the unacceptable ones are #1 (25.5%), #2 (21.3%), #3 (14.1%), #5 (10.8%), #6 (7.9%), #9 (2.1%) -- a total of 81.7% (hmm, a little rounding error there, I guess).
Taking your argument and data at face value, then, abortion is used as contraception -- or, rather, abortion is used in situations where contraception should have been used instead -- about 4/5 of the time, and used legitimately only 1/5 of the time.
BUT -- of the 81.7% who used abortion with apparent inappropriateness:
* How many thought they were using contraception properly -- were trying to be responsible? (I don't think "inconsistent" contraception usage qualifies as choosing abortion as one's preferred method of contraception.) These people made mistakes.
* How many improved their contraceptive habits afterwards? (If they made a mistake once and then used proper contraception thereafter, is it fair to deny the abortion for that one time?)
* How many were aware beforehand that sex would lead to pregnancy? (If they hadn't been properly educated about the known connection between sex and pregnancy, how can they be blamed for using the only option available when they unexpectedly became pregnant?)
* How many were given easy access to contraception? (Certain groups have made significant "progress" in preventing contraception from being handed out by family counselors, high schools, health clinics...)
Your data does not address these points, which would seem essential to proving your case. On what basis can it possibly be claimed that women are using abortion as contraception unless these questions have been answered?
Addressing your additional points:
* "54% of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant." So 54% were trying to be responsible, an acceptable circumstance for obtaining an abortion -- or at least contradicting the idea that they were using it "as a contraceptive" (and contradicting your implication that 90% are implicitly unacceptable). Of the remaining 46%, how many used abortion for acceptable reasons? (If the proportions of acceptable/unacceptable usage from the data you provided -- which does not track whether or not contraception was used -- are the same among these 46%, that would mean that a further ~9% (46% * 19.3%) used abortion appropriately, for a total of 63% appropriate usage. What will the actual numbers be, I wonder? Is it possible that, among the women who failed to use contraception, there is a higher percentage of extenuating circumstances such as rape? Like, maybe there was a good reason why they didn't use contraception?)
* "Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently." Which proves, what? They made a mistake, or perhaps were not properly educated. (The conservative position eliminates sex ed completely, but that's a separate argument.)
* "46% of women who have abortions had not used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant." Um, yeah, 100-54 is 46... this is the same statistic as the first point.
* "Eight percent of women who have abortions have never used a method of birth control." What portion of those 8% were using abortion for legitimate purposes? The fact that they never used birth control may be because they never agreed to have sex (were raped), or because they thought their spouse would be supportive (and he wasn't), or they were talked into it by a bf/spouse and then later realized it would be a terrible mistake. Would you deny abortion to all these cases?
* "Each year, about two percent of women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion." Again, what percentage of those were either (a) using abortion for a legit purpose, (b) not properly educated about contraception or how mommy and daddy make babies, (c) not given access to contraceptives, or (d) got pregnant in spite of proper contraceptive use? All 4 of those situations nullify the claim of "abortion as a contraceptive".
The statistics you reported have been carefully gerrymandered, it would seem (especially the follow-up numbers). Where are they from?
"how can you not say abortion is used as a means of birth control in this country?" I've no doubt that it is, somewhere by some women, "used as contraception" by some reasonable interpretation of that phrase -- but I don't think it's fair to say that that is mainly how it is used, which is what's implied. Just using the crude and incomplete numbers you've reported, it looks like abortion is used for legit reasons (and definitely not as s substitute for proper birth control) about 2/3 of the time, possibly more.
If a tool is misused under some circumstances, the solution is to study those circumstances and find ways to correct the problems, not ban the whole thing outright or restrict it unilaterally.
Postscript: we've been discussing the merit of the "abortion as contraception" claim, but many of the points which I've conceded regarding that claim work against the larger conservative position against abortion... and I can see I'm not going to have time to get into that properly right now, so I'll just say that conservative "framing" of the abortion issue has done nothing to clarify (and much to obfuscate) the whole situation. We end up arguing points which really don't matter (when does "life begin"? I say it begins at 40; your turn...), and energy which could be turned towards researching relevant facts and hammering out points of agreement gets side-tracked into debating against dogmatists who have no intention of shifting their views one iota, no matter how much the evidence or reasoning is against them.
For now, there's this, to which I will try to add the points we've discussed so far. Remind me.
liberal > moderate liberal > centrist < moderate conservative < conservative
If we diagram out the basic political structure in this country I think the above is a model we can agree on. Obviously there are all sorts of additional sub-classifications we can dream up but this is the basic structure in the U.S. If we're okay with that, I think we can both admit that much of what we have been talking about is more along the lines of classic liberal / conservative thought. What you have articulated (if i understand you correctly) is that liberalism is a forward-thinking ideology that relies on reason and loads of data to constantly suggest 'improvements' for society and also works towards a culture that becomes more and more flexible within a certain set of guiding principles to prevent anarchy. What you have also articulated is that conservatism is the counter-balance to this, the ying to liberalism's yang. Conservatives stand atop the inevitable march towards the future and a more perfect society and yell STOP! Conservatives are constantly looking backwards, constantly fantasizing about the 'good ol' days' and while we have rules, they are not unified into any coherent theory but instead exist rather hodgepodge and disjointed. We mostly try to delay progress.
Since I never really got your definition of ‘progressive’ maybe that would be a good question to ask now. If you agree with me that it describes a goal or someone that seeks change then do you also believe that by default most liberals are progressive? Assuming you are going to agree with me on the gist of what it means to be ‘progressive’ then the only question left to answer is “Can a conservative be progressive’ ?
What I would like to do is go repeat my original thesis which is that ‘progress’ is not the exclusive domain of the Left. I believe conservatives have advanced a number of forward-thinking ideas in the last decade. I go back to schools again. There is a growing consensus that liberals, not conservatives, have been the most resistant to change in school policy, mostly because of their ties with teacher’s unions. I read a lot of non-partisan education reports and there is a real sense of frustration out there. Look at all the positive press that Michelle Rhee is getting in Washington DC for her plan to demand more accountability from teachers, which is a conservative talking point. There’s also a ton of data that shows parents, especially poor/minority parents, want school choice, which has been a major conservative policy suggestion for quite some time.
There are some liberal ideas out there on education and some are decent. They want schools to improve just like conservatives do. So both sides have progressive goals and progressive plans, but I would contend that if you rate them on the level of departure from the current norm, conservatives are more progressive on education than liberals these days.
Also, our example of the New Deal giving way to the Great Society and then Welfare Reform under Clinton. To use your example of paths through the jungle; I would say that liberals in the mid-1960’s believed that the New Deal was a dead end but that they could see the correct way to go from that trail. But they didn’t go backwards to find that trail. They started hacking through the underbrush looking for a shortcut. That took 30 years. Eventually some conservative tour guides tapped them on the shoulder and said, “You were on the right trail to begin with. But now that trail is overgrown (it had 30 years of neglect) so conservatives started got out their machetes and started clearing a new trail somewhere between the original and the lousy shortcut. So far this trail has really gotten us far.
The point is, liberals undertook a 30-year mistake that cause a lot of strife in this country. Conservatives were the ones that got the welfare system back on track with the demands they placed on Clinton. We didn’t go back to the New Deal. We suggested a third way, which was a ‘progressive’ solution. We had to drag the Left kicking and screaming away from the Great Society welfare state. I’m sorry but just because liberals eventually got on board and saw the error of their ways doesn’t mean you get credit for finding the right path.
Re: Abortion
I’m going to take issue with a couple of your rules:
2. You can only claim someone is doing this if they used abortion instead of proper contraception, i.e. the pregnancy resulted from knowingly-unprotected sex
I disagree. What I believe is the more likely attitude among those having abortions is, “I will attempt to use the pill / condom / etc but if that fails, I’ll just get an abortion.” So in that respect I think abortion has just become Part II of a two-part plan for birth control. Since the first part requires either remembering daily medication or stopping a passionate moment to get a condom, the second part is a convenient fallback. I think the 47% of women who are getting abortions for a second time backs up that thinking.
In a sense, isn’t that what liberals wanted anyway? Most liberals don’t see a fetus in the first trimester (when most abortions occur) as a life anyway, so in that context an abortion would be just another part of the family planning tool kit.
3. You can only claim someone is doing this if they were aware that unprotected sex leads to procreation.
You seem to put a lot of stock in this rule here, since you use it to discredit or at least raise doubts about most of my assertions. So let me be clear here: As someone who became a father at 19 and as someone whose wife is a social worker and tells me lots of stories about the kids she works with….I can tell you that the vast majority of kids get pregnant because they’re just irresponsible. That was certainly what happened with me. It’s not because they don’t know where babies come from or because they couldn’t get any contraceptives or because they weren’t educated about how to use the contraceptives properly. They’re just irresponsible. Girls forget to take their pills and roll the dice. Couples have sex without using a condom because it feels better and hope for the best. Etc. This isn’t a matter of education or access….it’s a matter of responsibility. Kids these days learn all that stuff very early and mostly without parents even telling them. My daughter knew all of that stuff before I ever got a chance to tell her because it’s all over the place. You would almost have to be comatose to not know this stuff.
As for the rest of the discussion… the facts came from the Guttmacher Institute, which is the only organization I ever get my abortion data from because they have been doing this for 40 years and I believe they are thouroughly non-partisan.
I'm not sure we need to agree on the model; in any case, regardless of whether the philosophy I'm defending/advocating is classical liberalism or something else, I'm speaking only for myself (except as noted). I may try to defend "liberal" points with which I don't particularly agree, but don't assume that I do.
Your restatements of my definitions seem basically on target; I'll address any problematic nuances as they come up.
Yes, liberalism is essentially progressive, and most liberals (though not all) tend towards progressivity. (The back-to-nature types and the Sacred Crystal Energy worshippers, maybe not. I'd argue that those are actually distant variants of conservatism, with a frosting of liberal tropes... but I digress.)
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Conservative progressiveness and schools, redux: It is possible for a conservative approach to lead to [what I would call] progress.
However, there's a difference between (a) continuing using elements of ideas that have worked because they've worked and (b) rejecting new ideas essentially because they're new and/or clinging to traditional ideas because they're traditional.
It's great that your neo-traditional schools are producing better results than them newfangled librul schools, but that doesn't mean that all liberal ideas about education are invalid. Which specific traditional ideas are your schools embracing, and which specific liberal ideas seem to be failing?
Around here, we have a charter school set up by liberals. It uses public school funds and has to work with many of the restrictions the public schools face (including some extra restrictions only imposed on charter schools), yet they do a much better job than the mainstream public schools do. So whatever your school system may have proven, it isn't that we need to abandon all liberal ideas about schooling.
"Accountability from teachers" is a double-edged sword -- look at how "No Child Left Behind", with its apparently forward-looking attempts to tie school budgets to academic performance, has backfired. (If we can figure out why "conservatives" liked this seemingly forward-looking, somewhat radical and risky idea and "liberals" didn't, that may help us understand the difference between "ideal" conservatism and actual American conservatism.)
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I'll have to research the issue with regard to the New Deal (some links to suggested reading material would be helpful) -- but the sentence "Conservatives were the ones that got the welfare system back on track with the demands they placed on Clinton" strikes me as one which needs to be examined with great skepticism. Conservatives generally behaved like total assholes to Clinton, and are still doing it; I'd be greatly surprised to find anything constructive buried within all the BS that was manufactured to throw at him.
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Abortion, round 3(?):
Re your disagreement with Rule 2 -- 'the more likely attitude among those having abortions is, “I will attempt to use the pill / condom / etc but if that fails, I’ll just get an abortion.”'
What alternative would you propose?
And a key question: How many prior successful uses of contraception does it take before a pregnant woman can be cleared of the accusation of "using abortion as contraception"?
"I think the 47% of women who are getting abortions for a second time backs up that thinking." Not without further evidence it doesn't; I already answered that point.
You are correct that I don't see a fetus in the first trimester as a person. The brain has only just barely begun ticking over at the end of the first trimester (week 12), and it's extremely doubtful that it is capable of anything resembling thinking or feeling at that point.
Re your disagreement with Rule 3 -- "I can tell you that the vast majority of kids get pregnant because they’re just irresponsible."
Look, maybe your anecdotal data is 100% accurate, but maybe it's biased by the way you see things (ever hear of "confirmation bias"?). I want some numbers and methodology applied to that question before I go agreeing with you, and especially before we go basing national policy on the observations of one or two people.
The only person I know personally who got pregnant without meaning to was being responsible at the time -- she was apparently just extremely fertile.
Also, remember that there are two issues here -- (a) whether abortion is being used as contraception, and (b) whether access to abortion is too easy. I've been mainly addressing (a), because none of your arguments have addressed the main objections to (b).
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Thank you for mentioning Guttmacher. From what I can tell (mainly for the benefit of anyone else reading this), they do in fact seem to be pro-family-planning (they're an offshoot of Planned Parenthood, an organization much maligned by anti-abortionists) and not a religious right front organization.
Your supplemental facts seem to have come from this page. I have contacted them to see if they can shed any light on the question of "abortion being used as birth control", and will report on what I get back from them (if anything).
Yes, liberalism is essentially progressive, and most liberals (though not all) tend towards progressivity.
I will second that notion. On the whole, liberals tend to be more progressive in the sense that they are more actively seeking change. (Of course, as I think I stated earlier, I believe that this leads to a tendency to advocate change just for the sake of change, a kind of norm-boredom, and I wouldn’t say the change is always good change, but that’s a separate issue). I will also state the unspoken corollary which is that on the whole conservatives tend to advocate less change in the moving-forward way and tend to be more romantic in their notions that past norms were fine.
As you seem to indicate when you say, “It is possible for a conservative approach to lead to [what I would call] progress,” there are some circumstances, however rare in your view, where conservatives DO offer ‘progressive’ solutions that move us forward. Obviously there are caveats, which you also mention, just like there are caveats to liberal ‘progressivism’ as well. I think I see a bit less true liberal progressivism than you do and I’m quite sure that you see far less conservative progressivism than I do and that is 100% okay with me. My main goal with my blog and for the growing group of self-styled ‘progressive conservatives’ that I have met is that we want just want the Left to be open to the idea that there are conservatives who are seeking change that is not based on just hitting the rewind button.
If I could look into my crystal ball and predict one possible counter-argument that you might bring up, which is that self-perceived ‘progressive conservatives’ are really just extremely moderate liberals….I think that would be a valid point. A lot of us have struggled with that notion ourselves. I guess it’s all about where we draw the line on the diagram I advocated above. We consider ourselves conservatives because we think the answers to many of our social ills don’t always lie with the new, but often in a rethinking of the old.
Regarding the ‘traditional’ school model… I am not contending that this is the perfect model and the pinnacle of conservative policy making. What I am suggesting is that by selecting some conservative elements of what worked in the past in public schools (teaching citizenship and patriotism), taking conservative elements from private and parochial schools (basic curriculum, uniforms and strong discipline) and by also using some modern liberal teaching techniques and technology…a system has been created that works well. I also understand that down the road we could just as easily have an extremely liberal charter school that achieves as well or better. The point is that both approaches are progressive and forward-thinking, yet are rooted in two separate ideologies.
This scenario exists in a lot of other areas.
If you want some good info on the New Deal I would suggest reading the 75th anniversary series at NewGeography.com.
http://www.newgeography.com/category/story-topics/new-deal
The New Deal was indeed a liberal program at the time, but by modern liberal standards I think it would be considered hopelessly quaint and too conservative in its expectations for the recipients of aid. I think this was also the perception under Johnson and the Great Society as well.
Re: Abortion
You are correct that I don't see a fetus in the first trimester as a person. The brain has only just barely begun ticking over at the end of the first trimester (week 12), and it's extremely doubtful that it is capable of anything resembling thinking or feeling at that point.
So then why are you so offended by the notion that abortion is used as ‘birth control’ i.e preventing unwanted births to happen? I think in light of your feelings on first trimester abortions then you would be completely okay with abortion being part of the family-planning tool-kit.
re "change for the sake of change": this may be true in some ways, but I'm thinking it's more likely that liberals are more likely to perceive the problems with the status quo than are conservatives -- not so much "boredom" as (a) being less able to brush off suffering in others,and/or (b) possibly being in less ideal circumstances themselves, where they see those circumstances as being the result of failures of the system -- violations of social contracts or basic rules of fairness. (Conservatives like to blame the victim for everything, and hence are unsympathetic to either of these ideas.)
I don't think you have to be "bored" or even discontent, though, to see change as a positive thing. It's probably a symptom of having a curious mind; conservatives strike me as generally incurious (with Bush being a prime example) and unimaginative. They don't like asking questions that start with "What if", because they don't have a reference to tell them what the answer is.
I have no problem with conservatives having their little niches of safety, stability, and predictability; I just don't want them wrapping their little safety-blankets around me and mine, thanks; they may help keep you safe, but they can also be stifling.
re "there are some circumstances... where conservatives DO offer ‘progressive’ solutions that move us forward...: I think I can even offer a class of examples in which this is true. Liberals tend to dislike Big Engineering solutions to things, or at least did when I was growing up -- one particular incident which comes to mind was the protests against the launch of some interplanetary probes, some time in the 1980s iirc (because of the "deadly plutonium" it had on board as a power supply and the consequent risk of environmental contamination if the launch failed and it crashed), protests against huge hydroelectric dams (ecologically disruptive).
I'm not saying these protests are always wrong, but they do have a tendency to be retrogressive. Conservatives may fear science and reason, but liberals seem to have a distaste for large engineering projects.
Conservatives generally favor such things (with the possible exception of spending government money on space exploration... which is unfortunate, because it's my favorite of the bunch), and hence are being more "progressive". Are they really being "conservative", though? Or just capitalistic (power plants make money, and big rockets mean big government contracts)?
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re "we want just want the Left to be open to the idea that there are conservatives who are seeking change that is not based on just hitting the rewind button.": I'm certainly open to that idea, but I have yet to see it in action... lately, anyhow.
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re "So then why are you so offended by the notion that abortion is used as ‘birth control’..." I was expecting that question...
1. For the same reason I'm offended when Conservapedia claims Obama is a Muslim, even though I'd have no more problem with the idea of a Muslim president than I do with a Christian president: it's a lie. Lies piss me off.
2. Because, as with the Obama claim, it plays to an audience which is bothered by that idea, and turns them against something (legal abortions or Obama as president) on the strength of a false claim (women use abortion as contraception, Obama is a Muslim) -- while implicitly reinforcing their biases (against "abortion as contraception"* or a Muslim becoming president). *I do think this would be a rather wasteful practice, at best, but you're right that I don't see it as a heinous crime.
3. Because it seriously maligns the intentions and responsibility of women who seek abortions
4. Because (as I gradually figured out while responding to you) it's a maddeningly vague accusation -- perhaps even impossible to disprove, depending on what you mean by it...
4a. ...which makes it only of use as a tool to manipulate the uninformed, not something which helps us understand the problem better. A little like asking "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
You haven't answered my key question, though: how many times must a woman successfully use contraception before being able to seek abortion without being accused of "using abortion as contraception"? Under what circumstances can a woman legitimately seek an abortion just because she doesn't want to have a baby, according to you? What abortion scenarios do you accept as not being "abortion used as contraception"?
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And here's a "progressive conservative" scenario for you:
My understanding/assumption has always been that we're trying to reduce two things: the number of abortions and the number of unwanted children.
It's understandable that people might assume that restricting access to abortion would accomplish the first of these things, so I can forgive conservatives for initially pushing in this direction.
Now that the data is in, however, we find that it has essentially no effect. This brings up several questions in my mind:
1. Why do conservatives continue to push for it, since it doesn't work?
2. And, hey, why do conservatives also push for ideas like abstinence-based "education", which actually increase the number of abortions?
3. Why aren't "progressive conservatives" out there pushing for research to develop a genuine, forward-looking solution to the problem -- such as fetus transplantation and (ultimately) artificial wombs?
If it were possible for a "nice conservative couple" to simply step in and take over hosting of an unwanted fetus, I'd be much more inclined to agree that there could be restrictions on abortion. Any couple who have been cleared as adoptive parents (rules which are probably too strict now, as it is) should be allowed to have first dibs on unwanted live embryos and fetuses; if no takers can be found in a reasonable time, only then may the fetus be aborted in the traditional way (killed and disposed of).
Would "progressive conservatives" embrace such a solution -- even in the face of the likely fundie backlash? I can just see the picket signs: "Romans 1:26 - God delivered them to degrading passions as their females exchanged their natural sexual function for one that is unnatural -- artificial embryo transplants ARE ABOMINATION!" (...only with worse spelling)
And for that matter, are "progressive conservatives" fighting against abstinence-based non-education, creationism, and other backwards nonsense? Do they favor stem-cell research and other medical advances? Mandatory sex education, free contraception (take away every excuse for being "irresponsible")?
Convince me you're actually reasonable and not just trying to sound reasonable.
… I'm thinking it's more likely that liberals are more likely to perceive the problems with the status quo than are conservatives -- not so much "boredom" as (a) being less able to brush off suffering in others,and/or (b) possibly being in less ideal circumstances themselves, where they see those circumstances as being the result of failures of the system -- violations of social contracts or basic rules of fairness. (Conservatives like to blame the victim for everything, and hence are unsympathetic to either of these ideas.)
I would take that one step further and suggest that conservatives tend to dispel the notion of ‘victims’ in general. I’m primarily referring to economics here, but I would say that the difference between the two sides is that conservatives tend to see the people who go through the system and succeed as evidence that the system works and tend to place the blame for a lack of success on the individual. Liberals see people who went through the system and didn’t succeed as evidence the system is flawed and say the individual is a victim.
I would contend that while the conservative opinion may sound harsh it is the more optimistic of the too in that it elevates human potential. The liberal position tends to under-estimate human potential and so there is a constant push to make the playing field more level. While this may be an admirable goal on the surface there is all kinds of ancillary fallout from competition being squashed to unqualified individuals being placed in jobs, etc.
"there are some circumstances... where conservatives DO offer ‘progressive’ solutions that move us forward...: I think I can even offer a class of examples in which this is true. Liberals tend to dislike Big Engineering solutions to things, or at least did when I was growing up -- one particular incident which comes to mind was the protests against the launch of some interplanetary probes, some time in the 1980s iirc (because of the "deadly plutonium" it had on board as a power supply and the consequent risk of environmental contamination if the launch failed and it crashed), protests against huge hydroelectric dams (ecologically disruptive).
That is a very interesting point that I hadn’t really thought of. It also of course validates my original thesis which is that conservatives can be progressive therefore the ‘progressive’ label is not the exclusive domain of the left (i.e. a synonym for liberalism as is the common usage today.) Progressivism is a more of a mindset within the larger political sphere and while it may flourish on the Left and have a smaller following on the Right… it does exist on both ends.
It will be interesting to see how your statement above plays out under an Obama administration that is planning a lot of ‘Big Engineering’ solutions. Nuclear power may be another example of what you’re talking about. Conservatives tend to like it more than liberals because it’s cheaper and more efficient and as a bonus it has far less immediate impact on the environment (all progressive goals). I also think that infrastructure spending is a fantastic idea and support it completely, but I also believe it may be conservatives, who tend to have a better ‘business sense’, that end up partnering with an Obama administration to divert money from liberal pet projects like light rail to less sexy but more economically significant projects like increasing heavy rail capacity through major industrial centers.
"we want just want the Left to be open to the idea that there are conservatives who are seeking change that is not based on just hitting the rewind button.": I'm certainly open to that idea, but I have yet to see it in action... lately, anyhow.
Hence my original statement cautioning you to not cite conservatism or liberalism in practice but to think of a more ‘idealized’ version of both.
Re: Abortion
"So then why are you so offended by the notion that abortion is used as ‘birth control’..." I was expecting that question...
4. Because (as I gradually figured out while responding to you) it's a maddeningly vague accusation -- perhaps even impossible to disprove, depending on what you mean by it...
I mean literally what I said, which is that abortion is used in this country as a tool to stop unwanted births i.e. birth control. Since all statistics indicate that well over 90% are using it for social reasons, then I think that’s a fair assessment. I point to the reasons for having the abortion as evidence for it being classified as ‘birth control’ while you point to the possibilities (maddeningly vague?) that there was a lack of understanding of other birth control methods that somehow puts this beyond the standard birth control toolkit (by today’s standard).
Doesn’t your opinion that this is somehow more culturally significant than taking a pill daily or putting on a condom presume that the people seeking abortions do so with ‘heavy hearts’ ? I know liberals like data so do you have any that demonstrates most (over 50%) of the women seeking abortions regret the decision at that time? And if so, why the regret? If there is a level of doubt in their minds as to the morality behind their decision, then doesn’t that make them culpable, regardless of the science?
I guess the real question is that if you yourself believe that a first trimester abortion is no different that using a condom or taking the pill, what evidence do you have to prove most others getting abortions don’t feel the same way?
Personally I believe the only reason liberals elevate abortion beyond other types of birth control is because of the very real fact that most women that get abortions struggle with the morality behind their decision at some point. I don’t think liberals really believe that those women made a bad decision, but they are sympathetic to her anguish because it becomes a mental health issue for them. The most often heard retort these days to criticism that liberals don’t care about human lives is, “What about the suffering of the woman who has to make this decision…This isn’t an easy decision….etc” They de-emphasize the humanity of the fetus and over-emphasize the moral dilemma of the mother as a sort of trade-off. “You give us the abortion and we will promise you a lifetime of remorse. “
This also sort of becomes moot when so many liberals dismiss a conservative emphasis on adoption because it’s too hard on the mother mentally. (Obama mentions abortion in his ‘Blueprint for Change’ more than once and never uses the word ‘adoption’)
You haven't answered my key question, though: how many times must a woman successfully use contraception before being able to seek abortion without being accused of "using abortion as contraception"?
So long as there are other options that would pose no long-term burden on the mother (adoption, adoption, adoption) then the mother is in fact practicing ‘birth control’. She isn’t doing it to avoid a lifetime of legal and financial obligations…she’s doing it to avoid 9 months of discomfort and a difficult action at the end. That is ‘birth control’.
Under what circumstances can a woman legitimately seek an abortion just because she doesn't want to have a baby, according to you?
Big three exceptions (rape, incest, health of the mother)
What abortion scenarios do you accept as not being "abortion used as contraception"?
Big three exceptions (rape, incest, health of the mother)
And for that matter, are "progressive conservatives" fighting against abstinence-based non-education, creationism, and other backwards nonsense? Do they favor stem-cell research and other medical advances? Mandatory sex education, free contraception (take away every excuse for being "irresponsible")?
I don’t believe in abstinence-only education, though I see no problem with holding it up as the most ideal solution. It’s just like drinking. I tell my daughter, “You shouldn’t drink because you’re underage, it’s dangerous, etc….but if you’re going to, call me so I can bring you home safe.” Maybe that sends a contradictory message, but I would feel very irresponsible if I did not emphasize the best course of action for her.
On the flip side though, many schools DO offer sex education. I received it in Catholic school. My daughter has received it in public school. Most of my adult friends received it as well. So why is this liberal approach not working either?
My contention is that all the education in the world will not change cultural norms. Right now the norm among teens is ‘hooking up’ and out-of-wedlock births are so commonplace (70% in the black community) that there is no social stigma, hence no pressure for them to decline. You can spend billions on education and condoms but until you address the real source of the problem, liberal solutions are no better than conservative ones. The only difference is, liberals offer the option to fix their mistakes with an outpatient procedure while conservatives ask for 9 months and some courage at the end.
I take back what I said earlier about "generalizing" (regarding the Disraeli quote). Conservatives generalize with the best of 'em. The difference seems to be that conservatives seem to take particular sets of words as essential truths unto themselves (rather than being imperfect expressions of greater truths), while liberals seem to generalize more conceptually and abstractly.
Which I think is (another way of saying) what I meant about liberals having principles and conservatives having rules.
"I would contend that while the conservative opinion may sound harsh it is the more optimistic of the too in that it elevates human potential."
Well, sure -- if you make sure everyone does equally well, then "doing well" no longer means anything. I don't credit, for example, the educational idea that kids must always be told they're doing "great job" even when they aren't, on the theory that any criticism will hurt their fragile egos. A certain amount of self-esteem is important, but self esteem (indeed, any kind of esteem) must be earned -- and some kids arguably have too damn much to begin with.
And I'll grant that there's probably a lot of false-victimhood out there (...though lately it's as much or more on the political right as on the left).
However...
1. You see the people who succeed as evidence that the system works, but you see the people who fail as being responsible for their own failure.
I don't think I need to point out what looks like a double standard here; instead, I'll just ask: What would you accept, hypothetically, as evidence of shortcomings in the system? If there is no possibility of failure, after all, then success is meaningless...
2. It misses the point. People are not one-dimensional. You can't measure a person's success or failure with a single number. Someone might be an excellent athlete, but be unable to compete because of an injury. Does that athlete's lack of medical skills then equate to failure as an athlete?
One of society's essential functions is to compensate for individual shortcomings so that the strengths of those same individuals are not unnecessarily hog-tied. Your stance against the idea of "victimhood" would deny special assistance to those who need it in order to be able to use their strengths -- and thereby hinders human potential.
3. It misses the point (again): How is it bad if we all get to "succeed" by some standard? Society isn't a zero-sum game, where any gain now must be counterbalanced so as to always hover around some eternal mean; it advances. If everyone "succeeds" by today's standards, that effectively raises the bar for excellence.
By your argument, universal literacy is a bad thing because it demeans the achievement of those who have learned how to read. Universal freedom demeans the efforts of those who have worked their way out of indentured servitude. I suppose you dislike universal healthcare because it would demean the struggle of those who have purchased overpriced private healthcare by their own efforts... yeah, right.
4. Are you really trying to say that the system is perfect now, and that none of the liberal reforms over the past century were necessary because the system was perfect then too?
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"Nuclear power may be another example of what you’re talking about. Conservatives tend to like it more than liberals because it’s cheaper and more efficient and as a bonus it has far less immediate impact on the environment (all progressive goals)."
I think a lot of liberals are taking a second look at nuclear, especially in light of the (apparently accurate) claim that coal sludge contains just as much radioactivity. The main thing I don't like about nuclear power plants is the secretive, non-transparent, authority-driven way in which they are run -- which seems far more dangerous to me than the supposed risk of terrorist infiltration if plant layouts and procedures were widely known. How many power plants (of any kind) have ever been subject to terrorism, and how many nuclear plants have had "accidents" due to poor oversight? But obviously that's a whole topic unto itself.
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"I also think that infrastructure spending is a fantastic idea and support it completely, but I also believe it may be conservatives, who tend to have a better ‘business sense’..."
From what I've seen, conservative "business sense" has mainly to do with supporting projects which they know will benefit businesses in which they have a stake.
Show me how improving light rail would be less economically significant than improving (already dominant) freight rail. (And we certainly don't need any more effing highways. Fix the ones we've got, yes, but enough is enough.)
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"Hence my original statement cautioning you to not cite conservatism or liberalism in practice but to think of a more ‘idealized’ version of both."
If we're talking about an idealized form of conservatism (even if it's not specifically "progressive"), I am all for that. In most of what we have been talking about, however, it seems to me that the American Conservative movement has taken what I would consider to be an anti-[ideal-]conservative tack.
I would consider the following to be counter to ideal conservatism:
* the anti-abortion movement (babies are expensive and there is currently a glut)
* the anti-LGBT movement (attacking people for no good reason is destructive, and keeps them from doing their jobs)
* the anti-evolution movement (scientific knowledge is a hard-won triumph of civilization; not merely ignoring it but actively working to discredit is an incomprehensible waste of one of our most profoundly valuable resources)
* the anti-environmental movement (there's a reason environmentalism is called "conservation")
* the recent pro-war movements, especially with regard to the way those wars have been managed and the way we've causally thrown out all the international good will we had on 9/12/01
...and possibly others.
I'm not sure this type of conservatism exists anymore, but if it does it's become part of what is now called "liberalism".
How does "progressive conservatism" view these issues?
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"I mean literally what I said, which is that abortion is used in this country as a tool to stop unwanted births i.e. birth control."
I think you've over-broadened your definition there -- even abortion for rape would be stopping an unwanted birth. Hopefully you've clarified later on...
"Doesn’t your opinion that this is somehow more culturally significant than taking a pill daily or putting on a condom presume that the people seeking abortions do so with ‘heavy hearts’?"
Yes, that's my contention. As for data, I have only anecdotal evidence and the following argument: if a woman is so uncaring that she had her very own potential bundle of love-n-joy aborted with nary a concern, do you really want her raising children??
I agree, though, that this is one question about which we need to be gathering data. If I hear back from Guttmacher, I'll ask them if they have anything on that.
"If there is a level of doubt in their minds as to the morality behind their decision, then doesn’t that make them culpable, regardless of the science?"
No, because:
* The default should be not to restrict an activity. (Aren't conservatives always complaining about government interference in private affairs?)
* Even if women are using abortion "too casually" (by whose definition, and why?), the idea that this calls for government regulation or moral censure has not been demonstrated.
"I guess the real question is that if you yourself believe that a first trimester abortion is no different that using a condom or taking the pill, what evidence do you have to prove most others getting abortions don’t feel the same way?"
* It's one thing to talk about in the abstract; I'm sure it's quite different in person (my advisor here, who once experienced an "involuntary abortion" i.e. miscarriage, assures me that it was a very emotionally fraught experience -- and that was without any moral issues involved, since it was involuntary).
* Again: if a woman really did feel that callous towards her potential child, would you really want her raising it?
"I don’t think liberals really believe that those women made a bad decision, but they are sympathetic to her anguish because it becomes a mental health issue for them."
It's about personal freedom -- not being shackled by one's biological heritage or some one-size-fits-all notion of "destiny" or "role". Liberals generally reject the idea that one can be held to obligations to which one did not agree. Having sex while female and fertile does not constitute an agreement to have children.
Whether or not they made a bad decision depends a great deal on the circumstances, I should think. (What is this thing where conservatives can't deal with the idea that context is important? It keeps coming up.) If they were completely responsible, used contraception properly and dependably -- then no mistake was made; just bad luck.
Yes, I de-emphasize the life of the fetus. I consider a grown woman's happiness to be more important than the life of an unborn who may or may not even have enough brain to feel with and who certainly has no opinion on whether or not life is good. Are there valid arguments for any other point of view?
Mother cats, under stress, will quietly kill and eat their kittens. Why shouldn't a human mother be allowed to make the same choice for her unborn child? She's probably a lot better informed than the cat, if nothing else.
Mother cats can also re-absorb their unborn kittens, under stress. Why can't we artificially provide this same option for human mothers, who bear a great deal more responsibility for their offspring than do cats?
I think there should be more adoption, yes -- but that's just one of the things conservatives need to work on fixing before you can start arguing for returning to a more restrictive approach to adoption. (Some of the others I've already mentioned -- get rid of abstinence-based "education", make contraception more widely available, support gay adoption.) The current approach -- criticizing for not using the alternatives, while actively working to take the alternatives away -- is rank hypocrisy.
Even so, I don't see the need for abortions ever going away completely, at least until the population stops growing exponentially. Conservatives never seem to get the fact that we already have too many kids -- why do we want to go to heroic efforts to save a few more unborns? What's this obsession with babies? There are plenty of them, they're made cheaply with unskilled labor, and they're very expensive to raise properly. How is maximizing this product "conservative", by any stretch of the imagination?
"So long as there are other options that would pose no long-term burden on the mother (adoption, adoption, adoption) then the mother is in fact practicing ‘birth control’."
You're speaking of a hypothetical, here. My understanding is that the adoption process is slow, ugly, and hard on the kids and parents. Again: Why do we need more kids?
If "Big three exceptions (rape, incest, health of the mother)" are the only legit uses of abortion according to you, then your complaint about "using it as birth control" is basically an objection to what I consider one of the primary functions of abortion: simply not wanting to bring a baby into the world, for whatever reason.
"I don’t believe in abstinence-only education, though I see no problem with holding it up as the most ideal solution."
O rly? So, the fact that IT DOESN'T WORK isn't a problem? The fact that IT RESULTS IN HIGHER PREGNANCY RATES doesn't make you think twice about it?
Are you trying to actually reduce abortion rates, or just trying to prove to someone how against abortion you are?
"So why is this liberal approach not working either?" In what way does it not work? Proper sex ed is linked to lower pregnancy rates. American conservatives fight against sex education, and it is not included in many school curricula; if Progressive Conservatism wants to reduce teen pregnancy, then its advocates should be fighting for mandatory sex ed in public, private, and home schools -- not to mention the other "liberal" solutions I mentioned earlier.
If you mean it doesn't eliminate the problem completely, then I'd say (a) it's still miles better than conservative-proposed solutions, and (b) the problem will only be largely eliminated when women can choose to turn off their egg-dispensers (why aren't progressive conservatives agitating for more research into this -- a 99% solution everyone could agree on?) -- but even then, there will be cases of "parents/spouse/bf unexpectedly unsupportive" to deal with.
Your strategy, as I understand it, is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies by (re-)attaching social stigma to them. We've already been there as a society, and only conservatives want to go back -- because it sucked leper donkey dick (to borrow a phrase).
You cite the lack of social stigma as a prime cause of the higher pregnancy rate, but do you have any evidence for that? How do you explain the higher rate among blacks, who live in the same society? How are abortion rates in highly religious-right areas of the US, where the "stigma" approach is being heavily applied, versus coastal metropolitan areas which tend to take the other approach?
Further, much of the actual-Right's agenda also runs counter to the supposed goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies -- and they generally refuse to acknowledge or counter this fact, leading to further liberal rage at their hypocrisy.
Conservatives get so focused on banning or outlawing things they don't like that they ignore any evidence which indicates they are actually making the problem worse.
In other words, they spend so much energy trying to enforce rules that they don't notice they're failing to advance the principle.
Do you really want to reduce abortions? Or do you just want to convince everyone of how thoroughly devoted you are to the anti-abortion cause? You start reasoning down lines which might lead to the former, but you always seem to slip into thinking which is more about the latter.
How is Progressive Conservatism substantially different from the failed "solutions" American Conservatism has so far been promoting?
1. You see the people who succeed as evidence that the system works, but you see the people who fail as being responsible for their own failure.
I think people who ‘fail’ (and maybe we should define the word fail: it is not necessarily a ‘failure’ if you have to live in an apartment instead of a house, for example) are often the architects of their own problems either through a lack of effort, bad decision making, whatever. Of course there are many examples of someone who ‘fails’ through no fault of their own. The construction worker who has a good job and gets hit with a forklift, then loses his job, benefits and home…that is a ‘failure’ that he did not create and as a society we should help him. His coworker who wants to be a foreman but can’t read blueprints is going to ‘fail’ at getting that promotion. Is it the responsibility of society to help him get it? No. He needs to get more training and then he can hopefully achieve what he wants. The problem is that liberals see all failures as ultimately the fault of the system.
In the example of the construction worker wanting a promotion, to follow liberal logic we need to find out if he went to a poor school or was he not told about how to get more training or is the cost of that training too high or does he have kids at home so he can’t go to night school…..if at any point they see a roadblock then he needs help.
This is probably a groan-inducing point, but the best line I heard in the late Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture was when he said that the brick walls we come to in life are not there to keep us out but to allow us to prove how bad we want something. I think the liberal attitude is that whenever we see a brick wall Uncle Sam should knock it down for us.
Show me how improving light rail would be less economically significant than improving (already dominant) freight rail.
Are you suggesting there is a positive economic impact to light rail? That’s not why cities build them. They do so mostly to try and keep their downtown areas free from congestion (which doesn’t work) and to cut down on car-based pollution. And many newer lines (Houston being the prime example) are under-used and poorly planned. There is far more economic impact to adding heavy freight lines than light rail. Our current heavy rail system is overburdened and increasingly longer transit times cost shippers real money.
"Hence my original statement cautioning you to not cite conservatism or liberalism in practice but to think of a more ‘idealized’ version of both."
If we're talking about an idealized form of conservatism (even if it's not specifically "progressive"), I am all for that. In most of what we have been talking about, however, it seems to me that the American Conservative movement has taken what I would consider to be an anti-[ideal-]conservative tack.
I'm not sure this type of conservatism exists anymore, but if it does it's become part of what is now called "liberalism".
How does "progressive conservatism" view these issues?
I would say on abortion, we’re willing to leave the first trimester alone for now. The rest should be off-limits except for the Big Three.
On gay marriage we range between full acceptance to at least allowing legally equivalent civil unions.
The majority of conservatives, not just progressive conservatives, are opposed to the Creationism / ID movement. It’s a blight on conservatism right now.
I’m not aware of any specifically conservative ‘pro-war movements’. Please elaborate.
"I guess the real question is that if you yourself believe that a first trimester abortion is no different that using a condom or taking the pill, what evidence do you have to prove most others getting abortions don’t feel the same way?"
* Again: if a woman really did feel that callous towards her potential child, would you really want her raising it?
I’m not asking her to raise it. I’m just asking her not to abort it.
Having sex while female and fertile does not constitute an agreement to have children.
I disagree completely on that point. Unless you’re using birth control that specifically says ‘100% effective’ then the person is agreeing to accept a certain level of risk and they are responsible for the outcome.
I think there should be more adoption, yes -- but that's just one of the things conservatives need to work on fixing before you can start arguing for returning to a more restrictive approach to adoptionThe current approach -- criticizing for not using the alternatives, while actively working to take the alternatives away -- is rank hypocrisy.
I agree. Conservatives certainly need to do better in that regard. It would also be nice to have liberal help…although unfortunately liberals tend to be mostly obstructionist with adoption (although there is some hope that allowing gay marriage will soften this stance because those couple will want children.)
"So long as there are other options that would pose no long-term burden on the mother (adoption, adoption, adoption) then the mother is in fact practicing ‘birth control’."
You're speaking of a hypothetical, here. My understanding is that the adoption process is slow, ugly, and hard on the kids and parents.
Again, we just need to make that process better, not disregard it. I have friends who have adopted and they spent thousands of dollars and countless hours under review. This can be approved, but it will also require a loosening of liberal social work standards to a degree.
"I don’t believe in abstinence-only education, though I see no problem with holding it up as the most ideal solution."
O rly? So, the fact that IT DOESN'T WORK isn't a problem? The fact that IT RESULTS IN HIGHER PREGNANCY RATES doesn't make you think twice about it?
What I said is that I don’t believe in abstinence-only education. Mentioning abstinence as the most ideal choice in the context of a broader sexual education program should have no negative effect. Also, I’d like to see your data that abstinence-only results in higher rates. The only thing I have seen is a report that is has no impact (good or bad) and that the rising rates for the control group were the same as the rest of the population.
You cite the lack of social stigma as a prime cause of the higher pregnancy rate, but do you have any evidence for that? How do you explain the higher rate among blacks, who live in the same society? How are abortion rates in highly religious-right areas of the US, where the "stigma" approach is being heavily applied, versus coastal metropolitan areas which tend to take the other approach?
The stigma needs to come from their peers, not a top-down approach. I don’t know how to make that happen.
In other words, they spend so much energy trying to enforce rules that they don't notice they're failing to advance the principle.
Conservatives that are pro-life put that principle first. Have we failed in pursuing second, third and fourth principles? Yes. But we still believe our primary principle is morally superior to yours. I will agree with you that we can do more to facilitate adoption and that we failed on abstinence-only education but on the principle of life and when it begins and how it should be protected once it has been created, I promise nothing you and I discuss will ever change my mind on that. Maybe on that point I am not very ‘progressive’ but I never said one has to be 100% progressive all the time.
(Started answering earlier; Firefox crashed, had to start again. This version's going to be a bit shorter, which is probably a good thing.)
I think we're agreed that "equal rights for incompetents" would be a bad policy. I think we also agree that individual problems can neither be ascribed 100% to society nor 100% to the individual; we presumably differ in where the lines should be drawn -- i.e. where society's obligations end, or possibly where society's non-obligatory wish to help out becomes counterproductive.
Re Pausch: Some brick walls are just too damn much. I've lost friends that way. I wouldn't argue for knocking them all down -- "change for the sake of change", or because we're "bored" of having to climb walls -- but I've personally climbed enough unnecessary walls myself, and watched others do the same, to have a pretty good idea of when leaving a wall there just for the sake of having a challenge is just plain stupid.
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"Are you suggesting there is a positive economic impact to light rail?"
I should certainly think so. Got Data?
"That’s not why cities build them. They do so mostly to try and keep their downtown areas free from congestion (which doesn’t work)..."
That's not the primary reasoning behind the light rail we've been trying to build around here for the past two decades (downtown Durham has been quite pleasant to drive through ever since we got rid of most of the one-way streets*). We want it to ease the commuter traffic on NC147 and I-40 (which comes to a standstill at certain times of day), and to make it easier to take recreational trips to neighboring cities. Having traveled a lot in England, I really miss the way you can just hop on a train there and be somewhere far away in minutes or hours -- and I think it would do a lot for the economy in any part of the country where such a system was available.
(*I don't know if that was a liberal or conservative bad idea, but you can chalk one up for change not always working and another one up for liberals being perfectly willing to go back to an older way of doing things if a newer one clearly doesn't work).
(Related: I should think conservatives would favor reviving a good old-fashioned solution like passenger rail, which used to be the default for intercity travel -- or perhaps conservatives actually have some criteria by which they evaluate which traditions to keep? In any case, chalk another one up for liberals being willing to return to older ways... indeed, sometimes being the advocates for such.)
"And many newer lines (Houston being the prime example) are under-used and poorly planned." Well of course Houston -- it was designed by Texas conservatives. We had one of those as a President recently, an' he dint do so good. [rimshot]
But seriously: poor planning means that it was poorly planned, not that the idea is bad. (Any tool can be misused.) My understanding is that light rail works well in many metro areas, and my personal experience with it (Atlanta, DC, Boston, and SF) has been positive.
"There is far more economic impact to adding heavy freight lines than light rail. Our current heavy rail system is overburdened and increasingly longer transit times cost shippers real money."
I'm delighted that freight is coming back into demand again -- I remember suddenly realizing at some point that there used to be far more tracks downtown than there are now, and lamenting their loss. As it is, though, the right-of-ways still have plenty of spare capacity for some extra tracks, which could be making money carrying passenger trains.
(I could go off on a rant about Amtrak's lameness, but I'll spare you.)
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Abortion: "I would say on abortion, we’re willing to leave the first trimester alone for now. The rest should be off-limits except for the Big Three."
If I were to agree to a compromise on this, it would be mostly for the sake of compromise, not because we have come to an agreement on principles. However, such an agreement might well be worth it, if "progressive conservatives" could agree to work with us against their more radical elements -- the abortion clinic bombers, the doctor killers, the threats and verbal abuse of abortion-seeking women, the shouting of "baby-killer!", the endless Biblical quotes, the misleading propaganda...
...in exchange for which we might arrive at a set of reasonable (if not ideal) rules, we'd no longer constantly be arguing about it, and we could turn our energies to more pressing issues (of which there would certainly be no shortage).
And I'd want to see how other pro-choice folks felt about it; there may be some harm in a compromise which I'm overlooking.
But the possibility exists.
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"On gay marriage we range between full acceptance to at least allowing legally equivalent civil unions." Well that's a good start...
Personally, I favor getting the government out of the "marriage" business altogether; the concept of "marriage" should be a purely social one, and things like visitation, insurance, etc. -- the legal rights which currently come with "marriage" -- should all be based on establishing a legal relationship between the members of a family (which needs to be much easier to do than it is now).
However, now is probably not the time to move in that direction.
Again, the possibility exists there for a compromise.
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"The majority of conservatives, not just progressive conservatives, are opposed to the Creationism / ID movement. It’s a blight on conservatism right now."
That being the case, why do we hear so few conservative voices speaking out against them? You could do wonders for "conservatism"'s reputation among liberals just by taking a stand on that issue.
"I’m not aware of any specifically conservative ‘pro-war movements’. Please elaborate."
Well there certainly is no liberal pro-war movement; if they're not conservative, then who are they?
I'm speaking mainly of those who supported going into Iraq, supported staying there, supported "the Surge", claimed that leaving would be an abandonment of America's duty and the end of civilization... and who now want to invade Iran.
--
"I’m not asking her to raise it. I’m just asking her not to abort it."
The question of whether adoption is a viable alternative is perhaps outside the scope of this discussion... I still don't understand why "every fetus is sacred" when there are so many of them, but perhaps this is something which can't (yet) be discussed rationally? Some of us are hard-wired, perhaps, to be innately horrified by abortion, while others are not? That seems like an avenue worth exploring, if I haven't mis-extrapolated the basis of your position here.
"Again, we just need to make that process better, not disregard it. I have friends who have adopted and they spent thousands of dollars and countless hours under review. This can be approved, but it will also require a loosening of liberal social work standards to a degree."
Agreed... though perhaps not even "loosening" but just making the rules less ridiculous.
"Mentioning abstinence as the most ideal choice in the context of a broader sexual education program should have no negative effect."
That's a part of any decent sex-ed program, yes.
"I’d like to see your data that abstinence-only results in higher rates.
Just a quick search of my RSS feeds pulls up these:
* 2009-01-09 Mississippi, A Hotbed of Abstinence Education, Now Boasts Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate In America
* 2008-12-29 Old news: abstinence pledges don't work
* 2008-12-29 Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds (study apparently didn't look at preg. rates, but I would think the results of [no reduction in sexual activity] + [less contraception] would be inevitable)
* Guttmacher, 2007: Changing Direction:
Support Sex Education That Works
"The stigma needs to come from their peers, not a top-down approach. I don’t know how to make that happen."
I hate to pick on this, because it's important to admit when we really don't know -- and if I jump on you every time you admit you don't know something, you're not likely to do it again -- but if you don't know how to make the stigma happen, why are you proposing it as a workable solution?
Here's an idea for progressive conservatives, then: push for some "focus-group"-style research into what makes kids rally around a cause. What's likely to get kids to believe, at a gut level (not just "pledging"), that abstinence is really in their best interest? Can this belief be instilled without working against against the idea of falling back on proper contraception if they do decide to have sex?
--
"Conservatives that are pro-life put that principle first."
Then why are they so keen on the death penalty? (to name only the most obvious contradiction)
"we still believe our primary principle is morally superior to yours."
Does moral superiority trump effectiveness? Or are they the same thing?
"...I promise nothing you and I discuss will ever change my mind on that..."
In other words, it is non-rational -- which is not intended as a dismissal. When people feel strongly about something, and aren't capable of altering those feelings, there is some virtue in avoiding upsetting them needlessly -- even if their upset cannot be defended rationally.
Mind you, "some virtue" does not automatically trump a clear need... but it might be sufficient grounds for a pragmatic compromise. It would help to understand the reasons why your mind (and presumably the minds of many others) cannot be changed by rational argument.
Do you think it's hard-wired? Cultural conditioning? Other?
"Are you suggesting there is a positive economic impact to light rail?"
I should certainly think so. Got Data?
Let’s just look at his realistically. If light rail is successful it is going to provide a cheaper alternative than putting gas in the car. So I’ll give you that one. But then compare it to the money saved by transporting good efficiently by heavy rail…and there really is no comparison. The second saves the economy much more money.
"And many newer lines (Houston being the prime example) are under-used and poorly planned." But seriously: poor planning means that it was poorly planned, not that the idea is bad. (Any tool can be misused.) My understanding is that light rail works well in many metro areas, and my personal experience with it (Atlanta, DC, Boston, and SF) has been positive.
I’m not suggesting that light rail can NEVER be good….obviously it works in some places and I’ve used it in some of the cities you mention as well. But in other places, here in Louisville for example, I think it would be a waste of money. And even in the best scenarios, other projects can have a far greater economic impact.
RE: Abortion
If I were to agree to a compromise on this, it would be mostly for the sake of compromise, not because we have come to an agreement on principles. However, such an agreement might well be worth it, if "progressive conservatives" could agree to work with us against their more radical elements -- the abortion clinic bombers, the doctor killers, the threats and verbal abuse of abortion-seeking women, the shouting of "baby-killer!", the endless Biblical quotes, the misleading propaganda...
Most of that is a thing of the past. Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days. As for verbal protests, well after seeing the way liberals behaved towards Bush for 8 years I think it’s a bit unfair to ask us them to not engage in verbal assaults.
And I'd want to see how other pro-choice folks felt about it; there may be some harm in a compromise which I'm overlooking.
Most of the info I read these days suggests that the majority of Americans are right of the President on abortion (one of his first acts was to make abortions easier to get…proving it is a high priority for him). I’m not saying they are pro-lifers, but they are okay with at least moderate restrictions, especially after the first trimester.
Personally, I favor getting the government out of the "marriage" business altogether; the concept of "marriage" should be a purely social one, and things like visitation, insurance, etc. -- the legal rights which currently come with "marriage" -- should all be based on establishing a legal relationship between the members of a family (which needs to be much easier to do than it is now).
I have said almost the exact same thing myself. I favor civil unions for pretty much any two people who want to be legally responsible for one another.
That being the case, why do we hear so few conservative voices speaking out against them? You could do wonders for "conservatism"'s reputation among liberals just by taking a stand on that issue.
I don’t know and it is quite troubling to me, as someone who was trained as a social scientist and relied on hard science to do my job for a long time I think the assault on science from the Religious Right is horrible.
A prominent few have spoken up at times…
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will111705.asp
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701304.html
…but certainly not enough.
"I’m not aware of any specifically conservative ‘pro-war movements’. Please elaborate."
Well there certainly is no liberal pro-war movement; if they're not conservative, then who are they?
*cough* Secretary of State designate Clinton *cough*
"I’d like to see your data that abstinence-only results in higher rates.
Just a quick search of my RSS feeds pulls up these:
* 2009-01-09 Mississippi, A Hotbed of Abstinence Education, Now Boasts Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate In America
* 2008-12-29 Old news: abstinence pledges don't work
* 2008-12-29 Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds (study apparently didn't look at preg. rates, but I would think the results of [no reduction in sexual activity] + [less contraception] would be inevitable)
* Guttmacher, 2007: Changing Direction:
Support Sex Education That Works
That data seems to support a zero-impact claim, but I don’t think it supports a negative-impact claim. Maybe this is a trivial issue, but it shouldn’t be impled that it actually increases the number of abortions if it doesn’t.
"The stigma needs to come from their peers, not a top-down approach. I don’t know how to make that happen."
I hate to pick on this, because it's important to admit when we really don't know -- and if I jump on you every time you admit you don't know something, you're not likely to do it again -- but if you don't know how to make the stigma happen, why are you proposing it as a workable solution?
I don’t know if it IS a workable solution because things like social trends are very organic and not generally vulnerable to outside pressures to a great degree. That doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge it is the think most likely to succeed.
"Conservatives that are pro-life put that principle first."
Then why are they so keen on the death penalty? (to name only the most obvious contradiction)
Free will verses imposed will.
"we still believe our primary principle is morally superior to yours."
Does moral superiority trump effectiveness? Or are they the same thing?
Moral authority often means difficult choices in the face of an easier but morally corrupt solution.
Mind you, "some virtue" does not automatically trump a clear need... but it might be sufficient grounds for a pragmatic compromise. It would help to understand the reasons why your mind (and presumably the minds of many others) cannot be changed by rational argument.
Do you think it's hard-wired? Cultural conditioning? Other?
I often say that I became pro-life about 5 minutes after my daughter was born. Once I saw her and the gravity of that sunk in….I was done. And at that time I was a vocal agnostic/atheist and fairly liberal so it wasn’t as though I was just sticking to conservative ideology.
I don’t believe that science can ever completely define the line between ‘collection of tissues’ and ‘life’ and so in lieu of that I choose to err on the side of life. For me it’s really that simple. I’m happy to debate all sort of nuances in abortion policy but on the first principle of protecting life there is no swaying me. That’s not stubbornness or religiousness or a lack of reason. That’s just knowing my heart.
"But then compare it to the money saved by transporting good efficiently by heavy rail... and there really is no comparison. The second saves the economy much more money."
I don't understand the basis on which you are making that claim. Are you working from an assumption that our current economy involves more transportation of goods than of people? Or something else?
"And even in the best scenarios, other projects can have a far greater economic impact."
Again... you may be correct, but I'll have to understand the point you're trying to make in your first argument, because it seems to be based on the same unspoken premise.
--
You offer Hillary as an exemplar of the pro-war movement? Balderdash. She was being spineless (along with most of the democrats in the 110th) and going along with the neocons in order to seem more Manly and Tough and thereby capture the "but a GURL can't be president!" vote.
You may distance "true conservatives" from the war-hawks by calling the latter "neocons", if you wish -- moving any part of conservatism far, far away from neoconservatism could only be a good thing -- but I'd really like to see any evidence that any liberal (and I do not include Lieberman among them) is pro-war.
--- [ moving all the abortion stuff so it's together ] --
"Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days."
Got figures? Just today I read about this. Wikipedia's listing of incidents has many more in 2006-7 than previous years, but that could be due to more intensive editing over time (new incidents more likely to get added to an existing article). Can't find anything at Guttmacher; I'll add that to my list of questions to ask them...
"As for verbal protests, well after seeing the way liberals behaved towards Bush for 8 years I think it’s a bit unfair to ask us them to not engage in verbal assaults."
Duuuuuude! A most bodaciously heinous argument! o.0
I realize that, as a conservative, you feel compelled to say insane things like that in order to get liberals to display outrage and thereby prove how irrational they are. This sort of thing really isn't helpful if you're trying for some sort of reconciliation between liberals and "progressive conservatives", however.
...Or perhaps, as a conservative, you're just oblivious to any understanding which requires empathy or genuine understanding of the concept of "fairness". I'm willing to be tolerant and assume this interpretation, giving you the benefit of the doubt... so let me explain this slowly and carefully:
A politician expects to deal with a certain amount of verbal abuse. He is a public figure and a servant of the people; those people criticizing him are his employers. They are entitled to do so, and it is arguably part of their job as citizens to voice their grievances.
A pregnant woman going to a clinic is a private individual, with no relationship whatsoever to the protesters (other than the usual one of abusee/abuser). There's simply no excuse for any kind of attack (verbal or otherwise) on someone in that situation -- much less an organized one. How would you like it if raving atheists gathered outside your church and accused you personally of all the (legal but evil) wrongs of Christianity, and tried to stop you from going inside? Would that be fair? No. Neither is harassment of pregnant women, whether or not they plan to become mommies.
On top of that, a pregnant woman often has very minimal physical protection. How does she know she's not going to be shot, have acid splashed on her, or objects thrown at her? Bush, conversely, had the entire Secret Service clearing the area of anyone who might disagree with him, and shunting them off to "free speech zones" where he wouldn't have to listen to them. Which suggests a solution...
Perhaps abortion clinic protesters should be required to stay in a "free speech zone", somewhere far away from the event. Conservatives didn't seem to mind it when Bush did this, and he had much less justification for it, so there ought to be no problem. Never let it be said that conservatives don't have useful ideas!
"Most of the info I read these days suggests that the majority of Americans are right of the President on abortion..."
I think that says something about what you're reading, because most of what I read suggests that Obama's position is very much in line with most of America, not to mention in line with what works: "[Obama] opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in [Roe v Wade]." ... "President Obama was an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods."
"That data seems to support a zero-impact claim..."
Well, I did say it was a very quick check, but here's some more:
1. As I said, if you have the same amount of sex going on but less contraception, what are you likely to get?
2. ...Especially given this report that teen pregnancy rates are down overall because of better use of contraception. You can't use contraceptives properly if they're left out of your education.
3. The National Association of School Psychologists: "Abstinence Plus programs, which impart accurate information and comprehensive social skills training in addition to sending a strong abstinence message, have been shown more effective than Abstinence Only programs in reducing pregnancy, reducing sexually transmitted disease, and increasing resilience to other risk factors..." (not sure if they're misrepresenting the results, since there's no citation)
4. The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate among industrialized countries. As far as I know, we're the only country with an abstinence obsession, but there could be other factors.
I can't find any studies which look at ABE's correlation with anything beyond sexual behavior, but I bet I know what they'll find when they do.
(I also have considerable distaste for ABE because it often seems to be accompanied by lies and distortions... if it worked well, I'd take it anyway, but...)
"I don’t know if [peer pressure leading to social stigmatization of premarital sex] IS a workable solution because things like social trends are very organic and not generally vulnerable to outside pressures to a great degree. That doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge it is the thing most likely to succeed."
Um, sanity check? Why on earth would we acknowledge it as the thing most likely to succeed when it has shown (at best!) no sign at all of making any difference, while other techniques -- techniques, I must emphasize, often railed against by the people pushing ABE -- have enjoyed considerable success? This makes no sense at all.
Do you want to actually reduce abortions, or do you just want to "fight" them?
"I often say that I became pro-life about 5 minutes after my daughter was born."
So you felt inspired give her the gift of being denied the right to make her own moral choice, if she ever has an unwanted pregnancy?
I am beginning to think I will never understand the conservative mind.
"I don’t believe that science can ever completely define the line between ‘collection of tissues’ and ‘life’ and so in lieu of that I choose to err on the side of life."
Science doesn't define that line at all. Yes, the embryo is alive as soon as it is fertilized -- but so are the egg and sperm, and the organs which produced them. Life is a continuous thread running through the entire process, or it wouldn't work.
I think what you're referring to is the question of when a new person has come into existence. Science doesn't define that distinction either; it just gives us a lot more information to work with. You have made the choice to disregard that information and instead credit only your own subjective determination that there is a person present from the moment of conception, and not a moment before or after.
As I said earlier, there is some value in respecting feelings such as this. For example, We have a friend who is very squeamish about killing or harming animals, for any reason, to any degree. He won't eat from anything which has even been in contact with meat (raw or cooked), or even animal products such as eggs. We think he's a little over-the-top sometimes (well... a lot of the time), but we understand that it's not something he can really control -- and it's basically harmless to everyone else, since he doesn't demand that we stop eating meat, so we try to be respectful of his squeamishness.
However... If there were millions of people, with well-funded backing, continually working and lobbying to outlaw the use of all animal products in the name of "preserving life", I think we'd feel a little differently.
Re moral superiority versus effectiveness: "Moral authority often means difficult choices in the face of an easier but morally corrupt solution."
That doesn't answer my question. "Easier" is not the same as "more effective", for one thing.
Also, reading between the lines, it sounds like you're implying that sex for any purpose other than reproduction is immoral. Is that the case?
Re the contradiction between {being pro-life} and {supporting the death penalty}: "Free will versus imposed will."
What in the blazes is that supposed to mean?
"...on the first principle of protecting life there is no swaying me."
Unless that life is a possibly-innocent death-row inmate, of course (or not human, presumably, but we can probably agree there)... or that of a pregnant mother, if we're talking about quality of life (that of the mother and her possible child) and not just quantity.
"Knowing your heart" doesn't do diddly towards reaching a sane compromise, because you can't explain to me why you arrived at your decision...
...which in turn kind of undermines your claim that "progressive conservatives" are more flexible than liberals. I can tell you why I choose the position I do, and back it up with data. You can look for data which contradicts mine, or you can try to pick holes in my arguments; if you succeed in either of those tasks, you can change my mind.
But I can't do anything to change yours; you've said as much.
--
But yay, we're agreed on a long-term solution for marriage.
Guttmacher, belatedly:
"Thank you for contacting the Guttmacher Institute. To shed some light on this claim, I can direct you to our resources on repeat abortion in the U.S. From our report, Trends in the Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions, 1974-2004, we know that although 47% of abortions are obtained by women who have had a prior abortion, the proportion of second and subsequent abortions has recently begun to fall and there is no evidence that abortion is being used as a primary method of birth control. At the end of this report, Tables 7A - 7D contain the number and percentage of abortions by woman's number of prior induced abortions over time so you can see the trends for yourself.
You'll also find much on the breakdowns of abortions by individual occurrence as well as the circumstances surrounding repeat abortion in our other report, Repeat Abortion in the US. Please let me know if you have additional questions."
She's answering a slightly different question than the one I asked: Is abortion being used as a primary method of birth control?
However, this may be the only unambiguous way to legitimately phrase this question. The original question, "Is abortion being used as birth control?" is technically true 100% of the time.
This may explain why it's such a popular claim among anti-abortionists. Liberals perhaps see the literal (but meaningless) question, and without thinking about it automatically insert the "primary" in order to make it a meaningful question -- and then find themselves arguing against a statement which, on the face of it, is undeniably true.
But as we've seen, anti-abortionists (the pro-fetal position) don't consider abortion to be legit even as a fallback (non-primary) when contraception has failed, while pro-choicers do.
So once again, it comes down to whether the survival of the fetus is more important than the mother's quality of life.
...Or, really, the quality of life of mother and child, since if the mother is living in poverty, the child will as well (barring unusual circumstances)...
...except for adoption, about which I don't yet know enough. If a mother wants to abort a fetus and someone offers to adopt it, are the mother's maternity expenses generally paid from that point forward? In other words, how does choosing adoption over abortion affect the mother financially?
"But then compare it to the money saved by transporting good efficiently by heavy rail... and there really is no comparison. The second saves the economy much more money."
I don't understand the basis on which you are making that claim. Are you working from an assumption that our current economy involves more transportation of goods than of people? Or something else?
The money saved by more efficient transportation of goods dwarfs the money saved by offering public transit. Also, if a company saves $5 million a year because transit times are reduced, that is likely going to be money they can spend on other things, like hiring new employees. Basically, there is more ‘bang for the buck’.
You offer Hillary as an exemplar of the pro-war movement? Balderdash. She was being spineless (along with most of the democrats in the 110th) and going along with the neocons in order to seem more Manly and Tough and thereby capture the "but a GURL can't be president!" vote.
How many times did we go to war under Clinton? Somali, Iraq, Bosnia. He had no problem committing thr military to his causes and I think his wife is no different. There were also plenty of Democratic supporters of those missions under Clinton. It seems liberals like war just fine, so long as they are the ones running the show.
(I'll reply to the abortion stuff later today)
"Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days."
Got figures? Just today I read about this. Wikipedia's listing of incidents has many more in 2006-7 than previous years, but that could be due to more intensive editing over time (new incidents more likely to get added to an existing article). Can't find anything at Guttmacher; I'll add that to my list of questions to ask them...
I looked up some statistics and posted them here:
http://thebigstick.wordpress.com/2007/01/01/abortion-statistics/
If you look at the first graph it appears to validate your claim above. But then if you control for trespassing which was not reported before 1999 and is not a specifically ‘violent’ act in and of itself, vandalism, which is also not ‘violent’ and anthrax threats which spiked immediately after 9/11 and have declined rapidly…. we see far different results on the second graph.
True ‘violence’ meaning someone injured or an attempt to injure them is at the lowest levels since the early 1990’s. I’m not saying wackos don’t do wacko things and there aren’t disruptive acts, but when we’re talking specifically about violence I think it’s important to have proper context.
."As for verbal protests, well after seeing the way liberals behaved towards Bush for 8 years I think it’s a bit unfair to ask us them to not engage in verbal assaults."
Duuuuuude! A most bodaciously heinous argument! o.0
I will concede your point on that one.
"Most of the info I read these days suggests that the majority of Americans are right of the President on abortion..."
I think that says something about what you're reading, because most of what I read suggests that Obama's position is very much in line with most of America.
I disagree and a recent poll seems to indicate I am right. A Harris poll conducted in December 2008 found that just 9% of respondents said abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy. 82% said abortion should either be illegal under all circumstances or would limit its legality. 11% wanted all abortions illegal and 38% would only make exceptions for very rare cases of saving the mothers life or in rape or incest.
CBS conducted similar polls in 2007 and 2006 and got roughly the same results.
Obama’s position of unlimited access puts him in a group of just 9% of Americans.
"That data seems to support a zero-impact claim..."
Well, I did say it was a very quick check, but here's some more:
1. As I said, if you have the same amount of sex going on but less contraception, what are you likely to get?
2. ...Especially given this report that teen pregnancy rates are down overall because of better use of contraception. You can't use contraceptives properly if they're left out of your education.
3. The National Association of School Psychologists: "Abstinence Plus programs, which impart accurate information and comprehensive social skills training in addition to sending a strong abstinence message, have been shown more effective than Abstinence Only programs in reducing pregnancy, reducing sexually transmitted disease, and increasing resilience to other risk factors..." (not sure if they're misrepresenting the results, since there's no citation)
4. The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate among industrialized countries. As far as I know, we're the only country with an abstinence obsession, but there could be other factors.
I still don’t see anything that supports a claim that abstinence-only actually increases the number of pregnancies. To support that claim that would mean that kids with no education of any kind would actually have less pregnancies than kids with abstinence-only. I find that impossible to believe. I have already conceded that a well-rounded approach that mentions contraception and abstinence is the best plan, but it almost sounds as though you want to leave out any mention of abstinence because you think it will counteract the other stuff.
So you felt inspired give her the gift of being denied the right to make her own moral choice, if she ever has an unwanted pregnancy?
In the mind of a pro-lifer that is akin to giving someone the ‘moral choice’ of murdering their next door neighbor.
Re moral superiority versus effectiveness: "Moral authority often means difficult choices in the face of an easier but morally corrupt solution."
That doesn't answer my question. "Easier" is not the same as "more effective", for one thing.
In the case of abortion ‘easier’ is the primary motivation for most abortions i.e. their life would be ‘easier’ without an unwanted pregnancy.
Also, reading between the lines, it sounds like you're implying that sex for any purpose other than reproduction is immoral. Is that the case?
Not at all. I have no problem with sex for enjoyment, married or otherwise. But I do believe that people assume risk when they have sex for fun and they should accept the results.
Re the contradiction between {being pro-life} and {supporting the death penalty}: "Free will versus imposed will."
What in the blazes is that supposed to mean?
The murderer has free will to not commit the murder… the unborn child has someone else’s will imposed on them.
...which in turn kind of undermines your claim that "progressive conservatives" are more flexible than liberals.
I guess it depends on where we draw the line. Do you put most ‘liberals’ in the 9% group that favors no abortion restrictions or in the 82% that would allow some restrictions? Are those allowing restrictions true liberals or centrists/moderates?
This may explain why it's such a popular claim among anti-abortionists. Liberals perhaps see the literal (but meaningless) question, and without thinking about it automatically insert the "primary" in order to make it a meaningful question -- and then find themselves arguing against a statement which, on the face of it, is undeniably true.
I never argued it was the ‘primary’ method of birth control, but I do believe that many people who seek abortion see it as Step 2 if Step 1 fails, meaning they have already accepted abortion as a solution beforehand.
But as we've seen, anti-abortionists (the pro-fetal position) don't consider abortion to be legit even as a fallback (non-primary) when contraception has failed, while pro-choicers do.
Ummmm…yeah. We generally don’t believe that a broken condom releases someone of their moral obligation.
...except for adoption, about which I don't yet know enough. If a mother wants to abort a fetus and someone offers to adopt it, are the mother's maternity expenses generally paid from that point forward? In other words, how does choosing adoption over abortion affect the mother financially?
My understanding from friends who have adopted is that they assume all financial burden. That’s partially why it is a very expensive process because you can’t claim the birth mother on your health insurance (‘progressive companies’ could get big brownie points from changing this policy for their workers).
"The money saved by more efficient transportation of goods dwarfs the money saved by offering public transit."
You're just re-asserting your claim again. Some data, please.
"Also, if a company saves $5 million a year because transit times are reduced, that is likely going to be money they can spend on other things, like hiring new employees."
Also, if 10,000 people collectively save $5 million a year because of reduced transportation expenses, that is likely going to be money they can spend on other things, like buying consumer products. (Or, thinking more real-conservatively, to put into savings or invest in education.)
"How many times did we go to war under Clinton? Somali, Iraq, Bosnia."
That's quite different from being pro-war.
Somalia: Clinton went in with international cooperation to stop a humanitarian crisis -- not as an act of vengeance or conquest.
Iraq: Clinton initiated a 4-day bombing campaign intended to avert the need for actual war later on. Conservatives claimed, at the time, that he was just trying to deflect attention away from crucial domestic issues, like whether or not he was cheating on his wife (because, after all, how does tiny Iraq pose a threat to America?). Later on, they claimed he had been soft on terrorism. Are they back to claiming he was a warmonger? Stay tuned.
Bosnia: Again, we went in with an international coalition to stop a humanitarian crisis, and did so with astonishing success. No American solders were killed in combat during that operation, and the people in that part of the world still see Clinton as a hero.
Thanks for playing.
"It seems liberals like war just fine, so long as they are the ones running the show."
If the ultimate goal is promoting peace, then one might say this (albeit stretching the meaning of "like" rather a lot).
Bush's wars were all about promoting and spreading more war. He couldn't get enough of it, and never wanted it to end. For all I can tell, his conservative base felt pretty much the same way about it, too.
It's as if they didn't feel safe unless America was fighting someone... which is such a mindbogglingly stupid attitude that I hesitate to give it credence, but it's the only theory that seems to fit their behavior.
The money saved by more efficient transportation of goods dwarfs the money saved by offering public transit."
You're just re-asserting your claim again. Some data, please.
Here’s an excellent comparison from Australia:
http://www.ptua.org.au/myths/lightrail.shtml
More on the need for heavy rail here:
http://thebigstick.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/railroad-woes-another-example-of-failing-infrastructure/
"How many times did we go to war under Clinton? Somali, Iraq, Bosnia."
That's quite different from being pro-war.
Somalia: Clinton went in with international cooperation to stop a humanitarian crisis -- not as an act of vengeance or conquest.
Iraq: Clinton initiated a 4-day bombing campaign intended to avert the need for actual war later on. Conservatives claimed, at the time, that he was just trying to deflect attention away from crucial domestic issues, like whether or not he was cheating on his wife (because, after all, how does tiny Iraq pose a threat to America?). Later on, they claimed he had been soft on terrorism. Are they back to claiming he was a warmonger? Stay tuned.
Bosnia: Again, we went in with an international coalition to stop a humanitarian crisis, and did so with astonishing success. No American solders were killed in combat during that operation, and the people in that part of the world still see Clinton as a hero.
Thanks for playing.
"It seems liberals like war just fine, so long as they are the ones running the show."
If the ultimate goal is promoting peace, then one might say this (albeit stretching the meaning of "like" rather a lot).
It seems that Clinton saw war (and make no mistake – lopsided actions like Bosnia and air-bombing Iraq were still wars) as a useful tool for getting another party to comply with your goals. I would call that ‘pro-war’ even if it seems less so in comparison with Bush’s attitude.
Abortion Thread
Looking at your graphs and the source data:
Some notes:
1. The first time-slot is "1977-92", so presumably this is the total number of incidents across those 16 years. This might make it appear that levels of activity have come down significantly since then, but if I'm reading this right there was actually a spike in 1993.
You left 1977-92 off your graphs entirely, which is a reasonable way of dealing with the problem, but this also hides the fact of the spike -- which isn't to say you've distorted the data; I'm just pointing out the apparent existence of the spike.
I suspect anti-Clinton backlash was a large contributing factor -- and we may yet see a similar anti-Obama backlash effect.
2. I don't think it's fair to say that "Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days." Just looking at the "assault & battery" numbers, there was a major dip in 2008 (many of the figures declined sharply that year) -- but the numbers for the previous two years are higher than ever. What will we see this year?
3. We agree that there should be more careful and balanced analysis. Here's a quick graph of several key incident types, normalized, and with the earliest and latest figures corrected for time-span -- just as a first hack at getting a clearer picture of the patterns.
"True ‘violence’ meaning someone injured or an attempt to injure them is at the lowest levels since the early 1990’s." Just looking at actual "assault & battery", this is only true if you look only at last year (2008). The figures for 07 and 06 were higher than any other years, by a good margin.
"Obama’s position of unlimited access puts him in a group of just 9% of Americans."
Exactly where has Obama stated this as his position, or given any indication by word or deed that he supports it?
"I still don’t see anything that supports a claim that abstinence-only actually increases the number of pregnancies."
Do the math:
1. Abstinence-only causes no reduction in the amount of sex.
2. Abstinence-only causes a reduction in the amount of contraception used.
I don't have any numbers which directly show an increase, but neither are there any numbers showing no increase (or a decrease). I think what this indicates is that the question has not been asked (as far as actually getting some data) -- possibly because the answer is dead obvious, but I really don't know.
This is now the only question on my list to ask Guttmacher, which I hope to get to soon.
"To support that claim that would mean that kids with no education of any kind would actually have less pregnancies than kids with abstinence-only."
We're not talking about the effect of ABE vs. no sex ed at all; we're talking about ABE vs. proper sex ed. Even ABE might have a slight positive impact over no sex ed at all.
No, I do not want to leave out abstinence altogether; I think I specifically said that any decent sex-ed program will cover it and emphasize that it is by far the most reliable way to prevent pregnancy.
"In the mind of a pro-lifer that is akin to giving someone the ‘moral choice’ of murdering their next door neighbor."
What if she feels differently? Would she consider it a "gift"? But I'm venturing into personal territory here, and I don't need to go there just to score a point... and she may well agree with you.
"In the case of abortion ‘easier’ is the primary motivation for most abortions i.e. their life would be ‘easier’ without an unwanted pregnancy."
If a particular choice would be easier, that automatically makes "ease" the primary reason for doing it? Farblegarp. Just because something is easy doesn't automatically mean it isn't also the best choice for other reasons.
And you're again implying that there's minimal emotional cost to getting an abortion. For many women, the economic "ease" is greatly offset by the emotional pain of losing a potential child. Anti-abortionists would choose to translate this potential child into an actual child whom those women are killing, thus making it even more difficult to make a rational choice.
"But I do believe that people assume risk when they have sex for fun and they should accept the results."
Fair enough -- so it really comes down to whether any particular abortion (with all its attendant details -- how old the fetus is, what the circumstances were) is a moral crime, and if so how severe.
I'd like to see a lot more examination of individual (even hypothetical) cases and circumstances, rather than broad dismissal. (Both sides are guilty of this to some extent.)
"The murderer has free will to not commit the murder… the unborn child has someone else’s will imposed on them."
What if the death-row inmate is innocent? It seems to happen on a regular basis that new technology solves an old murder, and suddenly the guy (or gal... remember Bush's "please don't kill me!" mockery?) they were going to execute for it can't possibly have done it -- and yet conservative politicians will refuse to grant a pardon or argue for a new trial because we've got to be "tough on crime". WTF??
"I guess it depends on where we draw the line. Do you put most ‘liberals’ in the 9% group that favors no abortion restrictions or in the 82% that would allow some restrictions? Are those allowing restrictions true liberals or centrists/moderates?"
I think most liberals are simply in favor of keeping Roe v. Wade, providing public funding for abortions in the first trimester (and for threats to the mother's health in later weeks), and not requiring parental notification for teen pregnancies. (Checking the polls would give more reliable data than just asking me what I think liberals think, however.)
"...but I do believe that many people who seek abortion see it as Step 2 if Step 1 fails, meaning they have already accepted abortion as a solution beforehand."
...and...
"Ummmm…yeah. We generally don’t believe that a broken condom releases someone of their moral obligation."
What moral obligation is this, again? A moral obligation to make sure that a microscopic blob of protoplasm becomes a fully-fledged human being? Why stop there -- what about a couple's "moral obligation" to give every ovum that same opportunity? Why don't sexually-active women have a "moral obligation" to take fertility drugs, to maximize the chance that they have twins or triplets? How dare they use contraceptives and let those precious Eggs of Life go to waste! (This is, of course, essentially the Catholic position. "Every sperm is sacred...")
Abortion is an emergency backstop, if the primary method fails -- yes. That's what it's for.
You see harm in this policy; I don't. Sometimes, we just don't want another kid in the world.
However, my understanding was that you're willing to compromise on the legality of first trimester abortions, even so. This may be part of a viable solution.
I'm not sure where you stand on public funding, and I think I've gathered that you prefer parental notification for teens.
Political compromise aside, we still will never agree on the underlying morality -- and the arguments between "pro-lifers" and "pro-choicers" will continue -- unless you are willing to reconcile your beliefs with objective reality.
This whole discussion started because you claimed Progressive Conservatives were more flexible -- willing to compromise -- on this issue than are liberals.
Perhaps you're right: you seem to be more willing than I am to compromise your ethical beliefs for political expediency. What is the good that you hope to accomplish by such compromise?
I suspect that one of the gains is that it saves you from opening up your beliefs to rational examination, saves you from the risk of finding that they actually do more harm than good. You can still cling to those beliefs, but wave the banner of being flexible and willing to compromise whenever they are challenged.
You compromise politically in order to ensure the survival of your rationally untenable beliefs. This may be the essence of conservatism.
Your beliefs seem to be based on verbal rules -- "life begins at conception", "killing an innocent person is always wrong; killing a murderer is ok". Liberals tend to form their beliefs on the basis of what seems most likely to accomplish larger goals (aka principles) -- such as "doing whatever causes the least harm" -- and the resulting beliefs are always accountable to those goals.
A liberal might believe, for example, that legalizing abortion up to the moment of birth was the best option -- but if you could show that this causes greater harm than good, a rational liberal will change that belief.
Which is not to say that there are no reasonable grounds for compromise even if we can't agree on principles.
For example: it might be worth it for pro-choicers to agree to a set of permanent restrictions on abortion if all the anti-abortion groups will agree to a "ceasefire" -- stop campaigning to further reduce abortion rights, reduce their "practically nonexistent" attacks on abortion clinics to actual nonexistence, stop spreading lies and distortions to win more uninformed warm bodies to their cause, and start working for solutions which reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
That might sound like "political expedience", but it does benefit the people who would be paying most of the cost (i.e. pregnant women wanting abortions), so it might be a fair trade, depending on the details. I don't think we'll be likely to agree to anything more restrictive overall than what we have now, however.
"My understanding from friends who have adopted is that they assume all financial burden. That’s partially why it is a very expensive process because you can’t claim the birth mother on your health insurance (‘progressive companies’ could get big brownie points from changing this policy for their workers)."
I agree that this would be a good and progressive solution. I can't imagine any principled liberal being against it, either. I'd also favor changing the insurance laws so that the adoptive child is counted as a member of the adoptive family as soon as there's a contract for the adoption. If you focus on pushing for solutions like these, you can truly be called "progressive" and "conservative" at the same time -- and you're likely to get much more sympathy from liberals.
I suppose adoptive parents are forbidden to offer prospective abortion clients bonuses (beyond just medical care expenses) for not aborting. Perhaps even allowing the kid to stay with the biological mother, but with visitation rights or something (all these bits can be part of the final negotiated price).
Obviously this might lead to a pattern of women "holding fetuses hostage" for more money if it weren't carefully regulated... but it seems like the sort of "free market" solution which ought to appeal to a Progressive Conservative. You want more fetuses to become babies? Put your money where your mouth is. Take away the "I can't afford to go to college if I have this baby" excuse; make it "I can't afford to go to college unless I have this baby."
But I really don't think you can call your position "progressive" if all you're doing is working to roll back hard-won freedoms. "Progress" is positive change -- change which makes people's lives easier and better -- not increasing restrictiveness.
Looking at your graphs and the source data:
Some notes:
1. The first time-slot is "1977-92", so presumably this is the total number of incidents across those 16 years. This might make it appear that levels of activity have come down significantly since then, but if I'm reading this right there was actually a spike in 1993.
You left 1977-92 off your graphs entirely, which is a reasonable way of dealing with the problem, but this also hides the fact of the spike -- which isn't to say you've distorted the data; I'm just pointing out the apparent existence of the spike.
I left off 1977-92 because it would have skewed the graph.
"True ‘violence’ meaning someone injured or an attempt to injure them is at the lowest levels since the early 1990’s." Just looking at actual "assault & battery", this is only true if you look only at last year (2008). The figures for 07 and 06 were higher than any other years, by a good margin.
If we look at just assault and battery, yes, it was up in 2007-2008. But if we look at every other category, it appears to be down, and obviously is down if we take the sum total of all buckets. Selecting the one bucket that has not gone down when 11 others have is, well, selective.
"Obama’s position of unlimited access puts him in a group of just 9% of Americans."
Exactly where has Obama stated this as his position, or given any indication by word or deed that he supports it?
Has he mentioned any support at all for even modest restrictions (2nd or 3rd term bans, parental notification laws, etc.)? If he truly supported any of those measures it stands to reason he would have mentioned it during the primaries, since this poll seems to indicate a majority of Americans would have been pleased. He is too good of a politician to have ignored that opportunity.
"I still don’t see anything that supports a claim that abstinence-only actually increases the number of pregnancies."
Do the math:
1. Abstinence-only causes no reduction in the amount of sex.
2. Abstinence-only causes a reduction in the amount of contraception used.
So you contend that a teen who attends an abstinence-only class will not feel compelled to follow their message of not having sex but will feel compelled to not using contraception? You do know that contraception IS discussed in most of those classes, right? The message given is that the only birth control method that is 100% effective is abstinence. I fail to understand how that would lead people to keep having sex and actually be less cautious about it.
"To support that claim that would mean that kids with no education of any kind would actually have less pregnancies than kids with abstinence-only."
We're not talking about the effect of ABE vs. no sex ed at all; we're talking about ABE vs. proper sex ed. Even ABE might have a slight positive impact over no sex ed at all.
No, I do not want to leave out abstinence altogether; I think I specifically said that any decent sex-ed program will cover it and emphasize that it is by far the most reliable way to prevent pregnancy.
So we agree that the claim that abstinence-only education actually increases the number of pregnancies is false. Since I never contended it was preferable to a more well-rounded approach it seems that you and I are on the same page here. I would like to see a more comprehensive approach and so would you.
Progress!
"In the mind of a pro-lifer that is akin to giving someone the ‘moral choice’ of murdering their next door neighbor."
What if she feels differently? Would she consider it a "gift"? But I'm venturing into personal territory here, and I don't need to go there just to score a point... and she may well agree with you.
Again, when you see abortion as murder, the feelings of the abortion seeker, whether it be my daughter or a stranger, are irrelevant. As a society we accept that certain behaviors are morally wrong and we don’t really care about the personal feelings of the individual. For me, abortion fits under that group of morally wrong behaviors.
And you're again implying that there's minimal emotional cost to getting an abortion. For many women, the economic "ease" is greatly offset by the emotional pain of losing a potential child. Anti-abortionists would choose to translate this potential child into an actual child whom those women are killing, thus making it even more difficult to make a rational choice.
I believe I addressed this point before when I said:
“I don’t think liberals really believe that those women made a bad decision, but they are sympathetic to her anguish because it becomes a mental health issue for them. The most often heard retort these days to criticism that liberals don’t care about human lives is, “What about the suffering of the woman who has to make this decision…This isn’t an easy decision….etc” They de-emphasize the humanity of the fetus and over-emphasize the moral dilemma of the mother as a sort of trade-off. “You give us the abortion and we will promise you a lifetime of remorse. This also sort of becomes moot when so many liberals dismiss a conservative emphasis on adoption because it’s too hard on the mother mentally.”
"The murderer has free will to not commit the murder… the unborn child has someone else’s will imposed on them."
What if the death-row inmate is innocent? It seems to happen on a regular basis that new technology solves an old murder, and suddenly the guy (or gal... remember Bush's "please don't kill me!" mockery?) they were going to execute for it can't possibly have done it -- and yet conservative politicians will refuse to grant a pardon or argue for a new trial because we've got to be "tough on crime". WTF??
If a someone is executed when they are innocent it is obviously a terrible moral failing of the justice system. That’s why I tend to favor extremely unpleasant life sentences and a more robust and efficient appeals system. Give prisoners every legal opportunity to prove their innocence and when this is exhausted, make their stay in prison something akin to life on a chain gang.
"I guess it depends on where we draw the line. Do you put most ‘liberals’ in the 9% group that favors no abortion restrictions or in the 82% that would allow some restrictions? Are those allowing restrictions true liberals or centrists/moderates?"
I think most liberals are simply in favor of keeping Roe v. Wade, providing public funding for abortions in the first trimester (and for threats to the mother's health in later weeks), and not requiring parental notification for teen pregnancies. (Checking the polls would give more reliable data than just asking me what I think liberals think, however.)
Well in that case the polls would seem to indicate that only about 9% of Americans are ‘liberal’ by your standards, since the remaining 91% favor some level of change for Roe.
This whole discussion started because you claimed Progressive Conservatives were more flexible -- willing to compromise -- on this issue than are liberals.
Perhaps you're right: you seem to be more willing than I am to compromise your ethical beliefs for political expediency. What is the good that you hope to accomplish by such compromise?
Saving some lives is better than saving no lives. It makes sense to take what we can get for now and hope that modest restrictions will prove in time that we can go even further without pushing women back to alleys and coat hangers. This goes back to the notion of liberals passing up a good solution for a brilliant one. I prefer the good to no solution, at least in the short term. It is pragmatic to take small steps forward rather than remain idle.
You compromise politically in order to ensure the survival of your rationally untenable beliefs. This may be the essence of conservatism.
That statement is predicated on the belief that opposition to abortion is irrational, which you and I will remain in disagreement on. Personally, I find it irrational to pretend you can determine when life/personhood begins when you really can’t. You are drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and it’s really just your best guess. I’m not willing to accept a ‘best guess’ in this scenario.
For example: it might be worth it for pro-choicers to agree to a set of permanent restrictions on abortion if all the anti-abortion groups will agree to a "ceasefire" -- stop campaigning to further reduce abortion rights, reduce their "practically nonexistent" attacks on abortion clinics to actual nonexistence, stop spreading lies and distortions to win more uninformed warm bodies to their cause, and start working for solutions which reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
So let me try to understand this; you see a liberal saying something like this, “We realize that you believe abortion is murder and in that context over a million babies are ‘murdered’ every year in the U.S. So what we will do is agree to some concessions that will limit the current number of abortions i.e. ‘murders’ in return for you stopping the average 45 or so violent acts that occur yearly against abortion clinics, take down your yucky anti-abortion billboards and stop telling lies about us.”
To paraphrase you, I will never understand the liberal mind. If you honestly think those things would change the minds of liberals who believe abortion is a legitimate population-control device… I think that’s incredibly naïve.
But I really don't think you can call your position "progressive" if all you're doing is working to roll back hard-won freedoms. "Progress" is positive change -- change which makes people's lives easier and better -- not increasing restrictiveness.
I realize that much of liberal ideology is based on what is ‘easier and better’ for individuals and that is why they put much more weight on the economic potential of a 16 year old than on the life of an unborn child, however, you continue to miss the context. When I read you saying, “ But I really don't think you can call your position "progressive" if all you're doing is working to roll back hard-won freedoms. I hear But I really don't think you can call your position "progressive" if all you're doing is working to roll back the right to murder unborn children.” I don’t consider abortion to be a ‘freedom’ or ‘won’.
Just an aside, many people find seatbelts ‘restrictive’ but we see the common good in them. I see a common good in limiting abortion. I realize you find that an ‘irrational’ belief, but it is one that is shared by most Americans.
Please pardon the delay... need to get caught up with actual paying work for a bit... your ideology is important to us, and your arguments will be answered in the order in which they were received. Or in a different order, possibly, depending on how discombobulated our operators get. We thank you for your patience.
Other Issues thread (At Last, The 1948 Show!):
Re Australian link: that was a comparison of light rail vs. heavy rail for passenger usage. We were talking passengers vs. freight.
Re your blog post: Some intelligent investment in rail infrastructure could certainly go a long way. This doesn't preclude investment in light rail as well; the question is not which one to put all the money into, but how much to put into each in order to get the best "bang for the buck" -- or, better yet, what specific projects have been proposed, how much they each cost, and what they each are projected to do for the economy.
In other words, we're not debating whether or not to spend money on heavy rail -- I agree that we should -- but whether or not commuter rail (I don't care much if it's light or heavy; whatever works best) also deserves considerable investment.
Where did your "$1.3 trillion" figure come from? The earlier blog entry you link to is a 404.
The article you quote which cites Obama as being in opposition to a particular plan to help unsnarl freight lines in Chicago doesn't explain why he opposes it (maybe he supports a better one?) or even how the plan is supposed to help.
"It seems that Clinton saw war (and make no mistake – lopsided actions like Bosnia and air-bombing Iraq were still wars) as a useful tool for getting another party to comply with your goals."
And that's the primary benefit you think we got from those actions? You think we shouldn't have taken them?
"I would call that ‘pro-war’ even if it seems less so in comparison with Bush’s attitude."
That sounds to me more like conservative bloody-mindedness than like a reasonable assessment. Are surgeons "pro-blood" and "pro-pain"?
On to the abortion thread...
I guess we need to clarify the three types of rail: heavy (freight), passenger rail (amtrack, european style), and light rail (subways, monorail, etc). I would contend that there is real economic benefit to the first two. The last is mostly about environmental goals and relieving congestion, and also the most vulnerable to poor design.
I think Obama opposed the heavy rail expansion in Chicago because of noise/traffic complaints from the neighbors.
As for $1.3 trillion - that was an old study (I think 1998). A recent one that was cited a lot this week in the media puts infrastructure needs at $2.2 trillion. Either way, we need serious money spent in this area in projects that will create real jobs and more importantly, train people with skills that will carry on to other industries once the infrastructure projects are done (like the New Deal)
"I left off 1977-92 because it would have skewed the graph."
Well, right, if graphed without adjusting for the length of time. My graph adjusts for that, on both ends.
"If we look at just assault and battery, yes, it was up in 2007-2008. But if we look at every other category, it appears to be down, and obviously is down if we take the sum total of all buckets..."
A&B seemed like the most relevant measure; a lot of the other categories had problems with them, e.g. data wasn't collected before a certain date. In the case of "murder", there were so few cases that it wouldn't really affect the outcome unless you assign a proper weight (one murder is a lot worse than 10 vandalisms, I should think), which makes things complicated. I was also thinking in terms of things that clients would be likely to find intimidating; phoned threats to the clinic itself probably wouldn't affect them much.
But okay, which metrics would you pick as being the most significant as far as intimidation?
Re Obama's assumed support for 2nd- and 3rd-trimester abortions: "Has he mentioned any support at all for even modest restrictions (2nd or 3rd term bans, parental notification laws, etc.)? If he truly supported any of those measures it stands to reason he would have mentioned it during the primaries, since this poll seems to indicate a majority of Americans would have been pleased. He is too good of a politician to have ignored that opportunity."
This argument seems extremely thin to me. In any case, regardless of whether you are correct that this is his personal view, he neither made it part of his platform nor has he worked to make it a reality.
You can't suggest that something exists simply because nobody can prove that it doesn't, and then expect people to act on that belief...
...oh, wait a minute... Goddists do that all the time. So maybe you can.
That doesn't mean it makes any sense, of course.
"So you contend that a teen who attends an abstinence-only class will not feel compelled to follow their message of not having sex but will feel compelled to not using contraception?"
That phrasing is backwards.
A teen who attends an abstinence-only class will continue to feel compelled (by hormones and sexual wiring) to have sex, regardless of what they may promise or believe is right, and (due to the class) will additionally not feel compelled to use contraception. (This is what the studies show.)
There is also some evidence that ABE conveys a message that contraception is actually morally wrong, leading to less usage than would have happened without any sex education at all... but I digress.
"You do know that contraception IS discussed in most of those classes, right? The message given is that the only birth control method that is 100% effective is abstinence."
Um, no. Wrong. That's not abstinence-only; that's proper sex ed, sometimes called "Abstinence Plus" if the emphasis is mostly on abstinence but birth control methods are also taught and recommended.
ABE, as funded by the Bush administration to the tune of $1 billion, doesn't allow grant recipients "to advocate or discuss contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates."
"So we agree that the claim that abstinence-only education actually increases the number of pregnancies is false."
We agree that abstinence-only education may be no worse than no sex education at all. I don't think I'd go any further than that.
I agree that a more comprehensive approach is preferable.
"Again, when you see abortion as murder..."
I think the use of the word "murder" is highly misleading -- probably a deliberate ruse by those who got the anti-abortion movement going back in the 1970s.
"Murder" is unlawful killing. If abortion is legal, you can call it killing but you can't call it murder, by definition.
So, you consider it killing -- but we are in agreement on that. I presume what you mean, then, is wrongful killing -- and the thing which would make it wrongful, I presume again, is that you believe a 1-week old embryo is a person.
Am I right so far, or do I presume too much?
"I believe I addressed this point before..."
You didn't counter my claim that there is a steep emotional cost. By saying that a woman's primary motivation is "ease", you are implying that getting an abortion is usually easier than not getting one -- again claiming that the emotional cost is negligible.
My expert witness, a mother of four (one grown and in the Navy) and the survivor of one miscarriage (at 10 weeks), says that losing the embryo/fetus for any reason carries considerable emotional cost.
Is it "ease" if the mother doesn't want to have the child grow up in poverty, with a mother who is frustrated and angry because she had to put her life on hold for a decade or more in order to raise a child?
Yes, adoption might be an alternative. Progressive pro-lifers should be working to validate this alternative -- educating women about the benefits of adoption, making the separation less painful, making it easier for adopted kids to keep in touch with their biological parents so that giving up a child for adoption doesn't feel so much like sacrificing it.
Calling abortion-seeking women murderers, sinners or even just bad mommies is extremely counterproductive, and makes the pro-life movement look like a bunch of crazed religious fanatics (especially when you admit you can't rationally defend this position). It's certainly not "progressive".
"That’s why I tend to favor extremely unpleasant life sentences and a more robust and efficient appeals system."
So we're agreed that pro-life and pro-death-penalty are inconsistent positions.
"the polls would seem to indicate that only about 9% of Americans are ‘liberal’ by your standards, since the remaining 91% favor some level of change for Roe."
Where are you getting those figures from? The figures you gave earlier don't say anything about opinion on Roe v. Wade, since Roe v. Wade allows some restrictions.
2006: 33% said that abortion should be "permitted only in cases such as rape, incest or to save the woman's life", 27% said that abortion should be "permitted in all cases", 15% that it should be "permitted, but subject to greater restrictions than it is now", 17% said that it should "only be permitted to save the woman's life", and 5% said that it should "never" be permitted. (Wikipedia, citing PollingReport.com)
This would seem to contradict your implication that only 9% favor removal of all restrictions.
Those results don't show how many favor keeping restrictions at the present level, or loosening them some but not completely; those numbers plus the the 27% favoring no limitations would constitute what I would call an approximation of the "liberal" segment of the population.
"Saving some lives is better than saving no lives."
But why compromise from your apparent stand that abortions should be completely illegal? How does that save lives?
"That statement is predicated on the belief that opposition to abortion is irrational, which you and I will remain in disagreement on."
Yes, as long as you decline to defend it.
"Personally, I find it irrational to pretend you can determine when life/personhood begins when you really can’t."
That's actually an argument for why it doesn't make sense to make a law for exactly when abortions are illegal... I'd much rather have some kind of advisory system which looks at each case in context: did the mother take reasonable precautions? What are the likely outcomes of aborting versus carrying to term? Possibly there would be benefits for going along with the advisory and penalties for deciding the other way -- but not criminal penalties.
Such a system would have its own issues, of course, but it seems closer to an ideal solution. (Note that I'm not holding out for perfection here, just some forward progress.)
"You are drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and it’s really just your best guess."
I'm not drawing a line at all, as far as I know, regarding when a fetus becomes a person. It's not really my primary concern.
You, on the other hand, are drawing a very arbitrary line. Why at conception? Why not when the sperm enter the fallopian tubes? Why not fight for the right of every ovum to be fertilized?
We've been over this territory before: I can explain my reasoning to you, but you decline to explain yours to me. That's not being flexible or progressive, and it's not likely to result in a successful negotiation process.
My general view on such standoffs is that if one side won't show their reasoning or data, then they're wrong by default. It's like one team not showing up for a ball game -- they forfeit the match, whether or not they could have won if they had played.
"I’m not willing to accept a ‘best guess’ in this scenario."
Then why are you accepting your own "best guess" that personhood begins at birth?
Re your paraphrase of my proposed compromise, "We realize that you believe abortion is murder and in that context over a million babies are ‘murdered’ every year in the U.S. So what we will do is agree to some concessions that will limit the current number of abortions i.e. ‘murders’ in return for you stopping the average 45 or so violent acts that occur yearly against abortion clinics, take down your yucky anti-abortion billboards and stop telling lies about us."
...where you believe this to be an incredibly naive suggestion.
I don't think so, at least in principle; some details would have to be understood:
1. Subject to re-evaluation in, say, 10 years (after a generation that hasn't been lied to has time to grow up)
2. We haven't discussed what those limitations might be; obviously there would be some limitations which would be small enough for pro-choicers to accept for a decade, and some limitations which would be large enough for pro-lifers to consider it worth the trade. The question is whether or not there's any overlap between the two wherein a mututally agreeable compromise might be reached.
3. If you can find me a pro-choice liberal who thinks that this is an absurd proposal, please put them in touch with me.
"I don’t consider abortion to be a ‘freedom’ or ‘won’."
Yeah, I know you don't. We do.
I think I can suggest two constraints for the term "progressive", having seen where your usage of it seems wrong to me:
* A majority must agree that the changes proposed would actually be progress, advancements in society, of benefit to civilization in general.
* The proposed changes must somehow make life easier and/or less constrained, overall.
Your "progress" of rolling back abortion rights violates both of these constraints.
"Just an aside, many people find seatbelts ‘restrictive’ but we see the common good in them."
Ha -- I remember my conservative father ranting about seatbelts... Personally, this seems to me like an example of the "nanny state", and "protecting people from themselves" -- aren't those things which conservatives tend to complain about? In this case, I more or less agree with them. (Especially with regard to some of the idiotic child-seat laws we have here in NC -- Sandy's youngest had just gotten old enough to graduate from his seat, but then they decided to raise the minimum weight...)
"I see a common good in limiting abortion. I realize you find that an ‘irrational’ belief, but it is one that is shared by most Americans."
Probably because they've been misinformed and lied to. (I'm assuming you mean "further limiting abortion; as I said earlier, I concede that there are rational arguments for some limitations on abortion, at least for now.)
Sorry for the delays - still dealing with Ice Storm '09.
In the meantime, there is a very interesting blog post from Ross Douthat at The Atlantic that touches on some of what we have been discussing Re: abortion.
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/02/the_end_of_the_culture_war.php
P.S. I think we have reached a reasonable conclusion to the original question of "Can a Conservative also be a Progressive"? I'm happy to continue the abortion dialogue, but I just wanted to throw that other point out there.
Mike - I feel your pain ;-) We had power out for 3-4 days this past summer, and again this winter -- if not for the 3kw gasoline generator, things would have been a real mess. Wish we had a battery bank, and some solar panels... even just as a supplement to the generator.
No rush on the response; I've got this page's comment-feed in my RSS reader, so I'll see it whenever you respond.
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Re Russ Douthat: I've heard that name before -- apparently he doesn't quite get the Celestial Teapot analogy, so his reasoning powers are already suspect... but let's see what he's got.
First, he quotes a chunk from Damon Linker which sets up the dichotomy between those who believe abortion to be an "act of lethal violence" versus those who favor the rights of the potential mother.
I was going to grant that setup and skip it, but on further reflection I do not think you can describe modern abortion as "violent". If you make it illegal, on the other hand, the data would seem to indicate that the same number of women will end up with coat-hangers in the back alley, which is arguably somewhat violent (especially to the fetus) or at least gruesome. So right there Linker is using emotional imagery to mislead people in a direction which would actually make the cited problem worse -- and Douthat is quoting this approvingly as an anti-abortion argument. Tsk.
Linker continues: "These are contrary and incompatible metaphysical assumptions about matters of life and death and human dignity."
"Metaphysical"? It's difficult to know what he means by that. Definitions of "metaphysics" include "philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence" and "1 a (1): a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being and that includes ontology, cosmology, and often epistemology (2): ontology 2 b: abstract philosophical studies : a study of what is outside objective experience"
Is he saying that abortion rights are an ontological matter? Or outside objective experience? I don't see how either of those are true.
I expect the claim he's trying to smuggle in here is that the question of "when personhood begins" is "outside objective experience" -- which begs two questions: (1) what do we mean by "personhood", and (2) how does its presence affect the circumstances under which abortion is appropriate.
It sounds like he's trying to conflate the philosophical idea of "personhood" (which is arguably "metaphysical", if not completely meaningless) with the legal personhood, i.e. when a fetus becomes a person whose life society is obliged to defend.
Legal personhood is hardly a metaphysical question; if the law says you're a person, then you're legally a person. You can make a lot of different arguments about what criteria legal personhood should be based on, but claiming it should rest on some kind of subjective, unmeasurable, and ill-defined (i.e. "metaphysical") concept can only lead to conflict, as we will all have different subjective ideas about it.
You can't argue the rights and wrongs of any issue on purely subjective grounds, because it gives opposing viewpoints no matters of factual disagreement to resolve by objective measurement and no areas of commonality to stand on in agreement.
What he wants us to do, of course, is swallow the "metaphysical" claim whole, and then have us believe that his idea of what metaphysics says about abortion (what does it say, anyway?) should hold sway -- not just be given equal credibility to rational argument, but should be considered more important because they address this fuzzy thing called "metaphysics" which he claims is the only way to address these issues.
Poppycock.
Linker: "On that day, the Constitution ceased to be neutral on this matter of metaphysics."
The Supreme Court says "the question of the fetus's personhood and rights may be metaphysical, but the question of the mother's rights as a living independent human being are pretty clearly written in the Constitution."
In other words: if the Court has, in fact, become non-neutral with regard to metaphysics, the way in which it has done so is to determine that metaphysics should not trump objective reality.
Linker's second paragraph proceeds from his false conclusion about Roe v. Wade, so I'll skip it.
Douthat's essay then builds further on Linker's bogus point, adding an analogy between Roe v. Wade and Bush's many revocations of civil rights.
Again: we have arguments for why the revocations of civil rights were not only wrong but unnecessary; all the pro-life camp seems to have by way of argument is "metaphysics" about "when life I mean personhood begins"... and generally take a stance of being unwilling to examine that position.
Any stance whose adherents refuse to examine its reasoning is essentially a hostile intruder at the negotiating table -- a hustler in the marketplace of ideas -- and has not earned any respect, much less the respect of federal law.
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Re resolving the question of "can a progressive be a conservative?" -- I'm not sure what the overlap is on what we've concluded. I would say that it's possible for someone to be both progressive and conservative, but in practice I don't see anyone who calls themselves a "conservative" actually being what can be reasonably called "progressive". I would further suggest that "rational conservatism" is a large part of what many people who call themselves "liberals" are doing these days.
Some thoughts during the intermission:
1. Every tradition was once an innovation. By what virtue does conservatism recommend current tradition over innovations which may eventually become traditions in their own right?
2. One core mechanism of the conservative machine appears to be a specific type of fearmongery, the recipe for which goes something like this:
a. Find things which make people uneasy or uncertain, and amplify those fears -- make them afraid, repelled, disgusted, ashamed -- by speaking about the subjects in question as if any decent, right-thinking person would be repelled and disgusted by them too. (A little Biblical quote-mining never hurts, for adding that little frisson of deiphobia.)
b. Convince them -- again, by speaking with the assumption that this is what any decent person already fervently believes to be true -- that this fear and disgust is what elevates them above others, what makes them worthwhile, what saves them from becoming homeless and left to die alone and unloved and 30 pounds overweight in a VAN down by the RIVER. (Actually, that's much more a liberal type of fear; conservatives are apparently much more afraid of going to a mythical place where they will be subjected to vaguely-described tortures which nobody has ever actually witnessed. And here I had gotten the idea that they suffered from a lack of imagination! I guess it helps if you have the same fiction pounded into your head week after week from a very young age; the details probably fill in and become pretty vivid over time -- almost like they were describing something real.)
c. Make sure they understand that you are one of the few who truly understand the sinister nature of the ghastly menace you have revealed to them, and that they have been abandoned by society at large. Convince them that, indeed, society at large does not share these core values by which they define their worth, and is in fact engaged in an active campaign (with the help of the dreaded X Agenda, where X = gay, liberal, pro-abortion, elitist, socialist, communist, Muslim, Darwinist, environmentalist, whatever...) to destroy and pillage their way of life.
It's a lot like that episode of Star Trek where an alien entity that lives on anger contrives to trap a group of Klingons on the Enterprise, and then arranges the situation (via various unexplained but presumably SFnal means) so as to maximize the amount of mayhem and prevent negotiation.
When I first saw that episode, I thought it was just an allegory -- but it seems to be literally true, except that we don't need to invoke any unknown technology. Conservative fearmongery has evolved into a technique which quite effectively exploits humanity's worst instincts using nothing more extraordinary than the power of words.
Hmm, have there been any signs of life from Mike? Is it time for me to slap another elephant silhouette on the side of my computer?
Another question for the intermission, then: By what logic does conservatism continue to justify its philosophy of intensive self-reliance in a society where the basic resources for earning a living are increasingly controlled by established interests? (...especially when the lion's share of the reward from exploiting those resources tends to be allocated by affiliation rather than individual merit.)
For that matter, how can you justify supporting both self-reliance and the entrenched interests which make self-reliance impossible?
...and how does "progressive conservatism" differ from mainstream conservatism on these questions?
My apologies again Woozle. Work has been a bear the last couple of weeks (although our team managed to secure $2.5 million in new revenue for 2009 so i guess it was worth it).
I am making a commitment to myself to get a response to these posts done over the weekend. I will be ready for a fresh round of debate by Monday.
(and you can leave the elephant silhouette in the drawer for now : )
But okay, which metrics would you pick as being the most significant as far as intimidation?
Any violent act is going to be significant in terms of intimidation, so I don’t want to give the impression that I view some acts as less serious than others. Violence is violence and whether it’s the threat of murder or assault, I think they have a pretty similar effect on abortion providers. So we can agree that any violence is bad. In my opinion though, what the statistics prove is that regardless of how we graph the numbers the ratio of clinic violence to abortions is something like 1 act of violence for every 10,000 abortions. Given the view that many pro-lifers hold, which is that abortion = murder, I’d say we’re doing pretty good.
A teen who attends an abstinence-only class will continue to feel compelled (by hormones and sexual wiring) to have sex, regardless of what they may promise or believe is right, and (due to the class) will additionally not feel compelled to use contraception.
There is also some evidence that ABE conveys a message that contraception is actually morally wrong, leading to less usage than would have happened without any sex education at all... but I digress.
I still find it extremely hard to swallow the notion that teens will attend the class and only take away half the message (contraception is wrong) while ignoring the other half (premarital sex is wrong). It sounds to me like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, which is to suggest that the class can change behaviors, but only the ones that re-enforce your notion that the class actually does harm verses no class at all. As I stated earlier, I accept the notion that the classes are not effective, but I refuse to accept the idea that they are more harmful than no class at all, a fact you conceded earlier and now seem to be changing your position on.
"You do know that contraception IS discussed in most of those classes, right? The message given is that the only birth control method that is 100% effective is abstinence."
Um, no. Wrong….ABE, as funded by the Bush administration to the tune of $1 billion, doesn't allow grant recipients "to advocate or discuss contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates."
You basically just re-iterated my point. In order to give the message that abstinence is the only 100% method, you have to explain the failure rates of other types.
"Again, when you see abortion as murder..."
I think the use of the word "murder" is highly misleading… "Murder" is unlawful killing. If abortion is legal, you can call it killing but you can't call it murder, by definition.
The legal logic in your argument is sound, but under that same logic the Holocaust wasn’t murder. (I’m not invoking that for shock value, but that is the most applicable example.) I think murder tends to transcend contemporary legal constructs as it is perhaps the oldest moral offense we have.
."I believe I addressed this point before..."
You didn't counter my claim that there is a steep emotional cost. By saying that a woman's primary motivation is "ease", you are implying that getting an abortion is usually easier than not getting one -- again claiming that the emotional cost is negligible.
I believe I DID counter your claim. I said, “ I don’t think liberals really believe that those women made a bad decision, but they are sympathetic to her anguish because it becomes a mental health issue for them…They de-emphasize the humanity of the fetus and over-emphasize the moral dilemma of the mother as a sort of trade-off. “You give us the abortion and we will promise you a lifetime of remorse.“
I would say the ‘emotional cost’ is negligible in the sense that it doesn’t lessen the offense. To be quite blunt, I could give a fig about the ‘emotional cost’ for a woman. If she wants to avoid the emotional burden, the easiest solution is to avoid the abortion. If she is worried about the baby’s future, put it up for adoption. If she’s only worried about her own future, then she should have factored that in to her risk assessment of having sex.
My expert witness, a mother of four (one grown and in the Navy) and the survivor of one miscarriage (at 10 weeks), says that losing the embryo/fetus for any reason carries considerable emotional cost.
If your expert witness also had an abortion then they would be a good source of comparison. Since they apparently haven’t, I’m not sure how they can explain the emotional impact of a procedure they haven’t had. Assuming the miscarriage was either a planned pregnancy or a pregnancy they were planning on carrying to term, I don’t see how that would compare to ending a pregnancy you see as a burden. The only equivalent I can think of is if your source wanted to get rid of their pregnancy and the miscarriage accomplished that.
Calling abortion-seeking women murderers, sinners or even just bad mommies is extremely counterproductive, and makes the pro-life movement look like a bunch of crazed religious fanatics (especially when you admit you can't rationally defend this position). It's certainly not "progressive".
Negative rhetoric is always problematic in any discussion, but to suggest that unpleasant words make the conservative position non-progressive would imply that you can’t be progressive and use harsh rhetoric? If that was truly the case there would literally be NOTHING progressive about Dana’s blog, a point I’m sure she would dispute.
"Saving some lives is better than saving no lives."
But why compromise from your apparent stand that abortions should be completely illegal? How does that save lives?
If we increase the number of restrictions, less abortions will be had. I’m not sure how to explain that any better. I’ve heard a lot of liberals use this line of discussion lately though. The contention seems to be that since some pro-lifers are moving to an incremental approach it is somehow an admission that a goal of outlawing all abortions was/is flawed. I just see it as practical move to get things heading in the right direction and one that significant national support.
"Personally, I find it irrational to pretend you can determine when life/personhood begins when you really can’t."
That's actually an argument for why it doesn't make sense to make a law for exactly when abortions are illegal...
So in a question over when life begins, you choose to err on the side of no-life?
We've been over this territory before: I can explain my reasoning to you, but you decline to explain yours to me. That's not being flexible or progressive, and it's not likely to result in a successful negotiation process.
My general view on such standoffs is that if one side won't show their reasoning or data, then they're wrong by default. It's like one team not showing up for a ball game -- they forfeit the match, whether or not they could have won if they had played.
I really don’t understand what there is to explain. The scientific definition of ‘personhood’ is yet to be outlined with any degree of certainty or universal agreement. The law doesn’t even really do this, it only grants the mother dominion over the fetus, regardless of personhood. Even if we DO pick a legal definition, it will still be only our best guess. In the absence of 100% certainty I choose to err on the side of life/personhood. I don’t know how many more times I can say that.
I think I can suggest two constraints for the term "progressive", having seen where your usage of it seems wrong to me:
* A majority must agree that the changes proposed would actually be progress, advancements in society, of benefit to civilization in general.
* The proposed changes must somehow make life easier and/or less constrained, overall.
I could think of more than a few examples that would meet one of your criteria and contradict the other. Carbon emission standards, for example, are ‘progressive’ but not easy to implement and the additional cost would probably cost jobs, at least in the short term. So if something meets one standard and not the other, can it still be ‘progressive’?
Re: Ross Douthat
Legal personhood is hardly a metaphysical question; if the law says you're a person, then you're legally a person.
The law says that a fetus is a person if the mother is murdered while pregnant (i.e. two counts of murder) but the law does not say the fetus is a person if the mother pays a doctor to abort said fetus. The law is already in conflict with itself it seems.
--abortion thread--
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Woozle: "...which metrics would you pick as being the most significant as far as intimidation?"
Mike part 1: "Any violent act is going to be significant in terms of intimidation... Violence is violence and whether it’s the threat of murder or assault, I think they have a pretty similar effect on abortion providers. So we can agree that any violence is bad."
1. This doesn't answer the question, which was about intimidation of abortion seekers
2. Many of the incident types being graphed aren't even what I would call "violence"
3. Since you've changed the subject, I'm assuming you've abandoned the claim that "Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days."
Mike part 2: "...what the statistics prove is that regardless of how we graph the numbers the ratio of clinic violence to abortions is something like 1 act of violence for every 10,000 abortions. Given the view that many pro-lifers hold, which is that abortion = murder, I’d say we’re doing pretty good."
So... the end justifies the means, and they started it, and it's okay to commit violence on people because you believe it's the right thing to do, even if society doesn't agree with you?
Look, dude... Islam says it's okay to kill non-Muslims because their scripture says so. What makes the Taliban wrong and you right? Charles Manson believed that there was an upcoming racial war which it was his destiny to lead, necessitating several murders as the opening act. What makes him wrong and you right? What makes Jim Jones wrong and you right? What makes Fred Phelps wrong and you right?
My point is that unless you can offer a rational basis for your beliefs, they cannot provide a moral justification for other acts. You may Believe Deep Down that you are right, and you may even be proven right ultimately, but you can't expect any sympathy (or support) for it until the reasoning is found.
You aren't the only one with personal convictions, and many people who have convictions disagree with yours. This can't just be a might-makes-right power-struggle between The Force Of Your Convictions and The Force Of My Convictions; we have to look at the facts and reasoning we each used in arriving at our differing conclusions, find where the error or ambiguity is that led us to those different places, and then work towards resolving that error or ambiguity.
Otherwise, we don't have a civil or free society; we have a society based on power and strength -- might makes right, power is its own justification -- which does not result in anything we would recognize as a free society, or anything I would call "America".
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Mike: "I still find it extremely hard to swallow the notion that teens will attend the class and only take away half the message (contraception is wrong) while ignoring the other half (premarital sex is wrong)."
I'm not predicting that it will happen, I'm saying that this is what the data show does happen. This was addressed in some of the links I posted earlier; do I need to go through them again?
Also, I think they're absorbing both parts of the lesson just fine; its just that part of it is getting overridden by biological drives. They still believe they're "sinning" (unless, I suppose, they're "Saddlebacking", which is apparently not "sinful" even though it's no better for preventing the spread of diseases).
Mike: "I refuse to accept the idea that they are more harmful than no class at all, a fact you conceded earlier and now seem to be changing your position on."
I agree that abstinence-only classes may be no worse than no classes at all, but also that there is some evidence they are actually worse.
However, when talking about the merits of ABE, we are not talking about "ABE vs. nothing"; nobody is proposing replacing ABE with "recess-based education" (although ABE comes pretty damn close to being "ignorance-based education" as is). We are talking about "ABE vs. proper sex ed", where ABE classes are clearly worse. ABE classes and laws which were promoted by the Bush administration replaced proper sex ed and family planning.
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Mike: "You do know that contraception IS discussed in most of those classes, right? The message given is that the only birth control method that is 100% effective is abstinence."
Woozle: "Um, no. Wrong….ABE, as funded by the Bush administration to the tune of $1 billion, doesn't allow grant recipients "to advocate or discuss contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates."
Mike: "You basically just re-iterated my point. In order to give the message that abstinence is the only 100% method, you have to explain the failure rates of other types."
Enumerating only the failures of a particular tool, without explaining that it usually does work or how to use it properly (indeed, making it clear that most of those failures are due to improper use) is not the same thing as discussing it.
If I taught a class on carpentry, and only introduced the topic of "hammers" in order to explain the risk of smashing one's thumb (possibly breaking it, necessitating expensive medical treatment) or even killing someone by accidentally dropping one on someone's head from a great height, would you consider that a proper discussion of hammering technique? Do you think most people in that class would emerge as competent carpenters?
And would you feel confident sending a graduate of that class out on a real-world construction job, where they would be in daily contact with hammers and expected to know how to handle them properly?
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Mike: "Again, when you see abortion as murder..."
Woozle: "I think the use of the word "murder" is highly misleading... "Murder" is unlawful killing. If abortion is legal, you can call it killing but you can't call it murder, by definition."
Mike: "The legal logic in your argument is sound, but under that same logic the Holocaust wasn’t murder."
Rubbish. It was murder by international law and the laws of every civilized nation. (There was a little thing afterwards called "The Nuremburg Trials" which kind of laid that point to rest, in case anyone wasn't sure.)
Mike: "I think murder tends to transcend contemporary legal constructs as it is perhaps the oldest moral offense we have."
That strikes me as a rather alarming statement. What do you mean by it?
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Mike: "I believe I addressed this point before..."
Woozle: "You didn't counter my claim that there is a steep emotional cost. By saying that a woman's primary motivation is "ease", you are implying that getting an abortion is usually easier than not getting one -- again claiming that the emotional cost is negligible."
Mike: "I believe I DID counter your claim. I said, “I don’t think liberals really believe that those women made a bad decision, but they are sympathetic to her anguish because it becomes a mental health issue for them... They de-emphasize the humanity of the fetus and over-emphasize the moral dilemma of the mother as a sort of trade-off. “You give us the abortion and we will promise you a lifetime of remorse.“" .. I would say the ‘emotional cost’ is negligible in the sense that it doesn’t lessen the offense."
We're not talking about whether the emotional cost mitigates the offense you perceive; we're talking about what the primary motivation is behind the act you find offensive (so as to shed some light on the question of whether it is justifiable), and the larger issue of whether an offense has been committed in the first place.
"Ease" may be involved in some cases, but I think if it were the only factor, most women would choose the extra difficulty over the lifetime of guilt. Yes.
Mike: "To be quite blunt, I could give a fig about the ‘emotional cost’ for a woman. If she wants to avoid the emotional burden, the easiest solution is to avoid the abortion."
There you go again. I do not think the primary reason women get abortions can be adequately summarized as "personal convenience" (which is what I take it you mean by "ease").
I could be wrong, but you need to show me evidence that this is so rather than just claiming it over and over again.
However, it may not be productive to keep discussing this, as my view is that "personal ease" is sufficient justification. The fetus should be considered a part of the woman's body at least until independent viability, possibly until birth; the ethical guidelines until that point should be comparable to those for treatment of a large animal.
Mike: "If she is worried about the baby’s future, put it up for adoption."
What if she's worried about the baby's future in the adoption system, or as an adopted child, or other factors which may be particular to the individual case?
I think one underlying point on which we disagree is this: I maintain that sometimes it's better not to be born. You seem to believe the opposite, that being born is always preferable.
You also seem to implicitly believe that more babies are better than fewer, which seems completely wrong to me. We have too many people on the planet already; anything we can do to non-violently reduce the reproduction rate strikes me as a good thing.
Mike: "If she’s only worried about her own future, then she should have factored that in to her risk assessment of having sex."
That does follow logically if you see abortion as a crime, but of course we disagree on that. The onus remains on you to show why it should be viewed that way.
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Mike: "If your expert witness also had an abortion then they would be a good source of comparison. Since they apparently haven’t, I’m not sure how they can explain the emotional impact of a procedure they haven’t had."
I would think that deciding to abort a fetus, and then going through it (medical procedure away from home) would be much more traumatic than a natural spontaneous abortion...
...but ultimately, you are correct that this isn't really a direct piece of evidence.
Of course, if I had talked to a woman who had had an abortion and insisted that it was oh yes terribly emotionally traumatic for her, boo-hoo, would you count that either? My understanding was that you were already discounting such testimony, so I thought you might give more credence someone who had four times "chosen life" despite not personally wanting children.
In any case, it's only one data point.
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Woozle: "Calling abortion-seeking women murderers, sinners or even just bad mommies is extremely counterproductive, and makes the pro-life movement look like a bunch of crazed religious fanatics (especially when you admit you can't rationally defend this position). It's certainly not "progressive"."
Mike: "Negative rhetoric is always problematic in any discussion, but to suggest that unpleasant words make the conservative position non-progressive would imply that you can’t be progressive and use harsh rhetoric?"
No, I wasn't suggesting that using unpleasant/negative/harsh words is automatically non-progressive.
I was suggesting that going ahead and labeling people as "bad" without establishing that they are actually doing something wrong is non-progressive.
Yes, I know you believe they are, but you haven't yet established that point rationally.
Terms like "sin" are also anti-progressive, as they imply a moral judgment based solely on doctrine, i.e. without a rational justification.
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Mike: "Saving some lives is better than saving no lives."
Woozle: "But why compromise from your apparent stand that abortions should be completely illegal? How does that save lives?"
Mike: "If we increase the number of restrictions, less abortions will be had."
1. That's answering a different question than I asked. You're explaining why you should not compromise; you were claiming that you were compromising, and I was asking why you would do so.
2. It makes a statement which is incorrect -- and I've pointed this out at least once or twice before: the data shows that increasing restrictions has no effect on the number of abortions performed. It just makes them uglier and more dangerous. It DOESN'T WORK. FAIL.
Mike: "I’ve heard a lot of liberals use this line of discussion lately though. The contention seems to be that since some pro-lifers are moving to an incremental approach it is somehow an admission that a goal of outlawing all abortions was/is flawed."
I don't know who's contending that; I'm only saying that I don't see the justification on your side for any compromise, given the principles* you seem to be acting on.
(*That is, I'm guessing that there are principles -- although as I've said, conservatives often seem to be acting more on a set of rules to be obeyed unquestioningly rather than a set of principles or goals they are trying to accomplish.)
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Mike: "Personally, I find it irrational to pretend you can determine when life/personhood begins when you really can’t."
Woozle: "That's actually an argument for why it doesn't make sense to make a law for exactly when abortions are illegal..."
Mike: "So in a question over when life begins, you choose to err on the side of no-life?"
1. I choose to minimize error by not guessing arbitrarily.
2. This isn't a question of when "life" begins; "life" is present throughout the entire process. You're using "life" as a stand-in for some more elusive concept (and until this round, you hadn't confirmed my guess that the word "personhood" was closer to what you mean), and thereby confusing the issue.
3. If "personhood" is what makes the difference, then we need to be clear what the criteria are for personhood, and why those criteria are the important ones. Do we mean "ability to think"? The presence of any cognitive activity at all (as would be shown by an EEG)? Self-awareness? Having a personality? Something else?
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Woozle: "We've been over this territory before: I can explain my reasoning to you, but you decline to explain yours to me..."
Mike: "I really don’t understand what there is to explain. The scientific definition of ‘personhood’ is yet to be outlined with any degree of certainty or universal agreement."
Science doesn't answer this sort of question; it gives us the information we need to work out the best answer ourselves.
You're the one apparently using it as a criterion, so you need explain what it means to you, and why it is the reason for determining when an abortion is killing and when it is not.
Mike: "In the absence of 100% certainty I choose to err on the side of life/personhood. I don’t know how many more times I can say that."
Before, you just said "life"; now you're agreeing that you mean "personhood".
The idea of "when a fetus becomes a person" being the point when abortion becomes wrong does seem rationally defensible.
The next hurdle, as I explained above, is working out a reasonable process by which we can decide when that has happened.
Mike (discussing W's proposed constraints on "progressive"): "...Carbon emission standards, for example, are ‘progressive’ but not easy to implement and the additional cost would probably cost jobs, at least in the short term. So if something meets one standard and not the other, can it still be 'progressive'?"
You're suggesting that this example violates rule #2, "must somehow make life easier and/or less constrained, overall", due to job loss.
Job losses make life more difficult for some people, yes -- but overall, carbon emissions reductions benefit everyone, because:
1. they make for a cleaner environment (leaving the GW debate on the table for now, as it isn't necessary in order to make my point).
2. they encourage development of alternative fuels, helping (in the long run) to free us from dependence on limited/non-renewable resources (fossil fuels) whose supplies are mostly held by foreign powers whose interests are often counter to ours.
Also:
* Becoming unemployed is part of life; carbon emissions reduction did not create the idea of job loss. People who lose their jobs due to downsizing of one company can still go looking elsewhere -- perhaps at an alternative energy company whose sales are up due to those same regulations.
* Can you show that emissions reductions have actually cost jobs?
But perhaps there are other examples of "progressive" ideas which I will concede are in violation of one constraint or the other. Fire away...
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Woozle: "Legal personhood is hardly a metaphysical question; if the law says you're a person, then you're legally a person."
Mike: "The law says that a fetus is a person if the mother is murdered while pregnant (i.e. two counts of murder) but the law does not say the fetus is a person if the mother pays a doctor to abort said fetus."
My take on it is that the fetus is a person if (and only if) the mother says it is.
If a mother was murdered on her way to an abortion clinic where she had an appointment for The Procedure, then I'd agree there's might be an unresolved contradiction. (Perhaps personhood officially ends when the abortion procedure begins, or when the fetus's life is terminated by the doctor.)
If the law which makes this a "double murder" came up for a vote, though, I don't know that I would support it. It does seem especially heinous to murder a pregnant woman, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say there are two people being killed. It hits me in the same way as, say, murdering someone who is in intensive care (but who has a good prognosis for survival and recovery). Evil.
I will address some of your points later, though this one jumped out at me right away…
Waaaaaay back at the beginning of the abortion discussion I raised the notion that abortion is used as birth control by a lot of women. I suggested it was a Plan A for some women and a Plan B for others, both being part of the liberally-accepted birth control toolkit. This was your response:
01/14: The conservative claim that abortion is being used as birth control is... obscene.
Today I said:
"If she’s only worried about her own future, then she should have factored that in to her risk assessment of having sex."
Your response:
That does follow logically if you see abortion as a crime, but of course we disagree on that. The onus remains on you to show why it should be viewed that way.
Since you are saying that if abortion isn't a crime then the woman's future need not be part of her risk assessment, I think you are confirming what I said above, which is that abortion IS part of the accepted birth control tool kit. So long as abortion is available, her future need not be in jeopardy…correct?
==abortion thread quickie==
Mike said: "Since you are saying that if abortion isn't a crime then the woman's future need not be part of her risk assessment, I think you are confirming what I said above, which is that abortion IS part of the accepted birth control tool kit. So long as abortion is available, her future need not be in jeopardy... correct?"
1. I'm not saying that abortion poses no cost to the woman, so no -- it is still part of the risk assessment. You have been maintaining all along that abortion is "easy", and I've been saying no it isn't.
The woman's future may not be in jeopardy if she has an abortion, but she still has to make that decision -- and either go through an unpleasant ordeal (however trivial it may seem to you) or she may decide to pay the price, for whatever reasons, and have the baby.
So the risk of pregnancy still factors heavily in the decision to have sex and regarding what protection strategy to use.
2. I agree that abortion is part of the toolkit for handling an unwanted pregnancy, but I do not agree that it is significantly used as the first line of defense -- a primary method of birth control -- which is what I understood you to be suggesting.
I will clarify a bit: When you say "abortion is being used as birth control", it sounds like what you mean is "Women aren't bothering to use proper birth control; they're going and having sex, then routinely having abortions if they happen to get pregnant."
That interpretation of your statement is what I found obscene (and not supported by the data, either). If that is not what you meant, then I apologize for misinterpreting -- but it would probably be a good idea for you to clarify what you did mean. (Taken literally, it's meaningless anyway: abortion is birth control, by definition, and cannot be used in a way which is not birth control.)
It would also behoove anti-abortionists, if they have any interest in personal integrity or intellectual honesty, to use a less ambiguous phrasing -- because that way of saying it is clearly open to misinterpretation.
(From my experience, however, anti-abortionists are perfectly happy to foster whatever misinterpretations or lies they think will help their cause.)
Brought to you by today's accidentally-appropriate verification word, "ovulact"
Since you've changed the subject, I'm assuming you've abandoned the claim that "Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days."
I wasn’t trying to change the subject. To repeat my original statement, abortion violence IS almost non-existent when we look at it as a ratio to the number of abortion seekers, as a ratio to the size of our overall population, as a ratio to crime in general or types of crimes specifically. Having reviewed the statistics for this discussion I actually see it as even less of an issue than I did before, and given that abortion rates dropped as violence also declined, it’s hard to really even draw any kind of corollaries between the two numbers.
Given the view that many pro-lifers hold, which is that abortion = murder, I’d say we’re doing pretty good."
So... the end justifies the means, and they started it, and it's okay to commit violence on people because you believe it's the right thing to do, even if society doesn't agree with you?
I apologize if you mistook my comment as saying I’m okay with violence. I was trying to say that as a society we are doing pretty good giving the fact that abortion violence is so low.
"I still find it extremely hard to swallow the notion that teens will attend the class and only take away half the message (contraception is wrong) while ignoring the other half (premarital sex is wrong)."
I'm not predicting that it will happen, I'm saying that this is what the data show does happen.
Really? You admitted this (albeit, with caveats): I don't have any numbers which directly show an increase, but neither are there any numbers showing no increase (or a decrease). I know you think your math implies, but again, I consider that a have-your-cake-and-eat-it scenario you are trying to create. Given the thoroughness of abortion rights advocates I think the lack of polling data is likely because the results weren’t favorable, not because they forgot to ask.
(I really hate to keep revisiting the abstinence classes because we agree they aren’t effective. Arguing about them doing harm verses no classes is really just quibbling over minor details.)
"The legal logic in your argument is sound, but under that same logic the Holocaust wasn’t murder."
Rubbish. It was murder by international law and the laws of every civilized nation.
Killing Jews was legal in Axis countries, so that meets your definition of murder, unless you want to admit that legal killing can indeed be mirder (what’s your opinion on capital punishment?) And various motivations for abortion (ex. socio-economics) are outlawed in a majority of other countries. If we’re now giving weight to majority international opinion, we’ve got a whole new ballgame.
"I think murder tends to transcend contemporary legal constructs as it is perhaps the oldest moral offense we have."
That strikes me as a rather alarming statement. What do you mean by it?
I mean that what’s illegal today can very easily be legal tomorrow, and vice versa. Murder as an illegality has evolved over time. 100 years ago the murder of blacks in the South was never prosecuted. Now it is. Abortion went the other direction. So I think it shows our views of ‘crime’ are certainly fluid. That’s why your narrow definition of murder as an illegal killing only is so dangerous in my opinion.
I do not think the primary reason women get abortions can be adequately summarized as "personal convenience" (which is what I take it you mean by "ease").
A huge majority of abortions are done for ‘social reasons’ (the Gutmacher data confirms that) which I define as ‘personal convenience’. You and I obviously differ on that.
I think one underlying point on which we disagree is this: I maintain that sometimes it's better not to be born. You seem to believe the opposite, that being born is always preferable.
I’ll say the obvious which is that it’s much easier to make that judgment when you actually were allowed to be born. I’ve yet to meet anyone who is mentally stable who wishes they haven’t been born.
We have too many people on the planet already; anything we can do to non-violently reduce the reproduction rate strikes me as a good thing.
Really? Please cite the data which confirms the world is over-populated. We could argue that there are countries that are over-populated, but that is more a product of failures in resources, not over-reproduction.
I will clarify a bit: When you say "abortion is being used as birth control", it sounds like what you mean is "Women aren't bothering to use proper birth control; they're going and having sex, then routinely having abortions if they happen to get pregnant."
47% are repeat offenders. An additional % of the ones that are getting their first abortions chose to use no birth control and of those I’m quite sure a significant amount knew they were taking a risk. So I would be willing to bet that puts us at over 50% of abortion seekers who basically know that sex can = pregnancy and didn’t take suitable precautions.
A ghostly elephant stigma has begun slowly appearing on my forehead, so it's probably time I finished this response... the deadline-project isn't "done", exactly, but the finish-or-drop-dead part seems to be.
===Abortion thread===
Woozle: "Since you've changed the subject, I'm assuming you've abandoned the claim that "Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days."
Mike: "I wasn’t trying to change the subject. To repeat my original statement, abortion violence IS almost non-existent when we look at it as a ratio to the number of abortion seekers, as a ratio to the size of our overall population, as a ratio to crime in general or types of crimes specifically."
Whether or not you meant to, this is in fact a different subject. We were talking about your claim that "Abortion clinic violence is almost non-existent these days."; you're now saying that the ratio of [abortion clinic incidents] to [abortion seekers] is very low -- which is another claim altogether.
Also, you compared the number of incidents to the number of abortions; given that each clinic performs many abortions, this probably means a rather high number of incidents for each clinic -- which is relevant to considering the difficulty of keeping a clinic open and meeting operating expenses. (Yes, I inadvertantly overlooked this factor earlier.)
Mike: "Having reviewed the statistics for this discussion I actually see it as even less of an issue than I did before, and given that abortion rates dropped as violence also declined, it’s hard to really even draw any kind of corollaries between the two numbers."
Brief recap:
* I had suggested grounds for a possible truce between "pro-lifers" and "pro-choicers", and mentioned working against abortion clinic violence as something that pro-lifers could bring to the table
* you claimed that abortion clinic violence was "almost nonexistent nowadays"
* I gave you a graph which refuted that claim
* you claimed I was cherrypicking indicators to prove my point
* I suggested that you give me a list of indicators you would consider relevant to the question.
* You attempted to downplay the significance of abortion clinic violence as an issue
I'm thinking that this particular sub-discussion has become rather a waste of time. If you don't want to negotiate on that point, then don't. But it's still an issue for those who are pro-choice: we don't believe that violence, or threats of same, should be an issue for abortion-seekers or abortion clinics -- any more than it should be for other kinds of patients at other medical facilities.
We may disagree about whether abortion is killing (or "should be considered murder", if you prefer), but violence and threats against women who are doing nothing illegal is wrong -- and we should be able to agree on that.
Protesting outside a clinic is fine, but protest signs shouldn't make threats and should at least have some kind of factual basis for their claims. All abortion protesters generally have to offer is Biblical quotes, faked abortion photos, and fear-based emotional rhetoric.
The uglier the protest signs get, the less sympathetic I am. I have yet to see a fact-based anti-abortion sign.
---
Mike: "In my opinion though, what the statistics prove is that regardless of how we graph the numbers the ratio of clinic violence to abortions is something like 1 act of violence for every 10,000 abortions. Given the view that many pro-lifers hold, which is that abortion = murder, I’d say we’re doing pretty good."
Woozle: "So... the end justifies the means, and they started it, and it's okay to commit violence on people because you believe it's the right thing to do, even if society doesn't agree with you?"
Mike: "I apologize if you mistook my comment as saying I’m okay with violence. I was trying to say that as a society we are doing pretty good giving the fact that abortion violence is so low."
That was actually my bad; you had made a point of stating specifically that you weren't condoning violence.
I kept arriving back at that assumption, however, because I couldn't figure out what you meant by "doing pretty good". The only other interpretation I can think of is that you're doing well compared to those who commit violence for reasons other than protesting abortion -- but I can only think that you set higher standards for yourself than that, so that can't be right either.
Compared to what, then?
Fact check: in 2005, 1.21 million abortions vs. 761 incidents of violence and 14,034 incidents of harassment - ratios of ~1590 abortions/incident and ~86 abortions/incident.
For comparison, the US crime rate in 2005, when the population of 296,507,061, was 11,565,499 crimes (one crime for every ~25 people) including 1,390,745 violent crimes (one incident per 213 people), so yeah, you're doing better than common criminals at least.
---
Woozle: "A teen who attends an abstinence-only class will continue to feel compelled (by hormones and sexual wiring) to have sex..."
Mike: "I still find it extremely hard to swallow the notion that teens will attend the class and only take away half the message (contraception is wrong) while ignoring the other half (premarital sex is wrong)."
Try teaching a room full of alcoholics about the moral hazards of drunkenness. Then teach them that if they are going to get drunk, there's no point in getting a designated driver because even designated drivers can have wrecks. Now ask yourself: Do you think both lessons will be equally effective? How effectively do you think a student in this class will be able to avoid getting in a drunk driving accident?
Mike: "It sounds to me like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, which is to suggest that the class can change behaviors, but only the ones that reinforce your notion that the class actually does harm versus no class at all."
I'm only telling you what the data show to be happening. Show me where my interpretation is wrong.
Mike: "As I stated earlier, I accept the notion that the classes are not effective, but I refuse to accept the idea that they are more harmful than no class at all, a fact you conceded earlier and now seem to be changing your position on."
I'm not arguing that point, as the evidence for it is sketchy, but I am saying that it wouldn't surprise me at all.
---
And now... this is the third time I have lost part or all of my post, and I've used up most of my (short stretches of) free time for today getting this far, so I am going to post this and call it a day -- but I will answer the rest of your comments.
"Having reviewed the statistics for this discussion I actually see it as even less of an issue than I did before, and given that abortion rates dropped as violence also declined, it’s hard to really even draw any kind of corollaries between the two numbers."
Brief recap:
* I had suggested grounds for a possible truce between "pro-lifers" and "pro-choicers", and mentioned working against abortion clinic violence as something that pro-lifers could bring to the table
* you claimed that abortion clinic violence was "almost nonexistent nowadays"
* I gave you a graph which refuted that claim
* you claimed I was cherrypicking indicators to prove my point
* I suggested that you give me a list of indicators you would consider relevant to the question.
* You attempted to downplay the significance of abortion clinic violence as an issue
I'm thinking that this particular sub-discussion has become rather a waste of time. If you don't want to negotiate on that point, then don't.
Woozle, no one is trying to change the subject, misdirect or avoid the point. You made a big deal about abortion clinic violence. I said it was ‘almost non-existant’. You provided a chart. I discredited several parts of the chart since the offenses they cited weren’t really ‘violent’. You sort of agreed that we could weed several of them out. I also took out anthrax threats because there was only a spike directly after 9/11 and they have gone away. Here is the list of violent offenses I came up with from your stats.
Murder
Attempted Murder
Bombing
Arson
Attempted Bomb/Arson
Invasion
Butyric Acid
Assault & Battery
Death Threats
Kidnapping
Stalking
When you look at those alone, here are the total acts of violence for each year:
1997 112
1998 80
1999 41
2000 43
2001 33
2002 18
2003 20
2004 30
2005 34
2006 36
2007 55
(I’m not sure where you got 761 acts of violence in 2005 – see below) On average that is one act of violence for every 28,513 abortions. I am inclined to whittle that down even further by taking out death threats and stalking, which are disruptive but not technically ‘violent’. There hasn’t been a murder at a clinic in 10 years. There hasn’t been an attempted murder in 8 years. I stand by my original statement: Abortion clinic is almost non-existent. If you want to put your 55 acts in 2007 up against my ‘violent acts’ of abortion….be my guest. I think my number wins.
Protesting outside a clinic is fine, but protest signs shouldn't make threats and should at least have some kind of factual basis for their claims…The uglier the protest signs get, the less sympathetic I am.
Is that a legal suggestion, or just a subjective one? I think if we looked at protest signs from any event we could both find more than one ugly sign or not quite factual one. It’s sort of the nature of the beast.
"I still find it extremely hard to swallow the notion that teens will attend the class and only take away half the message (contraception is wrong) while ignoring the other half (premarital sex is wrong)."
Try teaching a room full of alcoholics about the moral hazards of drunkenness. Then teach them that if they are going to get drunk, there's no point in getting a designated driver because even designated drivers can have wrecks. Now ask yourself: Do you think both lessons will be equally effective? How effectively do you think a student in this class will be able to avoid getting in a drunk driving accident?
So if I understand your analogy, these kids go to these classes and the message they get is that since no birth control is 100% effective, they just shouldn’t bother using any birth control? Again, it seems like what you’re saying is that kids go to these classes, hear the message, then they skew the logic or cherry pick the points being emphasized which just happens to create results you were originally claiming. Sounds a bit too convenient for me. It’s really this simple: If you believe the classes are ineffective at getting across their message of abstinence, then you have to also accept that they would be ineffective at getting across their other messages. You can’t have it both ways.
Just as a nail in the coffin on the abstinence-only criticism that they actually increase the number of abortions, here is some info from a 2007 congressional study (bold emphasis mine):
Findings indicate that, despite the effects seen after the first year, programs had no statistically significant impact on eventual behavior. Based on data from the final follow-up survey, youth in the program group were no more likely to abstain from sex than their control group counterparts; among those who reported having had sex, program and control group youth had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age. Youth in the program group, however, were no more likely to have engaged in unprotected sex than their control group counterparts. Finally, there were no differences in potential consequences of teen sex, including pregnancies, births, and reported STDs.
As the study shows, there is no actively negative impact to abstinence-only education verses no education at all so the claim that it increases the number of abortions is false.
Source:
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/impactabstinence.pdf
Been obscenely busy, but this dialogue is still very much on my mind. Hoping to get a couple of things wrapped up today (or to be realistic I should say "this week") so I can reply properly. Thanks for your patience, and don't peel off a downed-donkey sticker for the side of your monitor just yet...
I apologize for being an absentee debater for the past few weeks, but our wonderful conservatively-correct competitively-outsourced mental health care system here in until-very-recently-red North Carolina has me investing most of my time trying to get mental health care -- not for me, though I could probably use some, but for my hypertwin's profoundly-autistic teenage boy -- rather than actually getting something in exchange for all that work, leaving me with very little time in which to meaningfully contribute to what's left of our economy, and consequently even less time for leisure activities such as ranting about screwed-up political ideologies.
I did, however, have a thought which seems significant.
I have been stipulating all along that "abstinence is the only 100% reliable method of birth control".
On reflection, I realize that this is actually an extremely misleading statement, because it completely fails to take human weakness into account. If a couple of kids decide to use abstinence as their preferred contraceptive, fail to buy condoms or pills or anything else as backup (because, you know, those methods are so unreliable), and then in a moment of passion find themselves suddenly being, you know, not abstinent, I should think that this should be counted against abstinence's "perfect" track record (especially if they end up preggers as a result).
"Oh, but that's hardly the method's fault," you say? "If two kids can't keep their clothes on, then they're no longer being abstinent, and they have only themselves to blame!"
Elephant feces.
Those kids are being set up to fail. It's not like we don't know their hormones are especially strong at that age. It's not like we don't know that they haven't yet learned how to deal with those urges. It's not like absintence-only education teaches them anything about dealing with those urges -- and high-minded admonitions don't count; their utter lack of effectiveness is, by now, well-documented and agreed-upon by all.
To put this in the most precise terms: abstinence as an act may be almost 100% effective (in much the same way that staying locked in your house all day is 100% effective against sidewalk-related injuries), but abstinence programs clearly are no better than any other programs -- and there is some evidence that they are worse, especially in areas that are less well-educated generally: Mississippi, A Hotbed of Abstinence Education, Now Boasts Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate In AmericaThat said, I don't yet see any evidence that abstinence-only is worse than no education at all, and I don't believe I ever claimed this. What I did (and still do) say is that as the numbers come in, I wouldn't be at all surprised that it did turn out to be worse.
It seems overall rather barbaric and wrong-headed to teach that not doing something is the only safe way of doing it, and I can't see much good coming of that -- especially when the "it" in question is something that is so basic to our existence as biological organisms.
[sarcasm](Why, Mike, rampant sexuality is a long-standing cultural tradition in Western society! How could you deny its significance by attempting to deprive our youth of it just when they need it the most? You're trying to "change the definition" of sex to include "not having any" -- surely this is a sign of the End Times!)[/sarcasm]
Take-away point: saying that abstinence is 100% reliable as a taught method of birth control is as meaningful as saying that condoms are 100% reliable as long as they work properly.
Again, I'd really rather not keep debating a moot point since we agree that abstinence-only is ineffective.
As for saying that if kids aren't abstinent, then it's proof of its failure....well I will borrow the term 'elephant feces' to describe that conclusion.
I think we have a solid disagreement here, then. The goal is to reduce unwanted pregnancies and the spread of disease. If the technique is taught as directed and yet the pregnancies or disease still happen, then to whatever extent this happens it has failed.
The failure rates of various techniques will then inform us of which one we want to use in order to optimize the outcome (i.e. minimizing some weighted sum of unwanted pregnancies and diseases spread).
If it's true that ABE's pregnancy and disease rates are no worse than those for proper sex ed, however, then this indicates that ABE works surprisingly well (it's amazing that it works at all).
Just don't go saying that "abstinence is 100% effective", because that's only true in an ideal world where people are 100% effective at mastering their hormonal impulses.
If you're talking about it as a personal practice, rather than an educational technique, it's still misleading because it implies that abstinence is so effective that you should just practice it and not bother to learn about any others. A kid might promise to never, never fire a gun without trained supervision -- but just to be on the safe side, wouldn't you rather s/he was fully trained in gun safety?
(Which is really a lovely example of the difference in integrity levels between liberals and conservatives: I don't think I've ever heard an anti-gun liberal bring up the bogus argument that "if we teach kids about guns, they'll want to use them".)
*sigh*
It looks like you have moved from simply discrediting abstinence-only education, which I agreed with you on, to now trying to discredit the whole notion of abstinence as hormonally-ignorant.
Condoms are something like 98% effective when used correctly. By your logic if 10 kids are taught to use them and 5 don't then that means the condoms were only 50% effective because they failed to take into account the amount of willpower required to stop mid-foreplay and strap one on.
When effectiveness % are assigned to various contraceptive methods, whether it's the pill, condoms or abstinence then those % are based on the method being used correctly. They don't take into account human nature, hormonal impulses, the minds of a teenager or which direction the wind is blowing. If you want to start holding abstinence to a standard of how often it is actually practiced, then I think we should do that for ALL birth control methods, in which case it starts to feel pointless to even ask teens to use them, because the likelihood of them using them is so low.
I'm not exactly dismissing it; I'm saying it's hugely overrated, and that I suspect it has costs which have not yet become clear... but I did admit that it works much better than I would have expected it to.
And yes, if proper sex ed resulted in 5 out of 10 kids getting pregnant because 4 of them didn't even use any of the methods taught (and maybe one did but didn't use it properly... or experienced device failure of some kind), then that would be a 50% failure rate.
Ultimately, what matters is this: given [action] by policymakers, how completely is [goal] achieved? That's "effectiveness", and yes, that's how all contraceptive methods should be measured when we're talking about public policy.
Just from memory, the source you gave (Guttmacher) shows failure rates both for proper application of the technique and with "typical usage". (I'm not sure what the original URL was, but this page has data which looks like what I remember.) Those numbers are about actual usage of techniques, of course, and "effectiveness in real life" adds another link in the "signal chain" (abstinence can fail due to impulse; condoms can fail due to forgetting to bring any), as does "effectiveness of teaching"; without those links, "abstinence" is 100% effective -- but if it were 100% effective in practical usage and as a taught method of contraception, then kids coming out of ABE classes would never experience any unwanted pregnancies.
--
Still planning to get back to the main debate, but several crises hit at once and we're still digging out over here.
(And I tried to post this earlier, but Blogger suddenly isn't playing nicely with Firefox on this system. Now using Konqueror instead.)
If we're going to start talking about proper usage, then from that perspective, abstinence is actually better than other forms of birth control.
If we're going to start talking about practical usage, then abstinence is still better because it's the easiest method to understand. Condoms can be misued in a variety of ways. Pills can be ineffective because they are taking at irregular times. Abstinence is pretty reliable.
Ultimately what you are talking about is saying, "try to be abstinent, but since we know you teens are horny little gremlins and you won't be able to keep it in your pants, carry a condom in your wallet...and maybe get on the pill...and keep a morning-after pill in your medicine cabinet."
Yes, yes....I can agree to all of that. But I think you could also simplify your position by saying that abstinence is impractical as a reliable method of birth control given its vulnerability to human impulses and the casual attitude towards sex in contemporary society.
I think that's essentially what Bristol Palin said in her last interview, though perhaps not as eloquently as yours truly.
I think we agree about "proper use" (i.e. reliability of abstinence vs. other contraception when used properly), but if we're talking "practical use" then abstinence can fail, and I think you have to take that into account.
Your summarizing "eloquent statement" does take it into account, though, so maybe we're in agreement after all.
---
On a completely different subject: Would anyone object (paging Dana... blog manager to the front desk...) if I suggested a more forum-like venue for continuing this conversation? The page is getting a bit huge, and Blogger has lately not been playing nice with my usual browsers.
For anyone who hasn't noticed, further dialogue has been moved to this post in the interest of loading-time...
Also, there's a question for Mike in the comments of this post.
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