It passed, and millions upon millions who need help will get it.
It is historic, and it is wonderful. For all the bill’s manifold flaws, the basic principle is now established that we all have a duty and an obligation to protect each other from the mutual enemy of injury and disease. And we begin unshackling people from the slavery of being forced to work for a particular employer just to get decent protection for themselves and their families.
It will not be perfect. Changes will be made over the years. But the die is cast.
President Obama has made history. This does not assure his re-election, but it makes it more likely, and in any case even if he goes down in flames like LBJ this part of his legacy can never be taken from him.
Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments for those who cry “socialism” and “the end of America” begin. It will be for naught: the die is cast.
{ 114 comments }
Wow. Go ahead and celebrate the destruction of the nation Dean. Wow.
“we all have a duty and an obligation to protect each other from the mutual enemy of injury and disease”
You cannot seriously be that naive, can you?
Today is a great day. I am very happy, and proud to be an American.
We’ll see how proud you are in ten years Cyrus.
Dean, I am sure as a Catholic you are proud and happy to see government funds killing unborn children.
Those of us who believe in this country and its system of government don’t generally sit around surly and sulking just because we didn’t get our way. I often don’t get my way and I don’t, ala Keith Olbermann, sit around whining that America is lost.
In this particular case, I fully expect to be looking back in 10 years and sort of regretting not being able to say I voted for Obama, and to be explaining to people what a nightmarish disaster the system used to be before we got this imperfect but desperately-needed reform. And I rather expect people who still rail against it to look a lot like those who railed against nightmarish things like the 8 hour work day.
Dean, we’ll check in and see in ten years. We’ll see who was closer to predicting the outcome of this bill.
Here is my prediction:
1. Longer waits and lines to get health care.
2. Rationing of key procedures and medicine.
3. Far fewer doctors.
4. The complete destruction of the health insurance industry.
5. Bureaucrats making your health decisions for you.
6. A national debt and deficit that crushes our economy, much like California and Greece today.
7. A complete gutting of the US military to redirect as much money as possible to pay for these mandates.
8. Tens of thousands of US citizens pushed to bankruptcy or jail by the mandate to buy insurance.
9. Serious discussion of states like Wyoming, Texas, Nevada, Arizona and other “red” states seceding from the union.
That’s my prediction Dean. Notice how it’s not all unicorns and rainbows.
Celebrate while you can Dean. And when tens of thousands of babies are aborted by this legislative abortion, I want you to remember how happy you were tonight.
This is not my America anymore.
That’s a long list of negatives. I am curious though whether you believe any good comes out of this or whether its ALL bad.
Cosmic: The Church has been clear for a long time now that national health care is a moral imperative, and I’m proud to stand with them on that. I am also with them that we should not be funding abortions, although I feel it’s a rather moot point since private insurance already does fund them. This is the sort of complaint that can be addressed in future legislation.
Regarding your predictions: a mish-mash of things we already have and thus have no predictive merit at all, and things that are almost certainly never going to happen. I have no fear of you, doomsayer.
As for this no longer being your America: well, other than questioning your patriotism, I can only feel sorry for you. Such a sulky, pouty mentality reminds me of those crybabies who said they would leave the country because Bush got re-elected.
redux. It’s all bad. What good do you think comes from it? Everything that is supposedly “good” has an immediate and obvious negative consequence. This is liberal unicorns and rainbows through and through. “Let’s force insurance companies to offer insurance at lower rates! What could go wrong?” “Let’s force people to buy insurance they don’t need! What could go wrong!” “Let’s fund abortion with money forcibly taken from people who find that to be murder! What could go wrong?”
This is an abomination made far worse by the absolutely banana republic techniques that Democrats fell back on to ram it through.
I suppose there is some remote silver lining from this that someone could point to and say “see, there’s SOME benefit” but I don’t buy it. That’s like saying “Well, WWII was pretty bad, but at least it advanced rocket technology! It wasn’t ALL bad!”
This is the end of this nation. I am not kidding, you all just witnessed the end of Pax Americana, the American century, the greatest economy in the history of the earth, and the idea that individual liberty is the paramount right of an American citizen.
And how does liberty die? “To thunderous applause.”
Dean, I say again, in 10 years you will not be singing the same tune. Oh, and Dean, in case you did not notice, the Catholic Bishops released a statement in direct opposition to this bill. So don’t try to tell me you’re in line with the Catholic Church on this. You are not.
Heheheheh. Sorry, I’ve been following what the Church has been saying carefully for some time. They’ve repeatedly affirmed the basic principle that we should have national health care. Overwhelmingly so. They are unhappy with some provisions of this bill and are thus opposed. OK. As I just said, those are things that can be addressed in future legislation.
In any case, in 10 years I fully expect most of the dire predictions you’re making to look a lot like people who predicted the end of America when we legislated an 8 hour work day and a minimum wage. Or an end of America because of so-called “warrantless wiretapping” and Gitmo. Whatever dude.
No one is going to wail. No one is going to gnash their teeth or rend their garments. But in the not too distant future a lot of folks on this side of the political divide are going to be saying “…told you so.”
By the way, no unicorns or rainbows that I can see. Just good, solid, old-fashioned American can-do PROGRESS!
Perfection isn’t attainable. And in any case, I got tired of waiting for the Magic Market Fairies to make everything sunshiny and happy and cheap.
Greenwell: Dude, if no one’s wailing or gnashing their teeth, Cosmic here is sure giving a pretty good facsimile, and other anti-reform blogs sure look the same.
The end of America indeed. [snort]
I take it you yourself do not currently have health insurance?
Dean, I did not make those predictions then.
I am making them now. This bill is predicated on the fantasy notion that health care is something in infinite supply that can be handed out by legislative whim.
It is not. It is a product and a service, and someone has to create the product and provide the service. The overwhelming and obvious impact of this bill is that it will make providing those products and services more costly and less profitable.
That means the supply will go down precisely when the demand goes up. The end result of that is as predictable as an apple falling from a tree.
We’ll see what happens when doctors start retiring early and fewer doctors move into practice. What will you and Obama do then Dean? Mandate that people become doctors? Or do you reason like the cognitively challenged liberals who think that people will become doctors and businesses will create new wonder drugs out of the goodness of their hearts?
I can only hope that this abomination gets repealed. Republicans will have to band together and refuse to fund it. I think it is quite possible that 30 states could pass a constitutional amendment to overturn this. And I don’t think it’s a slam dunk that the Supreme Court will not overturn this either.
As I said, this is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. It’s only the end of the beginning.
And I again say that this has changed politics irrevocably in this country. You’ll see the results of that fairly quickly.
This is a dark, dark day for this country. And it causes me no end of concern to see the gullible rubes celebrate it.
greenwell, oh, I fully admit to plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am sick over this. This country is no longer a country of serious people. It’s a nation of fantasy seekers who believe the empty promises of a pretty face. I think that’s worth wailing and gnashing some teeth.
“…it’s a rather moot point since private insurance already does fund them. ”
This is true. However, none of the insurance companies are *forcibly* – under the threat of armed force – taking funds from abortion opponents to fund other peoples abortions.
This bill changes all of that.
The people of this country have traded freedom for the illusion of “free” health care. They will end up with neither.
Oh, one more thing. When Obama was elected, I warned you all about this.
So those of you who voted for Obama and who are today saying “I didn’t want this!… you can just blow me.
We haven’t been a country of serious people for half a century. Ever since the Democrats figures out they could bribe us with our own money.
Or more precisely, ever since the Democrats figured out they could create an unsustainable situation, and then solve that situation by legislating away some of our freedoms. And the situation will never reverse. Even when the Republicans were in charge, they passed the prescription drug plan, in the few days when they weren’t busy stuffing their mouths with pork.
“greenwell, oh, I fully admit to plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Okay – I stand corrected, though I never considered your thoughtful responses to Dean to be “wailing”.
I work in the health care industry and I have already heard a lot of physicians talking of retiring early or just getting out of the health care field all together.
Dean has no clue of the real effect this will have on our long-term economic progress. He just knows it promises him, and people like him, more “free” stuff at the expense of everyone else.
I friend on facebook has put up a picture with the statue of liberty with both hans covering her eyes, as if in sorrow. This strikes mew as backwards. For the liberty of a republic was the defence of the common people. As france saw it. Thus the gift to the second republic. For france saw a new nation that was of the people and for the people.
There has been a divergence. In this instance quite a glaring difference. Now there has been a step back to the promise of so long ago. Hope it stops at a moderate point. What that is? I don’t know. It is a step in the right direction. To far in that direction will get you a country like france. Great medical care. No lines. ( No I can’t prove it!) But most of the time the country is on strike and crippled by one union or an other. That is in the future. In the future the people will still decide what and if things need to change. Nothing is locked in forever. Slow changes to reflect the times is how the system should work. Any democratic system.
Fear not. Your is not a bad system. If this is a misstake you will servive it. As for the health insurance companies. They can and will take care of them selves. Always have, always will.
Fear it not. This change right or wrong will help show the way to the next step to get it right. It will never be perfect…so there you go.
As I keep saying, Democrats have no idea what they’ve just done. And I fully admit that tonight I am not being thoughtful. I am as close to being enraged as I have ever been.
I still say there were better, cheaper ways to get insurance to those who didn’t have it and wanted it and were legal residents. Also, if this bill is so great, why is so much of it delayed until 2013?
I am indeed among the uninsured as it happens, which is not unusual considering how few IT jobs in Michigan include that anymore (it’s almost all contract semi-slavery now with no benefits).
I consider it an obscenity, and have for years, that so many people are tied to employers just to get decent protection. But I am far more concerned with the tens of millions of people now currently living with all the horrible things that Cosmic is “predicting” we will have. They’re already living with these “predicted” results because they either can’t get insurance or have crap insurance.
And I know plenty of people in the medical field myself, and many have been for national health insurance all along. Like everyone else, their politics are all over the map.
But none of this–none of it–is free. Nothing worth having is. It is right-wing myopia (and grossly stupid and insulting to boot) to suggest that anyone ever said this bill was “free.”
Dean, there are not “millions of people” living with the things I have predicted. My predictions go far beyond just who will and who will not be covered.
Dean, is it remotely possible that you are unaware that even this bill as it is written will leave millions of people “uninsured” according to your definition of “uninsured”? What about them Dean? I guess it’s OK with you for THEM to continue to be screwed.
And not one person will gain insurance from this bill for at least four more years.
But the cost of it will start as soon as Obama signs this abomination.
Oh let me be clear that I have been saying for years now that we should put 100% of all Americans on Medicare, and just allow the private market to compete for supplemental or improved insurance. So I didn’t get what I wanted. But see, I don’t declare my country dead just because I didn’t get my way.
Tens of millions of uninsured people will now have much better. Not for “free” because no one ever said it would be free. Freedom isn’t free. The only people claiming it would be “free” are, perversely, folks like you Cosmic.
It won’t be free at all. Neither is the U.S. Army. We need that too.
I am of course disappointed that there will still be some uninsured. Indeed, I am pretty sure I’ll wind up being one of them, since after all I’m a white divorced male in my 40s, and no one ever gives a shit about us, we’re disposable. What of it? People I know and care about will have what they should have had a long time ago.
As for this utterly shallow, fatuous notion that now we are no longer a serious country: right, because Australia, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and all of Europe are not serious countries. Jeebus.
You know what? I’ve had enough. You guys just keep talking about how America is ruined and how this health care is nothing but lazy bums asking for free handouts. I’ve got better things to do. And listening to right-wingers run down my country is no more pleasant than listening to left-wingers do it.
And listening to right-wingers run down my country is no more pleasant than listening to left-wingers do it.
I assume you haven’t been reading Day by Day embedded in your sidebar. “America sucks” seems to be the theme of the past 14 months.
I think David Frum has some good points here.
Repbulicans went the obstructionist route and lost. They could have had a lot more input on the bill, but they chose to try to block it and failed.
CosmicConservative Wrote:
“6. A national debt and deficit that crushes our economy, much like California and Greece today.”
Cosmic, did you seriously just compare the situation in California to that of Greece? As a California native, I am laughing my rear end off! Don’t ever forget, us Californians pay waaayyyyyyyyy more “out” in federal taxes than we take “in.” I can’t say the same for many a red state. Our problems in California rest solely on one thing…The 2/3 majority vote requirement, established circa 1978. That has to go, and eventually will. It allows for the tyranny of the minority like no other.
Cyrus, when California stops talking about billion dollar deficits I’ll stop comparing them to Greece.
Dean, I’m not just talking. As I have repeatedly said, we’ll check back in ten years and see who turned out to be right.
My track record in predicting political fallout has been pretty good so far. I would say that I hope that I’m wrong this time, but I’m afraid the reality is too obvious to those of us with eyes to see.
. . .by force, and regardless of whether they want to be there, or not.
Liberals seem to have three uses for me.
1) Pay for everything.
2) A target for hate.
3) Someone to put down and dominate so they can get their yayas.
So,
Does it make you feel like a man to pound that thing in my face?
Force me on my knees to service you?
Feel like a man?
Are you capable of comprehending that I’m less than appreciative?
Do you even care?
Those of us who believe in this country and its system of government don’t generally sit around surly and sulking just because we didn’t get our way. I often don’t get my way and I don’t, ala Keith Olbermann, sit around whining that America is lost.
Good for you Dean. You know, I thought conservatives were much more behaved than the latte liberals I’ve been around most of my adult life. I was wrong.
> Those of us who believe in this country and its system of government don’t generally sit around surly and sulking just because we didn’t get our way.
It’s like you weren’t alive while Bush was President.
Yours,
Tom
Dean, you have traded your ideals for supporting:
1. higher taxes
2. higher health insurance premiums
and
3. higher deficits.
I don’t happen to believe in universal health care, but I could have supported expansion of health insurance to those who cannot afford it; this legislation will force the costs of health care insurance for everyone up, and it ain’t gonna take 10 years.
I’m willing to bet that health insurance companies are taking steps to compensate for the higher costs they will bear like right now (higher deductibles, maybe no a percentage of cost incurred instead of a flat deductible, maybe an infrequent user discount) . I’m not livid or enraged, but it’s pretty obvious that if the costs of health care increase and the costs of health care insurance increase then people who currently have health insurance (the 95% or so of US citizens) are going to have to deal with it by getting poorer coverage and/or less health care. IMHO, that’s bad.
We are not a serious country. There are limits to the power of government hardwired into our foundational documents, and they are routinely run roughshod over by our government. The 10th Amendment is part of the freakin’ Bill of Rights, for chrissake, and it’s just completely ignored, and has been for going on sixty years now. We are having our freedoms replaced by state power to a greater and greater degree. This is not how this country was supposed to work.
Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to reverse things.
> There are limits to the power of government hardwired into our foundational documents, and they are routinely run roughshod over by our government.
Well, people make all kinds of arguments about whether our government (and we the voters) is following the letter of our foundational documents, but there is no doubt it (and we) routinely violate it’s spirit.
Yours,
Tom
Well, now we’ll get to see what remains of this bill after the lawyers and the SCOTUS get through with it. And that applies to Obama’s cynical Executive Order as well.
I’m not quite as enraged after a night’s sleep, but I remain convinced that this country has just leaped over the economic tipping point that will reduce this nation from pre-eminant superpower to just another bloated over-taxed entitlement state which will, along with the rest of the West, now just have to wait to see how long and hard they can keep squeezing the productive members of society to keep paying for the fantasy daydreams of the modern “progressive” dreamer.
Once the cost of this thing becomes clear and the taxes start drying up as the economy continues to sour (and if this isn’t enough to drive another recession, let’s go ahead and implement Cap and Trade to be sure and seal the deal) we’ll see the government start to legislate lifestyle choices based on the need to control health care. Can’t stay on a diet? Your health care options will be reduced. Can’t stop smoking? Don’t expect to get that lung cancer treatment. Can’t stop drinking? No liver for you. Progressives are already publishing papers on the subject of coercive lifestyle changes to reduce the cost of health care. And of course it will be all for your own good, and the wise and kindly government officials who make those decisions will, of course, be immune to them, just as those same people today lecture us about our carbon footprint while jetting around the country (and jetting their family around the country) on their slightest whim.
That’s where this will all lead. Hope you folks who support this don’t have any bad habits you’ll need to have reprogrammed away.
I just checked, the stock market is UP. The analysts say the pharmceutical & medical providers are now growth industries. I don’t know what to make of that. Someone thiks there is going to be a lot mroe demand, while supply is constrained. I think that means that the rise in medical costs is going to be inflated, but to be honest I don’t actually think demand is going to go up.
> I don’t know what to make of that.
It means that the lobbyists that Obama claimed would never influence him wrote the bill.
Yours,
Tom
Dean: Why is that a political imperative, rather than an imperative of individual Catholics to provide via charity?
If all this bill did was provide minimal (medicaid-style) health-care coverage for the few people who can’t afford to purchase insurance and don’t have any other means, that would be far less objectionable.
(And no, there aren’t really “45 million Americans without health insurance” who’d qualify, though I suspect you already knew that.)
But it doesn’t do that – it doesn’t remotely do that.
It costs far too much to do far too little for the money, while consistently increasing the power of the State.
And if you think that’s good, wait until they ignore the Constitution next time, in a way contrary to what Mother Church desires… perhaps in a way simply actively hostile to religion entirely.
If you think that’s implausible, well… hope you’re right!
1) Now that I have had an opportunity to think about the health care reform hoohah overnight, I realize that for me, my wife and our family, it won’t change much of anything; and that’s irrespective of whether or not it remains in force or is overturned by some big fat Republican coalition, if such an entity manages to sweep its way into power in Washington both this November and in November 2012.
2) I write a lot, both on this blogsite and elsewhere. And I’m heavily involved around Dane County, Wisconsin in efforts to accomplish some regionwide planning. But above all else, I’m an independent businessman. And that business is compiling and marketing specialized mailing lists. And I detect a good opportunity to make some money from all kinds of health insurers, because I know how to put together the type of direct mail lists that can get them new customers. Which makes them more profitable. Which means I can sell them more lists. Which means that I make money.
3) Will this new health plan tear America and its economy to shreds? Maybe yes, maybe no. If health care simply becomes a vast new entitlement program not backed by any means of taxing people to pay for those entitlements, then it spells future troubles. But it looks to me that most of the significant features of Obamacare aren’t scheduled to kick in until late in this decade. By then, there will be other preoccupations and excitements; not least of which will be what I am sure is a disappearing petroleum supply. And no matter what happens with Obamacare, I think Mr Magic is looking more and more like a dead fish in the next presidential election.
4) As for the so-called right to life issue that got so many folks upset, I truly couldn’t care less. We’ve never had any abortions in our family or Stefi’s. As for the religious arguments about this topic, that all just blows over the top of my head like so much hot air. Do statements such as that set me at odds with folks like the Evangelical Christians whom I’m genuinely fond of and whom I think are the salt of the american earth? Not really. I would like America to be a Bible-oriented christian land, because that is exactly what it was during our century and a half of grand development. But aside from the cultural aspects of the bible folks, I never have taken any religion seriously and I’m sure I never will do so. Besides; up until the professionalization of medical practitioners in this country, deep in the bowels of the 19th century, abortion was freely practiced at least through the first trimester, and nobody said much about it from the christian standpoint. Like everything else with the world, religious practices and devotions change like womens’ fasions.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
P Mike, are you seriously saying that you don’t think this will drive up demand for health care products and services? Seriously?
Pharmaceutical stocks are up today because this bill effectively guarantees them a huge new bloc of customers. Since this bill does nothing to address the existing incentives to prescribe drugs (much of which is done to avoid potential lawsuits from lawyers who don’t have to worry about tort reform) drug makers can expect a windfall of new customers for their drugs, with the government footing the bill. That’s why they went for this.
Of course this is yet another example of how businesses today don’t think beyond the next 12 months. Once this is entrenched the pharmaceutical companies will be raped just like everyone else. But for now they have dollar signs in their eyes.
Arnold, it is interesting to me that you consider the question of abortion to be merely a matter of religious belief. To me it’s a matter of objective proof of the life and humanity of the unborn. My objections to abortion are based on the biology and science of the act, religion doesn’t enter into it. Murder doesn’t cease to be murder just because someone believes or doesn’t believe in one particular sky-father or another. In fact I have said for decades that the Religious Right’s constant appeal to divine authority is a major reason they have been losing the cultural debate on abortion. Stick to the science and biology and I think pro-life wins that debate.
Also, it doesn’t matter if there will be other preoccupations when the costs for health care “kick in” or not. They will “kick in” regardless. And unless that preoccupation is with some unimagined windfall of wealth and prosperity, then when it does “kick in” it will rapidly become the nations preoccupation as the nation slides down an economic black hole.
I too will be either long gone or a doddering old fool when the bill for this abomination becomes due and the nation goes bankrupt. But my kids won’t be, and that is the reason for most of my anger at this legislation. As if my kids weren’t already burdened enough with paying for the frivolous entitlements of liberal fantasies, now they’ll have to be paying for this as well. Unless, of course, they just wind up being on the list of those taking advantage of what they are “entitled to” without worrying at all about their obligations.
After all, why should anyone bust their ass to get a good education and a good job if they will just see their paychecks ravaged by the insatiable demands of the “entitled” classes? At what point does a rational person just decide that it’s easier, better and more fun to just let the state take care of them while someone else carries the burden?
It wasn’t the exact bill I wanted to se, but hey at least it’s the first step towards some sort of health care reform. At least insurance companies won’t be able to drop Little Timmy from their books anymore because he was an evil little boy who got cancer. Now they’ll actually have to cover him.
It wasn’t the bill anyone wanted, which is why it passed of course. But, this is probably going to be more good than bad.
As far as going to school and ‘busting ass’ to get a good education why do we do it when others recieve assistance? Simple, you are still way better off than those people even with the higher taxes; hands down. There is no arguing this. Have you seen how people who solely subsist on government assistance live? I wonder if many of the people who scream bloody murder about this sort of thing have ever had a moment in their lives when they have had nothing?
Two phrases come to mind:
“Nero fiddled while Rome burned.”
And:
“Those with eyes will not see, those with ears will not hear.”
All great powers fall from within. And with a whooping of praise the friends of America cheer her ending.
jrogge, I can assure you that I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and I busted ass hard to get my education and current job. I was the first one in my family that I know of who went to college and got an actual 4 year degree. I’ve had many family members and close relatives who lived off of government assistance, and let me tell you, some of them ate better than I did, had better stuff than I did, drove better cars than I did, and lived in better quarters than I did.
In fact some of them made it a point to tell me what a fool I was for not taking advantage of the freebies.
Now, in the long run I much prefer my own life to theirs, but I can promise you that none of them went hungry, none of them lacked medical care and none of them lacked a TV, a telephone, a washer and dryer and a roof over their heads.
I’m sure there are some really nasty neighborhoods where government assistance living is pretty squalid, but I don’t blame that on the government as much as I blame it on the neighborhood. Most of my dirt-poor relatives lived in the rural south and most lived in trailer parks or on tiny plots at the end of long dirt roads. For the most part they managed to avoid the drug-infested, crime-ridden neighborhoods you must be talking about in spite of being on public assistance. They were not starving, they did not live in filth and they were able to watch their favorite TV shows at a time when I couldn’t afford a TV.
Actually, I think this is a huge ding against reelection for him, and given that “repeal HCR” would be a major plank for his opposition candidate, there is a reasonable chance that this will be taken from him. Pretty quickly, in fact, around February 2013.
At least insurance companies won’t be able to drop Little Timmy from their books anymore because he was an evil little boy who got cancer. Now they’ll actually have to cover him.
Or they just won’t ever cover him to start with. Those evil insurance companies can’t drop a policy that doesn’t exist.
CC,
> To me it’s a matter of objective proof of the life and humanity of the unborn.
I’m one of those religious guys, but I’m always on the verge of atheism. I’ve always thought that at some point before birth humanity becomes undeniably obvious, even during my atheistic periods. I was two months premature. Do people really believe late term abortions are justified for any reason and killing me in my isolette are not? It’s just a matter of location!
We need artificial wombs and baby transplant operations. Maybe technology that makes saving babies easy will throw this moral quandry into high enough relief that people will stop saying stupid things like, “It’s my body.” No, ma’am. There are two bodies involved. Only one is yours.
Yours,
Tom
CC, I’m frequently on your side of arguments around here, and at other times, just the opposite.
I think life begins at birth, not at conception. Therefore, no fetus has a constitutional right to protection until it gets born as a living, squealing, and hopefully lovable infant with unimpaired physical or developmental characteristics. Until then, Ms or Mrs would-be mama is in charge of deciding whether her particular fetus gets terminated before those constitutional protections click into gear. Simple as that.
I’ve picked up a lot of my opionions about life in general from my wife, Stefanija (Stefi) Prasnjak Harris, whom I met in October 1969 and married in February 1972. Stefi came here from Croatia, then a part of the Socialist Federated Republic of Jugoslavia (SFRJ), one of the poorer parts of Europe. Her parents were of peasant stock from two different parts of that country even poorer by their national standards: Slavonia, up close against the Hungarian border (her father, Stjepan (Stevo) Prasnjak) and in the wild mountains of Gorski Kotar in western Croatia (her mother, Marija Starcevic). Until not too long ago, Croatian peasant families had no access to physicians to attend childbirths. That was strictly the work of midwives, which was the way it had been since the dawn of the history of the croatian nation in the early middle ages. And this was the way things got done:
Most of these villagers had houses with two rooms and a kitchen. The bathroom was an outhouse. One room served as a bedroom, the other as an all-purpose room. On birth day, mama and the midwife were alone in the bedroom. Other members of the inner and extended family, along with other villagers, sat it out in the all-purpose room.
Nobody but the midwife handled the baby, until she turned it over to mama. And she didn’t turn it over at all until she inspected it as carefully as a modern obstetrician, pediatrician or whoever else handles these matters here in magicland. If there was any kind of serious defect, either physical or development, that she could easily spot. Then the infant died in childbirth, so to speak, with her assistance.
If the baby was considered whole and sound, the umbilical cord was cut, the baby was washed, and given to mama, the midwife opened the locked door and came out all smiles, and someone broke out the sljivovica (plum brandy) that is Budweiser of the the slavic Balkan societies, and other celebrations commenced.
But it the baby was not considered whole and sound, then the mid-wife opened the door and came out with the long lugubrious face of any mourner. Everybody, including mama, accepted it as a done deal, and started their own lives anew. There was always more work than time available in these villages, and nobody for long got a free ride to mourn for a dead baby.
Moreover, there were no social services to care for children who could not grow up normally and pull their own weight in the village.
That’s exactly the way things were in that very roman catholic society of Croatia in the olden days. Was the local parish priest aware of all this? Of course he was. As was the local gendarme located in a somewhat larger village some distance away. Catholics or not, not a one of them allowed himself or herself to become affected by this disease of western civilization that we call social guilt.
Do you understand anything about what I have carefully reported here, CC? There are no universal rules. Everything — the whole ball of wax — is determined by the values of a given culture and the general civilization on which that culture is a part. Here in magicland, we have been able to make up a complicated set of rules to deal with every situation. We’ve been able to do that, and get away with it, because we are infinitely wealthier than those Croatian peasants, who, like most other human beings, wanted to do the correct thing in as many circumstances as possible. But a defective infant threatened the economy and well-being of the village. And there was neither time, money or communal patience for any of that nonsense. Everybody was too busy raising food crops and/or making sure the pigs didn’t die until it was time to slaughter them for their meat.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Oh sure, they’ll cover him. The treatment that would cure him? Nah, that’s not covered. Here’s some aspirins for the pain of, you know, dying. (We would give you better meds, but there’s a War on Drugs going, you know.) And that cure for cancer? Cut in the budget two years ago. You’re welcome.
Arnold, I have a great deal of respect for you, and I think you are one of the cooler heads of reason on Dean’s World (more so than me for sure) but in this you and I will have to agree to disagree at the most fundamental and philosophical levels.
I am an objectivist, meaning that I believe in an objective reality. In that objective reality whether a “fetus” has passed through the birth canal or not is completely immaterial to that being’s humanity or not. Humanity is an intrinsic, objective value, not a subjective, extrinsic one. You aren’t “human” because someone slaps the “human” label on you. You’re “human” because you are objectively and intrinsically “human.”
Although I have no religious basis for saying this, it is still my belief that human life is special, and as such it needs to be treated with the utmost respect and consideration.
I understand you. I comprehend what you are saying. I grasp the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of where you are coming from.
But I could not disagree more strongly with you than I do.
Still, I respect the heck out of you.
Arnold,
What you describe is similar to the Roman method of abortion, although in Rome it was the job of the father to decide, the method was abandonment, and the time period for him to decide was pretty long. Early Christians were notable for saving abandoned infants.
I’ll go with the local parish priest as failing to live up to his Christian duty. You know about duties as well. Didn’t you faithfully execute your duties in Korea?
> Do you understand anything about what I have carefully reported here, CC? There are no universal rules. Everything — the whole ball of wax — is determined by the values of a given culture and the general civilization on which that culture is a part.
I begin to understand why you are so enamored of regional planning. I like the Houston method better. Philosophically, you are not a conservative Republican, because you do not believe in Judeo-Christian morality (conservative Republican atheists like Kim du Toit believe in Judeo-Christian morality, just not God), Greco-Roman philosophy and the equality of man. This is what the Founders believed in. You believe in cultural relativism. Your version of conservative Republicanism is merely coincidental. You happen to be mostly politically congruent with conservative Republicans, so that is where you vote.
Yours,
Tom
CC says:
And not one person will gain insurance from this bill for at least four more years.
Nonsense. I fully expect my son to be one who does so by the end of the year.
RogerR, seriously, keep us in the loop on that.
CC, I believe RR is referring to the provision that requires insurance companies to include adults up to the age of 26 as “children” on family plans bought by their parents or by their parents’ employers on their parents’ behalf. That provision goes into effect this year, and it will insure additional people in the short term. I expect extreme shock and dismay when the greedy insurance companies coincidentally sharply raise the price of family plans at about the same time this provision goes into effect.
Right, the “let’s immediately include people who are the least likely to actually need coverage” clause.
> CC, I believe RR is referring to the provision that requires insurance companies to include adults up to the age of 26 as “children” on family plans bought by their parents or by their parents’ employers on their parents’ behalf.
Half a century ago, when I was twenty six, my Dad had such an insurance plan, provided I was a student or a dependant like my sister with cerebral palsy. His company negotiated that. But when I got a job I was on my own.
Imagine, people getting together and making mutually beneficial agreements without the force of law….
Imagine further that Roosevelt had never screwed up employment compensation with foolish price controls and compensated with tax breaks so we got stuck with employer provided insurance…. Maybe Roger could negotiate his own tailor made insurance plan….
Silly me. That’s clearly as nonsensical as that no borders no religion song that long haired idealistic twit used to sing.
Yours,
Tom
Hmm… my insurance allows me to keep my daughter on my insurance plan until she’s 24 if she’s enrolled in college. I have certainly appreciated that. I am going to have to see what my insurance will do with my autistic son when he gets older.
By the way, just in the spirit of full disclosure I will probably be a beneficiary of this monstrosity in the long run due to my need to have coverage for a “disabled” son, but I can still oppose it in principle even if it is probably true that my family will likely be a net receiver of services over his lifetime.
So, thanks in advance for chipping in to help me deal with that, ya’ll.
For all the bill’s manifold flaws, the basic principle is now established that we all have a duty and an obligation to protect each other from the mutual enemy of injury and disease.
How did you come up with that one ?
> For all the bill’s manifold flaws, the basic principle is now established that we all have a duty and an obligation to protect each other from the mutual enemy of injury and disease.
Why not just say Death and be done with it? Let’s have a research project to detect and detain skeletal creatures who carry a scythe, hang with War, Famine and Pestilence and “SPEAK IN ALL CAPS.”
Yours,
Tom, aka Wince
Cosmic C
Glad to help. Well in spirit. As I’m in Canada. That is the point though. Some think of it as the cost of being in a great country. As some figure taxes are the cost of doing business. Some see it as what goes around comes around. This generation, the next? I’ll help yours now. They and theirs will help mine.
Its’ like a giant cubscout pack…all trying to do their best.
Hey! if Canada can make it work and not go broke. The US of A will have no problem either. It isn’t all roses. Choices will have to be made in the future too. The next generations are not helpless and will make as good a choices as we do. Yes, we can not burden them more then the load we have to carry. The demographic shift must be handled. It is being done. You all will be fine.
Dear Duncan,
Have you actually figured in the trillions of dollars that the next generation are going to factor in to their previously unreported generosity which you expect will support your current reckless health care spending in Canada ?
Yeah, let’s spend our kids money on ourselves, and spend more and more of it all the time. They won’t mind. They’ll be glad to sacrifice their wealth and prosperity so we can live beyond our means for a few generations. It’s that ancient liberal rhetorical question… “What could go wrong?”
It may be historic but it is anything BUT wonderful.
The higher health care costs, the higher insurance premiums (at least until enough people opt out of insurance in favor of penalties 1/10th cost while they can sign back up anytime they want if they get sick), the higher taxes and fees, the doctors leaving the profession and resulting rationing of care, and the exploding of the deficit.
Yeah, historic indeed. Now that the “campaign” is over we can now all admit that the lies that were told were just that, right ? That there will be no cuts in Medicare, that the annual deficit for this bill will start in the $200 billion range and explode upwards.
And that the number of uninsured will actually GROW because healthy people will opt out and bank the money they save.
Wow, congratulations on that. I really wonder just how delusional you have to be to think this is a good thing.
No Sirs.
We have the same care and concerns for our future generations as you do. We can see the demographic shift. It is no secret.
Expectations will change with what we can afford. Do we run deficiets. Yes. Though the previous eight years we didn’t. We were heading in the direction New Zealand went. We caught our selves just in time . The belt tightening hurt. You bet. We learnt.
Though the war and latest market conciderations we will be in deficiet territory again for the next four years. That is the estimate.
What else can you do?
I’ll answer that. You plan. You look forward. As a nation all persons must be concidered. Greed on any part can bring the whole house down. You gentlemen don’t have your heads down. Why think everyone else does? Some may. We must keep tabs on that.
Speak up. You are correct we can’t burden the following generations. SO? Don’t!
Yes. It is that simple. It is a work in progress. It is called life.
It can and does work.
McK
Trillions? We’re only the population of California.
Our debt made it to a trillion. Maybe three. Don’t know.
Our deficeit this year was 8 billion. There is inflation and we are being told that intrest rates will have to go up to curb it. So we are seeing huge foreign investments coming in. This has propped up our dollar so it is going to be on par with your any time now, and for the next three plus years.
I think we can afford it in the short term. We will and can make changes on the way.
Duncan, brag all you like about Canada’s health care. Your own top elected officials come to Florida for their heart surgery. That says more in one event than all the crowing you can do here on Dean’s World in your entire life.
Duncan,
I think I would rather live in Uruguay or Slovenia than Canada.
I would rather live in a much more conservative United States than either Uruguay or Slovenia.
I’m glad you and my brother like living in Canada, though. It is a wonderful place to visit.
Yours,
Tom
Danny Williams is one. Not plural. I can see your making that mistake as he once was a member of our National Parlament. Now he is the Premier of Newfoundland Labrador.
He made a choice. Not to wait. He claimed that the proceedure was not available in Canada only to awaken the ire of the medical profession. He has been politically roasted. Like his proceedure I believe he will servive.
I admit not every Canadian thinks like me. I do know they do think. As that is the point. Am I right or wrong? Together “we” will find the way as “we” all want the same thing. The best that we can get. Not just for me , but for “us”.
That includes “you” too. Is Canada great? Yes. Is it the best? Well the UN keeps telling us we are. As for being conservative, you can’t find anyone more so except for maybe the Norweigians.
If you want to know the difference between Canada and the US of A?
Can’t think of a whole lot. We are the second largest country with the population of California and the attitudes of Oregon. We have a history of having a more socialist bent to us then some countries. Those are generalities. Individually; we are the same. Our healthcare system isn’t the best. OR maybe it is. How could anyone know? It would depend on where you are in your life and circumstance. It is equal. I belive that is what you are moving towards. I say good on you.
As for foreign nationals that go to recieve healthcare in other contries, no matter the reason. I would put our record up against your country any day. That history is long and solid and a sence of pride and community with those who have come here when their countries did not exist as a free state. If you don’t know what I am refering to ( no some will as you have admitted your ages ) I will point out that Holland sends us tulip bulbs to this day. We give not just to our selves but of our very country , at times. This is not something any other counry has done to my recollection. So back off. Don’t attack what you don’t know. One day with luck and love for your fellow man you will. Some of your countrymen have seemed to recognize this. You are afraid. Don’t be. It will work. You want the same things. It will work, but only through change.
All I know about Canada is that they are America’s hat. I think they call them tuques, because they don’t speak English, they speak Canadian, which is mostly French with English swear words.
> As for being conservative, you can’t find anyone more so except for maybe the Norweigians.
Well, I think we are using two different meanings for conservative. I mean a person who believes the government should be based on Judeo-Christian morals, Greco-Roman philosophy and Anglo-Saxon law, as expressed in the U.S. Constitution, to borrow a description from Bill Whittle.
Most people here think both Canada and Norway are much less conservative than the U.S.
Yours,
Wince
Tabernac!
Now you’ve made me mad.
Oh, yeah…We have butter tarts. I am led to believe that they don’t exist south of , nor north of ( for those Palin fans ) the borders.
They are worth the discovery of Canada. On this you can trust me. Unless you don’t like raisins.
“Most of my dirt-poor relatives lived in the rural south and most lived in trailer parks or on tiny plots at the end of long dirt roads. For the most part they managed to avoid the drug-infested, crime-ridden neighborhoods you must be talking about in spite of being on public assistance. They were not starving, they did not live in filth and they were able to watch their favorite TV shows at a time when I couldn’t afford a TV.”
Perhaps it may be an “inner city” thing. In any case you say you like your life better now, and that’s my point really. We all bust ass to live better lives. There’s nothing wrong with people having “the basics” in my opinion. There’s a lot of benefits overall to society actually. You busted ass and now your quality of life is better. I am doing that now for the same reason. So see? There is a distinct purpose to busting ass and getting better things for yourself and your loved ones. It is still more advantageous to do so. So I doubt people will be less motivated to do something then they were before.
I’ve been to some of those rural trailer parks too and while they may be better that “the projects” I still wouldn’t want that lifestyle for myself.
jrogge, everything is relative. Those relatives (including my family, for a period as a child) living in trailer parks back in the 60s & 70s lived a life of utter ease and comfort compared to what those same people endured just a generation earlier. My grandfather was a sharecropper and my father grew up with the only transportation he knew being the family mule. They lacked indoor plumbing and only got electricity just before WWII. Their washing machine was a tub. The same tub they used as a bath. I have been to houses of relatives which had dirt floors. When I was a kid we used an icebox. Do you know what an icebox is? It’s a box you put ice in to keep your food cold. To have (relatively) cold milk in the morning my Dad used to milk the cow and put a bottle on a rope and dangle it in the well while he did his chores, so that by the time he came in for breakfast his milk was (somewhat) chilled. When they ran out of food, they went hungry until they could scrape something up.
Trailer parks with full time electricity, air conditioning, refrigerators, washers/dryers, television and food stamps to take down to the corner market to buy some coca-cola is a long, long way from “poor.”
I’ve been poor. Although the “poor” I knew was a 60s version of “poor”. But many of my relatives lived very much like their parents when I was a kid, so I know dirt poor. And living on government assistance in this country today ain’t it.
Yes despite how glamorously you lived as someone who was poor you still found the need to improve your conditions. You really aren’t contesting anything I said. If you are saying that people should live like the poor did during the great depression then you are missing the point entirely. The poor should not want for basic necessities. Your description of how the poor lived back then is something everyone knows. The difference between you and I is that somehow you feel that we should somehow allow our poor to live that way again. Why?
The fact that 60′s poor was less poor than 20′s poor is a very awesome thing.
CC, in answer to one of your comments;
One of my sons, a medical scientist in preparation, is also an objectivist. Whenever he and I argue, he always does on strictest logical terms. You bailed out from that when you determined that a woman’s right to control the outcome of her own reproductive cycle should be decided by someone other than herself. In anycase, Wisconsin not being former Jugoslavia, the women in our family will never have to depend on the instant judgement of a midwife.
TDG, in answer to one your comments:
I was in the US Army during the latter half of the Korean War. The last four months of that war, I served on active duty. That was in Indiana and Colorado. I never got to Korea. Nevertheless, I did my duty, as ordered.
What did active duty consist of? Devoting most of the day to learning how to become highly skilled professional killers. After duty, at nights, most of us, being normal 19 year olds of that era, spent our time trying to get into the pants of the numerous teen age girls who hung around military bases then as I presume they do now.
As you say, I am politically congruent mostly with conservative Republicans. Except that I think proper regional planning should co-opt private property rights, and that I have no problem with abortion. But when Democrats learn that I favor gun rights under the founding fathers’ interpretation of the United States Constitution, and that I actually own and shoot two submachines at tactical gun matches; and that I want all the illegal Mexicans and other aliens picked up by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, put into barbed-wire cages, and expelled, then they run away from me as fast as their legs will carry them.
Both of you:
I believe in nothing whatsoever. But I think carefully about everything, then form my own independent opinion; for which I never, ever apologize or suck around for people to agree with me.
Does this mean that I think there is not and cannot be a god? Hell no. It’s just that I never have seen any convincing evidence to say yes or no about any of that. Moreover, I don’t really think we are sitting in the middle of just one universe. I think they come in multiples, that they always have been there and always will be there. Maybe that means there’s one god per universe. Or maybe they have committees of wrangling idiotic gods, just like the governments they saddle us with here on this planet. Maybe they have both gods and godesses, just as Achilles, Odesseus, Hector, Paris, Prian, Agamemnon and the rest of those heroes thought, back 3200 years ago. Who in hell really knows for sure? And even if we knew for certain, what relevance would any of that have as we walk through life one day at a time? Don’t stand on one leg waiting for some deity to pay your income taxes or make sure your Detroit iron doesn’t pop a timing belt on a lonely country road in a Wisconsin winter.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold:
“One of my sons, a medical scientist in preparation, is also an objectivist. Whenever he and I argue, he always does on strictest logical terms. You bailed out from that when you determined that a woman’s right to control the outcome of her own reproductive cycle should be decided by someone other than herself”
This standard pro-”choice” argument is not remotely supported by logic. Using logic let’s say that I agree that a woman has a right to control the output of her reproductive cycle. Until that output becomes another human being, at which point her “right” to destroy it ends, just as your “right” to swing your fist ends when it meets my nose. Just because this is a commonly repeated argument does not remotely mean it is logical or rational. All this does is reboil the argument down to when a human being becomes a human being. I’m sure you’re not arguing (as your argument literally would state) that a mother can terminate her teenage son (although I’m sure many would like to sometimes.)
So, we are simply back to when, objectively a human being becomes a human being. I say it happens before birth, and I use as support for that the many, many productive members of society who were delivered premature without going through the birth canal. How far before birth? Since I can’t find a line to definitively say “this is human, this is not” I’m forced logically to say “since I can’t draw the line, I wont’ take the risk of murdering human beings simply because they are inconvenient.” So right now I’m back to conception.
After all, the most crucial aspect of any human being is their potential, and that potential is there from the moment of conception.
… And I say you become a human being, and citizen of the United States of America, and therefore protected from abortion, only open the year, month, day, hour and second of your birth. Change the US Constitution, if you think you can. And if you can’t change the US Constitution, then it’s tough titty.
My first test of logic is that it must be based on objective reality. And the objective reality of this situation is that you have to be living in order to be protected. Arguments about the unborn have no more merit for my attention than arguments about the undead. “Living person” means to me that he or she has been born and that he or she has not yet died. Not for no good reason do they list your date of birth on a birth certificate. Who in hell knows exactly what your date of fertilization might have been? To be sure, it’s most like to have been about nine months before you were born. So what exactly does that mean?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And by the way, I never said I favored “choice” per se. This world is getting overpopulated, and one day, I hope to see worldwide policies that will allot only so many children per couple, as they do in China today.
You wouldn’t exactly want to use me as a poster boy for human rights. And that’s okay with me. I scale protection of the evironment as more important than ensuring people the right to fill up every nook and cranny on this planet.
In any case, when the world’s oil supply starts seriously running out, the upshot will be a major worldwide die-off, starting with places where the locals can’t grow, slaughter or catch enough of their own food, and where any vacant lands will be used solely to grow fuel crops.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold, forgive me if I don’t consider you to be the ultimate authority on what is “living” or what is “human.” I am more than willing and able to formulate my own opinion on that subject and I am quite certain logic and objective observance of facts is more supportive of my position than of yours.
Whether something means anything to you or not is precisely the antithesis of objective reality and I find it quite amusing that you lecture about objective reality in one sentence and then proceed to assert your own subjective interpretation of reality as “fact” in the next.
Sigh… “Peak oil” again. Man that is so old. When did I first hear about Peak Oil bringing an end to civilization? What was it, 1979? 1980?
Since then we’ve discovered what, three times the previous oil capacity than we thought we had? Four times? I lose count.
I can’t take any view of human rights that fails to see reproduction as the “life” part of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness seriously. My views on abortion are nuanced (I spiritually believe it is a mortal sin, but I don’t think throwing pregnant women and doctors in jail helps in any way) but I won’t compromise on whether or not someone has the right to choose to have children.
Down that path lies eugenics and genocide.
Arnold,
> Who in hell knows exactly what your date of fertilization might have been?
The objective reality is that I was once a fertilized egg, and that it did happen on a certain date. Just because no living human being has a fact at hand does not render it less factual. Or do you contend that General Relativity popped into being when Einstein thought of it?
However, choosing the moment of birth as the moment we define human rights as popping into existence has nothing to do with objective reality. That would be a definition. People make up definitions. They are subjective.
Scratch most things people claim as objective reality and you hit opinion, not very far down at all.
Yours,
Wince
I have said many times, and will repeat here again, that at some point in the future where we have complete control over conception so that it only occurs when it is desired, people will look back at this period in human history in shock and horror that human beings could reach into mothers’ wombs and slaughter billions of other human beings solely based on the search for convenience of the mother. It will be viewed in the same way as the holocaust.
CC,
It might take artificial wombs and baby transplants. Women often change their minds after planned conceptions, you know.
Yours,
Wince
And yet society doesn’t let women stab their 12 year olds in the head with scissors…
Tom, I agree that when we choose to assign “human rights” to a being is a subjective decision, but if you believe in objective reality, then you should believe that there was some point in the development of the child when it crossed some line and became an objective human being.
This is precisely the issue I have struggled with for most of my life on the abortion question. I’ve never been able to draw that line definitively myself.
Ditto. And I think a plurality of Americans are in the same position.
CC,
> Tom, I agree that when we choose to assign “human rights” to a being is a subjective decision, but if you believe in objective reality, then you should believe that there was some point in the development of the child when it crossed some line and became an objective human being.
I do so believe. Arnold’s location (in or out of womb) seems a stupid reason to pick. There are no other cases I know of where a change in location changes our status as humans. (Hit me with one if you have it.) Maybe it’s a case of dependancy. But born babies are more dependant (because they are harder to take care of) than unborn ones. Insane people can be even more dependant! Are they not human? Which brings up Arnold’s Balkan culture economic argument – that unwanted babies are too expensive. Surely we should be executing crazy people and for that matter cancer patients. They are much more costly (orphanages are much cheaper) and have much less upside potential than babies. I did have one person use the definition that having drawn breath makes one a person. Now that’s silly. How about ‘having passed gas’, instead?
No, I’d have to say that Arnold has not worked very hard at his objective arguments. It’s like his refusal to fly, which begs so many objective arguments.
Frankly, Arnold strikes me as one of the more idiosyncratic and least objective thinkers around, speaking as a very idiosyncratic and wildly opinionated thinker, myself. I still maintain he is a force of nature though.
> And yet society doesn’t let women stab their 12 year olds in the head with scissors…
In Roman days the father could decide he did not want an infant for any reason he liked and it got left out somewhere. The abandonment of Romulus and Remus appears to be part of the actual culture, although I’m not familiar with any historical cases of a she-wolf showing up….
Yours,
Wince
Phelps, the difference between me and most Americans seems to be that since I can’t figure out where the draw the line, I prefer not to err on the side of murder and therefore pick conception as the only logical place I can draw the line with the information I have.
CC,
> Phelps, the difference between me and most Americans seems to be that since I can’t figure out where the draw the line, I prefer not to err on the side of murder and therefore pick conception as the only logical place I can draw the line with the information I have.
That makes philosophical but not political sense. I am pro-life, but I keep trying to make late term abortion really illegal instead, because I think it is politically more practical. Either that or we really need artificial wombs and baby transplants. I favor prizes to develop them. See, there’s the “mad” part. If only I had the “genius” part to go with it.
Yours,
Wince
how did this become an abortion thread?
I think it;s obvious that life begins at conception. In fact, earlier; after all a zygote is just a union of two gametes. Thats just primitive biochemistry; e coli are more complicated.
However, when does Awareness begin? we will likely never know. If we did, there’d be no debate.
Do we accept animals as sentient? I don’t; I support animal testing, etc. I eat meat. So when do human fetuses distinguish from animal ones? Only then can we speak of true “potential” for life.
I recall that in science class we saw how the fetus passes thru stages; develops a vertebrae, goes thru an amphibian phase, pseudo gills, has a tail briefly, etc. Theres actually an entire concept called neoteny which is relevant but too much a digression here.
Then, there’s the matter of the nervous system, which isn’t fully active until the third trimester. All of this circumstantial evidence would be irrelevant if the baby was an entity unto itself, but you also have a living mother who unlike the fetus is a fully realized human, not a potential one. Its solely because there is another person involved that there must be some accomodation made; and the fully realized human deserves more accomodation than the partially realized one, just as a partially realized one deserves more than an animal.
Thus, i find myself drawn to the original compromise of Roe vs Wade, and conclude that it srperesents the best compromise possible between these competing issues and rights in conflict.
So: pro choice for law, pro-life for kin.
Aziz,
Get a clue,
If it wags its tail and barks, its sentient.
McK, thats an interesting position. Are you for or against animal testing?
anyway I dont really are about poersuading. I was just typing aloud my own thought process. Im open to being convinced otherwise. But not as a matter of political or moral priority.
Aziz,
The better question is whether the animal has a claim to the integrity of its own nature ?
Assumed, they don’t have rights but can it be said they have a claim on their own identity ?
“integrity of its own nature” – is that something that can be preserved, even while we are severing their spinal cords, injecting cement into their lungs, implanting tumors, etc ? (all things that I support being done to animals, as part of research I read about every month in my journals).
i dont think animals have an “identity” – I define it as something more than just self awareness.
Aziz, I’m not nearly as certain as you are of the lack of “identity” in animals. Like most things I think this is more complex than we now understand. However, I also think that human life is unique on this planet and I am very much a pro-human individual.
But I am finding it harder and harder to support a lot of what is done to animals in the name of science.
1) Okay, everybody. So I’m subjective and not objective. So what?
2) Aziz, this thread got twisted into an abortion argument because one of these folks told me I came across like a political conservative but not as conservative as I thought I was. Or something like that. So I had to explain that Republicans run away from them because I threaten their property rights with my ideas for comprehensive regional planning; and because I favor abortion. But I also explained that Democrats run away from me because I’m the NRA election volunteer coordinator (EVC) for our congressional district in Wisconsin; and that I want all the illegal aliens in this country picked up, put behind barbed wire, and deported. Also, these days, liberal Democrats hate folks like me who are also ardent no-compromise Zionists. And I think you all hate me because I keep on blathering about the coming of world peak oil. But one thing I would never do just to make for pleasant social situations, and that is to say I agree with something that I just don’t like.
3) So let’s put it this way. I think about whatever I want to think, and to hell with consistency with anything else. If I think it’s right, then I’m for it. Otherwise, I either don’t give a damn about it one way or another, or I’m against it. I say and write what I think. When feasible, I act on what I think. I am answerable to nobody except my main squeeze, because she’s the one who accompanies me through life 24 hours a day. So she’s my pastor, priest, rabbi, imam, psychological counselor, lover, accountant, story teller, and sometimes even my very own cartoonist (some of the stuff she sketches cause me to all but laugh my ass off).
4) And two things I can say about myself that requires no other explanation:
First, I’m a freethinker. Second, what you see is what you get. Because I always try to play it as straight as I know how.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
CC, Id be against animal testing if it wasnt so carefully done. You cant just waltz into an animal lab, whisk away a rat and torture it to death. There are very strict ethhical procedures for it. In the end, its simple: rats/pigs/dogs/monkeys or men? I choose men.
To be brutally hoest, I am not sure what my feeling would be about aliens. I suppose if they have technology – as opposed to us dscovering them on some primitive rock – i will be compelled ethically to give them benefit of the doubt. Yeah, i would have to really.
But Androids and AI? no way. Even Lt Data is iffy.
well, wait. Whats a definition of sentience I cam live with? Perhaps… the ability to articulae the simple concept, ” I want my rights”. Thus, rights become not a passively granted thig, but something that must be actively sought. By that standard, an AI must actually desire to be sentient, which is itself proof of sentience.
yes, i can write a hello wworld program “I want my rights” but thats not emergent behavior. The ability to ask for rights must not be part of the AIs original programming.
You know, I think this is way better than the Turing Test…
Arnold, have you ever thought about putting steffi’s sketches online? (assuming you get permission.)
a Cartoon Blog of the Week might be fun! definitely better than that Day by Day drek here on the front page.
and Im with you on Peak Oil, but I think there are plenty of alternative fossil fuel variants that will be economically justifie once we get deep into the peak oil scenario. So Im not too worried. By then we’ll have fusion, and we already have nukes, and we are getting towards electric cars.. we’ll make it.
Aziz, shall we now divert this thread into a PETA shriekfest?
Except for that I’m a cat lover, I agree with your priority of rights argument. Stefi sort of likes dogs, but I can’t stand them, because unlike cats, they stink, and hungering for campanionship as that they won’t leave you alone. And when some animal wants to pad it way up to me, stick its nose in my crotch and sniff to determine my gender, then I’m tempted to kick it away from me.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
1) Aziz, you’ve put an idea into my head about Stefi’s cartoons.
2) Peak oil stuff.
a) Electric powered cars are nice for trips up 40-60 miles. Then your GM Volt has to sit all night hooked up to a 120 volt outlet, our you have to burn up more fuel. Also, lithium supplies will run out one day like all the other unobtainia of this planet.
b) Fusion powered vehicles, in my mind, are just another example of juggling one of the laws of thermodynamics. At least until someone makes it practicable. And I have learned never to trust in the coming of a technological development before it’s up and running.
c) The best alternative fuels that I know of with current technology are ethanol and biodiesel.
Most modern cars, which have fuel lines whose constituent parts cannot be damaged by more than 10 percent alcohol, can easily be converted to flex fuel standards, which means they will burn an 85 percent ethanol/15 percent gasoline mixture. They could just as easily burn E100, as many Brazilian cars are equipped to do, but the fuel mix then has to slightly preheated at cylinder because cold alcohol won’t mist for proper combusion as gasoline does.
Diesel engines produce 1/3 more torque than gasoline powered engines of the same displacement. But biodiesel, its harvestable equivalent, clouds at relatively high temperatures and jells at even colder temperatures. Which means all such fuel has to be pre-warmed before it gets to the diesel injectors.
One of the newer units of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is working on liquid fuels for the future that are expected to answer the problems cited above.
But converting large scale agriculture to become the mainstay of the energy that drives our vehicules does not say much for the need to feed ever-growing and ever-larger mobs of human beings that already overpopulate this planet, and many times more such people will be joining the world for breakfast, dinner and lunch unless something fundamental changes.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Dean, what in hell is a “Bot”, as described in your UserOnLine box, and how do I become one, if that is a good thing, or avoid meeting one while I’m walking past a cemetery, it’s a bad thing?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Im not in favor f using grain as fuel – we need it for food. Theres probably enough oil in shale and in other more esoteric formations that we can keep going for a long while yet, especially with th emove towards hybrids that simply use less. So we can go further with less oil to get us past th ehump.
Ultimately, cars will be all electric on a hydrigen economy, so we wont be reliant on lithium either – but lithium is a pretty common element. googling, i found:
http://lithiumabundance.blogspot.com/
so, no worries.
the ideal end state: generate all energy using nukes, and then run cars off the grid, as hybrids with hydrogen fuel cells. A fusion plant in a car is never gonna happen.
Aziz,
It is apparent to me that you have not studied the implications or timelines of world peak oil with the same degree of diligence that you obviously have invested in magnetic resonance imaging. Otherwise, you would not be waxing so dismissively flippant on the most fundamental change in energy availability in more than a century.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold,
> So let’s put it this way. I think about whatever I want to think, and to hell with consistency with anything else. If I think it’s right, then I’m for it. Otherwise, I either don’t give a damn about it one way or another, or I’m against it. I say and write what I think. When feasible, I act on what I think. I am answerable to nobody except my main squeeze, because she’s the one who accompanies me through life 24 hours a day.
This is why you are a force of nature! Maybe I’m wrong, since I don’t know how you act (maybe Steffi will let us know sometime), but this screams integrity to me. It’s why I’m always glad to see you on these threads.
A Bot is a computer program which reads web pages. Google uses them to index the web for searches.
Yours,
Wince
Arnold, I admit you’re right – then again, I did a PhD in MRI, so even if I were *very* diligent in studying peak oil, your statement would still likely be true :)
Im probably somewhat more familiar with peak oil theory than most people, and FAR less conversant with it than you (but you aren’t “most people” obv.)
And I dont doubt peak oil theory. I basically accept the primary axioms: volume of oil production is decreasing worldwide (with hard data to support that).
But peak oil theory is bounded – it refers solely to the availability of oil supply from traditional oil sources. It makes no statements about alternative oil sources (like oil shale from Alberta, Canada – check that out.) Neither does it make any statements about alternative energgy sources or technology. So peak oil theory could be 100% true and yet still not amount to a genuine crisis.
Unless we dont develop those alternatives, of course. But theres a lot of funding in teh past year for precisely that.
and thats a good thing. Its foolish to deny the science behind peak oil, but its equally foolish to resign ourselves to that fate.
To quote Jim Kirk, “I don’t like to lose.”
It’s also bound by traditional model formations, which I also think are incomplete. I’m a firm follower of abiotic oil formation, and I’m impressed with the success that those exploring it have had in finding new “unexpected” reserves.
In England they had peak fire wood – and they developed the steam engine to pump water our of coal mines.
Yours,
Wince
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