This is such a powerful piece about where we were with free speech and language just a few decades ago. Thank you Bari for putting this in perspective. As you have said - we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy. Thank you for being brave.
This is such a powerful piece about where we were with free speech and language just a few decades ago. Thank you Bari for putting this in perspective. As you have said - we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy. Thank you for being brave.
Great piece, I agree! The only one question I personally have with this story - who are "We" in the name? There is a huge number of people raising alarms for years and they were ignored, called names and made fun off. I am very happy that Bari's eyes are opening to the things she and her friends were lied about for years, hope more people of her generation will start to look deeper into "other side" arguments and stop rejecting them outright.
I am stunned by Bari's article. After all, Islam is the religion of peace. Don't pay attention to those wearing suicide vests or ISIS slaughtering, torturing, raping women and children and then burning them alive or the Taliban murdering women who venture outside without a male escort or not wearing the burka.
These are actions of a peaceful religion or so the PC, Woke left tells us and we all know they wouldn't lie. The question we should all be asking is, how come the feminist, left, Democrat Party never addresses this? All we hear out of the left is that "Islam is the religion of peace." Only an uneducated idiot would say that yet Democrats actually believe it and preach it.
Even more puzzling is why would anybody vote Democrat, the party of the dangerously ignorant.
Not to put a damper on your tirade, Lonesome - but our senile 'idiot' who is our current President just assassinated Al Qaeda's #2 (or perhaps that was the Deep State). I guess that doesn't matter. He was a bad Muslim.
Or that Obama was in office when #1 was hit (another BAD Muslim).
The point here is that the entire Democratic Party is not WOKE (but sadly, quite a lot of it is, I admit). Just like today's iteration of the GOP is not entirely MAGA (but close..).
The 'ignorant' are on both sides of this increasingly wide divide.
Christianity is also hailed as the "religion of peace," yet it spent 2,000 years libeling and murdering Jews for the fake crime of "they killed our Jesus." Christianity invaded and conquered lands not its own in order to "civilize the heathens," which in reality meant "kill their leaders and take their land." The Church ripped American and Canadian Natives from their families and condemned them to White Christian Re-education Schools to "beat the Indian out of them." Christianity conducted the Inquisition and the Crusades, and exiled American colonials from their communities if they were not sufficiently "pure." Christians murdered women as "witches." Christians merged the power of Church and State by becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, among others. "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before" is not a sonnet to peaceniks.
Yes, Islam commits every atrocity you list here. But so did Christians. Fortunately, Christianity seems to have grown out of its "kill them all, let God sort them out" phase, and could eventually live up to its "religion of peace" ideals. Islam will too, given enough time.
Meantime, any religionists who insist on using the "terrible swift sword" against people they don't like need to be smacked down good and hard by the rest of us. We can no longer allow them to use religion as a cover for crimes they could not otherwise commit.
Christianity softened its image because of the reformation and the rise of protestants sects. In the reformation there was a couple hundred years of bloody warfare between Catholics and the multiple forms of protestant sects. Protestants fought Catholics and protestants fought each other but in the end it all worked out and the killing stopped and we no longer have inter Christian Religion warfare. This has not happened with Islam and it looks like it will never happen.
The Muslims bitch about the Crusade but the Crusade only lasted 300 years but Islam has been assaulting the West for over 1000 years.
Agreed. It not only softened its image, it changed its way of dealing with the rest of the world. Christianity has, in my opinion, finally matured out of its blood-and-guts stage, and the world is better for it.
I don't know if Islam can make that leap. Christianity, being a religion that stands apart from government, can be as flexible as it chooses, and chose to abandon the sword. Islam, on the other hand, combines religion, government, power, and lifestyle into a single machine of submission that demands the rest of world obey. Islam doesn't recognize any other religion or government as valid, only as competitors to be crushed into submission.
Which is not to say a billion Muslims don't want what we want--a peaceful and prosperous life that includes getting along with neighbors. But the tribalists and true believers among them will not allow that to happen, and will kill their own to ensure "purity." There are a lot of those bonecrushers out there, and they have serious firepower to bring to bear.
I don't know how Western culture deals with that other than brute defensive force.
Agree -Shane. Religion has been a tremendous source of both good and evil. But I do think that one significant difference is that Christ explicitly espoused peace and forgiveness and never brandished the sword , while I believe Mohammed did in fact wield a sword himself.
Well said, KTA. Jesus was a guy I'd love to have a beer with, and a genuine prince of peace. The religion founded by Paul in his name, not so much, not until Christianity grew out of the bully-and-butcher stage to the peaceful maturity it enjoys now.
Islam is still in the bully-and-butcher stage, and needs to grow out of that. If it can, that is. Christianity is a religion, and propers with or without government. Islam is as a way of total existence that considers religion and government one and the same, rejecting any notion that other religions or forms of government are valid.
Christianity (and Judaism) were able to grow out of their dominate-and-conquer stages; I don't know if Islam can make that separation because the entire point of Islam is submission to Allah.
I hope Islam can do that, for all our sakes, and especially for the billion-plus Muslims who just want to live their lives without anger or violence.
I'm one of the many leftwing Democrats who is nauseated by the woke and the PC, and who are also appalled by the treatment of women in a lot of muslim countries. I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices, and GOP politicians around the country for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies. I certainly won't be voting for most members of a party that tried to deprive us of our democracy. (I would happily vote for my GOP governor, Charlie Baker, if only he'd run again, and if I could vote for Liz Cheney, I certainly would, but I'm not registered in Wyoming.)
I don't know what party Bari belongs to, but I'm here because I appreciate her perspective.
Leftwing Democrat you sure are when you write "I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices .... for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies". The Supreme Court did no such thing. As you can see around the country there exist a variety of STATES providing their own constitutional or statutory facility to abortion.
You are a good little leftie as you haven't the foggiest notion of what the US Constitution is about, nor what the decision in Dobbs is based on.
Your "facts" are wrong. And the Ninth Amendment canard has been raised and beaten back countless times.
But there are just some who can't see reality. Here is a clue: If, in fact, some "right" existed pre-US Constitution, that "right" does not get US Constitutional protection. It is unaddressed by the Constitution. And left to the States to debate and decide. As they are now doing.
Put another way, the Ninth does not pull some gaggle of supposed "rights" into the US Constitution. It leaves them elsewhere.
You seem to believe there's no such thing as unenumerated rights. If so, why does the Constitution specifically mention them, and what is the point of the Ninth Amendment if not to protect them?
"The Ninth Amendment is a constitutional safety net intended to make clear that individuals have other fundamental rights, in addition to those listed in the First through Eighth Amendments. Some of the framers had raised concerns that because it was impossible to list every fundamental right, it would be dangerous to list just some of them (for example, the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, and so forth), for fear of suggesting that the list was complete.
This group of framers opposed a bill of rights entirely and favored a more general declaration of fundamental rights. But others, including many state representatives, had refused to ratify the Constitution without a more specific list of protections, so the First Congress added the Ninth Amendment as a compromise.
Because the rights protected by the Ninth Amendment are not specified, they are referred to as “unenumerated.” The Supreme Court has found that unenumerated rights include such important rights as the right to travel, the right to vote, the right to keep personal matters private and to make important decisions about one’s health care or body."
Don't get pissed off but did you really have to use the insult "You are a good little leftie"? You could have made you point without that. I'm really not someone to throw stones. I have done the same in the past but I am trying to change my ways. All though Matt Mullins inspires me to belittle him.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm not pissed at your comment and I should know better. It is just frustrating to see some of the stuff that passes through the comments.
Your advice is quite good and I hereby vow to do better. Much better.
They were not interpreting the Constitution. They totally ignored the 9th amendment, and the fact that even early in our nation's history, abortion was accepted up until quickening, which generally does not happen before 16 weeks.
I believe that the court overturning RvW was enforcing the tenth amendment. basically, "powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states, or to the people. "
That's certainly a reasonable supposition. However, a major problem is precedence. It's very messy for women to have it yanked away after 50 years. Women are undoubtedly already dying, including women who weren't even seeking abortions, because MDs are afraid to remove fetuses, for example in the case of ectopic pregnancies.
The whole idea of “quickening” was the idea of determining when the soul is placed into the baby. It never was some scientific determination. In fact I think it was a religious concept. In any case we no longer try to determine such a thing, we know that science now tells us the life is human from conception and in the absence of anything telling us when the soul comes into the picture we presume it to be immediately.
Jews don't presume it to be immediately, and in any case, it's debatable whether there is a soul.
And if there is a soul, and if it enters the small collection of cells right after conception, who's to say that if those cells never become a human, that soul can't enter another embryo?
But I can tell you that when I was 8, my mother had a miscarriage when she was about four months along. For our family, which also consisted of my older brother, the miscarriage was a big disappointment, but not a death in the family. The disappointment dissipated completely when my sister was born around 15 months later.
From the founding of the US in 1776 to the mid 1800’s abortion was considered highly socially unacceptable and the numbers were so small there was little need for regulation.
It is hard to look at the Roe V Wade decision as being any better than the Dred Scott decision and many of the arguments supporting each are strikingly similar. Using the 9th Amendment as support for RvW is taking such a broad reading of the 9th Amendment, making any law regulating any behavior (for example environmental law) would be virtually impossible.
Appreciate the POV. To my eye, is is a mischaracterization to refer to SCOTUS justices as "GOP." The three to whom you refer are better characterized as "originalists" - they believe the Constitution should be interpreted as written and as intended at the time. Me, too. Why does it apply, hundreds of years after it was written? Because human nature does not change. If you want to change the Constitution, there are methods available.
Although you did not say it explicitly, many mischaracterize the overturning of Roe. It was IMHO not the "taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies." It was the correction of the Court's 1973 attempt to legislate from the bench. The Court does NOT make laws, but Roe was just that - even prescribing by trimester whether abortion was allowed. That is not their role; they knew it then, and they know it now. Overturning Roe simply said that it was not the Court's decision to make; that decision belongs to the People. The elected representatives of that People - "politicians" - in various states are making that decision now. That's the way it is supposed to work. I've always supported available abortion; it's not going away. I think the Fifteen-Week Rule is a decent compromise - and we are going to have to compromise - all of us.
Very well said about all of us needing to compromise. One of the biggest problems in modern politics is the inability to compromise on anything. Lawmakers want to hang onto their jobs, and to do that, they dare not set off their rabid bases (left or right). That turns every lawmaker into a Culture Warrior, rather than an honest broker of what's best for America.
That legislative fear makes life difficult for those of us who just want honest and reasonable solutions to our problems, and to otherwise be left to our own lives. We can't have because lawmakers are in the headlocks of the minority wings of their respective parties, and I resent that.
Agree with Jim. Abortion is an issue on which extremists on either side seem to have no respect for the other’s arguments. I would not outlaw abortion, but extremely restrict it. Most people in this country do not even realize that under Roe our laws regarding abortion had gradually become the most liberal- lax- permissive - whatever word you would use to characterize them in most of the world. Usually we take extra care in our society to protect the most vulnerable among us, yet even though the unborn is clearly the most vulnerable - the pro choice crowd talks only about the rights of the pregnant woman, even when she has conceived willing, even if unintended, through her actions. I would certainly leave early abortion legal even though it morally offends me, and certainly allow it in all cases of tape and incest since those pregnancies were unwilling and often involve extreme trauma for the women involved. Compromise is by definition never perfect for either side, but it can at times be the least divisive alternative.
Your comments are very fair. It is so sad that the pro choice people do not even talk about how horrific abortion is to the unborn baby. And they talk about the view of the women, but most of the prolife movement is made up of women who are fighting for the life of the baby.
Well said! The Democrat rag NYT headline: "...Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wasn’t All That Fond of Roe v. Wade" You are correct the courts are there for strict interpretation of the law not to make laws.
The next step is to rule Chevron Deference unconstitutional. Congress needs to write explicit rules for the executive, otherwise there will be the same problem of lawmaking outside of the legislative branch. This is precisely what the Constitution says should not happen.
I wouldn't want to end the Chevron Deference. If we did, governing would grind to a halt, because there is no way on Earth that Congress could (or should) micromanage to that degree. Our nation is too big and complex to require Congress pass a law every time a regulation needs to be issued by an agency.
Senators and representatives don't have time to read bills now; they vote blindly most of the time. Throwing the work of every federal agency and regulator on their desks on the notion that Congress must sign off on EVERYTHING? Not remotely possible in a country like ours.
Welcome David. We need dissenting voices on this very conservative BBS. I have said most of us are preaching to the choir. Hopefully we can debate instead of hollering at each other. I used to be pro-choice until I saw a sonogram of a friend's fetus. I saw the heartbeat and that was an epiphany for me and I thought that is a human being and to kill it is murder. There is a cavoite to this. I would never tell a woman what to do with her body.
This blog is not conservative. Bari is a self-proclaimed liberal. She is in a gay marriage. Her writing clearly comes from left of center. What she is NOT is a leftist. She is more of a classical liberal: Loves the country, seeks the truth, comes from a different perspective from us conservatives. The far left is her enemy just as much as it is mine. I read her because although I don’t always agree, she does seek truth and writes honestly and gets me out of my echo chamber without bashing me over the head. We used to have a lot of this kind of thing but the far left has been doing its best to quash it for decades. We need more of it.
I agree with you about Bari but from what I see, most of the posters here are conservatives and it seems most are right of center. I don't think I have ever seen a conservative on here that isa fanatic, passionate but not fanatic. Because the preponderance of posters are conservative is why I call it a conservative BBS. there use to be conservative Democrats but I don't think many exist now.
Compared to the radical left, which is running the Democrat Party now, Bari is a conservative. She left the NYT which has become a leftwing rag sheet. If she is liberal as she claims, she is a true liberal in the spirit of John Stuart Mill.
You are right on many points, but the political situation has changed so much, I mean division and radicalization on both sides, that attaching labels and using traditional classification may no longer work. I for one have to confess that I flip-flopped a few times because the party I belonged to for many years had stopped representing my beliefs. I’d rather switch parties than stubbornly vote for something I no longer support. This type of realignment is happening to many people at the moment, and I think it includes Bari. Sort of a slow motion earthquake, which is defined as “occurs when the Earth's tectonic plates slide against each other at a slow rate without causing major ground tremors”. Except major ground tremors in our political life may very well be imminent.
If you think for yourself, the fringes of both parties hate you. However, with the emergence of the PC, Woke movement, most of the Dem party is dominated by what used to be the fringe and is now mainstream not on the fringe.
You’re right on all counts. In fact I was originally going to point out that the fact so many conservatives comment on here and make it feel like a conservative blog is a testament to conservatism, because Bari is not one. We want to hear those other voices. I think that in this far-left culture, even a liberal sounds sane to a conservative and so we like it.
You are so right. It is refreshing to hear a moderate Democrat. However, it puzzles me how a Jew can vote Democrat. The Reps align themselves with conservative Christian fanatics who rabidly hate gays.
I have a friend who is a successful conservative gay businessman. He says, he wants to vote republican but cannot vote for a party that castigates him.
The left aligns themselves with radical left-wing loons and the right aligns themselves with Christian fanatics.
Both parties sell out to anyone who will vote for them. I know you should support your constituents but do you have to sell out to the crazy ones?
I consider myself well on the left, but I think the woke are nutty and hurt the Democrats (and I liked John McWhorter's book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Betrayed Black America. I do like a solid social safety net like the Scandinavian countries have; I'd like a justice system that focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment--something more like in Norway. I consider global warming an urgent problem.
I also think a country needs to enforce borders, and that a country should be able to sustainably support its people, including produce enough food to feed everyone. By that measure, and others, the US is very overpopulated.
I do agree with Bari more often than not--same with Andrew Sullivan.
I agree with a lot of what you say. Crime is on the rise but for years crime has been dropping and the reason it has been dropping is long mandatory sentences. You cannot rehab a sociopath.
I think global warming is a far left hoax. Please don't tell me the lie that 97% of all scientists believe it to be true. That lie has been around for almost two decades. When people who repeat the lie, nobody asks them when was this survey taken? Who participated in the survey and what was their degree in?. Where was it held and what were the questions? Nobody asks these questions because it is a lie. There are about 8 billion people on Earth so there are probably a few million scientists. Did all of the scientist take this survey? If they didn't where did the 97% number come from?
This is a geological fact. The Earth goes through cooling and warming periods that is due to cooling and warming periods of the sun. There were 5 ice ages. Some of the glaciers in these ice ages were two miles thick. Then all of a sudden, the sun got warmer and the glaciers melted. This was not caused by the automobile.
This is from the Harvard Gazette, hardly a bastion of conservative thought:
I credit Roe v. Wade with causing the reduction in crime that began occurring ~20 years later. A lot of people who would have grown up under straitened circumstances simply weren't born.
I first learned about global warming in 1975, in a class, Quantitative Aspects of Global Environmental Problems, given by John Holdren, at UC Berkeley.
Carbon dioxide holds heat on Earth, preventing it from radiating out into space in the same manner that your car windows cause the temperature to rise quite high on sunny days when the windows are closed. It's simple chemical physics.
Yes, Earth certainly has gone through a number of cooling and warming periods, due to other factors, but the current warming is easily traceable to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It's very interesting that the Harvard Gazette published that story you posted. Global warming's effects weren't yet nearly as obvious then as they are now. There is absolutely no question global warming is happening, what with so much of California ablaze every year, temps over 100 in Seattle this summer and last, a city where I have never been the least bit uncomfortable in summer, wildfires in Siberia, and glaciers melting everywhere in the world where they exist.
The Gazette is a newspaper, not a scientific journal, and Bill Cromie (who wrote the article) is a journalist, and one who did not deal with global warming, or even the environment generally, most of the time. I suspect that if he'd interviewed Holdren, he would have written a different story, and he should have interviewed Holdren, who had been a professor at Harvard for a number of years by that time.
Global warming's existence is obvious to observant lay people by now, and frankly, it scares me. I suspect it will even be obvious to you in another ten years, if not sooner.
I’ve been puzzled by that, as well. Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro have both addressed it before. As I recall they point out that most Jews are not religious Jews but Jews by birth, i.e. the religious aspect of it is unimportant to them. And generations have been voting Democrat so they continue to do so. The religious Jews, the ones aligned with Israel, see Democrats for what they are and I think (hope?) shun them.
Not sure I agree with you on the Republican alignments. Can you give an example of this?
My issue with Republican reps is that they talk a great game when they’re in the minority, then they regain the majority and proceed to do exactly nothing. Say what you will about Democrats, they are true believers in their demented ideology and willing to get thrown out in support of it. Obamacare, for example.
I have seen the Reps actively kiss up to the religious right like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. It was a few years back and I can't give you exact examples but unlike the left, I am not making it up.
I wouldn't characterize this blog as "conservative." To me it appears above all as a place that seeks the truth. Yes, individual commenters have their own POV, but the really great thing is that with few exceptions, everyone is willing to debate and consider others' views.
re: sonogram. I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits. As they say in the South, this ain't play.
A pro choice rallying cry recently is to equate gun rights with a woman's right to abortion. So when you write that you support abortion's availability, but that must be limits (of which I agree with), I wonder if gun rights can be looked at through the same lens - that there must be limits.
Abortion rights are in the Constitution nowhere. The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Limiting that is a very different animal.
"I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits"
This reflects what most of us want, I think: available early, limits later.
The irony is that under Roe, we had that: women were voluntarily making sensible and reasonable decisions about abortions without Big Daddy Government on their necks. Under Roe, 91 percent of all abortions were performed in the first twelve weeks. Only 1 percent were performed late-term, with virtually all of those for medical emergencies to woman or baby. (And turning "virtually" to "none" in late term abortions would have been a minor legal tweak at best.)
In other words, America already had the abortion policy that most of us want: abortion for any reason early, and none late except for medical emergencies. Our data reflected Canada's almost exactly: 91 percent early, 1 percent late, and Canada has zero abortion laws, its government having decided decades ago to leave abortion decisions to women and doctors.
Women know what they are doing with their abortion rights, and it's a shame that half our state governments don't trust them to keep on doing it.
Overturning Roe was (probably) legally correct, but nonetheless a disaster for women in total-ban states. I hope political pressure will make those legislatures and governors end their total bans for something far more in line with what most Americans think is reasonable.
Your first and second paragraphs are risible. How would you feel if your rights were transferred to a fetus or embryo? I'm not even going to bother to argue with your second paragraph. No, there weren't any BLM people on hand for the insurrection. And nor was the law enforcement officer who killed Ashley Babbit a criminal.
I'm well aware abortion is still legal in my state. But other states where it is not legal are trying to pass laws preventing their citizens from coming here to get abortions.
Women's lives are at stake with these bans.
"In some cases, the infection can become severe or life-threatening, leading to sepsis, hysterectomy or even death. In 2012, a woman died in Ireland after her waters broke at 17 weeks and doctors refused to give her an abortion. The case spurred a movement that led to the overturning of Ireland's abortion ban in 2018."
I don't know where you get your information, but it's so far from what I've seen (videos of Jan 6), read, heard from watching the Jan 6 Committee hearings, etc., that there's no point in arguing with you. You have a whole set of "facts" which are contrary to the evidence.
The thing that ties the Left and Islam together is hatred of Israel. And that hatred is so compelling that the Left carefully looks the other way when Muslims engage in practices that are misogynistic, homophobic, and theocratic. Likewise, Islamic leaders are careful to try to keep the most libertine behaviors of the Left out of sight of their populations. The alliance against Israel is too important to allow little things like clashing social philosophies to get in the way of it.
Poor little Israel, it's so small, yet attracts soooo much attention from the brain dead. Luckily, Israel doesn't give a damn that the Left and Islamists hate it. It's not going anywhere no matter who bitches and moans "Ohhhh, the Zionists, I hate Zionists and I hate Israel but oh, no, I love the Jews, I just hate those Zionists," rinse and repeat.
There is more than that. They also both hate Christianity. The original Left in France committed genocide in the Vendee to put down an uprising of pious Roman Catholics against the new regime which destroyed relics of saints in the name of "Reason". The Bolsheviks created more martyrs for the Holy Orthodox Church than all the pagan Roman and Persian emperors combined.
The persecution may be softer and less bloody now here in America, but what is the point of seeking to require Roman Catholic nuns to pay for contraception and hounding pious Christian bakers and wedding photographers to force them to provide services they do not want to provide? Civil rights? Give me a break, it's to deny them the right to live according to their Christian faith. Both the Left and Muslims are following the dictum "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
But why does the Left hate Israel? I think it is because Israel is an ally of the United States and the Left hates the United States. For the same reason they embrace enemies of the United States, like Iran, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Because the Jewish people, by and large, are successful and hard working. This sets them up as “the oppressor” class and the Palestinians as the “oppressed”.
Frog, a big part of this is that Israel by necessity must view itself as a sovereign nation. About half of the US supports the sovereignty of the US while millions of others view themselves as global citizens. I view much of the rest of the so called free world as in the global camp. Look at howctge UN, WHO ETC operate and imagine what would happen to an Israel or the US constitution if they if a world body had the right to determine how Israel or
The US should act or what rules they should be subject to.
The Left hates Jews. Hating Israel is just the politically correct version of antisemitism.
The Jews have survived everything the rest of the world has thrown at them. For thousands of years. Maybe you can come up with a secular explanation for that. Personally, I'm going to stick with the religious explanation.
Their Judaism is secondary to their leftist. An jnteresting question to pose is where does belief in God fit in for those Jews who seem to put their politics first. Exactly how do they define, "religion?" I would love to see Bari address these issues in the future. I raise these questions often with friends and it makes for a very interesting conversation.
The Left hates anything that makes a claim to loyalty independent of the state. The Jews on the Left by and large are Jewish only by ancestry, rather than by faith, and find the anti-Christianity of the Left attractive. Orthodox Jews tend to be center-right or flatly right-wing.
And yet the Left is becoming more and more antisemitic.
I can't account for the fact that some people manage to find common cause with people who are, in all reality, their enemies. A lot of LDS people are Republicans, despite the fact that their fellow Republicans--Evangelical Christians in particular--*despise* them.
I’ve had many LDS neighbors and my son-in-law’s family is long-time LDS, although he isn’t very religious. My nephew’s wife and family are LDS. People have their own beliefs and family traditions but I’ve never seen or encountered any divisiveness and I for sure don’t despise anyone or sense I’m despised. Actually religion just doesn’t come up socially. There’s a lot more to do and talk about.
That was what was said when Romney was nominated for president, but it turned out to be untrue.
I spent much of my adult life as a Boy Scout leader, working with a lot of Mormons and a lot of evangelical Christians. I never knew any friction between them.
As an LDS person, I can assure you that it's there. And I suspect it had more of an effect on the 2012 election than you think. I know from personal experience that anti-Mormon hate ratcheted up significantly in 2012.
From a 2006 Rasmussen poll: "Of those who identified themselves as evangelicals, 53 percent said they wouldn't consider voting for a Mormon candidate."
In 2012, when that question was asked of all voters, 18% said they wouldn't vote for a Mormon. That a significant amount when elections turn on 3 or 4 percentage points.
I’ve noticed recently that Hollywood, having done their best to decimate Catholicism, is now turning with a vengeance on Mormonism. Not that this is new, but I’ve noticed a real ramping up of Mormon “horror stories” on streaming channels.
Tim - Classical Liberalism has been good to Jews in this country (the US) but the new left is a far different entity. I personally don't understand anti-semitism. I just really don't get it. But our society is changing and hopefully more people will start to see that old alliances aren't necessarily working for them any more.
I don’t know if our founding fathers considered themselves “classical liberals” but I do know that without the constitution they literally risked their necks to codify, neither classical liberalism nor the multitude of religions practiced in America would have ever existed.
Today we’re seeing the demise of both of them and my point to Celia is that there are plenty of Jews abetting that demise. Do we really want to bellyache about which religion is being persecuted more? The fact is they’re coming after ALL religions. “Jews like Schumer and Soros are marxists first and only claim the mantle when they are criticized for collaborating in the demise of this country so their sycophants can label their critics antisemite.
This by no means meant to be an indictment of the Jewish religion because there are plenty of “Christian” collaborators working hand in hand with “Jews” and “Muslims” to dominate ALL of us, religion be damned. My bitch is against the fools who fall for the ruse and willingly play their game.
Tim - agree completely about the ‘who is being persecuted more’
Jews have prospered here and I think they’re like a lot of people, jewish or not, who look backwards and vote according to the past rather than what their party is becoming. I know people who are appalled at what’s happening under Biden and the Dems but act like they’d rather eat shit than vote for a Republican
Celia, you’re forgetting the Abraham Accords Trump negotiated between the Arab (Sunni) states of UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco and Israel that decoupled the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from moving toward normalizing relations between them. Trump even had Saudi Arabia leaning in that direction but then we elected an imbecile that declared them a parish state. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and Israel share a common foe in Iran. With Biden in office and Obama retreads running our foreign policy, any further overtures at formally normalizing relations will be met with the Saudi version of “let’s go Brandon”.
I'm not sure what to think of the Abraham Accords. I was impressed that Trump managed to negotiate them. But I am not convinced that the Islamic nations who signed on were doing anything except hiding behind a pretense of peace.
Actually, he pushed back on China and funded both our National Parks and HBCUs at unprecedented levels. In spite of leaning left, I was glad about these efforts.
That could have been good or bad, depending on how it would have been handled. I think we should ditch fossil fuels for concentrated megawatt power production and just go nuclear. It's far cleaner than any other renewable, doesn't harm wildlife (if managed properly) and we have learned enough enough to put solid safeguards in place. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a35131133/advanced-nuclear-reactor-designs/
This would underwrite the whole electric future of cars, homes, and offices (and even some manufacturing) beautifully. Seems like a no-brainer. Manage and control all of the negative externalities (except for mining, maybe) in one place. No solar panels to recycle, no unsightly windmills littering the landscape, no increased bird deaths. Nuclear is far less materials intensive and so a positive impact on the waste stream as well.
I get that it's at least a decade or more out but I don't see any other way to power modern life cleanly. I like my modern amenities (even though I live in the woods) and don't relish the idea of going back to caves or even 19th century homesteading. Specialization benefits me massively. It gives me time to respond to substack comments for one thing. ;-) Food for thought.
I've had trouble with nuclear in the past, but I'm coming around to it. The newer generation of plants appear to be safer. The one thing left is the radioactive waste - we have to find a way to safely decontaminate it, instead of burying it for future generations to discover.
Agreed. As a sci-fi fan, I love the idea of rocketing it into the sun. But, that will most likely never happen because of the risks inherent in moving the mass off the planet. This article discusses where we are at in terms of disposal, with deep burial being the most likely solution long term. https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/nuclear-waste-disposal-methods.php
Also, one good thing about bringing more nuclear power generation online would be that it would catalyze more research into reducing or neutralizing the waste, etc. Future physics and materials science may solve these problems. I believe there is much we don't know about the material world and questions we haven't even asked yet that will seed tech solutions in the future. I'm not much of a technocrat when it comes to solving people problems. But I definitely am one when it comes to solving infrastructure problems.
It is a strategic alliance of necessity that will increase revenue and stability of Arab States but there is no evidence it is motivated by a the populations becoming less anti-semitic. Most Arab states are autocracies governed by elites that have little in common with the hoi polloi. On the other hand...sometimes capitalist peace is a crucial stepping stone to other types of peace. Time will tell.
I visited Dubai recently... on a direct flight from Tel Aviv, and spoke to Emiratis who see the reality of "Palestine" and their leaders... many hearts and minds have been changed... for the better...
As I am wont to point out, when a non-Muslim characterizes Islam as a "religion of peace" he is deluded, but when a Muslim claims Islam is a religion of peace, oddly he is not lying. He is betraying the fact that Islam has a defective concept of peace. In Semitic languages the consonants are the root of the word: note that salam (peace) and islam (submission) have the same consonants. In the Muslim mind, peace and submission are inextricably linked. The only peace Islam knows is the peace between conqueror and conquered, between master and submissive slave. There are no negotiated peaces in the Islamic conception of foreign affairs, only hudna, pauses or ceasefires which can be abrogated by Muslims whenever it is to their advantage with no moral stain for duplicity (indeed it might even be regarded as immoral to not reopen hostilities at an opportune moment).
DNY, thank you for the engaging response. And the woke crowd in America is using the same tactics to create submissive followers who obey the commands of violent ideological leaders. The words are violence crowd are the greatest threat to democratic ideals because they encourage physical violence. The best thing that could happen to this country is for California to turn half red not in blood but in Republican.
In Mid-Eastern affairs, TRIBALISM is the very basic culture - much more than Islam. Hence the wars between Shia and Sunna.
Anyone who is not a member of our tribe is an enemy of our tribe - unless he is a member of a tribe with which we have a [temporary] alliance; in that case he is only a potential enemy, and we don't try to kill him.
Example: The Qur'an states explicitely the Allah designated the holy land to the Children of Israel. ALL learned Arabs [and all other Muslims] who actually read the Qur'an know this. The Qur'an is ignored when it goes against tribalism.
The Islamic countries have been ruled by cruel bloody dictators for thousands of years. Islam is a fairly new religion but it was born in a culture of cruelty where absolute rulers stayed in power the same way Communist regimes stay in power through fear generate by murder and torture.
And the direction the Democrat regime is headed. They have the fear thing worked out to an art, and are beginning with the torture thing-emotional torture to start.
That depends what Muslim sect you belong to. Shiite Muslims (Persians) have been killing Sunni Muslims (Arabs) and vice versa for centuries. It continues to this day between Iran (Persia) and the Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Prodded by warmongering neocons like Dick Cheney, fools like George W. Bush wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and shattered tens of thousands of young American lives in the arrogant belief we could end the savagery by turning Iraq into a democracy. We all know how that turned out. I say let Allah decide. If it takes a few more centuries of them killing each other, so be it.
Evidently the Islamic man who killed other Muslim men in Albuquerque was very, very unhappy that his daughter had married a man from a different sect (can't remember whether he was Shiite or Sunni).
It's worth noting that Muslims started killing other Muslims over leadership issues within just a few years of Mohammed's death. And they've never stopped.
The second I saw about the murders in Albuquerque, i was questioning if it was really the wire supremacist leftists were jumping at blaming. I was not shocked at all to find out the real perpetrator.
My brother-in-law is a Middle Expert who has been called by news agency as an expert. He told me years ago that the Iranian fanatics weren't building an atom bomb to terrorize the west but to kill Sunnis.
When you can’t criticize ideas this is what you get. The religious right pushed me away from the right in the 80’s. The difference is they were not bound by Marcus’s Repressive Tolerance and would simply get mad.
The Religion of the New Democrat party equates group identity with oppression and cordons off any of those groups from critics. Their religious doctrines (Repressive Tolerance) mandate violence.
"New Democrats" weren't beating cops and crashing through the Capitol on January 6; that was all MAGA and rightists. What religious doctrine compelled them to do that? And what part of Marcus' Repressive Tolerance mandated that Donald Trump order his security to beat and tear-gas people in a park so he could get a photo op in front of a church?
Leftists are absolutely responsible the violence they cause, particular during the Summer of Floyd. But they are hardly alone in using violence as a means to political ends.
We all need to tell them to put down the guns, knives, and lead pipes simply because they didn't get their way on X or Y. The Rushdie attack, January 6, and Seattle/Portland/Minneapolis are the only thing that come from it, and normal Americans should no longer tolerate this kind of political violence.
You’re right that none of us should tolerate violence, and on the right we don’t. Those few who rioted at the capitol and went inside were found and were prosecuted and wound up serving time, and the right supported it. The rioters on the left during 2020-21 were NOT held to account. Leftist groups defended their actions. Kamala Harris and others bailed out the rioters. People who stood in their way were either gunned down, like David Dorn, or were put on trial for murder like Kyle Rittenhouse. The perspectives here are like night and day.
The left has used violence for decades. The right has not. January 6th was a shock because it never happens. And for the record your swipe at Trump re: Lafayette Square was debunked long ago, it is false.
I'd agree with your statement on conservatives being appalled by January 6, except that the MAGA right still insists nothing criminal occurred and all the prosecutions were political. I wish they'd just say, "Yeah, the riots and siege were wrong, wish we hadn't done that, our bad." I'd be happy to forgive the excessiveness of emotion, but find that hard to do when they insist they didn't do anything wrong that day.
I agree completely that the Left was idiotic to support the riots, arsons, personal violence against innocent passersby, and takeover of public streets that characterized the Summer of Floyd. Were I in charge in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc., I would have sorted out the legitimate protestors from the criminal element, protected the former, and thrown the latter into jail, and used the National Guard to do it if my cops were too outnumbered. And CHAZ? I would have torn it down the first day. The first job of any government is to protect public safety.
Same with January 6. Were I president that day, I would have quadruped the police presence and also had the National Guard in place. When MAGA protestors arrived, I would have ensured the protection of the shouters and sign-carriers and legal protestors, but arrested everyone who threw a punch, tear-gassed a cop, or tried to breach the gates to enter the building. No sane society should ever allow rioters to rampage its Capitol.
The Kyle Rittenhouse case should have been thrown out at arraignment. That was a political prosecution, not a criminal one, and that it went as far as it did is scandalous.
But I'm a liberal, not a leftist, Woke, or MAGA.
P.S. Sorry, but Lafayette Square was not a hoax; photos and videos prove that law enforcement cleared the park with clubs and gas so Trump could get a photo op. Holding the Bible upside down just gave it comic relief.
Well I guess (especially in light of Biden's railing on "MAGA Republicans" now) it's important to describe the difference between "conservatives" and "MAGA Republicans" because Biden did not, nor do you. Trump got 74 million votes in the last election. So who are you talking about that thinks the Jan 6th prosecutions are unjust and political? I've been a Trump supporter and while I think the prosecutions in many cases have been unfairly harsh (i.e. solitary confinement for long periods for someone with no criminal record, etc.) and that aspect has been political, I really don't know of anyone on the right who has suggested that if we had it to do all over again we'd condone rioting in the capitol.
At the same time there is plenty of video from that event that gets no airplay that shows people walking into the building calmly, staying inside the ropes even, going in unauthorized but not looking to hurt anybody, just protesting. Still wrong, but hardly an insurrection. There is also, as one commenter pointed out, evidence of it being a "false flag" in that a guy like Ray Epps, who looks like an FBI plant who was openly encouraging people to go into the building, is not prosecuted at all. Understand that, as I pointed out earlier, conservatives rioting is not really a thing; the Jan 6th event was novel. Most on the right were horrified and condemn it.
Thanks for your reasoned comment, Michael. Here's more of what I believe:
--Conservatives have a MAGA right; Liberals have a Woke left.
--Most Americans are conservative-moderate-liberal, not hard-enders. All were appalled that the January 6 protests turned violent and that the Summer of Floyd protests turned violent too.
--The Woke left considers violence, rioting, looting, and takeover of public spaces as not a bug, but a feature, to the "worthy goal" of "destroying the evil Other."
--The MAGA right feels the same way about the Woke left, and dismissed January 6 as "tourists visiting the Capitol" or "a Little League baseball fight."
That said:
--Is there a term other than "MAGA right?" to describe the violent wing of the right? I understand that not all Trump supporters supported J6, just as not all Biden supporters supported the Floyd riots. "Woke left" is the correct term for the hard wing of my side. What would you suggest instead of "MAGA right" for your violent wing?
Next: in my analysis, the J6 crowd had four elements:
--Noisy, active, completely legal and legitimate protestors. The ones who didn't commit violence or trespass should have gotten a complete pass from police.
--Trespassers. Those who walked up the steps and through the building without violence should have been told to turn around and leave, and if they didn't, be charged with trespass, released on no bail, and given a small fine.
--Rioters, particularly those who fought police, harmed other rioters, broke out windows, and ransacked the Capitol, were not insurrectionists. But they committed crimes serious enough to earn heavy fines, jail time, or both.
The same standards I demanded of Summer of Floyd protestors and rioters, BTW. Most Floyd crowds were noisy, active, and nonviolent. State and city politicians who gave the rioters, looters, and arson a pass from any police interference because "they're so upset" should have been fired.
--Finally, J6 insurrectionists. Most there that day were not. But some were, and they were serious about hunting down Pence and Pelosi to do them harm, stop the election certification, or both. They deserve years in prison. We're talking a relative handful of the crowd that day, but it's crucial to public order to find them and put them away.
"Ray Epps, FBI false flag plant." Nobody has yet confirmed if he was or wasn't, and I don't pretend to know. What I do know is that even if he urged people to run through the Capitol, he did not hold a gun to their heads or otherwise force them to do so. People are responsible for their own decisions on breaking laws.
If Lafayette Square was not cleared specifically for a Trump photo op, then why did he just happen to be carrying a Bible for an "impromptu" walk in the park, and why did his visit happen only minutes after cops violently cleared out the protestors with gas and clubs? Sorry, but that's no coincidence: they cleared the park so he could visit and pose. He would have zero reason to carry a Bible around otherwise. I do not consider that debunked at all.
But, hey, if we agreed on everything, how dull would that be?
Well said. Also, some say Jan 6th was a false flag to get at Trump and the MAGA movement. Lots of evidence to support this, but you won't hear that on #msm and the #normies have zero clue. Crazy times.
That "some say" January 6 was a false flag doesn't mean it's true . . . because it isn't. Some also say the Earth is flat, but that isn't true either. "Normies" have plenty of clue.
This is such a powerful piece about where we were with free speech and language just a few decades ago. Thank you Bari for putting this in perspective. As you have said - we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy. Thank you for being brave.
Oh wow, so well said, "we are living in cowardly times - courage is the remedy."
you nailed it with that.
I must borrow that phrase.
This was indeed a powerful piece.
You wrote what I was thinking, KittyKatz. I got chills reading Bari’s article.
"courage is the remedy".
Courage is not a pill, not medicine one swallows or injects.
Courage is the willingness to lose all, including one's life in defense of a principle.
There is little of that today and few if any are celebrating the rare demonstration of it.
Bari and Nellie, you might try finding some authors who write inspiringly about folks who exemplify courage in a host of matters.
Salman Rushdie continuing to make public appearances over the last 30 years is a certain measure of courage.
You bet. He didn't seek "safe spaces", he sought out places to "speak"!
Today's medical update made me happy---it looks like he'll pull through. He faces a long and tough rehab, but he seems to be out of death danger.
As for his attacker, I hope there is a dungeon into which we can throw him and never hear his name again.
Great piece, I agree! The only one question I personally have with this story - who are "We" in the name? There is a huge number of people raising alarms for years and they were ignored, called names and made fun off. I am very happy that Bari's eyes are opening to the things she and her friends were lied about for years, hope more people of her generation will start to look deeper into "other side" arguments and stop rejecting them outright.
I am stunned by Bari's article. After all, Islam is the religion of peace. Don't pay attention to those wearing suicide vests or ISIS slaughtering, torturing, raping women and children and then burning them alive or the Taliban murdering women who venture outside without a male escort or not wearing the burka.
These are actions of a peaceful religion or so the PC, Woke left tells us and we all know they wouldn't lie. The question we should all be asking is, how come the feminist, left, Democrat Party never addresses this? All we hear out of the left is that "Islam is the religion of peace." Only an uneducated idiot would say that yet Democrats actually believe it and preach it.
Even more puzzling is why would anybody vote Democrat, the party of the dangerously ignorant.
Not to put a damper on your tirade, Lonesome - but our senile 'idiot' who is our current President just assassinated Al Qaeda's #2 (or perhaps that was the Deep State). I guess that doesn't matter. He was a bad Muslim.
Or that Obama was in office when #1 was hit (another BAD Muslim).
The point here is that the entire Democratic Party is not WOKE (but sadly, quite a lot of it is, I admit). Just like today's iteration of the GOP is not entirely MAGA (but close..).
The 'ignorant' are on both sides of this increasingly wide divide.
They are shared.
Personally, I find there's a lotta similarities between the Woke and the MAGA crowd here. That's just me.
Agreed. 100%. They just pull in opposite directions. But the fervour is the same.
Lol.
A change of pace:
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Christianity is also hailed as the "religion of peace," yet it spent 2,000 years libeling and murdering Jews for the fake crime of "they killed our Jesus." Christianity invaded and conquered lands not its own in order to "civilize the heathens," which in reality meant "kill their leaders and take their land." The Church ripped American and Canadian Natives from their families and condemned them to White Christian Re-education Schools to "beat the Indian out of them." Christianity conducted the Inquisition and the Crusades, and exiled American colonials from their communities if they were not sufficiently "pure." Christians murdered women as "witches." Christians merged the power of Church and State by becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire, among others. "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus, going on before" is not a sonnet to peaceniks.
Yes, Islam commits every atrocity you list here. But so did Christians. Fortunately, Christianity seems to have grown out of its "kill them all, let God sort them out" phase, and could eventually live up to its "religion of peace" ideals. Islam will too, given enough time.
Meantime, any religionists who insist on using the "terrible swift sword" against people they don't like need to be smacked down good and hard by the rest of us. We can no longer allow them to use religion as a cover for crimes they could not otherwise commit.
Christianity softened its image because of the reformation and the rise of protestants sects. In the reformation there was a couple hundred years of bloody warfare between Catholics and the multiple forms of protestant sects. Protestants fought Catholics and protestants fought each other but in the end it all worked out and the killing stopped and we no longer have inter Christian Religion warfare. This has not happened with Islam and it looks like it will never happen.
The Muslims bitch about the Crusade but the Crusade only lasted 300 years but Islam has been assaulting the West for over 1000 years.
Agreed. It not only softened its image, it changed its way of dealing with the rest of the world. Christianity has, in my opinion, finally matured out of its blood-and-guts stage, and the world is better for it.
I don't know if Islam can make that leap. Christianity, being a religion that stands apart from government, can be as flexible as it chooses, and chose to abandon the sword. Islam, on the other hand, combines religion, government, power, and lifestyle into a single machine of submission that demands the rest of world obey. Islam doesn't recognize any other religion or government as valid, only as competitors to be crushed into submission.
Which is not to say a billion Muslims don't want what we want--a peaceful and prosperous life that includes getting along with neighbors. But the tribalists and true believers among them will not allow that to happen, and will kill their own to ensure "purity." There are a lot of those bonecrushers out there, and they have serious firepower to bring to bear.
I don't know how Western culture deals with that other than brute defensive force.
Agree -Shane. Religion has been a tremendous source of both good and evil. But I do think that one significant difference is that Christ explicitly espoused peace and forgiveness and never brandished the sword , while I believe Mohammed did in fact wield a sword himself.
Well said, KTA. Jesus was a guy I'd love to have a beer with, and a genuine prince of peace. The religion founded by Paul in his name, not so much, not until Christianity grew out of the bully-and-butcher stage to the peaceful maturity it enjoys now.
Islam is still in the bully-and-butcher stage, and needs to grow out of that. If it can, that is. Christianity is a religion, and propers with or without government. Islam is as a way of total existence that considers religion and government one and the same, rejecting any notion that other religions or forms of government are valid.
Christianity (and Judaism) were able to grow out of their dominate-and-conquer stages; I don't know if Islam can make that separation because the entire point of Islam is submission to Allah.
I hope Islam can do that, for all our sakes, and especially for the billion-plus Muslims who just want to live their lives without anger or violence.
Thanks Shane. Good to hear from you and see you on this thread. Love Bari. Hope that all is well.
Thanks much for this kind note, and back at you!
I'm one of the many leftwing Democrats who is nauseated by the woke and the PC, and who are also appalled by the treatment of women in a lot of muslim countries. I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices, and GOP politicians around the country for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies. I certainly won't be voting for most members of a party that tried to deprive us of our democracy. (I would happily vote for my GOP governor, Charlie Baker, if only he'd run again, and if I could vote for Liz Cheney, I certainly would, but I'm not registered in Wyoming.)
I don't know what party Bari belongs to, but I'm here because I appreciate her perspective.
You are “equally disgusted” by vastly unequal things. People like you are part of the problem.
Leftwing Democrat you sure are when you write "I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices .... for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies". The Supreme Court did no such thing. As you can see around the country there exist a variety of STATES providing their own constitutional or statutory facility to abortion.
You are a good little leftie as you haven't the foggiest notion of what the US Constitution is about, nor what the decision in Dobbs is based on.
see what I wrote in response to Steven N, currently directly above your comment.
Your "facts" are wrong. And the Ninth Amendment canard has been raised and beaten back countless times.
But there are just some who can't see reality. Here is a clue: If, in fact, some "right" existed pre-US Constitution, that "right" does not get US Constitutional protection. It is unaddressed by the Constitution. And left to the States to debate and decide. As they are now doing.
Put another way, the Ninth does not pull some gaggle of supposed "rights" into the US Constitution. It leaves them elsewhere.
You seem to believe there's no such thing as unenumerated rights. If so, why does the Constitution specifically mention them, and what is the point of the Ninth Amendment if not to protect them?
The 9th leaves open the fact that there are a lot of rights that didn't make it into the Constitution. That was its purpose.
OK, I will try again. Here is the text of the Ninth:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
It could not be any clearer that no “certain right[]” not enumerated therein is protected by the US Constitution.
Other rights might be protected elsewhere. If it is not enumerated in the Constitution, it is not in the Constitution and thus not protected by it.
"The Ninth Amendment is a constitutional safety net intended to make clear that individuals have other fundamental rights, in addition to those listed in the First through Eighth Amendments. Some of the framers had raised concerns that because it was impossible to list every fundamental right, it would be dangerous to list just some of them (for example, the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, and so forth), for fear of suggesting that the list was complete.
This group of framers opposed a bill of rights entirely and favored a more general declaration of fundamental rights. But others, including many state representatives, had refused to ratify the Constitution without a more specific list of protections, so the First Congress added the Ninth Amendment as a compromise.
Because the rights protected by the Ninth Amendment are not specified, they are referred to as “unenumerated.” The Supreme Court has found that unenumerated rights include such important rights as the right to travel, the right to vote, the right to keep personal matters private and to make important decisions about one’s health care or body."
https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/ninth-amendment/
Don't get pissed off but did you really have to use the insult "You are a good little leftie"? You could have made you point without that. I'm really not someone to throw stones. I have done the same in the past but I am trying to change my ways. All though Matt Mullins inspires me to belittle him.
But he does have a point. The statement:
"I'm equally disgusted by the GOP SCOTUS justices .... for taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies"
Is exceedingly factually incorrect and the repetition of the lies propagated by most media channels to inflame hatred.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm not pissed at your comment and I should know better. It is just frustrating to see some of the stuff that passes through the comments.
Your advice is quite good and I hereby vow to do better. Much better.
I'll try too. But at times I get so frustrated, I go over the edge.
We all do. It happens. But we all seem to be reining in our excesses, which is all we can ask of each other--to try.
I find it interesting you believe it is the role of SCOTUS to make law and not interpret The Constitution.
They were not interpreting the Constitution. They totally ignored the 9th amendment, and the fact that even early in our nation's history, abortion was accepted up until quickening, which generally does not happen before 16 weeks.
I believe that the court overturning RvW was enforcing the tenth amendment. basically, "powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states, or to the people. "
That's certainly a reasonable supposition. However, a major problem is precedence. It's very messy for women to have it yanked away after 50 years. Women are undoubtedly already dying, including women who weren't even seeking abortions, because MDs are afraid to remove fetuses, for example in the case of ectopic pregnancies.
Can you give me an example of where an ectopic wasn't terminated because of the ruling?
Exactly.
The whole idea of “quickening” was the idea of determining when the soul is placed into the baby. It never was some scientific determination. In fact I think it was a religious concept. In any case we no longer try to determine such a thing, we know that science now tells us the life is human from conception and in the absence of anything telling us when the soul comes into the picture we presume it to be immediately.
Jews don't presume it to be immediately, and in any case, it's debatable whether there is a soul.
And if there is a soul, and if it enters the small collection of cells right after conception, who's to say that if those cells never become a human, that soul can't enter another embryo?
But I can tell you that when I was 8, my mother had a miscarriage when she was about four months along. For our family, which also consisted of my older brother, the miscarriage was a big disappointment, but not a death in the family. The disappointment dissipated completely when my sister was born around 15 months later.
Early in our nations history, slavery was legal.
From the founding of the US in 1776 to the mid 1800’s abortion was considered highly socially unacceptable and the numbers were so small there was little need for regulation.
It is hard to look at the Roe V Wade decision as being any better than the Dred Scott decision and many of the arguments supporting each are strikingly similar. Using the 9th Amendment as support for RvW is taking such a broad reading of the 9th Amendment, making any law regulating any behavior (for example environmental law) would be virtually impossible.
You're wrong about abortion being considered highly unacceptable back then. And about the 9th amendment.
Appreciate the POV. To my eye, is is a mischaracterization to refer to SCOTUS justices as "GOP." The three to whom you refer are better characterized as "originalists" - they believe the Constitution should be interpreted as written and as intended at the time. Me, too. Why does it apply, hundreds of years after it was written? Because human nature does not change. If you want to change the Constitution, there are methods available.
Although you did not say it explicitly, many mischaracterize the overturning of Roe. It was IMHO not the "taking away women's rights to make decisions about their own bodies." It was the correction of the Court's 1973 attempt to legislate from the bench. The Court does NOT make laws, but Roe was just that - even prescribing by trimester whether abortion was allowed. That is not their role; they knew it then, and they know it now. Overturning Roe simply said that it was not the Court's decision to make; that decision belongs to the People. The elected representatives of that People - "politicians" - in various states are making that decision now. That's the way it is supposed to work. I've always supported available abortion; it's not going away. I think the Fifteen-Week Rule is a decent compromise - and we are going to have to compromise - all of us.
Ditto
Very well said about all of us needing to compromise. One of the biggest problems in modern politics is the inability to compromise on anything. Lawmakers want to hang onto their jobs, and to do that, they dare not set off their rabid bases (left or right). That turns every lawmaker into a Culture Warrior, rather than an honest broker of what's best for America.
That legislative fear makes life difficult for those of us who just want honest and reasonable solutions to our problems, and to otherwise be left to our own lives. We can't have because lawmakers are in the headlocks of the minority wings of their respective parties, and I resent that.
Yes. Me, too.
Agree with Jim. Abortion is an issue on which extremists on either side seem to have no respect for the other’s arguments. I would not outlaw abortion, but extremely restrict it. Most people in this country do not even realize that under Roe our laws regarding abortion had gradually become the most liberal- lax- permissive - whatever word you would use to characterize them in most of the world. Usually we take extra care in our society to protect the most vulnerable among us, yet even though the unborn is clearly the most vulnerable - the pro choice crowd talks only about the rights of the pregnant woman, even when she has conceived willing, even if unintended, through her actions. I would certainly leave early abortion legal even though it morally offends me, and certainly allow it in all cases of tape and incest since those pregnancies were unwilling and often involve extreme trauma for the women involved. Compromise is by definition never perfect for either side, but it can at times be the least divisive alternative.
Your comments are very fair. It is so sad that the pro choice people do not even talk about how horrific abortion is to the unborn baby. And they talk about the view of the women, but most of the prolife movement is made up of women who are fighting for the life of the baby.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Well said! The Democrat rag NYT headline: "...Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wasn’t All That Fond of Roe v. Wade" You are correct the courts are there for strict interpretation of the law not to make laws.
It's true. She wasn't. Among other things, she foresaw quite accurately that it would be messy politically.
I just think that after nearly 50 years, it was a huge mistake to expunge it.
It's true. She wasn't. Among other things, she foresaw quite accurately that it would be messy politically.
I just think that after nearly 50 years, it was a huge mistake to expunge it.
The next step is to rule Chevron Deference unconstitutional. Congress needs to write explicit rules for the executive, otherwise there will be the same problem of lawmaking outside of the legislative branch. This is precisely what the Constitution says should not happen.
I wouldn't want to end the Chevron Deference. If we did, governing would grind to a halt, because there is no way on Earth that Congress could (or should) micromanage to that degree. Our nation is too big and complex to require Congress pass a law every time a regulation needs to be issued by an agency.
Senators and representatives don't have time to read bills now; they vote blindly most of the time. Throwing the work of every federal agency and regulator on their desks on the notion that Congress must sign off on EVERYTHING? Not remotely possible in a country like ours.
Welcome David. We need dissenting voices on this very conservative BBS. I have said most of us are preaching to the choir. Hopefully we can debate instead of hollering at each other. I used to be pro-choice until I saw a sonogram of a friend's fetus. I saw the heartbeat and that was an epiphany for me and I thought that is a human being and to kill it is murder. There is a cavoite to this. I would never tell a woman what to do with her body.
Again, welcome.
This blog is not conservative. Bari is a self-proclaimed liberal. She is in a gay marriage. Her writing clearly comes from left of center. What she is NOT is a leftist. She is more of a classical liberal: Loves the country, seeks the truth, comes from a different perspective from us conservatives. The far left is her enemy just as much as it is mine. I read her because although I don’t always agree, she does seek truth and writes honestly and gets me out of my echo chamber without bashing me over the head. We used to have a lot of this kind of thing but the far left has been doing its best to quash it for decades. We need more of it.
right on!!
I agree with you about Bari but from what I see, most of the posters here are conservatives and it seems most are right of center. I don't think I have ever seen a conservative on here that isa fanatic, passionate but not fanatic. Because the preponderance of posters are conservative is why I call it a conservative BBS. there use to be conservative Democrats but I don't think many exist now.
Compared to the radical left, which is running the Democrat Party now, Bari is a conservative. She left the NYT which has become a leftwing rag sheet. If she is liberal as she claims, she is a true liberal in the spirit of John Stuart Mill.
You are right on many points, but the political situation has changed so much, I mean division and radicalization on both sides, that attaching labels and using traditional classification may no longer work. I for one have to confess that I flip-flopped a few times because the party I belonged to for many years had stopped representing my beliefs. I’d rather switch parties than stubbornly vote for something I no longer support. This type of realignment is happening to many people at the moment, and I think it includes Bari. Sort of a slow motion earthquake, which is defined as “occurs when the Earth's tectonic plates slide against each other at a slow rate without causing major ground tremors”. Except major ground tremors in our political life may very well be imminent.
I am left of center (voting mostly for Democrats at a national level up to 4-6 years ag) but considered alt-right by many (most) Democrats.
If you think for yourself, the fringes of both parties hate you. However, with the emergence of the PC, Woke movement, most of the Dem party is dominated by what used to be the fringe and is now mainstream not on the fringe.
I don't think we're dominated by the PC and the woke, but their numbers certainly have grown, much to my chagrin.
Sorry, but Biden's as Woke as they come.
You’re right on all counts. In fact I was originally going to point out that the fact so many conservatives comment on here and make it feel like a conservative blog is a testament to conservatism, because Bari is not one. We want to hear those other voices. I think that in this far-left culture, even a liberal sounds sane to a conservative and so we like it.
You are so right. It is refreshing to hear a moderate Democrat. However, it puzzles me how a Jew can vote Democrat. The Reps align themselves with conservative Christian fanatics who rabidly hate gays.
I have a friend who is a successful conservative gay businessman. He says, he wants to vote republican but cannot vote for a party that castigates him.
The left aligns themselves with radical left-wing loons and the right aligns themselves with Christian fanatics.
Both parties sell out to anyone who will vote for them. I know you should support your constituents but do you have to sell out to the crazy ones?
I consider myself well on the left, but I think the woke are nutty and hurt the Democrats (and I liked John McWhorter's book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Betrayed Black America. I do like a solid social safety net like the Scandinavian countries have; I'd like a justice system that focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment--something more like in Norway. I consider global warming an urgent problem.
I also think a country needs to enforce borders, and that a country should be able to sustainably support its people, including produce enough food to feed everyone. By that measure, and others, the US is very overpopulated.
I do agree with Bari more often than not--same with Andrew Sullivan.
I agree with a lot of what you say. Crime is on the rise but for years crime has been dropping and the reason it has been dropping is long mandatory sentences. You cannot rehab a sociopath.
I think global warming is a far left hoax. Please don't tell me the lie that 97% of all scientists believe it to be true. That lie has been around for almost two decades. When people who repeat the lie, nobody asks them when was this survey taken? Who participated in the survey and what was their degree in?. Where was it held and what were the questions? Nobody asks these questions because it is a lie. There are about 8 billion people on Earth so there are probably a few million scientists. Did all of the scientist take this survey? If they didn't where did the 97% number come from?
This is a geological fact. The Earth goes through cooling and warming periods that is due to cooling and warming periods of the sun. There were 5 ice ages. Some of the glaciers in these ice ages were two miles thick. Then all of a sudden, the sun got warmer and the glaciers melted. This was not caused by the automobile.
This is from the Harvard Gazette, hardly a bastion of conservative thought:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2003/04/global-warming-is-not-so-hot-2/
I credit Roe v. Wade with causing the reduction in crime that began occurring ~20 years later. A lot of people who would have grown up under straitened circumstances simply weren't born.
https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalized-abortion-on-crime-over-the-last-two-decades/
I first learned about global warming in 1975, in a class, Quantitative Aspects of Global Environmental Problems, given by John Holdren, at UC Berkeley.
Carbon dioxide holds heat on Earth, preventing it from radiating out into space in the same manner that your car windows cause the temperature to rise quite high on sunny days when the windows are closed. It's simple chemical physics.
Yes, Earth certainly has gone through a number of cooling and warming periods, due to other factors, but the current warming is easily traceable to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It's very interesting that the Harvard Gazette published that story you posted. Global warming's effects weren't yet nearly as obvious then as they are now. There is absolutely no question global warming is happening, what with so much of California ablaze every year, temps over 100 in Seattle this summer and last, a city where I have never been the least bit uncomfortable in summer, wildfires in Siberia, and glaciers melting everywhere in the world where they exist.
The Gazette is a newspaper, not a scientific journal, and Bill Cromie (who wrote the article) is a journalist, and one who did not deal with global warming, or even the environment generally, most of the time. I suspect that if he'd interviewed Holdren, he would have written a different story, and he should have interviewed Holdren, who had been a professor at Harvard for a number of years by that time.
Global warming's existence is obvious to observant lay people by now, and frankly, it scares me. I suspect it will even be obvious to you in another ten years, if not sooner.
I’ve been puzzled by that, as well. Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro have both addressed it before. As I recall they point out that most Jews are not religious Jews but Jews by birth, i.e. the religious aspect of it is unimportant to them. And generations have been voting Democrat so they continue to do so. The religious Jews, the ones aligned with Israel, see Democrats for what they are and I think (hope?) shun them.
Not sure I agree with you on the Republican alignments. Can you give an example of this?
My issue with Republican reps is that they talk a great game when they’re in the minority, then they regain the majority and proceed to do exactly nothing. Say what you will about Democrats, they are true believers in their demented ideology and willing to get thrown out in support of it. Obamacare, for example.
I have seen the Reps actively kiss up to the religious right like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. It was a few years back and I can't give you exact examples but unlike the left, I am not making it up.
Thank you LonesomePolecat. I'm all for respectful debate.
I wouldn't characterize this blog as "conservative." To me it appears above all as a place that seeks the truth. Yes, individual commenters have their own POV, but the really great thing is that with few exceptions, everyone is willing to debate and consider others' views.
re: sonogram. I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits. As they say in the South, this ain't play.
An interesting reply, Jim.
A pro choice rallying cry recently is to equate gun rights with a woman's right to abortion. So when you write that you support abortion's availability, but that must be limits (of which I agree with), I wonder if gun rights can be looked at through the same lens - that there must be limits.
Already plenty of limits on gun rights. If we actually enforced them, it might translate to real lives saved.
Abortion rights are in the Constitution nowhere. The right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Limiting that is a very different animal.
I thought you might say that.
"I was staunchly pro-choice until I saw an actual abortion performed. I still support its availability, but there MUST be limits"
This reflects what most of us want, I think: available early, limits later.
The irony is that under Roe, we had that: women were voluntarily making sensible and reasonable decisions about abortions without Big Daddy Government on their necks. Under Roe, 91 percent of all abortions were performed in the first twelve weeks. Only 1 percent were performed late-term, with virtually all of those for medical emergencies to woman or baby. (And turning "virtually" to "none" in late term abortions would have been a minor legal tweak at best.)
In other words, America already had the abortion policy that most of us want: abortion for any reason early, and none late except for medical emergencies. Our data reflected Canada's almost exactly: 91 percent early, 1 percent late, and Canada has zero abortion laws, its government having decided decades ago to leave abortion decisions to women and doctors.
Women know what they are doing with their abortion rights, and it's a shame that half our state governments don't trust them to keep on doing it.
Overturning Roe was (probably) legally correct, but nonetheless a disaster for women in total-ban states. I hope political pressure will make those legislatures and governors end their total bans for something far more in line with what most Americans think is reasonable.
Well said.
Thanks, Jim, much obliged.
Jim, this BBS may not be conservative but it is certainly not left wing.
Precisely. We all seek the truth.
Most of us do, do that, don't we?
No. We seek to confirm what we already believe, and that, IMHO, is humanity's fatal flaw.
Your first and second paragraphs are risible. How would you feel if your rights were transferred to a fetus or embryo? I'm not even going to bother to argue with your second paragraph. No, there weren't any BLM people on hand for the insurrection. And nor was the law enforcement officer who killed Ashley Babbit a criminal.
I'm well aware abortion is still legal in my state. But other states where it is not legal are trying to pass laws preventing their citizens from coming here to get abortions.
Women's lives are at stake with these bans.
"In some cases, the infection can become severe or life-threatening, leading to sepsis, hysterectomy or even death. In 2012, a woman died in Ireland after her waters broke at 17 weeks and doctors refused to give her an abortion. The case spurred a movement that led to the overturning of Ireland's abortion ban in 2018."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/26/1111280165/because-of-texas-abortion-law-her-wanted-pregnancy-became-a-medical-nightmare
I don't know what planet you're on, but it's not Earth.
On the contrary he’s 100% correct here.
I don't know where you get your information, but it's so far from what I've seen (videos of Jan 6), read, heard from watching the Jan 6 Committee hearings, etc., that there's no point in arguing with you. You have a whole set of "facts" which are contrary to the evidence.
The thing that ties the Left and Islam together is hatred of Israel. And that hatred is so compelling that the Left carefully looks the other way when Muslims engage in practices that are misogynistic, homophobic, and theocratic. Likewise, Islamic leaders are careful to try to keep the most libertine behaviors of the Left out of sight of their populations. The alliance against Israel is too important to allow little things like clashing social philosophies to get in the way of it.
Poor little Israel, it's so small, yet attracts soooo much attention from the brain dead. Luckily, Israel doesn't give a damn that the Left and Islamists hate it. It's not going anywhere no matter who bitches and moans "Ohhhh, the Zionists, I hate Zionists and I hate Israel but oh, no, I love the Jews, I just hate those Zionists," rinse and repeat.
There is more than that. They also both hate Christianity. The original Left in France committed genocide in the Vendee to put down an uprising of pious Roman Catholics against the new regime which destroyed relics of saints in the name of "Reason". The Bolsheviks created more martyrs for the Holy Orthodox Church than all the pagan Roman and Persian emperors combined.
The persecution may be softer and less bloody now here in America, but what is the point of seeking to require Roman Catholic nuns to pay for contraception and hounding pious Christian bakers and wedding photographers to force them to provide services they do not want to provide? Civil rights? Give me a break, it's to deny them the right to live according to their Christian faith. Both the Left and Muslims are following the dictum "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
But why does the Left hate Israel? I think it is because Israel is an ally of the United States and the Left hates the United States. For the same reason they embrace enemies of the United States, like Iran, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Because the Jewish people, by and large, are successful and hard working. This sets them up as “the oppressor” class and the Palestinians as the “oppressed”.
Frog, a big part of this is that Israel by necessity must view itself as a sovereign nation. About half of the US supports the sovereignty of the US while millions of others view themselves as global citizens. I view much of the rest of the so called free world as in the global camp. Look at howctge UN, WHO ETC operate and imagine what would happen to an Israel or the US constitution if they if a world body had the right to determine how Israel or
The US should act or what rules they should be subject to.
The Left hates Jews. Hating Israel is just the politically correct version of antisemitism.
The Jews have survived everything the rest of the world has thrown at them. For thousands of years. Maybe you can come up with a secular explanation for that. Personally, I'm going to stick with the religious explanation.
You seem to ignore that there are a lot of Jews on the left
Their Judaism is secondary to their leftist. An jnteresting question to pose is where does belief in God fit in for those Jews who seem to put their politics first. Exactly how do they define, "religion?" I would love to see Bari address these issues in the future. I raise these questions often with friends and it makes for a very interesting conversation.
The Left hates anything that makes a claim to loyalty independent of the state. The Jews on the Left by and large are Jewish only by ancestry, rather than by faith, and find the anti-Christianity of the Left attractive. Orthodox Jews tend to be center-right or flatly right-wing.
And yet the Left is becoming more and more antisemitic.
I can't account for the fact that some people manage to find common cause with people who are, in all reality, their enemies. A lot of LDS people are Republicans, despite the fact that their fellow Republicans--Evangelical Christians in particular--*despise* them.
I’ve had many LDS neighbors and my son-in-law’s family is long-time LDS, although he isn’t very religious. My nephew’s wife and family are LDS. People have their own beliefs and family traditions but I’ve never seen or encountered any divisiveness and I for sure don’t despise anyone or sense I’m despised. Actually religion just doesn’t come up socially. There’s a lot more to do and talk about.
That was what was said when Romney was nominated for president, but it turned out to be untrue.
I spent much of my adult life as a Boy Scout leader, working with a lot of Mormons and a lot of evangelical Christians. I never knew any friction between them.
As an LDS person, I can assure you that it's there. And I suspect it had more of an effect on the 2012 election than you think. I know from personal experience that anti-Mormon hate ratcheted up significantly in 2012.
From a 2006 Rasmussen poll: "Of those who identified themselves as evangelicals, 53 percent said they wouldn't consider voting for a Mormon candidate."
In 2012, when that question was asked of all voters, 18% said they wouldn't vote for a Mormon. That a significant amount when elections turn on 3 or 4 percentage points.
I’ve noticed recently that Hollywood, having done their best to decimate Catholicism, is now turning with a vengeance on Mormonism. Not that this is new, but I’ve noticed a real ramping up of Mormon “horror stories” on streaming channels.
Tim - Classical Liberalism has been good to Jews in this country (the US) but the new left is a far different entity. I personally don't understand anti-semitism. I just really don't get it. But our society is changing and hopefully more people will start to see that old alliances aren't necessarily working for them any more.
I don’t know if our founding fathers considered themselves “classical liberals” but I do know that without the constitution they literally risked their necks to codify, neither classical liberalism nor the multitude of religions practiced in America would have ever existed.
Today we’re seeing the demise of both of them and my point to Celia is that there are plenty of Jews abetting that demise. Do we really want to bellyache about which religion is being persecuted more? The fact is they’re coming after ALL religions. “Jews like Schumer and Soros are marxists first and only claim the mantle when they are criticized for collaborating in the demise of this country so their sycophants can label their critics antisemite.
This by no means meant to be an indictment of the Jewish religion because there are plenty of “Christian” collaborators working hand in hand with “Jews” and “Muslims” to dominate ALL of us, religion be damned. My bitch is against the fools who fall for the ruse and willingly play their game.
Tim - agree completely about the ‘who is being persecuted more’
Jews have prospered here and I think they’re like a lot of people, jewish or not, who look backwards and vote according to the past rather than what their party is becoming. I know people who are appalled at what’s happening under Biden and the Dems but act like they’d rather eat shit than vote for a Republican
Celia, you’re forgetting the Abraham Accords Trump negotiated between the Arab (Sunni) states of UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco and Israel that decoupled the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from moving toward normalizing relations between them. Trump even had Saudi Arabia leaning in that direction but then we elected an imbecile that declared them a parish state. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and Israel share a common foe in Iran. With Biden in office and Obama retreads running our foreign policy, any further overtures at formally normalizing relations will be met with the Saudi version of “let’s go Brandon”.
All true. One rarely encounters anyone who even knows about the Abraham Accords, let alone appreciates what it accomplished.
One small quibble: we did NOT elect Alleged President Asterisk. He was installed by a cabal of evildoers via massive fraud. Never forget that.
I'm not sure what to think of the Abraham Accords. I was impressed that Trump managed to negotiate them. But I am not convinced that the Islamic nations who signed on were doing anything except hiding behind a pretense of peace.
If I were to guess, the common denominator of the Accords is their shared hatred of Iran with Israel. The enemy of my enemy is now suddenly my friend.
The only thing the Trump Admin did that I can say was smart.
It wasn't so much Trump admin's doing as a reaction to Obama empowering Shiites across the levante.
Actually, he pushed back on China and funded both our National Parks and HBCUs at unprecedented levels. In spite of leaning left, I was glad about these efforts.
I'm thinking he would have opened up Alaska to drilling if he had the chance. But don't quote me.
That could have been good or bad, depending on how it would have been handled. I think we should ditch fossil fuels for concentrated megawatt power production and just go nuclear. It's far cleaner than any other renewable, doesn't harm wildlife (if managed properly) and we have learned enough enough to put solid safeguards in place. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a35131133/advanced-nuclear-reactor-designs/
This would underwrite the whole electric future of cars, homes, and offices (and even some manufacturing) beautifully. Seems like a no-brainer. Manage and control all of the negative externalities (except for mining, maybe) in one place. No solar panels to recycle, no unsightly windmills littering the landscape, no increased bird deaths. Nuclear is far less materials intensive and so a positive impact on the waste stream as well.
I get that it's at least a decade or more out but I don't see any other way to power modern life cleanly. I like my modern amenities (even though I live in the woods) and don't relish the idea of going back to caves or even 19th century homesteading. Specialization benefits me massively. It gives me time to respond to substack comments for one thing. ;-) Food for thought.
Forward thinking. It's smart.
I've had trouble with nuclear in the past, but I'm coming around to it. The newer generation of plants appear to be safer. The one thing left is the radioactive waste - we have to find a way to safely decontaminate it, instead of burying it for future generations to discover.
Agreed. As a sci-fi fan, I love the idea of rocketing it into the sun. But, that will most likely never happen because of the risks inherent in moving the mass off the planet. This article discusses where we are at in terms of disposal, with deep burial being the most likely solution long term. https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/nuclear-waste-disposal-methods.php
Also, one good thing about bringing more nuclear power generation online would be that it would catalyze more research into reducing or neutralizing the waste, etc. Future physics and materials science may solve these problems. I believe there is much we don't know about the material world and questions we haven't even asked yet that will seed tech solutions in the future. I'm not much of a technocrat when it comes to solving people problems. But I definitely am one when it comes to solving infrastructure problems.
It is a strategic alliance of necessity that will increase revenue and stability of Arab States but there is no evidence it is motivated by a the populations becoming less anti-semitic. Most Arab states are autocracies governed by elites that have little in common with the hoi polloi. On the other hand...sometimes capitalist peace is a crucial stepping stone to other types of peace. Time will tell.
I visited Dubai recently... on a direct flight from Tel Aviv, and spoke to Emiratis who see the reality of "Palestine" and their leaders... many hearts and minds have been changed... for the better...
As I am wont to point out, when a non-Muslim characterizes Islam as a "religion of peace" he is deluded, but when a Muslim claims Islam is a religion of peace, oddly he is not lying. He is betraying the fact that Islam has a defective concept of peace. In Semitic languages the consonants are the root of the word: note that salam (peace) and islam (submission) have the same consonants. In the Muslim mind, peace and submission are inextricably linked. The only peace Islam knows is the peace between conqueror and conquered, between master and submissive slave. There are no negotiated peaces in the Islamic conception of foreign affairs, only hudna, pauses or ceasefires which can be abrogated by Muslims whenever it is to their advantage with no moral stain for duplicity (indeed it might even be regarded as immoral to not reopen hostilities at an opportune moment).
DNY, thank you for the engaging response. And the woke crowd in America is using the same tactics to create submissive followers who obey the commands of violent ideological leaders. The words are violence crowd are the greatest threat to democratic ideals because they encourage physical violence. The best thing that could happen to this country is for California to turn half red not in blood but in Republican.
In Mid-Eastern affairs, TRIBALISM is the very basic culture - much more than Islam. Hence the wars between Shia and Sunna.
Anyone who is not a member of our tribe is an enemy of our tribe - unless he is a member of a tribe with which we have a [temporary] alliance; in that case he is only a potential enemy, and we don't try to kill him.
Example: The Qur'an states explicitely the Allah designated the holy land to the Children of Israel. ALL learned Arabs [and all other Muslims] who actually read the Qur'an know this. The Qur'an is ignored when it goes against tribalism.
Well said.
I remember Khrushchev and Kennedy shaking hands and agreeing to seek world peace. Of course, "peace" to Khrushchev meant "world socialism".
The Islamic countries have been ruled by cruel bloody dictators for thousands of years. Islam is a fairly new religion but it was born in a culture of cruelty where absolute rulers stayed in power the same way Communist regimes stay in power through fear generate by murder and torture.
And the direction the Democrat regime is headed. They have the fear thing worked out to an art, and are beginning with the torture thing-emotional torture to start.
That depends what Muslim sect you belong to. Shiite Muslims (Persians) have been killing Sunni Muslims (Arabs) and vice versa for centuries. It continues to this day between Iran (Persia) and the Arab states, most notably Saudi Arabia. Prodded by warmongering neocons like Dick Cheney, fools like George W. Bush wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and shattered tens of thousands of young American lives in the arrogant belief we could end the savagery by turning Iraq into a democracy. We all know how that turned out. I say let Allah decide. If it takes a few more centuries of them killing each other, so be it.
Evidently the Islamic man who killed other Muslim men in Albuquerque was very, very unhappy that his daughter had married a man from a different sect (can't remember whether he was Shiite or Sunni).
It's worth noting that Muslims started killing other Muslims over leadership issues within just a few years of Mohammed's death. And they've never stopped.
The second I saw about the murders in Albuquerque, i was questioning if it was really the wire supremacist leftists were jumping at blaming. I was not shocked at all to find out the real perpetrator.
This isn't the first time the left fanatics have done this and it won't be the last.
My brother-in-law is a Middle Expert who has been called by news agency as an expert. He told me years ago that the Iranian fanatics weren't building an atom bomb to terrorize the west but to kill Sunnis.
The Sunnis and the Shias hate each other.
In that case it might be an idea to give them both bombs.
Except they'll soon enough get around to infidels, whom they hate almost as much as apostates.
We need a modern day Rodrigo Diaz or Charles the Hammer.
Charles Martel, The Hammer.
Yes, the very same. The Battle of Tours.
We need more like him. And El Cid.
You and I read history, something the left never does.
True, They just invent a narrative.
1619 Project???? lol Doesn't get any more idiotic or false.
It's Saturday night. What are we doing here? Time to go out. Have a great one.
Huh, I guess I stopped following this story too early. Last I heard it was a 'white nationalist' doing what Huffpo says white nationalists do.
Of course that's what the media was claiming, because they wanted it to be true.
Biden: "We had ZERO inflation in July..."
God speed to Salman Rushdie.
God damn the vile cult that facilitates this kind of act.
God help the Andy Rosses of the world who are on the front lines in the fight against its perpetrators.
God bless the likes of Bari Wiess for forcing us to look in the mirror and declare which side we’re on.
When you can’t criticize ideas this is what you get. The religious right pushed me away from the right in the 80’s. The difference is they were not bound by Marcus’s Repressive Tolerance and would simply get mad.
The Religion of the New Democrat party equates group identity with oppression and cordons off any of those groups from critics. Their religious doctrines (Repressive Tolerance) mandate violence.
"New Democrats" weren't beating cops and crashing through the Capitol on January 6; that was all MAGA and rightists. What religious doctrine compelled them to do that? And what part of Marcus' Repressive Tolerance mandated that Donald Trump order his security to beat and tear-gas people in a park so he could get a photo op in front of a church?
Leftists are absolutely responsible the violence they cause, particular during the Summer of Floyd. But they are hardly alone in using violence as a means to political ends.
We all need to tell them to put down the guns, knives, and lead pipes simply because they didn't get their way on X or Y. The Rushdie attack, January 6, and Seattle/Portland/Minneapolis are the only thing that come from it, and normal Americans should no longer tolerate this kind of political violence.
You’re right that none of us should tolerate violence, and on the right we don’t. Those few who rioted at the capitol and went inside were found and were prosecuted and wound up serving time, and the right supported it. The rioters on the left during 2020-21 were NOT held to account. Leftist groups defended their actions. Kamala Harris and others bailed out the rioters. People who stood in their way were either gunned down, like David Dorn, or were put on trial for murder like Kyle Rittenhouse. The perspectives here are like night and day.
The left has used violence for decades. The right has not. January 6th was a shock because it never happens. And for the record your swipe at Trump re: Lafayette Square was debunked long ago, it is false.
I'd agree with your statement on conservatives being appalled by January 6, except that the MAGA right still insists nothing criminal occurred and all the prosecutions were political. I wish they'd just say, "Yeah, the riots and siege were wrong, wish we hadn't done that, our bad." I'd be happy to forgive the excessiveness of emotion, but find that hard to do when they insist they didn't do anything wrong that day.
I agree completely that the Left was idiotic to support the riots, arsons, personal violence against innocent passersby, and takeover of public streets that characterized the Summer of Floyd. Were I in charge in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc., I would have sorted out the legitimate protestors from the criminal element, protected the former, and thrown the latter into jail, and used the National Guard to do it if my cops were too outnumbered. And CHAZ? I would have torn it down the first day. The first job of any government is to protect public safety.
Same with January 6. Were I president that day, I would have quadruped the police presence and also had the National Guard in place. When MAGA protestors arrived, I would have ensured the protection of the shouters and sign-carriers and legal protestors, but arrested everyone who threw a punch, tear-gassed a cop, or tried to breach the gates to enter the building. No sane society should ever allow rioters to rampage its Capitol.
The Kyle Rittenhouse case should have been thrown out at arraignment. That was a political prosecution, not a criminal one, and that it went as far as it did is scandalous.
But I'm a liberal, not a leftist, Woke, or MAGA.
P.S. Sorry, but Lafayette Square was not a hoax; photos and videos prove that law enforcement cleared the park with clubs and gas so Trump could get a photo op. Holding the Bible upside down just gave it comic relief.
Well I guess (especially in light of Biden's railing on "MAGA Republicans" now) it's important to describe the difference between "conservatives" and "MAGA Republicans" because Biden did not, nor do you. Trump got 74 million votes in the last election. So who are you talking about that thinks the Jan 6th prosecutions are unjust and political? I've been a Trump supporter and while I think the prosecutions in many cases have been unfairly harsh (i.e. solitary confinement for long periods for someone with no criminal record, etc.) and that aspect has been political, I really don't know of anyone on the right who has suggested that if we had it to do all over again we'd condone rioting in the capitol.
At the same time there is plenty of video from that event that gets no airplay that shows people walking into the building calmly, staying inside the ropes even, going in unauthorized but not looking to hurt anybody, just protesting. Still wrong, but hardly an insurrection. There is also, as one commenter pointed out, evidence of it being a "false flag" in that a guy like Ray Epps, who looks like an FBI plant who was openly encouraging people to go into the building, is not prosecuted at all. Understand that, as I pointed out earlier, conservatives rioting is not really a thing; the Jan 6th event was novel. Most on the right were horrified and condemn it.
Lafayette Square was not cleared for Trump. This was debunked a year ago by the IG. Even liberal news outlets reported this. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/police-clear-lafayette-park-area-trump-hold-bible/story?id=78171712
Thanks for your reasoned comment, Michael. Here's more of what I believe:
--Conservatives have a MAGA right; Liberals have a Woke left.
--Most Americans are conservative-moderate-liberal, not hard-enders. All were appalled that the January 6 protests turned violent and that the Summer of Floyd protests turned violent too.
--The Woke left considers violence, rioting, looting, and takeover of public spaces as not a bug, but a feature, to the "worthy goal" of "destroying the evil Other."
--The MAGA right feels the same way about the Woke left, and dismissed January 6 as "tourists visiting the Capitol" or "a Little League baseball fight."
That said:
--Is there a term other than "MAGA right?" to describe the violent wing of the right? I understand that not all Trump supporters supported J6, just as not all Biden supporters supported the Floyd riots. "Woke left" is the correct term for the hard wing of my side. What would you suggest instead of "MAGA right" for your violent wing?
Next: in my analysis, the J6 crowd had four elements:
--Noisy, active, completely legal and legitimate protestors. The ones who didn't commit violence or trespass should have gotten a complete pass from police.
--Trespassers. Those who walked up the steps and through the building without violence should have been told to turn around and leave, and if they didn't, be charged with trespass, released on no bail, and given a small fine.
--Rioters, particularly those who fought police, harmed other rioters, broke out windows, and ransacked the Capitol, were not insurrectionists. But they committed crimes serious enough to earn heavy fines, jail time, or both.
The same standards I demanded of Summer of Floyd protestors and rioters, BTW. Most Floyd crowds were noisy, active, and nonviolent. State and city politicians who gave the rioters, looters, and arson a pass from any police interference because "they're so upset" should have been fired.
--Finally, J6 insurrectionists. Most there that day were not. But some were, and they were serious about hunting down Pence and Pelosi to do them harm, stop the election certification, or both. They deserve years in prison. We're talking a relative handful of the crowd that day, but it's crucial to public order to find them and put them away.
"Ray Epps, FBI false flag plant." Nobody has yet confirmed if he was or wasn't, and I don't pretend to know. What I do know is that even if he urged people to run through the Capitol, he did not hold a gun to their heads or otherwise force them to do so. People are responsible for their own decisions on breaking laws.
If Lafayette Square was not cleared specifically for a Trump photo op, then why did he just happen to be carrying a Bible for an "impromptu" walk in the park, and why did his visit happen only minutes after cops violently cleared out the protestors with gas and clubs? Sorry, but that's no coincidence: they cleared the park so he could visit and pose. He would have zero reason to carry a Bible around otherwise. I do not consider that debunked at all.
But, hey, if we agreed on everything, how dull would that be?
WELL SAID
Thank you, Sheena.
Well said. Also, some say Jan 6th was a false flag to get at Trump and the MAGA movement. Lots of evidence to support this, but you won't hear that on #msm and the #normies have zero clue. Crazy times.
That "some say" January 6 was a false flag doesn't mean it's true . . . because it isn't. Some also say the Earth is flat, but that isn't true either. "Normies" have plenty of clue.
Bless you for saying these truths.
Agreed 100%; thank you Bari and KittyKatz.