When I read this letter to the editor in our local paper (the Kirksville Daily Express), I couldn’t help but pass it on. It’s people like this who, I believe, could be crucial to the Democrats’ chances to pick up Senate seats and electoral votes in Middle America. If they are already voting Democratic, we could lose them unless we tone down the extreme abortion rhetoric. Likewise, if they are voting Republican, they are ripe for the picking if we reach out to them, due to their dissatisfaction with GOP policies in other areas.
[Rather than type “(sic)” over and over, I’ll just point out that the odd lack of capitalisation of “Social Security” is preserved from the original, as are all other grammar and usage choices.]
Dear Editor,
It’s not social security that needs fixing; instead it’s our political system. Social security was started by a wise president, F.D. Roosevelt, who wanted to help people with their retirement. However, our greedy politicians, in order to help balance a budget often full of pork, started dipping into this fund and putting I.O.U.s back into it.
No wonder social security is going broke!
If Congress would put social security in a lock-box fund for social security purposes only, the fund would build itself up and keep going. Congress then would have to use our tax money more wisely by cutting out wastes like many people feel this war with Iraq was, the money wasted in space, raises for Congress, etc.
In the first place, putting money into private accounts would not solve the problem. Instead, it would only make the problem worse in the long run. Congress needs to study this problem very carefully before they ruin a good system. Some of the causes are the fact that millions of babies killed by legalized abortion have kept them from paying into the system. Also, sending jobs overseas has hurt the system.
President Bush, being from a wealthy family, doesn’t know what it is to gamble with your retirement money! I feel it would be better to raise the cap on social security withholding or use money from other sources than to privatize social security.
Louis J. Anesi
Now, I don’t agree with this guy about everything (the war, of course; and I do support the right to first trimester abortion). But I did think it might interest some to see the perspective of an (almost certainly) older gent who most likely has never been to a blog, and who opposes abortion but who otherwise sounds like a textbook Democrat.
I agree. We focus on the fact that the reason they are looting Social Security is because Bush has run up record deficits by insisting on tax cuts for the rich.
This diary harks back to my diary of Converting the red to purple some weeks back.
So I will write here again my idea of joining republican blog sites and inserting our toned down version of Dems. and hitting on the things we can come to agreement on and Social Security is one of them among many others that seem to be surfacing of late..
I don’t listen to politicians much, but when I do I rarely hear them speak about abortion at all. And when they are speaking of it, I wouldn’t exactly characterize their words as ‘extreme abortion rhetoric’. Am not really sure what would be considered that, in fact.
The vast majority of people that I encounter speak of a “woman’s right to choose”, which doesn’t seem at all extreme to me. Or a right to determine and control their own reproductive health, etc. Of course, there are activists and like most activists for a cause, they are passionate, and possibly some rhetoric would be considered extreme, but that’s what activists do.
I think reaching out to Republicans and so on is great, but if they are listening, absorbing and parroting the extreme rhetoric from the other side, not much of anything we say about abortion or anything else is going to seem “moderate” because it is already pre-demonized.
On another of his points, I read a novel written in 1960 or so, by Creighton(sp) or someone, where abortion was the theme. Only it was about illegal abortions and the ramifications both to doctors and to patients who were unable to find a real doctor, etc. Anyway, it definitely had a pro legalization agenda, but the point is, it mentioned that there were approx 1 million illegal abortions a year that were performed. Which is approximately the amount of legal abortions performed a year now, 40 years later. I thought that was interesting.
I would agree with you, but there is ‘extreme abortion rhetoric’ coming from the other side. Heck, I’m willing not to discuss it – but they don’t seem to want to leave it at that. Abortion is as old as the hills (even St. Augustine was ‘pro-choice)- it’s going to happen as long as we don’t have a system that properly educates people on birth control. I’d give up something on abortion in exchange for the other.
Time to pull out my favourite op-ed piece on the subject. This is Sarah Blustain, deputy editor of The American Prospect, from TAP Online, 11/21/04 (emphases mine):
I should point out here that Maryscott O’Connor, for one, has forcefully presented a very different attitude about her own abortion. But I think Ms. Blustain is correct in the vast majority of cases.
I would only add that while Democratic politicians do understandably shy away from the level of rhetoric found in the grassroots, they find it necessary during primary season to go to the “cattle calls” held by organisations like NARAL, and genuflect to their hardline views. Even Dennis Kucinich, who seemed in every other respect to be running a candidacy based around “telling it like it is, and let the chips fall where they may”, found it necessary to face political reality and jettison his anti-abortion views shortly before entering the race.
I read the article. A couple of times, even. And, while I feel for this woman’s ambivalence, I still don’t see where the ‘extreme rhetoric’ comes in.
She seems to be stating (and I may have this wrong, I read quickly), that she considers saying “a woman’s right to choose” is extreme. Or, at the least, unfortunate. Or that saying, “My body is not public property!” is extreme rhetoric. Or, that acknowledging that some people may feel great angst over having had an abortion is preferable to acknowledging that some feel none at all. Why can’t they both be acknowledged, and not be considered “extreme”? I’m afraid it’s impractical (and inane) to think one can fit women into little approved boxes, so that their feelings or lack of them don’t offend anyone.
Anyway, since I obviously don’t grasp what you or this author consider “extreme rhetoric” even still, maybe you will spell it out more clearly? And why you consider it exteme, as well.
How about this post below? Do you see the point I’m making there?
Alan
Maverick Leftist
What “extreme rhetoric”? I thought the consensus was “safe, legal, and rare”? I don’t think democrats have to alter their positions, so much as teach people how we got there.
Roe dealt with the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, and almost parenthetically with abortion. The question before the court was: under what circumstance(s) does the State have a right to intervene in that relationship. Answer: absent a “compelling State interest”, never. The State has absolutely no business intruding between a doctor and her patient.
When life begins is a debate we’re not going to solve anytime soon, and shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. Better to argue the fact that abortion is a medical procedure, made as an informed decision following a patient’s consultation with her doctor. Women who elect to have the procedure fully understand “safe, legal, and rare”; that the decision is not made lightly; and carries life-long pain.
We need to constantly present the issue in historic terms, framed in context of the ruling that justifiably removed the State from a decision made inside a doctor’s office. The rhetoric is not inflammatory. People are ignorant of the facts.
These ‘gents’ who are so eager to force women to give birth, and establish the state as the owner of womens’ bodies should refocus their efforts on encouraging science to develop technology that will permit men to conceive and give birth.
No doubt they are merely reacting to the biological injustice of it all.
I responded at length to a similar question about “what extreme rhetoric?” above.
But I think you (and many others) are way off base when you try to short-circuit the difficult moral dilemma that surrounds abortion by blithely dismissing it as “a medical procedure”, “a woman’s own body”, “between a woman and her doctor”, etc. The subtext of that is “Anyone who thinks a fetus–even a fairly late term one–is a ‘baby’ must be a simpleminded religious fanatic, and such people are beneath my contempt.” Right? Because if you were to acknowledge that the line between “product of conception” and “baby” is a fuzzy rather than a sharp one, you’d have to come up with a very different, and much less simplistic, argument.
And while I believe this very brusque line of argument is philosophically and scientifically invalid, perhaps more important is the fact that it figuratively gives the finger to anyone who is at all ambivalent about abortion. And if we want to lure a few of those people to our side (we do, don’t we?), that’s just not going to cut it.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
Well the old guy? is right about Social Security but that ridiculous idea that abortions are keeping millions from working/paying into the system is such stupid propaganda crap.
Might be that all the people who can’t find decent jobs and minorities who have much higher unemployment rates were able to work than we’d have those millions paying into the system. Concentrate on social programs for education and jobs, money for pro-environmental related jobs and we’d have a lot more money going into the system. To say nothing of making tax cheats/rich people pay their fair share.
And Al Gore was right to keep talking about the lockbox on Social Security and got ridiculed for that…Then again wasn’t it bush who said when campaigning then that ‘what did Gore think that SS was some sort of government program’?. Guess bush musta thought it was his own personal lock box with him having the key.
I think several talking points are that private accounts take trillions out of SS and how is that supposed to be made up, that would you want to put your money in an ‘enron type’account and hope for the best, and getting the rich to be taxed fairly would be a big help.
The ‘Social Security lockbox’ this gentleman speaks of is a fantastic idea, and something the Dems have spoken about for a while – didn’t Gore mention something like this in the 2000 election season?
Speaking as someone who lives near and with the people that Dems need to reach….
We have a lot of work to do.
I mentioned this above in my comments and yes he did and he got terribly ridiculed by the press and everyone for continuously talking about the lockbox. Must have been trying to tell everyone something about what might come to pass if bush got in..or stole into the white house anyway.
I thought so! Thanks, Chocolate. I actually looked around a bit for it and couldn’t find anything. You’ve set my mind at ease. =)
You’re welcome MM…my mind tends to be a lockbox of odds and ends of information, like trivial pursuit. I don’t know a lot about anything but have lots of bits and pieces of info floating around up there.