I just want to post some communist reeducational material for the benefit of Glenn Beck and Haley Barbour.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted on July 2nd. Here are the results of the election in November.
As Eugene Robinson noted on the Rachel Maddow Show tonight, there’s a reason that black people all left the Republican Party after 1964.
Yep – that’s primarily why I’m not a Republican…
This is from the April 28, 1923 issue of Time magazine. Leonidas C. Dyer was a Republican from Missouri who was swept out of office in 1932 as FDR and the New Dealers were being swept in. It’s too bad he lost. He lost in the next three election cycles, too. Then he retired. People should know his name because he’s a civil rights hero. He tried to establish the principle that the Federal Government had the right and the responsibility to stop lynching. He failed because the Senate Democrats filibustered the bill he had passed in the House of Representatives.
But when the Democrats finally came to their senses, the southern Democrats became Republicans. That’s the history. There is no other history.
To answer the question you pose:
It has nothing to do with appealing to a constituency.
Trust me.
As someone who has experienced a ridiculous amount of wanted pregnancy loss, I assure you that privacy concerns are the number one reason why I am pro-choice. Every time I’ve experienced the trauma of losing a wanted pregnancy, I have imagined a system that required me to document or rationalize why my partner was suddenly no longer pregnant. It is the most horrifying thing to contemplate imaginable.
I respect your religious beliefs. I do.
But you really must start listening to those of us on the other side of this issue and learn from our stories. I have my own, which privacy prevents me from sharing. But we’ve had so many women over the years here tell their stories of rape or unwanted pregnancy. Choice is the most humane position. I wish there was a way that people could avoid becoming pregnant if they didn’t want to become pregnant that didn’t involve total abstinence, but there is not. And you cannot devise a humane way to enforce a law that compels people to carry their pregnancies to term or that holds them accountable if they do not. Any attempt to that would trample people at their most vulnerable and viciously invade their privacy. It’s the truth, and it isn’t about winning votes.
I think you missed this not-insignificant part of my discussion:
I then laid out how my position on abortion has nothing to do with Scripture and everything to do with the fact that “from the moment of conception there is no ontological difference between that baby and a full-grown adult besides growth and development. There is no point after conception where the baby “becomes” human, she is human from the moment a human genome is created” and “the same laws that apply to killing any human being have to apply across the board to all human beings, be they newly conceived or terminally ill.”
I most certainly hear those on the other side of this issue and I understand your stories – and my own stories – but I find them to be about as persuasive as the stories about happy slaves who regularly ate at the dinner table with their masters – the stories may well have been true, and the feelings genuine, but they in no way justified the policy of slavery. I know many people object to that comparison, but to me it is crystal-clear inasmuch as the primary justification for both issues was a denial of the humanity of their victims – property rights and reproductive are both inherent rights, but they are both secondary to the fundamental human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in that order. My pursuit of happiness cannot infringe on your liberty. Your liberty can not infringe on my life. Your life takes precedence over my liberty, so we have speed limits and traffic laws. My liberty takes precedence over your pursuit of happiness, so we have labor laws and the 13th-15th Amendments.
That’s my perspective, others may (and clearly will) differ.
This isn’t exactly something most rational people would say is a minor thing that you can just say “besides.”
It is “minor” in the sense that there is no ontological difference between a zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, youth, teenager, adult, and one who is elderly – they are all stages in the growth and development of a human being.
Put another way: when does one “become” a human being?
Okay, I accept the distinction you are making. You are not invoking any religious beliefs to support your anti-choice view.
But my point still stands. You can’t devise a law that protects every embryo from destruction that doesn’t brutally invade people’s privacy, including those who have lost their embryos against their will.
That’s why it doesn’t matter whether you think the embryo’s right to life trumps the potential mother’s liberty. I disagree with you on that point, but it isn’t dispositive.
If you have to invade everyone’s privacy to protect embryos, you’ve crossed a line. Without a workable law, you can’t advocate for a legal position. At best, you can make a moral case to people who are in a position to decide. But you can’t advocate a law that would traumatize people dealing with the the unwanted loss of a pregnancy.
It’s different to say that you think someone is morally obligated to do something than it is to say that they are legally obligated to do something.
And, on this issue, that distinction should be decisive.
I think that matter should be even clearer than that, but meeting you half-way, that’s how I see it.
I don’t see it as any more invasive than what already exists regarding already-born infants – parents who have lost children to SIDS or other maladies are no less traumatized than parents who have lost children to miscarriage, yet the state imposes its expectations on them nonetheless. I’m simply saying that the point of official responsibility should be moved a few months earlier in the process – much like a doctor is required to record a live birth, the requirement should be to record a living baby. Those who never see a doctor have a responsibility to notify the state of a live birth, that requirement simply needs to be moved up a few months. There’s no need for a new regulatory scheme – the scheme already exists – the decisive moment of responsibility simply needs to be moved up a few months.
And do understand that it’s not merely that I’m not invoking any religious beliefs, I’m stating clearly that there is no religious basis for a position for or against abortion – certainly not a Scriptural basis. I’m saying that religion has nothing to do with it – at all – contrary to what the Southern Baptist Convention and the Vatican would have you to believe.
Thanks for reminded us who we are, and why we are where we are today.
Johnson predicted the slide that Democrats would experience after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it, the Southern Strategy, did happen and work. And it is a continuing fact. But the Republicans learned much more from it than just the fact that racism works. Hate is a powerful tool in politics and any racial, ethnic, or religious subgroup can be used for political purpose.