I’m glad that Jonah Goldberg found an opportunity to use “Aristotelian” in a sentence, but his overall point is wasted in the context in which he provides it. While it is true that some people would prefer a shopping mall to a public park, and vice-versa, that doesn’t mean that we can’t rely on scientists to give us the most reliable answers to scientific questions. Neil deGrasse Tyson cannot tell us whether it is better to encourage exercise or commerce, but he can explain the cosmos better than the editorial staff at the National Review.
Likewise, scientists and medical professionals can tell us how safe the abortion procedure is, or whether it will be beneficial to women’s health to insist that doctors providing abortions have a medical facility suitable for brain surgery. The Supreme Court looked at the evidence and concluded that right-wing legislators are passing laws with the sole purpose of driving abortion-providing clinics out of business. That wasn’t some aesthetic call. It wasn’t taking the side of the green spaces people over the mall shoppers. It was a correct conclusion based on data and expertise in the field of medicine and the careful collection of evidence.
Finally, it won’t do to insist that whatever the people decide must be correct and that anything contrary to the wishes of the people (as expressed by a snapshot of their will in one election season) is undemocratic. We will always have a governing elite, and we will always have experts who know the most about important things. Democracy is how we tell these people that they’re doing a bad job. It’s not a way for us to make decisions for them.
When our elites fail us, the whole system breaks down, and the surest way for them to fail us is for them to stop believing in the very idea of knowing the most about important things. That’s what has happened on the right in this country. And one of the consequences of that is that we’ve lost the freedom to vote people on the left out of office for doing a bad job.
Sorry, but you don’t put a blabbering schizophrenic patient in charge of the hospital surgery team because the team in place is making too many mistakes. You just grin and bear it, and hope things somehow take a turn for the better.
The brain of the right is out to lunch and it doesn’t appear that it will be returning in the afternoon. And, yet, folks like Jonah Goldberg keep making excuses for their abdication of duty.
“Fundamentally, the fight over abortion isn’t about evidence, it’s about principles. That doesn’t mean evidence isn’t important, just that its importance is entirely contingent on the question you’re trying to answer.”–Goldberg
Well, of course. “Their side” argues that the principle at stake is the “sanctity of life” or some such notion. “Our side” argues that the principle at stake is, for example, recognizing and respecting women’s autonomy and reproductive rights. There’s no common ground here, and thus (in the minds of the right-wing SCOTUS justices) the very idea of some sort of “common-sense” compromise on abortion rights is an absurd betrayal of principle. Evidence about the merits of particular medical practices is entirely beside the point for those justices.
Whether it be on the issue of abortion, guns, gay rights, creationism, abstinence education, or any of the Right’s favorite issues, one is inexorably forced to the conclusion that compromise is impossible. The only way to a good outcome is to go head to head with them and defeat them decisively.
Of course, the conservative “sanctity of life” argument is specious anyway because most conservatives want to push this to the ultimate conclusion, which is that the sanctity of the fetus takes precedence over everything else, including the life of the mother. Let the mother die bearing this child because the fetus rules. And once the child is born, then it’s truly on it’s own and don’t expect any help from the GOP.
This is why I don’t buy the “sanctity of life” argument from these hypocrites. It’s all very well to blather about that, but they don’t really mean it.
And the other logical extension of this argument is that far too many conservative anti-abortionists are out there ginning up and inciting the masses, and that has definitely resulted in adult nurses, doctors and other health care workers being murdered in cold blood. Sanctity of life, my Aunt Fanny. And these people never ever tone down their rhetoric. If anything they ramp it up. Witness Carly Fiorina’s totally egregious LIEs about live fetuses allegedly writhing on a table top in agony before being murdered with a knife or something. Where’s the video that Carly lied that she “saw.”
When it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the recent PP videos were fake and fraudulent, conservatives doubled down – just like Benghazi – and kept insisting that they weren’t fake and that PP was engaging in illegal activities. These people aren’t even attempting to play fair. They’re out to oppress women and kids with their draconian measures, but they pretend it’s all in the name of sanctity of life. Baloney.
These people are feckin unhinged; their sanctity of life arguments don’t hold water; and Doughy Pantload is full of crap… but he’s highly compensated for it… blast his hellspawn mother Lucianne.
the only way to cling to fraudulent ideologies and failed policies is to devalue education, denigrate expertise and dispute facts. gain control of at least part of the communications infrastructure and a parallel universe can be constructed to achieve epistemic closure, for as long as solid reality permits.
orwell:
sadly, i see at least one more national election cycle in which conservatives will deny the inevitable and futilely triple down, since, in the same way that 2016 became hillary’s run after being unexpectedly sidelined by obama, 2020 will be ted’s run after being unexpectedly sidelined by trump. after ted’s loss, modern conservatism will finally be a spent force.
Goldberg’s point is not that “we can’t rely on scientists to give us the most reliable answers to scientific questions.” His point is that whether or not abortion is the right solution in general, or in a particular case, is not a scientific question.
Science can contribute what science can contribute. Furthermore science is by no means completely settled, there are controversies in science as well. Such controversies can only be settled by scientific methods, but many have not yet been settled, and as they are (more or less) settled, new ones are continually cropping up. But that is all on the level of science.
There’s no justification for telling lies or being ignorant about abortion, but after you take into account all the available scientific information, the decision remains a moral/ ethical one. Rhetoric based on fact, rather than scientific demonstration, is all that is available to the vir bonus peritusque dicendi (good person skilled in the art of speaking) for the purposes of persuasion.
Priscianus, I think you’re giving Goldberg way too much credit. First of all, he often writes in an (intentionally?) elliptical manner which makes it hard to figure out what his point is. In this piece, he first says that we can all agree on the evidence but disagree on the solution — which is at best a red herring and at worst dishonest, since conservatives reject the evidence on climate change, tax cuts, health care, and many other issues.
But part of his target here seems to be not just abortion in general but the SCOTUS abortion case in Texas. And let’s be clear about that: regardless of how one feels about abortion, that law was absolutely not designed to improve women’s health. It was designed to shutter abortion clinics. And that’s what it did.
You can think that’s a good thing or a bad thing. You can’t say that the law was about women’s health. Goldberg at best is trying to muddy that distinction.
tl;dr: He’s a liar or an idiot.
What does your comment have to do with the Texas law?
Nothing. It was a response to something ou said.
Other than the Latin phrase that I didn’t understand, I thought his remarks were spot on. Whether abortion ought to be legal is indeed not a question that is informed by the scientific method.
The key issue is not the science, it is who is empowered to make that moral/ethical decision.
The problems with science come in the definition of “life”. Whose definition of “life” holds? Science complicated that issue by differentiating developmental phases — blastocyst, embryo, fetus and describing the process by which a human being becomes independently viable. That is driven by the principle that it is the potential human being, without an advocate, who is most important, regardless of the effects on the woman carrying the child.
The contending principle is that a woman should have control of her own body. It is the woman’s decision, and hers alone, with whatever counsel of science or moral/ethical principles she chooses.
The political issue comes when some group of legislators, largely middle-aged white men, decide that the decision is that of the state.
No amount of science will resolve that political issue: woman’s power and responsibility or state power and responsibility on behalf of the blastocyst,embryo,fetus, child?
Whatever botched science, it is in service to those making a fundamentally political argument: who gets to choose?
If historical practices are good enough for common law, then anthropological data ought to be good enough to establish the traditional ability of women to control their fertility through herbs or culturally enforced abstinence for the benefit of their society’s resources.
Jonah Goldberg is a hack. Period. Full stop.
The proof of that is extended with each post/column he authors. And worse with each book of hackneyed propaganda he publishes to entertain the stupid.
He’s not worth the brain cycles to point out what an obtuse phony he is.
Goldberg is the poster child for the destructiveness of nepotism.