Posted on 01/15/2012 11:51:16 AM PST by Kaslin
In his book How to Stop Dialogue In Its Tracks, Sacha Baron Cohen provides three awkward statements for guys that can be employed to bring a lousy date to a quick conclusion; “I just believe that environmentalists should mind their own business.” Or, 2. “Don’t you find the obsolescence of the slide rule to be terribly regrettable?” And, 3. “Does the Roe versus Wade decision trouble you as much as it does me?”
In recognition of the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling this week, I am going to jump right on topic number three. OK, there is no such book calledHow to Stop Dialogue In Its Tracks. But if there were, Sacha Baron Cohen surely would have been the author.
In spite of there having been a Supreme Court ruling in 1973, the pro-life versus pro-choice political debate remains unsettled in America after all these years. There are three good reasons for this.
First is the abject sloppiness of the Roe versus Wade legal ruling. The majority opinion, delivered by Associate Justice Blackmun, cited a right to privacy given to pregnant women by way of the due process clause in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Here is that very wording of the amendment:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The reason that you don’t see the word “privacy” anywhere in there is because Section 1 was written to eliminate the practice of slavery in the privacy of the plantation. The notion that behavior done in private should be exempt from state laws is a Pandora’s Box that could apply to the worst of domestic behavior if carried to its logical conclusion. Harry Blackmun did not pull the idea of privacy out of sound jurisprudence. He pulled it out of his own jurist posterior.
Judge Robert Bork wrote this about the Roe v. Wade ruling in his landmark book, The Tempting of America, “Unfortunately, in the entire opinion, there is not one line of explanation, not one sentence that qualifies as legal argument.”
The second reason that the abortion matter is not settled is that it is disquieting to people of good conscience. And to my fellow pro-lifers, I will assert that we need to mature our side of the debate to a point where pro-choice proponents do not feel like we are casting judgement against them. Please understand that they are dealing with a personal uneasiness in their own lives. We should be about winning their hearts rather than defeating their priorities.
I believe that the primary reason that settling answers about abortion are so elusive is that the wrong questions were asked by the Supreme Court in 1973, led by Chief Justice Warren Burger. During the Roe v. Wade hearings, the justices posed questions in an attempt to establish conclusions about when life begins in the development of an unborn human. The prosecution provided expert testimony, presenting the latest scientific guesswork of the period. All of the phases of in-utero fetal development were described to the court.
Out of that conversation, the notion of trimesters was adopted in the majority opinion. The court reasoned that during the first trimester, the fetus was not to be considered a person. With that understanding, the Fourteenth Amendment wording, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life” would not apply.
As the fetus develops, states are allowed to add restrictions on abortions up to the point of birth. But no personhood is assumed until a live birth is complete. Even the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 merely outlaws the procedure. It does not attempt to outlaw the destruction of the fetus, which is likely how the law was possible to be upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.
The mess that will not be resolved began with the assumption by Justice Burger that the Supreme Court had the authority to determine when life begins; that they owned the role of assigning personhood to the fetus at a point in development; that the Supreme Court Justices could endow people with the right to life.
The problem is that the Burger court forgot that the Supreme Court is an instrument of the government, instituted by the people and deriving their just powers from the consent of those people. A branch of that government should not even entertain the idea that they are in the position of the Creator.
As the founders realized and recorded, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The Supreme Court does not endow us with our rights. They merely secure the rights already endowed to us by our Creator.
So, when does life begin?
Interesting conversation for a good date, but not the business of government employees; even those employed as Supreme Court Justices.
Hand him a joint and a lighter.
“How to Stop a Liberal from Talking”
Don’t start in the first place
Is not aborting a fetus the same as taking a human life? Do you support taking human life?
I'll settle for defeating them, though.
That question usually results in the leftard going off on a tangent of how many people were killed in the wars by the EEEEVVILLLL BOOOOOOOSH.
>>”How to Stop a Liberal from Talking”<<
Confront him with facts.
In recognition of the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling this week, I am going to jump right on topic number three. OK, there is no such book called How to Stop Dialogue In Its Tracks. But if there were, Sacha Baron Cohen surely would have been the author.
Obviously this guy has read How to Stop People Reading Your Articles in Two Paragraphs or Less.
If there were such a book Sacha's smarter cousin Simon Baron-Cohen could have been the author.
I’ve found a fun way to get under liberals’ skin is to regularly describe certain people or behavior as “normal”.
I know a lot of liberal acquaintances and one sure fire retort to any Obama argument is is “You can throw the race card and call me a racist anytime you feel like it..”
If you confront them with facts they just start with the ad hominem attacks. Emotion is where they retreat to when confronted with objectivity, and it is usually ugly.
Examples:
Abortion: ask them when someone becomes human. Most will say at third trimester. But not if the mother doesn't want it. Then facts are based on feelings.
Global warming: Ask them why are we worried about global warming in the coldest part of the Quaternary Ice Age at the end of our interglacial period while we are at dangerously low levels of CO2. They will look at you like they never heard any of that before and go on with some nutty ideas that we are out of the ice age when even the global alarmist don't believe that.
They drive their 'facts' based on feelings.
let me just clarify what you are saying.
It is normal for a woman to be executed for being raped or it is normal for a 53 year old man to marry a 6 year old girl. It is normal to execute someone for saying something that isn't politically correct.
Is that the type of normal we are referring to?
WTF are you bitching about? No one forced you to read the column
That's never worked for me, usually resulted in the yelling and stomping off in a huff. So I guess technically you are right - they stop talking, at least to me...
If the person declares that an embryo or fetus does not become a human being until it reaches a certain gestational age, and consequently destroying an embryo or fetus which has not reached that age does not constitute killing a human being, an "abortion equals killing" argument will be meaningless to such a person, at least with regard to those embryos or fetuses which have not yet reached the age in question.
I've spoken to a number of people who are of the opinion that it is murder to kill a fetus which has reached a certain age, but believe that destruction of embryos or fetuses prior to that age is not murder. I would suggest that rather than regarding such people as being the moral equivalent of those who insist that infanticide should be legal even after birth, it would be more helpful to solicit their help in protecting the late-term unborn.
In addition to being helpful in the obvious way, such an approach could also help in another more significant way: most people in the U.S. either have had an abortion or know someone who has. Many such people are stuck in a guilt trap: they believe that if abortion is evil, then they or their friends must be evil; since they refuse to believe that they or their friends are evil, they can therefore not believe that abortion is evil. Such people will do anything and everything necessary to protect that illusion, since they believe that to be the only way to prevent them from being destroyed by guilt. In reality, the efforts to pretend abortion is okay simply make them feel worse and worse about it, when what they really need is to say "I am a human being who made a terrible mistake, but I am wiser now, and can work for what is right from here out."
I would suggest that people who had an early-term abortion (or have friends who did so) but join in the fight against late-term abortions and infanticide may find that such work helps them to make the necessary leap from having to pretend that what they did was okay, to recognizing that it wasn't but that such recognition and atonement cures guilt far more effectively than denial.
Note that the message of atonement can be delivered as a religious one or a purely secular one. Even from a purely secular psychological standpoint, recognizing that one has done something wrong is far healthier than trying to justify one's wrongs with known falsehoods.
The only thing I found that works to stop a liberal from talking is to let them talk until they lose their voice.
There really is no such thing as having a political “discussion” with a liberal. They always start to yell, sweat, cuss and then throw random numbers around like, “62% of Americans like Obama according to an (make up a pollster) blah, blah”.
Incorporating common sense and logic into the “conversation” is where you lose them.
almost impossible to stop a libtard from talking.
that is their one medium of existence — words, and words only.
But you can throw them off balance and off subject by saying
the ‘wrong’ word. they will go after that like dog & bone.
done it many times, still fun.
That's kind of the point. After the "non-existent book" gambit, this guy lost a reader. And more than one, since most people didn't get much further than the title to judge by the comments.
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