CBS' decision to run the ad has generated much debate over censorship, abortion "rights", and the abortion controversy. The New York Times editorial board opines:
The National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America and other voices for protecting women’s reproductive freedom have called on CBS to yank it.The pro-choice side engages in a quite wily argumentative strategy by couching the debate in terms of "rights". I mean, who could argue with protecting one's inherent rights? But such a paradigm, where the pertinent issue becomes the supposed oppression of women, distracts from the central point of contention concerning abortion. One's position on this issue doesn't constitute an opinion or "belief" (as Tebow unfortunately put it) or taking a side on a person's God-given rights, it's actually a matter of defining life. The abortion debate reduces to the issue of when life begins, how we define life, and what circumstances justify ending life. Pro-choice advocates dissimulate on the issue by injecting rhetoric like "allowing women to make their own decisions" and "protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices." No one wishes to undermine the freedom women experience; instead, pro-lifers wish to protect the most vulnerable of "lives".
[Some miscellany on abortion:
- For a humorous take, see this video and article both from The Onion.
- Further, I just don't understand how someone could look at an aborted fetus and not at least find the "conception begins at life" viewpoint somewhat viable.
- Finally, I enjoy relaying to pro-choice advocates, the kind that see abortion as merely an innocuous proxy for birth control, my future decision to abort a child because I don't think he'll like my favorite football team. After all, if one can abort a fetus simply because one is unprepared for parenthood, that implies it has essentially no moral value and thus any arbitrary reason should suffice (the above article from The Onion alludes to this as a reasonable response to abortion).]
CBS was right to change its policy of rejecting paid advocacy commercials from groups other than political candidates. After the network screens ads for accuracy and taste, viewers can watch and judge for themselves. Or they can get up from the couch and get a sandwich.I have to agree with those opposing the commercial. The Super Bowl or any sports event is not the proper place to push a political or moral message. I want sports, that's it. And for God's sakes, can we stop with old men discussing their erections (or lack thereof) as well?
17 comments:
Off topic:
I hope you will do a post on how Bush's enormous funding of AIDS treatment in Africa has backfired. The number of people infected increased once the treatments were provided. They figured they no longer had to exercise any restraint.
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-business-us.html
War on AIDS Hangs in Balance
The battle to fight AIDS in the developing world is reaching a critical turning point. The growth in U.S. funding has slowed dramatically, while the number of people requiring treatment has skyrocketed.
It reminds me of the comment about feeding stray animals. Handouts just seem to create more need rather than an improvement in the situation.
Few things cause me greater skepticism regarding the possibility of intelligent dialogue on political issues than the utter corruption of the abortion debate. As you've noted, one could make well-considered, rational arguments in favor of abortion, but conventional choicers rarely do, instead making an inane plea that would be the death of democratic governance if we actually believed it. Choice for the sake of choice applies to everything. Indeed, one could say that democratic governments exist for the exclusive purpose of limiting the potential actions of others and forcing them to take other actions against their will. The question is what will be enforced and why. (This incoherency is common to American politics of all stripes, of course, but it's never more egregious than here.)
And something like half the people in this country actually buy into this argument, completely oblivious to its utter hollowness. The purported secular rationalists in this debate evidently can't reason their way out of a wet paper bag. Unbelievable. (On the plus side, no doubt some conventional choicers have more practical, coherent reasons for their position, and keep them hidden because they're politically incorrect or callous. But probably not enough of them.)
Where do you stop in censoring views?
It's OK for the feminists to push their propaganda into all walks of life (ever watched any movies showing women doing things that even the average male would be afraid to do?) but not for the other side?
Isn't that what the SC's decision about campaign finance is about? Restricting the right of corporations to get their message out creates more inequalities than it eliminates.
What does it matter if some women are going to carry babies to term that they might not? The battle is not about women being able to abort or not, it's an ideological battle.
If one less Tim Tebow would mean one less crack baby or one less low IQ thug, then I think keeping abortion legal is justified. This is why I don't get Steve Sailer's obsession with the Freakanomics guys. Sure their data was wrong, but if abortion was illegal we'd have far more NAM criminals to worry about today. If anything, abortion should be subsidized by the government so that low income people with poor future time orientation can get it more easily.
I hate advertisements of any kind so I can't really speak to having a view regarding the appropriateness of this ad. Oh, and I also hate professional sports. For all I care they can advertise gold credit erections running across the screen all super bowl long. (THAT I would watch. Some gang of kids singing about their inability to get an ereection until they sold and/or bought gold? Fabulous.)
As for abortions, I really don't care. Society is fucked as it is and the abortion issue at this point is a very tiny one. Stopping abortions isn't going to happen even if Roe v. Wade is overturned so society is likely to remain fucked. That being the case I'd say that abortion could be chosen by the parents (notice the plural there) up until the seventh month after birth. Let's face it babies are so adorable that... well, there's nothing more adorable but a newborn baby aint a person. In fact it aint worth shit. Your dog, heck your hamster, is more of a person than your newborn.
Yeah, so parents' right to choose is just fine by me. BUT, I naturally hate the smug ruling class who dictate what's Right and Good and True and thus almost invariably defend and fight for the opinion of the losing class - though only when that opinion is similar in worth to that of the previaling one (not, of course, when the persecuted opinion is an illuminati conspiracy spanning two thousand years).
The abortion issue is just such a case. As we all know the Right has a reasonable view. Heck, killing abortion doctors is a reasonable view. For decades the "pro-life" view was persecuted, mocked and condemned, thus I fought for it. Now, the tide may be turning and human nature abhors an equilibrium (equilibrium means DOUBT and the masses can not suffer doubt, they must be CERTAIN of what is Good and True and Just) so for all we know the Right to lifers may become ascendant. If this happens and the question of abortion comes to be viewed as Americans in our day generally view child pornography (and no, none of this is remotely likely - as mentioned above) then I'll fight stropngly for the pro-choice view.
I can live with Doubt and Nuance and It-Depends.
mnuez
"This is why I don't get Steve Sailer's obsession with the Freakanomics guys. Sure their data was wrong, but if abortion was illegal we'd have far more NAM criminals to worry about today."
I think Sailer's point is that abortion mostly affects women with enough self interest to get their butts to the clinic and has little impact on the lower classes. So the thug population grows as an overall percentage because the average group doesn't keep up with the losers. Abortion law has less impact on the upper classes because they have doctor friends and they are far better at using contraception correctly than the lowest classes. Personally, I think women would just be more careful if abortion were illegal because that is exactly what they used to do before abortion and welfare. Individuals had to be responsible for themselves. If abortion weren't legal, women would make more of an effort not to get pregnant.
they [upper classes] are far better at using contraception correctly than the lowest classes.
I'm not sure about this. I mean even the dumbest person understands how to use a condom and they're inundated with the idea of using birth control.
What dumb people can't rationalize is the appropriate social and economic situations in which to have children. They see no problem with getting knocked up and popping out a few babies, even though they lack a stable partner, a stable home, stable income, etc. They don't connect the dots.
"well, there's nothing more adorable but a newborn baby aint a person. In fact it aint worth shit. Your dog, heck your hamster, is more of a person than your newborn."
Can you explain possibly the most insane comment ever made on this website?
"I think Sailer's point is that abortion mostly affects women with enough self interest to get their butts to the clinic and has little impact on the lower classes."
It would have more impact on the lower classes if we didn't subsidize single moms. Take away their welfare checks and they'll think twice before popping out another kid. Affordable abortion needs to be an option because lots of low class women won't use a condom because their low class alpha boyfriends don't like them. Every HBDer should support abortion.
The Super Bowl or any sports event is not the proper place to push a political or moral message.
If you reject the 40-year-old secularism / non-discrimination message and accept the America is a Christian nation, then Superbowl and every other event in this country is an appropriate venue for airing a Christain ad.
The most popular form of "birth control" in Christian and pre-Christian Europe (and I assume elsewhere in the world) before the 18th century was actual infanticide where the unwanted baby was either left in the woods to die or was smothered by a wet-nurse.
I know what you mean OneSDTV in terms of inanity. Human babies aren't particularly cute or adorable - puppies and kittens are adorably cute. A human baby is nothing but a screaming, eating, pooping machine.
TUJ,
Source please?
I have a really hard time believing infanticide was the most popular means of birth control even in Christian Europe.
Christians have never liked Abortion, much less that.
"A human baby is nothing but a screaming, eating, pooping machine."
Takes one to know one.
Christians have never liked Abortion
Actually, their position has been inconsistent until recently (past 200 years or so - which makes me question how sacred an embryo actually is).
For example, Aquinas (somehow) concluded "ensoulement" did not occur until the 2nd month of the embryo's development.
Source please?
Infanticide
Greece and Rome
Medea killing her sons, by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix (1862).The historical Greeks considered the practice of adult and child sacrifice barbarous.[24] However, exposure of newborns was widely practiced in ancient Greece. In Greece the decision to expose a child was typically the father's, although in Sparta the decision was made by a group of elders.[25] Exposure was the preferred method of disposal, as that act in itself was not murder; moreover, the exposed child technically had a chance of being rescued by the gods or any passersby. [26] This very situation was a recurring motif in Greek mythology.[2]
The practice was prevalent in ancient Rome, as well. Philo was the first philosopher to speak out against it.[27] A letter from a Roman citizen to his wife, dating from 1 BCE, demonstrates the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed:
snip
Christianity
Christianity rejected infanticide. The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache said "You shall not kill that which is born."[36] The Epistle of Barnabas stated an identical command.[37] So widely accepted was this teaching in Christendom that apologists Tertullian, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr and Lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act.[2] In 318 CE Constantine I considered infanticide a crime, and in 374 CE Valentinian I mandated to rear all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). The Council of Constantinople declared that infanticide was homicide, and in 589 CE the Third Council of Toledo took measures against the Spanish custom of killing their own children.[30]
[edit] Middle Ages
Whereas theologians and clerics preached sparing their lives, newborn abandonment continued as registered in both the literature record and in legal documents.[3] According to William L. Langer, exposure in the Middle Ages "was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference".[38] At the end of the 12th century, notes Richard Trexler, Roman women threw their newborns into the Tiber river even in daylight.[39]
Child sacrifice was practiced by the Gauls, Celts and the Irish. "They would kill their piteous wretched offspring with much wailing and peril, to pour their blood around Crom Cruaich", a deity of pre-Christian Ireland.[40]
Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn.[41] In Gotland, Sweden, children were also sacrificed.[42] Infant exposure, and the eating of horsemeat, were two concessions made when the pagan Norse Icelanders eventually adopted Christianity in the year 1000.
In the High Middle Ages, abandoning unwanted children finally eclipsed infanticide. Unwanted children were left at the door of church or abbey, and the clergy was assumed to take care of their upbringing. This practise also saw the birth of the first orphanages.
"Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn."
So it was illegal in almost all the rest of Christian Europe.
In sharp contrast, it was legal everywhere in Pagan Europe.
"Infant exposure, and the eating of horsemeat, were two concessions made when the pagan Norse Icelanders eventually adopted Christianity in the year 1000."
So it was clearly the preference of Core Christians to have infanticide be illegal everywhere, though in this one case pragmatic considerations were given precedence.
"A human baby is nothing but a screaming, eating, pooping machine."
Maybe yours are, but mine are precious sweet cuddle muffins. Then they grew into curious imaginative kiddos. Now they are on well their way to being strong men and disciplined productive citizens. I understand why the weak might be intimidated by kids, but focused, loving parents with a vision for their families, not so much.
Attitude is everything. Name the last guy to take over the world by crying in his beer.
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