Russo's Republic

2002-11-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

REPUBLICANS TAKE THE SENATE!!!

Well, it's been an awfully long time since I've blogged anything (just over two months in fact) but Russo's Republic is back in business.
News of the day: The incredible Republican sweep of the elections. Watching the returns last night was a lot of fun, much better than in 2000 when we were all huddled around the TV hoping against hope that Bush could pull it out. I think perhaps the first signs that it would truly be the GOP's night came with the very early announcement of victory for Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and even more significantly, that of senate candidate Saxby Chambliss, who ousted democratic incumbent Max Cleland in Georgia. The fact that Chambliss swept the election with a comfortable seven point margin, despite projections that his opponent would win and that a GOP victory in Missouri was much more likely, illustrated early on that Republicans were out voting in force.

For a quick recap of just how well the Republicans did in this election, check out the Washington Post's election day summary:

On individual Senate races, however, conflicting evidence from the surveys in many states was enough to give both sides hope that most of the nine competitive races could go either way. The lone exception was Arkansas, where Republicans privately expressed pessimism about their chances of preventing Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R) from losing to Attorney General Mark Pryor (D), despite a visit from Bush yesterday.

In Minnesota, former vice president Walter F. Mondale (D), who went on the ballot after Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D) was killed in a plane crash, debated former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman in an unprecedented election-eve encounter. Weekend public polls disagreed on who had the edge in that race.

Among the closest races are the contest in South Dakota between Sen. Tim Johnson (D) and Rep. John Thune (R); and in New Hampshire, where Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) is counting on support among independents and women to help her defeat Rep. John E. Sununu (R). Sununu has the benefit of a GOP tilt in the state, but could suffer some erosion if conservatives who supported Sen. Robert C. Smith (R), who lost the primary to Sununu, stay home or write in Smith. Another tossup race is in Colorado, where Sen. Wayne Allard (R) has struggled against former U.S. attorney Tom Strickland (D). Both sides privately expressed confidence yesterday.

Two other races became significantly closer in the past two weeks. In Georgia, Sen. Max Cleland (D) has been trying to hold off a late surge from Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R). Democrats said yesterday they had seen some signs of improvement there, but Republicans believe Bush's Saturday visit will motivate Republicans to turn out in big numbers. In North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole (R) has lost her once-sizeable lead against former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles (D).

Of these 9 races that were said to be toss-ups, only two went to the Democrats (Johnson defeated Thune in South Dakota and Pryor defeated Hutchinson in Arkansas, though this was actually expected, due to Hutchinson's affair with a staffer that cost him reelection. I have no pity for him). In Louisiana, democratic Senator Mary Landreux failed to garner 50% of the vote, which means a run-off (and possible Republican victory) is in the works. And in the other 6 competitive races--that would be Minnesota (Coleman), New Hampshire (Sunnunu), Colorado (Allard), Georgia (Chambliss), North Carolina (Dole), and Missouri (Talent), Republicans were victorious, sometimes by a huge margin.

Of course, I haven't even mentioned our gains in House seats, and our great record with governorships--how insane is it that Virginia has a democratic governor (Mark Warner) and Maryland has a republican (Bob Ehrlich)?!...but you can read all about that on someone else's blog. It was a pretty great night to be rooting for the GOP.

2002-09-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

AMERICAN IDOL REVEALS OUR NATION'S GOOD TASTE

While the Fox summer TV show, American Idol, has been soundly criticized by many as yet another example of our cultural wasteland, I actually enjoyed watching the show, and was impressed that America voted Texan Kelly Clarkson the winner last night. While Kelly was certainly one of the top singers in the group of ten finalists, I was worried that her modest sense of dress compared to the other contestants (Entertainment Weekly called her "demure") might hurt her chances. Yet despite the rash of Brittany-style midriff tops worn by virtually all her female competitors, Kelly proved that America's "Idol" doesn't have to show up on stage half naked. Not that Kelly didn't display a sense of style. During Tuesday night's final singout between herself and runner-up Justin Guarini, she wore a series of elegant ballgowns, showing herself to be beautiful and sexy yet (amazingly in this day and age) still fully dressed. The fact that America voted for her, over some of her more brazen competitors such as Ryan Starr and Christina Christian, shows that all taste in our nation is not lost.

2002-08-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

HATING GOOGLE

A guy who spends his time fighting Google. It seems the well-known search engine is "undemocratic" because it ranks "established" longstanding sites higher than newcomers. Not that this bothers me, especially since, as all of us bloggers know, google ranks blogs much more highly than other sorts of sites. My blog is the first thing to pop up on google when you search for my name, even before the gazillion articles I've written for Accuracy in Academia.

2002-08-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

BOOZY FRUIT

I'm liking the Washington Post better and better.....

2002-08-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

PEACE, LOVE, AND CHINA

The Washington Post has an interesting article about a Woodstock-like rock festival in China, replete with yak milk tea, and other elements of local flavor. Despite the guise of freedom, the article notes that "The local Communist Party office demanded a complete list of songs and lyrics in advance for its approval. On Saturday morning, party officials crossed some songs off the list. Tonight, in the middle of a rapper's set, party monitors flipped the switch on the amplifiers for a moment when he deviated from the script." So censorship is hardly dead in China.

One quote that stood out: "Woodstock is not really familiar to us," confessed 30-year-old Michelle Tang, Channel V's China publicity manager. "We just think it stands for the wild music festival." You're not alone there, Michelle.

2002-08-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

SCIENCE AND ABORTION, CONTINUED....

To be continued, might be more accurate, as I'm too busy at the moment to give a real response to Julian's most recent post, but in the meantime, read what Eve had to say on the matter.

2002-08-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

SCIENCE AND ABORTION, PART DEUX

Julian Sanchez has posted a response (more of a rebuttal, actually) to my speech, which can be found on his blog, Julian’s Lounge. He makes a few very interesting points, to which I am compelled to respond.

In my speech, I attempted to show that the pro-life position is supported by science, certainly more so than the pro-choice position, by illustrating that according to our scientific standards, fetuses are human beings.

Julian objected to this characterization of my argument, noting, “If the argument were really purely scientific, the appropriate response would be: ‘so what?’” And he’s right here to a point. Certainly, I think that you need more than science alone to establish the pro-life position, as you need more than science alone to establish any moral position, such as the position that human beings are any more special than insects or trees, and therefore deserve to be treated differently. Fact alone, in my view, doesn’t establish anything by itself, but merely gives us a foundation for science and philosophy, though I suppose Randians (existence exists, non-contraditiction, etc) and, in a much deeper philosophical sense, some Christians (this gets into the forms, ousia, very complicated stuff) would disagree. What my pro-life argument is meant to show is exactly what I said it would. That is: “science does support the pro-life position. And that it’s by contrast the pro-choice position that is based on superstition and on vagueries.”

While I claimed that the argument itself was purely scientific, certainly I didn’t mean for that argument to exist in a void. The whole purpose of the speech was to establish a common groundwork between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, so that discussion on this issue would be possible. I took for granted (and you can object to this if you want, but please realize the philosophical quagmire you’re getting yourself into) that human life is innately valuable, that it is a good thing that our government and constitution have seen fit to protect it, and that as a nation and a species we have in the past perpetuated great evils by failing to protect that which is scientifically human (ie, chromosomes, DNA, all that good stuff) as that which is morally human.

I don’t think I’m going out too far on a limb here to say that most people in America, and most people who consider themselves pro-choice, would agree with these statements, or at least the first two (the third being a bit more catty).

Now, I take it from the example Julian gives, at the end of his post, that he disagrees with at least point one (all human beings are innately valuable). To quote his example, in full:

“So, what should we believe about the inner life of the fetus, if it has one? It has not yet developed any capacity for abstract symbol manipulation. It almost certainly is not reflectively conscious of itself. The sum total of its experience, if it has any, is limited to the flow of amniotic fluid, and perhaps the feel of its own limbs. What would we say about a 30 year old human male, say, raised and fed intravenously in a sensory deprivation tank, who had these traits? Would it really be appropriate to call him a person? How seriously wrong would it be to kill this creature, if it were necessary to avoid some significant cost? Now, here I may lose a few readers, but I think if we strip away the purely visceral reaction to the idea of something that looks like an adult human person being killed, we see that the answer is that it wouldn't. The mind destroyed is almost certainly less developed than an adult dog's. Why, then, should we treat it differently? We should not, unless we think moral worth inheres, not in minds, but in the orderings of DNA base pairs. And that view seems more absurd than any religion.”

Now this of course gets into a whole barrage of issues, but to take on just a few:

1. I hardly need to say it, but this raises about a gazillion questions about which life is valuable and which isn’t. Cases in point: retarded person, more severely retarded person, boy raised by wolves (can’t speak, has no “abstract symbol manipulation”), person in a coma, healthy human infant, elderly man drugged up on morphine, etc, etc. Julian will probably respond that these are just cases to be looked at individually (and I certainly wouldn’t argue the “slippery slope” as a sole argument for or against anything) but it’s worth pointing out as a problem. It becomes even more of a problem when the death of any one of these stands to benefit others. Like human organs, fetal tissue is considered a valuable commodity.

2. We really know very little about the inner life of the fetus, but what we do know suggests that it experiences a great deal more than “the flow of amniotic fluid and perhaps the feel of its own limbs.” There have been numerous studies done that show unborn children can hear sounds outside of the womb (my mom tells me that I used to kick her in time with her typing). Furthermore, experiments involving very young infants show that they are born with an incredible amount of innate knowledge and intuition (they can sense depth, understand the difference between solid objects and ones that can be squished, know that a large ball can’t fit through a small hole, and so forth). This is really fascinating stuff, and it suggests that unborn children may have a lot more going on in their minds than we can speculate about.

3. Julian is right to pick out my point that we can detect brainwaves in a fetus as early as 40 days (6 weeks post-conception) as a particularly convincing one in my favor, but by comparing the brainwaves of fetuses to those of cows and gerbils, he ignores the obvious point that fetuses have human brains, and that aside from their present limitations they will one day be capable of metacognition (being able to evaluate the relation of their own thoughts to reality). No other animals except humans are capable of this feat. Lest this becomes an argument about potential, let me point out that children, up to the age of four years old, aren’t capable of metacognition either. The “deer in the forest” argument also plays somewhat of a role here when we’re talking about fetal cognition. In the same way that a hunter, spying what he thinks is a deer in the forest, ought not to shoot until he is absolutely sure it is not a human being, we should be very, very careful about making assumptions about a fetus’ mental state before we kill it. I think there are much better arguments against abortion, but this one may appeal to Julian’s rationality-oriented ethics.

4. On to Julian’s final point: Why should the biology of the fetus (DNA base pairs and all) matter more than its rationality? Julian doesn’t think it should, and calls that view “more absurd than any religion.” Now, this is a philosophical question, and it’s a question that my speech wasn’t really trying to address.

Scientifically, when we speak of human beings, we’re talking about the species homo sapiens, with 46 chromosomes. When we speak of human life, medically, and, for the most part, legally, we’re talking about hearbeats and brainwaves. So what I set out to do in my speech was to ask: according to our scientific and medical definitions, is a fetus a human being? Does it have a distinct identity (speaking now in terms of cells and DNA)? The answer to this is undeniably yes, it does. Proving this was the goal of my speech, and it’s why the speech focused so much on fetal biology and development.

Now, Julian is right in pointing out that the speech, for the most part, did not take the next step. It did not attempt to prove why DNA and biology are more important than rationality. That would take much longer than a half hour speech, and lest anyone say that the point I proved is obvious, well, you might think so, but pro-choicers are extremely vehement in denying it. To quote Stanley Fish again, “Nowadays, it is pro–lifers who make the scientific question of when the beginning of life occurs the key one in the abortion controversy, while pro–choicers want to transform the question into a ‘metaphysical’ or ‘religious’ one by distinguishing between mere biological life and ‘moral life.’” This is exactly what Julian is doing here, and I hope that he recognizes it.

But back to Julian’s philosophical question—because I want to at least begin to answer it here, even if my speech wasn’t aimed at that goal.

I think that my speech approached this philosophical question during the “thought experiment” section that he describes, where I asked people to think about the continuity of their own identity, to think about their growing, changing, variable body and mind as linked. The link between our minds and our bodies is not merely coincidental. It has a great deal to do with our biology, and the way our neurons are arranged. Human rationality can not arise from the brain of a chimpanzee, not matter what we do to the physical gray matter, whereas it can from the brain of a fetus, given time.

So when Julian asks, why should biology matter more than rationality, my answer is that they are inevitably and inextricably linked. Furthermore, because they are thus linked, just because a human being (that is, someone with human DNA) is not experiencing rationality at the moment, that does not preclude them from doing so in the future. This is an issue that always comes up when we’re talking about people in comas, and the case with a fetus is actually much simpler. While we’re unsure that someone will ever experience rationality again, we can be pretty certain that, barring accident or injury, a fetus will be fully rational within a number of years. Does Julian really want to say that human biology minus rationality does not deserve human protections?

Going even deeper into philosophy, I’d say that the reason the human mind and human biology are inextricably linked is because there is a “form” or pattern (going back to Aristotle now) of a human being, that it the model for all of us, and that humanity, human dignity, and ethics involving human beings is all tied to this form, and thus tied to our physical status as living human beings, irregardless of our current mental state. I don’t expect Julian to agree with this point, but I think it follows from my preceding point about the connection between our physical bodies and our mental faculties.

I apologize for the length of this posting, and eagerly await any responses.

2002-08-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

C-SPAN PHOTOS

This is entirely self-promotion, but there are now photos of me and Shamed up on the C-SPAN website, for those who care to take a look. This rather miniscule brush with fame has also reminded me of a fact I find odd: When I do a google search for my name, I instantly come up with tons and tons of links. This site comes up first, followed by my much-neglected Conservative Activism page, followed by my many articles for Accuracy in Academia, mentions of me in the Yale Daily News (one photo has me holding a sign that says "Al Gore is the Unabomber"), and so on. But when I do searches for a number of my high-school classmates, I may get one mention of them, if anything. Eve pointed out that this is probably due mainly to my profession (journalism, such as it is) but I would think that at least a few would have websites, as most were much more technologically-minded than I. Perhaps they were just smart enough not to put them in their own names.

2002-07-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

RADICAL MANIFESTATIONS

Well, I know it's been a couple of weeks, but Russo's Republic is back in business. Sorry for the lack of postings, but some very exciting stuff has been going on. Conservative University (Accuracy in Academia's premier conservative conference for college students) went off without a hitch, and Shamed Dogan and I were actually televised giving speeches on C-SPAN. (Well, C-SPAN's 2 and 3, but hey, it's a start). I spoke about why the pro-life position is supported by science and Shamed spoke on why conservatives should be "pro-choice on crime." The program may be on again (they've already shown us three or four times) so check the C-SPAN schedule if you're interested. Lots of interesting commentary is coming later, but I figured for now I'll post a rough transcript of my speech, so those of you who don't get C-SPAN 3 can see what I had to say, such as it is....

The Science of Being Pro-Life
(note: please keep in mind that this transcript is virtually un-edited, so yes, there are places where I repeat myself, where the grammar isn't great, etc...)

I want to begin with a paradox. As you all know, abortion is one of the most divisive and controversial issues in our society, but it’s also an issue about which debate is said to be impossible.

Now, that’s kind odd right, kind of disturbing to you college students. You’re used to debating most topics, things like economics, social security, welfare. These are all things which, at least, liberals think can be debated. But when it comes to abortion, most people tend to put it aside, to say, abortion is a religious issue, it’s an issue of personal moral conviction. It’s not an issue that we can talk about. I just have my belief and you have yours, and never the twain shall meet. We can’t talk about it.

So what I’m hoping to do today is to prove that that’s wrong. I think that abortion can be talking about. While there are certainly many religious reasons to be pro-life, I think that there are also many scientific reasons to be pro-life, and I was hoping to go over the science of abortion, because I think that by talking about science, we can really get a debate going.

It’s kind of interesting, but the pro-choice movement in America usually likes to talk about science too. They like to portray themselves as the scientific ones, the modern ones. I’m sure you’ve heard that pro-lifers are all men who want to send women back to the days when they were all barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, though of course those days never really existed in the way that they talk about them. But I think it’s really the pro-lifers who are in fact the ones on the forefront of science.

There’s actually a really interesting anecdote about this. At the American Political Science Association Convention, in 1998, there was a panel about whether moral question could be resolved by rational argument, and two of the speakers there were professor Robert George of Princeton, who you may have heard of because he’s a quite famous conservative, and professor Stanley Fish of Duke University, and prof. Fish is very, very left-wing, kind of a post-modern guy, a left-winger in many ways. During this panel, it had just barely begun, when they were talking about whether science supported pro-life arguments or pro-choice arguments. And the debate had just been a few minutes in going on, when Prof. Fish immediately conceded. He said, “Prof. George is right. And he is right to correct me. Nowadays, it is pro-lifers who make the scientific question of when the beginning of life occurs the key one in the abortion debate.” So, we’ve got even this radical left-wing professor admitting that at the very least, science supports the pro-life position. So I think hopefully I’m going to demonstrate that he’s right, and we can in fact get some of these leftists to admit that science does support the pro-life position. And that it’s by contrast the pro-choice position that is based on superstition and on vagueries.

So I’d like to give you just a little background first on abortion in America. You’ve probably heard some of these statistics, but some of them shocked even me. Since Roe v. Wade was passed by the Supreme Court in January 1973, there have been over 40 million abortions in America. Each year in the United States today, there’s about 1.3 million. You can’t get exact figures, these are from a couple years back. Only about 1% of these abortions occur in cases of rape or incest. So that does happen. It’s true that women are raped occasionally and do have abortions as a result of that, but these are a very small minority of cases. These are by far not the rule, these are the exception to the rule. 52% of abortions are obtained by young women, under the age of 25, which makes it especially crucial that we get this word out to college campuses where there are so many young women.

14% of abortions are paid for with public funds, usually state money, Some states have bans on money going towards abortion, but many more do not. And 47% of all abortions are repeat abortions, that is, abortions performed on a woman who had already had an abortion. So when you hear it said that abortion is not being used as a contraceptive means, that’s not always the case unfortunately. One last statistic, and this was especially shocking, in Washington DC, the city you’ve been in now for several days, over the last several years, I think the last figures I was able to get were from 1998, there were more than twice the number of abortions as live births. I think that bears repeating. For every baby born in Washington DC, two were aborted. So that’s really pretty horrendous.

So now I’d like tell you a little about the science of abortion, and I want to start by concentrating on something that should be very familiar to yourselves: that is, you. I want you to think about yourselves as you are now, 20, 21, 22 years old, you’re probably pretty tired ‘cause it’s only ten in the morning, and you’ve been at this conference for several days. And now go back in time a little bit. Think ten years earlier. Maybe you were in middle school. You certainly didn’t look the same. You didn’t have the same body, you didn’t have the same emotions, you certainly didn’t have the same rational state of mind. Your brain was very different then. But you were still you. You still had this identity that you carried with you. Now go back even further. Go back to when you were about five. You were extremely different then. You were probably about yea high, very short, you certainly didn’t have the mind of an adult, you probably couldn’t process rational questions very well. You couldn’t listen to a speech like this. You’d probably be very bored and crying for your mother to take you out. And you certainly couldn’t think in the way that you do.

So go back even further. Think to when you were a baby. You probably don’t even remember this, but you know that it happened, right? You know that you were an infant at one point, you’ve probably seen pictures, you’re father or mother or someone has told you about being an infant. At that point you probably didn’t even understand language, but you were still you, you still had this identity.

So go back just one step further. Go back to when you were in the womb. You can picture that, right, in the same way that you can picture being an infant even though you can’t remember it. What is to say that that person in the womb isn’t you. It seems that in every sense, it is you. Just going back. You can go back that far in your mind. You know that this physical being that is you, that houses your consciousness, that’s the same person that you are today.

The basic argument is this: We exist along a continuum. Our lives begin as a single cell that’s formed from the union of your mother’s egg and your father’s sperm, and at the moment when that happens, this is scientific, this is medical fact, at that moment, a new being is formed. It’s a new human being because it’s composed of human DNA, it has 46 chromosomes, the sperm and egg each have 23 and they combine to form a new being, crossing over occurs among the genome, it’s a new being that has never occurred before in the history of life. And from that point onward, that being, if left to grow and mature, will become a human being. I mean, it is already a human being, but it will be born in 9 months, and will exist as a person outside of the womb if accident or injury does not prevent it from being so.

Maggie Gallagher in her book, Enemies of Eros, which I highly recommend that you read, put it very well when she states:
“The baby my mother held in her arms, was me. It was we that grew in her womb. Infancy, like a drug induced stupor, is a temporary condition from which people normally recover. I am the human being I was and the human being I will be, though in ordinary speech we might say the person that I am can easily change. This is why the new idea of “personhood” is so dangerous. Our “personhood,” defined as the sum total of the choices we make, shifts and dies and is reborn constantly. Our self-consciousness alters beyond recognition, we abandon the companions, the ideals, the tastes of our youth, remodel our selves and our futures, constantly rewrite our own histories. But nonetheless through all this shifting and changing and transformation, we each remain the same human being that we were, from conception through birth, teething, childhood, puberty, adolescence, adulthood and senescence, until death do us part from our humanity.”

And so that’s Maggie Gallagher for you. And you might say, well, this is philosophy, this is religion, but no, it’s not, there’s no religion here. Whenever we abort a fetus or a blastocyst or any stage after that moment of conception, we are aborting the person that is, the person that will be. In the same way we mourn a child, when we hear on the news that a child has died, we feel much more sorry than we would if it had been someone that was 60 years old. Because that person’s potential has been cut short at a very tender age.

In that same way, whenever, we abort a fetus or child, we are cutting off their life, and it may be at a much earlier stage of life than we are accustomed to talking about, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not ending their life, or we’re not ending a life at all.

So that’s basically the argument for why life begins at conception. And now I’d like to talk a little bit about fetal development, so in case you weren’t convinced by that or need more scientific proof to counter pro-choicers, I think that this is also pretty convincing.

I’d like to talk about how an unborn child rates against our normal standards for judging life and death, which are usually things like a heartbeat, growing cells, brain waves, things like that. So I brought some pictures of a developing fetus, and I’ve heard often abortion advocates talk about a fetus as a “blob of cells” and that’s kind of harsh, but if you look at the very early picture, this is a human embryo at about 28 days after conception, so four weeks, and you can that it does look kind of like a blob of cells. And that is, I mean you can see the shape taking place, you can see some of the organs in there, and at this stage just four days later, you can already see, I think this is the heart, you can see the head, you can see it taking shape. This happens very quickly. At 37 days, I think this is 9 days later than the previous picture. You can see even more it’s taking shape there. Here you can see the beginnings of the hands and the feet. This is only at 41 days.

And I’ve got some more pictures. Here we have a human embryo at 44 days. It already looks very much like a baby. You can see the hands, the feet, the head, the eyes. At 50 days, even more so, you can see the little finger and toes, I think there’s still webbing between them at that stage. Then on to 54 days, you can see the toes, the hands, it looks like a baby. Here at 56 days, this is less than two months after conception, this is less than 8 weeks, it really looks like a baby doesn’t it.

And of course these changes aren’t solely visual. The visual aids merely show the appearance of the fetus through time, but I think that the fact that this fetus transforms so rapidly, from 28 days to less than a month later, it goes from looking like a blob of cells, as abortion advocates talk about, to looking like a baby. And this tells us obviously that it’s not just this growth that happens naturally, there’s actually a code directing the growth of this baby. This baby has an identity. And maybe you couldn’t see that it looked like a baby in the very first picture, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not growing and changing, that it’s not developing, according to everything that was there at the moment of conception. That organ that was there. That’s what’s growing and evolving during the nine months of pregnancy.

These changes aren’t solely visual. Between days 18 and 25, so that’s even before the first picture I showed you, the fetal heartbeat begins. About that same time, the baby is pumping blood of it’s own blood type through it’s own closed circulatory system. It already has veins. This is before one month has passed from conception.

By day 40, the baby’s skeleton is fully formed, it has reflexes, and we can also detect brainwaves. In the future, we may even be able to detect brainwaves earlier, but obviously it’s difficult because there’s so many layers of fluid surrounding the baby. Basically, by eight weeks into the pregnancy, less than that, the fetus already has a heartbeat and brainwaves. So when we’re talking about judging a fetus by our normal standards of life and death, well, it seems to be alive. It has human DNA, it has brainwaves, it has a skeleton, it has hands, it has feet and it has a heart pumping blood of its own blood type. It’s certainly not just the mother’s cells. It’s a baby. I don’t see how you can have a different blood type than your mother and still be part of her body.

After this point, the baby obviously becomes even more developed. By about seven weeks, 49 days, we have pictures of baby’s sucking their thumbs in the womb. This is still less than two months into the pregnancy. By about eight weeks, all of the body systems are present, by nine weeks the baby can squint, can swallow, can make a fist, things like that, and by eleven weeks it can make spontaneous breathing movements, it can move around, even though the mother won’t be able to feel it yet. So, by 12 weeks the first trimester ends. Proponents of abortion usually like to tell you that 88% of all abortions take place within the first trimester. And that’s true—they’re right about that. But that means that 88% of abortions take place before this time, before 12 weeks, when the baby already has a heartbeat and brainwaves, and all these other things that would categorize it, by all our scientific definitions, as life. So I don’t see how they can possibly say that it’s not a living human being because according to all our medical definitions, it is.

I’d like to talk about partial birth abortion too, I know that it’s a very difficult topic, but first I’d like to show you a picture, and no, it’s not a picture of an abortion. It’s actually kind of a cheerful picture, by contrast. It’s just a little bit bloody, but it’s not bad at all. It’s a picture of fetal surgery. You may have seen this in the New York Times magazine about a year ago, July 15th 2001. It’s a picture of a….a very pro-life family, in fact, learned that their child had Spina Bifida, and were able to go do this very careful medical procedure whereby they perform surgery on the fetus. They sedated the mother, pulled her uterus out onto her belly, and saved the fetus. And you’ve probably seen this. Hopefully this won’t disturb you, knowing that the baby is alive and well.

You can see that’s the mother’s uterus, and that’s the baby’s hand. The baby’s hand poked itself out of the womb during the surgery and the doctor very gingerly picked it up and you can see obviously, this fetus is 24 weeks old, it’s fully formed, and it has a hand that looks just like a baby’s. It’s in fact even a patient in this situation. I thought it was kind of interesting, and perhaps shows a bit of the media bias, that if you look at the caption here it says, “Dr. Joseph Brunner with Kelly Hasten’s uterus,” it doesn’t mention the baby, so I thought that was kind of interesting, just from the pro-life perspective on how the media treats abortion.

And that’s obviously a very cheerful image, because they’re actually saving this baby. The baby was born, and I believe is now healthy. But many babies at the same age, are unfortunately not saved. In fact, abortion is still legal at this point.

The youngest age at which a baby can survive outside the womb is said to be about 20 weeks. Now it’s very, very unlikely that a baby at 20 weeks post conception is going to be able to survive, it has maybe a 1% chance, but it’s possible. That’s the earliest possible age. And the number of abortions performed after that point is 1.4% of the total. Now that may sound small, and when people talk about partial birth abortion as being very rare, it is rare compared to all the number of abortions that occur otherwise. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen a lot, because if you consider that, let’s say there’s 1.2 million abortions a year in America. It’s actually more like 1.3 million, quite possibly more, considering that these figures come from the people who provide them, but even using the very conservative estimate of 1.2 million abortions a year in America that means that when you take 1.4% of that number, you get 16,800. So that means there are 16,800 cases where a baby about that stage [as in the NYT photo], maybe a little earlier, is aborted each year in the US. That’s a lot. These are babies that could at least possibly have survived outside of the womb and I don’t see how anyone can justify that.

It’s also true that the youngest age at which it’s possible to survive gets earlier and earlier and has for the last couple decades. At 23 weeks, the baby has only a 15% chance of survival. But at 24 weeks into pregnancy, one week later, it’s 56%. So it’s this huge jump, that’s about a 40% jump. And at 25 weeks, it’s 79%. So about a week after that picture with the baby’s hand coming out was taken, 80% of all babies who are born at that point will survive. So this isn’t a case of these being children who can’t live outside the womb. Often they are.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard that most descriptions of partial birth abortion are right-wing propaganda. That’s definitely not true, and to prove that, again I’m sorry to have to talk about this because it’s really just a very gruesome and traumatic procedure, but I’d like to quote from the case opinion in the Supreme Court case of Stenberg v. Carhart, which was a case decided just a couple years ago about partial birth abortion.

There was a law in Nebraska that banned partial birth abortion, except in cases of the life of the mother, they even made that exception, the Supreme Court struck down this law, because they said it didn’t provide an exception for the health of the mother. That’s sort of a weird thing, because you might think if it’s life-threatening that would mean the life of the mother, however the “health of the mother” is often inserted into abortion law clauses because it allows for exceptions for, say, mental health, things that aren’t really talking about the mother being physically endangered. It’s kind of a loophole, which is really very disturbing. And the Supreme Court in that case ruled that they needed to provide this loophole in the law, otherwise they couldn’t allow it.

So I’m going to quote, this is from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists describing what’s called the D&X procedure, which is partial birth abortion, essentially. This is from the court record.

Step one is: “deliberate dilatation of the cervix, usually over a sequence of days”

That’s the opening that the baby would come out from, needs to be opened so that the baby can actually come out.

Then step two: “instrumental conversion of the fetus to a footling breech”

If you’ve heard of breech babies, that means when a baby comes out feet first. It’s actually a very dangerous condition, because you want the baby to be able to get it’s first breath of air very quickly. So what they’re doing is they’re deliberately repositioning the baby so that it comes out feet first, so that it doesn’t have a chance to take a breath.

Step three is: “breech extraction of the body excepting the head”
That is, they pull it all out except the head.

And Step four is: “partial evacuation of the intracranial contents of a living fetus to effect vaginal delivery of a dead but otherwise intact fetus.”

Basically, they suck the baby’s brains out and pull it out. And this is not right right-wing propaganda. This is from the Supreme Court case, and you can look it up if you want. So when they say, “partial birth abortion is rare, partial birth abortion doesn’t happen, it really isn’t like that,” well this is from the Supreme Court record which in fact decided in favor of the pro-choice side in this case. So I don’t see how they can possibly say that.

I want to say one more thing about that case, actually, which is to tell you a little about Justice Scalia’s reaction to it. Perhaps you know Scalia, he’s one of the most conservative justices on the court, if not the most. And he dissented to the court’s opinion in this case, saying:

“I am optimistic enough to believe that, one day, Stenberg v. Carhart will be assigned its rightful place in the history of this Court’s jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott.”

Now you probably know what those cases are. Korematsu was the decision that allowed Japanese-Americans to be imprisoned during World War II and Dred Scott was the decision that said that African-Americans are not citizens of the United States and never can be. That’s how bad Scalia thinks this is, and I agree with him.

And there are actually many, many parallel’s between the situations of slavery and abortions in America. For one thing, they both involve classes of human beings that were declared not to be persons. If you think about it, this is really the best parallel for it. In slavery, black Americans were considered not to be human beings deserving of human protections and the same thing is being said for fetuses, despite all of the scientific evidence to the contrary.
It’s kind of interesting that back in the days of slavery, there were some who would say things like, “black Americans don’t have souls, they belong to an inferior class of beings.” Things like that. This is the science of eugenics, which in fact Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood, you’ve probably heard, took up in her quest to provide birth control and abortions to everyone who wanted them. And she even set up clinics in predominantly black areas of the nation, in order to facilitate that. She thought that black people were having too many children and wanted to eliminate them. And so she set up clinics in places like Harlem and Nashville to provide that.

So there’s really the same pseudo-science at work here. In the same way that eugenics is a very false science, it’s not true at all, these scientific claims that when we’re talking about abortion we’re not talking about killing a human being are entirely false. It is a human being. A blastocyst is a human being. That’s the stage a fetus is at just four days into pregnancy. It has human DNA, human cells, very shortly it will have a fetal heartbeat and brainwaves, and I don’t see how we can possibly say it’s not a human being.

Perhaps you’ve heard the slogan: “Against Abortion? Don’t have one.” Well, this is kind of a radical answer, but the response to that should be, “Against Slavery? Don’t own one.”

And that’s not to say in any way that slavery is justified of course, it’s to say that the parallel is the same. If such an awful evil exists in the world, you need to fight it. You can’t just say, “Oh, okay, you can do what you want, you can own slaves, and well, I’m opposed to it, I’ll just live in my own little society and not think about it.” No! We live in one nation, and we need to think about this. We can’t accept this moral evil in our society.
So to conclude, I’d like to give you just a few suggestions for when you talk about abortion, because hopefully some of what I’ve shown you today will give you some ammunition for when you next have to discuss this with people who take the pro-choice side.

I’d say, first, bring up scientific data whenever you can. Don’t let them say, “This is just about your religion,” because it’s not, it’s not about religion. There are religious reasons of course, and certainly I think that we do in some way need to invoke a god in order to justify the human dignity of all human beings overall. But that’s not to say that the abortion debate itself is about religion. It’s not. it’s about science, and whether these people can be considered human beings. Scientifically, they are.

I’d also say, I know that this is a very difficult issue to talk about, it gets people worked up, and gets them very angry. I personally don’t think it helps to use picture of aborted fetuses when talking with people who don’t agree with the pro-life position already, because it obviously shocks them, but I don’t think it shocks them in the right way. I think it just makes them so angry and so disgusted that they’ll just walk away and won’t even think about it. I think that in some ways you have to lead up to this issue gradually. And that’s just my personal opinion, that’s why I didn’t bring anything like that today.
I’d also say that there are many things that you can do to help. There are places like crisis pregnancy centers, where women go when they are pregnant and don’t know what to do. And these places do help out with food and medical supplies, things like that, to help women have babies. These are great places to volunteer at. There’s also sidewalk counseling, pro-life organizations you can work for, all those kind of things.

And I wanted to add, to the men in the audience, especially, don’t think this is only an issue for women. I’m sure you’re often told that by the left, but it’s not, it’s a human issue.
And that’s not to say that women aren’t sometimes better at approaching other women about this issue, personally. But this is an issue on which everyone can speak, not just women, though it’s good to note that of most of the pro-life organizations, the national ones, women are the heads of almost all of them. So it’s not like this is a conspiracy of old white men against society. It’s not.

So I’d just like to add, in conclusion, that when such a tremendous evil exists in our society, by legal mandate, we must do whatever we can to fight it, and I hope you will do your part.

Thank you.
.

2002-07-09T12:09:00.000-07:00

IN-VITRO VERITAS

Yet another reason to disapprove of in-vitro fertilization.

2002-06-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

JESSE JR. ON SCHOOL VOUCHERS

If you want to begin your morning with a sigh of disgust, read this statement by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. on why yesterday's Supreme Court decision was "the worst decision in the last 50 years involving church/state issues."

2002-06-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGS FOR CHILDREN

Some doctors are now prescribing weight-loss drugs such as Meridia and Xenical for children ages 12-16, as part of a new study to determine whether the medications are safe and effective for this age group. While I understand the use of such drugs as a last resort, it's hard to believe that adolescents have reached that point. And while these drugs have been shown to produce weight loss, little research has been done on whether the effects last after medication is discontinued. Wouldn't education and exercise be more useful tools at this age, rather than a drug regimen that may have to be continued indefinitely?

2002-06-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

SORRY FOR THE DELAY....

Blogging has been delayed for the past couple of weeks, because I've been hard at work on our Accuracy in Academia Conservative University conference. Spaces are almost completely filled, but if you're an intern or student in the DC area who is interested in attending on Saturday, July 20th, contact me at sara@academia.org.

2002-06-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

MIDDLE AMERICA GETS RECOGNITION FROM THE NY TIMES!

The New York Times Magazine has actually done a cool story on what the median family income in America, $54,400, gets you in different parts of the country. The Alvarez's in the Bronx rent a 3-bedroom apartment for $900 a month, and own one 1996-issued car, while the Oxfords from Johnston City, Illinois bought their 4-bedroom house for $15,000 in 1980, and have equipped it with a swimming pool and hot tub. They also own two cars, a 2002 Saturn and a 2000 Chevrolet pickup truck. Being from New York City, I'm not one to spurn the advantages that big city living offers, but I have to admit, a back yard with a swimming pool would be just heavenly, and in New York City only multi-millionaires with penthouses can come close.

2002-06-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

HARVARD BLACK STUDIES DEPARTMENT DOES SOMETHING RIGHT?

When UC Berkeley prof. John McWhorter published his book, "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America," which argued that contemporary black culture discourages academic excellence, his views were condemned by many on the left. But now, advocates for black children and members of Harvard's Black Studies Department, appear to be taking his thesis seriously.

Spurred by rumors that middle class black students in Boston were lying about their family income on college applications, to excuse bad grades and take advantage of affirmative action, the Rev. Eugene Rivers and his wife Jackie created the Dubois Society, a self-proclaimed academic honors society for black students. Members are assigned readings and meet once a week for academic discussions, many of which are led by faculty from Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department, which also provides classroom space and funding for the program.

While conservatives might raise a few hackles about the program's racially-centered academics, it's namesake W.E.B. Dubois' communist political leanings, and its segregated atmosphere, I for one find it admirable that Harvard Profs are actually doing something real for their community, instead of insisting that all academic racial disparities are the fault of institutionalized racism.

2002-05-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

TRANSGENDER DECEPTION

Trust the New York Times to conflate issues of honesty and privacy. In this intriguing but bizarre account of a 13-year-old girl living as a boy (referred to as M. in the article), and aided in that deception by a California public school, the Times (and the student's school) give short shrift to concerns that other students may be harmed by the failure to reveal the truth about the teenager's sex. In perhaps the only paragraph that comes close to touching on the possible ramifications to other students, the Times states:

"Helping M. live as a boy may seem compassionate, but there are some people -- even some sympathetic to M.'s predicament -- who think the school should be handling M.'s situation differently. Ken Zucker, head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic in Toronto, says that M.'s well-meaning teachers are bordering on unethical conduct. ''They're perpetuating a deception,'' Zucker says after I explain M.'s situation to him. ''What if [M.] starts dating a girl at school, and she finds out and is traumatized? The school is potentially liable, because they have actively perpetuated a deception. I would advocate that this youngster be encouraged to 'come out' as a transgender youth, so that everyone knows the score. But whatever decision is made, this kid needs to be evaluated by a local expert in gender identity -- not by a well-meaning teacher.''

In fact, this hypothetical situation is entirely real. M. does have a girlfriend, a fellow eighth grader who knows nothing about his true sexual identity. Though the Times frequently compares M's situation to the film Boys Don't Cry, in which the girlfriend of a girl-passing-as-a-boy learns to love and accept "him" for who "he" is (and is also beaten and raped by angry men), it's hard to imagine any adolescent not being seriously disturbed upon finding out that her boyfriend is really her girlfriend. Additionally, by deceiving the student body about M's true gender, the school is putting him at risk for serious harm if anyone does find out the truth.

The Times article cites the danger to transgendered teenagers as a reason for M. to conceal his true sex. It states:

The teacher insists he is only doing what is necessary to keep M. safe, and other transgender youth experts say that having M. 'come out' as transgender could be dangerous. ''The consequences of being an 'out' transgender youth are too great,'' says Gerald Mallon, an associate professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work and editor of the book ''Social Services With Transgendered Youth.'' ''If [M.] gets found out at school as having a vagina, he will probably be beaten or raped.''

Still, any troubles that M. might have experienced if he was honest about his identity from the start are likely small potatoes compared to what this "popular" teenager stands to lose if the truth is inadvertantly discovered by his classmates. By helping him to lie, M's school may very well have put him at greater risk.

The school's actions are based on the premise that M.'s sex doesn't matter--only his perception of it does. If he thinks he's a boy, then he must be one, and all authority figures in his life ought to ignore objective reality in favor of subjective feeling. Unfortunately for them, society isn’t so kind or understanding, and the “gender binary” implicit in our culture is not a mirage. Whether one is male or female matters a great deal. Our lives, families and relationships are intrinsically affected by our sex. M’s sex assuredly matters to his classmates, and is of immense importance to M. himself. His school, perhaps, should be commended for their caring, but in this case they have clearly made the wrong choice. They have ignored the question of honesty, perhaps even failing to see M’s case as a question of honesty in a society where reality is determined by sentiment. But the school is wrong. Truth exists, and in this case that means that M. is a girl. She may be transgendered, and she may want to be a boy, but her wishes can’t change reality. By going to great lengths to disguise that fact, M’s school is putting her life, and the wellbeing of her classmates, in danger.

2002-05-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

ABERCROMBIE AND FILTH

From the same company that brought us a catalog filled with nude models and t-shirts mocking Asian surnames, comes thong underwear....for little girls. The children's department sells clothing for girls' sizes 7-14, though the company claims that the underwear is meant to fit kids sizes 10 and up. Perhaps worse that the underwear itself, are the labels which decorate it. One has a picture of a cherry, while others contain phrases including "wink wink" and "eye candy." When pressed about the underwear, company spokesman Hampton Carney said, "It's cute and fun and sweet." Um yeah, maybe if you're a pedophile....

2002-05-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON DC: ONE BIG CAMPUS

I think part of why I like living in DC so much is that it reminds me of my bright college days at Yale in oh so many ways. This may be partly due to the fact that I live in a veritable commune (or as close as a right-winger can come) of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy buddies, including Shamed and Eve, but it's also due to the fact that my new hometown is in a perpetual state of political fermentation. DC is very much like a college campus in that it provides both a physical stomping ground where the most disparate elements of our politically charged society collide, and a symbolic backdrop for the airing of grievances. It's not coincidental that political protests at universities always attract so much attention, more so, than say, marches through the streets of major cities. The immense stone libraries and quadrangles of our nation's campuses serve a function far beyond mere academics, just as the Capitol Building is not merely a place where the Congress meets.

Actually, what started me reflecting on how DC is like a campus was this article from today's Washington Post that details several philosophical "shouting matches" that have taken place on the streets in the last few days. I engaged in a couple of (somewhat less heated) exchanges while out protesting the lefties who were protesting (take your pick: global warming, election 2000, Ashcroft, Israel, etc) in DC a few weekends ago, and the article today caused me to think for a moment, "How exactly like those endless arguments I had in college." The sides spot one another, they lash out for a few moments, and then go their separate ways. While the Post seems unconvinced by the utility of such discourse, I for one am pleased that it's taking place on the streets of my city. Better that folks care enough to confront the other side, than estrange themselves from the political altogether. For those of us that truly groove on political discourse, it's hard to find a place better than DC.

2002-05-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES: ALL THE NEWS FOR THE ARISTOCRACY

One of the many, many things that pisses me off about the New York Times, and especially, the NYT Magazine, is that despite their grandiose airs of helping the poor and sympathizing with the downtrodden, the paper perpetually exalts the most ludicrous and grotesque extremes of high culture and high fashion. Witness this article about one of New York's elite skin doctors and her wealthy clientelle who lust after botox injections (a poison that in small doses helpfully paralyzes the skin, preventing wrinkles) and liposuction in a fruitless search for the fountain of youth. While not entirely uncritical of the provider of these services, the Times mostly chats on and on about how helpful and beloved she is to the society dames who patronize her clinic, and how she's setting a standard that will soon be imitated by the rest of America. Yup, that's exactly what the poor need....to waste their precious cash on paralyzing poison. Um, how about a condemnation of vanity here. The Times doesn't exactly look kindly upon the industry tycoons of capitalism. Why give so much leeway to the excesses their money produces?

The Times positions itself as a critic of elite style and culture. It's funny that all the trends they recommend require so much cash.

2002-05-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

NIKE KRIKEY

Keeping an eye upon the ever-increasing American waistline, Nike's clothing line has decided to expand its sizes. So, what's wrong with that, you ask? Well, they're not adding more sizes, they're just making their existing sizes larger in an attempt to delude customers that they're actually slimmer than they are! The new size small Nike sports bra will fit a woman with a 35-37 inch bust. Average in the US is a 36C. I'm all for making exercise clothing in bigger sizes, but let's label them as they are, not as we wish they would be.

2002-04-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

VEGAN COUPLE STARVES INFANT: BABY ALMOST DIED FROM DIET LACKING MILK OR FORMULA

Check out this horrendous story from Fox News about a vegan couple in New York City who almost starved their daughter to death by refusing to feed her anything except vegetables, fruits, and nuts. The child, Ice Swinton, weighed only TEN POUNDS at the age of 16 months, half the normal weight of a child that age. She was rushed to the hospital last November, where she was diagnosed with "developmental problems, a distended abdomen, fractured bones, a vitamin deficiency called rickets and a lung disorder — all caused by malnutrition, authorities said." Fortunately the child has improved in foster care, although she still suffers from severe developmental delays. I've heard of environmentalists fetishizing the third world, but inducing the diseases of that region in a child is so far beyond the pale.

2002-04-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

SAUDI COMMERCIAL DECEIPT

Apparently the networks have finally caught up to us blogger folks. I saw brief mentions of the Saudi's sad attempts at indoctrination on both Fox News and CNN last night, the first time I've seen the mainstream media address the issue. Interestingly, this article from Electronic Media claims that nine U.S. networks including Fox News, the History Channel, A&E, Lifetime, and others have refused to air the commercials, despite the fact that Shamed and I saw one on Fox News just last night, and Shamed has seen them on the History channel as well. Has anyone else out there witnessed this Saudi filth on other national networks? Let me know at psamiad@aol.com (oh, and in case you're wondering, my e-mail is named for my cat who is in turn named for the wish-granting sand monster in E.B. Nesbit's Five Children and It- a great book, by the way.

2002-04-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

SAUDI ARABIA: "ALLIES IN PEACE"

Just saw a pro-Saudi TV commercial this morning, boasting that the United States and Saudi Arabia have been allies for "sixty years" and showing numerous photos of smiling Saudi sheiks posing with U.S. politicans. The written message at the end of the commercial declared: "Allies in Peace." Coming from the same government that sponsors a newspaper which declared just a few weeks ago that Jews put the blood of Muslims in their Purim pastries, it's rather revolting to witness this blatant propaganda. I've been trying to find the written text of the commercial online, but just wanted to post this right away.

2002-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

NOTE TO PROTESTORS: DILUTING YOUR MESSAGE DOES NOT HELP YOUR CAUSE

As Eve Tushnet has already described on her blog , our bawdy right-wing coalition numbered only three and included myself, Eve, and Shamed. Still, despite the rather meager supplies at hand (a few markers and highlighters, 8.5 by 11 oaktag paper, and scotch tape), it felt useful to be a lone voice of dissent amidst a sea of lefties for causes ranging from the Green Party ("Yea Nader!" Shamed cheered as they passed. "Thanks for giving us the White House") to Patriots for Peace, to various pro-PLO factions.

A few highlights to add to Eve's account:

One of the things that disturbed me most, was the numerous children being used as political billboards for their parents' causes. Now, don't get me wrong, I fully support the right of parents to pass on their values to their offspring, bad, bad brainwashing public schools, etc. But I think that there's a difference between discussing complex social and political issues in the home with your children, and turning your four-year-old out on the streets wearing a sticker supporting the Palestinian state on her back (I saw several). Also witnessed was the sight of two young boys marching with an older woman, possibly Grandma, shouting out parts of various political cheers into a megaphone she was carrying. I personally didn't see this scene, but read Radley Balko's account of a terrified young girl being carried in a coffin for an even harsher use of children in activism.

By all means, take your children to protests and rallies, but don't actually expect them to participate until they are of an age (at least 8-10 years old I would say) where they're able to comprehend what they are rallying for. To subject children to the ethos of the mob before they are able to comprehend the issues at stake can't be good for their ultimate comprehension. This applies to conservatives who use their young offspring in pro-life protests as well as to the red diaper babies who were out in force this weekend.

Most of the signs we saw, especially among the more mainstream lefty protest that began at the Washington Monument, were silly and juvenile, but a few, such as a mock Israeli flag with a blue swastika in the center instead of the Star of David, and others with swastikas that contained the names of various political figures such as Ashcroft on the arms of the symbol were truly disturbing. For those who are constantly harping about language and symbols offending others, it wouldn't hurt for the left to show a little sensitivity.

Interestingly, despite our obviously pro-war signs, we were constantly mistaken by our fellow protestors as being on their side (perhaps they didn't even bother to read the signs). One woman told us about a conservative counter-protest, which she found "ridiculous" and laughable. Though we didn't get a chance to see it, from her description it did sound pretty sad, consisting mainly of signs that said, "Patriots Over Here. Cowards and Traitors Over There" or something to that effect. Unhelpful rhetoric to say the least, and (though I'm not familiar with those who organized the protest) I can't help questioning why they felt they had to set up a separate camp. I felt I was doing the most good by marching side-by-side with the lefties, so they'd be forced to confront voices of dissent.

2002-04-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

WILL THE REAL GENERAL TSO PLEASE STAND UP

According to this article in today's Washington Post, General Tso was a highly successful military commander in the nineteenth century Chinese Army of the Qing Dynasty, but despite all his achievements, he may never have been given a taste of his own chicken.

2002-04-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

EXAGGERATIONS

Check out this article from last Tuesday's Washington Post Health Section about exaggerated disease statistics. With it's off-the-cuff humor and refreshing skepticism, it's easy to see why many right wingers prefer the notoriously left-wing Post to its more sinister counterpart, the New York Times.

2002-04-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

A COW'S LIFE

In this fascinating and (for the NY Times) surprisingly unbiased account of the life of a modern day factory-produced cow, Michael Pollen examines the pros and cons of raising cattle on corn feed and antibiotics. Most interesting is his observation that many of the ills of the modern cattle industry are aided by the extremely cheap price of corn, which in turn is made possible "thanks to federal subsidies and ever-growing surpluses." I haven't checked his figures, but Pollen claims that "the price of corn ($2.25 a bushel) is 50 cents less than the cost of growing it." Thus, cows raised on factory farms in the U.S. are fed huge volumes of corn, despite the fact that corn-fed cattle must be kept on a constant diet of antibiotics to counter infections that the corn-based diet produces in cows' complex digestive systems which traditionally handled mostly grass.

The cheap price in corn also comes at a huge cost in oil usage (another casualty of the modern government-subsidized farm), leading Pollen to say "We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf, transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine," though he also notes, "Whatever else you can say about industrial beef, it is remarkably cheap, and any argument for changing the system runs smack into the industry's populist arguments. Put the animals back on grass, it is said, and prices will soar."

2002-03-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

MASCOT R NOT US

An bill that would ban Native American mascots and team names is circulating through various committees in the California state legislature. Introduced by Democrat Jackie Goldberg, a lesbian councilmember from Los Angeles, who gleefully enacts the agenda of the California Teachers Unions, the legislation reads:

"All public schools, community colleges, the California State University, and the University of California are prohibited from using any school or athletic team name, mascot, or nickname that is derogatory or discriminatory against any race, ethnicity, nationality or tribal group."

The legislation also specifically bans the following Native American team names, including "Redskins, Indians, Braves, Chiefs, Apaches, Comanches, or any other American Indian tribal name."

The San Diego State University Aztecs are now worried that their Monty Montezuma mascot (named for Montezuma II, an Aztec leader who was conquered by Hernando Cortes in the 16th Century) will be eliminated.

Aside from the almost obvious criticism of the bill as a case of political correctness gone too far, the bill should raise conservative hackles over the issue of localism. A Los Angeles councilmember should not be telling Podunk High School in Orange County what it can name its sports teams. The bill may also violate the First Amendment in some cases. Imagine a case where students at a public school vote on the names of their sports teams. How does the state government justify keeping certain (non-obscene) names are off limits? While I'm no legal scholar, this surely is an interesting area of law.

Perhaps some students at the University of Northern Colorado would object were their state to pass a similar ban. The Native American student organization became fed up with the use of Native American mascots, and thus created their own "Fightin' Whites" mascot for their intramural basketball team. Offensive? Possibly. But T-shirts bearing the "Fighting Whites" name and logo (a white guy in a suit and tie) are now in high demand.

2002-03-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Bernard Goldberg's new book Bias of late, and am almost through with it. First off, let me say that it is an incredibly self-righteous book. Goldberg's focus is as much on his own loss of prestige within CBS as it is on the overarching problem of left-wing bias in the media. Goldberg's personal struggle would be more relevant if, as he would like us to believe, the article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 1996 on the problem of bias in the media was badly received solely because he was pointing out a legitimate problem in his industry. In point of fact, the article attacks one of Goldberg's colleagues, a fellow named Eric Engberg, personally, and besmirches the reputation of CBS specifically. As one of Goldberg's colleagues noted following the publication of the journal piece, "What do you think would have happened to you if you worked at IBM and did something like this?" Whistleblowers are not exactly considered team players in most industries. Goldberg's response to this point is to claim that the the media ought to have a higher standard when it comes to self-criticism. Maybe so, but it's easy to say when it isn't your segment that was ripped to shreds in a national publication. Futhermore, Goldberg did not take the required action of receiving approval from CBS before submitting the article for publication, a point which he glosses over as insignificant. In any case, halfway through the book I was already sick of hearing about how Goldberg was maligned by CBS for the simple crime of telling the truth (which just so happened to involve publicly attacking his employer and colleagues) and how unfair they were for taking him off the air.

That said, Bias is worth reading, partly for the occasional revealing anecdote (many of which had already reached me by word-of-mouth long before I read the book) such as film critic Pauline Kael's reaction to Nixon's landslide '72 victory ("'I can't believe it!' she said. 'I don't know a single person who voted for him!'"). While several of the chapters center on very old ideas (the myth of heterosexual AIDS, the sudden increase in stories on the homeless when a Republican occupies our nation's top office) the detailed report that Goldberg is able to give as an insider is well worth reading. Several chapters focus on more novel instances of bias, one of these being the networks' failure to put blacks in newsmagazine stories because they fear white middle-class viewers won't be interested in people so different from themselves--yet another instance of media elites underestimating their viewers. The divergent viewing habits of white and black television consumers is also discussed, and I for one was surprised to learn how few shows are watched by both blacks and whites (Touched by an Angel and Law and Order being some of the rare contenders in that category). In conclusion, I recommend at least skimming through this book, though for anyone who reads conservative publications regularly, little of what Goldberg has to say will come as a surprise.

2002-03-19T18:17:00.000-08:00

I'll blog a bit more shortly, but for now I just wanted to post a link to this interesting article, appearing in the NY Times of all places, which discusses the problems children from the Fujian province in southeastern China have in adapting to public schools in New York. I mostly found this article interesting because of the immensely difficult bargain these children's parents struck in sending their infants back to their homeland, and because the sequence of these children's lives is so out of sync with what I had presumed to be the natural trend of immigration (parents feel out-of-place, but children are quick to adapt).

2002-03-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

I watched CBS's special on 9/11 last night, and was generally impressed by the footage they showed, though the musical accompaniment at various points seemed misplaced, more appropriate for Deep Impact than a documentary about the worst attack ever on American soil. The producers did a good job of conveying the utter normalcy of that morning before the attacks. Even though you knew it was coming, my reaction was still one of shock when the firefighters, making a routine check for a gas leak underground, suddenly looked skyward just in time to see the first jet hit the north tower. For all who were worried about the footage being unnecessarily graphic, it was actually much more tame than most of what we witnessed on the small screen in the week following the attacks. As one of the firefighters on film commented, those two huge buildings were "reduced to dust."

While it feels a bit early for retrospectives about a chapter in our nation's history that is yet to concluded, the CBS documentary did serve as an apt reminder of how terrible those early days were. Six months later, our perceptions of the world altered, the war on terrorism has become a normal facet of life. For two hours last night, I re-visited the hours and days just after the attacks, when, glued to the television screen, it felt irreverant even to walk across the room, get something to eat, and like an act of cowardice to turn the set off. While life must go on, it is good to have such reminders.

2002-03-08T20:05:00.000-08:00

Hi, this is Sara Russo. Welcome to Russo's Republic. I've just started this blog, so it may be a week or so before it really takes off, but in the meantime, please visit my conservative activism page here.