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| State Senator Wendy Davis, during her 13-hour filibuster |
Melinda Henneberger has a thoughtful take on Democrat Texas State Senator Wendy Davis' thirteen-hour filibuster of a bill banning late-term abortions.
I have a bit different take.
If we can look for a moment beyond a politician abusing the political process to guarantee the killing of children in the womb, a pattern emerges that is quite remarkable.
A half-century ago, Democrats used the filibuster incessantly. They used it to protect segregation-- the Progressive Democrat ideology that there were different classes of human beings with different degrees of humanity and with different rights. The whole point of Democrats' incessant filibusters against civil rights was to maintain the power of the privileged at the expense of the weak.
Racists and abortion advocates share this fundamental assertion: there are human beings who are less than fully human, and who do not share the rights of others.
That legacy is alive and well in the Democrat Party. Senator Davis' thirteen hour filibuster of a bill protecting the lives of children in the third trimester is of a piece with the fifty-seven hour filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by her fellow Democrats. She and her forebearers filibustered in order to deny basic human rights to a class of human beings deemed unworthy of legal protection.
Children in the womb face a bleaker future than did blacks in the segregation era. Democrats shifted on segregation not because of enlightenment but because blacks had gained enough political power that their votes could be used to advantage. Children in the womb will never vote, and will never (while they are alive) serve the political interests of Democrats.
Democrats defend two interest groups: elites, and those who are of use to elites. Live unborn children are of no use to Democrats (although dead ones have a constituency). From the perspective of the Democrat Party, unborn children are now and will be in perpetuity just what blacks were during segregation: less-than-human, to be denied basic human rights when it fits the interests of the elites.
And note that abortion, like segregation, targets blacks. A thread runs through this. Senator Davis' little show in Texas is just another filibuster by another Democrat against people who are of no use to them.
The republicans in the U.S. Senate have taken the use of the filibuster to an unprecedented new level. Now virtually everything in the senate needs 60 votes to advance. Your ignoring of this fact is just one more way you demonstrate that you are a hypocritical partisan hack.
ReplyDelete-KW
Unlike, say, President Lackwit, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid, all bipartisan to the bone. :-)
DeleteYou're such a whiner, Popeye. Grow up.
@KW:
DeleteDo you have any comments relevant to my post?
@KW:
DeleteThat's a perceptive critique. I'll have to ponder it.
At least you didn't call me a racist.
if there's hypocrisy here, there's hypocrisy on both sides. the minority party likes the filibuster and the majority party doesn't. when the parties switch then their feelings toward the filibuster do too. i could say the same to you--why is 'obstructionism' suddenly okay?
Deletenaidoo
Egnor, There was a story posted yesterday on the Blaze featuring a young black women testifying in the Zimmerman case. Here are some of the comments in whole or in part.
ReplyDelete“What a blithering fool. Just what I would expect…..”
“Creepy A@@ N1993r”….
“Dat not racial cause nobody axe me. Dat what I sait when you axe me. When I was which you I taught you axe me somthun else”
“Gettopotomus”
“HA! Gettopotomus! That’s a good one. I am going to use it! :-)”
” @Nobull14, (Ghettopotumus) BWWAAHHAAA!! Dat’s gotta be da funniest thing I’ve read all day, Yo!”
” Why riot when it’s hot and you can stay inside all day, smoke pot, and watch BET.”
“Part of me hopes he is found innocent just to allow the blacks to riot and maybe once and for all we can stop their tribal madness.”
” And she is just 19. What an angel. What a future she has ahead of her. All those gubment checks, etc.”
“Nappy headed ho”
“In the true spirit of the First Amendment: ******, ******, ******, ******”
” Naw, we get 6 broads to judge a man. How is that a jury of his peers? 6 women? What a crock.” (this one is sexist; I included it to show they’re not all racist.)
“And most in that group are indeed what Paul Dean proclaimed”
” He was shot in self defense because he tried to kill or seriously injure another person. Because he was a black punk.”
And that’s just from the first of eight pages of this crap. There’s nothing like this on the left.
-KW
Good point, KW.
DeleteA few people on the Right (assuming that's who they are) say bad things about blacks on comboxes.
Nearly all people on the Left support abortion policies that have killed 20 million black children since 1973.
Nearly all homocides committed against blacks occur in municipalities governed entirely by the Left.
Compare.
i know a left-wing troll when i see one. you obviously don't. either that or you're one of them.
Deletethe 'young black woman' you referred to is herself racist. she says that people in her 'culture' use terms like cracker all the time, as well as 'nigga.'
naidoo
KW,
DeleteDid they post their party affiliation in the combox?
Some of the nastiest bigots I have ever had the unfortunate circumstance of coming across identify with the left.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A Democratic legislator from Minnesota swiftly apologized Tuesday for a tweet he sent that referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Uncle Thomas" following a major ruling on the nation's landmark voting rights law.
DeleteA typical Democrat response to a black man with a mind of his own.
obstructionism is suddenly cool again!
ReplyDeleteas we all know, bachfiend is sompletely opposed to abortion after twenty weeks. this bill drew the line at...twenty weeks! and yet the abortion fanatics would have none of it. they worship abortion.
naidoo
Naidoo,
DeleteNot quite true. I don't have any problems with abortion by choice before 20 weeks. I would prefer them to be rare and as early as possible, particularly surgical abortions, which is an invasive procedure with a risk of complications.
Readily available affordable contraception should prevent the necessity for most abortions, which is still going to be needed in case of contraception failure, rape or incest.
I agree with my state's (Western Australia) legislation that allows abortion after 20 weeks, after aapproval by a medical panet appointed by the Minister of Health, for indications of risk to the woman's health or life (hasn't happened so far) or serious irremedial foetal abnormality.
It's just my opinion. I can't speak for anyone else.
Leftists will really go to the mat for violence against children. How heroic of them. As far as I can tell, the only thing they didn't like about Gosnell and his dead baby factory was that it was unhygienic. Tiddy up a little more, Kermit.
ReplyDeleteA clean medieval torture chamber is still a medieval torture chamber.
TRISH
Trish,
DeleteI didn't like Gosnell's abortion clinic because he was doing late term abortions.
Although, his clinic should have been closed down because it was a danger health wise to its staff, as well as the patients.
There's a recent case in Australia, in which a partial abortion was performed on one of 31 week gestation twins, and I wonder what the indication for it was, was it good enough? Foetal abnormality in non-identical twins? Is aborting one a risk to the other, presumably normal, twin?
And they aborted the wrong twin.
So you say, Bachfiend. But here in the United States we've been having a fight recently concerning late term abortion. A recent bill that would ban abortion after twenty weeks--your favorite cutoff point--passed the (Republican-controlled) House of Reps. Only SIX Democrats voted yes. Count 'em--SIX!!
DeleteThe bill will go nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate and even if it did, the president has already promised to veto it. He's even said that a child born alive in a botched abortion has no right to medical attention. The child should just be allowed to die right there.
Texas passed would have passed a similar bill but this defender of bloodthirsty killing filibustered it and now she's being fetted as a hero.
Just last month there was a lot of hand-ringing about Gosnell, and how terrible he is, but...but...but...but. Now, we they really upset that he was doing abortions at 24 and 25 weeks? No. They were upset that his standards of cleanliness were low. Killing children is okay, just keep it hygienic.
These people are fanatics for killing children. I'ms peaking of the media and the political left, which are basically indistinguishable. They know that once they accept the tiniest restriction on abortion, they are accepting that there is another life at stake, and once they accept that another life is at stake, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
TRISH
There are 201 Democrats in the House. Six voted to restrict abortion after twenty weeks. That's about three percent. These people are insane.
Delete--Francisca S.
Dr. Egnor: Your friend P.Z. Meyers is making an appearance in a documentary film called "Evolution vs. God." I may try to see it when it's released for download on July 9th.
ReplyDeleteI saw the trailer and it appears that some creationist guy goes around to universities and asks proponents of evolution very basic questions which they struggle to answer.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/28/evolution-vs-god-famed-evangelist-says-his-new-film-exposes-embarrassingly-stupid-ideas-behind-darwinian-theory-get-a-sneak-peek/
Looks interesting.
TRISH
TRISH:
DeleteThanks. I like Comfort a lot. Myers has mentioned the interview-- I suspect that Myers agreed to it because he has a book coming out and wants the publicity.
The documentary should be a great film. I look forward to it!
Trish,
DeleteIt's a film. Edited to reflect a particular view. Not a documentary. Similar in fact to the so-called documentary 'Darwin's Dilemma' produced by Stephen Meyer and the YEC Paul Nelson about the Cambrian explosion (actually radiation) 540 million years ago (go figure, so to a YEC 540 million years is 'young').
Stephen Meyer repeats the same arguments in 'Darwin's Doubt'. It's a substandard piece of work with incompetent or dishonest discussion of references.
He discusses convergent evolution at one point, ridiculing two papers claiming that it produced the same gene in obviously disparate species. One of his references (and he makes it difficult to find references giving a link to the endnotes with 'author, title of paper, page nos' and listing references separately alphabetically with no link) is 'Convergent evolution of antifreeze glycoproteins in Antarctic notothenoid fish and Arctic cod' by Chen, deVries and Chien, Proceedings National Academy of Science, April 1997, pp 3817-3822, which indicates that the two genes are DIFFERENT not the SAME.
Darwinism isn't intrinsically atheistic. There are religious scientists who accept Darwinism. Such as Robert Asher, who recently wrote 'Evolution and Belief. Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist'. Stephen Meyer spends a few pages criticizing Robert Asher.
I have read both. I recommend Asher's book. I don't recommend Meyer's, unless you're into fantasy novels for adults.
"It's a film. Edited to reflect a particular view. Not a documentary."
DeleteAll films have points of view.
Best documentary Oscar for 2002 went to Bowling for Columbine. In 2006, it was An Inconvenient Truth. There is no such thing as a documentary without a point of view. Your calling it a film with a point of view is some kind of attempt to delegitimize it.
I haven't seen it and neither have you because it isn't out yet, but you've already dismissed it ostensibly because it has a point of view. Good to know you're very open-minded about it. Sounds like some kind of coping mechanism you use whenever you perceive your deeply-held convictions to be under attack.
I'd like to see what kind of questions this guy has and if the evolutionary biologists have answers. They should, shouldn't they? Surely, if they're the experts and their science is sound, they should answer all of this guy's questions with expertise and wit. But I think you know that didn't happen, because if it did, the guy wouldn't have been able to make a film.
"Darwinism isn't intrinsically atheistic."
I never said that it was. You might want to tell KW that, though.
TRISH
Trish,
Delete'Darwinism isn't intrinsically atheistic' referred to the film's title - 'Evolution versus God'.
Robert Asher in 'Evolution and Belief'. Confessions of a Religious Paleontologist' argues that God is the agency, evolution is the mechanism used.
I haven't seen the film. I have seen the trailer. The questions used in the trailer are so stupid that it's no wonder the interviewees appear gobsmacked. One was referring, apparently, to Richard Lenski's 20+ year experiment with E. coli, in which the interviewee was asked; all that's happened is that a bacterium turns into another bacterium (what else would a bacterium do - turn into a dog)?
You must think I'm an idiot to lie to my face like that.
DeleteIn the trailer, he posed exactly two questions. The other questions were ones that you imagined based on the answers given. You don't know what the questions were. We'll have to see the movie to know if he was asking about Lenski's experiment.
You also didn't quote him correctly. What he said was, "To summarize, the observable evidence that you give me for Darwinian evolution is bacteria becoming bacteria. It's still bacteria. There's no change in kind."
He did NOT say that one bacterium became ANOTHER bacterium. That would be a neat trick, and that's what he wants to see. Let's see one species become another. Not adaptation within a species. No one disputes that species adapt.
But you can't even get that correct, so you have to misquote him.
You could help your cause a little with a bit of honesty.
TRISH
Trish,
DeleteI was paraphrasing, not quoting (no quotation marks). The questioner was asking a question with a desired answer that would disprove evolution not prove it. Observing a species turning into another species under one's own eyes. Richard Lenski's experiment is neat, with two of the 12 lines of E. coli developing the ability to use citrate at some point in 20+ years - being able to metabolise particular sugars is often used diagnostically to sort pathogens from non-pathogens in medical microbiology (not that E. coli can't be a pathogen - Lenski's used a safe strain).
'Species' is a rather artificial concept in bacteria, with horizontal gene transfer being so ubiquitous.
Democrats certainly do not oppose late term abortion. Wendy Davis wouldn't be a heroine if they did.
ReplyDeleteThe GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House from 2001 until 2007 and they did nothing on the abortion issue. That's one reason I'm not a member of a political party. It's better to be an independent and I get fewer robocalls.
Unfortunately, there is no truly pro-life party. There is one party that is very serious about being "pro-choice" and they will fight like warriors for their cause. There's another party that's supposed to be pro-life but they shrink from a fight.
Stop shrinking. Children are dying.
--Francisca S.
Francisca:
DeleteI basically agree, although I support Republicans because there are a few genuinely pro-life people in the party, and I don't think there are any in the Democrat party.
The Republicans are open to pro-life views. The Democrats are not.
True, the Republicans are chickenshit, but I think I can commiserate with them. The media are not on their side. The pro-abortion forces can always count on favorable coverage from reporters who will frame the issue to their advantage.
DeleteBen
The Democrats had their opportunity to show us that they aren't the Kermit Gosnell party and they failed. That's what they are--the party of baby death camps and toilets clogged with body parts.
ReplyDeleteThe Torch
Racists and abortion advocates share this fundamental assertion: there are human beings who are less than fully human, and who do not share the rights of others.
ReplyDeleteThat's the crux of it right there, Egnor. That's what we're fighting about.
Ben
@troy:
ReplyDeleteThe dignity and worth of every human being is a fundamental tenet of Christianity. There have been Christians who have not acted in accordance with Christian teachings (surprise).
But the world is an immeasurably better place because of Christianity. Our faith, besides being the best worldly hope of man, is true as well.