The Vital Issue, Redux III

 This issue becomes more important with every election, especially in the United States post-Dobbs.  I've published this post twice before, here and here, but as it's fallen off the front page, and it's an election year, I think it's time to post it again.

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

If you think the last ended with the fall of the Third Reich and the liberation of their death and concentration camps, you are in error.  Both Stalin and Mao demanded that their political opponents be slain; in Mao's case, by their neighbors when enforcing the One Child Policy. 

You can escape that lowest tier here in the US if you're very careful to delve deeply into the coverage provided by your healthcare insurance company, and you have enough money to opt out.  Regardless of whether your plan covers abortion, if any of the plans offered by your insurer do, you are contributing to that coverage.  And certainly if your state's Medicaid coverage includes abortion, then your state government is helping the strong kill the weak.  This is why local elections areas or more important than national elections.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether your governments will prevent the strong from killing the weak.

The Problem With YouTube (and Society)

I remember telling somebody that the internet makes it easier for you to interact with everyone in the world, and also that it makes it easier for others to reach out to you, including scam artists.  It would certainly seem that the same is true for every other kind of horrible person out there in the world. 

I am generally not prone to posting a thing as soon as I see it, especially when it's already five years old. But I do believe this man deserves your attention.

 

The comments on this video are heartbreaking.  You need not read many to get a feel for the harm being done.

Youtube contains cesspits, everywhere.  And its algorithms seem to eventually lead to them, every time.  Of course, the same goes for Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, and all the rest of the social media/ user generated content platforms.  And we are using similar algorithms to shape and perhaps even govern our societies; for nearly everything we attempt to learn from our ever-growing datasets.  And they are all black boxes for those who didn't write them, and even to some extent for those who did.

Never have we had such a dire need for better Christian formation and education.  In the meantime, may God have mercy upon us.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

 Ludwig von Mises once said, "Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law."  My entire series, "Supply, Demand, and Price" is a catalog of sad examples of our rulers creating failures and tragedies by ignoring the laws of economics.

Unfortunately, these days our rulers are no longer content with pretending that only the laws of economics are subject to their control and revision.  They are trying to make the laws of biology subject to their will, as well.  And, like ignoring laws of physics and economics, this leads to tragedy and disaster.

Copybooks were the manuals used to teach children writing.  Back when Kipling wrote the poem referenced in my title, the exercises were basic moral doctrines.  

Not my usual thing

I don't do hot takes. I first saw this video yesterday, and it made me mad enough to fisk it today.

Getting mad that someone won’t date you is weird. Just move on and find someone who does actually want you pic.twitter.com/s4V3vKlSGm

— nicoco✿ (@PetiteNicoco) May 28, 2021

This video was posted to TikTok by Lexi Nimmo, who is billed as an actress, Instagram influencer, and plus-sized model, and from there was posted to Twitter. I'm going to post her spoken words in purple.

Let's start with her presentation. She's well groomed, has regular features, and has a friendly, attractive smile. Aside from morbid obesity (i.e., a BMI greater than 40kg/m^2 (e.g., 5'5", 240lbs) or weight more than 100lbs over ideal for height), she appears to be healthy. She has nice skin and long hair, both markers of good health.

Note the opening word balloon: "Reply to mellcannon's comment
Or he isn't attracted to bigger girls like how some people arnt attracted to smaller girls. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences [Very startled, wide-eyed emoji.]

"Heyy Bestie! [giggle]"

subtext: I like you and am your friend.

[serious]"You're wrong."

subtext: Aaaannnd there goes the friendliness. She's let the mask slip, and revealed, if only for a moment, the rage.

"I think it's time for another adult pre-k lesson, what do you think?"

Note Ms. Nimmo's wide, fake smile, and the contempt evident in using baby talk to tell her bestie that she has a pre-k level of consciousness and/or morality. And she's about to crank that contempt up to ELEVEN.

"Aaaall right, turn your listening ears on! Zhoooop! Catch a bubble in your mouth! [gasp] Good jo-ob!"

Subtext: Not only does Bestie clearly deserve to be told to shut up and listen, it is necessary to do so in a manner appropriate for a toddler, which is why Ms. Nimmo is doing so. And she does so often enough to have created a Tiktok hashtag for this practice, #adultprekwithlexi.

I would like to suggest to Ms. Nimmo that perhaps contempt is not the best way to keep friends, let alone persuade them. I would readily suggest to my wife that any one who treated her like that did not deserve my wife's friendship at all, let alone to be my darling wife's best friend.  In truth, such advice is appropriate for any human being.

"Okay, here's the thing. Having a preference is something like, 'I'm looking for a partner who likes kayaking, or wakes up early in the morning, ooooor, loves pizza.'" [giggles]

Those are in fact examples of preferences, but it's hardly an exhaustive list. Maybe one of the preferences of the man in question is, "I'm looking for a partner who will run five miles in half an hour with me before breakfast twice a week."

"But when your preferences exclude an entire group of marginalized people, that's problematic!"

Remember, "problematic" is to the woke as "blasphemous" is to Sharia law. It is something to be punished always, and never, ever forgiven, except perhaps by dying in the struggle to advance the faith.

"Okay, that's not nice, that's not a preference."

Sure, it may not be nice, but it IS a preference.  Maybe it's just a preference Ms. Nimmo opposes, because it excludes her. Remember that when we're talking about attraction, romance, dating, and marriage, the whole biological purpose of all that stuff is for people to start families and have babies. And that is ABSOLUTELY somewhere that each person's preferences should be honored. I'm sure there are plenty of men whom Ms. Nimmo has turned down, and perhaps harshly, when they pursued her with too much ardor, on the basis of preference.

"If you love [sic] all fat people in one group together as though they are not very different individuals, that's fat-phobic. Just like lumping all black people together and saying 'I don't like black people' is racist. And just like lumping all disabled people in one group and saying, 'I don't think people in wheelchairs are hot' is ableist. Do you understand what I'm saying? [giggle]"

One of the things that's built into the First Amendment's guarantees -- freedom of religion, of speech/ press/ opinion/ expression, of association, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances -- is the right to be an obnoxious hateful bigot.  Ms. Nimmo has the right to dislike such people, all she wants.  She can even hate and loathe them if she wants. She can even choose to BE one, all she wants. What she does not get to do is demand that they change their views to suit her.

Nor is commanding others how to think the only thing I can think of that might make Ms. Nimmo unattractive to a man. He might find her religion, Wokism, offensive. Or perhaps he cannot cope with her smug self-righteous moral supremacy. Or maybe it's her habit of treating people of differing opinions like toddlers, especially when they have a point. And given our society's supine willingness to let adherents of Wokism oppress others at will, I would not blame any man in the slightest if he declined to inform Ms. Nimmo if this was his reason for dropping her.

And I'm going to share a hard truth with Ms. Nimmo, and all other unmarried women: There are lots of men who will regard you as good enough to use for uncommitted sex, but NOT good enough for marriage, family, and children. Such a man is very likely to dump all the women he's used, once he's found one he's willing to marry -- or even, just one who's sufficiently better for use.  If you had been wise, you would never have let any such men have sex with you.

And, to go off-topic just a bit, it can reasonably be argued that glorifying obesity (I saw the banner on the set of one of Ms. Nimmo's Tiktok videos) poses a public health hazard comparable to glorifying smoking. Obesity contributes to hypertension, deep vein thrombosis, congestive heart failure, obstructive sleep apnea, pulmonary embolism, shortness of breath, neuralgia, asthma, arthritis (especially of the knees and hips), back pain, gastroesophageal reflux disease, diabetes mellitus type 2, hypercholesterolemia, coronary artery disease, leg swelling, varicose veins, cerebrovascular accidents, chronic kidney disease, and physical disability. As Ms. Nimmo is created in imago Dei, she is as deserving of compassion, respect, and understanding as anyone. Obesity does not change that. But she also deserves to have her errors called out, as much as anyone else does.

Mercy, Compassion, and the Prodigal

I am a huge fan of These Stone Walls.  Fr. Gordon Macrae has an entirely unique point of view in the blogosphere -- a priest sent to jail, probably for life, for crimes of sexual abuse he did not commit.  His voice is consistently one of justice, mercy, and compassion.  He deserves your attention and prayers.

In this post (go read it first.  Go read it now.), he takes Raymond Arroyo and Laura Ingraham to task for their expressed desire that soon-to-be nonogenarian Theodore McCarrick be sent to jail for his crimes.  They argue that because McCarrick has not repented, he deserves no mercy.

Perhaps he doesn't, Fr. G will admit.  But he is eighty-nine years old.  The elderly and frail are treated very badly in prison by the young and thuggish who make up the majority of its population.  Justice perhaps need not offer mercy to the unrepentant, but compassion says we should not put a man who will soon be ninety into a population that greets those like McCarrick with chants of 'Kill the priest!  Kill the priest!  Kill the priest!'  And if we are not going to kill McCarrick ourselves, then it is unjust to put him among those whom we can reasonably foresee will do so without our sanction.

Read the comments too, where compassion is likewise extended to Arroyo and Ingraham.

Should the strong kill the weak?

I've discussed this issue before. 

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

If you think the last ended with the fall of the Third Reich and the liberation of their death and concentration camps, you are in error.  Both Stalin and Mao demanded that their political opponents be slain; in Mao's case, by their neighbors when enforcing the One Child Policy. 

You can escape that lowest tier here in the US if you're very careful to delve deeply into the coverage provided by your healthcare insurance company, and you have enough money to opt out.  Regardless of whether your plan covers abortion, if any of the plans offered by your insurer do, you are contributing to that coverage.  And certainly if your state's Medicaid coverage includes abortion, then your state government is helping the strong kill the weak.  This is why local elections areas or more important than national elections.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether your governments will prevent the strong from killing the weak.

Murder vs. Justifiable Homicide

So libertarian Charles Murray recently said of abortion: "It’s a murder—it’s a homicide—but sometimes homicide is justified." (Salute to Matt Archbold.)

Sometimes homicide IS justified. When the only way to prevent an imminent murder is to slay the imminent perpetrator, that is justifiable homicide. There are other cases. Justifiable homicide is the entire point of Just War Theory -- to delineate the cases where nations may engage in mass, military homicide. But it is ALSO to delineate where such use of force is NOT justified. In fact, it makes the case that it is possible for soldiers fighting a just war to commit murder on the battlefield.

By having sex with a man, a woman voluntarily assumes the risk of pregnancy. The pregnancy is certainly not the fault of the child. Even if she becomes pregnant from rape, bear in mind that the child is neither the perpetrator of the rape, nor his accomplice, nor his co-conspirator. The child is every bit as much a victim of the rapist as the mother; he has denied his child its inherent right to be reared by its own parents in a stable, permanent marriage. I don't see any justification for slaying the child.

Murder is unjustified. The lack of justification is what defines "murder" as a subset of "homicide." Cases of homicide which are murder and cases of homicide which are justifiable have NO overlap. Mr. Murray's statement is profoundly irrational. He needs to either admit that abortion is murder, or make the case that it's justifiable homicide, and not equivocate the two.

Blogrollin' on Executive Fiat Mass Murder

Was Bush's decision that his people could torture captives gravely evil and utterly inexcusable? You bet. Has Obama done even worse? You bet! (salute to The Anchoress, whose post here is worth reading.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hot Air's story, which has the video, in case embedding doesn't work right.

Does this excuse Bush's use of torture? Nope. It just demonstrates that our Ruling Class has no respect for the rule of law, for morality, or for us, regardless of which side of the aisle they may call home. I have no solutions. I agree with Zippy when he says that national office elections are basically theater meant to reconcile us to being the subjects of the Ruling Class.

Why Single Payer Is a Bad Idea

I've long opposed any government takeover of medicine. Harry Mount explains why here. There's an exception to the scenario he paints, of increased demand, reduced resources, longer lines, and surly service -- the politically connected will get moved to the head of the line, and treated with deference, because in a politically controlled system, the politically powerful are in charge.

Salute to Big Pulpit.

The Tragedy in Connecticut

EDIT: I suppose you can consider my post the tl/dr of this post by the eloquent and esteemed David Warren, whose writings I recommend without qualification.

end edit With Pope Benedict, I am deeply saddened by the senseless and tragic massacre in New Town, Connecticut. I pray for those lost and all their families: May God have mercy on them all, and give his grace to all.

This article in the Atlantic concedes that the debate over banning gun ownership is largely over, and that those who argue for have lost. The author, Jeffrey Goldberg, even concedes that defensive gun uses happen, that law-abiding gun owners save lives with their guns, and even contradicts a lawyer for the Ohio police chief's association who says that his anecdotal evidence proves gun violence has increased since Ohio passed a shall-issue CCW permit law by claiming that statistics show otherwise.

Israel used to have a serious problem with school massacres. The PLO or Hamas would find some willing martyr, hand him a $50 black market AK-47 and some ammo, and send him to shoot up a school. Prime Minister Golda Mier said she was not going to make policy on the backs of children. Her response was to field armed volunteers to protect elementary schools, often retired relatives of the school children. The death tolls from these incidents went from over a score to low single digits, and Arab terrorists started using suicide bombers instead of gunmen.

I am not at all surprised to find Pelosi, President Obama, et al, making sure that they don't let tragedies go to waste by trying to make gun-banning hay while the sun shines. But I sincerely hope that they fail.

On infanticide (blogrollin')

There is apparently a pair of bioethicists who claim it is moral to perform post-birth abortions, which are somehow not the same thing as infanticide, in spite of both being the act of intentionally slaying an infant member of the species Homo Sapiens. I have no intention of linking to the article. Rather, I link to William Briggs' most excellent fisking, in which he points out the myriad of fallacies, false premises, non sequiturs, and most important, their failure to point out with anything approaching precision when infanticide becomes moral.

Salute to John C. Wright, comments further.

Justice and Prison

I have thought for some time that our prison system was unjust. It turns out that it's also unneccessary. An article in the New Yorker addresses both the injustice of our prisons, and what reduces crime.

One problem is that our justice system is misnamed. It is a criminal prosecution system. Its interest is not in justice and common law, but in statues, regulations, and procedural correctness. Prosecutors do their best to ensure that exculpatory evidence is never introduced, and work assiduously to avoid jury trials (to save time and money), and juries are never told to consider justice in convicting and giving sentencing recommendations. Is this a prudent way for a just society to order their priorities? Are time and money more important than justice?

A more just punishment would involve restitution, not incarceration. Stealing should involve not just paying back what you stole, but being forbidden the opportunities you used to steal. Embezzlers should not be allowed to go back into positions where they have authority over money.

Crime is prevented by simple things like reducing opportunities to commit them. Dr. Ruwart pointed out almost 20 years ago that if you reward police for reducing crime, instead of convicting criminals, they will act to do so -- and save us money in the process.

Another simple way to reduce crime is not punishing people for owning or using a little weed. (No, I don't use or approve of weed. I'd rather have a drink myself, even though I can readily recognize that ethanol causes a lot more adverse medical outcomes, that can easily be a lot more serious.) Relegalizing opioids and cocaine can come later.

Blast from the Past

I have maintained for years that taking government money is bad for Christian charity. And right about the end of this article about Obamacare on Catholic Lane it would seem that Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, IL, and Steven Mosher agree with me.

Worth Repeating for Emphasis

Salute to Marc Barnes over at Bad Catholic Blog, where I first saw the video.

I've written about this before: here and here and here and here. Feel free to review.

Greens jump the shark!

Salute to the Western Confucian.

Here's the video. Greens did this themselves, without any prompting, with the idea that this is funny, and you'll agree. Be advised, it's nearly as violent as photos of aborted children.



There's commentary on Lew Rockwell and James Delingpole's Guardian blog.

EDIT: Some thoughts of my own....
the murders are portrayed as essentially inconsequential to those who do them. And they do them immediately after lying about the consequences. These things point out first, the value that the AGW types put on human life; second, their respect for the rule of law; and third, their commitment to honesty.

Further update: 10:10Global took down this video of theirs the same day they posted it (and yes, it really is the creation of 10:10Global, an advocacy group going on about the need to cut global carbon emissions by 10% every year, intending to start in 2010). They can no doubt ask Google to remove this posting of it, but it's likely that the detailed write-up currently on Wikipedia will remain, and that it will get re-posted each and every time it gets blocked or taken down.

Cui Bono?

Who, besides providers and irresponsible fathers, benefits from the status quo on abortion? A study of that question is the subject of this article.

Cosmetics and pharmaceutical manufacturers use the flesh of aborted children as commodities. Everything I've ever said about embryonic stem cells (especially this) applies in this situation. There's a reason I've compared people like this to vampires. As PrairieHawk says in the comments of the article, it's cannibalism.

The Cold Heart of Obamacare

Salute to A Shepherd's Voice. Read the full column, by Nat Hentoff, at the Cato Institute.

Mr. Hentoff has an excellent stinger line: "We do not elect the president and Congress to decide how short our lives will be. That decision is way above their pay grades."

World of Lies

I hear enough of Rush Limbaugh to know he has adopted "the World of Lies" as a new catchphrase. That certainly seems to apply to Planned Parenthood; witness this article.

From the comments, and though I regard RICO as bad law, I agree with this:

I realize that, under the current administration, this is highly improbable but I do believe a case could be made to charge PP, and all their officers, under the RICO statutes. They constitute a continuing criminal enterprise (hiding knowledge of, and facts pertaining to, crimes), they fraudulently receive government funds under various titles, and they conceal their activities by operating under multiple entities, perceived as independent though controlled by a single, overarching, entity which controls the direction and methods used within the organization. Going after the individual offices for their trangressions, regardless of how serious, is akin to prosecuting street level drug dealers, whilst the kingpins operate with impunity. -- Reilly

A New World Record

Nobody, but NOBODY, does more murdering than abortionists. Not the Commies, not the Nazis, not the Turks, not the War Between the States, not even influenza.

None of those has passed the 1 Billion (1,000,000,000) Mark. Abortion has.

Is it any wonder that Mother Teresa made so much effort to constantly remind people, "[T]he greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

For your stack of quotes:

"Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion." -- Mother Teresa

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." -- Mother Teresa

Obama's Gag Order

If there's anything that tells me ObamaCare is a really, really bad idea, it's this:

President Forbids Insurance Companies to Tell Their Customers What Changes ObamaCare Would Bring

EDIT:

Check out this article as well. The money quote:

As if to drive the point home, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a gag order this week telling all private companies participating in the Medicare Advantage program to shut up. Violators would face fines and jail time. Forget the First Amendment.

The gag order was issued after Humana Corp. sent a letter to its policyholders who participate in Medicare Advantage telling them the facts about Obamacare’s effect on the program. The companies were ordered “to end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your website.”

The bureaucrats added this blunt threat: “Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions. ….”

Those, my friends, are the words of soft tyranny. How much longer before it becomes a hard tyranny?

Reforms that increase liberty, freedom, choice, and options from the Cato Institute.