It All Comes Down To Marketing

 With the release of the film "October Baby", many people are asking a new question: How common is abortion survival?

Well, let's make a comparison to something a little more well-known: the lynching of blacks in the United States. 


There are more than 3,500 known cases of whites lynching blacks between 1882 and 1968.

3500 lynchings in nearly a century.
That's an average of 83 deaths a year.

Well, that tells us the raw numbers, but out of what population? After all 83 deaths out of a population of 100 would be a lot worse than 83 out of a population of 100 million. 

So what was the black population between 1882 and 1968? This is rather harder to calculate. Mortality rates in the 1880's are rather worse than those in 1968, and the population skew is also different. However, we can safely say that most people alive in 1882 were not alive in 1968. 

In 1860 it was 4.4 million, by 1960 it was 18.9 million.

Since a smaller population makes the per capita lynching incidence look worse, we will calculate the total population in the way that makes the incidence of lynching look the most horrific: we'll just add the two numbers together, call it 25 million. This choice pretends the black population between 1860 and 1959 was a constant 4.4 million, and in 1960 was 18.9 million, but it makes the per capita rate the worst it can be.

So, let's say 25 million alive during that whole period.

Now, there have been roughly 52 million abortions in the last 50 years.

So, how many abortion survivors are there in the United States each year?  

We don't know for sure, since the United States does not even keep integrated statistics on abortion throughout all 50 states - virtually no one keeps statistics on survivors of abortion. 

The closest we can get is to look at a country with a comparable health system that does keep statistics.   According to the 2005 Confidential Enquiry into Child Health, 50 babies survived abortion in Britain in 2002. In 2002, there were 1,354 abortions performed after 22 weeks in Britain. That means that around 3.7% of children aborted after 22 weeks survived.

The figures for the CEMACH 2007 Perinatal Mortality report, gathered from hospitals in England and Wales during 2005, reveal 16 babies who survived abortion were born after 22 weeks in the womb or later in the pregnancy... in 2006, 2948 abortions were performed at over 20 weeks.  That would put the survival rate at .5 %.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 1.4% of U.S. abortions take place at 21 weeks or later. There are 1.37 million abortions in the United States each year. That means 18,200 abortions after 21 weeks.

If Britain's baby survival percentage (.005 to .037) coincides across the Atlantic, then between 90 and  670 children survive abortion every year in the United States (1.4% of 1.3 million is 18,200 and 3.7% of 18,200 is 673).

Now, there's no reason to think US survival rates are different than UK survival rates.

But, let's be generous and say that our calculated abortion survivor numbers are 5 times higher than it should be, and it's really only between 18 and 135 survivals a year in the United States.

Alright.

So, America experienced 83 lynching deaths per year out of a total population of maybe 25 million versus somewhere between 20 and 135 abortion survivals a year out of a total population of 52 million abortions. If we went to straight per capita, that compares 83 deaths per 25 million vs 10 to 70 alive per 25 million.

Yep - if we drop the abortion survival rate by five in order to present a conservative estimate, the rates of black lynchings versus abortion survivors are essentially identical.
And that's if we are being generous.

If we were being honest, we would admit that there are MORE children surviving abortion each year than there were blacks being lynched each year. 

So why has everyone heard about black lynchings, but no one has heard about abortion survival?

It's all about marketing. 

A Hate Crime Gone Wrong

A witness to the killing of Trayvon Martin describes a hate crime gone wrong.
But apparently, it wasn't the Hispanic man who committed the hate crime.
It was Obama's "son", Trayvon Martin

According to the eyewitness:

A black man has an Hispanic man on the ground, beating the crap out of him.
Hispanic man has cut on his head, bloody nose, grass stains on the back of his white coat.
Witness saw black man in hoodie sitting on him and beating him.

Hispanic man cries out for help.
Witness turns to dial 911, hears gunshot.
Black man lies dead on the grass.

Looks like Obama's son engaged in felonious assault and got shot dead.
A hate crime gone wrong.

Is this scenario unlikely?

Not when you remember the incredible hatred the two groups have for one another.

The West Coast has seen a tremendous up-swing in both black-on-Hispanic and Hispanic-on-black violence, with hate crimes against Hispanics "soaring".

New York City has seen the same thing.

But, of course, it only hits the national news when the Hispanic can be portrayed as "white" and when the victim is black. If the victim were Hispanic, or was black Hispanic instead of white Hispanic, well... different rules would naturally apply.

UPDATE:
Police reveal that Trayvon initiated the assault, punched Zimmerman, beat his head against the concrete several times.

UPDATE:
Pat Buchanan asserts that young black males make up between 2 and 3 percent of the population, but are responsible for 30% of society's assaults. In New York, 83% of all gun assaults are by blacks, 15% are by Hispanics - that's 98% of all gun assaults in the city. In the country at large, "white criminals choose black victims in 3 percent of their crimes, but black criminals choose white victims in 45 percent of their crimes."


I wonder where he gets his stats?


Also, it is interesting that a small percentage should have such an unusually large effect is not unique, but it is interesting.  I can think of only two other situations where this obtains in a way that our society conspicuously notices, or fails to notice. 

Mocking Victims

Can you imagine a writer mocking the survivors of rape, claiming such alleged victims simply didn't exist?

Can you imagine an editor approving a story that claimed the lynchings of black men were all entirely fabricated: "The odds that this has happened in the real world approach those of being struck by lightning and eaten by a shark at the same time. With a winning lottery ticket tucked in your swimsuit"?

How about an article that claimed the Holocaust never happened, that the people in the camps all died of disease, that their bodies were burned only to keep the disease from spreading?

Well, Salon very publicly denied a similar reality in Andrew O'Hehir's review of "October Baby."

You could ask for no better twist, in an antiabortion drama, than having an aborted fetus return to life as an adult character (especially a really cute one). But unless you’re going to set the movie in heaven or experiment with complicated alternate-universe theories (which might in themselves raise some theological hackles), that’s tough to pull off. Hence, Hannah and her weird story, which gets weirder the longer you stick with it. Bracketing her absurd back story...

Yes, that's a knee-slapper alright, that whole "abortion survivor" meme, isn't it?

Gianna Jessen is just yucking it up over the cerebral palsy she suffered as a result of her abortion survival. 

Ana Rosa Rodriguez thinks one of the funniest things that ever happened to her was having an abortionist rip her arm right off her body and leave her still alive in her mother's womb, to be born a few hours later.

Sarah Smith undoubtedly often refers to the frequent surgeries she's undergone as a result of her abortion survival as "just weird".

And the permanent brain damage Ximena Renaerts suffered as a consequence of her abortion survival is a well-known laugh riot, frequently portrayed in sitcoms. 

There are a lot more survivors, of course, and a lot more stories, but none of them really make a difference to the point of Salon's article:

I was too amused and distracted by the terrible play in which Hannah is acting when she collapses onstage, leading to the doctor’s office scene, to bother with doing any scientific or medical research. ...  But I can state with some conviction that this is not a highly plausible scenario: Abortions that late in the second trimester are exceedingly rare to begin with, probably less than 1 percent of all abortion procedures. And while we’re given a gruesome description later in the film of what this “failed abortion” involved, no one ever explains how or why it happened. The odds that this has happened in the real world approach those of being struck by lightning and eaten by a shark at the same time. With a winning lottery ticket tucked in your swimsuit.

As O'Hehir himself admits, he didn't do a bit of research. And why should he? He's a liberal, and liberals know all.

But it gets better! Again, as himself admits, even if he had known of these survivors, it would have made no difference. He wasn't upset about the abortion or the survival, rather, he was "creeped out" by the portrayal of the main character's father, who was entirely too "Old Testament" for his taste:

That whole aspect of “October Baby” creeped me out a lot more than the wacky failed-abortion story did, honestly.

Ah, that wacky abortion story! Yes, that's just too funny. You could die laughing. Any decent person can see why O'Hehir would be more concerned about the fact that the main character's father showed continuing concern for his daughter's welfare then our same beloved O'Hehir could ever be about the fact that an abortionist tried and failed to kill a young lady.

I would write more, but I'm wiping the tears from my eyes.

UPDATE:
I thought I would calculate the odds on Paddy O'Hehir's figures.


Hey, let's check Paddy's math!

Let's see... according to the Daily Mail, over 60 children a year are born alive after an attempted abortion.

"Medical advances make it increasingly possible for even those born after just 22 weeks in the womb to survive.... Latest Department of Health figures show that abortion is rising, with 193,700 terminations in 2006, and 2,948 carried out over 20 weeks."

Now, the chances of being struck by lighting are 1 in 280,000, according to the Lightning Safety Bureau. About 550 people are struck by lightning each year.

Only 10-20 people are year are struck while in contact with water, much less while actually in the water swimming. "Ron Holle, a former meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who tracks lightning injuries, estimates that 10 to 20 people in the United States are shocked annually while bathing, using faucets or handling appliances during storms."

That means out of 550 people, only 10-20 were in contact with water.
So the 280,000 odds has to be increased by a factor of at least 20.
That makes the odds of being struck while swimming 1 in 5,600,000.

Your chances of being attacked by a shark is 1 in 11.5 million. 

Your chances of having a winning lotto ticket are between 1 in 18 million and 1 in 180 million depending on the exact game.

So, to calculate the odds of Paddy's scenario, his suggestions (swimming, lightning strike, shark attack and winning ticket) have to be multiplied together. We'll take the lowest odds of each to increase the likelihood.

Paddy's scenario: 1 in 52,900,000,000,000, or 1 in 52 trillion.
The national debt is only around 17 trillion.

What are the actual odds of surviving an abortion?

Well, 16 of the 66 babies in 2008 in the UK were born alive after an abortion attempted at or later than 22 weeks. As Paddy O'Hehir points out, those kinds of abortions are infrequent - only 2948 of them in the UK that year.

But those are the kind that will lead to an adult with disabilities.

Of course, of those born under the 22 week cut-off, half still survived more than an hour, but who cares about living, breathing children, right, Paddy?

So, the ACTUAL likelihood of surviving an abortion after 22 weeks and living to adulthood is something more like .005 or 1 in 200.

Heck, let's be generous and say 1 in 1000.

According to http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/after_12_weeks.html, something less than 2% of abortions in the United States are after 22 weeks.

There's 42 million abortions in the US each year, about 115,000 per day.

So, roughly 115 children a day survive their abortion, and could make it to adulthood if they were only given care.

Yep, Paddy.
115 people per day.
That's how many people you insulted.

But what's the chance a liberal or an Irishman, maybe even an Irishmen who's ex-girlfriend had an abortion, what are the chance that such a drunken sod will mock the woman who killed his own child by mocking the men and women who survive an abortion?

Well, the odds of that are 1:1.


Update:
NYT reports  "a 1985 study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology examined  33,000 suction curettage abortions and found a failure rate of 2.3 per 1,000 at the 12-weeks or earlier".  Let's see, that would be 76 survivals in that 33,000 abortion sample. 

2012: The Year The Music Died

I got into a debate about who was the best Presidential candidate.

To be quite honest, I'm not sure that it matters.

Oh, sure, we can do better or worse in the short term with one versus the other, but in the long-term? Yeah, in the long-term, we're dead.

We can argue economic policy and governmental policy all day long.
Those things are important.
But none of them matter if we don't solve the social problems.

Indeed, if the social issues aren't solved, the economic issues will get worse. This is a very simple problem, a problem that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats nor the Libertarians want to solve. The United States is not pro-natalist. That's the source of all problems. As long as we aren't having babies, as long as we promote sterility whether by homosexuality or contraception or whatever, any change in economic policy is just moving deck chairs around.

We can only pay illegals to have our babies for us for so long - at some point, they will stop coming in because there isn't any advantage to having babies here versus having babies in Mexico or Central America or wherever. As soon as they stop providing us with children, we're dead.

Dueling Worldviews
The Catholic Church fought dueling for a thousand years before it finally fell out of common social usage. She condemned the joust in the 1100s and was still answering dubia about duelling in the 1860s. It wasn't until the culture changed from being honor-based to being money-based that duelling stopped.

Dueling didn't stop because the Church condemned it or because people became "anti-dueling" or "pro-life". It stopped because people stopped valuing honor so highly. They were no longer willing to kill to preserve it.

Dueling was a consequence of living in an honor-based society.

Same with being pro-natalist.
In order to be pro-natalist, the society has to value babies as a very high, if not the highest, good.
But when honor fell out of favor in this society, honor wasn't replaced with babies or with considerations of future generations. Honor was replaced with money.

The country isn't anti-natalist because it hates babies.
It is anti-natalist because it doesn't see the money-value of babies.
That is, when given a choice between making a baby and making a buck, most people choose the avenue that will turn them the buck.

Even when women choose to stay at home, many of them choose to do so BECAUSE IT IS CHEAPER than earning that second income, getting taxed on it, and paying for the child care. The time-value of money is now higher than the time-value of a baby, and this culture cares about time-value. So I don't care how pro-life people get in their survey answers. They aren't going to have babies because they are too busy trying to earn the next buck. The money is worth more than the baby.

A Slave of Mammon
Consider another example. Look at how William Wilberforce got slavery outlawed. Slavery wasn't making much money for England as a whole, but it WAS making a lot of money for a small, entrenched government interest group. That group successfully blocked ALL direct anti-slavery legislation.

Wilberforce finally beating them by passing an obscure shipping regulation which bled the money out of the trade. Now, if English culture had held slavery to be actually valuable, that law would have been amended to allow slavery to continue, and Wilbeforce's success would have been very temporary.

But, since slavery wasn't held to be socially valuable, the small, entrenched pro-slavery group was unable to get the law amended.

Notice: whether the law was pro-slavery or anti-slavery was of absolutely no concern to the larger society. No one else cared enough about the issue one way or the other to actually change the law.

So Wilberforce found it nearly impossible to change the law to be anti-slavery. Once it was changed, his opponents found it absolutely impossible to change it back to being pro-slavery.

The Problem With Going Back to the Future
The same is true in America about babies.
The problem isn't with pro- or anti-natalist legislation.
It's that no one cares enough about babies to actually have any.
We are too self-involved, too oriented towards turning the next buck.

And, given the growth of technology, are people becoming MORE or LESS self-involved as the years rush by? Let's put it another way: isn't Facebook primarily the quintessence of self-involvement - superseded only by Twitter?

I don't see how the fight to turn America pro-natalist takes less than several centuries.
It took the Industrial Revolution to destroy the honor-based society that encouraged dueling.
It will take a similar revolution to destroy the money-based that encourages sterility.

And, ultimately, when it comes to babies, societies can't afford centuries.

Now,
IF Santorum gets elected President
and
IF Santorum stays true to pro-life principles
then 
MAYBE we have a chance.

But if Santorum does NOT get elected, then the country is not interested in the pro-natalist tag that is being hung around Santorum's neck (much to his chagrin). And that means America is going to the dogs.

And Santorum's chagrin is why I ultimately don't trust Santorum.

The press is trying to paint Santorum as (horrors!) an orthodox Catholic.

In his interviews, Santorum keeps denying that he is an orthodox Catholic, in the sense that whenever a news-babe puts him on the spot, he denies social policies are an important part of his agenda. That means even *HE* thinks he can't win on a pro-natalist platform.

Which means America loses this time around, no matter who wins.
We lose because our society isn't interested in the only winning strategy: babies.
We aren't interested in the best long-term investment any human being can make.

God promised that Catholic Faith would triumph.
He did not promise America would.

Auto de Fact

Horrors!

It seems some Dutch Catholic priests were caught having sex with young men back in the 1950s. The priests were disciplined and ten of the young men - assumed homosexuals - were castrated.

To the 21st century American, it sounds horrible.
So, of course, it is making headlines today.

Now, no one has pointed out that in the 1950s, homosexuality was considered a serious disease, and all kinds of cures were attempted.  Electroshock therapy, nausea aversion therapy, psychoanalysis, and estrogen injections to reduce libido were all considered reasonable. The nausea inducement therapy could and did lead to death through dehydration.

Notice how the press is howling for the skins of the perfidious doctors who imposed such therapies?
Yeah, me neither.

And it's not like the press is now or was ever against castration, even in the 1950s. After all, that's when doctors invented "Christine Jorgensen". Mr. Jorgensen was the subject of the first successful sex mutilation operation, in which a man's genitalia were destroyed and refashioned to look like a woman's in order to convince the man and the world that he was now a woman.

The operation was so successful that, to this day, the MSM refers to this poor man as "she" - as if the destruction of perfectly healthy organs changed every Y chromosome in the man's body into an X. Indeed, whenever some poor man or woman undergoes this total destruction of their external genitalia, the press howls in delight.

Of course, there is voluminous evidence that sex change operations are complete failures. But who cares about that?

This is a politically acceptable castration, and it's cutting edge, 21st century "medicine", so no one is going to complain about the fact that it doesn't actually work. As SCOTUS has pointed out, we all have the right to construct our own reality, even if that reality has no contact with this one.

And speaking of the American judicial system, recall another fact. It is not unheard of for American judges to sentence certain criminals to chemical castration in lieu of imprisonment, or to forbid them from having any more children. Liberals have little to no problem with these practices.

But, when it comes to this story, multi-cultural liberals disregard the fact that homosexuality was a crime in the 1950s, the fact that the culture was entirely different, that punishment and treatment were viewed in different light - none of this has bearing.

There is only one thing to focus on - men were castrated and a priest was behind it.
That is sufficient.

Call the court of public opinion!

Chant your confession of faith in liberal values!

Let the fires be lighted!
Let the executions begin!

Warp and Woof

What would you say to a couple that insisted on aborting a perfectly normal child because they dearly wanted a disabled child?

It happens.

Deaf couples not uncommonly desire only deaf children.
They do not want children who can hear because such children would not fit into their tightly knit deaf community. Consequently, some deaf couples would be willing to undergo genetic testing only to assure themselves that their child will, indeed, be deaf. Children who do not carry the gene for deafness would be aborted.

This came to mind over the recent lesbian-inspired brouhaha in Canada, wherein a lesbian took offense at the presence of a Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) quote in a pamphlet distributed in her childrens' school.

Seems she finds the CCC offensive.
She wants the Catechism passage removed.

Now, there would be no shortage of bishops in the United States who would undoubtedly strike the offending CCC quote from all teaching materials, lest some sodomite be offended (Cardinal Wuerl, call your office!)

But the case made by the deaf parents strikes to the heart of an argument raised by Catholics - the notion of "intrinsic disorder."

What does it mean to be "intrinsically disordered"?
Deaf people would disagree with hearing people.
Deaf people would be wrong, of course.
They would, however, still strenuously disagree.

Eyes are meant for seeing.
If you are blind, you suffer from intrinsic disorder.
Ears are meant for hearing.
If you are deaf, you suffer from intrinsic disorder.

It doesn't matter if you have a wonderfully tight-knit community despite your hearing disorder.
It doesn't matter if you have a wonderfully tight-knit community because of your hearing disorder.
You suffer from a disorder.
Insofar as your community is built around a disorder, so does your community.

Same goes with being homosexual.
Sex organs are made for procreating.
Using your sex organs in ways that can't lead to procreation is disordered.
It doesn't matter if you have a wonderfully tight-knit community despite or even because of your sexual disorder.  You suffer from a disorder.
Insofar as your community is built around a disorder, so does your community.

There are many wonderfully tight-knit communities that are intrinsically disordered.
La Cosa Nostra is a wonderfully tight-knit community, but it's centered around a disorder.
Amish communities are wonderfully tight-knit, but centered around a basic theological disorder.

Too many people are so fascinated by community that they are willing to forgive literally anything as long as community is promoted. But, while Christianity is about human community, human community is not the point.

If promoting human community were the point, becoming a hermit would be a sin.
Since becoming a hermit is a virture, it cannot be the case that human community is the point.

It is communion between God and man that matters.
Any community which arises between man and man as a result of the pursuit of communion with God is just gravy.

Someone might want to mention this to the lay and ordained socialists who inhabit our parish and chancery offices.

Proof For the Existence of God

Herein lies the classic problem of how to get a finite mind to comprehend infinity:

Atheists always ask for a test or proof of God.

1) Since finite creatures only have a finite capacity to perceive, we are unable to accurately perceive infinity.

That is, our finite senses "fill up" with the first contact we make with infinity. Although there is infinitely more to reveal, we are unable to absorb the rest because our senses are already filled to maximum capacity.

Even if God were standing before us, we would be unable to perceive that He is God.

2) Yet if our senses prevent us from sensing infinity, how can we conceive of infinity?
The very fact that we can conceive of infinity means our intellects are capable of something our senses are not capable of.

Human intellect is more than just the processing of sensory data.

We are somehow linked to something infinite, something that allows us to hold the idea of infinity.

3) Since that "infinite" is not us, nor is it in us, it must be God.

A Complete Defense

As the Volokh Conspiracy points out:

"Gloria Allred, writing on the letterhead of the Women’s Equal Rights Legal Defense and Education Fund has asked the West Palm Beach County Attorney to prosecute Rush Limbaugh for violating Fla. Stat. § 836.04:

Whoever speaks of and concerning any woman, married or unmarried, falsely and maliciously imputing to her a want of chastity, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree …."

Now, Volokh is interested in analyzing the law, and I'll leave him to it.
You can see from his analysis why Allred is full of it.

I want to point out something entirely different to Volokhs' analysis, yet closely related to it.

Gloria Allred's attack is an essentially Muslim attack.

According to The Reliance of the Traveller, a fully approved manual of Sunni Sharia jurisprudence, slander (ghiba) has a very special definition - "slander" is saying something about someone that s/he wouldn't like to have said. (r2.2)

It doesn't matter if the statement is true. If the statement hurts the feelings of the one being discussed, it is slander and can be punished.

This is not an exaggeration, it is a quote.

The manual of sharia law even goes so far as to describe the six times when it is permissible to slander someone. It is still unlawful to slander them, mind you (r2.16), but it is acceptable to slander someone (you won't be punished for it) in the following circumstances:  
(1) testimony to a judge or one in authority in order to correct an injustice (r2.17), 
(2) to warn a wrongdoer that he must cease, lest he be punished (r2.18),
(3) asking for a legal opinion about someone from a legal authority (r2.19),
(4) to warn Muslims of an evil-doer (r2.20),
(5) to describe someone apparently unconcerned about the evil he is committing (r2.21),
(6) to identify someone who is known by a disparaging name (e.g., "the Cripple").

That's right. Islam considers court testimony to be slander, even if it is fully correct in every detail.

Now, Miss Fluke testified that she fulfilled all the qualifications of a slut: promiscuous, looking for money to compensate her for her sexual activity, etc.

So, anyone who actually identifies her as a slut has not committed slander according to US courts, but that person has committed slander by the Muslim definition of the word.

And Allred is apparently using the Muslim definition of slander here.

Many people have trouble figuring out why Muslims and liberals get along. This is one of the reasons. Multiculturalism and Muslim theology agree very strongly on this point:

You can't say anything that hurts another person's feelings. 

According to both parties, the truth is not only not a complete defense, the truth is no defense at all. Similarly, Muslim theology holds "It is permissible to lie if the goal is permissible, it is obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory." (r8.2).

Again, this matches precisely with the Alinsky mode of doing business. Liberals, secular humanists, multiculturalists, say whatever needs to be said in order to destroy their opposition. There is no regard for truth. Truth simply isn't relevant.

Because Islam holds that God can change, and that God is the greatest of deceivers, Islam is relativistic in how it handles most essential matters. A Muslim can lie, cheat, steal, even murder, as long as the target is a non-Muslim and as long as the goal is to advance the faith.

Lenin would have made a superb Muslim.
Conversely, Khameni would have made an excellent socialist.
And, of course, we have no way of demonstrating that Barack is not both.
He's got a complete defense.

Other Feet

You know, Catholics are arguing this entire HHS Mandate thing in the wrong way.

We should argue thusly:

Since when do employees get to force their values on their employers?

On what basis does the government force the Catholic Church into the bedrooms of non-Catholics?

What possible reason can Obama have for forcing bishops to regulate the sexual antics of their non-Catholic employees?

How is compelling the Church to participate in someone else's sex life is a legitimate interest of government, especially when the target is someone who isn't even Catholic?

Ladies and Gentlemen, put the shoe on the other foot.

Obviously, the Church has both the right and the duty to inform individuals, Catholic or non-Catholic, about what makes for a moral life.

But people who insist that religion has no part in government do not recognize either the right or the duty.

Thus, if they are to be logically consistent, they cannot but abhor a government which attempts to compel religion to enter the bedroom of the employee.

The fact that they don't, in fact, feel such abhorrence tells us all we need to know.

So, take the line that Obama wants the Catholic Church in the bedrooms of all of their employees, regulating their sex lives, making sure that they have sex the way that Obama intends them to.

If Obama is that interested in people's sex lives, he should regulate their sex lives directly himself and quit trying to force proxies to do it for him.

Fear Factor

The great thing about giving regular lectures on a variety of subjects is the questions and comments from the audience.

After a talk I gave yesterday, one of the attendees - an active homosexual - made a comment that opened up a new door of insight for me.

We were talking about the fact that Hitler won World War II. Sure, he lost the battles and committed suicide, but his philosophy had won. Secular humanists around the world agree that eugenics is a worthy goal, that we should seek out and destroy defective children or people who were too old, too sick, to contribute in any positive physical way to society.

America is now, and has long been, a eugenics culture, and we spread our eugenics ideas around the world.

And this young man was good with that. He agreed that defective people should be killed, insisted that he would never want to live in a deformed or semi-vegetative state, and hoped that someone would actively kill him if he ever entered such a state.

Why did he feel this way?

He remarked that he had once been at an outdoor cafe and seen a father and his son at a nearby table. The son suffered from some debilitating disease that required a stomach feeding tube. He saw the father cradle his teenage son as the father injected a nutrient solution into the teenager's stomach.

He said, "I could never do that. I would never be strong enough."

I replied, "You're afraid then. That's the basic problem here."

"Yes."

That is when the door opened up for me. I answered him.

"Well, that's understandable. But remember, every individual choice contributes to the larger society. Society is the sum total of all of society's individuals making individual choices. So, when you choose to do or not do something based on your fear, when everyone else also makes choices based on their fears, society becomes fear-based."

And this was my question:

"Do you really want to live in a society based on fear?"

That's the basic difference between the Founding Fathers and ourselves.
It's the basic difference between any serious soldier and any non-soldier.

Fear cannot be avoided - we all experience it.

But the Founding Fathers made a society that was not based in fear. Our social institutions used to encourage bravery in the face of fear. Given a choice between surrendering to our fear or facing down our fears, our public institutions used to encourage us to do the latter.

Now it encourages us to do the former.

Insofar as we are willing to entertain a large, caretaker government, insofar as we surrender our personal responsibilities, we have chosen to create and live in a fear-based society.

Snips and Snails and Rattlesnake Tails

There is a certain poignancy to this story.

It seems Cardinal Dolan and his staff got schooled in what Catholicism actually teaches by Barack Hussein Obama, and his Muslim friends in the White House.

The poor Catholic sods apparently didn't understand Catholicism very well, so Barack put his grade school Catholic education to good use and explained to the bishop and his staff what it all meant.

Now Thomas Peters is all outraged and stuff at Barry's incredible hubris.

But, I think, in deference to the bishops and their endless charity, we should put the Christian charity of the doubt on this whole story.

I mean, look at it from Barry's point of view.
And, in case you don't understand Barry's attitude towards the bishops, we'll bring in expert analysis to explain it:


The bishops supported ObamaCare.
They pushed it and pushed it and pushed it.

And after they helped Barry push it through, they were suddenly shocked, SHOCKED to find that Barry was going to throw them under the bus, make them look like fools in front of the Pope.

And to a certain extent, isn't this what the whole loud row is about? After all, have you ever heard any priest, any bishop, anywhere teach that contraception was a mortal sin until now? Really?

Have they preached on the evils of sterilization, protested the distribution of condoms? Spoken out against any of the contraceptive eugenics attitudes that were slowly destroying the fabric of American society? Of course not.

So why such a sudden change of heart?
Let's put it this way: what are the chances any American cardinal has towards the Papacy if such a mandate goes uncontested?

When RvW came out, the Catholic bishops protested only legal abortion and said not a word about the contraceptive mentality that spawned RvW. Now that contraceptives are being mandated, they protest that, but continue to promote the eugenic socialist philosophy that spawned the contraceptives.

And now, here they were, trying to work with him, but he pulled the rug out from under them. What a shock, huh?

How good a good ex-socialist, ex-Muslim, ex-Alinskyite do such a thing to such nice guys?

It's a poser, no doubt about it.

I mean, I still have not figured out how they ended up on the raw end of such an otherwise perfect deal, and I'm really, really smart and all, so I just cannot imagine how thoroughly non-plussed the bishops must have been when it all fell apart around them.

After all, who could have guessed that the only man in public office who had publicly promoted legalized infanticide would mis-treat a Catholic bishop?

You can see how anyone would have been blind-sided.

That's why, even after Barry shows a preferential option for skinning the fleece right off the sheep, and stomping on the little lambs to boot (pardon the pun), the bishops still went ahead and helped him accomplish a few other of his pet projects.


I guess they figured that if they just kept helping Barry rape the nation, B. Hussein would throw them some scraps. Which, heaven knows, is a perfectly reasonable position to take.


So, imagine the scene from Barry's point of view. Here they come, the bishop and all his staff waddling into the White House. If you're inside Barry's head, you can almost hear him chuckling and see him shaking his head as they trundle up, faces all aglow, looking for the handout they thought they had earned.

It must have been comically sad for him, to watch the poor little Catholic tykes sniffing around his shoes, hoping he would throw them a scrap or two.

But, never fear! Like Jesus, B. Hussein patiently sat down and explained to them that it is not right to feed the dogs with the food that belongs to the children... well, the voters.... well, Barry's supporters. You know.

Groups like Big Pharma, who supported ObamaCare and will make out like bandits now that they are a line-item in the national budget. Or Planned Parenthood and the eugenics, environmental green crowd, upon whom Barry has already spent billions and intends to spend billions more.

Or even the poor American Muslims, who find it so difficult to pay zakat.


Drugs, environmentalism, Islam: these are the religions that really matter.

And Barry has to explain that to the poor foolish bishop and his imbecilic staff.

In short, he has to preach Alinsky's Gospel to them.

So, to speak in Christian charity, I'm sure they never saw things from his point of view until just then. Assuming they even did so then.

You can't blame a rattlesnake for being a rattlesnake.
You can only look in wonderment at the children who keep running back to play with it.

Rush is Right

Color me confused, but I don't get it.

What, exactly, did Limbaugh say about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke that was wrong?

What's that?
Oh!
Horrors!
He used the word "slut" to describe a self-admitted sexually promiscuous fornicator from Georgetown.

Hmmm....

If memory serves, Georgetown hosted a Slutwalk not six months ago.

Lafayette Square has never seen so much skin. As I wandered into this designated meeting place to march in the SlutWalk, I was relieved to note my outfit—we’ll call it a costume—fell in the mid-range of concertedly slutty ensembles. That put it just above the leopard-print-bra-and-stiletto combo and slightly below the same combo overlaid with a mesh dress borrowed from the Village People.

Two men with canes and fur coats swaggered past me, holding signs declaring, “Pimps for Women’s Rights.” They captured the sentiments of the day... My contribution to this simulated brothel was a slip, my approximation of “the morning after,” as a fellow slut deemed it.

Did anyone at Georgetown get upset about that article in Georgetown's own newspaper?
Why no... no they didn't.
Any call for an apology from the administration about the outrageous, vitriolic language used by Georgetown's own newspaper to describe Georgetown's own students?
Well, no... no there wasn't.

But now the President of Georgetown has come out in support of Georgetown's very own self-described slut. He has attacked Limbaugh for Limbaugh's "vitriolic" comment (apparently, agreeing to use Georgetown's own terminology is "misogynistic, vitrioloic and a misrepresentation").

Odd. Isn't his comment merely a repetition of Georgetown's own newspaper referrence not just to one woman, but a whole parade of its student body?

Given the popularity of slutwalks on college campuses, I thought modern intellectuals embraced the whole slut culture as an expression of basic freedoms? That's certainly what Georgetown's own article seems to describe.

So why attack Limbaugh for using the self-same terminology that Georgetown itself uses to describe its own student body as they "Take Back The Night" in their frilly costumes, waving sex toys and (now government-subsidized) condoms in the air?

Is this one more example of the kind of PC language that allows black hip-hop artists to label friends and neighbors "whores" and "niggas" while putting the "racist" label on anyone who agrees with them?

Liberal men and women can call women sluts and bitches, but conservative men and women cannot agree?

Words mean things - if someone wants to celebrate their sluttiness in order to gain subsidies for it, they can't get upset when someone else agrees with them.

Paying for Prostitutes

Rush is again right.
But there's a bit more to it than he has so far pointed out.

Our pretty little woman, Miss Fluke, wants to be paid by the government for the expenses she incurs when she has sex. That is, she wants to turn her sexual activity into a government-funded subsidy.

Now, by itself, this isn't that unusual.

France, Sweden, Russia: many countries are giving their citizens money if they only succeed in having sex and having children.

We, however, are trying to give money to employees to prevent them having children.

Why the difference?

Well, children keep employees, students, etc., from dedicating their lives to the state.

If you want to set the state up as God, you can't have your citizens doting over their children.
If you want to set the the environment up as God, you can't have citizens having children.

Kathleen Sebelius put the point with beautiful concision. If you believe, as she does, that people are essentially cost items on your balance sheet, then reducing the number of children reduces social costs.  Of course, the unspoken flip-side is equally true: reducing the number of Baby Boomers reduces social costs.

And this is the second part of the equation.

Look at this from the bureaucrats' point of view.

The worker to retiree ratio available to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. is dropping.
We are running out of workers.
It takes 20 years to raise up a new worker, assuming that new worker is born today.

Every worker that has children will be one more worker who isn't able to contribute their full salary to paying for retiree benefits.

The politician who is in office right now can't afford to have the dwindling number of national employees go on child leave. And face it, that's what taxpayers are. Every taxpayer is employed by two companies - the one you nominally work for (your place(s) of employment), and the one you actually work for (the government).

Your place of employment gets your valuable time and pays you money for it.
Your government gets your valuable money and pays you... well... hmmmm.... it gets your valuable money, anyway.

Just as your employer doesn't like it when you take sick leave, so your government doesn't like it when you decide - without getting clearance from them first - to divert your resources to your children. Anything which trains you up in the idea that children are to be avoided is a net plus from the politician's perspective.

Sure, it may harm the nation in the long run, but the wave of retirees will get their benefits.

Retirees vote.
Parents vote.
Single people tend not to vote.

So, you keep people single, which is best accomplished by keeping them in sterile relationships, and they won't vote you out of office because they don't vote. By keeping them sterile, you keep them from becoming voting parents.

You pay the retirees off with the money the single people earn. Old people vote, and they'll reward you by voting to keep you in office.


Really, it's a win-win all the way around.

That's really what Sebelius means when she says contraception reduces social costs.
Sure, contraception increases pregnancy and abortion rates, but it reduces family cohesion and voting rates.
Which means the politicians get to keep more money, keep more power, and live in the style to which they have become accustomed.

And all that is needed to maintain this status quo is a little government-mandated subsidy for contraceptives.

On what grounds could anyone possibly object?