I’m going to rudely hijack one political issue to make a point about another. I think you’ll quickly figure out what it is.
NARAL has been undermining their own relevance by failing to support pro-choice positions in a misguided attempt to court moderates—basically, as Ezra Klein points out, they’re failing to recognize their role in the political ecosphere. They’re an advocacy group for a specific range of policies, not a politician who has to balance constituencies—they are supposed to be spokespeople for one particular constituency.
…one thing groups like NARAL have a tendency to do is accept vaguely acceptable-sounding or politically popular bills in an effort to remain in the center, believing their group’s moderate credentials — see also their early endorsement of Lincoln Chafee — somehow important. The alternative strategy — practiced by the NRA, among others — would be to wage all-out war on even these minor encroachments, thus fighting to shift the center left.
This strategy of trying to join the center rather than move it is a damaging one. If NARAL were totally dogmatic and absolutist, that would make life much easier on Democrats who could occasionally show their “centrism” by voting against NARAL-opposed legislation that actually doesn’t much matter. Instead, however, to demonstrate independence on choice, Democrats end up supporting much more onerous and repulsive legislation, because just aping NARAL’s priorities line doesn’t win them any points in the media. Elected politicians, after all, often have to remain “in the center.” Independent interest groups, on the other hand, can spend their time trying to redefine what “the center” is. NARAL — and others on the left — should do more to exploit that freedom.
Digby also reiterates this very important point.
I do not think NARAL understands its function anymore. It is not a politician from a conservative district who won with only a few percentage points and needs to pander. It is not a political party that needs to gloss over differences to come to consensus. It is an advocacy organization. Its job is to hold the line and then move the debate their way.
If this is true for NARAL, how much more appropriate is it for the independent voices we look for on blogs? The job of the blogger is not to triangulate and strain to express some hypothetical view of some nebulous ‘moderate’—it’s to state his or her opinion, unmellowed by that fawning desire to appeal to a majority. Our readers are presumably sampling multiple online sources, and what we have to expect is that they will make up their own minds on the basis of those many inputs, and the real arrogance is to pretend that we can read those minds and aspire to represent a majority. We can’t and we don’t. We are nothing but the enabled and accessible voices for nations of one.
I am strongly pro-choice, so much so that my views probably make many other pro-choice people uncomfortable…and that should be OK. I am not trying to stand for a consensus, I am staking out my position.
This is also true for my views on other aspects of the political argument, on science and evolution, and on religion vs. atheism. I simply do not understand why apologists for religion, for instance, think they need to carp at me and tell me to be less radical, to moderate my stance and to quit alienating those hypothetical fence-sitters that they are trying to woo. That’s not my job. My goal is to shift the debate towards my position (without expecting that everyone will adopt my specific views), and I can’t accomplish that by letting the rope go slack and drifting towards someone else’s position.
So, loud and proud, baby. Fight for your ideas, not those that someone else tells you are examples of what the majority wants to hear. Majorities are made of individuals, and the only way we’ll ever get an honest consensus is if everyone is singing out frankly for their own beliefs.
But if we do that, we risk becoming… *gasp* irrelevant!
I know you’re being sarcastic, but it’s a good excuse to make the point that behaving like NARAL guarantees irrelevance.
What, changing your positions at every change in the political winds? Trying to court “moderates” by watering everything down to utter dilution? Making a “big tent” where people have to ignore their very real differences and support a single, monolithic position on a single matter?
Why does that sound so familiar? It’s almost as if there were a large political organization – maybe a party? – that was behaving similiarly and was losing all effectiveness as a consequence. It’s on the tip of my mind, but I can’t quite remember…
Pharyngula is at the absolute top of my list of blogs, and I admire PZ Myer’s full-throated defense of expertise, knowledge – ya know, facts – as much as any reader of this website. I’m an atheist. I’m a liberal. I am with you.
But I made the mistake of clicking over to Myers’ more-or-less defense of infanticide, and am left feeling nauseous. It reminded me of that Chris Rock like about OJ Simpson – I’m not defending the guy, but I understand.
In Rock’s case, it’s a joke. In Myers’ it’s not. He’s just not sure about murder. Saying I’m disappointed is an understatement.
Not only is PZ not against abortion, Slippery Pete, but he’s not against the sin of Onanism either! All those innocent sperm, carrying the homunculi of countless unborn generations, lost forever – surely the only thing that’s even worse than murdering a single unborn child is murdering hundreds of millions of them.
Clearly, PZ is Judas and Arinas’ unholy lovechild, possibly created through hybrid cloning techniques.
This post has a strong whiff of relativism. Maybe NARAL is just trying to take the right position in the debate. I don’t think consensus is a result of compromise, rather principled reason leads to consensus.
Prof. Myers position can be reduced to absurdity in the following way:
Suppose I believe people should give more money to charity. I certainly wouldn’t advocate that people give all of their assets to charity in order to effect some change. I also probably share your ‘radical’ views on abortion, but I wouldn’t advocate infanticide to realize them. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting. Interesting post nonetheless.
The Dems have been trailing behind the Rethugs, drifting along in their shadows, trying for relevance, until the battleground has moved so far to the right that Nixon looks like a leftie. It’s the political equivalent of painting the interior of your house white so it doesn’t offend the buyers when you sell it in twenty years.
BTW, the word “fawning” found on your blog caused cognitave dissonance until the caffeine brought me back…
You haven’t reduced my position to absurdity at all. If you believe people should give more money to charity but shouldn’t give all their assets away, then that is what you should say. Going to an extreme when you honestly believe in a particular middle ground because you hope everyone will end up in the middle is also something you shouldn’t do — what if you are very persuasive?
No, see, Lurker, PZ is arguing that you should say what you think. So, if you think a thing, you say that thing, not a different thing.
It’s really rather a simple concept, and I don’t know how you managed to misinterpret it as “say something other than what you think”.
Caledonian, don’t be obtuse. Please. Let’s try to act like adults. PZ Myers says, of course, he doesn’t like infanticide, but he understands. I’m not talking about abortion or onanism, tough guy. Grow up.
Ah. I see. So your criticism of NARAL (and other bloggers)is that it’s being disingenuous rather than simply ineffective.
Caledonian’s sarcastic remark reminded me of the run-up to the Iraq War, when everybody over here was chiding the UN for not marching lock-step with Bush and Rummy and the rest of the chickenhawks. The UN has got to do exactly everything the US says, we were told, or it would become irrelevant!
But, honestly, is there anything in the world more irrelevant than a yes-man?
I’m also not saying I’m unsure against murder — I’m against it. I’m saying that I don’t know where the line should be drawn that defines murder.
Thank you PZ. MissPrism I thought that PZ was asking NARAL to take positions it(it’s constituency) didn’t hold in order to shift the center. You should be less snippy.
PZ –
There is probably no answer to that question, biologically. But you have to draw a somewhat arbitrary line somewhere. Those that refuse to draw the line are either radical pro-lifers (birth begins at conception) or sociopaths (no opposition to it anytime at all). Birth, to me, is a damn bright line. There is no doubt that having a child is an impossible burden for some women that harms child and mother alike, and that it would have been better had the birth not taken place. But I think most people intuitively (or explicitly) understand that if you open the to-kill-or-not-to-kill question up to utilitarian analysis, you start down a path that leads, metaphorically, straight to hell.
I remember, and reread PZ’s old post. I honestly can’t say that I find much to disagree with in it. Like you Slippery Pete, I personally consider the moment of birth to be the line that is not to be crossed. However, remember that PZ’s statement about infanticide was “1) you have no other way to control fertility, and 2) you are so impoverished that the life of an infant must be balanced against your life and that of other members of your family. That is not an endorsement of infanticide, but a recognition of reality, and a refusal to damn people who have been compelled to make painful choices.”
That statement is the recognition that there can be dire circumstances that could cause it, not a lbanket statement that infanticide is okay. I know no one really likes relativism, since it does have the slippery slope issue. But what it does highlight is the need to to be flexible in understanding circumstances, and to be careful about making blanket statements.
Translation: if we open up that question to rational analysis and actually ask it, we may not get the predetermined conclusion that we cling to. Therefore we have to dissuade people from asking the question at all costs.
Bravo! Thanks for speaking out, as always, and standing up for your own opinions and ideas. We need more people who are not afraid to do so.
Caledonian, you debate the virtues of murder. I didn’t come here for that. And I don’t debate pedantic smartasses, either. I’ll continue to read and admire and learn more about biology and just avoid the fever swamps of those who want to debate at what age children ought not be murdered. Have fun.
What the heck does NARAL stand for anyway? It’s web site says NARAL Pro Choice America, but don’t the caps indicate the letters stand for some words?
They seem like KFC which is somehow no longer Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Actually, one final response. If you try to paint me as some kind of intellectual coward, you will fail. There are lots of questions I am happy to debate, which is why 15 years ago I decided theism was for fools, just for starters. You’re making sweeping assumptions about me based on minimal evidence, which reflects more upon your intellectual style than mine. But, yes, there are certain things I don’t bother debating because they’re not worth it, and this is one of them. I’ll keep visiting for all the terrific information about biology, the entertaining fundie-bashing, and the squid porn, and skip the tawdry bits.
The goal of centrism, for itself, seems like a holdover from the time when national Democratic candidates could try to get support from the south, by “triangulating” enough: be from the south, do a “sister souljah” moment, etc., and maybe a few southern states will come around. Those days are long gone, but some people don’t realize it yet.
“it’s to state his or her opinion, unmellowed by that fawning desire to appeal to a majority. ”
This should also be interpreted in a local context: the truth doesn’t depend on what the majority of your friends think.
What is a good pro-choice advocacy group to donate money to?
I really don’t get it. I just don’t see any upside for NARAL to do this.
It’s not like they’re going to have to take some special flack for opposing this fake science. That’s what they exist to do, people expect them to do it, they’re getting more criticism for not doing it.
And it’s not just a matter of doing their job. Between this and their support of Lieberman, women (and men, but I’m guessing mostly women) who had previously been willing to unwallet on their behalf, aren’t anymore. (And I should know–I’m one. Digby too, apparently [per her last paragraph])
It’s like watching a once-terrific organization commit suicide.
David:
It stood for three different things over the years, and now stands for nothing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NARAL
As someone who was a staff for an issue advocacy group, I can tell you that the challenge is not to change your actual positions on issues when talking to the general public, but to frame the way you talk about your issues so that they can appeal to the general public.
There is a difference.
I agree with PZ that these organizations need to stick to their agendas and not move to the middle. Instead of changing their positions, focus tactics and work on angles and language that work toward the strategic goal.
I stand with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, PZ, et al when I say that people who have strong opinions on atheism should state strong opinions on atheism. Likewise, a group such as NARAL, whose name signify that it exists for the express purpose of protecting the right to choose, is failing if it doesn’t fight every dotted I or crossed t that encroaches on that right.
I have had arguments with my brother, a moderate Democrat who believes that the progressives should just shut up until the Democratic Overlords have completed the takeover of America, and then we can work towards making the Democrats more liberal.
I had to remind him that Ronald Reagan slugged it out in the primaries as an unashamed ultra-conservative in 1976, and again in 1980. By 1980 he had branded conservatism so strongly that it became un-American to be liberal. It doesn’t take too long; and I think that this is part of Karl Rove’s fear. Rather than allow an election to follow ideological differences, they have to inspire fear in the electorate of the opponent. It’s not new, but there it is. It can’t be fixed until people start fighting for their beliefs rather than election victories.
I also agree with PZ. This is why the left has been so marginalized and why the center has shifted.
I have many times been in a group of friends where the discussion has drifted to the topic of abortion. Inevitably what happens is those holding extreme anti-abortion views have no problem with spouting their opinions. Those that support a woman’s right to control her own body are quiet. Those that have less entrenched opinions are influenced by the anti-choice people. This changes the debate and shifts power to their position.
I realize that the tolerance of leftist is one of our attributes but it is wrong to mistake tolerence for timidity.
Lurker:
Abortion <> murder. It is dishonest to equate the two.
I agree completely with Digby and PZ.
Stop the Right wing nutsphere from chipping away at a woman’s right to choose.
In the name of centrism, women are being cajoled into giving up control of their bodies. The penis-wielding, power-hungry, chauvinistic control freaks are loving this.
This isn’t right.
Oops.
That previous post should be read as follows:
“Abortion does not equate to murder.” I was trying to use the “not equal” symbol and forgot that the less-than sign also signifies an HTML tag. My bad.
“No, see, Lurker, PZ is arguing that you should say what you think. So, if you think a thing, you say that thing, not a different thing.”
See, the problem seems to be that NARAL is led by a woman who is a Catholic (nothing wrong with that, per se) who apparently thinks the Pope is right about conception and abortion and such.
So it would appear that the organization is led by a woman who doesn’t especially agree with the views the organization is supposed to represent.
It’s like she actually wants to run NOW, a general women’s rights organization, but settled for NARAL even though she doesn’t seem to agree with its mission.
Sonja: “As someone who was a staff[er] for an issue advocacy group, I can tell you that the challenge is not to change your actual positions on issues when talking to the general public, but to frame the way you talk about your issues so that they can appeal to the general public.
“There is a difference.”
I agree, but as in all things there are matters of degree. When questions of “framing” vs. “changing” positions arise, it’s good to be mindful of Vonnegut’s “moral of the story” in Mother Night:
You are what you pretend to be, so you better be careful what you pretend to be.
Majorities are made of individuals, and the only way we’ll ever get an honest consensus is if everyone is singing out frankly for their own beliefs.
Sorry to go all Princess Bride on you with respect to the word “consensus” but I do not think it means what you think it means………..
No, I do know what a consensus is. You don’t build an honest one by first telling everyone what they must believe in order to get along. You build a real consensus by getting everyone to first state their position and then hammer out points of agreement.
We’ve been told over and over again, for instance, that Americans support the war in Iraq. Would you call that a consensus? Or a kind of spin that ignores what Americans actually believe?
But Andy, you see, is using the Washington definition of “consensus”: “what the Beltway insiders and media talking heads agree is salable to the rubes in flyover country”. It’s a whole different version of English they use down there…
Yikes. This issue is sticky. It reminds me of the big conversations I’ve been having lately around some of the things Dawkins says–or more accurately, HOW he says them. I am all in favor of taking a very hard line for one’s position on any issue of importance. But knee-jerk sarcasm, entertaining and satisfying as it can be, is not always the best tactic. And sometimes it is. But the hammer should never be our only tool. That is my only concern…not that we are utterly uncompromising in sticking to our ideals, but that our clarion call degenerates into monotonous blunt-force trauma. A self-deprecating sense of humor can, for example, sometimes help promote an otherwise unpalatable view. Unshakeable confidence and winning humility don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
There are many possible approaches to shifting the conventional wisdom. But historically, holding sacred cows up to merciless ridicule- not just straightforward disagreement- has quite often been a very effective one. Once something not previously questioned by most people has been openly mocked, it rarely regains all of its previous aura of inevitability.
Awww, it’s kind of sweet to read the comments on that old thread from my seven-month pregnant self. Like I want to go back in time and say “Don’t worry, the vomiting will end.”
Anyway, go back to your earnest debate…
I’ll keep visiting for all the terrific information about biology, the entertaining fundie-bashing, and the squid porn, and skip the tawdry bits.
Alas, one man’s squid porn is another’s “tawdry bits”.
I saw nothing in Cale’s responses to you to suggest he was making “sweeping assumptions” of you, nor to suggest he would have thought you an “intellectual coward” for declining to debate the issue.
You however, in bringing it up yourself, cause others to consider it.
“It reminds me of the big conversations I’ve been having lately around some of the things Dawkins says–or more accurately, HOW he says them.”
One of the best things about the God Delusion is how he makes his points: the extra little digs, the way he mocks an idea to drive his point home, the fed-up tone. It’s refreshing.
Religions are based on a bunch of bunk, Dawkins proudly stands up and says this, and people get upset. So what. They should be upset. They’ve swallowed a bunch of swill about God or Jesus or Mohammed and they need to wake up to the fact that they’ve been sold a bill of goods.
The Christian/Jewish/Islamic dog-and-pony show has been going on for more than two thousand years. I am thankful that Richard Dawkins is standing up and saying enough is enough.
“Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug — push it a little — weaken it a little over the course of a century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
– Samuel Clemens
This is (one reason) why “<>” doesn’t make a good not-equal sign. I’d recommend “!=” (being a programmer, it’s my first choice), or “=/=”, which can be simplified down to ≠ – “≠”.
“The penis-wielding, power-hungry, chauvinistic control freaks are loving this.”
This gave me a rather uncomfortable flashback to *Zardoz*…
A little long, but it is Friday…
HOW THE ENEMY CAME TO THLUNRANA
By Lord Dunsany from The Food of Death and other Tales (1915)
It had been prophesied of old and foreseen from the ancient days that its enemy would come upon Thlunrana. And the date of its doom was known and the gate by which it would enter, yet none had prophesied of the enemy who he was save that he was of the gods though he dwelt with men. Meanwhile Thlunrana, that secret lamaserai, that chief cathedral of wizardry, was the terror of the valley in which it stood and of all lands round about it. So narrow and high were the windows and so strange when lighted at night that they seemed to regard men with the demoniac leer of something that had a secret in the dark. Who were the magicians and the deputy-magicians and the great arch-wizard of that furtive place nobody knew, for they went veiled and hooded and cloaked completely in black.
Though her doom was close upon her and the enemy of prophecy should come that very night through the open, southward door that was named the Gate of the Doom, yet that rocky edifice Thlunrana remained mysterious still, venerable, terrible, dark, and dreadfully crowned with her doom. It was not often that anyone dared wander near to Thlunrana by night when the moan of the magicians invoking we know not Whom rose faintly from inner chambers, scaring the drifting bats: but on the last night of all the man from the black-thatched cottage by the five pine-trees came, because he would see Thlunrana once again before the enemy that was divine, but that dwelt with men, should come against it and it should be no more. Up the dark valley he went like a bold man, but his fears were thick upon him; his bravery bore their weight but stooped a little beneath them. He went in at the southward gate that is named the Gate of the Doom. He came into a dark hall, and up a marble stairway passed to see the last of Thlunrana. At the top a curtain of black velvet hung and he passed into a chamber heavily hung with curtains, with a gloom in it that was blacker than anything they could account for. In a sombre chamber beyond, seen through a vacant archway, magicians with lighted tapers plied their wizardry and whispered incantations. All the rats in the place were passing away, going whimpering down the stairway. The man from the black-thatched cottage passed through that second chamber: the magicians did not look at him and did not cease to whisper. He passed from them through heavy curtains still of black velvet and came into a chamber of black marble where nothing stirred. Only one taper burned in the third chamber; there were no windows. On the smooth floor and under the smooth wall a silk pavilion stood with its curtains drawn close together: this was the holy of holies of that ominous place, its inner mystery. One on each side of it dark figures crouched, either of men or women or cloaked stone, or of beasts trained to be silent. When the awful stillness of the mystery was more than he could bear the man from the black-thatched cottage by the five pine-trees went up to the silk pavilion, and with a bold and nervous clutch of the hand drew one of the curtains aside, and saw the inner mystery, and laughed.
And the prophecy was fulfilled, and Thlunrana was never more a terror to the valley, but the magicians passed away from their terrific halls and fled through the open fields wailing and beating their breasts, for laughter was the enemy that was doomed to come against Thlunrana through her southward gate (that was named the Gate of the Doom), and it is of the gods but dwells with man.
Greg Peterson:
Dawkins makes careful use of qualifiers to aim his sarcasm and invective at frauds and humbugs. He goes to some trouble (although not always successfully) to make sure those who are merely ignorant or mistaken are not in the line of fire. The trouble is that he is often quoted without the qualifiers he relies on.
It’s a wonderful tactic when faced with frauds, or those who have the social skills of unruly dogs. The rub – which I think we agree on – is that there are many people who, rather than being frauds or fanatics, are simply in need of education. There are people who, rather than backing down when barked at, will entrench and bite back. Some of those will nonetheless shift their position when approached diplomatically.
Mockery of humbugs is marvelously effective against their kind. But mockery of students is sadism.
For what it’s worth, earnest godsbags can be good people. But they won’t give up their hope of seeing wifey or hubby or granny or pappy or miscarriagey again after they’re worm food. Not when they’ve built their whole life on it. Saying “your loved ones don’t exist any more”, even diplomatically, is too shocking.
Ichthyic –
Ohhh, snap, you got me. I have accidentally caused to happen that which I was afraid of. I brought it all down upon myself. The regret I feel is crushing.
GP
But knee-jerk sarcasm, entertaining and satisfying as it can be, is not always the best tactic.
No! Really?! Beat that strawman all you want.
PZ’s post was right on. Sure, PZ’s behavior might cause him to be banned or shunned by certain groups whose views he shares to a large extent.
That’s why he has his own blog.
By the way, whatever happened to that whining trespasser who got tazed in UCLA?
Fyi, regarding infanticide: I strongly approve, but only in airplanes, restaurants, movie theatres, and supermarket checkout lines.
I brought it all down upon myself.
..and continue to do so, for reasons beyond me at this point.
By the way, whatever happened to that whining trespasser who got tazed in UCLA?
If you think tasers are bad, check this out: the “goodbye” weapon.
I certainly enjoyed the feedback. This is exactly what makes it tricky for me, because I actually am very abusive of sacred cows. You know the guy who quit smoking and then became an intolerant anti-smoking crusader? That’s me, but with religion. Having been duped by it for nearly 20 years, I have a reputation for being pretty merciless, and I enjoy that reputation. I agree with everything you said above, and I practically worship Dawkins. In print. I loved “The God Delusion,” but I found his tone in “The Root of All Evil” sometimes unhelpful. Sorry, just did. Not his words necessarily, but his tone, which rather than sounding confident and iconoclastic hit my ears as rather defensive. “Wanna bet?” for example. Now of course Dawkins is completely correct that the age of the universe is well-established and unlikely to change, but saying “Wanna bet?” to that shitbag Ted Haggard came off–to me–as defensive and reactionary. Not in control, not superior in reason, just sort of playground pissing matchy. That’s mostly what I found unhelpful.
I would also reiterate that(while I often find ridicule highly effective), it should not be the only tool in our toolkit. PZ is brilliant at presenting one of the other tools: Real awe-struck enthusiasm about the natural world. Dawkins is great at that, too…his boyish zest as he explains a scientific concept. That’s the carrot, friends. We can club religionists with the stick of “you are being very, very silly” repeatedly, and we should, but I think the carrot of “reality is so much more interesting and satisfying than your cramped, crabbed little myths” can be effective as well. I think that Carl Sagan, for example, was a real master of that approach, and there is something in it that we can all learn from, because a sincere love of reality can be the warm sun shining down that gets the coat of ignorance off of someone better than the bitter winds of contempt (justified or not) ever could. To torture the living fuck out of Aesop.
This was some pretty good irony for me to end my week with. Most of the week I get attacked for defending Dawkins and being too much like him (at work and among friends), an “atheist fundamentalist,” then here when I float out a more conciliatory trial balloon about the possibility of a less abrasive style, I get smacked back. I guess we all have to, to some degree or another, find our own best style for how to spread reason and dispel superstition as much as possible. I thank you for your educational views on the matter.
I guess we all have to, to some degree or another, find our own best style for how to spread
I prefer that you bend over first.
Great White, a fine parody of Creationist quote mining. You are just too adorable, you mook. Why, if you were here right now, I just might have to do as you prefer. It’s not like your microphallus would be much of an inconvenience.
GWW:
By the way, whatever happened to that whining trespasser who got tazed in UCLA?
I don’t know, but there was an article that the cop who tazed him has a history of excessive force.
————-
The UCLA police department identified the officer caught electrifying the student who did not produce his college ID card as Terrence Duren, an 18-year veteran of the UCPD.
Duren hasn’t had the smoothest career in law enforcement. He came to Westwood after being fired from the infamous Long Beach PD. A few years after being hired by UCLA he was accused of using his nightstick to choke a fratboy and the university asked the UCPD to fire Duren, but he was only given a three month suspension.
In late 2003 Duren shot a homeless man, Willie Davis Frazier, Jr., in a Kerckhoff Hall bathroom. Frazier, who attempted at first to shun lawyers and represent himself, was imbalanced enough to spend time in mental institution as the court tried to figure out if he was fit to stand trial.
During a 2004 preliminary hearing in which Duren testified against Frazier, the officer carried a Machiavelli book into court, “The Prince”, which argues that the ends justifies the means. “Did you know that this was Tupac’s favorite book?” he asked.
Less than a year after Duren shot Frazier, UCLA decided to invest $22,000 in tasers, according to the Daily Bruin.
And now, ironically it’s Duren who is being accused of abusing the taser.
“If someone is resisting, sometimes it’s not going to look pretty taking someone into custody,” he told the LA Times today. “If you have to use some force, it’s not going to look pretty. That’s the nature of this job.”
source: http://www.laist.com/archives/2006/11/20/taserhappy_cops_history_was_one_reason_for_tasers_at_ucla.php
As I argued before, in these cases it could be worthwhile to study what happens elsewhere. The situations may not be identical but analogous.
Party politics: For an example I know, I think a fair analysis of Sweden’s last election is that the former majority leader was playing for the center. While the new grouping quit that tactic and finally profiled themselves as parties with discernible agendas. Seems like two supportive cases for profilation.
Abortions: It doesn’t work out as a worst case scenario. Practices and ethics makes early abortions free, but later controlled or forbidden except for medical causes. And the mother’s life is prioritized. Seems like two cases showing it won’t mean relative morals.
Making a strong case for emulating Dawkins qualifiers, indeed. Though style is difficult. (Yet apparently I can inject some qualifiers on my own. :-)
Which is why i drop unnecessary capitalization every monday of the week, and tries to concatenate still separatelyspelled termparts. My program of simplifying germanisation of english is of outmost importance!
But I agree that one should fight for the larger of two ideas. Choosing between churchill-style fighting for rationality, evolution, tears, and sweat, and chamberlain-style fighting for evolution is such a case.
As I argued before, in these cases it could be worthwhile to study what happens elsewhere. The situations may not be identical but analogous.
Party politics: For an example I know, I think a fair analysis of Sweden’s last election is that the former majority leader was playing for the center. While the new grouping quit that tactic and finally profiled themselves as parties with discernible agendas. Seems like two supportive cases for profilation.
Abortions: It doesn’t work out as a worst case scenario. Practices and ethics makes early abortions free, but later controlled or forbidden except for medical causes. And the mother’s life is prioritized. Seems like two cases showing it won’t mean relative morals.
Making a strong case for emulating Dawkins qualifiers, indeed. Though style is difficult. (Yet apparently I can inject some qualifiers on my own. :-)
Which is why i drop unnecessary capitalization every monday of the week, and tries to concatenate still separatelyspelled termparts. My program of simplifying germanisation of english is of outmost importance!
But I agree that one should fight for the larger of two ideas. Choosing between churchill-style fighting for rationality, evolution, tears, and sweat, and chamberlain-style fighting for evolution is such a case.
“with discernible agendas” – with a different agenda
“with discernible agendas” – with a different agenda
And how do you deal with overlap between the groups?
It’s not like your microphallus would be much of an inconvenience.
Evidently you’ve never seen my diamond-cutting demonstration.
So, NARAL is advocating for NARAL. Or more to the point, advocating for the paychecks of the people who have made careers at NARAL. Having crossed that line they now must strategize to maintain the income that pays their mortgages and allows them to put on parties to generate more income.
They have decided that this income will come if they are less shrill so as not to offend some of their more tepid supporters.
What NARAL is not, is an advocacy organization, hence their inability to be anyplace near as resolute as a dedicated blogger. They are following the model of the United Way, not the model of Pharyngula.
NARAL has never received my funds because I think they are an ineffective organization with a weak commitment to a single issue. I dont much care what their tone is as long as they lack the clout to move their agenda.
No, the only way we’ll arrive at a consensus is if we’re all listening to each other.
“The penis-wielding, power-hungry, chauvinistic control freaks are loving this.”
I wish it were so easy. A most lamentable reality, in my opinion, is that there are plenty of women who are quite happy to oppress other women. Actually, “happy” may be too soft a term. “Eager” to prevent other women from making their own reproductive choices may be more accurate. The sisters do not all sing from the same page.
Of course, you are over looking that the other side is going to stand up for its ideas.
And for some reason, you don’t seem to like it when pro life people do that.
Thats because, like all atheists, you believe the what applies to YOU does not apply to THEM.
Atheists are so amusing; after telling me there is no God they always try to tell me what to do…and what they are going to do TO me if I don’t do it.
Lev Bronstein:
Let me put it this way: I do not object any more to anti-choice positions when they are expressed in a vertebrate fashion; on the contrary, showcasing ignorance is a very important measure in fighting it. However, I’m a bit confused by the rest of your ignorant micro-rant. You clearly know nothing whatsoever about what any atheists believe, let alone all of us. And at what point has any atheist ever threatened to do anything to you if you don’t take their advice? I very much doubt whether such a thing has occurred, and in the unlikely event it has, I for one will cheerfully condemn it–as well as any other evil act ever committed by any atheist. It’s a much shorter list than the evil per capita committed by Christians, I can tell you (to preempt the inevitable vacuous examples, Hitler and the Nazis most definitely were not atheists, and the Thirty Years’ War and the Taiping Rebellion, alone, killed far more people than even the highest estimates of Soviet atrocity body counts).
I struggle with infanticide, too. It’s disgusting. An annoying issue.
But it is a consequence of the utilitarionish line of thinking. If one accepts that likely outcomes rule the decision, then the moment of birth is not the bright line. We can’t claim a clear societal impact at that point.
A society that generally allows killing folks doesn’t seem like it would last long. You can imagine people arming, and constantly on the lookout for potential assassins. Not much fun, anticipating your own murder.
The next potential “bright” (actually, not so bright) line is the point at which a potential victim might develop that fear. It would seem that that fear would be a societal impact.
However, coldly logical as that might be, obviously such a policy would spark outrage. Surely there would be greater guilt felt by the perpetrators, etc. Birth becomes a pragmatic bright line, rather than a totally logically driven one.
Paul
Suppose I say that my view, which I will defend, is that agnosticism and atheism are distinct positions, and someone calls me a wimp…
“I simply do not understand why apologists for religion, for instance, think they need to carp at me and tell me to be less radical, to moderate my stance and to quit alienating those hypothetical fence-sitters that they are trying to woo.”
I can’t speak for “apologists for religion,” whoever you think they are. Some of find that those who beat their breasts the hardest about the irrationality of religion tend to put their own irrationality on display. It doesn’t have to be that way, but that’s often how it shakes out. Richard Dawkins’ attempts to shove the Irish troubles and the Crusades in the same box comes to mind, as does the recent nonsense about “Neville Chamberlain appeasers.”
“Thats because, like all atheists, you believe the what applies to YOU does not apply to THEM.”
Actually, I’d have to guess that as groups go, atheists are (if anything) more likely than average to believe that what applies to us also applies to “THEM”* – especially given the importance of ideas like the golden rule or Kant’s categorical imperative (first formulation: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law”) in atheist morality.
. . . .what are atheists going to do to you if you don’t do what they say? I have to admit, I’m curious.
* except for cases where THEM happen to be gigantic ants bent on destruction. That’s a bit different.