From “Propertarians and Alito”:
Friedmanite libertarians are indistinguishable—aside the occasional semi-sincere remarks against the Drug War—from far-right conservatives.
It’s just that they come to a reactionary stance from a different direction, the belief that there is no heirarchy of rights. Thus broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause is for them a Stalinist action, while the right of the state to usurp ownership of a citizen’s uterus is good government.
Yeah, the irony is flaming: the level plane of rights—strictly eschewing any notions of hierarchy—perversely, for modern libertarians, translates in practice to mean that the right to property actually trumps all others. For the modern libertarians, the right of wealthy advertisers (like Nike) to lie is inalienable, but the right to a free press is at the government’s indulgence. The right to own guns shall not be infringed, but ownership of one’s uterus is right out. Thus authoritarianism begins, and we walk the path to Santiago.
Discuss among yourselves. Me, I’ve got some uteri to invade and occupy.
Because it’s FRIDAY, baby—and that’s just what we do!
****
update: Evidently, linking to elementropy brings out his softer side.
AAAAARRRRRRRGHHHH!!!!
(Of course, “far-right conservatives” think we’re all a bunch of pot smoking porn loving atheists, so what the hey?)
that’s just what we do!
Turning up da HEAT wit your boy, J. Goldstein!
Looking forward to dispatches from the front lines in Occupied Elle, Jeff.
Maybe I could do a ride-along sometime? Y’know, like Mike Yon and the Strykers…
SB: shot
I’d probably just get
PS: poor little fella.
the irony is flaming . . .
Gay-baiter.
[Turing: theory.]
Did somebody say Friday?
Yeah, John, I was just thinking the same thing. Doesn’t something else go on around here on Fridays?…
Wow, so please explain how it is that a female can have sole OWNERSHIP of a fetus for nine months then be able to sue for child-support?
This owership of fetus thing is really freaky, sounds like the fetus needs be given the right to march for freedom, emancipation from Fetus Slave State.
Further, how can a female own something which is decscribed as just a bunch of nothing.
I’m all for ownership but this is treading near slavery.
KEEP YOUR ARMADILLO OUT OF MY UTERUS!
Do armadillo’s have uteri?
Indeed, and the 9 banded armadillo is blessed with “uterus simplex” (don’t ask). Of note, both species of Dasypodidae have 64 chromosomes.
So. It’s because of the chromosomes then?
Because it’s national fiscal policy, that’s how. I think you’re being rhetorical but still I can’t pass up the opportunity to rant: Think Little Joe Biden, his VAWA, Title IV-D, the $1B DHHS, and gender feminists on one side of the child-support racket, and old-school Pubbie apathy on the other.
Breed. Pay up.
Heh. Kinda squeezes any anti-authoritarian notions by the, um, balls, doesn’t it?
Ok maybe I’m just a dense trogolodyte neofascist conservative, but how does the author go from asserting that “Friedmanite libertarians” assert no hierarchy of rights, to claiming that they assert certain property rights over others?
Ah well. Let’s not conflate the uterus with the contents thereof, shall we?
Last time I invaded and occupied a uterus it was only for nine months, and then I got pushed out. Haven’t been back since, and don’t want to, ‘cause frankly, it was a little cramped in there.
TW:quite
OK then, quite cramped in there.
So rather than notification of the husband, what we should have here is an eviction notice to the fetus….hmmmm…. pretty heartless bitch throw a poor, homeless little fetus on the street, you ask me. Maybe the pro-lifer’s can get the government to file an emminent domain suit.
If I own a warehouse and someone else’s goods are housed therein, I suspect I might be held liable for damages if I decided I didn’t want to house those goods anymore and simply threw them out in the street. Particularly if the goods were of such a nature that they would be irreparably damaged by any effort to relocate them prior to the expiration of oh, say about nine months or so. And most certainly if I had either explicitly or implicitly consented through my actions to the potential creation and housing of said goods for said period of time.
Would it be too austere merely to note “fucking morons”?
I was thinking that the Santa Monica Rent Control Board would want to hear about these evictions.
[I lived in Santa Monica once, but that was a long time ago.]
You will have to pry my uterus from my cold, dead hands.
I think we need to introduce more uterine control
resolutions into Congress….Maybe not…..
You know this could also be a way around the ban on prostitution…
“Umm, seriously Officer, I was just renting a space to store my…… tool.”
I know, I know, I’m sorry.
And humid.
Today’s fetuses have it so much better than we did back in my day. A whole record store on a keychain. All the sex they can survive. Air conditioned uteruses.
Bah!
I’d consider myself a Friedmanite libertarian. I’m pro choice, anti death penalty, and support the legalization of all drugs. I support church-state separation, have no problem with physician-assisted suicide, and believe that the only limits to free speech are libel, slander, and fire-in-a-theater situations. I don’t believe the FEC has any business policing indecency and I’m in favor of legalizing prostitution and gambling everywhere in the nation.
Yeah, I can see how someone might think we are indistinguishable from far-right conservatives.
“fucking morons” is exactly right, Charlie.
Make that FCC. It’ll make a lot more sense that way.
Couldn’t we just give the fetus a voucher or something?
SeahH: couldn’t agree more. I read a number of the other posts over there and it just made me sad. The guy seems like he’d be nice enough, but he’s so far gone with Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) that there’s not the slightest hope of a coherent conversation.
Nice vocabulary, some familiarity with certain aspects of history, but not a speck of sense when the word Republican (or libertarian) is mentioned. We’re all the spawn of (Satan? Benjamin Netanyahu? Karl Rove?) and only by giving the reins to Kofi Annan and adoping extreme socialism can we hope to save the planet from Bush’s creeping fascism.
Ok, I understand now. It’s BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!!
Only Howie Dean can save us! (snicker)
I’m always amused by the reactions of my “non-violent”, anti-war friends when I explain that just because as a libertarian I am ethically forbidden to initiate violence doesn’t mean that I won’t kick the living shit out of you if you punch me in the nose.
It’s the eyes, mostly, I think.
SB: reached
Yep, sure does. More than that essay I just wasted time reading.
I’m not surprised by this guy, though. Of course the left hates property rights; they want your property, for crying out loud!
The Elementroy guy has just enough knowledge to know some of the words, but not enough to know he doesn’t understand any of it.
How many strawman arguments can you cram into one paragraph anyway? The guy’s going for a new record.
I get the feeling that this guy has an actual strawman in his bedroom, like a scarecrow or something, with a crudely drawn visage of Bush on it, and three or four times a day he pummels the crap out of it until he’s overcome with exhaustion and ecstacy.
If the Friedmanite Chicago School economists give this guy hermorrhoids, I would love to see what his reaction would be to the folks over at the Mises Institute. Probably make him blow a gasket somewhere.
It’s too bad that the writer doesn’t bother to take into account why someone might be pro-life. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not about property rights, enslavement of women, sexual morality, or anything else they might throw at it. It’s as simple as the fact that those on the pro-life side see the fetus as human, and therefore deserving basic rights and liberty. It’s not a religious thing. It’s not a social conservitive thing. It’s that whole pesky murder thing.
Personally, I don’t know when life begins, so I don’t have a dog in the fight. I do know, however, that if I believed that abortion was murder, I wouldn’t be persuaded by someone drawing into question by libertarian bonafides. Last i checked one could be a libertarian and be against slavery and murder as well. (unless you’re an objectivist, in which case just leave some cash at the murder scene I guess.)
Of course, the pro-life side has the same blinders when it comes to the pro-choice side. To someone pro-choice the fetus isn’t a living being and therefore debate isn’t possible. If the pro-choice side saw the fetus as a living being, they wouldn’t be pro-choice in the first place. (in most cases. I once knew a woman who was fanaticly pro-choice, yet still mourned the death of her 3 month old child who died in a miscarrige. I still scratch my head over how her fetus could be a person and everyone elses is just an extension of a womans flesh.)
What it boils down to is that it’s pointless to debate public policy aspects, since in the end it boils down to a scientific/philisophical argument. Activists on both side of the aisle make my head hurt, although I can better relate to the pro-life side.
“Hierarchy of rights”- Does that mean some animals are more equal than others?
“Hierarchy of rights” means that females have the right to castriate the male’s balls for a period nine months after which should females choose not to castriate then females have the right to sue males for their money.
Pro-choice isn’t about choice it’s about controlling males and females have been given the absolute authority under the law to RULE. Rather like Medea’s barbaric form of females empowerment, I say. Also, I am sickened by my own gender for such deceptive concept of ‘feminist’ empowerment.
G.Bob, your identification of the central issue as “the pesky murder thing” is spot on. Saying it that way really has a way of deflating the hysterical rhetoric of guys like this Elementropy person.
But I think asking when “life begins” misses the point. The egg and sperm cells that fuse to form a human being are “alive” too.
What opened my eyes was the realization that a fertilized egg is a human being, in the most basic, literal sense of that term.
We already know it’s human (since the cells that formed it are human). It is “a being” because it is a single entity, a single organism from the moment of fertilization. It’s alive because the cells that formed it were alive.
The simplest way I can think to say it is that a fertilized egg: (a) is a living organism, (b) is human, and (c) exists as a single entity.
How is that not a human being?
“Pro-choice isn’t about choice it’s about controlling males and females have been given the absolute authority under the law to RULE.”
What and what? what absolute authority do you find in Casey?
The only answer I can come up with, is that it’s too young to vote (Democrat).
“What absolute authority do you find in Casey?”
Marriage Contract.
What absolute authority do you find in a marriage contract?
And what does that have to do with the law?
Well actus simply stated a female is not forced to marry but should she choose to marry she must enter into and agree with the contract of marriage. If She does not agree with the contract She has the Choice of not entering into the agreement.
Your argument relates to the Marxist movement which has these past decades set out to undermine the institution of marriage (a contractual agreement between a man and a women) because this institution undermines the Marxists goal of collective control in order to form a more perfect Marxist Utopian State.
Way back when I was 20 yrs of age, I used to be one of those gullible feminists who bought into the Marxist movement’s belief that partriarchy parasitic pregnacy was oppressive however, what I have since learned from a life of experience is that, like all ideology based upon Marxism, their ideals are leading us all down the Road to Serfdom. If feminists wish to speak of choice over their bodies they should be arguing as to the merits of having themselves sterilized or not. This is an example of choice.
Females have no right to make all decisions concerning reproductive rights when half of the equation (males) are prevented by law from making any decision at all. How can you defend a law that protects only one gender and for a specific period of time? Equal rights under the law should extend to everyone.
I was told back then during Marxist feminists rise to power that abortion was empowerment, but the reality is that abortion is a burden upon everyone especially females and is far more oppressive than being stuck in the kitchen, barefoot in misery. (seems men like to cook as well)
I do not expect you to understand what I mean by abortion being a burden because NOW prevents anyone from speaking of such burdens abortion brings upon the female but I will say that the main reason why Susan B Anthony fought for the female’s right to vote was on behalf of giving opportunity for females to empower their own lives and own financial stability so that females would NOT be forced into having abortions.
Birth control was meant to prevent both pregnancy and abortion, abortion was not meant to be another form of birth control. Marxist Feminism uses fear of patriarchy parasite pregnacy and abortion as a means through which females can be equalized to control males.
Susan B Anthony had already accomplished our liberation when she fought for our right to vote and much like F. Douglas said about black emancipation we females should have been given the right to make it on our own rather than being forced to subject ourselves to a collectivism designed undermine individual freedom while leading us all down the Road to Serfdom.
Keep your body off my laws, Mr. Author!
Turn the deal around. Is it still fair?
SB: miles
to go, before I sleep
Whine, whine whine.
If babies grew in cabbage patches, you would have a point about men being denied an equal stake in a pregnancy.
The plain biological fact is that men do not have an equal stake in pregnancy at all. All this argument of “disparate impact” on men, that they don’t get the same choices as a group as woman do, are specious, and I think slightly dishonest.
Reproduction is one area where men and women can never be equal, except in the general idea that men and women share the right to be free of governmental intrusion in private matters. Until science triumps and gives men the ability to bear children, or men and women together the ability to have children outside of a human body, for a portion of her pregnancy, a woman, by virtue of the fact that it is her physical person at stake, will have control over the situation the father does not. That’s just reality. And it is no more unfair than the God, or nature, who made you both.
This guy has some questions for you, SarahW.
And I gotta say, I don’t think it’s whining to assert that men have a stake in reproduction. Equal stake? Well, sure, in the outcome, though not in the biological process of gestation.
But here’s what struck me about your comment. There are other areas in which men and women aren’t equal: men tend to be stronger, have a greater muscle mass, etc. This to me seems like the kind of thinking that should allow for the exclusion from women from certain jobs: firefighters, soldiers, etc. And yet we’ve created social remedies through the law that tend to avoid unpleasant facts about biological disparity.
Now, why is it correct to do in one instance—when the effect is to benefit women; but not in the instance of reproductive rights, when it seems to me the stakes are a LOT higher?
Well, hers and the physical person she is carrying.
Which, as we know, can be either a male or female. It’s a toss up.
“Your argument relates to the Marxist movement which has these past decades set out to undermine the institution of marriage (a contractual agreement between a man and a women)”
If someone wants to sign a contract to not have an abortion—or to seek permission or notice for one—that is their perogative. That has nothing to do, however, with laws mandating permission or notice.
“Way back when I was 20 yrs of age, I used to be one of those gullible feminists who bought into the Marxist movement’s belief that partriarchy parasitic pregnacy was oppressive howeve”
well it looks like the gullibility is still there.
Except when the perogative is parametrically opposed to the logical hypotenuse, in which case notice is 97% of permission. Or 25, whichever is more orange.
One of the more pernicious concepts that the abortion lie-fest has fooled people into believing that childbearing is so terribly dangerous to the life and health of the woman. Sheesh, maybe 50+ years ago but now I’d venture more woman drown in bathtubs or something equally goofy than die or suffer serious health problems due to caring and birthing a child.
Jeff:
I found myself agreeing with Sarah. And I do not believe that the standards for firefighters should be lowered. But then, although I’m small I’m pretty strong for my size. And I married into a family of giant women. I also know a fair number of women who are both surprisingly strong and taller than average.
Naturally, I do not think it’s right to keep women out of physical jobs, though the standards should not be modified to accommodate them. The issue becomes more complex with respect to cops and the military. That is, if the women is being hired for her brains, the armed forces/police might be justified in modifying the academy regime/basic training, so they can have the benefits of her analytical abilities as a detective/etc.
It’s worth noting–WRT law enforcement– that the MP doesn’t pull people out of the army/marines because of their brawn as much as their brains. That is, the USMC sent my husband off to army training so he could be an MP. Never mind that he was going to spend a lot of his time breaking up fights and domestic disputes: they wanted a smart guy to do that. (Well, he’s tall, and played football in college. But he’s built slender: they did not just want a slab of beef.)
Jeff’s brain on ‘80’s style college party jungle juice, responding to Elementropy’s criticism:
“It cuts like a knife. But it feels alright.”
Jeff,
My sister is a firefighter. She’s not what I’d call dainty, but she’s fairly skinny. I’ll have to ask her about that.