There's also a video, and I'm inspired to write about an aphorism you can see at 1:57: a shot of a room in a clinic — presumably a room where abortions are performed. The label on the door reads "Audre," and on the wall, in large capital letters, there's a quote and the name "Audre Lorde." The quote reads "Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer (1934-1992) who is a source of some popular feminist aphorisms, notably "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." The one painted on the wall shown in the video suggests an argument about abortion that resonates with abortion rights doctrine, that the woman finds her own meaning. The Supreme Court's cases depict the woman engaging in a philosophical/theological/scientific inquiry into the significance of the entity she may choose either to nurture within or to extricate. The Lorde quote seems like a feminist paraphrase, where the mental process runs along a path of feelings.
The woman entering the room is invited into an awareness of her feelings. Feelings are the most genuine way to your decision. Perhaps the woman entering the room thinks: I don't feel this is anything like a baby or that I am murdering anyone. Or: I hear my future child begging for life. The quote — to my eye — calls you to experience your conscience, and it doesn't let you off the hook. The painted letters seem to be the only decoration in the room. It's the place to focus your eyes throughout the procedure.
I wonder what women's names appear on the other doors. Do the names take the place of room numbers and are the rooms referred to by name in an effort to give warmth to the place? You're a name not a number.
I wonder what are the other aphorisms in the other rooms. Are they all so neutral and open-ended as to the woman's right to choose?
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115 comments:
Most women who see the sign are there because they feel they want to get rid of the inconvenient baby. The sign assures them that what they're doing is the right thing by definition. How much more decisively can you let someone off the hook?
@Paul You are assuming feelings are not complicated, that there is no complexity and ambivalence. Obviously, the woman's feelings got her to that room, so we can assume that at least one aspect of her feelings bring her there, but the aphorism tells her to pay attention to her feelings now, not to steel herself, and it portrays her feelings as a path and to believe in the genuineness of the knowledge to be arrived at through following the path of feeling. It is the opposite of anesthesia.
The quote — to my eye — calls you to experience your conscience, and it doesn't let you off the hook.
I wish I could trust this female "conscience". I don't. I think it changes at whim. The word feelings is the key to this thinking, I believe. I wish it was logic.
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
What a horrible quote:
1. Putting "are" next to "our" is like wearing an outfit made up of two noticeably different shades of the same color.
2. The truth is exactly the opposite of what is claimed here. Truth is advanced by dispassionate collection of data and logical analysis of same. When it comes to feelings, you can be confident that you will "feel" as if whatever you want is just.
Humans are more rationalizing than rational and yes, that is a flaw.
@Ann I agree that that is how the quote should be used, but I agree with Paul and Darcy that I highly doubt that that is how it is used.
You have to be born first be able to choose aphorisms.
The hysterical screeching by those in the gallery is indicative of the intellectual argument for abortion.
How pathetic do you have to be to cheer the right to kill a 5 month old baby?
"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
Does that mean what I think it means? The master, AKA male house, and it must be destroyed, so get out your pick-axe and start smashing away?
No wonder I have a problem with liberalism. Destroy, not build.
I met one of these women once. A high school friend who went to Rice had her latest conquest over, and she explained to me quite clearly how she rejected the idea of forming their own feminist nirvana, but instead wanted to take what was built and change it to their own view.
At least a hermit crab has the decency to use what is discarded.
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
Just ask any toddler throwing a fit because they can't have ice cream instead of vegetables.
@dbp I am an engineer by profession and the son of an engineer. I am confident that I am as big a fan of logic and rationality as anyone on this planet. I have still found that feelings are an important part of learning and self-knowledge, particularly in the spiritual side of my life. When making major life decisions I have found that the best and most reliable guide for me is to get all the facts and think about it for a while, and then go with my "gut".
how in the world could common sense regulation reduce choice or curtail rights? no one really needs a filthy unregulated fly by night abortion.
"I wish I could trust this female "conscience". I don't. I think it changes at whim. The word feelings is the key to this thinking, I believe. I wish it was logic."
You'd really pull the switch that made the thinking about pregnancy utterly and purely logical and without any feeling?
You think the pro-life sentiment is grounded in logic.
Ironically, your comment isn't logical. You express a "wish." Sorry, but that's feeling! You long for a world of decisions made by logic? Do you have enough straight logic in your head even to imagine such a world?
If you say yes, look again and answer this question — using only logic -- Isn't that vision of yours a fantasy?
At what point will the shreds of logic that remain available to you cause you to confess that your thoughts are tainted/driven/enlivened by feeling?
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
I feel that that is the most irrational, illogical, and erroneous thing I've read in a long time. Therefore I know it to be true that that statement is irrational, illogical, and erroneous.
Obama loves to kill about to be borns. This is actually a plus to the pro-choice gang.
"Just ask any toddler throwing a fit because they can't have ice cream instead of vegetables."
The aphorism says feelings are the path to knowledge. What is your point? The toddler knows what he wants. That's knowledge.
If he were older, he might be able to take more long-term interests into account. Until then, parents have to protect him.
But are you comparing an adult woman to a child?
At what point do people get to make decisions for themselves?
Do you favor the endless protection of the government in a government-as-parent model for our society?
Not surprised at Barry's tweet. Dictators like their mobs to rule.
I first heard about this story on NPR this morning (Wednesday). I think I can boldly and accurately assert that the story was nowhere at all in mainstream and conservative circles online. It was apparently a Twitternado for the left, but not elsewhere. That's why NPR was on the story fresh and early.
My question: why did she bother to filibuster a bill that eventually failed in the vote? Filibusters are for minorities who want to prevent majorities from passing things. Maybe I missed something.
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
I would have known this was written by a female.
As Althouse herself has expressed, women really are hysterical. They either can't or won't allow their intellect to overrule their emotions.
Oh, and Wendy is pretty. That helps.
Obviously, the woman's feelings got her to that room, so we can assume that at least one aspect of her feelings bring her there, but the aphorism tells her to pay attention to her feelings now, not to steel herself, and it portrays her feelings as a path and to believe in the genuineness of the knowledge to be arrived at through following the path of feeling.
Magical, postmodern thinking is so sophisticated. Will she still be able to hear the hum of uterine evacuator's pump?
Audre Lorde was a Caribbeaan-American writer
Does that make her a black Hispanic?
This is too cliche to be anything but pablum.
@Jim, fair enough. But I see the quote as not recognizing a place for logic and a place for feelings but rather that feeling are the only thing that matters.
The quote is there to help the pregnant woman feel fine with what she is about to do, not make her look at it critically.
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
yes we know that about you. we always have. but when we notice it, it's chauvinistic.
I doubt Dorothy Parker made the list:
“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”
― Dorothy Parker
Lorde could well have had some such "examine your conscience" message in mind in whatever context she originally said it-- considering how often the other things women say turn out to have some sort of demand buried inaccessibly deep in the subtext. Whether the enciphered message comes across to the women reading it in an abortion clinic-- and, still more, whether the people who put the sign up meant it to-- I still very much doubt.
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge
Holy cow is that stupid.
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
What a crock. A ridiculous and risible statement. It conforms to the rules of English grammar, but that is about all.
First of all, in the causal chain, thoughts precede feelings.
And one can think just about anything, including blue flying unicorns.
Definition #2 of "genuine" is: sincerely felt: not affected or pretended.
So, "feelings are our most sincerely felt paths to knowledge". Almost a tautology, so therefore a meaningless statement.
Not for me. I feel that logic is my most sincerely felt path to knowledge, if the word 'knowledge' means anything at all.
Feelings without logic are not to be fully trusted.
When feelings rule
It is the end of reason,
Ushers in the dark season
Of crazed misrule.
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
that's what Larry Summers said in so many words that got him in such hot water.
Someone go down to Austin and tell the valiant Democrats that some of those babies were LGBTQ and ethnic minorities.
Althouse is the anti-Spock, furiously supressing her intellect to allow her feelings and emotions to run free....
Going through life relying only on your feelings means that you're pretty much screwed.
Feelings certainly lead to belief. Feelings might help lead to making an informed choice. Belief and making informed choices is not knowledge.
Anyway, if feelings are the most genuine paths to knowledge, what are the less-genuine paths? What are the imitation paths to knowledge? Does it matter if your path is genuine or not if you reach the same "knowledge" destination?
Feelings, woah-woah-woah, Feelings!
"Feelings" is a song written by Louis Gasté, also known as Loulou Gasté, and Brazilian singer Morris Albert and made famous by Albert, who recorded it as a single released in 1974 that later appeared as the title track of his 1975 debut album. The song's lyrics, recognizable by their "whoa whoa whoa" chorus, concern the singer's inability to "forget my feelings of love". Albert's original recording of the song was very successful, performing well internationally. "Feelings" peaked at #6 on the pop and #2 on the Adult Contemporary charts in America.[1] Over the next few years "Feelings" was performed by many other vocalists including Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Petula Clark, José José, Caetano Veloso, Frank Sinatra, Engelbert Humperdinck, Shirley Bassey, Glen Campbell, The O'Jays, Sarah Vaughan, Walter Jackson, Sergey Penkin, Julio Iglesias, Dobie Gray and Johnny Mathis. It was also recorded by numerous easy listening bandleaders and ensembles such as Percy Faith, Ferrante & Teicher, 101 Strings and Herb Ohta whose ukelele rendition was recorded with André Popp's orchestra for A&M Records.
In more recent years "Feelings" has been best known as a target of parody and ridicule for embodying what are perceived by many as the most insipid lyrical and musical qualities of 1970s "soft rock" music. It appears frequently on lists of "the worst songs ever"[2][3][4] and was included on the 1998 Rhino Records compilation album '70s Party Killers.[5] Actress and performer Julie Andrews once considered this song too difficult to sing during a lecture at Chautauqua Institution.[6] She explained that the song was too difficult to sing, simply because it had no meaning behind it.
HA! "[Julie Andrews] explained that the song was too difficult to sing, simply because it had no meaning behind it."
Fucking feelings.
feelings are the path to knowledge.
I guess one of the problems here is the attempt, by the powerful, to manipulate our feelings. Specifically the constant use of the Latin word "fetus" is an attempt to manipulate our feelings.
Say baby, say baby, say baby!
We say baby when we're happy about the pregnancy and fetus when we want to kill our child.
One might add that our Pravda media censors all photographs of abortion because it does not want to upset our feelings.
a shot of a room in a clinic — presumably a room where abortions are performed.
Yeah, exactly, you don't know. How do we know? It's just a room, with unseen aborted ghosts.
If you want truth, and want people to feel, show the abortion! Why are we not showing the abortions? Or the result of abortions?
Feelings, like truth, are meant to be suppressed in our society. This is why hardly anybody speaks of their abortions after they have abortions. Because they will hear a bunch of feelings and feel a bunch of feelings and there will be a lot of upset.
Abortion doctors get shot because of feelings.
Dr. Gosnell was called a "monster" by liberals. And yet his post-birth abortions are advocated by people who have cushy Ivy League jobs, who are applauded for saying, with cold academic jargon, that the unfit should be murdered. And I say "murdered" to get our feelings going.
One of the things the Supreme Court obviously failed to do is take the homicide issue off the table. The smart, cold, analytical people ought to think about how best to do that. Before we become a whole mob of feelers.
Ann Althouse: "You think the pro-life sentiment is grounded in logic."
What about the pro-life position/policy prescription is not "logical" or grounding in logic?
The pro-life position is that the child developing in the womb is a distinct human individual, deserving of consideration and protection.
A unique, separate (though attached), human being.
How is that "illogical"?
But...people genuinely feel that others, not just inconvenient fetuses, are subhuman or deserve to die all the time. Feeling that a 20 week fetuses isn't really a child doesn't lead to knowledge, any more than a Nazi's feelings about a Jew lead him to knowledge. Feelings can lead people to seek knowledge, sure, but that's about the only way I can see this quote making sense.
So the topic is feelings v. logic, and Audre Lorde and the video capture are primary evidence?
I betrayed the topic above. I reacted logically by not reading all the way through the blog-post, and emotionally by being such a guy with no feeling for feelings.
Wait. Just read your response to the toddler thing---he knows what he wants so that's knowledge?
Well okay, feelings lead to knowledge about...feelings!
"My question: why did she bother to filibuster a bill that eventually failed in the vote? Filibusters are for minorities who want to prevent majorities from passing things. Maybe I missed something."
She was fillibustering as a member of the minority party trying to prevent the majority from passing things. Part of the point was to keep the discussion going until the clock ran out on Governor Oops's derangedly-called "special session." Once the clock hit midnight, Perry's bill was dead.
(although, true to form, the GOP did try to pass the bill after midnight and stamp an earlier time on their vote, despite the fact that it was all happening online. Stupid knows little bounds with Texas GOP)
After last night, can you tell me what pro-lifers should say to appease pro-abortionists?
If forcing abortion clinics to meet medical cleanliness standards and limiting abortions to within 20 weeks --- then, clearly, the group that is incapable of compromise are the ones who wish to suck the brains out of the skulls of infants.
Death statutes, for any Supreme Court Justices who wander onto Althouse threads. Death statutes! Look them up! We have laws that resolve your tar baby!
Our feelings are our most genuine obstacles to knowledge.
This a thread about knowledge? Where's YoungHegelian when you need him?
You know who else had feelings?
Nazis.
Feelings! I just need to shout more!
FEELINGS! IN ALL CAPS!
IN BOLD AND IN ALL CAPS! LISTEN TO ME I GOT FEELINGS AND I AM THE PATH TO FUCKING KNOWLEDGE!
I need a bigger font.
^ Is a joke, before anyone gets upset.
harrogate, that makes sense, and there's confirmation of your assertion. Thank you.
Thank goodness that those feminists filibustered the law that would have made abortion clinics adhere to the same health and safety regulations as other out patient surgical centers!
I mean, what better way to punish a woman for exercising her 'right to choose' than by making sure she faces an increased risk of complications, infections, and contracting an STD from improperly sterilized equipment?
The Sisterhood sure knows how to treat its members!
If it feels good..do it!
you know who else had no sense of humor Sofa King?
clearly, the group that is incapable of compromise are the ones who wish to suck the brains out of the skulls of infants
How do you think that Gosnell had as many victims as he had? Women didn't just look him up on Google. They were referred to Gosnell by these people.
Abortion is almost always about expediency.
To the degree there is any thought involved, it revolves around fixing a problem.
The feeling is, quite clearly, "I have a problem I have to get rid of. Will no one rid me of this troublesome pregnancy?"
In this case, feelings are driving the action to kill - quite obviously so.
Thinking might drive the action toward a different outcome - or even avoiding it in the first place.
Otherwise, I eagerly anticipate as a defense against a murder charge the sentiment ""Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge" to see how far this dog runs.
Until then, it serves to explain votes for Obama.
We've raised people to 'trust your heart' without giving them good principals to guide them. This is the result.
Sofa King said...
"You know who else had feelings?
Nazis."
A joke, true, but the underlying truth exposes the moral vacuousness of "Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
I'm headed to training shortly, but I will respond to the questions directed to me.
The Lefties are great at this
Turn off your brain, just FEEL.
Like the masthead on Choom's website in '08, "I'm asking you to believe".
Not think, believe.
Ann Althouse said...
I wish I could trust this female "conscience". I don't. I think it changes at whim. The word feelings is the key to this thinking, I believe. I wish it was logic.
You'd really pull the switch that made the thinking about pregnancy utterly and purely logical and without any feeling?
You think the pro-life sentiment is grounded in logic.
A lot more than pro-abortion.
We saw what happens to disposable people from about 1933 - 68.
And, for a woman who says abortion is a terrible thing, you seem to expend an awful lot of energy defending it.
harrogate said...
My question: why did she bother to filibuster a bill that eventually failed in the vote? Filibusters are for minorities who want to prevent majorities from passing things. Maybe I missed something.
She was fillibustering as a member of the minority party trying to prevent the majority from passing things.
Money for her next campaign?
Some big Lefty press cause she's gonna run for Congress?
"How do you think that Gosnell had as many victims as he had? Women didn't just look him up on Google. They were referred to Gosnell by these people."
Happily referred.
Because, when "our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge," and the feeling is, "I've got to kill this baby," the pro-choice crowd will always make sure she can.
"Some big Lefty press cause she's gonna run for Congress?"
She got a tweet from Obama.
For idiot libs, does it get any better than that?
You'd really pull the switch that made the thinking about pregnancy utterly and purely logical and without any feeling?
Ironically, your comment isn't logical. You express a "wish." Sorry, but that's feeling! You long for a world of decisions made by logic? Do you have enough straight logic in your head even to imagine such a world?
At what point will the shreds of logic that remain available to you cause you to confess that your thoughts are tainted/driven/enlivened by feeling?
False dichotomy. Feelings should be grounded in logic first, NOT the other way around. This is why men tend to be more logical thinkers than women.
So basically, you've set up a straw man here. Who says his feelings aren't grounded in logic? Maybe yours aren't, but please don't project that view on others, especially on men.
The quotation seems to draw a distinction between "feelings" and "knowledge".
But most feminists that I have met or read deny this distinction. They equate feelings with knowledge.
And that's why they are not taken seriously.
The quotation seems to draw a distinction between "feelings" and "knowledge".
But most feminists that I have met or read deny this distinction. They equate feelings with knowledge.
And that's why they are not taken seriously.
Bob Ellison: "harrogate, that makes sense, and there's confirmation of your assertion. Thank you."
So, the roll call vote started before the midnight deadline but could not be completed by midnight due to the "occupy" tactics of those in the gallery.
No wonder there will almost certainly be another special session called.
As for Harrogate referring to this (very short) special session as "deranged", one is forced to ask what criteria can be used to determine if a Texas Legislative special session is deranged or not?
Probably nothing logical.
Just "feelings".
Recommended reading, logicians:
Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions by Martha Nussbaum
Didn't liberals/Democrats just spend the last several years telling us that filibusters were a betrayal of the Principles of Democracy and a form of tyranny just a step away from terrorism?
Oh, liberals were filibustering. Never mind. That's different because shut up.
Yes, feelings are complex but feeling are highly changeable and chargeable.
No doubt all the notable blood-drenched crimes of the 20th century (death camps, gulags, killing fields, etc.) were motivated by justified feeeeelings of hate, anger, pride and arrogance.
Has this long bloody path led us to a genuine path of knowledge?
Lets look at the middle east.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom
--Wm. Blake, "Proverbs of Hell"
Apparently we have not reach excess.
If this thread was about paths and types of knowledge then the other personality types in the Jungian model would also have been discussed.Too bad it wasn't.One group wants to accentuate one mode of the model which leads to decisions bases on mercurial criteria.One group wishes to use another mode of the model which leads to sterile decisions.Both modes may have undesirable outcomes.Why reject either?
In many African-American studies programs at major universities it is being taught that Greek civilization stole every achievement attributed to it from Africans.
This is of course, laughable.
Some even teach that Aristotle "stole" all his knowledge from the library at Alexandria, which is of course chronologically impossible.
But since those who teach such things "feel" and "believe" it is true, then on the campuses of some of our most "elite" universities, this becomes "Truth" and "Knowledge".
These programs and lunatic professors are, of course, untouchable.
But hey, feelings lead to knowledge, right Ann?
Hmmm, lessee now...
Feelings
Nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my feelings of love
Teardrops,
Rolling down on, my face
Trying to forget my, feelings of love
Feelings,
For all my life I'll feel it
I’ll wish I've never met you, girl
You'll never come again
Ya gotta watch out for those feelings.
Due to a variety of reasons related to my upbringing, I spent the first 10 years of my adult life making decisions based on feelings.
That made a complete mess of my life.
So I've spent the last 15 years ignoring my feelings, and not only straightened out my life, but am way beyond my peers in terms of financial and emotional security.
It is quite possible that a woman finds herself in an abortion mill primarily because she was using her feelings to search for knowledge with a guy instead of logic and reason.
I'd be interested to see a discussion of women and the success or disappointment in life based on whether or not they used feelings as their primary path to life decisions, or logic, or depended on someone else's input (i.e., husband, boyfriend, father, friends, mother, etc).
My hypothesis is that women in relationships tend to leave life decisions to the primary male in their life...that's part of the hypergamous urge.
And my hypothesis is that women make disasters of situations for multiple people when they make decisions based on feelings and/or female friends inputs (as in, 75% of divorces are initiated by the female, and if even 1% are initiated because her friends helped talk her into deciding she was unhappy, that's too many).
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
If women believe that then no wonder they do so poorly in STEM.
But are you comparing an adult woman to a child?
Millennial women are only technically adults.
Do you favor the endless protection of the government in a government-as-parent model for our society?
No. And the Obama administration should provide adequate proof for even the most brain-dead among us.
The Lefties are great at this
Turn off your brain, just FEEL.
Yes, that's right. The fight over abortion is 40 years old. And it's been mostly fought by intellectuals. Feminism vs. Catholics. People who think and try to reason their way through issues. It has been an intellectual fight.
The great mass of the American people is composed of low-information voters. One might say, low information feelers. And the lefties are, as you say, great at this.
But sooner or later pro-life people will figure out to get the people to start feeling outrage about infanticide. This will happen, and it will happen in a course similar to the abolitionist movement. More and more people will identify as pro-life. One day they will show up in academia, in newsrooms, in Hollywood.
The Pravda technique of hiding photographs (because photographs affect our feelings) will fail. It always fails. Censorship does not work in a free society. It may work for a while, but principled liberals will show the photographs, because they believe in free speech. And they believe in truth.
How many women change their minds in the room where the abortion is done? I bet it's a very low percentage. Someone must know.
The phrase could easily be viewed as mindless pap, or something to make the abortionists not the patient feel better. The abortionists would like to believe that the woman has made a considered decision, using thought and feeling. Some surely have. But many are being led or pushed through the process.
The goal of the phrase is to reduce guilt, on the part of both the patient and the abortionists. Likely it has little impact on the decision process.
Drago said...
In many African-American studies programs at major universities it is being taught that Greek civilization stole every achievement attributed to it from Africans.
Not to mention Cleopatra.
She was black, you know.
Forget all that Greek ancestry.
The pro-life sentiment is indeed grounded in logic. First, a human life evolves from conception to death. Second, normalizing premeditated murder without cause and without due process causes a general devaluation of human life.
There is no legitimate defense for supporting elective abortions. Decent men and women can neither support nor tolerate this dysfunctional behavior.
Liberty is only possible for individuals capable of self-moderating, responsible behavior. The consequences of normalizing premeditated murder are not constrained to the mother or the aborted human life she was responsible to care for. Both the mother and father must accept responsibility for their actions.
Make love, not war!
Saint Croix said...
But sooner or later pro-life people will figure out to get the people to start feeling outrage about infanticide. This will happen, and it will happen in a course similar to the abolitionist movement. More and more people will identify as pro-life. One day they will show up in academia, in newsrooms, in Hollywood.
You're already seeing this.
The Pravda technique of hiding photographs (because photographs affect our feelings) will fail. It always fails. Censorship does not work in a free society. It may work for a while, but principled liberals will show the photographs, because they believe in free speech. And they believe in truth.
And, when hiding wasn't an option, there was a cottage industry of people who doctored the photos.
Long before Photoshop, too.
The Gosnell case embarrassed liberals in the media. As Althouse pointed out, correctly, they were ashamed.
Their shame speaks volumes.
There is so much repression because we are scared of our emotions.
The abortion regime is not a feeling regime. It is a repressive regime. It has always been.
The worst part of all this is how abortion undermines the parental role of protector. The father has no voice. Zero. The mother is encouraged to think of herself first, not the child. Indeed she is told that it's not a child at all.
How much impact does this have on overall society? It's probably unmeasurable in any scientific way. Our plague of irresponsible parenting has many causes, I am sure. Abortion and the "feelings" it engenders have got to be right up there.
I'll bet this never appears on a wall at an abortion clinic
It's disheartening I have to trot this link out. Again.
The skyrocketing number of single moms are a testament to the pro-life movement. Women don't want to abort. It's bad. We feel it's bad.
The Supreme Court did not count on all this feeling. They did not think "millions and millions of single moms." That was not the plan. They had a plan, a centralized plan, and it backfired horribly. Now it's all cover-it-up.
Saint Croix:
That's the analogy which caused me to reject the pro-choice position.
They did not support slavery. They did not reject slavery. They were pro-choice -- an untenable stance.
However, committing premeditated murder without cause and without due process is arguably a greater violation of human rights than involuntary exploitation and constrained liberty.
The choice is clear. It is not "pro-choice".
The pro-life sentiment is indeed grounded in logic. First, a human life evolves from conception to death. Second, normalizing premeditated murder without cause and without due process causes a general devaluation of human life.
There is no legitimate defense for supporting elective abortions. Decent men and women can neither support nor tolerate this dysfunctional behavior.
Liberty is only possible for individuals capable of self-moderating, responsible behavior. The consequences of normalizing premeditated murder are not constrained to the mother or the aborted human life she was responsible to care for. Both the mother and father must accept responsibility for their actions.
Make love, not war!
David said...
The worst part of all this is how abortion undermines the parental role of protector. The father has no voice. Zero. The mother is encouraged to think of herself first, not the child. Indeed she is told that it's not a child at all.
The Lefties want to do for the white male what they've done to the black male and then do for the white female what they've done to the black female.
1998 Rhino Records compilation album '70s Party Killers
1. Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree - Dawn
2. The Night Chicago Died - Paper Lace
3. Billy, Don't Be A Hero - Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods
4. (You're) Having My Baby - Paul Anka
5. Playground In My Mind - Clint Holmes
6. Feelings - Morris Albert
7. Sometimes When We Touch - Dan Hill
8. The Candy Man - Sammy Davis, Jr.
9. Afternoon Delight - Starland Vocal Band
10. Torn Between Two Lovers - Mary MacGregor
11. Escape (The Pina Colada Song) - Rupert Holmes
12. Muskrat Love - Captain & Tennille
That music trapped in your head....yeah....you're welcome!!
"Didn't liberals/Democrats just spend the last several years telling us that filibusters were a betrayal of the Principles of Democracy and a form of tyranny just a step away from terrorism?"
Did they?
If they were, I can assume two likely reasons:
1) It's an easy excuse to blame the Republicans for filibustering when the Dems don't have the moxy to fight for and win sufficient votes in support to overcome the filibuster; or, most likely and more often, when they really don't want a bill to pass but they want to appear as if they did, so they let the bill die and blame "republican filibuster." (In other words, they're taking a fall.)
2.) The Republicans do threaten filibusters too often, as a default means to block bills they oppose.
However, there is a difference between threatening filibusters promiscuously and using them judiciously. Filibusters are not, by definition, undemocratic. They are another tool in the process of sausage-making that is legislation.
I've always wondered if the waiting rooms at abortion clinics have a bunch of kids' toys and books like at the dentist's office.
That sounds like the kind of pensee that Snowden's pole dancer would record on her Facebook page. Sometimes vacuity reaches such all encompassing banality that it becomes a kind of Zen awareness.
Isn't that stage in life where you let feelings run it, considered to be a state of immaturity?
Mitchell the Bat:
The presence of childhood paraphernalia would be inflicting cruel and unusual punishment for a woman who intends to commit premeditated murder.
Actually, it would also be inflicting the same punishment on the executioner and his staff.
Think of the mother -- with dreams of material, physical, and ego gratification -- and the paid executioner and his staff!
Think of the sex and taxable activity delayed or prevented by an unwanted pregnancy. The government has a material interest -- contrary to its mandate -- to prevent or mitigate unwanted pregnancies.
The anti-mentality embodied in the quotation is far more wrong and offensive than legal elective abortion past the 20th week.
If my feelings are the most genuine path to knowledge, then my feelings are that the elective killing of a foetus at five months makes me ill.
If I combine that with my knowledge that no other Western country allows this, then my feelings become great anger. Anger at the stupidity and evil of these Democratic Party activists who think that there is some "right" to kill a baby at that point of development, regardless of the moral or practical consequences. And anger that they disrespect women so much that they would allow substandard doctors to perform the procedure.
"Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge."
"The heart wants what the heart wants."
"Know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
Feelings provide us with lots of excuses, but hardly ever reason. They have their place, but feelings alone will take you to some dark places. No thinking person trusts their feelings alone when making decisions. Put them in the balance with known outcomes and logic and you have a better chance of getting close to the truth.
Henry said...
Recommended reading, logicians:
Upheavals of Thought:
The Intelligence of Emotions
by Martha Nussbaum
good one Henry. especially the punchline.
@Jay - Holy! Is that a stupid cow!
I wonder what women's names appear on the other doors. Do the names take the place of room numbers and are the rooms referred to by name in an effort to give warmth to the place? You're a name not a number.
I wonder what are the other aphorisms in the other rooms.
-------------------
Room: Mary.
Aphorism on the wall: Blessed are you amongst women, and blessed is the fruuit of thy womb.
Would be interesting to compare the survival rates between different aphorism rooms...
I try to imagine sometimes what it would feel like for a woman to abort my child against my will.
It would be horrific. Unspeakable. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be able to talk about it at all. I would shut down completely.
Boy, those feminist aphorisms make me wish women ruled the world.
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
Star Wars did it better:
Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Joseph N. Welch
"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Joseph N. Welch
If my feelings are the most genuine path to knowledge, then my feelings are that the elective killing of a foetus at five months makes me ill.
It's "our" feelings. Your feelings are worthless.
Switch off the fetus, Luka. Use the Forceps.
I was more interested in the fact that the news choose to gloss over the fact Rep. Davis served her owners in the abortion lobby well and blocked the treatment of a medical procedure as such. So Texas abortion clinics are still not held the same medical standards as other clinics. When they find a Gosnell in Texas, it will be her fault.
And anyone past high school knows feelings are an unreliable guide to anything.
Feelings grounded in and guided by reason are important. There are research studies which demonstrate that good decisonmaking requires emotion.
However, elevating feelings to a higher status than reason is the first step toward rationalizing any decisions based on what we feel in the moment. Those decisions might very well harm us in the long run, as well as harming others.
This is why the prochoice position makes no sense. The people least able to appropriately decide the value of the human life within them are the women who are terrified by the changes that the pregnancy will bring to their lives. In this context that quote is affirming the woman's fear and saying that it should guide the decision.
@ Mary- excellent.
Here's a thought- in the interest of choice and ensuring that the woman to whom society has turned over this power of life and death makes a choice that balances all concerns, I propose that a pro-life organization should pick the quotes for half of the rooms, while the clinic owners can pick the rest.
I suspect one of the reasons Humans are so successful as animals is that we have a massive cerebral cortex. True, without emotion, there wouldn't be much reason to do anything.
However, without the cerebral cortex, we wouldn't even be living in grass huts. And let's be clear. In the sense of "guiding" an individual to some "good" conclusion, that doesn't always happen either.
That's why we have laws, and such.
I'm not trying to say there is no value in reasons, simply the idea that unchecked, feelings will arrive at better knowledge, understanding, etc., is Bullshit.
That is, reason is required to keep feelings in check.
Something special happened here in Austin, all right: mob rule.
After the filibuster failed, pro-abortion demonstrators caused such a ruckus that the vote couldn't be taken. Lefties online were openly advocating rushing the floor of the Senate to prevent a vote.
Sadly, the "stupidity" of Texas Republicans seems to be respect for the rule of law and representative Democracy. Idiots. Fuck Democracy! Liberal policies are much more important.
I'm not trying to say there is no value in reasons, simply the idea that unchecked, feelings will arrive at better knowledge, understanding, etc., is Bullshit.
this is especially true of fear, which is the overriding emotion that women in these circumstances are dealing with.
Fear has a purpose- it switches OFF the higher level thinking when we are in immediate danger and need to react reflexively. Telling a person who is fearful that the emotion rules, is clearly not going to lead to complex or nuanced thnking. The only decision that can be considered under those circumstances is the one that removes the source of the fear.
Which is, obviously, very convenient for the butchering profiteers of the abortion industry.
You'd really pull the switch that made the thinking about pregnancy utterly and purely logical and without any feeling?
No, I wouldn't. I know that the quote was provided here with respect to the topic of abortion. I wasn't particularly referring to abortion with my comment, though.
I reacted (see, there I go again, feeling!) to the quote because I'm wary of the message that feelings are of the utmost importance.
The way I see it is that in our culture, women are programmed to believe that our feelings matter most of all. And the quote - written by a woman - does say that our feelings are the most genuine paths to knowledge. Does that mean I'd like to leave feelings out of our search for knowledge? No, and I don't think it's possible, anyway. But I'd love it if the fostering of this message of our feelings being all-important died a logical death.
You think the pro-life sentiment is grounded in logic.
I'll not deny that.
You long for a world of decisions made by logic? Do you have enough straight logic in your head even to imagine such a world?
Not without any feeling/emotion at all, of course not. But more logic, please. Yes.
...Isn't that vision of yours a fantasy?
Is it? I don't know.
At what point will the shreds of logic that remain available to you cause you to confess that your thoughts are tainted/driven/enlivened by feeling?
I don't think I said that they are not.
Fingernails.
A judge in Colorado has made it a crime to show abortion photographs in a place where children might see them.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the case. I bet!
They showed large pictures of aborted fetuses. About 200 children were present, and some of them became upset.
Yes, you should be upset. It is upsetting. You live in a society where parents decapitate and dismember unwanted children.
Be glad your parents love you!
Imagine you're a child, and you think the world is nice. You think there is love and happiness and sunshine. And then you see a photograph of a baby who is not loved by her parents. A baby who has been decapitated and dismembered because she is unwanted.
Of course you cry. That could have happened to you!
Imagine you're a parent whose child is crying. You want to stop the crying. "It's a lie! It didn't happen! The world is a nice place. I love you, please stop crying."
Of course we want to hide our decapitated children from you. We don't want you to hear about your butchered sister or your brother whose arm was ripped off.
Now imagine you are on the judiciary. This is your nightmare. You've created it. You've issued these baby-killing rules. You're the one who actually made these small children cry. They are crying at photographs of a reality that you, the judges, have created. So what do you do?
You censor. You repress. You deny.
What is the path to knowledge, feelings or thoughts? Geez, what an academic exercise. You think the unelected people who have dictated these rules actually want you to go down either path?
We don't want you to feel anything. And we certainly don't want you to think!
While we're on the subject of "paths," where does repression and denial and censorship take us?
"No feeling, no thought, no feeling, no thought." That's our motto. We ought to run for office on that. Except, oops, I forgot, we're an unelected judiciary. We don't have to run for shit! We dictate a "right" to decapitate and dismember small children. And when non-aborted children cry at what we have done, we order the free speakers to shut up.
Because we're fascists, that's why. Because we said so. Stare decisis! That's Latin for knife in the neck.
If women use feelings to determine whether or not they should follow through with the decision to end a human life, I hope they listen to the feeling that says, "no". Women generally have abortions because their child is either inconvenient or embarrassing. That is a sad excuse to end a life.
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