The thing for which Williamson is most famous is his (since deleted) tweet advocating the execution by hanging of every woman who has an abortion. [Jessica] Valenti notes that this would encompass approximately 25 percent of U.S. women.So Williamson got the boot.
Williamson’s second-most famous comment is in his contemptuous depiction of a nine-year-old African American boy, which is basically a litany of racist stereotypes strung together, complete with a description of the boy making a gesture Williamson describes as “the universal gesture of primate territorial challenge.”...
Here's "By Firing Kevin Williamson,The Atlantic Shows It Can't Handle Real Ideological Diversity/Williamson's rhetoric is inflammatory, but his views on abortion are not beyond the pale" by Katherine Mangu-Ward (Reason). Excerpt:
But the thing that cost him the gig was a remark he made on a podcast well before his firing and in a tweet (since deleted):The Atlantic is obviously caving to pressure. They had to know when they hired Williamson that he maintains that abortion is murder, and the fact that he would treat it the way he'd treat any murder is just standard, mundane adherence to principle and resistance to pragmatism. There's nothing to be shocked about. Why hire him if that wasn't what you wanted?
And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, "If you really thought it was a crime, you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide." And I do support that. In fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging.
But what about that "the universal gesture of primate territorial challenge"? I agree with anyone who wants to advise writers to avoid references to monkeys and apes when talking about black people. But: 1. Human beings are primates! and 2. Williamson noted Donald Trump's entry into the 2016 presidential race with a column titled "Witless Ape Rides Escalator." Well, that attitude probably helped him get the job at The Atlantic. He'd throw feces at Trump! And he's conservative!
Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, announced his candidacy at Trump Tower, making a weird grand entrance via escalator — going down, of course, the symbolism of which is lost on that witless ape...Now, I blogged that at the time:
On the substance, Trump is — how to put it gently? Oh, why bother! — an ass. Not just an ass, but an ass of exceptionally intense asininity... The one thing worse than Trump’s vague horsepucky is his specific horsepucky...
"We’ve been to this corner of Crazytown before. If we’re going to have a billionaire dope running for the presidency, I prefer Ross Perot and his cracked tales of Vietnamese hit squads dispatched to take him out while Lee Atwater plotted to crash his daughter’s wedding with phonied-up lesbian sex pictures."That post had only one tag: nothing.
From "Witless Ape Rides Escalator," by Kevin D. Williamson, and that's more than I want to have to say about the person whose name I'm again declining to blog... which is what last night's post meant. I'm not saying his name. I'm not giving him the attention he wants. As my mother used to say: You'll only encourage him.
Anyway, here's the one column Williamson managed to get published in his mini-stint at The Atlantic: "The Passing of the Libertarian Moment/The end of the Cold War and the rise of Donald Trump have left classical liberals without a political home." Ha. He gave them the anti-Trumpism they wanted. But it was not enough. Because the ladies rebelled.
From that lone Atlantic column:
The Christian right was able to make its peace with Trump with relative ease, because it is moved almost exclusively by reactionary kulturkampf considerations.... The Chamber of Commerce made peace, being as it is one of the conservative constituencies getting what it wants out of the Trump administration: tax cuts and regulatory reform. The hawks are getting what they want, too, lately: John Bolton in the White House and an extra $61 billion in military spending in the latest budget bill.Sad... but not really that sad. Williamson hurls harsh words, gets harsh words hurled at him, and The Atlantic decides he wasn't as useful to its purposes as it had previously calculated.
What are the libertarians getting? A man with Richard Nixon’s character but not his patriotism, an advocate of Reagan’s drug war and Mussolini’s economics who dreams of using the FCC to shut down media critics—and possibly a global trade war to boot....
Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right.
Posts
204 comments:
1 – 200 of 204 Newer› Newest»"Thought leader magazine" lmfao....someone please give me an example of any great thoughts it had under its current idiotors.
You fixed the headline before my comment posted; nice speed!
Is it true that 1 in 4 women in the US have had an abortion? I'm skeptical.
Williamson's a good writer but comes across (esp. when he was on Twitter) as a snobby, condescending asshole. The good news is he can take his own advice (for people living in impoverished parts of the country without good opportunities etc) and "just move." Maybe he can learn to code!
Jessica Valenti would be the the first in line to decry Winston Smith for Thoughtcrimes.
In an ironic way, the Atlantic proved the CEO of Sinclair correct.
Did the cannons just go off in Fort Sumpter today?
Burn the witch!
I do like and respect Williamson as a writer, but he's a neverTrumper (I think), and doesn't understand that the Left doesn't care, still views him as an enemy and will sink him, which apparently they just did.
"You fixed the headline before my comment posted; nice speed!"
I have a compulsion to hit the publish button and clean up the typos and glitches when I read the published post. I keep telling myself to resist... but it's just part of what I do here. If you're quick enough, you get to read the first draft. If you wait 3 minutes, you'll see the corrected version.
Williamson's a good writer but comes across (esp. when he was on Twitter) as a snobby, condescending asshole.
Yes, I thought he would be a good fit there.
Especially his TDS.
Ridiculous. The Womyn were rebelling at anyone even daring to suggest that anything they can do to a fetus might be even slightly morally questionable. The Atlantic would kick off ANYONE who is anti-abortion at this point.
He is doing what the Left does so well, and so often, speaking hyperbolically and violently without nuance to get attention.
Except that no one (at least on the Left) calls out Obama for him and his aides calling Republicans suicide bombers, punching back twice as hard, or bringing guns to knife fights.
If Kevin even suggested abortion was baby murder, much less the hanging thing, he'd be gone. Feminists want to shut down ANY DEBATE on abortion...while advocating repealing black letter Rights from the Constitution.
No one is allowed to dispute this or even hold a public contrary view.
This is what Totalitarianism looks like writ small.
Love kevin Williamson.
The Goldberg Atlanteans should put on their pussy hats and sink into the solipsism to which they are so naturally inclined.
I’ll find kevin wherever he goes.
The same idiot researchers at the Guttmacher Institute claim that 43 percent of U.S. women had an abortion in 1992. Wow! Because we don't not force doctors to report induced abortions to a central authority, Guttmacher's (absurd) figures are based on "estimates" from telephone and online surveys. By contrast, the Netherlands keeps very detailed, and intrusive, records. The Dutch figures indicate a low abortion rate (5 to 7 abortions per 1000 women of reproductive age). No way Americans are aborting babies at fifty times the rate...
Comes down to that they were looking for a conveniently anti-populist conservative who would fit in.
Not quite so it seems.
"when they hired Williamson that he maintains that abortion is murder"
With which I agree.
It's good that lefties and Democrats keep reminding me that they're the party of tolerance.
Abortion is sacred. Having an abortion, or at any rate making sure others can have abortions, is a sacrament.
All of the other things your regressive numbskulls think are "rights" (like your silly 2nd amendment Rambo jerkoff fantasies) don't really matter. We smart nice people understand that we call some things "rights" just to mollify the deplorable backwards swamp dwellers. The Constitution is just an old piece of paper and we nice people don't have to take seriously any ideas it supposedly embodies if the results of those ideas are in any way ugly. But! Abortion, of course, is sacred and anyone who disagrees must be cast out. Anyone who disagrees--who dares to seriously disagree--is by definition a heretic and must be cast out.
Couldn't be clearer.
All the bloodthirsty slots at the Atlantic are reserved for Ta-Nahisi Coates. Williamson was spoiling the messaging, so he had to go. What was Goldberg thinking when he hired Williamson? He was thinking that Williamson would repent, recant, and reform.
That didn’t last long.
I think we need a pool on the dates the Bret Stephens gets sacked by NYT and Megan McArdle gets pushed out at WaPo.
Maybe The Atlantic can hire Bill Kristol. He has gone nuts. He’ll fit right in.
Meanwhile, Trump needs to rethink that whole trade war thing. Maybe he should talk to Mueller.
Ha ha! We deplorable despise Williamson because he told us early on that we should just shut up and die.
Fuck him and the high horse he rides.
25 precent? yikes...also skeptical.
I hope people remembered how Trump dealt with the question of what would happen to the woman if abortion were made illegal. He first indicated that there should be some legal consequence — certainly not the death penalty! — but with criticism, he backed off.
Williamson was way out on the edge in a way that is actually quite dismissive of women. Trump wouldn't go anywhere near that, and he was anti-abortion.
Megan McArdle gets pushed out at WaPo.
Hmm. She was at The Atlantic, and then Bloomberg. I was just assuming she was making standard career moves for more money, more readers or whatever. Are you suggesting she was pushed out?
Kevin Williamson said ...
It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.
If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.
Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.
MATTHEWS: If you say abortion is a crime or abortion is murder, you have to deal with it under law. Should abortion be punished?
TRUMP: Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and conservative Republicans would say, "yes, they should be punished."
MATTHEWS: How about you?
TRUMP: I would say that it’s a very serious problem. And it’s a problem that we have to decide on. It’s very hard.
MATTHEWS: But you’re for banning it?
TRUMP: I’m going to say -- well, wait. Are you going to say, put them in jail? Are you -- is that the (inaudible) you’re talking about?
MATTHEWS: Well, no, I’m asking you because you say you want to ban it. What’s that mean?
TRUMP: I would -- I am against -- I am pro-life, yes.
MATTHEWS: What is ban -- how do you ban abortion? How do you actually do it?
TRUMP: Well, you know, you go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to illegal places --
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
TRUMP: But you have to ban it.
MATTHEWS: You banning, they go to somebody who flunked out of medical school.
TRUMP: Are you Catholic?
MATTHEWS: Yes. I think...
TRUMP: And how do you feel about the Catholic Church’s position?
MATTHEWS: Well, I accept the teaching authority of my church on moral issues.
TRUMP: I know, but do you know their position on abortion?
MATTHEWS: Yes, I do.
TRUMP: And do you concur with that position?
MATTHEWS: I concur with their moral position but legally, I get to the question -- here’s my problem with it...
(Laughter in the audience.)
TRUMP: No, no, but let me ask you, but what do you say about your Church?
MATTHEWS: It’s not funny.
TRUMP: Yes, it’s really not funny. What do you say about your church? They’re very, very strong.
MATTHEWS: They’re allowed to -- but the churches make their moral judgments. But you running for president of the United States will be chief executive of the United States. Do you believe...
TRUMP: No, but...
MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.
MATTHEWS: For the woman.
TRUMP: Yeah, there has to be some form.
MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What?
TRUMP: I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
TRUMP: I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: You take positions on everything else.
TRUMP: Because I don’t want to -- I frankly, I do take positions on everything else. It’s a very complicated position.
Amadeus 48 said...All the bloodthirsty slots at the Atlantic are reserved for Ta-Nahisi Coates. Williamson was spoiling the messaging, so he had to go
Funny you should bring him up.
Ta-Nehisi Coates Gives Atlantic Hire Williamson Props For Writing
Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic said he loves to read the outlet’s new conservative hire, Kevin D. Williamson, in a recent interview on Jamie Weinstein’s podcast hosted by National Review.
Weinstein asked the “Between the World and Me” author if there were a conservative writer who he finds interesting or compelling. Coates chuckled, then hesitated and chuckled again, saying he always reads Williamson’s work.
“H-ll, yeah,” Coates said at the one hour, 13-minute mark of the interview. “He can write his a– off! I don’t agree with sh-t he says, but –”
“If you can write, I will always look at what you’re doing, because at the very least I can study some sh-t and figure out, maybe there’s something for me, in this,” he added. “Even if I hate what you’re saying, or I think you’re dead wrong.”
Wow, ARM is a Williamson fan. Strange bedfellows indeed!
That's right. Williamson wants the communities that supported a Trump to die. I am sure he wants the old white working class patriotic citizens to die. I bet in his black heart he wants Donald Trump to die.
The Great Don Surber has compiled a list of the cretins who have attacked the God Emperor and his people. They have been shamed, humbled or destroyed. This worthless cuck is just the latest.
You want us old white people to die Kevin?
Right back at you.
Tennessee Coats hearts Kevin Williamson - but not enough to save his ass.
chickelit seems capable of misinterpreting almost anything, although I do agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that Williamson is a good writer.
Ann Althouse said...Williamson was way out on the edge in a way that is actually quite dismissive of women.
Dismissive how? I'd say the opposite--he's taking both his beliefs and women seriously. It's not dismissive to say that women are full, moral human beings with reason and free will and should be treated like adults. It'd be dismissive to say that one believes abortion to be a sin & a terrible moral wrong but poor little women shouldn't be criticized--much less punished--for voluntarily choosing to have abortions.
That's how we treat children. Sure they might do bad things but we're careful to not be TOO harsh on little kids--they don't know any better the poor dears and if we're too mean we'll hurt their delicate feelings/psyches. We "look the other way" when children (or animals) transgress because we understand they're less than fully responsible for their actions and choices. That's pretty close to what the "acceptable" anti-abortion position is supposed to be w/r/t addressing women themselves--"I believe your choice is wrong but I certainly won't criticize you for making it nor take any action that would prevent you from making it or punish what I view as a horrible moral wrong." THAT is dismissive!
They are not strange bedfellows. They are happy butt buddies. They want the same thing. They should call up Chuck and they could start one of those human centipedes
Willuamson's only other piece written for the Atlantic was an attack on Victor David Hansen.
Williamson, like ALL the self-described
"Tru Cons" are more than happy to trim their sails in support of the MSM lefty narratives to "prove" that they are not like those horrible deplorables and can effectively operate as trained lefty house pets.
Unfortunately, there will always be things written in the past by these Tru Cons (when they were pretending to be conservatives) that wont align perfectly with the views of their lefty masters.
Oops!
Now Williamson will have to pretend to be all about conservatism again now that the left has made clear that his sucking up now will not be sufficient.
Perhaps he and Bill Kristol can launch an official Michelle in 2020 fan club.
Doncha wonder how folks who are journalists, in this case the responsible parties at The Atlantic,people whose job it is to investigate things & report to the rest of us about what they've found out, were so bad at their jobs that they got caught out by Kevin Williamson's views on abortion? It's not like he was hiding them locked in a shed behind the house, was he?
More Atlanteans than KW oughtta be shown the door over this, & for multiple reasons.
I am shocked- shocked- to find that gambling is going on in here!
Williamson is a witless ape. They lured him from the conservative rag to the progressive rag so they could fire him from the progressive rag. The guy is dumber than Sollozzo. Anyone with some smarts would not have fallen for this trap. Fucking moron. Who listens to this idiot?
There's nothing to be shocked about. Why hire him if that wasn't what you wanted?
My hypothesis is that they are so deeply.caught up in their bubble that they couldn’t wrap their heads around the possibility that he really, truly, meant what he had written. Anyone have a better idea?
Yes he was a cuck and cucks get chucked. Hard.
Couldn't happen to a nastier piece of work.
Feminism is supposed to be more than an exercise to obtain freedom from consequences, isn't it? If I think something ought to be outlawed why would I believe that people who violated that law should not face legal consequences? Just 'cause they're women!?
I own firearms. MANY prominent people have baldly stated recently that they want private firearm ownership to be illegal (of the kind of scary "full semi-automatic" firearms I own, anyway). They will happily tell you that they want it to be illegal for me to exercise my 2nd Amend. rights and would happily throw me in jail for doing so. That's pretty extreme given the number of citizens who own firearms, but it's a position that's tolerated & celebrated by the Media & lots of nice centrist people.
That position is more than a bit dismissive of the millions of firearm owners in this nation but I don't remember hearing that particular objection!
The core objection seems to be that this guy actually MEANS what he says & dares to actually say the (obvious) logical consequences of his beliefs.
That's simply not allowed, you see.
I dont read enough history to know if scorched earth tactics against adversaries ever led to anything but eventually more costly battles being fought down the road. That is not to say that people arent right when they draw lines. I believe History does say you need to draw them, and then fight hard. But over every inch of possible (ideological) terrain? Hmmm.
If the tactic in this case by Goldberg (near enough to Orwell's) was to find space for a dissenting voice in the cabin, so that the cabins True Believers might realize they are near to slightly feverish, (and that there are possibly a whole range of thoughts found out in the woods, beyond the safehouse), well, maybe the intention just needed to choose a writer who was less prone to swing a very fiery torch at X. Maybe look for somebody who can talk about the foolishness of Y before trying to go hard at X.
I know, I know: some of you are going to say that there is no Y. (Because those in the cabin are right on everything! Or they are ridiculous on everything!) Perhaps a cynic might say that Mr Williamson was hired purposefully to be fired, as a way to feed those that demand such sort of ritual be undertaken from time to time. Sad, if that is the case.
If Williamson said that women should not face the same punishment as men for the same crime, that to me would suggest he thinks they have diminished capacity or the like. Yet now I read just the opposite. Can someone althousesplain this?
Insert Kierkegaard reference here.
It's an odd reaction to someone admitting the logical consequences of a sincerely held belief.
It seems almost, dare I say, gendered!
It's ugly when people take the concept of/a libertarian understanding freedom of association seriously and don't give enough consideration to how that belief might make others feel.
It's ugly when people take the concept of abortion being murder/morally equivalent to murder seriously and don't give enough consideration to how that position might make women feel.
It's in theory OK to HOLD those positions, I guess, as long as you don't express sincere belief in them to the point that you're willing to admit what must logically follow. THAT, you see, is ugly and must not be allowed--that's extremism!
@Amadeus 48 I am glad that you think Kristol has gone nuts as well.
Hey, did ya hear about the Irish guy who married the Italian gal?
Their Kid didn’t know to get drunk or grab his cr***h.
This will not end well. (And I'm not even a big fan of Williamson).
In his 6:52 ARM did a pretty good job of showing why I dislike Williamson's writing. Williamson considers himself a Christian, yet he writes off vast segments of humanity as "life unworthy of life." It is hard to be both a Christian and a libertarian, the idea of charity seems alien to Williamson.
Maybe someone should be thinking about whether or not Jeffrey Goldberg deserves to keep his job. This doesn't reflect well on him, the hiring first, which presumably wasn't "run up the flagpole" before he made the decision, and now the peremptory firing, which presumably is a reaction to something, advertisers maybe or the owner. I understand the majority share is owned by The Emerson Collective, which is run by Laurene Jobs, Steve Jobs' widow. A woman, probably the only woman whose opinion matters, as sweet as it is to think that getting rid of Williamson was to make the women in the office feel safe from his evil thoughts.
According to Wikipedia Laurene Jobs is worth $18.8 billion. That's a lot of money.
Pragmatism before science and principle. At least the religious left are consistent.
A Constitutional rite conceived at the twilight fringe and born in an abortion chamber.
Anyway, lives deemed unworthy, inconvenient, profitable, once, twice, again and again and again. It's no wonder the practice is carried out under a layer of privacy in an abortion chamber. Once rejected, today normalized.
That said, unlike one-child, selective-child (or Planned Parenthood), represents a clear and progressive Choice, with corporate profits, democratic leverage, and taxable revenue to consider, a wicked solution, a final solution, to an albeit hard problem.
Is it true that 1 in 4 women in the US have had an abortion? I'm skeptical.
#MeToo
I wish I could buy Kevin Williamson for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth.
Williamson says outrageous things to keep his readers happy.
He really does hate the Trump voters and a lot of NR readers agree with him.
Those of us who didn't left.
On the other hand, I am prochoice but think a woman should be sterilized after her second abortion.
My favorite example is a young woman I saw as a patient 30 years ago who had had seven abortions and was on MediCal and a graduate student at a UC school.
A veritable Holocaust. So, was he fired for committing abortion, Planning to commit abortion, or a thought crime?
A child conceived. A child Chosen. A child aborted. Perchance, a colorful clump of cells harvested. A lack of agency and weird progression.
#HateLovesAbortion
"There's nothing to be shocked about." That's funny. What would progs be without strategic shock?
"1. Human beings are primates!" That's funny too. So actual knowledge should make a difference?
"The Atlantic decides he wasn't as useful to its purposes as it had previously calculated." True. Showing it's all about calculation to begin with.
"Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right." The audacity of hysteria. Williamson was "threatening" to "string people up"! While people exercise their constitutional right -- wait, where was that in the Constitution again?
Anyway, the female mob gets its scalp.
One can be right about abortion and wrong about everything else.
You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh...
TRUMP: And how do you feel about the Catholic Church’s position?
MATTHEWS: Well, I accept the teaching authority of my church on moral issues. . . . I concur with their moral position but legally, I get to the question -- here’s my problem with it...
Let me summarize the Catholic teaching response to this position which was so famously espoused by Mario "Personally Opposed But" Cuomo -- Matthews is FOS.
As for Williamson, both the Church and the pro-life community generally would prefer mercy for post-abortive women, many of whom acted under duress and the exploitation of ideologues and the greedy abortion industry. No pro-lifer wants to put women in prison. If anything, it is the abortionist who deserves prison for killing innocent human life. But pro-lifers would even prefer not to put abortionists in prison if only they stopped killing.
female mob gets its scalp
The female chauvinists do not collect scalps. They burn warlocks, and witches, at the stake. They sacrifice babies, and harvest colorful clumps of cells, in the privacy of their offices. Evolution of human life, aborted, in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, leisure, taxable revenue, and democratic leverage. Yes, it's pragmatic and lucrative. #MarchForSomething
Althouse makes a great show of careful parsing, but here she says Williamson is “threatening” to hang women. Having an opinion is a threat now?
Are those Canadians who think Paul Bernardo should have been hanged threatening to hang him?
I am surprised by ARM’s view of life. In this new view of his, self-determination (“happiness”) comes from the individual, not from society (socialism). But I believe it is also true that the Social Contract determines the direction or context of self-determination. When a government is inimical to the working class, which I believe our government and constitution is, then pursuing self-determination is a losing proposition if it can somehow be alleviated by a U-Haul. If government disregards the happiness of many, then moving is simply a fruitless pursuit of the impossible. I’m not saying that staying in a stagnant position is a good choice. I’m saying that stagnancy is everywhere and moving will only introduce you to a different stagnant locale.
@Hoodlum,
It's ugly when people take the concept of abortion being murder/morally equivalent to murder seriously and don't give enough consideration to how that position might make women feel.
It's also interesting that no one cared to see it from Williamson's side, that he, too, had "feelings". He wrote about how, as an adopted child, he felt that, had he been born a year or two late, that there was a good chance that he might have been aborted rather than adopted.
Clearly, he felt strongly about the matter. Is it really too much of a stretch for a pro-choicer to see that there are people, e.g. the adopted, the disabled, poor minorities, etc. who see abortion as targeted at getting rid of people like them? Why shouldn't these people speak on behalf of their confreres yet unborn? Don't we assume that the ethical task of X minority (e.g. blacks) is to speak for the future generations of blacks, & to safeguard their "soft landing" into society when they arrive?
No pro-lifer wants to put women in prison...
That is true. For pragmatic reasons, selective-child, as a cultural progression (a great leap), cannot be treated, or resolved, as one-child. The best case is to replace sexual indoctrination with biology education and a course of self-moderating, responsible behavior. A woman's and man's agency is realized through choice, conception, responsibility.
@Mark,
As for Williamson, both the Church and the pro-life community generally would prefer mercy for post-abortive women, many of whom acted under duress and the exploitation of ideologues and the greedy abortion industry. No pro-lifer wants to put women in prison. If anything, it is the abortionist who deserves prison for killing innocent human life. But pro-lifers would even prefer not to put abortionists in prison if only they stopped killing.
Well, yeah. From a secular legal point of view, yeah. From a PR point of view, yeah.
But, from a Canon Law point of view, abortion is a mother murdering her own child, & was traditionally seen as such a grievous sin that only a bishop could give absolution. For pastoral reasons, i.e. a nice way of saying that it's so common now that the traditional Canon Law is unworkable, bishops have, also within the ambit of canon law, delegated that power to the priests in their charge.
At the end of it, under Canon Law, it's still murder.
No one ever said that abortion was not the intentional killing of human life. Whether it is "murder" is an entirely different question -- a LEGAL question under common law (which raises questions of mens rea), not canon law. But no matter. Canon law is at the service of the faith, not the boss of it. Canon law could be repealed tomorrow, but the faith and moral law that stems from it cannot be. And under the latter, the Church prefers mercy to condemnation.
Williamson was way out on the edge in a way that is actually quite dismissive of women
No. Williamson was dismissive of that subset of women who subscribe to the Religion of Uteritarianism: where the government can order a man out in the field to die...but dare not utter a single limit to a woman's fecundity.
MOST women agree to commonsensical limits to abortion and a rather larger subset than Ms. Althouse is probably comfortable with do NOT agree that abortion is a rather benign medical procedure but SHOULD be illegal.
But she, like The Atlantic, does not want to give that set of women a voice.
Williamson was guilty of hyperbole, nothing more. I do not believe for a minute that wanted to hang women who'd had abortions. However, he does believe that abortion is a serious evil and that the law should criminalize it and a fix a criminal penalty to the crime -- a penalty suitable to deter the crime.
Even the consequence of automatic excommunication under canon law is remedial, not punitive.
Who cares? Williamson told the "white working class to go die". Libertarian principles dontchaknow.
He pretends to be a libertarian one day, a conservative the next. Supported Hillary in 2016, and was all set to be the "reasonable Conservative" at Atlantic. But he wasn't "reasonable" enough.
So bad, so sad. I'll bet Jonah Goldberg and Rod Dreher are now jumping up and down and screaming "pick me, Jeff!" "Jeff, Pick me - I'm REALLY resonable!"
Williamson was guilty of hyperbole
He is also guilty of smearing 99 percent of those who call themselves pro-life who will now be tarred with his odious and repugnant views.
This was written by the same woman who not so long ago wrote about complaining to another woman about smoking while the author was pregnant with a clump of cells, a mere parasite?
The circle refuses to square.
Amazingly, in his 2014 podcast he starts out by saying "I'm a bit of quish on Capital Punishment"
Before saying he's hang every woman who has an abortion.
He reminds me of Erick Erickson, arrogant, yet stuck on stupid and constantly saying outrageous things and then backtracking in a quishy dishonest way.
Williamson = typical Cuckservative. Hated by the Left, but just can't stop attacking the Right.
Abortion was illegal in most places in the USA 1950s and 1960s?
Did we jail the woman?
I don't remember seeing that. I doubt it.
In any case, you don't need to jail the women, you just need to jail the abortionists.
smearing 99 percent of those who call themselves pro-life
Show us the common principle. We don't still do color judgments (i.e. paint [classes of] people with broad, sweeping strokes), do we?
The Atlantic was must-reading when Michael Kelly was the editor. I subscribed to it and every issue had something worth reading. It was iconoclastic and unafraid to challenge the conventional worldview. Alas, since Kelly's untimely death, it has turned into just another lefty rag, filled with self-referential articles that all reflect the identical leftist point of view. It is, to be blunt about it, indistinguishable from the others of its ilk, like Vox, The New Republic or Slate. I had dared to hope that hiring Kevin Williamson meant that The Atlantic might give iconoclasm a second try, but alas, that is not to be. It looks like I won't be reading The Atlantic any time soon.
It's not dismissive to say that women are full, moral human beings with reason and free will and should be treated like adults. It'd be dismissive to say that one believes abortion to be a sin & a terrible moral wrong but poor little women shouldn't be criticized--much less punished--for voluntarily choosing to have abortions.
Perfectly stated and my thoughts exactly.
Also, it's stone cold bullshit that 1 in 4 American women has had an abortion.
It sounds to me like he was hired just to be fired, to prove the Atlantic thinks correctly.
you don't need to jail the women, you just need to jail the abortionists
Maybe. Unfortunately, elective abortion is a natural right, and, for now, a quasi-legal rite. We need need to improve biology education, and strive for a cultural shift, including the discouragement of the practice, the normalization/promotion of responsible behavior, and pragmatic alternatives and support when one and two are insufficient. Also, abort, regulate, or tax the lucrative industries of corruption and harvesting. As well as find an alternative demographic appeal for the Democrat Party.
"Maybe. Unfortunately, elective abortion is a natural right, and, for now, a quasi-legal rite."
Actually, what we need is new SCOTUS that will overturn Roe v. Wade and return it to the states.
This isn't a gay topic. Why is it here?
I am a regular reader of Kevin Williamson. I tend to agree with his views on poverty and opportunity but think he's over the top on his Trump hatred - though his anit-Trump book was amusingly well written. I notice the offending comments are not actually linked, so I would assume that they were clearly hyperbolic if actually heard. I will follow KDW's writing wherever he winds up.
It will be a nasty world when everyone must pretend to agree on everything. I think Solzhenitsyn and Orwell have both described it pretty well.
I don't think I've ever read KW though I Pocketed this Atlantic article to see what the fuss is about. He seems to still be a NeverTrumper so not my kind of people anyway.
Leaving aside all the politics of him, NR and Atlantic, this seems like an incredibly shitty thing for any employer to do.
That is, hire someone, get them to leave a current job, then immediately fire them. KW hid nothing, as far as I can tell. Atlantic had ample opportunity to vet him and it seems like they did. The "Well, this podcast turned up, yadda yadda" is absolute bullshit.
It probably isn't but it certainly feels like Atlantic pranked him in this. "Hey, I know, let's hire a popular conservative writer, then, once he has left his current job, we'll fire him and leave him out in the cold."
IANAL but I spent 30 years teaching human resource management. My guess is that he would have cause for a lawsuit. It seems obvious that Atlantic was not acting in good faith on this. If he had hidden something from them in the hiring process, well, perhaps. It would depend on what he had hidden. If he had done something wrong after being hired, well, sure. You can fire someone within 90 days for no reason at all in most states.
But this is Bullshit with a capital B.
John Henry
Leora:
Thanks for concern trolling us with the idea that conservatives might be able to enforce their views on Republicans like Williamson. What a nasty and implausible world you imagine.
Concern. Troll.
I'd rather talk about this guy.
skip ahead to @ about 4:30 and learn something about law abiding gun owners.
Bitches.
Williamson Must be gay, otherwise, why bring him up?
@Mark,
Canon law is at the service of the faith, not the boss of it. Canon law could be repealed tomorrow, but the faith and moral law that stems from it cannot be. And under the latter, the Church prefers mercy to condemnation.
What?! No. Canon Law is the instantiation in Church Law & case law of 2000 years of the Church's putting the faith into practice. Do you think Pascal & the Jansenists had cows over the importance of "Jesuitical Casuistry" if Canon Law had not played such a role in the Church? Looking back, the Jansenists lost, didn't they?
Even the consequence of automatic excommunication under canon law is remedial, not punitive.
How can telling someone "You are now cut off from the Mystical Body of Christ & are thus hell-bond" not be considered "punitive"?
Look, Mark, when it comes to the history of Catholic theology, I'm on it like a chicken on June bug. I mean, just look at the various theological schools of thought on the doctrine of Justification. It may be bad PR for the modern world, but Catholic theology is looooooot more hard-ass than many of its adherents & especially its clergy, want to admit.
Hey, address the gay issue, right in front of you.
Gay, gay, gay.
And all that involves.
Ass Hemmoroids.
Checking with the doctor regularly.
Wonder drug cocktails
&et cet.
@Douglas,
Alas, since Kelly's untimely death, it has turned into just another lefty rag, filled with self-referential articles that all reflect the identical leftist point of view. It is, to be blunt about it, indistinguishable from the others of its ilk, like Vox, The New Republic or Slate.
True 'dat.
The new crop of Lefties since the Oughts have destroyed every journal they have touched. To be dogmatic is one thing. To be dogmatic & a blithering, obstreperous idiot is another & the journals of the Left seem to grow idiots in batches. Even Salon ---- Salon! --- was worth reading when it first came out. Now, it reads like it's written by post-Marxist Lefties two weeks short of their last dose of thorazine.
It must be exciting to be gay.
The most powerful anti-abortion statement I have ever heard, was when a woman who ran an abortion clinic stated: "If women saw what was in the bucket, it would end the practice of abortion."
How about another gay Lorenzo post?
Those always get at least 20 -25 responses?
It's pretty simple really . . . .
1. Phone rings
2. Jeff Goldberg (Editor) notes that caller ID reads "Laurene Powell Jobs", owner of of the Atlantic and Jeff's boss
3. Goldberg pics up phone before the end of the first ring
4. Jeff says, "Laurene, how nice to . . . "
5. Laurene interrupts, " . . . . . um, I'm not . . . ah . . . getting it Jeff"
6. Jeff simultaneously texts Williamson, "U R Fired / Call HR"
The 1:4 number is the number of women who have had a D&C, and is therefore useless.
Most D&Cs aren't for abortions. You get them for polyps, for excessive bleeding, for when the baby has already died but your body hasn't miscarried.
None of these are an abortion.
I have a friend who has had 5 D&Cs. No abortions.
Though, this does bring up an interesting point that gets overlooked.
We're told D&C abortions are totally safe and have no effects on future fertility.
Yet when an OB gives a non-abortive D&C, he warns of the risks to future pregnancies and deliveries. You have to report them on your intake forms. A D&C is a uterine surgery and therefore reduces the total number of C-sections one may have safely.
Yet they claim abortive ones are magically consequence free.
I asked a (not especially pro-life) doctor friend about this once. He said, wryly, "Because abortionists don't do follow up, OBs do."
Anyway, the 1:4 number is bogus. But useful, because it gives post-abortive women more clout re: things like Williamson.
At this point, I'm convinced they hired him, knowing they'd fire him.
"Is it true that 1 in 4 women in the US have had an abortion? I'm skeptical."
-- I imagine it is like divorce numbers, and is making the fallacy of thinking each abortion is a unique woman, when in reality, that is not the case. Or, maybe it is, and the whole "safe, legal, rare" thing was a lie.
I read the Constitution. Abortion isn't mentioned. Roe is bad law. So let's modify the concluding sentence of this essay appropriately:
"Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a pretend constitutional right to kill their unborn children."
There we go. Now that's accurate.
(In the meantime, he's not going to string any of them up. They'll keep killing their unborn children.)
"My hypothesis is that they are so deeply.caught up in their bubble that they couldn’t wrap their heads around the possibility that he really, truly, meant what he had written. Anyone have a better idea?"
-- They knew what he thought, but thought they'd be able to keep him around a bit longer before being forced to dump him.
Kristol hasn't gone nuts - he's gone nutless. It's pathetic really, like he's begging the NYT to give him Bret Stephens' current gig.
The 2016 election really was such a clarifying moment - all those Neocons revealed that they were just Lefties who got off on invading other countries.
Anyway, The Atlantic will never higher Jonah - can't have two Goldbergs in one place, so his mini-me Douche-Hat still has a shot.
I find it funny that people pay people to write opinions. Because you can get opinions anywhere, and for free. Maybe some aren't as good, but I read some of the writers that get paid and I don't see much that hasn't already been said on Althouse or 4chan. Maybe the words aren't as fancy sometimes, but using fancy words just because you can is like a guy in a Porsche revving his engine at a red light: we get it, it's a fancy car, but you're being a dick.
Like this morning: Althouse posted Google's "Shocking Content" policy and said "Oh, for fuck's sake." And that is a pretty 4chan thing to say to assholes. Maybe a bit professor-y, but still. And then she added:
"At 11:20 AM the day of this post, I got a message just like what you see above, telling me I'd committed a violation in the past 24 hours. I'm just going to guess it's my joke that ends this post. Really, fuck them."
Which is pretty hardcore. Like, I think a lot of people see 4chan as just a bunch of assholes being assholes, which is pretty true, but sometimes you have to be an asshole to say what you need to say. And sometimes you just need to call an asshole an asshole, without getting all fancy about it.
Althouse posted the Google examples of Shocking Content:
• Content containing gruesome, graphic or disgusting accounts or imagery (e.g., blood, guts, gore, sexual fluids, human or animal waste, crime scene or accident photos)
• Content depicting acts of violence (e.g., accounts or images of shootings, explosions, or bombings; execution videos; violent acts committed against animals)
• Content with significant obscene or profane language (swear or curse words)
And that pretty much describes an average day at 4chan. But then you realize that you don't even have to be on 4chan for those Google and YouTube dicks to say that you're doing that shit, too. And you're thinking 'Hey! I'm not THAT bad' but it doesn't matter, they group you with everybody else and now you're a Bad Person.
And that's like this Kevin Williamson dude: he was saying he was a conservative, but then he did that 'Hey! I'm not THAT bad' shit to other conservatives, and they fucked him over, anyway. And that is what these elite assholes do: they try to turn you against each other, and then when they get you alone they fuck you in the ass and tell you that you better say you liked it, or then they'll REALLY fuck you in the ass.
So everyone is turning on everyone else and fucking each other in the ass, and all you wanted to do was be able to say your shit without getting ass-fucked. And I don't mean to use 'ass-fucked' to disparage people who like getting fucked in the ass, I mean it in the way that you're being fucked in the ass but they didn't even ask you if it was okay.
So people are getting fired, people are getting booted off YouTube and Google, and people are getting their shit jumped on in Twitter, and you know who the assholes are by who the people are that are happy with this shit. Because they think it'll never be their turn to be ass-fucked. But it will happen. Because the ass-fuckers won't stop until everyone's ass is fucked. Again, no disrespect to those who engage in consensual ass sex, it's a metaphor and shit.
The first question is whether the unborn child is a human being or (under US law) a "person." And the second question is whether the woman knows it. Killing a human being or person is murder. But women have been taught that the unborn child is not a person but a clump of cells and that therefore under US law they can decide whether to let the pregnancy continue until there is a child. You can't teach women that abortion is legal because there is not a person there and then hang them because they act on those assumptions. So I wouldn't agree with Williamson. But I think it's wrong to say that there is no human being or person there just because they are small and helpless. Biologically there is a human being there. US law and culture says there isn't a person where the person is unborn but US law and culture increasing disrespects the born person. Maybe that's is telling us something. Maybe we got on a, ... oh what's that phrase? ... a slippery slope? when we trashed the unborn. Now they take out writers with the trash. Who's next?
PS. Personally, I think we have to pay our debts of every kind if we want to stay human. But in our culture the state encourages women to run up enormous, unpayable debts - to murder their children, to get their boy friends expelled from college, to get their colleagues fired and to kill their aged parents. In a way women are being punished more severely than by hanging. A hanging stops their life and their heart at the same time whereas this culture stops their heart but leaves them to go on living.
But gay cocksucking, ass fucking,
ass licking and ball sucking
is encouraged.
Gee, too bad I'm straight.
Barf.
the pro-life community generally would prefer mercy for post-abortive women, many of whom acted under duress and the exploitation of ideologues and the greedy abortion industry.
I tend to agree with this. I am prochoice for the reasons noted., I saw too many women die when I was a medical student to oppose that single abortion but the second one is choice. The use of abortion as birth control is murder. The first abortion is also murder but under circumstances that cry out for mercy.
The abortion rights industry is evil.
With a second abortion the woman has indicted that she does not want children. Fine, Let her have her tubes tied.
Let's hear it for slappy meatflaps!
Indicated.
Oh now that Michael K reminded me.
Light bulbs gerbils.
In other news:
https://foxnews.com/politics/2018/04/05/new-details-about-basis-for-andrew-mccabes-firing-from-fbi-revealed.html
Continuing the mockasham
http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/05/mueller-grand-jury-witness-ronn-torossian-says-enough
Klimnik was known to Mccain because he had been employeed by the international republican institute, and they hired him for his govt contacts and language skills
Was the term kulturkampf properly used? I thought it was about the Government cracking down on non-conforming thought (like those Bavarian Roman Catholics).
Regards — Cliff
Abortion is a prog article of faith, of course, and the abortion industry an evil cult.
But pro-life proponents nonetheless underestimate their opponents: as abortion became a tool of conservative politics after Roe, progs discovered it was the perfect weapon to mobilize the troops, purify the ranks, pursue power, and keep women in line. "Pro-Choice" became the unadulterated expression of the prog Will to Power--a fabricated right, imposed by judicial fiat, contemptuous of the actual Constitution, justified by elite rationalizations (their sheer arbitrariness bringing home the arbitrariness of prog power itself).
Opposing abortion is therefore not about life: it threatens the prog project itself. It must be Resisted at all cost.
Pedantic point to follow: I don't think coming down on the escalator was the move of a witless ape. It was more like deus ex machina. If you want to go full Olympian i was Leda and the Swan. Trump did after all carry the woman's vote........Conservatives are on a much tighter leash than liberals. They don't get to be edgy or over the top. Those moves are not allowed in their combats. They're sumo wrestlers. They lose their center of gravity when the try to do a karate kick.
Kevin Williamson is one of the few people to block me on Twitter. I'm not sure if it was my early calling him out over his TDS or if it was something to do with the Mississippi GOP primary of 2014. I think TDS. I'm pretty tame on Twitter and I think he was blocking anyone who questioned his Never Trumpism. I stopped taking WSJ over Bret Stephens and re-upped after he went where he belongs.
Williamson is most famous is his (since deleted) tweet advocating the execution by hanging of every woman who has an abortion. [Jessica] Valenti notes that this would encompass approximately 25 percent of U.S. women.
You can't apply criminal laws retroactively. It violates the ex post facto clauses in the Constitution. If it's legal when you do it, you haven't committed a crime.
Also the crime, properly defined, is an intentional killing of the baby. Thus you would prosecute the abortionist for the killing.
You could, of course, prosecute the mother (and the father!) as co-conspirators who paid for the killing.
But it's not a crime to have a miscarriage. Innocent people have miscarriages. The crime is causing the miscarriage.
Not surprised this happened. I like Kevin Williamson and yes he uses hyperbole, though less than he used to. I think Williamson is far more sympathetic to the folks who voted for Trump than some of the comments here would lead you to believe.
I would wager many who dislike KDW dislike him less for what he has written and more for what his critics have written about him.
I'll follow his writing where ever he lands. I guess in that case his firing is good since I don't read The Atlantic.
PS, when are folks going to give the "cuck" epithet a rest?
Yes I found it a rather poor metaphor:
http://.foxnews.com/politics/2018/04/04/planned-parenthoods-political-group-failed-to-accurately-disclose-120g-in-support-clinton-dems-fec-says.html
It doesn't to belong but it does:
https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/islams-abrahamic-dilemma/
Killing babies in the womb is not a Constitutional right. It is a "right" made up by philosopher-kings out of thin air (emanations of penumbras or some such hot air).
"Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a pretend constitutional right to kill their unborn children."
Oh come on.....clearly those White Republican men who wrote the 14th Amendment clearly intended to create a right to privacy that included the right to an abortion. Bringing up the fact that they used neither the word "privacy" or "abortion" in doing so is being pedantic.
/s
IIRC most law scholars think Roe v. Wade was one of the WORST Supreme Court opinions ever, since it relied on specious extra-legal reasoning, invoking woozy and hitherto-unknown "penumbras" and "emanations" from the Bill of Rights ---EVEN THOUGH abortion was anathema to the world the Framers lived in.
But for wymyn, including wymyn law professors emerita, the decision was a godsend, in that it relieved them of any moral duty to protect and bring to term the baby they allowed themselves to conceive. How can you argue against a "constitutional RIGHT"?
You see, according to nine old men, humans have "evolved" from believing that killing one's fetus was morally abhorrent, into believing that it's OK, just a little inconvenience that a doctor could Wink wink) take care of, "first do no harm" be damned---and the government will force other people to pay for it, to boot.
Buy killing your offspring, "survival of the fittest" is reduced to being lucky enough not to be aborted by your mother: Now THERE's evolution in action for you!
Snort!
At the moment, the Left's actions seem reminiscent of Salem circa 1692. This has the markers of a religion going full inquisition. This will not end well. It is simply a matter of how this will end badly.
Khesanh 0802 said...
@Amadeus 48 I am glad that you think Kristol has gone nuts as well.
Kristol hasn't gone nuts. He has always been a traitor. He has always been meant to make sure the "good" conservatives are defined as open borders never ending wars "free" trade.
Kristol has always been on the other side. Trump just made his mask slip.
Has part of the Hamilton 68 alliance that trying to purge social media of any crimethink, the head of the outfit is Michael Hayden, Michael Morrell another acting company director is part of it:
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/andrew-mccabes-gofundme-campaign-put-together-k-street-consulting-and-pr-firm/
This is one of the better Althouse threads of recent times. I am enjoying how people are expressing their thoughts and opinions in a manner that allows me to think, not just react.
"Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right."
First of all, it's not a constitutional right, it's a judge created "right", that has no existence in the actual US Constitution, and no legitimacy at all.
Second, he didn't threaten to string anyone up. That would be vigilantism.
Third, if they emotional little girls don't like it that someone disagrees with them? Tough shit.
I don't like anything those leftists say. Shall I work to get their lives destroyed for the crime of disagreeing with me?
Apparently, the answer to that is "yes, all decent Americans should work to destroy the lives, the jobs, and the businesses of anyone to the Left."
When the civil war comes, and bodies start getting dumped in piles, understand that this is why. If you are going to shut out all disagreeing speech, you're going to get non-speech, instead.
And we own most of the guns.
So,. enjoy your social power. Right up to the point where we decide to prove that the gun is mightier than the tweet.
This episode was simply fucking hilarious! For some reason, The Atlantic thought it could and should hire a conservative writer for intellectual "diversity". It appears that the only qualification put forth before hiring one was that the writer be a proven anti-Trump guy, which Williamson is without question. What fucking idiots in the hiring process didn't realize the readers of the magazine wouldn't give a shit about Williamson's Trump stance- everything else Williamson wrote, which provides the "diversity" wasn't going to fly at all.
You either stand up to the mob, or you don't try to stand up them. Apparently, the magazine is going to go through a list of no-nos in trying to hire a conservative, and eventually end up with David Corn.
As Young Hegelian has noted, Williamson was adopted after his mother gave him up. He might have been aborted. It's all psychomachia. The libertarian tells Williamson that he has no right to exist. His attacks on what he imagines are the toothless hillillies who voted for Trump are an attack on himself. This should be elementary. Willianson is Catholic, and, he says, a libertarian. You cannot reconcile libertarianism and Christianity, let alone libertarianism and Catholicism.
Get your shit together, Kevin.
“Willuamson's only other piece written for the Atlantic was an attack on Victor David Hansen”
So much for the notion that he was hired to challenge the Atlantic readers.
Kevin Williamson went full anti-Trump.
Never go full anti-Trump.
James K said...
“Willuamson's only other piece written for the Atlantic was an attack on Victor David Hansen”
So much for the notion that he was hired to challenge the Atlantic readers.
Kristol, Williamson, Rubin, Will, Brookes et al are all just tools meant to reassure Atlantic/NYT/WAPO readers that the "good" conservatives think the open borders endless wars crony corporatism of the uniparty is ok and everyone to the right of Mao is extreme.
They, like the Bush's and the rest of the uniparty republicans have been a traitorous sham all along.
Hoodlum Doodlum, you are awesome.
You cannot reconcile libertarianism and Christianity...
Of course you can. It's not like Christianity was developed the protect and defend the state.
They had to know when they hired Williamson that he maintains that abortion is murder, and the fact that he would treat it the way he'd treat any murder is just standard, mundane adherence to principle and resistance to pragmatism.
Most pro-choice people (Althouse is a rare exception) are in denial about whether abortion kills a baby or not. They don't think about it, and they don't want to think about it. If you ask them to think about it, they get upset with you.
I can't tell you how wonderful (and helpful) it was for me to be able to come to this blog, run by a principled pro-choice liberal, and discuss the subject. She was completely tolerant and open and often brought up the subject to inspire discussion. It was marvelous and so helpful to me.
So contrast The Atlantic with Althouse. It's not even close, really. They embarrassed themselves in a way Althouse never did.
It's easy to show that abortion isn't murder with ordinary language arguments, and why a couple wanting the baby could legitimately say it was.
Starting from a fetus is human (i.e. not wolf) but not a human.
A couple wanting the baby will take it as a human. Nothing more common. A woman not wanting a baby will not.
A soul relates one to others ("That man has no soul"). The fetus isn't doing any relating, but others outside are or are not, depending on them. Language follows that distinction.
You learn to be human. Infants are subject to lots of say-foring to pick it up.
Birth however, or with sonograms even just cuteness, is enough to get external people relating, and so the point of language personhood can be pushed back a ways.
the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right.
Where is abortion mentioned in the constitution?
It's easy to show that abortion isn't murder with ordinary language arguments
You also have to hide the bodies and keep them out of the media.
“You learn to be human.”
Well then, infanticide shouldn’t be a problem either.
“Where is abortion mentioned in the constitution?”
Some people write it in over the second amendment.
There's a reality to abortion that has nothing to do with semantics.
It's the difference between Anthony Kennedy's opinion in Casey and his opinion in Carhart.
The Carhart opinions are fact-based. They have to be because of the issues involved in the case. Even the pro-choice opinion had to write some gruesome sentences. ("D&X reduces the incidence of a free floating fetal head that can be difficult for a physician to grasp and remove.")
Roe and Carhart are oblivious to the abortion procedure. I suspect Anthony Kennedy at the time of Casey had no idea what a D&E abortion was. Their opinions were fact-free. It was largely based on words, ideas, ideology. The facts were ignored. Justice Blackmun wrote…
The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development.
Blackmun then proceeded to skip over the facts. He omitted them from his opinion. There is no discussion of the baby. Does she have a heartbeat? Is there brain activity? Is she moving? Does she feel pain? How big is she? It's clear from his opinion he has this disregard for the baby, and the baby's life. He defined the baby as a non-person and from that moment on, he ceased to think.
It's easy to show that abortion isn't murder with ordinary language arguments
If it was, in fact, "easy," there wouldn't be a pro-life movement. The fetus trick only works on people who are unaware of the trick. Once we recognize that the word "fetus" is just Latin for "baby," the jig is up.
There's a reality that exists outside the words we use to describe the reality. The word "fetus" might work for readers who are lost in the ivory tower world of words and ideas. But for realists who have seen an abortion, or a photograph of an abortion, this semantical game no longer works.
A couple wanting the baby will take it as a human. Nothing more common. A woman not wanting a baby will not.
You can't logically say a baby at 22 weeks is a human or non-human, depending on our whim at the moment.
What you're describing is a conflict. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong.
When liberals say "choice" like they reject this binary concept of right and wrong (or life and death!), what they are saying to the rest of us is "I don't give a shit and I'm too intellectually lazy to grapple with the subject."
From Casey...
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
Imagine if I start shooting people and then I try to make that argument at my criminal trial! "I was just defining my own concept of existence, your honor."
We don't create the universe, and it's a mistake to talk as if we do. The universe was created by God, not by us. Just like a baby is created by God, not by us.
This doesn't answer the question of when life begins, or whether abortion kills a baby. But you're never going to answer the question correctly if you feel like any answer is acceptable.
Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right.
As we at Althouse all know, you are only allowed to write about women in flattering terms.
You want us old white people to die Kevin?
He wants you to move to where your lives won't suck so bad. Misstating someone's position is a tacit admission you have no decent rebuttal of it.
And yeah, the idea that abortion is a Constitutional right is really only for the true believers. It is legal. That should be enough to say.
Though they cannot always express it in the technical legal terms, pro-life people who give the issue any serious thought understand this. They understand that women who get abortions have fooled themselves into believing a hideous lie. Such women, while guilty of a horrible act, are not morally accountable in the same way as someone who kills a child knowing full well it is a child and choosing to do so. I have been pro-life my entire life and have never met a single person in the movement who agrees with Williamson’s position. Indeed, when Donald Trump said during the 2016 campaign that women who get abortions should be jailed, it was the pro-life movement that objected and forced him to for one of the few times in his public life walk back from a position.
None of the various rightwing journalists getting their “liberals are out to run conservatives out of society” righteous indignation on seem to have noticed that Williamson’s position is not the mainstream or even the typical pro-life position. The fact that they all apparently think that it is really makes you wonder if they have ever met anyone who is pro-life and are just lying about being so themselves. People who are pro-life should be the ones who are most offended by Williamson and his attempt associate himself and his offensive and stupid views with their movement.
The good news for Williamson is that Williamson has given a lot of sage advice for people in his position. Williamson can just pick up and move from his family and friends and go somewhere he has never been and has no connections to and take up a new career. Maybe he can go to North Dakota and become a welder, or to rural Georgia and become a mechanic or to South Texas to teach remedial Spanish. I have it on good authority from Williamson that moving across the country and taking up a new career is so easy that only an opiod addict or a welfare queen couldn’t do it. So Williamson should land on his feet and maybe for the first time in his life Williamson can get a job doing something besides talking out of his ass.
Williamson’s position is not the mainstream or even the typical pro-life position.
Many pro-lifers (like me) are opposed to the death penalty.
Other than that, Williamson's position is mainstream and normal pro-life rhetoric. He says an unborn person is a baby with a right to life. Thus he analogizes the killing of the baby to murder.
I think our focus should be on the person who does the actual killing (i.e. the abortionist). The mother who receives the surgery, or the father who pays for the abortion, would be accomplices and co-conspirators. But you don't have to charge them with crimes. In the Gosnell murder trials, only the abortionists were prosecuted for murder. None of the mothers were.
People who are pro-life should be the ones who are most offended by Williamson and his attempt associate himself and his offensive and stupid views with their movement.
As a general rule, most pro-lifers want us to think of the baby as a human being and shy away from a discussion of homicide. But not thinking about the homicide issue is what caused this whole conflict in the first place.
It was nice of Valenti to remind us that women are fragile, delicate creatures who must be shielded from scary wrongthink.
Thanks Jess. Now make me a sammich.
It was nice of Valenti to remind us that women are fragile, delicate creatures who must be shielded from scary wrongthink.
Thanks Jess. Now make me a sammich.
My own favorite comment from above:
Ken B said...
Althouse makes a great show of careful parsing, but here she says Williamson is “threatening” to hang women. Having an opinion is a threat now? ...
My least favorite comment from above, because it does that thing of using quotation marks around what is a blatantly fake quote:
rcocean said...
Who cares? Williamson told the "white working class to go die". Libertarian principles dontchaknow...
And the comment that I found provocative in an interesting way:
Bay Area Guy said...
Kevin Williamson went full anti-Trump.
Never go full anti-Trump.
I was thinking about whether I had gone "full anti-Trump" myself. I haven't, and I remain satisfied that I haven't. I didn't vote for Hillary; I never suggested that a vote for Hillary was needed to save the nation from Trump; I didn't support Hillary in any way. I voted for Trump. I am a perfect example of a Trump-hater who didn't go -- and hasn't gone -- full anti-Trump.
I honestly don't know if Kevin Williamson really did go "full anti-Trump." He sure hates Trump and I get that. I read Kevin's columns for the fun of the writing; not as something like a vote in the House of Representatives. Did Williamson vote for Trump? For Evan McMullin? He didn't vote for Hillary, did he? Did he ever say how he voted?
Anyway, I know how I voted. It was for Trump; the least-bad alternative. So while most of you don't know how Althouse voted in 2016, you know how I voted.
A couple wanting the baby will take it as a human. Nothing more common. A woman not wanting a baby will not.
Hmm!
Let me change a few words without changing the context of the moral position here and see if that has any reaction.
A Northerner wanting the black man as a citizen will take it as a human. Nothing more common. A Southerner wanting a slave will not.
If my personhood, humanity and even EXISTANCE is at the diktat of a self interested person, that is not a moral proposition I support. Then the difference between a fetus and a silver mining slave in Rome is essentially non-existant.
Granted, one can't get it all one's way, but we should VOTE about where this 'personhood' line actually is.
And just to make it clear: if the woman takes any government money, than she gets some strings on that womb of hers.
"the execution by hanging of every woman who has an abortion. [Jessica] Valenti notes that this would encompass approximately 25 percent of U.S. women.the execution by hanging of every woman who has an abortion. [Jessica] Valenti notes that this would encompass approximately 25 percent of U.S. women."
This is the sort of typical dishonesty one has come to expect from Valenti: It is obvious that Williamson advocates defining abortion as murder, with the same kind of penalty. He is never claimed that we should go after women who had legal abortions!
From commenter John, and some others:
"The good news for Williamson is that Williamson has given a lot of sage advice for people in his position. Williamson can just pick up and move from his family and friends and go somewhere he has never been and has no connections to and take up a new career. Maybe he can go to North Dakota and become a welder, or to rural Georgia and become a mechanic or to South Texas to teach remedial Spanish. I have it on good authority from Williamson that moving across the country and taking up a new career is so easy that only an opiod addict or a welfare queen couldn’t do it. So Williamson should land on his feet and maybe for the first time in his life Williamson can get a job doing something besides talking out of his ass."
Apparently you don't know a thing about the man. He's pretty much lived his life this way. It's why he's mystified that people would let themselves be trapped in decaying and dysfunctional communities. He figures they ought to do what he did--get out and move to, well, Mumbai, which is one of the places Williamson has worked. He's been taking his own advice for his entire life.
@Unknown: Good. So can we just shut up now and stop worrying about this Williamson fellow? He’ll be fine wherever he he lands. I just don’t want to hear you or him whining about losing his last job.
I just don’t want to hear you or him whining about losing his last job.
Nobody's worried about Williamson, he'll be fine. We're observing what his firing says about supposedly liberal tolerance. If you weren't so busy dancing because someone you don't like got fired maybe you'd be able to follow what other people are saying.
This is the sort of typical dishonesty one has come to expect from Valenti: It is obvious that Williamson advocates defining abortion as murder, with the same kind of penalty. He is never claimed that we should go after women who had legal abortions!
Thank you! Some of the Althouse commenters are doing better with the analysis of this subject than some of the people who are collecting paychecks to do the same.
Invoking the word murder implies a malicious intent. If a woman does not believe that the fetus is yet an individual person then she doesn't have the intent to kill a "person." Maybe we could plead this down to involuntary manslaughter?
I think in order to solve such a divisive issue we have to be ready as a country to determine exactly when that fetus becomes a baby. For all the Eurocentric blathering of people like Bernie Sanders no progressive will ever mention that the abortion laws are pretty strict in most of Europe, usually restricting ANY abortion after the 20th week. Is that acceptable to the pro-choice crowd or is this yet another "choice" that is ruled out by fiat. Exactly what are the choices the pro-choice side presents?
chickelit said...
@Unknown: Good. So can we just shut up now and stop worrying about this Williamson fellow? He’ll be fine wherever he he lands. I just don’t want to hear you or him whining about losing his last job.
No problem. And @chickelit, when you get fired for disagreeing with Trump, or for saying something hateful about NRA supporters, we don't want to hear any whining about you losing your job.
Because what goes around, comes around
You can't logically say a baby at 22 weeks is a human or non-human, depending on our whim at the moment.
What you're describing is a conflict. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong.
Lots of words, probably most, work that variable way. They come from an interest, and in this case it's how to relate to the fetus. People differ on that.
You want to dogmatize the word, which shows insufficient respect for the word you're using yourself.
If lots of people relate to the baby, say when it's born (there it is, cuteness itself), then it's got a soul, and people take it as human. You can't get away with treating it otherwise, by sheer majority vote.
You can push that point in time back into pregnancy some distance by picturing cuteness in some form. That will happen and ought to be where the law sets the line.
It's not actually some property of the fetus that's involved, but the reaction to it. Does it generate a relation to it in others, or does it not.
You won't get much reaction out of 8 cells; perhaps from the parents, via a plan for it. For them it's a baby, for others not. Others may defer on the matter.
"Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right."
So we 2nd Amendment supporters, who are now in the same position as those women upset over someone against their emanations from penumbras of nonenumerated privacy rights, can we demand firing of every Hogg and all the other antigun bigots in the US who want us disarmed, who do indeed want us dead? http://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/04/05/they-want-you-dead/
Althouse writes:
Sad... but not really that sad. Williamson hurls harsh words, gets harsh words hurled at him, and The Atlantic decides he wasn't as useful to its purposes as it had previously calculated.
Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right.
So, just to be clear here: anyone talking about "NRA supporters have blood on their hands", or "people who oppose our gun ban have blood on their hands" should be fired for "threatening those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right"?
Because, unlike abortion, "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is actually right there in the Constitution.
You lefties really are going to miss the old rules
Rick said...
You want us old white people to die Kevin?
He wants you to move to where your lives won't suck so bad.
Yes, he wants the town you grew up in, the community that you've spent your life part of, to die.
All because the Chinese gov't wants to destroy your job, and Kevin's ok with that
Apparently you don't know a thing about the man. He's pretty much lived his life this way. It's why he's mystified that people would let themselves be trapped in decaying and dysfunctional communities. He figures they ought to do what he did--get out and move to, well, Mumbai, which is one of the places Williamson has worked. He's been taking his own advice for his entire life.
Yes, unknown, Williamson is a liberal arts major who literally knows nothing. He has no skills or knowledge or authority about any subject. His career has consisted of traveling around the world talking out of his ass about subjects he knows just enough about to be dangerous. Since he has never had a skill or known anything, he is puzzled by the fact that those who do are angry when they lose their careers. He doesn't seem to understand why everyone just can't walk around and say stupid, offensive things for a living like he does.
My hope is that this experience spurs him to go and learn how to do something useful and allows him to live a productive life in obscurity somewhere. I wish him well. I just hope I never have to hear his name or his asinine, ill informed opinions anymore.
All because the Chinese gov't wants to destroy your job, and Kevin's ok with that
Kevin realizes that the only way to prevent this is economic isolation which creates far more misery than it solves.
John said...
None of the various rightwing journalists getting their “liberals are out to run conservatives out of society” righteous indignation on seem to have noticed that Williamson’s position is not the mainstream or even the typical pro-life position.
So what?
David Hogg's positions are not "in the mainstream." Publicly admitting you want to repeal the 2nd Amendment is not "the typical pro-gun control position." You're ok with us "running those people out of society"?
"Piss Christ" wasn't "typical" or "mainstream" art. So can we run the creator of it, and every curator who showed it, out of society?
Pick one, and stick with it: either I have the absolute right to offend you, or you have absolutely no right to offend me.
Which is it? Because if it's not the former, we need to get President Trump to work destroying the lives of all Leftists, because a lot of your ideas are very offensive to us decent normal Americans
I have a typo at 6:34. I wrote...
"Roe and Carhart are oblivious to the abortion procedure."
What I meant to say is "Roe and Casey are oblivious to the abortion procedure.
In fact the Carhart opinions are, shockingly, the first real discussion of the various abortion surgeries. In other words the Supreme Court was writing about abortion as a constitutional right for 27 years without actually familiarizing themselves with the details of the surgery.
When you read Kennedy's description of D&E abortions (he's obviously appalled by them) in Carhart, it creates a bit of cognitive dissonance when you realize this is the same guy who's saying that the Constitution requires D&E abortions. In fact, all 9 Supreme Court Justices in the first Carhart opinion are on record disparaging the D&E abortion.
The 5 pro-choice Justices in the majority are on record saying how unsafe it is for women. (if it's unsafe for women, why can't we criminalize it to protect women?) And the 4 dissents are on record for saying that abortion kills a baby. (If abortion kills a baby, why aren't they a person with a right to life protected by the 14th amendment). Carhart makes hypocrites of all 9 of them.
Unknown said...
Apparently you don't know a thing about the man. He's pretty much lived his life this way. It's why he's mystified that people would let themselves be trapped in decaying and dysfunctional communities
Here's the point that you and Kevin have missed: "Decaying" != "dysfunctional"
"The mill closed because the Chinese gov't is subsidizing our competitors, and we couldn't beat that" == "screwed over by an enemy of the US, and deserves our help and support".
I've moved multiple times for work, because I did not have a deep emotional connection with the people I left.
That does not make either me, or Kevin, superior to the people who DO have that deep emotional connection, and don't want to leave. For most of the human race over most of human history, it actually marks us as seriously deficient.
Pick one, and stick with it: either I have the absolute right to offend you, or you have absolutely no right to offend me.
You have a right to be as offensive as you want. But you don't have a right to work for anyone's magazine. I don't have to listen to you or pretend you are anything other than what you are. But, yes, you do have a right to be as offensive as you want. You just don't have a right to another person's platform to say it.
John said...
But, yes, you do have a right to be as offensive as you want. You just don't have a right to another person's platform to say it.
1: The point you miss, John, is that Williamson was fired for "offending" his co-workers. and for offending leftists who do not work at, or own, the Atlantic.
None of them have a right "not to be offended" by Williamson, but they still attacked the Atlantic for hiring him, and demanded that he be fired.
That is the illegitimate action: demanding that some company fire someone because they have offended you. But, fine, that's a game both sides can play.
2: So we need to fire every single Fed gov't "art funder" who funded any art that offended anyone on the Right.
Oh, and unlike magazines, TV channels are "the people's platform", because the airwaves are a "limited natural resource".
So we can shut down every TV station that broadcasts anything offensive to the Right. Such as David Hogg, or anyone else saying anything pro-gun control.
Kevin Williamson is so Conservative he supported Hillary in 2016.
Wow, that's really right-wing.
I suppose he'll scuttle back to National Review and go back to pretending he supports conservatism. Hopefully, he'll transfer to Reason Magazine and declare himself a Libertarian and no conservative.
None of them have a right "not to be offended" by Williamson, but they still attacked the Atlantic for hiring him, and demanded that he be fired.
No. but they have a right to object to Williamson and their employer has a right to listen to them if he likes. The Atlantic can run its magazine however it wants.
That is the illegitimate action: demanding that some company fire someone because they have offended you. But, fine, that's a game both sides can play.
That is just complete nonsense. If I have an employee that all of my other employees hate, I am absolutely within my rights to fire him to appease my other employees. I can also tell the offended employees to pound sand. The Atlantic choose the former option. And that is their right.
I am grateful to Althouse for recalling, and posting a link to, and an excerpt from, the Trump interview with Chris Matthews.*
Did Althouse think that the excerpt was in any way helpful to Trump? Did it make Trump somehow a moderate in comparison to Kevin Williamson? I think I could listen to Kevin Williamson lecture for an hour on the subject of abortion rights and be fascinated. I don't think that Trump could talk for more than five minutes about abortion, and still make any sense.
The fact of Trump fucking up his interview with Chris Wallace reminds me of the list of people who presided over Trump interview disasters:
~Mika Brzezinski, supplying Trump with his own quotes and then asking Trump who said them;
~Lester Holt, giving Trump enough rope to hang himself with the answer about why he fired Comey;
~John Dickerson, persisting with basically innocent questions until Trump stopped the interview, on camera;
~Bill O'Reily, asking Trump about Putin and saying, "But he's a killer!" and Trump responding, "We got a lot of killers."
And so many more. Is anybody left, to interview Trump in his safe space, besides Sean Hannity?
I think I could listen to Kevin Williamson lecture for an hour on the subject of abortion rights and be fascinated
That is really too bad. You should work on that.
Saint Croix said...
"It's easy to show that abortion isn't murder with ordinary language arguments"
You also have to hide the bodies and keep them out of the media.
4/6/18, 6:16 AM
A number of years ago an pro-life group had mobile billboards pulled by trucks with detailed photo graphs of an aborted fetus. I was out walking with my wife when one passed by. All the women on the street turned away in apparent distress, including my wife.
They know what they saw. They know what is being done. They are simply refusing to think about it.
I'm not too worried about Kevin Williamson. The folks at National Review are savvy enough that they probably were keeping up his old office for him in anticipation of this.
It does, however, put the kebosh on my thought that maybe it was time to subscribe to The Atlantic.
John said...
No. but they have a right to object to Williamson
No, they do not.
We had a societal cease-fire agreement, as part of the whole concept of "freedom of speech". You are free to disagree with what I say. You are free to write why you think I'm wrong.
You are not free to demand that I be harmed for offending you.
Let's repeat that, because it is the key point here: You are not free to demand that I be harmed for offending you.
The Left has decided to eliminate that line. In doing so, they've established their hostility to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience.
They have, in short, established themselves as enemies of America.
If you think we are only going to respond with social sanction, you are as stupid as you are insane. And that's saying something.
Canon law could be repealed tomorrow, but the faith and moral law that stems from it cannot be. And under the latter, the Church prefers mercy to condemnation.
I wouldn’t put this past the current pope...
You are not free to demand that I be harmed for offending you.
I am free to say I don't want to be around you or work with you and my employer is free to choose me over you. No one owes Williamson a job. If the people at the Atlantic don't want him around, they are free to kick him to the curb.
John said...
"I think I could listen to Kevin Williamson lecture for an hour on the subject of abortion rights and be fascinated"
That is really too bad. You should work on that.
L-o-fucking-l.
I was careful to NOT say that Kevin Williamson's right, and I agree with him, and I want to fight for his point of view. All that I said is that I could listen to him, and be fascinated. Contra, say Trump.
I think I get you. You don't want Kevin Williamson to speak, and be heard by people who might be interested in hearing him.
You should work on that, chief.
John said...
...
I am free to say I don't want to be around you or work with you and my employer is free to choose me over you. No one owes Williamson a job. If the people at the Atlantic don't want him around, they are free to kick him to the curb.
This is a point that I find difficult to oppose. And yet for some suspect classifications, and some proposed suspect classifications, some folks would like to codify that exact opposite proposition in the law.
@Chuckles:
I think I get you. You don't want President Trump to speak, and be heard by people who might be interested in hearing him.
Gahrie said...
@Chuckles:
I think I get you. You don't want President Trump to speak, and be heard by people who might be interested in hearing him.
That's so untrue! I watch Trump, and I am transfixed. Like watching the Marx Brothers. I would never, ever suggest that Trump cannot be heard. I would never suggest a prior-restraint ban on Marx Brothers movies. Particularly not when they include a Curly-era Three Stooges short before the feature.
If Trump wanted to be taken seriously, I might suggest that he hire some good speechwriters the way that Reagan and the Bushes did, and that Trump should read those speeches.
So there. Thanks for asking. No; I do not want Trump to be silenced. It's the best free entertainment I have gotten in this new century.
Kevin realizes that the only way to prevent this is economic isolation which creates far more misery than it solves.
Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. You have to back up that “creates far more misery” nonsense.
Where has there ever been a place in the world where there wasn’t a global economy and the country did well? Nowhere. Oh, except the US from the late 40s to the 60s. For all intents and purposes, that was the time this country did the best it ever has. We were isolated because the rest of the world was still picking up the pieces of two world wars.
We were isolated because the rest of the world was still picking up the pieces of two world wars.
This completely misstates reality. We weren't isolated over that period. Because the rest of the world was recovering from the war we were selling our products globally effectively without competition.
John said...
You are not free to demand that I be harmed for offending you.
I am free to say I don't want to be around you or work with you and my employer is free to choose me over you. No one owes Williamson a job. If the people at the Atlantic don't want him around, they are free to kick him to the curb.
Excellent.
So, I am free to say "I don't want to be around or work with gay people, or 'trans' people, or [pick your favorite hated ethnic group]", and my employer is free to fire those gay / trans / whatever people and keep me.
Good to know.
But I'm going to wrap up with this, and leave the field to you:
Old and "out": I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it
New and "in": I disagree with what you say, and will defend to the death my right to destroy your life for saying it
Enjoy
Rick - I’m not sure that disproves anything I said. Two things: 1, you made the point that isolated economies create misery. You certainly didn’t disprove that point. 2, the fact that we had NO competition during that time bolsters my point that a closed economy can function just fine.
In point 1, that should be “prove”, not “disprove”.
You certainly didn’t prove that point.
Nor will I, nor is it necessary. There's an entire field of study which has already thoroughly done so. Further evidence exists throughout the entire history of the world. These can't be reduced to a blog comment so I'm not going to try. Rather I will invite reader to judge based on their own knowledge.
the fact that we had NO competition during that time bolsters my point that a closed economy can function just fine.
Untrue. During that time we were selling to a group roughly 20 times larger than we. That concentration of benefits is what you recognize as a period of greatness. Now you want to cut our markets by 60% (this is not proportional since per capita analysis does not adjust for PPP) and claim we won't lose anything. Ridiculous.
From my standpoint, the irony here is that Roe v Wade insulated abortion from democratic dialogue by holding that the right to abortion is almost entirely defined by federal constitutional substantive due process guarantees. Thus, everyone's wonderful opinion is nearly irrelevant until we see either an overruling of Roe v Wade, or a constitutional amendment. So Williamson's harsh commentary has only theoretical weight.
Abortion is the sort of moral issue that will never be satisfactorily resolved. I've thought hard about it at different times and reached quite different conclusions.
Unknown said...
From my standpoint, the irony here is that Roe v Wade insulated abortion from democratic dialogue by holding that the right to abortion is almost entirely defined by federal constitutional substantive due process guarantees. Thus, everyone's wonderful opinion is nearly irrelevant until we see either an overruling of Roe v Wade, or a constitutional amendment. So Williamson's harsh commentary has only theoretical weight.
Yes! A contentious social issue, effectively removed from public debate (but not really, of course) and legislative compromise with all of its practical, political considerations, by becoming a heretofore unknown constitutional right. Removed from meaningful public debate, that is, and condemned to legalistic and extremist debate.
Even Justice Ginsburg knew about those bad unintended consequences. Ginsburg has been critical of Roe v Wade because she thinks it actually slowed a growing movement toward reproductive rights that might have gained steam in the public arena and in state legislatures.
But then Ginsburg was sufficiently unconcerned about that notion in the end, such that she actively participated in a near-perfect repetition of the error with her majority-backing in Lawrence v. Texas, U.S. v Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges.
Thing is? Williamson won't learn a damn thing about this whole experience.
Dealing with the vicious left is like deliberately stepping in dog shit. The Williamson types think it won't stink ... or at least the stench will be manageable. The rest of us know better.
The Williamson types think it won't stink .
This is about the fifth time someone has suggested he misunderstands the left. Nothing could be further from the truth. He knows exactly what they are. He didn't take the job out of naivete, he took it because the hiring increased his profile which translates to a greater readership and a higher salary. This remains true even though that future salary will not be coming from the Atlantic.
Williamson probably presumed it would take him longer to get pushed out but that is a minor detail.
Williamson at least knows how to write. Whereas so much of what's appeared in The Atlantic recently has been poorly written hackwork.
I was surprised to learn that The Atlantic was hiring Williamson, far less surprised to learn he'd been fired.
Thoughtful, insightful work published by Atlantic has become increasingly rare and, apparently that's the way their readers, editors and owners want it. At least the hacks don't have to see readers' ridicule of their output anymore, now that The Atlantic got rid of comments.
This is about the fifth time someone has suggested he misunderstands the left.
Sorry. I disagree. While he may have taken the job to increase his profile, at heart he thinks he can reason with the left. That he's not one of those conservatives.
He'll never be pure enough for them. And he deserves what he got.
at heart he thinks he can reason with the left.
This is obviously not true considering how inflammatory he is when discussing their positions. You think this is true because you focus on how he treats your positions and you're he must be following the playbook you're familiar with. But he doesn't treat their positions with kid gloves and focus his ire only on conservatives - that's exactly why he's no longer there.
Williamson's a psychotic Neanderthal pig no wonder how you slice it so I'm sure that wherever he got fired from it was long overdue.
@rick
I think you're giving Williamson way too much credit. He thought - because he also bashes conservatives - it would provide him cred with the left. And it did. Until it didn't.
Now he can go back to lumping it with Kristol, Jonah and the rest of the nevertrump crowd. A true victim. A man without a country.
gregq replied: No problem. And @chickelit, when you get fired for disagreeing with Trump, or for saying something hateful about NRA supporters, we don't want to hear any whining about you losing your job.
Because what goes around, comes around
Why should I rise to defend someone with harmful, ugly notions like Kevin D. Williamson? This isn't a Sir Thomas More "defend the devil" moment. Williamson is a petty asshole who just happens to write well (waves at Ritmo). If that's all there is to defend about him (writing skills), I'd join you.
chickelit said...
gregq replied: No problem. And @chickelit, when you get fired for disagreeing with Trump, or for saying something hateful about NRA supporters, we don't want to hear any whining about you losing your job.
Because what goes around, comes around
Why should I rise to defend someone with harmful, ugly notions like Kevin D. Williamson?
Because your ideas are just as ugly, and if you don't defend him, aint no one going to defend you. In fact, we're going to aggressively go after you.
Because that's the new normal. The old normal was better, but I can't force you to be a decent human being.
I can, however, be at least as nasty as you are.
@gregq: But told you that this wasn’t a “Man For All Seasons” defend the devil situation. Quit pretending that it is, or convince that it is. I contend that that Williamson is a one-off, forgettable asshole. Now write something convincing or I’ll just ignore you.
@gregq: Start with something that you really admire about Williamson.
Just a suggestion.
"Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right. "
I'm sure slaveowners felt the same way.
Because the women had the audacity to say we don't like your threatening to string up those of us who see fit to exercise a constitutional right.
I'm sure slave owner felt the same way.
chickelit said...
@gregq: But told you that this wasn’t a “Man For All Seasons” defend the devil situation.
Yes, i know you said that. You are wrong.
The Atlantic didn't fire him for bad writing, they fired him for thought crime. From my perspective, you are a thought criminal. So if it's ok to destroy people's lives for being thought criminals, I'm happy to learn that.
So, do we go ahead and fired every single person who gave a grant to an "artist" who offended people? Shall we destroy any business that does anything that offends any normal people (as opposed to offending a left winger)?
No problem, let's get this war going. because you can babble all you want, but I'm not so stupid that I'll believe you over my own lying eyes.
If it's ok to fire people for thought crimes, then every single leftist needs to be fired, from everywhere. Where we have the government power, we'll do it that way (and the 1st Amendment is clearly dead, so it's not going to protect you, just like it doesn't protect us).
Where we don't have the political power? Well, there's all sorts of ways to destroy people's lives. You started the war, you don't get to complain when it goes "hot."
I think this says it all:
http://babylonbee.com/news/movement-that-demands-forceful-silencing-of-all-opposing-viewpoints-unsure-why-nation-so-divided/
U.S.—A political movement that immediately demands that people they disagree with be forcefully silenced by myriad means such as having their sponsors pulled and having them fired from their jobs expressed Friday that they weren’t 100% sure why the nation was so polarized and divided. Lamenting the significant problem of America’s deep divisions while simultaneously creating internet mobs to lynch those with whom they disagree, the nation’s liberals collectively stated they couldn’t figure out why polar opposites continued to drift further and further apart.
Representatives of the left, who recently campaigned for advertisers to tank a show they did not like and for a magazine to fire a man they did not agree with, expressed their bewilderment that the nation can’t just unite and all get along. A barrage of social media posts and opinion pieces by progressives all expressed similar confusion at the nation’s polarization.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” one opinion writer at Slate wrote, in an article entitled “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along And Also Agree With Me Or I Will Kill You?” “Why can’t our nation get along? Also, if you breathe an opinion even slightly different from our own, we will destroy you. But yeah, let’s all be united and stuff.”
@gq: Here’s where you’re confused: The Atlantic does have the power to hire and fire - it’s called freedom of association. A news organization is not subject to the 1st Amendment in the same way governments entity is. Here’s how it works: If a federal government entity fired Williamson, he’d be SOL working in this whole country. If The Atlantic fires him, another publication can and will hire him, especially if Williamson’s opinions are as riteous as you seem to contend. Moreover, The Atlantic’s readership can protest the firing by dropping subscriptions.
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