A simple question.
If one is too radical to be a Centrists by their standards and, therefore, must be a Progressive yet not radical enough to be a Pogressive by their standards, where does one fit in?
Is one what each says one is and, so, is neither?
Where does one go when rejected for failing a purity test?
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As someone who writes blogs, I am always interested in the conversations that appear in the comments section of blogs and news reports. I have to admit to some novice naivete when I first started my blog on a local Cape Cod internet news site over a decade ago as what I thought would engender discussion of the topic actually produced a variety of unanticipated then and just anticipated now as part of the process ways people approach blog topics.
Luckily there are those who do discuss the topic and are informative to all concerned including myself as I have learned more information in some comments beyond what my research had found.
The other categories of comments, often the same approaches used by certain names which over time your become familiar with in both their relevance to the topic, which is usually just not there, and their writing style, their general approach to topics include those who introduce their own topic for discussion, those who question why I have not written about another topic and suggest such topics I should have written about, and those who ignore all known reality to make a point that is unsustainable.
Among the types of commenters that I find interesting and often humorous are those who, in their fanaticism about certain topics and arguing via selected facts while ignoring other more important or even relevant ones, paint themselves into corners.
Recently with all the RoevWade discussion, a friend posted a list of the statistics of the number of unadopted children regardless of age in each state in the country.
The obvious purpose of the post as it was stated in the message that came with the stats was to point out that with the rescinding of Roe, the argument that rather than abort one should put the child up for adoption is rather foolish considering the number of unadopted children that existed while Roe was in affect and how this number will now increase without abortion as an option for those women for whom it is the only one.
The point was clear.
Once the comments got beyond the usual pro-birth platitudes about killing babies with references to what would have happened if Beethoven’s mother had aborted him and a lot about Jesus, the major comeback to the poster was not that the number of adoptable children is very high, but that he had chosen what the commenter considered the incorrect number as if the issue was not that there is a number.
If the answer to abortion is adopting, then there should be fewer kids available for adoption judging from the crowds in mega-churches and pro-birth rallies.
The first point that had to be clarified was the number of children available for adoption as if an incorrect number erases all of them. The fact is that there are a lot of children in a position to either be adopted or enter the foster child system which vastly outnumbers the amount of adoptions per year.
His figures may differ from another figure that used different criteria to determine the raw number by a few hundred one way or the other, but that does not weaken the point that if pro-birthers were serious, there might be fewer babies around waiting perhaps until they reach their majority to get adopted.
If the option for adoption, loudly promulgated by the right to birth crowd, were exercised by it, the number would be closer to zero not 50,000 or 44,000 if you want the other number.
The defense of this reluctance to adopt was instant, amost reflexive and a subject of ironic debate.
The reason offered by a pro-birth person for the lack of adoptions by pro-birthers was that many more people would adopt if it were more affordable, noting that the cost can range from $5,000 to $70,000 with many agencies having a sliding scale based on the prospective adoptive parent’s income.
This person may have also pointed out that the federal adoption tax credit of $14,890 helps reduce the financial burden, however, even with a tax credit the cost is high and the tax credit only comes after all fees have already been paid.
The cost is not covered but reimbursed.
The answer to the surfeit of adoptable children referred to as “Domestic supply of adoptable children” by SCOTUS Justice Alito in the original draft version of the decision to rescind Roe, is that cost slows adoptions.
This person’s assertion , and the agreement expressed by those who wrote in support of it, was that it is wrong to condemn the pro-birth crowd for not adopting babies because it is not their will or lack of it that hampers but the cost of adoption that does.
There are hundreds of “Pro-Life” organizations and 1,300 mega churches, not little wayside or parish churches of which there are thousands, but mega churches. Considering the cost of adoptions as recognized even by pro-life people, considering that the cost limits the amount of adoptions, and considering that now, having won their desire to force women to give birth regardless of the circumstances, these entities should help defray if not totally eliminate the cost of births and adoptions.
You could adopt ten or more children at the going top rate for the cost of a mega church pastor’s automobile, or more babies if the pastor cashed in all cars, planes, and boats.
The people who advocate adoption instead of abortion and then defend the lack of adoptions on the cost, need to give this some thought.
The person promoting the abortion/adoption approach and who disputed the number of adoptable children had opposed free adoptions of babies whose mother would have aborted for whatever reason such a decision had to be made because adoption agencies need a certain amount of money to operate, and almost all of them (if not all) have a charge for birth-mother expenses.
The thing is, that now with Roe gone, there will be more forced birth mothers who might not be able to afford the cost.
That’s where the self-named pro-life crowd needs to step in.
If a woman carrying a baby finds herself in a position that may call for an abortion but can no longer get that abortion because of a state law and must carry the baby full term regardless of realities, this cost should be borne by those responsible for the care needed for that birthing mother and paid by them .
They should also do the same for all costs related to adoptions.
This would benefit all concerned.
The birthing mother could have the baby she was forced to have without going in debt and then being condemned because she is now in a position to have to apply for public assistance to raise the child, the adoptive parent who could just adopt a child without also going into debt, and the pro-birthers who can show they are truly committed to their anti-abortion stance and have stepped up in the name of babies.
It would be shown that there was more to the demand for carrying babies full term than just the demand that promotes a particular religious belief and forcing it on all citizens.`
They are all for demanding responsibility without taking responsibility for what comes from that demand. They prescribe to the notion that women only get pregnant voluntarily and the man is just there because he is needed to create the pregnancy but bears no responsibility, unless he is the spouse.
Rapists and those who engage in forced incest and pedophilia get a pass as the cost of what they helped wrought is borne by the woman. The rapist is rewarded for the impregnation, first by having all related pleasures met, physical and psychological, and then not being held responsible for any costs incurred by a pregnancy.
Poor dear should have just avoided getting raped.
Now that the pro-birth crowd has gotten its way based on the divine source for the stance they claimed, they wash their hands of any responsibility to help in the process they demanded?
No woman who needs an abortion should be forced to carry full term and deliver unless all expenses before, during, and after birth are covered in full by the organizations and churches who forced her onto the birthing bed, and in those cases where the child will need extensive medical care for their whole lives, short or long, the cost should be borne by the same.
It is very convenient to make demands and pass laws that cost others money so that you can proclaim victory in a war of your own creation and praise the lord of your own religion.
It’s another to pay to prove the depth of the principle and take responsibility for what you have brought about.
The rape victims get victimized when their person is assaulted. They are further victimized by those who force them to have the baby and cover all the costs before, during, and after birth ony to be ignored in the raising of the child.
These people are pro-fetus and pro-newborn with little or no consideration of the mother. If they had any, perhaps, in lieu of taxes, churches can use that money for mothers being forced to give birth.
It is horrendous that neither the rapist nor the religious and political entities who forced the birth have any financial responsibility for their success, but mothers and adoptive parents do.
I will move closer to those who want adoption over abortion when churches and pro-birth organizations establish a system where the cost to a woman for whom an abortion is the best choice but has to carry full term by law and the Bible are covered until such time as the children are adopted with any related fees similarly covered and all medical care required is also funded.
Otherwise, they are merely concerned that newer model babies are produced like late model cars because people like the look and smell of a new baby and will be quicker to scoop up and produce the $5,000 to $70,000 fee going by the numbers supplied in her comments by the pro-birth person, but not so much with an older, unsold model that has been sitting around waiting for a buyer for years until they turn18.
The pro birth crowd, secular or religious, do bear some responsibility for the little gift from God, so churches and “pro-life” organizations need to cover all costs of the birthing mother and the prospective adopting parents or make arrangements for perpetual medical care when necessary.
Otherwise, it is all just words, ego, and control.
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It began when they decided to turn away the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
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Could very well be that, with all enumerated rights being rescinded, we have found Clarence Thomas’s kink,
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Over the Fourth of July weekend during a casual and friendly conversation among friends about recent political happenings, the 1/6 committee, the latest SCOTUS decisions, in response to my pointing out that I thought it wrong and inequitable that a teacher can not have a Rainbow Pride Flag, original or updated, in their classroom but a teacher can have something up that is pointedly religious, and can have a picture of a spouse and/or the whole family while Gay teachers are told that they cannot do the same thing with their legally wedded spouse and/or family.
I had just finished relating my personal experience with this double standard and my having made a formal complaint resulting in the teacher in the classroom nextdoor having to remove her Easter Season banner sporting a big black cross draped in a white sepulcher wrap on a field of sky blue silk proclaiming, “He Is Risen!” after I had been directed by administration to remove and never replace the one Rainbow image I had in mine, when a person in the group chimed in that this was an example of the type of persecution presently being meted out on an innocent and loving group of people, Christians.
I will be quick to point out that all remarks that may have referred to any form of Christianity leading up to this defense only dealt with the far fringe people like those Christians who believe Jesus would never have been crucified if he had had an AR-15, not with the mainstream. If she felt the need to defend that group and not agree with the criticism, I suspect she may have seen some of herself in things said.
While silent about my situation which became the same for the teacher in the next room, the requirement to remove all non-curriculum related posters from our classrooms that the principal immediately issued, the person offering the defense saw the other teacher’s situation as persecution while mine seemed acceptable.
That teacher was not given individual treatment but was treated as other teachers were.
Equality is not persecution unless you feel it is an assault by lessers on your higher standing.
When I asked this person for examples of persecution, I was thinking of the atrocities we heard about in elementary school, torture, killings, and all manner of atrocities visited upon missionaries and the good people in satanic countries that called for our taking a monthly collection at St. John School to ransom pagan babies from all that.
Comparing that to not always getting things the way you want them, not having more rights than others so as to be able to ignore laws with which you disagree, and being criticized just as everyone else is when it comes to political actions, I failed to see any persecution and found it rather insulting that being treated like everyone else was to this person, and many others, persecution.
Oh, really.
Well, this 72 year-old, cis-gender, white, Gay male who has lived and worked his adult life from just before Reagan took office to the present, as one of millions of Gay Americans who had to first survive the attacks of Ronald Reagan and his Moral Majority and then had to deal with the subsequent conditions his era wrought and the attempts by those who cry about persecution attempted, and still do, to take away my rights and have the civil government recognize their claimed right to discriminate based on their religion and also enact their religion and its rules on everyone tjrough legislation doesn’t see any persecution.
I know about Christian persecution. The nuns told us all about it. First there were crucifixions, some regular with two being a little odd. One person was crucified upside down the other on a big ex, what is now known as the St. Andrew cross. Then there were the beheadings, arrow piercings, BBQing, flaying and salt pouring, nuns working out sexual frustrations by describing rather detailed BDSM dungeons etc.
The biggest eye opening persecution was the one where the Christians got fed to lions. There were poems, stories, and paintings of groups of praying Christians being stalked by lions as the crowd in the colosseum looked on.
In the 1960s, Yankee Magazine advertised a plush lion that came with Christians you could shove down its throat.
Now that’s some persecution right there.
My intent may have originally been to show not getting your way was not really an insurmountable sacrifice of life teetering on martyrdom like with the lions, but as I looked up Christians fed to lions, I found that in spite of the Romans keeping meticulous records, they preferred to avoid lawsuits wherever possible, among the records of events at the colosseum, while having people attacked by lions on rare occasions, there were no references to groups or even individuals as Christians.
The victims of the lions were convicted criminals.
There may have been Christians among those fed to the lions, but they were not the targets. They were not all that special. They were there for others reasons just like the others were.
The historian Tacitus does mention that Nero liked to throw Christians to wild dogs along with crucifying them and burning them alive, but he never mentions lions, and, as a Christian himself, Tacitus would most like have mentioned that as it hits close to home.
Tertullian, a writer who also happened to be Christian, did note that when Romans got mad about something, the rising price of lamp oil for example, and people needed a target for their anger, the cry of “Away with the Christians to the lion!” rang out, but he had never seen any follow up. And he had a vested interest in checking things out.
Claude Eam!
So, considering that Rome may have loved certain aspects of people being attacked by animals on special occasions, and the dedication of the colosseum having involved thousands of animals being killed or doing the killing, no records have been found to show that Christians were specifically targeted, but, rather, would seem to have been just one kind of fish caught in a net of many.
To claim otherwise is to ignore reality as so far recorded with no contradictory evidence. If the myth of a feeding Christians to the Lions campaign can be sustained only if you ignore that they were just in the group, and you have uneducated masses with no ability to fact check, you can see how sympathy for a persecuted people would be a great tool even if the persecution is a fiction.
The PR story became part of unverifiable history as anyone with a question had no way to check the evidence as illiteracy was in the way and there were few written sources regular people could access. You had to believe what you were told solely on trust as there was no way to fact check.
What records exist show that Romans did feed people to animals for the entertainment of the crowd, that only Nero went after Christians specifically (He did conveniently blame them for the burning of Rome) but he had them attacked by dogs, and that generally the spectacle of throwing people to animals involved unarmed criminals.
Mano Y Pata.
In the early days, one of the crimes committed as a group by Christians was that they refused to pay taxes since Rome was a rather warped theocracy and paying taxes could be seen a supporting a false religion and laws that went against their religion.
This tactic is a traditiom now.
The problem with the Christians was that they wanted all the glory of Rome without helping to cover the bill. It was not not solely based on religious tenets.
The idea that you eat the body of your dead founder in the catacombs below the pizzeria is bad in itself, but this not paying taxes thing was too much.
They really annoyed Rome with their demands for tax exemption.
Records, including personal correspondence and random writings, describe the supposed spectacle of animal feedings as rather long and drawn out affairs with no real big finish to make you go back for another show. Each time the animal would eventually get around to attacking after what could seem an eternity during which time people would go to buy lunch and return hoping they hadn’t missed the finale, and then the eating. Same thing each time.
The eaten aside, feeding the number of eaters required in an extermination program gets expensive since many animals used as eaters in one scenario end up the killed beast in another and replenishing the stock involves a lot of work and travel. You can’t just go out into the forests around Rome and get replacement lions for those who have been killed or simply died.
The Romans did not single Christians out for this form of persecution. This adaption of reality to fit a purpose worked well all through the centuries like the length of labor a mother can immediately bring up during an adolescent argument to invoke pity and get the offspring to relent.
This false pity for a false victim gave a veneer to a group claiming to have been persecuted that blinded people to the actual power grab taking place, i.e. replacing the earthly Roman Empire with a carbon copy based on another, not the Roman, theocracy.
Not getting your way all the time is not persecution.
Using religion to oppress people is.
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The Roman empire had collapsed and Europe was a mess. Since the barbarians that brought down Rome were influenced by Christianity and not the religion and politics of Rome, this made it possible, with the emperor out of the way, to solidify a position of power and establishing the Holy Roman Empire of which, in spite of its having an emperor, the pope would have total control.
Disobey or in any way displease him, and the pope could call down the wrath of God.
But with establishing of power comes the need to maintain it. One way is to conquer others and become their hated leader always looking over your shoulder, the other is finding or establishing some common bond that unifies otherwise disparate peoples.
The one thing all those who needed to be ruled had in common was religion. Many traditions and practice of various groups of people were based on a need to have some convenient sort of divine powers whether one God a or a committee that could be the go to reason or explanation for the unexplainable, later to be recognized as science, and someone who seemed intelligent enough to be a go between to speak with this unseen power which over time was seen as a powerful means of control.
Predisposed to religious thinking with its built in fear that the eternal life you face might be worse than the life you are living, the nose under the tent was not a camel but religion, one unifying religion with the strictest rules to avoid a horrible after-life with a new aspect not experienced by the various people until then, money, and lots of it, became part of the game.
It wasn’t enough to rely on effective preaching and willful conversion based on the message as people had been pretty accustomed to their old ways and may not convert.
Charlemagne, the first Holly Roman Emperor had a solution for this.
Needing to establish the Empire in the remote parts of Germany, those he conquered were forced to choose baptism or death. Thousands ended up being herded to the rivers to be forcibly baptized or be subjected to all the wrath of God and the things He dreams up to exercise it at the ends of swords and spears.
It was conversion or extermination.
Of course you could fake it and not really accept conversion, but the fact that you were still around implied the conversion, so, besides obeying or violating the laws of a few men in control who wanted to keep it that way, man’s and the laws of God each having their punishments and each demanding money, the church had the advantage over the state because, unlike the state whose jurisdictions and punishment ended with death, the Church could threaten punishment in this world and threaten punishment in the next.
Once The Holy Roman Empire established itself as the power in Europe, Abbeys, monasteries, and religious houses sprang up everywhere and the new Christians supported the church through tithes, with the boss of the Emperor getting his chunk in Rome with the Emperor knowing if he failed to pay up, the pope would say God wanted a new Emperor, and also supported the nobility with taxes.
While the abbeys, monasteries, and other religious establishments may have sent money it collected to Rome. Their special status had them paying nothing to the Empire from which they got protection, or else, God’s wrath.
Charlemagne has been praised for establishing a unified Europe. What is not spoken of is how he did it be massacring those who chose not to follow his religion, forcing people to abandon their own religious beliefs, and having the Christian ones become the law of the land so that obey or die became the lynch pin of European power subjected only to the power that threatened eternal punishment of disobedience in an after-life no one has ever seen or come back to report on.
Okay, there was Lazarus, but you notice he is rather quickly removed from the Gospels as if someone coming back from the dead would not have had the Apostles, especially John, asking more questions and writing more about it. They did mention he smelled, so they obviously observed details and noted the important ones.
Lazarus was never interviewed about his experience, or they were so dull as not to really matter, and Jesus, the only other person on record to come back, had a vested interest in promoting the streets paved in gold lit by candy cane gumdrop street lights, and all the rivers running pass the many mansions being made of chocolate.
And thus, Europe became a unified, Christian continent.
It was not voluntary.
We did not have a war this time. There has been societal evolution so the way this time was more subtle and centered more on temporal law and punishment to bring about a mass conversion.
Lying about others, scaring people into obedience, and finally getting their own onto the Supreme Court, has been the chosen method of conversion.
You may still be in the religion you have been in and do not have to subscribe to the beliefs of another religion, but now that one religion’s beliefs as held by the Justices and not necessarily by the majority of citizens or even in the denomination who see them as fringe and extreme, are codified in civil law, you are required under penalty of time or fine to follow that belief or pay a price.
The horn of Roland called to summon Charlemagne, and the United States Constitution was lost.
Looking at history between Charlemagne and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the subsequent Protestant Reformation, it might have been the source of religious Euphoria over taking spiritual and forced temporal control over a continent and then eventually pushing this idea globally, but when people met a certain level of education, the system collapsed but the infighting among the various Christian denominations for dominance is ongoing.
With the present make up of SCOTUS, they are wasting no time forcing us into the river at sword point.
The recent SCOTUS decision that began returning us to the MAGA world of the 1950s when men were men in their rightful position, women were women in every negative sense of that word then, Minorities knew their place, and Gay people were to remain closeted, in spite of their promises that this undoing of fifty year precedent in ROEvWADE is a one-off, is being seen by at least one Justice as the first of many reviews of previous SCOTUS decisions that acknowledged rights not specifically included in the Constitution, and undoing them.
Gay rights, Voter rights, Civil Rights, and Women having credit cards, a say in their medical treatment, being able to enter contracts without a spousal co-sign and many more assumed rights of many, as yet, unsuspecting victims can be taken away if the conservative Justices decide to do so. That promise that this was a one-off came from four Justices who got on the Bench by lying to the senate and the American people during their nomination hearings as the recent decision now reveals.
Most people getting a job are familiar with having to sign the statement on the application swearing that everything is true to the best of their knowledge and to lie on an application could lead to termination and potential loss of earned benefits when found out regardless of length of employment, so getting a job that controls people’s rights after having lied to us, the employer, does not sit well.
Exercising their right to assembly, but doing so without all the simple tourist giddiness of January 6, 2021 rowdiness, people had begun to gather in front of the homes of three justices to let them know that “We The People” don’t approve of being ignored in the majority for some minority religion’s principles after having been lied to.
And then this happened.
The head of security for the Supreme Court requested that Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland enforce a law barring protests in front of the homes of the justices living in Maryland, Roberts and Kavanaugh.
There is such a law and it was sufficient just to ask that it be enforced, but the head of security in the request went beyond the purview of the law and claimed a right.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s top security officer, Gail Hogan, based the request on the protests being “threatening activities” that violated the Maryland law that prohibits assembling “in a manner that disrupts a person’s right to tranquility in the person’s home.”
“I am writing to request that the Maryland State Police, in conjunction with local authorities as appropriate, enforce laws prohibiting picketing outside the homes of Supreme Court justices who live in Maryland.”
Now I would imagine three people standing outside a house just staring at it could be threatening to the residents inside enough to be worthy of police attention. An assembly outside a Justice’s house could fit into a very broad category that would include the above example to storming the Bastille but, regardless off size, should be accepted as a political statement supported by the First Amendment in more than one way, with security standing by without jumping to the immediate arrests that enforcement would entail.
Even if the crowd agreed to leave peacefully it would only take one improper or, perhaps, misunderstood interaction of one person on one side with one person on the other, and the fireworks go off.
Avoiding such an interaction because the assembly is allowed by the Constitution would avoid that and keep things peaceful.
The problematic irony is that in demanding enforcement of the state law, the head of security showed that because it is based on an unenumerated right, the law, being unconstitutional, cannot be enforced.
The appeal includes the claim that a person has a right to tranquility in the person’s home.
However, a reading of the Constitution shows that the word and any reference to Tranquility comes only in the Preamble and not the body of the document, and the once it is used, it refers to the federal government’s ability to keep states from fighting with each other when they have disagreements.
As a document establishing how the nation will be run, the Constitution’s use of “Domestic Tranquility” applies to the country as a political and geographic entity and not individual houses.
One of the aims of the Constitution is to be a tool for maintaining tranquility not guaranteeing it just as the Preamble says its purpose is.
There is no right to any form of domestic tranquility in the Constitution, especially related to one’s home, and enforcing an unenumerated right cannot trump the action of people peacably assembled as per their First Amendment right to do so.
Just ask Clarence Thomas and the other conservative Justices whose home are being picketed.
The Justices will just have to weather it out.
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