Category: Jeremiad
On refusing to take “yes” for an answer
[W]hether the top marginal federal income-tax rate is 39.5 percent or 34 percent, life will go on. Life goes on, except when it doesn’t. I never went through any naturalization ceremony — if I wasn’t an American the minute before I was born, I don’t see how I became one the minute after. If I’m to live under a government that considers my life nothing more than an accounting entry, then there are any number of states that might claim my allegiance. The Swiss at least know how to keep a proper ledger.
The House of Representatives and its Republican leadership had a chance to take a vote on the question of extending the protection of our nation’s laws to people like me, at least to some of us. The bill was, strangely enough, essentially identical to one the House had already passed. I do not expect that, even had it passed, the bill would have become law. Senate Democrats would have filibustered it, and though that filibuster might have been overcome, President Obama, who should know better, would have vetoed the bill. But it would have been something to have the House of Representatives at least take the vote on the question. I could respect the “No” voters, in a way. At least they’re willing to say what they think. But pulling the bill because Renee Ellmers and Jackie Walorski don’t have the guts or the principle to vote one way or the other? That is — let us all acknowledge the plain fact — cowardice. Ellmers told her voters she planned to vote for the bill at the very moment she was maneuvering to escape doing so.
This is especially shameful considering that the vast majority of voters support the provisions in the bill. This bill was not a problem for Republicans, but for a handful of House members. Majorities of men support these changes, as do majorities of women—for that matter, only 17 percent of the people who describe themselves as “pro-choice” support the current anything-goes abortion regime. On a question that really matters, the House of Representatives had a rare chance to take “Yes” for an answer.
I can only conclude that that was not the answer you want.
(Kevin D. Williamson on the Stupid Party spiking a major prolife Bill on the very day of the national March for Life in D.C.)
Note that Jackie Walorski had Right to Life endorsement. I supported Michelle Bachman for her first Congressional run (i.e., her attempt to prove The Peter Principle) because Feminists for Life affiliate Susan B. Anthony List endorsed her eagerly.
Do you wonder why I’m politically burnt out on this issue, about which I still care a great deal?
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Charlie Hebdo and Precious Snowflakes
Sunday after Nativity
Tuesday, 12/9/14
Soma Today: Giving Tuesday
It’ “Giving Tuesday,” the day when our civil religion prescribes a token pause in our buying crap so we can resume shopping tomorrow with our consciences suitably whitewashed.
I don’t think it will work for me. I’ve been looking at the family budget, wondering “how can we be spending that much?” and then “how in heaven’s name can a family of four live on 80 hours of $7.25 per hour minimum wage by two workers – mom and dad both?”
There’s talk of a “living wage,” which is “the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their needs that are considered to be basic” and a click or two up from subsistence. It’s thought to be sorta kinda progressive.
But it’s time for a periodic reminder of the idea of a “family wage,” which is “a wage that is sufficient to raise a family” as distinct from a living wage. It is advocated by the Great Reactionary Oppressor, the Roman Catholic Church, or so I and some Catholic intellectuals read it. The current status quo is supported by business interests, politicians, and sundry others who profit from it in sundry ways:
Be it remembered, however, that once upon a time, in a land far, far away spiritually, it was not thought that universal participation in the money-paid workforce was a thing ardently to be desired. Indeed, the “Family Wage” was the progressive desiderata for a time, and I consider it a mark of our gullibility and collective amnesia that we now pine for a “living wage” and think that life is incomplete without the
goodsshit we can buy if we – Whoa! What a great idea! – pool two or more living wages under one roof. Look! Kim Kardashian! Chaz Bono! American Idol! Shiny! (HT Mark Shea)The beast feeds itself. Mrs. Jones goes to work, the first on her block to do so. Before the Jones kids have become notably delinquent, the Joneses have compiled an admirable pile of
goodsshit we could buy if Mrs. Tipsy would go to work, too. And then the next family down the block follows suit, and before too long, nobody feels they can survive on a single wage. And maybe they really can’t (unless the Missus aggressively gardens, cans and freezes, and what kind of middle-class family still does that?! It’s barbaric!) because the extra worker supply has driven down wages.And retirement savings? Out of the question! What say we just keep on working? Life is meaningless without a nice paycheck anyway.
(Your Humble Scribe) Remember how Dubya admonished us to get out and shop, to show the terrorists they could not beat the indomitable American spirit? How pathetic we’ve become!
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Oh! How we love the poor children of backward lands!
I couldn’t help myself. I heard about the Nobel Peace Prize recipients, but couldn’t stop thinking about something else.
The Nobel laureates were chosen for their work to assure the right of children (and of girls in particular in one case) to an education. And we Oooh! and Aaah! and Coo and inveigh against those barbarians who put children to work, or marry them off to old goats at age eleven, and how enlightened we are to celebrate their liberators with one of the world’s topmost honors.
Meanwhile, closer to home, children increasingly become commodities to be
- gestated in rented wombs, where they may be
- inseminated by designer sperm donors,
- purchased to adorn our empty and sterile lives, and
- aborted by contractual stipulation if they’re “defective” goods.
Then we tart up our little girls starting around age ten or so, and get them (and now, their boyfriends, too!) their Gardasil shots. But no old goats for our daughters (at least until they’re 16). And our notion of “education” for our designer babies is “college or career readiness,” not a humane and rounded life.
So we’re civilized and they’re barbarians because we prostitute our daughters to males closer to their age and start our wage slavery ten or fifteen years later?
If anyone made an effective case that this is barbarianism, too, and that children have rights to be born free, to be raised by biological parents wherever possible, to know the heritage of those biological parents, and to have actual childhoods instead of vicarious re-enactments of how we dream our adolescence could have been, he or she would surely be branded a bigot – if not shot in the head.
So kudos to the heroes and heroines of the International Children’s Rights Institute (and a tip-o-the-hat to Matthew Dugandzic). May they irritate, and indict, and expose hypocrisy, and rip the curtain back to expose child and surrogate quasi-slavery, until there’s no mistake that some of the world’s barbarians have advanced degrees, with homes on Beacon Street or in Santa Barbara, or condos in Manhattan or Michigan Avenue, and firm control of the levers of Official, Sanctioned public opinion.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 