Virginity or Death!: A Conversation With Katha Pollitt

First of all, I want to commend Katha Pollit for her wonderful and very aptly titled book. I for one do have major problems with organized religion. And yes i do think many religious adherents in the US have very low cognitive ability. How can one describe an individual that believes the earth is only 6,000 years old or that the earth was created in just six days? Can such an individual be respected as intelligent? These folks are the underpinnings of a regime and political trend that will undo our democracy and wreak the havoc of war upon much of the world. These US clerico-fascists are spreading their irrational hate and repression throughout US society and it is dangerous.  Their overwhelming obsession with controlling people’s sexuality is central to keeping a conservative mood in the country and from keeping people from making their own decisions. Sexual repression is a model for other types of repression. By placing women and youth under the sexual control of repressive patriarchy they maintain a kind of moral conservatism that bolsters political conservatism. When people think for themselves they challenge authority. They also seek to erode the current hegemony of that authority with a counter hegemony of alternatives the success of which can delegitimate the ruling elite as a source of all solutions. This is greatly feared by those in power.

As a Generation X guy I would like to thank the hippies who gave us HPV, AIDS, Herpes,drug resistant clap, rampant abortion , ridiculous divorce rates, and the fact the only safe sex in the new century is over the internet..... Second as the spawn of Leftist/ Socialist/ Secular Humanist parents I am the black sheep who enjoys religion, nationalism, and firearms. I have managed to summon enough cognitive abilities to recognize cabdrivers alternatives as Sociology 101. Conflict theory............

The hippies didn’t give you any of those things the government did from what I read in the underground press, man. And who cares how many abortions occur. Do you really want all those folks around anyhow?  And what’s wrong with high divorce rates? Does it affect you and your relationships? Human Papaloma Virus could be cured with a vaccine but who is against it? The same crackers who like G-d, guns, and country. Get a clue dude!!

texasetc,
Lol,
you are pathetic. You definately have a problem, and grown up attitudes to sex is one of them. Stop pretending to be the offspring of people who can think, and just admit to pathetic partisanship. If you are having sex over the net, you need to get out more, and if you don’t want to catch diseases, use a condom.

“The hippies didn’t give you any of those things the government did from what I read in the underground press, man”

This is an awfully paranoid statement coming from a supposedly “intelligent” person.

“And what’s wrong with high divorce rates?”

It definitely affects the children involved, and not in a good way.

The 60’s and the sexual revolution brought us all the problems I mentioned. My post was sarcastic but still valid. Should the government try to overturn Roe v. Wade?...Of course not! The right to privacy is guaranteed by the Constitution and is not negotiable. The government should not be involved pro or con..... Is abortion a morally objectionable choice to any reasonable person?......Without a doubt. Due the political warfare over the issue of choice both sides have dug trenches and neither side is willing to seek another way. Expand Planned Parenthood’s birth control programs. Require all high school students to take a realistic health class. It is possible to educate without endorsing teen sex.Parents have the ultimate responsibility in educating their children Force insurance companies to pay for the Pill. Encourage adoption as part of pregnancy counseling...............................Think outside the box people........

Baby boomers have left their kids a fucked up society .  In 1966 the worst result of a sexual encounter was pregnancy. In 2006 the worst result is AIDS.  Free Love turned out to have a high price.

The hippies and the 1960s didn’t bring any of those problems mentioned above. Careless behaviour did. Divorce is not as bad as kids living through their parents bad marriage. Marriage is a legal contract like any business. If you went into business and signed a legal contract with a partner and the deal went sour would you continue to stay in business losing money just because you once put pen to paper? Chances are you would sell your share and leave cutting your losses. Well marriage is really no different. The crackers want to tell everyone else how to live. They don’t know how to just live and let live. Believe me they’re the most disfunctional people and have all the miserable problems about which they’re on their high horse. They’re the last ones to lecture to anyone!! Now they aspire to control the lives of those who are more intelligent. We really shouldn’t allow it!!

“I think that there are areas in which the feminist movement is a victim of its own success. “

Interesting.

I believe, with all my heart, that those of us on the fringes for the past 30 years or so, those of us NOT writing op eds for the New Yorker,have brought the fight to the next generation.

By raising children on our own as despised, errant solo procreators, prone to welfare and STD’s in our various sluttish ways.

Lol

The. non-middle class single mothers of the last generation , the divorcees and the widowed, have actually raised fine young people, our daughters and sons, who are aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch...and they fight for sustanence and justice everyday, even in these modern and cartoonish times.

Hope is not just a feminist issue.... and noone born yet can kill it.

!

Minerva.

Thanks for speaking out!  And so eloquently!! Trolls like the ones that have been infesting this site ever since I’ve been coming here don’t get it and now they want to beat up on single moms. Like they know what being a single parent in Bush’s Amerika is really like. Not only do you often have to put up with Walmart wages and no benefits or help from absentee dads but now these assholes are up on a high horse stigmatizing people who they don’t even know for not being Ozzie and fuckin’ Harriet.  You’re also right to point out that frequently you raise better kids than they do despite the challenges that you have to cope with that these other morons don’t. I feel single parents deserve respect not judgementalism from the likes of clerico-crackers who don’t know shit and who don’t have an ounce of human sympathy for other people in a tight spot due to no fault of their own. And I can’t understand anyone’s objection to abortion. If you’re against abortion, fine. Don’t have one!! But don’t tell others what to do. And the part about being pro-life is BS. Most “pro-lifers” could give a rats ass about the 20,000 actually existing people who needlessly die annually in the US for lack of Universal health care in a $12 trillion economy or the nearly 700,000 Iraqis killed since the US illegally invaded that country to wage a war that all these crackers supported. A lot of people just can’t live and let live. They want to force their way of life on others no matter what. These assholes aren’t pro-life. They’re pro-fascist!!

HPV vaccine:  I think that it should be available to all individuals interested in taking it.  I don’t believe that it should be mandatory, however.  My youngest daughter is 14 and we eagerly await the opportunity that this vaccine becomes available.  My middle daughter is 20 and sexually active.  Of course, she is interested in the vaccine.  My oldest daughter is already married.  Should she get it?  It is her personal choice but if it were me, I definately would.

“the feminist movement is a victim of its own success”:  I agree.  Many devoted mothers became “Superwoman” with the advent of dual career homes.  They had responsibilities inside and outside of the home.  The movement greatly benefitted single mothers in making the “playing field” more equal and it brought about greater higher education oppertunities for women.  My mother had four kids, went to college, and became a teacher, all the while, being a loving and supportive wife to my father who had a politically charged career.  I have great respect for my mom.  I began my career with two young children and left the “world of work” to stay at home full time with my four children.  I am fortunate that my husband makes a great living and we can enjoy this “Ozzie and Harriet” life.  I would not have it any other way, nor would my family.  One thing I have noticed, there are many single fathers who are enjoying a more intimate and nurturing relationship with their children.  In a way, the feminist movement brought out the best in men as they are needed by their children to be more in touch emotionally and the men are experiencing greater freedom and acceptance in taking on a more nurturing role.

Partial birth abortion:  Reminds me indirectly of Jonathan Swifts :A Modest Proposal” except rather than eating the fine infants, our society can use the body parts to make money and delve into much research..  Since only the child’s brain is sucked out of it skull, doesn’t that leave the eye balls in tact which are worth $300-$600 apiece?  What about all the internal organs?  The embilical cord, bone marrow, and etc?  Who benefits from this very painful procedure where the woman goes into labor and delivers all but the head?  Why is this such a politicalized issue?  Oh yes, and Swift was only being sarcastic to make a greater point.  Paritial birth abortion isn’t a satiristic literary tool, Partial birth abortion is a real practice and issue.

“Thanks for speaking out!  And so eloquently!! Trolls like the ones that have been infesting this site ever since I’ve been coming here don’t get it and now they want to beat up on single moms. Like they know what being a single parent in Bush’s Amerika is really like. Not only do you often have to put up with Walmart wages and no benefits or help from absentee dads but now these assholes are up on a high horse stigmatizing people who they don’t even know for not being Ozzie and fuckin’ Harriet.  You’re also right to point out that frequently you raise better kids than they do despite the challenges that you have to cope with that these other morons don’t. I feel single parents deserve respect not judgementalism from the likes of clerico-crackers who don’t know shit and who don’t have an ounce of human sympathy for other people in a tight spot due to no fault of their own. And I can’t understand anyone’s objection to abortion. If you’re against abortion, fine. Don’t have one!! But don’t tell others what to do. And the part about being pro-life is BS. Most “pro-lifers” could give a rats ass about the 20,000 actually existing people who needlessly die annually in the US for lack of Universal health care in a $12 trillion economy or the nearly 700,000 Iraqis killed since the US illegally invaded that country to wage a war that all these crackers supported. A lot of people just can’t live and let live. They want to force their way of life on others no matter what. These assholes aren’t pro-life. They’re pro-fascist!! “

Can we say unthinking stereotype?  Of course, I thought so!!!

Kim and Chopper,

Its nice that you can enjoy the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle. Most of us can’t. Things are tough these days. Kinda suprised you’ve heard of In These Times. Anyhow, you may be interested to know that it was actually the Republicans that are responsible for partial birth abortion. Back when Clinton was president he agreed to sign a bill banning partial birth abortion which was had massive bipartisan support in both houses. Barb Boxer, a Democrat from California, attached an amendment to the bill that stated that an exception to the ban would be made if it was deemed medically necessary to perform a partial birth abortion to save the mothers life. The bill was sent through Congress twice with Clinton’s signiture and was voted down both times by House and Senate Republicans because of the Boxer Amendment. But for vicious Republican partisanship both times we could have had a ban on partial birth abortion (with the perfectly reasonable proviso regarding the mother’s life). I guess political partisanship and hatred of Clinton meant more to the Republicans than the ban they so constantly proclaimed to want!!

Chopper I don’t know what to say or what your point is on this thread. I thank you for taking the time to reproduce in full my post. It must have impressed you!! Unfortunately, it is not the silly stereo-type you make it out to be. It is the truth of an increasingly sick society. It shows how hypocracy and ignorance can infect one ot the richest, most advanced, and most powerful countries on the face of the earth.

Most people who oppose abortion even in cases where the health or life of the mother is at risk or in cases of rape and incest are mindless religious fanatics. Is this some kind of coincidence?  Or is dropping out of the 21st Century a distinctly cracker thing?

“Its nice that you can enjoy the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle”

Ok cab driver, in this case I’m not going to bother to redo your entire post.  You don’t even know what my “lifestyle” is, so it makes your point pretty much worthless.  An old but underhanded debating tactic is to take as an example of those who disagree with you the most extreme or disreputable members of that opposition.  For instance, your statement about religious believers as those who think the earth is only 6,000 years old.  I know a lot of religious believers (I’m one myself) and I don’t know any who think the earth is only 6,000 years old.  It’s pretty much as if I, for instance, accused anyone left of center of being a Stalinist.  Katha Pollit does pretty much the same thing, when she uses the inevitable nut calls that she got to say the flag represents “racism, war, etc.” the usual litany.

Btw, your statement about 700,000 Iraqis came from a highly suspect source.  The most likely figure is one tenth of that.

Only 70,000 dead Iraqis over the last three and a half years, eh chopper? The official US casualty figures for Iraq civilians which are the most conservative passed that long ago. The Lancet says as of October 600,000 to 650,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the US/UK invasion. In addition, there is a consensus of a death rate of over 100 Iraqis a day in a spiralling civil war! This is according to independant press reports and UN investigations. So I figure we’re approaching the 700,000 mark soon enough!! Stop watching FOX NEWS there Chopper. Your view is way to skewed!!

The Lancet report says 98,000, and gives a confidence level of 95% for the absurdly wide range of between 8,000 and 194,000.  The 98,000 is just a mid point, and since the margin of error is so huge it is an almost meaningless number.

For your information, I don’t even get Fox News, so I can’t watch it.  Anyway CNN and the NYT aren’t exactly unbiased either.

Hi cadriver,

A college degree lends so much oppertunity!  Although it is helpful, there are many of our friends who never went to college and make $200,000+ a year combined income.  One trend I have observed in our friends, many of the working women make equal to hire salaries than their husbands.  I must give credit to the Women’s Movement for laying the foundation for the those successes.  The bottom line in all of our successes is HARD WORK. 

Partial birth abortion, delivering a baby feet first would be less dangerous to a mother’s life than to have a c-section?  Was Barbara Boxer trying to create a loophole?  It is my understanding that when the mother’s life is threatened, a C-section is the appropriate action.  That leads to ethical questions however, as the baby is delivered intact and could not have its brains sucked out after delivery.  Partial birth abortion isn’t a partisan practice.  People from all walks of life find it either moral or immoral.

How I heard about In These Times:  I read Vonnegut’s “A Man Without a Country” and he mentioned the publication.

Kimberly,

In college they teach spelling. Opportunity and higher are the correct spellings of the words you misspelled.  And who said anything about college and jobs and relative earnings. I thought we were talking politics. Anyhow you mention Kurt Vonnegut. Isn’t he one of the banned writers from the libraries where you live? Just Kidding!! I noticed you put HARD WORK in all caps. Thanks. No one is lazier than a Chicago cabbie! Or freer from occupational hazard (think exit wound in the middle of the forehead!). What a cush job, huh? I really don’t know what your point was on partial birth abortion. Are you saying that it is never necessary? Apparently it must be if there is a proviso about danger to the mothers life in a proposed bill. Anyhow unless you’re an OB Gyn don’t offer such cocksure medical opinions! All I said was that the Republicans could have had their ban but they killed it. They hate Clinton and the Democrats more than partial birth abortion because they refused to pass the bill with the amendment that takes into account the life of the mother. Boxer was not trying to create a loophole. She was looking out for the health of women in these circumstances. The remark about killing the kid after delivery was stupid. No one would ever suggest it and it made no sense. The amendment was more of a safeguard than a loophole. Besides, Partial Birth Abortion is so uncommon that it has become just a red herring to stir emotions over nothing.

Chopper,

Your figures are way off. There was an article on the Alternet which discussd the Lancet study in detail and they insist on the 600,000 to 650,000 figures. The results of the survey was based on interviews with 1,849 randomly selected households 90% of which presented official death certificates to the researchers. Qualified epidemiologists certified the research as accurate. CNN and the NYT are not exactly liberal either.  Just because they’re professional journalists without the yellow infotainment style that dumbs everything down to the level of a ten year old while toeing the Bush line to boot doesn’t mean they’re over the top leftists “spreading terrorist propaganda” like Lynn Cheney accused them of doing. For your information CNN and NYT are big corporate media who are at the mercy of political authority for access to news stories. Their wealthy corporate sponsers also see to it that they stay within certain bounds. They’re not that left. They’re just not crackers!!

Dear Cabdriver,

Thank you for correcting me on the word “opportunity”...I misspelled it twice and didn’t think it looked right.  Hire versus higher, yeah, that was a stupid mistake.

I didn’t give any cocksure medical opinions...I asked a serious question and as far as Barbara Boxer goes, she isn’t a doctor in any form and I am not aware of any doctors that stood behind her “provision” in the case of a mother’s life being in danger.  I have sent an email to my sister who is a doctor, although she is not an ob/gyn, asking her if there is a case where it is safer to have a partial birth abortion as opposed to a c-section.  I am glad that you are such an intimate friend of Ms. Boxer’s that you know what her intention was in adding that to the bill.  Of course, it would be blatant murder to kill a child after it is delivered.  That is why the procedure of partial birth abortion delivers all but the infant’s head and then sucks the brains out. 

Not all Repulicans are against partial birth abortions and not all Democrats are for partial birth abortions.  Not all Republicans hate Clinton, either. 

I am sure you work very hard.  Hang in there and perhaps you can move up the ladder into a management position or start your own cab company.  Unless a person is born privileged or wins the lottery, hard work is the only way to get ahead.  My comment on education and relative income has very much to do with the political issues and the Women’s Movement. 

Kurt Vonnegut is not a banned writer in any libraries that I am familiar with.  I live in Arizona by the way.

Kimberly,

The fact remains that the Boxer amendment was a security provision not a loophole. It was not a last ditch attempt to save Partial Birth Abortion (PBA) which is so rare as to be worth little attention. I am very pro-choice and am uncomfortable with PBA. It seems that if the baby is almost all the way out, sucking its brains out before delivering it won’t save the mother who I would have thought would have died by this point were she to be in a critical situation due in whole or in part to child labor. Anyhow the bill, with or without the amendment, would have been an effective ban on PBA given the reality of the situation and would have passed with the support of both Boxer and Clinton. It seems that the Republicans led at the time by Newt Gingrich prioritized hatred of Democrats and pursued their vicious unwritten policy of NO BIPARTISANSHIP!!  But for cracker stupidity, PBA would now be illegal in this country.

Dear Cabdriver,

Earlier, you said that Barbara Boxer was looking out for the health of women.  Now you state that you think a woman would probably die “by this point if she were in a critical situation”.  How was Ms. Boxer looking out for the welfare of a woman in this issue?  What was the purpose behind her proposed amendment to the bill?  Why do you choose to criticize Gingrich and the Republican party for not passing a bill with Boxer’s amendment?  Why don’t you question Boxer and criticize her? 

You also state that the number of partial birth abortions are so little that it is hardly worth mentioning.  Is that a noble statement?  I am uncomfortable with the practice of partial birth abortion because it takes the life of a viable fetus in a horrific manner.  It seems barbaric to me that someone would endorse such a practice and saddens me for the life of that child.

Just out of college and newly married, my husband and I did not have health care benefits and we paid $600 to the county hospital when our oldest was born.  Working with doctor’s sliding fee schedules and programs geared for the uninsured, our daughter received all of her vaccinations and antibiotics when needed.  We never frequented the emergency room to receive medical care because we couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit.  We prioritized our money and went without many times.  Even while in college, we had no health insurance and had to pay for visits to the medical center on campus.

I also don’t have medical benefits. I am glad you and your husband were accomidated by a public hospital. I have diabetes and many related health issues and waited a long time on two occaisons to be treated in Cook County Hospital. Once I spent a week with a cellulitic infection in my left leg.  You have to excuse me because I’ve suddenly forgotten what all this fascinating person stuff has to do with the price of tea in China!!

As far as Boxer’s amendment, I think she was trying to cover all bases. I don’t think she was trying to stonewall, kill, or otherwise harm the bill in its obvious attempt to make PBA illegal. I honestly don’t think either her or Clinton approve of the practice or want its continued legality. I am not a doctor and cannot point to a credible instance when it would actually make the difference in the mother’s life. I have never understood waiting until delivery to decide to get an abortion. It seems absurd. Perhaps a complication could develop in a freak situation when PBA would be the only way to save the mother. Perhaps Boxer had this in mind and so I figure she was making the amendment in good faith and consequently I refrain from attacking or criticizing her. I see no reason to assume her motives are any thing but pure.

Many people single out Boxer for criticism. She is one of the right’s whipping boys. She is Jewish, liberal, female, and a Democrat, all unpopular things in our current cracker political culture. I am NOT saying this pertains to you. You seem reasonable and decent. But the hype around Boxer often generates opportunities to create more hysteria in crackerville and gain support for the far right. This is a real consideration when thinking about Republican reactions to proposals to liberal democrats and the chances for successful bipartisanship.

Dear Cabdriver,

In regards to Barabra Boxer, an interesting coincidence, my daughter is a liberal, feminist, democrat, and she is in the process of converting to Judaism.  Her husband is a moderate Republican Baptist.  They don’t vote the party, they vote for the person.  My son is a democrat.  He won’t be old enough to vote until March.  My middle daughter is a Republican but she too is independent minded.  We have all sorts of interesting discussions, especially in regards to all of the propositions this coming Tuesday.  Although my husband and I are Republicans, we don’t take any advice from John McCain regarding the issues.  I previously mentioned our experiences when we didn’t have health care.  If you think Universal healthcare is the answer, talk to a Canadian about the long waiting lists for treatment or even to see a doctor.  I worked for a major managed care provider.  I shudder to think how medical issues would be resolved in a government sponsored program.  At least our clients could appeal to their Human Resources for help.  Money talks.  How awful is it dealing with the Internal Revenue Service? 

Kimberly

Universal Health Care needn’t be inefficient or slow in servicing patients. In a system as wealthy as ours and with the money spent it is a crime that all people aren’t covered, at least minors.  Certain states like Illinois are attempting to get programs going that will guarantee health care to children of those who are uninsured. Advocates of the single payer system are not trying to establish “socialized medicine” whereby the government runs a huge health system from mostly tax revenue, employing medical staff, running the hospitals and clinics, providing equipment and medication, and provided anciliary services like ambulences. What the advocates of the single payer insurence scheme are talking about is saving more than $400 billion in wasted administrative fees, redundent services, and high salaries of management by replacing much of the existing insurence provision with a single payer government system much like social security. People would have a percentage of their earnings deducted for a single payer system as they do now with social security and it would go to a fund to insure people that can’t afford private insurance and HMOs.  The rates for private insurance would decrease to be competitive. Health care costs need to be regulated. Most of the big business in northern Illinois is health care related; hospitals, medical supplies, pharmacuticals.  Whenever I ask the big shots who are in this industry taking my cab to the airport why the high costs many same the same thing-profit! Honestly! There are so many people at all levels that think costs are way out of line and are only funding excessive CEO salaries and other kinds of fat!  We can insure all Americans, control costs, not bankrupt ourselves, and give quality care and service. There would also be a large private health care sector since so much of the insurance and delivery is merged in managed care. The only thing in the way is greed. People once thought social security was impossible once as well. Social Security needs to be protected.

We are living at a time when there is a growing income gap that is worsening. In real terms the median wages and income is declining. All Bush can think of is more tax cuts for the rich. These cuts only increase the deficit without bring growth and more tax base for revenues. Job creation and GDP growth this year has declined over the past few quarters. The deficit may be declining but the national debt is increasing. It will soon be over $9 trillion. What have to show for all this debt? A bunch of cheap crap from China, a military behemoth with wars and corpses to go with it, and continually outsourced jobs because no one wants to directly invest in the US because effective demand is so low. The deficit is an anti-jobs policy because money from China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and the UK is going to by debt in the form of T-Bonds instead of making jobs in a stable economy.  Its no wonder we can’t have a pro-growth policy. Our economy is built on debt and an increasing skewing of the distribution of wealth to bloat financial markets and fund the imports of cheap crap which is all a growing number of working poor can afford.

“Your figures are way off. There was an article on the Alternet which discussd the Lancet study in detail and they insist on the 600,000 to 650,000 figures.”

I inadvertantly accessed a previous Lancet study from 2004.  That study was obviously flawed, with such a wide confidence interval.  There are good reasons for thinking the later one is equally flawed.

“I really don’t know what your point was on partial birth abortion. Are you saying that it is never necessary?”

Cab driver, partial birth abortion is always medically unnecessary, and doctors have testified to this on the hill.  The only reason Pelosi put the proviso in was to create a loophole.

“Their wealthy corporate sponsers also see to it that they stay within certain bounds. They’re not that left. They’re just not crackers!!”

Frankly, this is an absurd statement.  Try reading “Bias” or “How I accidently became a member of the rightwing conspiracy” of you have doubts about the left wing bias of the MSM.  It isn’t conscious, most journalist just take a liberal-left point of view as the default position. 

The only reason the MSM doesn’t seem that left to you is because you seem to be over on the far left with the Nation.  Just because you think so doesn’t make everyone right of George McGovern a “cracker”.

You are more than just right of George McGovern my friend. You are an ultra-rightist of some kind or another. The MSM is not left at all. The nation is liberal not far left. So is the American Prospect. I read the MSM. It is very cautious and conservative. It banged the war drums for Bush & Co. It toes the line on a range of things like Iraq being “the front line in the war on terror.” The far right likes to malign the media because the MSM is staffed by people with college educations who use big words and achieve a level of sophistication above the average cracker who learns the Manichean “absolute good and evil” scenario/explaination at the local Church as a young kid. There is a very big differance between education and inculcation. Believe me!!  The two books you mention are ultra-rightist garbage which no scholar would take seriously. Try Eric Alterman’s “What Liberal Media?” if you want a real political education about what the MSM is all about. Also Bob McChesney’s “The Problem of the Media” is excellent. We can start with the fact that almost all the MSM is owned by five huge Megaconglomerates and they control vast media markets as a result of deregulation. This was deliberate and we are fast approaching the moral equivalent of state controlled media. I’m surprised the right still complains ad noseum about the supposed “liberal bias” in the MSM.

As far as the Lancet study is concerned it has great acceptance world wide by many neutral experts and is quite statistically sound.

I believe it was Boxer and not Pelosi who added the PBA amendment. Your argument does seem reasonable that these Dems sought a loophole more than anything else. How Shameful!!  There does seem to be no real medical reason for PBA. That’s just common sense. I might go still further and argue that there is no such thing as partial birth altogether. When your 90% out of the birth canal your born! Period! They don’t suck the brains out by the way. That’s a myth. They use the method Joe Pesci used in GoodFellas, an icepick through the medula oblongata. How progressive!! I’ve got to admit I’m with the crackers all the way on this one. Now if we could just get them to value ALL human life!!

BTW, do you call yourself Chopper because you are a biker? They are notoriously ultra-rightist, no?

“You are more than just right of George McGovern my friend. You are an ultra-rightist of some kind or another. The MSM is not left at all. The nation is liberal not far left. So is the American Prospect. I read the MSM. It is very cautious and conservative.”

I freely admit I’m quite far to the right of George McGovern.  However, I don’t consider myself “ultra-rightist”.  I don’t buy the conspiracy theories that seem to be so prevalent on both ends of the political spectrum these days.

“the front line in the war on terror.”

This certainly isn’t true of the NYT or NPR.

“The far right likes to malign the media because the MSM is staffed by people with college educations”

This is a simplistic statement if I’ve ever seen one.  People such as Thomas Sowell, William Buckley, Walter Williams, Dinesh D’Souza, and Judge Robert Bork are all highly educated.

The two books I mentioned were both written by members of the MSM.  Eric Alterman is quite far to the left and even a moderate would seem conservative to him.  Alterman himself admitted that most journalists were at least liberal on social issues.

“I believe it was Boxer and not Pelosi who added the PBA amendment.”

I think you are right, I made a careless mistake.

“They use the method Joe Pesci used in GoodFellas, an icepick through the medula oblongata.”

Still quite gruesome and disgusting.  Btw, GoodFellas was an excellent mob movie, perhaps the best of that genre ever produced.

“BTW, do you call yourself Chopper because you are a biker? They are notoriously ultra-rightist, no?”

No, I’m not a biker, although I did own a motorcycle quite some time ago.  Chopper is an old college nickname that was actually a play on my last name, Lammers.  My classmates started calling me lambchops, which inevitably got corrupted to chops and then to chopper.  I’m not sure about biker politics, I don’t have much contact with members of that community.  It wouldn’t suprise me, however, if your supposition was correct.

Chopper,

You made one statement that I thought was questionable. You said that the MSM journalists, whether broadcast or print media, don’t intentionally spin the news to reflect a liberal bias or promote a liberal political perspective but rather do it unconsciously. This puts you in direct opposition to Ann Coulter who has said, “the very first thing that any jounalist in the National MSM does when reporting a story is ask, ‘how can I spin this in order to promote a leftist political agenda.’” I suppose this kind of reactionary lunacy is to over the top for you so you are willing to believe that thousands of people in the employ of one of the biggest and wealthiest industries in the US unconsciously adopt a political position all at once. This is logically implausible. To reach the conclusion I reached I used the logic inherent in much mainstream organizational theory used in business and social science. Some call it “Groupthink” but most large organizations build consensus thinking and behavior through a variety of means like sanctions and rewards, etc. I think that no big organization with much at stake ever bites the hand that feeds it. Big media is Big business and they only carry their critiques of the status quo so far. Also they can’t alienate their big advertizers. In addition, they need access to the system and its political actors in Washington, the business community, and otherss. The MSM is very much a part of the established order.

The part about college is that there is a culture war going on in the US today and the MSM is out of touch with small town rural “cracker” America in a way that FOX is not. FOX would actually have their “journalists” posit such things as were Ariel Sharon and Yitzak Rabin both punished in obvious ways by G-d for “dividing the land” in a manner forbidden in Holy Scripture?” Such a question is not one that a professional journalist seriously posits as a Journalistic question unless he is appealing to crackers. There are other such examples but I think a culture war over what is and is not professional journalism is certainly more prominant in the debate over the media than whether or not a “liberal bias” exists which is just conservative code for “I really don’t relate to the ultra secular, cosmopolitan image and outlook of the MSM.”

BTW, the far right’s maligning of the MSM isn’t aimed at William F. Buckley, Dinesh D’Sousa, or Robert Bork. It’s aimed at the all American Saltine!!

Reading the posts above brings something to the front of my mind that I’ve been reflecting about quite a lot. The abortion issue is one I have wrestled with for some time, and I admit I have not reached resolution with it.

And so…

Is it not philosophically consistent with a humanistic and/or socialistic perspective to reject abortion, both as a personal choice and as a near-unlimited legal right?

Yes, I am aware of the horrors of black-market abortions, and I know the difference between a blastocyst and a baby. Patience! I only ask you to ponder a few points. I also know that you’re not all humanists or socialists, but in the main, the contributors to ITT and a very large share of its readers are at least one of those.

Abortions, I submit, occur most often because of a refusal to take care of someone. The fact that an abortion has been sought means that there has been a choice to not take care of the child who would have arrived. It may (and so often does) mean that the mother cannot count on her family or neighbors to assist her, especially if her pregnancy has broken a taboo or violated social mores. Even if there is no stigma attached to the pregnancy, many women simply do not have a support network she can rely upon. She may have no relatives, or enough helpful friends, or any level of economic security, and so may see an abortion as the only way to prevent herself and her erstwhile child from being neglected, abandoned, or victimized in a society that does not uphold taking care of others as a primary value.

However, if humanistic values were at work, would not the life within her be regarded as having an inherent value, as much so as the mother herself?

(Unless, of course, one can show me that humanism clearly discriminates in favor of air-breathing people over and above amniotic fluid-breathers… and if that is part of humanism, I would also expect to get the logical and philosophical bases for that sort of favoritism)

In a society that had a truly humanistic orientation (if my take on humanism is not thoroughly off-base), a pregnant woman could count on being regarded as an inherently valuable person, whose pregnancy heralded the coming of another person with inherent value in some months’ time. Could she not have greater confidence that she would be helped when she needed it, if values like that were at work? Would not the value of the mother and of the child take precedence over stricter, less generous customs and attitudes, ones that might easily lead to social stigmatization or even abandonment?

And so, would there not be less incentive to abort, rather than more? In other words, don’t humanistic values correlate negatively with the choice to terminate a pregnancy? In this case, I refer to abortions in which the life of the mother is not at stake, i.e. most of them.

As I have pondered this issue, it seems to me that they do correlate negatively. Or at least, they could, as long as there was some level of consistency between a stated ideal and the behavior that follows it. The value statement that all people have inherent worth, and are therefore worthy of being cared for (regardless of circumstances like race, or socioeconomic status, or marital status, or being a victim of rape, or whatever other reason will have been given for ending the unborn life) seems to me less and less to support an easy acceptance of abortion.

Unless, of course, there is a clear-cut difference between the inherent value you and I have (if we have any) compared to the value of the child within, as defined by humanism. I ask again, is there such a clear-cut difference in value? If there is, upon what is the differentiation based?

And for those who are socialist as well as being humanistic…

(by the way, it seems to me that in order to be a socialist, you pretty much already have to be humanistic in your orientation… although you can be humanistic without endorsing socialism!)

to continue…

continuing…

...is there not an ethic of caretaking built right into socialist political philosophy? Those of you who are socialist, I ask you, is that a correct statement? Isn’t the insistence that no one be left uncared for, that no one be made to face destitution regardless of circumstances or personal characteristics, isn’t that the basis for advocating that one should minimize the focus upon personal gain, in favor of the legally mandated sharing of the wealth of the society?

The “just” society described by socialist values is one that is deliberately crafted so as to ensure some basic level of sustenance for all of its constituent members, regardless of their merits or demerits, simply because they are members of that society, no?

I’m sure y’all socialists will feel free to correct me if I have described wrongly.

So, if I can claim the protection of society from, for example, starvation, ignorance, and illness (i.e. by claiming food, schooling, and medical care) as rights I am due, rather than as privileges I must earn, how is this philosophically inconsistent with protection being “claimed” (i.e. provided by society) by the unborn?

I ask again, is there a tenet within socialist philosophy that clearly favors the born over the not-yet-born? Upon what is it based, in terms of the ideals and values that socialism would implement if it were the guiding principle of a society?

I have said on a number of occasions on these threads that I draw a distinction between the termination of a pregnancy very early on (via Plan B, or RU-486, or a D and C as possible methods), in contrast to one that occurs after the organ systems have already formed by about 8 weeks. I stick by that distinction in the sense that neural development, including the ability to feel pain or to be aware of anything, is directly related to the length of time that has passed since conception.

But, for the sake of discussion, what if we called that division of mine an arbitrary one, based only upon the preferences or dilemmas of people who are enjoying a form of favorable discrimination, i.e. that their value is assumed to be very much greater than the value of embryonic or fetal people?

(There’s the rub, right there, or at least a large part of it. If the unborn aren’t people, they’re something else. And if we’re going to define what they aren’t, we then have to define what they are, it seems to me. Unless, of course, we stop there and simply say that we’re big and potent, and they’re small and defenseless, and that’s pretty much their tough luck. Almost like we do with animals, when we eat them and wear their skins.)

That attitude doesn’t seem to fit well with the values that humanists and socialists promote, when they articulate their higher ideals.

What if, instead, inherency of value as a human being was the premise? Are we not then forced, if we are humanistic and/or socialist, to recognize the obligation that society has toward all people regardless of merits or demerits, regardless of whether one’s birth occurred in the past or is soon to come?

Perhaps there’s another, better premise from which to work. I must admit, it is a lot easier to equate “what is satisfying to me” with “the good”, and if personal satisfaction is regarded as a top value, then justifying abortion is not difficult at all. In fact, it really cuts to the chase and makes unnecessary all the philosophical and moralistic gymnastics. I’m not so sure that’s a “better” premise.

In fact, isn’t that the attitude that socialists rebuke capitalists for holding? Isn’t the obligation to give care (even to amnio-breathers) more in line with socialist values, as well as the values of humanism more generally?

You can see from my phrasing that I have many more questions than answers on this topic. I hope there is no misperception that I am standing in judgment or casting aspersions, because I am not. I would be curious and grateful to read any responses.

“The MSM is very much a part of the established order.”

To an extent, but it is a liberal leftist order.  Of course it isn’t hardcore left such as The Nation, but poll after poll shows the averager reporter and newspaper editor has attitudes and opinions well to the left of most Americans.  Your assumption is correct, I’m not a big fan of Ann Coulter, I think she is needlessly strident, careless with her facts, and tends to assume that people who disagree with her are ill-intentioned.  Sort of a Michael Moore of the right.

“I suppose this kind of reactionary lunacy is to over the top for you so you are willing to believe that thousands of people in the employ of one of the biggest and wealthiest industries in the US unconsciously adopt a political position all at once”

No, of course not.  It isn’t always consistent or 100%, it just trends left most of the time.  Reporters and editors from the MSM mostly report news from a leftwing perspective without thinking about it.  For most of them the default position on issues such as abortion, homosexual marriage, raising the minimum wage, etc is the leftist position.  To oppose any of these things makes you “far right” or “religious right”.

“I ask again, is there a tenet within socialist philosophy that clearly favors the born over the not-yet-born? Upon what is it based, in terms of the ideals and values that socialism would implement if it were the guiding principle of a society?”

I’ve never figured out what being pro-life or pro-choice has to do with one’s economic philosophy.  If you want to find some people who are both rabid capitalists and rabid pro-choicers check out the Ayn Rand Institute.

Personally I’m in favor of free enterprise (socialism in practice has proven to be pretty much a failure) and pro-life policies (abortion is murder).

“The “just” society described by socialist values is one that is deliberately crafted so as to ensure some basic level of sustenance for all of its constituent members, regardless of their merits or demerits, simply because they are members of that society, no?”

That’s kind of the problem.  Not charity (all of us should perform charitable acts) but a guaranteed existence by the state.  Or as they used to say in the Soviet Union, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”.

Hi chopper,
Thanks for responding. My questions had to do with the very strong association between “leftish” approaches to political philosophy and a tendency to promote a pro-legal abortion agenda (acknowledging that there’s a range of attitudes that exist “on the left"). I want to know the thinking behind the position from a regular citizen rather than a partisan leader or pundit, so I thought it worth questioning the premises that lead up to that policy stance.

The “right” (by the way, I get a little weary of the borrowed political spectrum from the French Rev days, but I guess I’m stuck with it if I’m going to converse with anybody), being largely associated with an anti-legal abortion agenda, at least articulate their premises with clarity. They base their views either directly upon religious tenets or, at the very least, a view that strictly identifies conception as the beginning of a new human life that therefore deserves to be valued as much as a person who has been born already, even without overtly relying upon a clerical or scriptural starting point.

That view can be argued with, but at least it’s clear. I’ve also known two full-on atheists in my life, who still reject abortion based on their belief that categorizing the unborn as something other than “people” is an artificial division. Neither of them cares about the Bible or any mystical/spiritual teachings. One of them I knew years ago and I’ve lost track of him so I don’t know his other political attitudes; we weren’t too close. The other is still a close buddy and he’s a Republican who has pretty much backed Bush, though not unreservedly (he and I really get into it sometimes, since I’ve been very critical of Bush especially since the Iraq invasion). He’s really quite hostile to religion, an ex-evangelical who became disillusioned and is now devotedly atheistic… sometimes a bit rabidly, I must say, even though I do love the man. He remains anti-abortion for the reasons I already mentioned.

I have an ongoing curiosity about the links (or divergences) between the ideas and values people say thay hold and the behaviors and policies they favor, therefore my questions above. Not to minimize your response, chopper, I’m glad to have read it, but I’d also like to hear from someone whose views are leftward of your own and who is pro-legal abortion.

If any of them would care to take the time…

Chopper,

You honestly believe the US political order (which is what I meant) is a “liberal left-wing order.” What planet are you from? I don’t think you get politics my friend. Liberal is not left wing. Liberalism saved the US capitalist system and this is a fact. The Nation is pretty standard liberal fare. Nothing far out about it. The recent elections show that the MSM is NOT out of touch or to the far left of the general electorate. Murdoch style yellow journalism did a head trip on Joe Lunchbox over the MSM and fanned the flames of prejudice and intolerance while pandering to his resentments and bitterness about “elitism.” This is hardly the job of professional journalism. I don’t believe you know much about the noble history of US broadcast Journalism. You ought to go see “Good Night and Good Luck.” CBS under the direction of William Paley brought news of the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids over London to the US through the correspondence of Edward R. Murrow. Later Murrow would expose the McCarthyite witchhunts and the wretched conditions of US agricultural migrant workers in such documentaries as Harvest of Shame. CBS and other MSM Newsanchors and correspondents were often elevated to the level of public intellectual in a way that could never happen with the yellow sensationalists at FOX.

You use one dimensional mindless labels like “liberal” as a way of stigmatizing ideas you dislike and would rather not address.  It is a cowardly way of avoiding issues or having to make substantial arguments. Main stream liberalism is not “the left” in any real sense. Liberals have always been virulently anti-communist during the cold war. Ann Coulter is not a Michael Moore of the right. Coulter is a slanderous shitbag. Moore is cautioning conciliation and restraint these days and opposes leftist third parties like socialists, Greens, and others and favors support for the Democratic Party. Such unqualified support for one of America’s two big business parties hardly makes Moore a “leftist.” He is what we on the left like to call a “truthteller” and he sure dropped the dime on your boy Bush!! 

By the Way, the vast majority of Americans support the minimum wage and more than half support abortion and stem cell research. Large numbers also support gay marriage and more probably would if it wasn’t for the Republican lynch style hate campaign. To support these issues is not to be out of touch with the mainstream just out of touch with the far right.

Oh and Chopper, What was Jesus’s position on the minimum wage? Would he still regard it as inflationary if he saw profits and upper incomes raising faster than inflation and taking up a greater share of the GDP as the incomes of the lower half of society declined in real terms and took up an ever smaller share of US GDP? Would it matter if all this were occuring against a background of rising labor productivity? Just a thought for the Prince of Peace!!

“You honestly believe the US political order (which is what I meant) is a “liberal left-wing order.” What planet are you from? I don’t think you get politics my friend. Liberal is not left wing. Liberalism saved the US capitalist system and this is a fact. The Nation is pretty standard liberal fare.”

Much of the East coast establishment was liberal-left.  I’ll admit that conservatives have made impressive gains starting with the 1980’s, but the MSM never really bought into it.  And yes, I consider The Nation to be hard left.  Any magazine which is still trying to prove that Alger Hiss wasn’t a Soviet spy is pretty far on the left.

“You ought to go see “Good Night and Good Luck.””

Nah, I don’t think I’m going to the 100th+ movie about the machinations of the 10,000th most evil man to ever live, Joe McCarthy.  Hollywood has long been over-obssessed with that subect.

Cab driver, continuing the last post (I was short on time) much of the academia, the arts, and yes, the MSM is dominated by liberal or leftwing views.  They don’t dominate the political sphere as they once did, I’ll freely admit.

“Liberal is not left wing. Liberalism saved the US capitalist system and this is a fact. The Nation is pretty standard liberal fare.”

What do you mean by liberal?  In fact I consider myself a classical, or 19th century, liberal, in that I’m in favor of individual rights, a limited government, and free enterprise.  It’s the modern incarnation I don’t like, with its emphasis on expanded government, an extensive social welfare (bordering on socialism) state, and weakness on defense and crime.  As for The Nation, any publication that has people such as Katha Pollit, who I consider basically anti-American (the flag represents racism etc) associated with it is hard left.  A more mainstream liberal publication of the sort you seem to be positing would be The New Republic.

“You use one dimensional mindless labels like “liberal” as a way of stigmatizing ideas you dislike and would rather not address.”

Not really, see above. 

“don’t believe you know much about the noble history of US broadcast Journalism. You ought to go see “Good Night and Good Luck.” CBS under the direction of William Paley brought news of the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids over London to the US through the correspondence of Edward R. Murrow. Later Murrow would expose the McCarthyite witchhunts and the wretched conditions of US agricultural migrant workers in such documentaries as Harvest of Shame. CBS and other MSM Newsanchors and correspondents were often elevated to the level of public intellectual in a way that could never happen with the yellow sensationalists at FOX.”

Yes, the MSM has always been good at trumpeting its “noble history.” The McCarthy witchhunts were a relatively minor episode, no one was killed in them, for instance.  You don’t hear much about Walter Duranty’s reporting from the Soviet Union during the 1930’s (for which he won a Pulitzer prize the the NYT still proudly displays) in which he denied the massive famine that was taking place there.  He mostly catered to Stalin’s propaganda.

This is not to say that all MSM reporting is bad, and quite often they do get it right.  But like any human institution it is a mixture of good and bad, nobility and baseness.  It doesn’t have quite the pure and noble history your post seems to imply.

Cab driver,
In re-reading my last post I realize you were refering to broadcast journalism, and Walter Duranty was a print journalist.  My main point still stands, however.

“Thanks for responding. My questions had to do with the very strong association between “leftish” approaches to political philosophy and a tendency to promote a pro-legal abortion agenda (acknowledging that there’s a range of attitudes that exist “on the left"). I want to know the thinking behind the position from a regular citizen rather than a partisan leader or pundit, so I thought it worth questioning the premises that lead up to that policy stance.”

Thanks, and I hope you don’t mind this response.  Although I am generally on the right end of the political spectrum (and I’m sure many, such as cabdriver, consider me hard or ultra right) I’ve never quite figured out why abortion has become a left-right issue.  In fact I’d say the main reason why the Democratic party has lost so much of the Catholic vote over the last few decades is because it has pretty much become the “abortion on demand” party.  John Kerry actually lost a majority of the practicing Catholic vote, which would have been unheard of in JFK’s day.

“Moore is cautioning conciliation and restraint these days and opposes leftist third parties like socialists, Greens, and others and favors support for the Democratic Party. Such unqualified support for one of America’s two big business parties hardly makes Moore a “leftist.” He is what we on the left like to call a “truthteller” and he sure dropped the dime on your boy Bush!!”

I haven’t heard much from Moore lately, but his movies have used dishonest editing techniques, and he certainly didn’t support conciliation and restraint previously. 

“Oh and Chopper, What was Jesus’s position on the minimum wage? Would he still regard it as inflationary if he saw profits and upper incomes raising faster than inflation and taking up a greater share of the GDP as the incomes of the lower half of society declined in real terms and took up an ever smaller share of US GDP? Would it matter if all this were occuring against a background of rising labor productivity? Just a thought for the Prince of Peace!!”

Cabdriver, the above is not an argument for raising the minimum wage, it is an assumption that raising the minimum wage is an effective anti-poverty tool and that anyone who opposses it is acting out of evil motives.  Most economists believe raising the minimum wage is at best a weak or ineffective anti-poverty policy.  If it is such a great idea why not make everyone rich (or at least give them high incomes, the two are not the same) and raise it to $100 per hour?  I’ve read large parts of the Bible.  There are several admonitions in it to employers not to cheat the working man out of his wages.  I haven’t found any mandating the state setting wages or prices.  Can we assume that we are striving for results, not intentions, and that neither favoring nor oppossing a raise in the minimum wage makes one virtuous or evil?

“Liberals have always been virulently anti-communist during the cold war.”

Liberals such as Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson and JFK were.  Others such as George McGovern, Jimmy Carter (in practice a George McGovern with a Southern twang) and Dan Rather were at best MIA.

The East Coast establishment is never really explained. They seemed to pursue very popular policies which uplifted the country out of poverty made the US the number one economic power in the world. The state intervention from the New Deal on was heartily supported by big business on down. There was massive poverty in the US during the Great Depression and much fear of the direction of the country’s consequent political direction. The right is trying to rewrite the whole history of that era but no one who really remembers is buying it.

The Nation magazine is the USA’s oldest surviving Journal of opinion. It began in 1865 just after the end of the Civil War. The views expressed are pretty mainstream liberalism. Anti-American is a McCarthyite epithet which stigmatizes people and views without addressing specifics. BTW, just because Joe McCarthy didn’t kill anyone doesn’t mean he was harmless. He caused much havoc and ruined a lot of innocent lives without due process.  Even President Truman regarded HUAC as unconstitutional.  It is generally agreed that the witchhunts violated due process and the very establishment of the committee was done under questionable legal auspices. That is more unAmerican than Katha Pollitt and her musings about the flag.

Michael Moore didn’t lie or distort the truth in his movies. He is a very careful documentary producer and backs his claims up with verifiable facts.

Your remarks about the minimum wage are silly. The minimum wage hasn’t been raised in nearly ten years. We have a very low rate of inflation which is running well behind the rate of increase in incomes of the top quintile, corporate profits, and CEO salaries and perks while the real value of wages of the growing number of working poor below the national median has lost value due to rising costs. I don’t believe that we should build our country on the backs of slaves. I also don’t think cheap labor, either native or immigrant, should be exploited to make a few people rich. If one can’t afford to pay a living wage one should not be in business. I’m sure you would agree that if a business could not afford to pay its suppliers for inventory or its subcontractors for necessary services that they should go out of business for lack of capital to run things. Why should labor be an exception. One must pay a living wage as part of the cost of business and not immiserate others. The country is currently building wealth at the expense of at least a third of the workforce which is barely keeping itself going. Do you think poverty elimination will be solved by the market. How can paying people even lower wages solve the poverty problem as you seem to suggest? The market will never solve the issue of poverty but only make more of it. Obviously continued impoverishment will only contract the domestic market even more making investment less likely because of a lack of effective demand. Supply doesn’t create its own demand and Say’s Law which says prices bring equilibrium to supply and demand doesn’t work today. Capitalism is plagued by a crisis of overproduction and endemic stagnation. The reason that world GDP growth has been stagnant for a long time is that the distribution of wealth is always worsening. Capitalism doesn’t readjust over the long term through achieving equilbrium through the internal logic of the system but through exogenous jolts like war, disaster, and other kinds of traumas that lead to a massive restructuring that is part of historic capitalism’s self-reproduction through its repeated patterns of “creative destruction” in its long history of lurching from crisis to crisis. The laws of motion of capital lead to a concentration and centralization of the accumulation process which eventually will lead to a political imperative to replace it with a different system.

As far as the Bible is concerned, I don’t understand why conservatives expect it to mention things like minimum wage laws, abortion, nuclear war, and other structural features of modernity. Must be the same reason they don’t get historical change.

“Michael Moore didn’t lie or distort the truth in his movies. He is a very careful documentary producer and backs his claims up with verifiable facts.”

Frankly cabdriver, this just isn’t true.  He is a “very careful documentary producer” in about the same way Mel Gibson was a very careful historian in “Braveheart”.  His scenes are often taken out of context or the timeline is reversed.

“ The laws of motion of capital lead to a concentration and centralization of the accumulation process which eventually will lead to a political imperative to replace it with a different system.”

I’m not going to reproduce all of your post on the minimum wage.  You still aren’t addressing the central issue.  Is it an effective way to fight poverty?  The bulk of your post on this is rehashed Marxism.  Let me clue you in on something cabdriver, there are very few Marxist economists left.  Capital doesn’t concentrate in the way Marx predicted, in fact a careful reading of economic history shows most great fortunes are dissipated within 1 to 2 generations.

You seem to be assuming that a low minimum wage means low wages.  I can tell you (and I live in a relatively low wage state) that it would be difficult to hire someone in this area to work at McDonald’s at the minimum wage.  There is no way to make someone’s productivity increase by government fiat.  If the minimum wage is set higher than a person’s economic productivity to a company, that person will become unemployed.  One of the more subtle effects of high minimum wage laws (for reasons that are somewhat complex) is an increase in white teenage employment but a decrease in black teenage employment.  Is this a result you really want?  The solution to low wages is to increase skill and education levels, not raise minimum wages.

On a final note on Marxism, I realize there are still many Marxist university professors.  However, they tend to be in the English, Journalism, Women Studies, etc. departements.  Among economists it is largely discredited.

“The Nation magazine is the USA’s oldest surviving Journal of opinion. It began in 1865 just after the end of the Civil War. The views expressed are pretty mainstream liberalism. Anti-American is a McCarthyite epithet which stigmatizes people and views without addressing specifics. BTW, just because Joe McCarthy didn’t kill anyone doesn’t mean he was harmless. He caused much havoc and ruined a lot of innocent lives without due process.  Even President Truman regarded HUAC as unconstitutional.  It is generally agreed that the witchhunts violated due process and the very establishment of the committee was done under questionable legal auspices. That is more unAmerican than Katha Pollitt and her musings about the flag.”

I didn’t say McCarthy was harmless, but really what did he do?  Mostly he caused people to hit a few bumps on the road of life.  And communist infiltration of the government was actually more of a problem than the left and even many mainstream liberals have been willing to admit, although McCarthy himself made wild and unsubstantiated charges.

As for Katha Pollit, her musings about the flag are symbolic of her pervasive anti-American views.  I believe in free speech, she has a right to express them.  They are still anti-American, however.

“As far as the Bible is concerned, I don’t understand why conservatives expect it to mention things like minimum wage laws, abortion, nuclear war, and other structural features of modernity. Must be the same reason they don’t get historical change.”

You brought religion into this by posing it as a WWJD question, implying that Jesus would favor a minimum wage.  Why do you think minimum wage laws are a structural feature of modernity?  Emperor Diocletian instituted wage and price controls in the Roman Empire back in the late 3rd century.  They didn’t work too well then either.

Chopper,

I am quite familiiar with neo-classical labor economics. If wages exceed productivity or labor is employed beyond the point where the marginal productivity of labor brings diminishing returns unempoyment will result because demand will run ahead of production of goods and services causing inflation and consequent interest rate hikes which will cause a recession and thus unemployment and lowered wages anyhow. But libertarians like yourself carry this around like a dogma which doesn’t fit the reality. Most economists agree that a rise in the current minimum wage would not cause inflation. We are even in a unique situation in this regard. Productivity as well as profits and the incomes of the rich are running so far ahead of the paltry wages of most of the country that it would not produce inflation or unemployment. It is likely that lack of demand is hurting the domestic economy. Low wages are reenforced by our policy of importing cheap goods financed by the world glut of non-US savings. Domestic savings are negative for the first time ever. Foreign savings boost the dollar so that ever declining average wages can continue to absorb imports while high wage manufacturing employment is continually outsourced putting ever downward pressure on wages in cyclical fashion. Foreign investment in this way is drawn into the financial markets instead of direct investment to produce jobs so all parts of this economic dynamic are reenforcing.

Your simple neo-classical dogma ignores the fact that real wage levels have been declining in the US relative to the costs of most basic necessities and that productivity is running ahead of wage growth as the average workweek is increasing by about 15 hours with very little per hour increase.  This is the reason that wages and salaries occupy a lower proportion of the GDP than since the depression and profits a higher proportion since the 1960s.  Your market dogmas don’t take into account the facts of the current US economy. Also the minimum wage is not a living wage nor are the wage levels just above it. About $20,000/year for a family of four is at the poverty level and currently 35% of the 113,500,000 working families earn less than $30,000/year which means most people at or below the median only earn enough to keep themselves going in order to work to enrich others or in Marx’s famous lexicon, “they earn enough to reproduce their own labor power.”

Your solution to low wages is nonsense. Most recent US labor market studies have shown that the most intense job growth is overwhelmingly in fields below the median national income. A very current spurt of growth in jobs in the health care field pay decently enough but there are dire labor shortages due to difficulty in getting enough qualified people trained . Our current Administration has cut higher education loans and primary education in general which has hurt the skilled labor market. Even so job growth is limited and there will always be a large pool of unskilled labor. Your solution to low wages is to tell poor people, “...don’t like what McDonald’s is paying? Try being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or stock broker!” It just isn’t realistic and doesn’t address the issue of the need for median and below incomes to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

BTW, if any of Marx’s predictions proved correct it is the global concentration of capital. Some old fortunes may have gone but that doesn’t invalidate the fact of the general trend of global economic concentration.

“I am quite familiiar with neo-classical labor economics. If wages exceed productivity or labor is employed beyond the point where the marginal productivity of labor brings diminishing returns unempoyment will result because demand will run ahead of production of goods and services causing inflation and consequent interest rate hikes which will cause a recession and thus unemployment and lowered wages anyhow. But libertarians like yourself carry this around like a dogma which doesn’t fit the reality.”

Cabdriver, I actually meant the statement in a micro, not macro economic sense.  What I mean is if the state mandates a certain rate of pay, and a particular individual’s productivity for a company is of less value than his cost to that company, the company will of necessity be forced to let him go.  If a salesman for instance costs a company $12 per hour but is only able to bring in $10 per hour in gross profit to that company that salesman will soon be out of a job.

“Most economists agree that a rise in the current minimum wage would not cause inflation.”

Most?  I realize there are some who favor an increase in the minimum wage but I believe the majority are against this.

“Also the minimum wage is not a living wage nor are the wage levels just above it. About $20,000/year for a family of four is at the poverty level and currently 35% of the 113,500,000 working families earn less than $30,000/year which means most people at or below the median only earn enough to keep themselves going in order to work to enrich others or in Marx’s famous lexicon, “they earn enough to reproduce their own labor power.””

I think everyone agrees that it would be impossible to support a family or even oneself in this country on minimum wage.  Most heads of family make more than the minimum wage, and in virtually every job there are opportunities for advancement.  I’ve never heard of anyone who had the same job for a year making minimum wage.  And do you really support raising the minimum wage to $30,000 per year?

“BTW, if any of Marx’s predictions proved correct it is the global concentration of capital. Some old fortunes may have gone but that doesn’t invalidate the fact of the general trend of global economic concentration.”

What do you mean by this statement?  That some nations are richer than others, or that some individuals are richer than others? 

“Even so job growth is limited and there will always be a large pool of unskilled labor. Your solution to low wages is to tell poor people, “...don’t like what McDonald’s is paying? Try being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or stock broker!” It just isn’t realistic and doesn’t address the issue of the need for median and below incomes to keep pace with the rising cost of living.”

Obviously most people don’t have the capability to be doctors, lawyers engineers, or stock brokers!  But even improving basic reading, writing, and math skills can make a considerable difference in employability and compensation.  In my job (I’m a branch manager for an industrial equipment distributor) I’ve had to turn people away because they lacked basic math skills.  From what I’ve seen even getting people up to where they should be with just a high school diploma would make a tremendous difference in what they could do.

I agree we are a nation of dummies but our “education president” failed to fund no child left behind and so here we all sit!!

I’m suprised you don’t know anyone who worked for minimum wage for more than a year. I know many and they are good workers. It is true that many jobs pay above the minimum but not much above it. When wages increase, employers usually insist on better productivity. Most people in this society are well beyond their remuneration in productivity. Windfall profits coexisting side by side with an impoverished toiling workforce is testimony to this incontrovertible fact. Wages have lagged behind labor productivity for a very long time. Prevailing low wages are not evidence of low labor productivity but of employer greed. I don’t know why this is so hard to believe about this fact.  We are living, after all, in a place called the USA!!

As far as the concentration of global wealth I mean the concentration of wealth in a few hands on a global scale that never before existed. I heard a statistic which went something like the richest ten percent of the world’s people have as much cumulative wealth as the rest of the world combined. This is an amazing fact!! If true we have a good reason to hold a certain German Philosopher, now buried in Highgate Cemetary in London, as still quite relevant!!

“I agree we are a nation of dummies but our “education president” failed to fund no child left behind and so here we all sit!!”

I was never really sold on Bush’s education program, in fact I’m not convinced that the federal government (and I mean this regardless of which party controls the White House) is capable of doing much to improve education.  I also think that throwing more money at our educational programs will do little or nothing to solve or even ameliorate them.

“I’m suprised you don’t know anyone who worked for minimum wage for more than a year. I know many and they are good workers. It is true that many jobs pay above the minimum but not much above it.”

Really?  I couldn’t begin to find anyone even minimally competent to handle our shipping and receiving at anything less than about 70% above the federal minimum wage.  And this is not a high level job.  I really think starting pay should be about double, but I’m constrained by our home office in what I can offer.

It is unfair to blame the president.  No Child Left Behind was a good idea and it does need more funding.  However, education is a personal responsibility and no matter how hard teachers try to reach kids, no matter how much schools are financially punished because of low test scores, it is the kids themselves who have the ability to make a difference.  They also are damning their futures to hell by not focusing and doing their homework.  Parents should be involved in their child’s education and support the schools’ efforts to educate their children.  Even if the parents fail to do their job, the bottom line is that the kids are failing themselves.  They are limiting themselves financially.  Many kids take on the attitude that they can work at McDonalds so education isn’t important to them.  Well, here we sit.

My father was greatly impoverished.  He didn’t even have a bathroom in the garage his family was forced to live in.  He had to go two blocks to a filling station to use their restroom.  What did my father do?  He focused on his studies.  He went into the military to get the GI Bill and then he went to college.  His brother was fortunate to get a full scholarship to Dartmouth and got his doctorate in Physics.  Maybe the average person won’t go so far as to get their doctorates like my father and his brother did, but they do have intelligence and can go as far as they want.  Btw, my Grandma and Grandpa were divorced and so my dad grew up in a broken home.  Taking personal initiative is the best way to find success and stay successful.

Many Democratic leaders seem to think that our society is made up of “victims”.  Can a victim mentality help someone to become self sufficient?  While I do believe that victims do exist, I believe that empowerment and personal initiative is the way out of poverty.  The greatest tool one can use is the tool of education.

I also believe that there are truly students with special needs and learning disabilities and they need extra instruction and specialized assistance.  The majority of students, on the whole, can learn in a mainstream classroom and the majority of teachers do want their students to succeed and offer academic assistance as well as tutoring programs.

Work ethic and today’s youth:  Could it be that the work ethic and abilities coincide with the percentages of youth who didn’t plug away at their studies?

My husband is a manager of a tire store.  He has noticed a great shift and hard worker attitudes in many of his young employees.  They start out well above minimum wage although it doesn’t take more than attention to detail and sweat to do a good job.  It is extremely difficult for him to find such employees.  The ones that do work hard are able to go full time, receive great health care benefits and enjoy a company that rewards their employees with many incentives i.e. paid fishing trips to Lake Tahoe, paid weekends at a resort, as well as great company parties.  The fulltime employees enjoy job security, excellent pay raises , and a great future of moving up in the company through the stores and into the corporate offices.  Although some fulltime employees have some college experience and/or degrees, most only have a high school diploma.  That doesn’t hold one back.  They are trained as they move up in the company and even assistant vice presidents succeeded with only a high school diploma. 

Hard work, attention to detail, integrity...sounds like a route for success in many careers and markets.  Is it fair to expect that of Americans?  Victims of greedy employers, public schools, and life circumstances?

My mom always said that life wasn’t fair.  That is true.  So what can a person do?  Make decisions, efforts, and choices that will lead to the best life possible.

Chopper,

Studies for 2005 differ greatly. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Dept. of Labor. there were just under 500,000 wage earners who got the federally mandated minimum of just $5.15/hour out of over 75.6 million US employed persons who earn an hourly wage. According to the survey those under and over 25 years of age are divided 60% and 40% respectively. According to other surveys,however, about 7.3 million wage earners get the federal minimum wage about half of whom are between 25 and 54 years of age, a third of whom, according to the Center for Economic Policy Research are stuck earning this level of pay for at least three years.  The minimum wage is a below poverty level wage for a family of four. About 36 million Americans are below the poverty level about 13 million (or more than a third) of whom are children. The current minimum wage is $3.50 below its 1968 level in real purchasing power. The legal minimum wage is not just entry level earnings of teens but a wage that contributes significantly to the earnings of many households. Millions of multiple income households would sink well below the poverty line if not for the earnings of at least one minimum wage worker. To insist on libertarian reactionary dogmas is cruel and ignorant. The market will not lift these people from poverty as their suffering enriches those at the top. I don’t know what you don’t get about this fact. We are a society of ever hardening class boundaries and ever greater degrees of exploitation the both of which seem to go hand in hand.

Kim,

You don’t seem to get that people are increasingly unable to care for themselves and educate themselves which takes enormous resources. Being a reactionary you probably don’t get how Bush sees education for most as superfluous in a society which is becoming ever more committed to war and low wage low skill jobs. Why educate people who will only end up cannon fodder or mopping up kitchens somewhere. Why tax the rich to train youths whose futures society obviously intends to be played out on the battlefield or in a dead end low wage occupation. American society values money, not the quality of life of most of its citizens or those of the world. I’ve never understood how observant people could be so dumb or naive as to think the US is a well intended, democratic society with humane values. This is really naive. BTW, your grandfather at least had the GI Bill. He also faced a growing economy and three and a half decades (1945 to 1980) of the American working and middle classes ONLY years in the sun!! Kids today are in much more difficult straits. Education has always been the responsibility of society. Those who are more affluent can afford the higher property taxes and get better schools. Many poor kids have little hope of anything which is why they look up to criminal role models.  It is hard to separate poverty issues from those of education. You can’t solve problems with money alone but it is obvious spending per pupil in poor areas is way behind that in the affluent areas. The Chicago area schools have improved with increased spending and better designed teaching programs. Test scores have improved for kids in Chicago Board of Ed. public schools and there is hope more can be done. The teachers union is not to blame. Many teachers who repeatedly failed state of Illinois recertification have been let go.

Oh cabbie, cabbie, cabbie…

Society’s problems with education all began with Bush and the youth of today will only end up dying on the battlefield of tomorrow?  I don’t know what you mean by me being a reactionary but you certainly have an pessimistic fictionalized viewpoint.

I am no real expert on the complex issue of education. I know that there are many problems. I know also that many public schools are failing and there is just cause for real concern. Many are justified in their indignation at public education in America today and have every right to be skeptical of just spending more funds as a way out of the education crisis. 

I also know that American has always been a rigid class society and after a brief respite from this pattern in the immediate post WWII era is reverting to old ways.  Many recent studies have shown this to be true. In one such study close to 45% of the children of those born in the lower income quintile remain there while another 53% move up to any one of the next three. Only 2% move up to the very top. Keep in mind that the second to the highest quintile caps out at about $70,000 annual income which is good, well above poverty, but not more than a few households actually get that high. Most remain near the poverty line or not to far above and can barely meet high education costs or those of many other basic necessities. There is a small number of Americans getting rich off all of this abuse!! Bush’s agenda is to enrich a few and use much of the rest as cheap labor or cannon fodder for more corporate based military aggression around the world. This is the real purpose of a vague, amorphous, infinite War on Terror. The military-industrial complex is back and providing the only real consistant source of profitable investment outlets for surplus capital in an economy that tends toward long periods of stagnation.  Yet such a strategy is fraught with its own internal and external dangers which are both political and economic in nature. This is the core contradiction of mature US monopoly capitalism.

“Studies for 2005 differ greatly. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Dept. of Labor. there were just under 500,000 wage earners who got the federally mandated minimum of just $5.15/hour out of over 75.6 million US employed persons who earn an hourly wage. According to the survey those under and over 25 years of age are divided 60% and 40% respectively. According to other surveys,however, about 7.3 million wage earners get the federal minimum wage about half of whom are between 25 and 54 years of age, a third of whom, according to the Center for Economic Policy Research are stuck earning this level of pay for at least three years.”

Which one do you think is more crediable?  I mean that as a serious question.  If the BLS is right the minimum wage is really a non-issue, or should be.  Of course it makes for great political theatre, and I fully expect it to be raised because it is usually popular with a large part of the electorate.

“The current minimum wage is $3.50 below its 1968 level in real purchasing power. The legal minimum wage is not just entry level earnings of teens but a wage that contributes significantly to the earnings of many households. Millions of multiple income households would sink well below the poverty line if not for the earnings of at least one minimum wage worker. To insist on libertarian reactionary dogmas is cruel and ignorant. The market will not lift these people from poverty as their suffering enriches those at the top. I don’t know what you don’t get about this fact. We are a society of ever hardening class boundaries and ever greater degrees of exploitation the both of which seem to go hand in hand.”

Cabdriver, none of the above is relevant to the central question.  Is the minimum wage an effective anti-poverty tool?  If in fact it has a negligable or even perverse effect than raising it is counter-productive.  As I stated earlier, one of the more subtle effects of raising the minimum wage is to increase white teenage employment but decrease black teenage employment rates.  This in effect redistributes income away from poor black families to middle class white families.  Is this really a goal you want to achieve?

Calling libertarian thinking (dogma if you wish, but I think that term is more properly applied to Marxist philosophy) reactionary is sort of weird.  A reactionary economic philosophy would be one such as mercantilism which would favor certain companies or merchants over others.  In its more modern form this is the economic part of facism.  Our current economy is nowhere near to operating on libertarian principles, and it hasn’t since the begining of the 20th century, certainly not since the New Deal.

“I also know that American has always been a rigid class society and after a brief respite from this pattern in the immediate post WWII era is reverting to old ways.”

You should study economic history more.  Many of the giants of American industry, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt came from quite humble circumstances.

Chopper,

Your last post is irrelevant. The old barrons came down because the economy’s structure changed not because America is a fluid society without hard class boundaries.

The BLS survey doesn’t sound right. Even the CATO website figured 8 to 9 million minimum wage earners. Maybe I misunderstood something.I do realize that whatever the figure it is only about 5 or 6% of the total economically active population. This is not the point. The point is that wages are key to fighting poverty. The Post WWII experience showed this. Higher Union wages created a middle class. According to Henry Ford, no icon of socialism, it also made for huge profits.

Social inequality is not health to the extent it exists in the US today and libertarian conditions have NEVER existed anywhere but came the closest in the US. The state is essential to capitalism’s emergence and perpetuation. This is without a doubt. Marxism is still quite relevant because of the global and national concentrations of wealth and income as well as concentration of productive surplus. According to Fortune Magazine, no bastion of socialism, in 2005 the top 500 transnational firms had revenues reaching over $9 trillion, about 20% of global GDP. Their profits were between $650 billion and $700 billion declared for tax purposes coming close to between 1 and 2% of global GDP. These 500 companies are a small percent of the hundreds of thousands of global companies and their subsidiaries world-wid