Don't Confuse Hate With Fear

It's all over the news. Women-hating, war on women, assault on women, misogyny.
It's in anti-female laws that are being introduced and enacted right and far right.

• Laws that would restrict women's legal right to determine their own reproductive destiny.
• Laws that denyequal pay for women who perform the same work as their male counterparts.
• Laws that permit rape by transvaginal ultrasound as blackmail for a medically unnecessary procedure in exchange for a constitutionally permitted and otherwise legal abortion.

It's from radio shout hosts who slander and demean females who speak publically about the need for certain types of female-related healthcare coverage, or food accessibility based on socio-economic segments of society.

It's everywhere these days, or so it seems.

But I believe what's going on isn't hatred, despite what it looks like or sounds like.

I believe it's fear.

I truly believe that the men engaging in such behavior and proposing these laws do not hate women. I believe they are scared of women.

Scared? How so?

Based on the one thing women do that men cannot do. Procreate.

Given that only women can get pregnant and give birth, these men who are engaging in repression and degradation of women, in their infinite sense of insecurity and inadequacy, must control the when, how and under what circumstances women get pregnant and give birth. Otherwise, they fear the inevitability of becoming irrelevant.

This fear is certainly nothing new. It's centuries old.

Consider the current contention that requiring employer-provided heath insurance to cover women's contraception might violate employers' moral or religious beliefs. And consider that those moral/religious beliefs are defined in terms of women's reproductive lives.

Just who, pray-tell, dreamed up those religious beliefs in the first place and who continues to dictate them and enforce them on threat of excommunication from their religious institution?

Men.

Not women.

Men.

I'm far too conservative to believe that anybody should be able to use their ideology or religious dicta to deny anybody else her personal freedom or individual liberty. 

The Choice is NOT Ours

A friend of mine publishes an e-newsletter that is chock full of all things political with a focus on money and healthcare reform -- and a lot of his own opinion. Although he's a self-identified Republican, I agree with a lot of what he says.

Occasionally, though, I really disagree with him. That's true with his most recent issue, which is at http://www.throwtherascalsout.org/eNewsletter157.htm, in which he took on the current debate over employers and their healthcare benefits including coverage for contraceptives. Here's what he wrote:

-- Sorry, I just don't agree. Though I am pro-choice, health plans and taxpayers should NOT be required to cover birth control or contraceptives or Viagra or abortions or morning-after pills or vasectomies or Vialis or whatever. When I say "keep the government out of my bedroom," I mean here too. Buy an extra-coverage policy if these things are important to you.

Here is my reply to him:

Really, Jack? Why stop with personal issues such as pregnancy prevention, especially when "the pill" is also prescribed to alieviate for all kinds of medical conditions such as ovarian cysts, endometriosis, severe acne, abnormal facial hair growth, etc?

How about all kinds of other morally or religiously offensive procedures/medications/etc.? Anyone who's Christian Scientist could object to providing healthcare benefits for all medical treatments entirely and just tell his or her employees to pray.

I personally find it repugnant that insurance plans and Medicare cover erectle dysfunction prescriptions, particularly when so many women's conditions and preventative programs/procedures aren't covered. 

Should insurance plans not provide coverage for alcohol-related conditions because some people find alcoholism a moral weakness, or coverage for obesity-induced diabetes because an employer might blame obesity on personal choice and thus, the person is responsible for her/his diabetes?

But why stop with healthcare? How about my tax dollars supporting behaviors and practices that I find morally offensive, such as certain church sects' subjugation of women and denying them equal opportunity, or that is even criminal, such privately tolerating pedophilia and sheltering/excusing/playing shell games with pedophiles in their ranks?

Despite the Constitutional guarantee of "separation of church and state," that has been reduced to little more than a fig leaf. All taxpaying Americans fund all kinds of government services that are provided to those churches/religious organizations for nothing. Examples include police and fire protection, use of tax-funded infrastructure, access to safe food and water suppies, benefit of non-polluted air and waterways, federally funded grants and academic scholarships for students attending religiously affiliated colleges and universities. The list is endless.

Trying to wall off one aspect of Americans' life choices and situations because some people find them morally objectionable on ideological or other grounds is like trying to remove salt from soup.

And telling people who want or need such services as you list in your newsletter to "Buy an extra-coverage policy if these things are important to you" is great advice for people who can afford or even find such coverage in this world of private insurance companies that have expanded denial of coverage because of "pre-existing conditions" so broadly that it can even include pregnancy.

And for schmucks like some of the GOP legislators to say that people who work for religiously-affiliated employers, such as Catholic hospitals, and want employer-provided healthcare coverage to just go work somewhere else is unbelievably specious when most if not all hospitals in many areas, including major metropolitan regions, have religious affiliations.

There is no sanity or refuge for the average person seeking healthcare coverage in the private insurance industry. And it's way too easy for people with guaranteed health coverage like members of Congress, rich people who can afford and find loopholes around anything, and oldsters like you and me who are fortunate enough to have access to Medicare to tell other people to just buy your own.

The only recourse in a society like the United States that is becoming increasingly backwards, i.e. its steadfast rejection of universal, single-payer healthcare coverage, is for the government to prohibit institutions and profiteers of human suffering from discriminating on ideological grounds, trumped up or otherwise.

In summary, Jack's opinion on this issue reflects the current American society-destroying affliction of "I've got mine, screw you."

Liberalizing University and College Students

In his Feb. 27 piece, "The New Conservatism: Don’t Bother With College," http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/the-new-conservatism-dont-bother-with-college/   New York Times writer David Firestone says GOP presidential hopeful  Rick Santorum called President Obama "a snob" for urging students to go to college, that he called for a reduction for a reduction in the number of people who seek higher education, and that students who attend a four-year college will emerge fully indoctrinated as liberals.

Perhaps this is another case of what the meaning of is is, but if the purpose of attending college is to learn things you don't know yet, to expand a person's body of knowlegde, to consider information, ideas, philosophies and worlds previously unknown, to open students' minds to new fields of study and expose them to people who have had access to broader knowledge and experiences the students haven't had, then, yes, attending college is a very liberalizing experience. It isn't intended to be an echo chamber, cheering section or rubber-stamping exercise for ideologies and beliefs the students or their parents already have.

To me being liberal equals being openminded. And I am truly conservative about bashing the liberalizing mission and experience of college/university life. Particularly if it means maintaining a highly educated and strong nation. And I am truly conservative about Santorum's attempt to expand ignorance as a national policy.

Want Smaller Gov't? Elect Democrats

The GOP mantra, particularly among candidates for elected office, is that the Democratic Party is the party of big government and that the electorate should trust the GOP to reduce the size of government.

Historical facts, however, belie that.

I've often heard/read that the federal government has actually grown in Republican presidential administrations. An article that provides statistics says:
 
"Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both increased the size of the bureaucracy, whether or not you count military personnel.  Reagan increased the non-military workforce  by 238,000 employees, and the federal workforce including military personnel by 324,000.  George W. Bush increased the non-military workforce by 53,000 employees, and the federal workforce overall by 77,000.  Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, reduced non-military employees by 8,000 and the federal workforce overall by 6 37,000. Carter came in third behind George H.W. Bush as a small-government practitioner."

This article, as http://www.brendagrantland.com/Blog/BlogRepublican.html, includes a little quiz the results of which are quite interesting and that Democrats should pounce on like a frog on a fly.

President Obama isn't included in this quiz because he wasn't in office long enough when the article was published. But he has been now and while he Obama is constantly accused of bloating the federal government, according to the article "Big Government? Obama Has 273,000 Fewer Federal Employees Than Reagan" at
http://www.politicususa.com/en/big-government-obama-reagan, it seems that Obama has not increased the size of government.

Plus, he has either cut or proposed cuts in wasteful spending. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57321244/obama-to-cut-federal-swag-wasteful-spending/ And his federal deficit reduction plan -- which the Republicans rejected after previously backing many of the same policies -- cut more spending the the Republicans alternatives.

Historical facts show that Republicans' claims of being the small government party are false. While they're absolute hawks about cutting spending on public programs that benefit middle and poor Americans, they passionately protect government spending on the much more costly tax breaks, subsidies and other welfare for the rich.

Republicans who promise to cut the size of government remind me of men who beat their wives and girlfriends. They're so sorry and promise to never hit them again. We all know how that goes.

The difference is, Republicans never say they're sorry.

Standing up to an "Occupy" Disser

I have an acquaintance who has strong moral and polical beliefs, but is seldom moved to write about them or respond to countering opinions that appear in the mainstream media.

An opinion piece by a Nevada academic attempting to marginalize the Occupy Movement that was published a few weeks ago in a Milwaukee newspaper proved to be an exception.

The grabber in the Nevada professor's piece for my acquaintance was the assertion that, "What really motivates the Occupy movement is not resentment against the 1% but a sense of futility in grappling with a weak economy. With unemployment hovering around 9%, and with all the recurrent plant closings, foreclosures and cutbacks in public services, there is a lot of anger to vent. But class warfare isn't the solution."

The newspaper, for whatever reason, chose not to publish my acquaintance's rebutting letter.

So here it is, unedited. I share it because I think it knocks the proverbial ball clean out of the park so far as illuminating the faulty reasoning of the Nevada professor is concerned:

"Bradley Schiller’s ('The 1%', December 11) misrepresentation of the Occupy Movement as a disaffected group taking the anger of their circumstances out on rich folks demonstrates the kind of disconnect that makes people wary of Ivory Tower academics. Schiller, in an apparent attempt to solidify the myths of the self-made man and fluid social mobility, would have us believe that America’s millionaires and billionaires are just like the rest of us and the Occupy Movement is, at hear, merely railing against the American Dream.  Though I cannot speak for all who identify with the Occupy Movement, my understanding of it is that it has arisen from anger at a system in which people who have acquired wealth and power attempt to manipulate the political and economic structures to close the door to opportunity behind them, anger at those who use their wealth and power to create a dual justice system in which manufactured threats are used as a basis for curtailing the rights of many, while the real crimes perpetrated by some of the rich and powerful against wide swaths of the populace are ignored, if not condoned, anger at the scarcity mentality that makes some people willing to do apparently anything to jealously guard what this country has afforded them with complete disregard for their debt to it and the opportunities, infrastructure and resources it has provided them.  Schiller’s attempt to belittle the Occupy Movement as a naïve, “us or them” class warfare, in the end, says more about Schiller’s lack of intellectual depth and/or honesty, than it does about people’s serious grievances about systematic complexities that promote and perpetuate injustice."

Schiller's entire column is at: http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/the-1-833b5br-135692753.html

I'm far too conservative to buy Bradley's kind of "envy" argument that is so liberally bandied about by shills of the rich and privileged, who, oddly, are shouldering their tax burden and whose taxes further enrich them via subsidies and other publicly funded largess.

Lawmakers Pass Laws that Enrich Lawmakers

New York Times headline two days after Christmas:

Economic Downturn Took a Detour at Capitol Hill

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

"Rarely has the financial divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/us/politics/economic-slide-took-a-detour-at-capitol-hill.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

No wonder Congress -- particularly some members -- consistently pass legislation that favors big biz and the rich to the detriment of the rest. Shouldn't an elected official work for his/her constituents and not those who will fill the Congress members' coffers? This sure looks like a cronyism/quid-pro-quo/conflict-of-interest form of government, not democracy.

I am very conservative about people who are elected to represent the people getting rich in their elected positions by passing laws that make themselves richer. Sounds like a corrupt banana republic to me.

Libertarian Freeloaders

New York Times article teaser: "The Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank, plays an outsize role in setting the agenda in Arizona and is helping set up similar litigation outfits elsewhere."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/goldwater-institute-an-aggressive-conservative-watchdog.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24

Would that the news media and politicians would deep six the "libertarian" label!

The only real "libertarians" in the U.S. live in a cave and never come out. Everyone else benefits every day from government benefits and services, including the roads they drive on, safe commercial flight, potable water, breathable air, and so much more that makes for healthy, convenient, sustainable living that taxes fund and is made possible by those "regulations" they hate so much. All these so-called libertarians really want is the freedom to do whatever heck they want without having to pay for it and without regard to the harm to any/everyone else.

I'm way too conservative to want my taxes to fund these wanna-be freeloaders follies.