A Worldview/RPT Rant On a Reasonable Zuby Quote

I think the below is applicable to many things. Like masks, mandatory vaccines for colds. etc. But I can also see how the below will be used to counter life and the freedom the Founding Documents of this nation afford. This is to say I like the quote, but can see it being misused as well.

That is the reason for the post — just to counter what I can see others using it for.

So, how does this play out with the Left? [Or, strict Libertarians.] Below I will use some personal experience as well as some legal interpretation and thought experiments – with a dash of religious philosophy to get us started.

WORLDVIEWS IN THE MIX

Before we begin, many who know the site know that I speak with informed knowledge in my Judeo-Christian [theistic] worldview to those of other adopted worldviews [known or unknown] to change hearts and minds. Often people do not know what a worldview is or if they hold one, or that knowing of it even has purpose. Nor do they know that higher education just a couple generations ago thought it educations purpose to instill it. A quote I came across in seminary that I kept discusses this:

Alexander W. Astin dissected a longitudinal study conducted by UCLA started in 1966 for the Review of Higher Education [journal] in which 290,000 students were surveyed from about 500 colleges.  The main question was asked of students why study or learn?  “Seeking to develop ‘a meaningful philosophy of life’” [to develop a meaningful worldview] was ranked “essential” by the majority of entering freshmen.  In 1996 however, 80% of the college students barely recognized the need for “a meaningful philosophy of life” and ranked “being very well off financially” [e.g., to not necessarily develop a meaningful worldview] as paramount. [1 & 2]


[1] Alexander W. Astin, “The changing American college student: thirty year trends, 1966-1996,” Review of Higher Education, 21 (2) 1998, 115-135.

[2] Some of what is here is adapted and with thanks to Dr. Stephen Whatley, Professor of Apologetics & Worldviews at Faith International University… as, they are in his notes from one of his classes.

I wish to highlight the “a meaningful philosophy of life.” This is known as a worldview, or, tools to dissect life and define reality. So the question becomes, what then is a worldview? Why do we need a coherent one?

WORLDVIEW: People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently based on these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize.  By “presuppositions” we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world.  Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists.  People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world.  Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.  “As a man thinketh, so he is,” is profound.  An individual is not just the product of the forces around him.  He has a mind, an inner world.  Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it.  People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world.  The inner thought world determines the outward action.  Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.  But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after careful consideration of what worldview is true.  When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room” — that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions.

— Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1976), 19-20.

So, even if one isn’t necessarily aware they have a worldview, they operate as if they do — borrowing from what they perceive as truths but are often a patchwork of interpretations that if questioned on, the self-refuting nature of these personally held beliefs are easy to dissect and show the person is living incoherently. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “worldview” this way:

1) The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world; 2) A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.” 

What are these self-refuting aspects people find themselves moving in-between? What are the worldviews? Here are some listed, and really, that first list of seven is it. That is as broad as one can expand the worldview list:

  1. theism
  2. atheism
  3. deism
  4. finite godism
  5. pantheism
  6. panentheism
  7. polytheism[1]

Others still reduce it further: Idealism, naturalism, and theism.[2] C.S Lewis dealt with religious worldviews much the same way, comparing: philosophical naturalism (atheism), pantheism, and theism.[3]


[1] Doug Powell, The Holman Quick Source Guide to Christian Apologetics (Nashville, TN: Holman Publishers, 2006); and Norman L. Geisler and William D. Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers);

[2] L. Russ Bush, A Handbook for Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1991).

[3] Mere Christianity (New York, NY: Macmillan Inc, 1943).

Knowing what “rose-colored-glasses” you are wearing and if you are being internally coherent in your dissecting of reality is important because of the cacophony of what is being offered:

Faith Founded on Fact: Essays in Evidential Apologetics (Newburgh, IN: Trinity Press, 1978), 152-153.

Joseph R. Farinaccio, author of “Faith with Reason: Why Christianity is True,” starts out his excellent book pointing a way to this truth that a well-informed public should know some of:

  • This is a book about worldviews. Everybody has one, but most individuals never really pay much attention to their own personal philosophy of life. This is a tragedy because there is no state of awareness so fundamental to living life. — (Pennsville, NJ: BookSpecs Publishing, 2002), 10 (emphasis added).
  • “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our well being.” — James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 122 (emphasis added).

Is this part of the reason so many today, especially young people, do not have “well-being”?

(More on worldviews can be found in my first chapter of my book titled:INTRODUCTION: TECHNOLOGY JUNKIES” — PDF | As well as my WORLDVIEW POST on the matter)

The Law of Non Contradiction

I bet many reading this will have used the phrases or ideas below without realizing it was incoherent at best. I link to my chapter above, but here is an excerpt from it to better explain why a person’s worldview should be internally sound:

The law of non-contradiction is one of the most important laws of logical thought, in fact, one textbook author goes so far as to say that this law “is considered the foundation of logical reasoning.”[1]  Another professor of philosophy at University College London says that “a theory in which this law fails…is an inconsistent theory.”[2]  A great example of this inconsistency can be found in the wonderful book Philosophy for Dummies that fully expresses the crux of the point made throughout this work:

  • Statement: There is no such thing as absolute truth.[3]

By applying the law of non-contradiction to this statement, one will be able to tell if this statement is coherent enough to even consider thinking about.  Are you ready?  The first question should be, “is this an absolute statement?”  Is the statement making an ultimate, absolute claim about the nature of truth?  If so, it is actually asserting what it is trying to deny, and so is self-deleting – more simply, it is logically incoherent as a comprehensible position[4] as it is in violation of the law of non-contradiction.  Some other examples are as follows, for clarity’s sake:

“All truth is relative!” (Is that a relative truth?); “There are no absolutes!” (Are you absolutely sure?); “It’s true for you but not for me!” (Is that statement true just for you or is it for everyone?)[5] In short, contrary beliefs are possible, but contrary truths are not possible.[6]

Many will try to reject logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs; often times religious pluralism[7] is the topic with which many try to suppress these universal laws in separating religious claims that are mutually exclusive.  Professor Roy Clouser puts into perspective persons that try to minimize differences by throwing logical rules to the wayside:

The program of rejecting logic in order to accept mutually contradictory beliefs is not, however, just a harmless, whimsical hope that somehow logically incompatible beliefs can both be trueit results in nothing less than the destruction of any and every concept we could possess.  Even the concept of rejecting the law of non-contradiction depends on assuming and using that law, since without it the concept of rejecting it could neither be thought nor stated.[8]

Dr. Clouser then goes on to show how a position of psychologist Erich Fromm is “self-assumptively incoherent.”[9] What professor Clouser is saying is that this is not a game.  Dr. Alister McGrath responds to the religious pluralism of theologian John Hick by showing just how self-defeating this position is:

The belief that all religions are ultimately expressions of the same transcendent reality is at best illusory and at worst oppressive – illusory because it lacks any substantiating basis and oppressive because it involves the systematic imposition of the agenda of those in positions of intellectual power on the religions and those who adhere to them.  The illiberal imposition of this pluralistic metanarrative[10] on religions is ultimately a claim to mastery – both in the sense of having a Nietzschean authority and power to mold material according to one’s will, and in the sense of being able to relativize all the religions by having access to a privileged standpoint.[11]

As professor McGrath points out above, John Hick is applying an absolute religious claim while at the same time saying there are no absolute religious claims to religious reality.  It is self-assumptively incoherent.  Anthropologist William Sumner argues against the logical position when he says that “every attempt to win an outside standpoint from which to reduce the whole to an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is delusion.”[12]  Authors Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl respond to this self-defeating claim by showing that Sumner is making a strong claim here about knowledge:

He says that all claims to know objective moral truth are false because we are all imprisoned in our own cultural and are incapable of seeing beyond the limits of our own biases.  He concludes, therefore, that moral truth is relative to culture and that no objective standard exists.  Sumner’s analysis falls victim to the same error committed by religious pluralists who see all religions as equally valid.[13]

The authors continue:

Sumner’s view, however, is self-refuting.  In order for him to conclude that all moral claims are an illusion, he must first escape the illusion himself.  He must have a full and accurate view of the entire picture….  Such a privileged view is precisely what Sumner denies.  Objective assessments are illusions, he claims, but then he offers his own “objective” assessment.  It is as if he were saying, “We’re all blind,” and then adds, “but I’ll tell you what the world really looks like.” This is clearly contradictory.[14]

Philosopher Roger Scruton drives this point home when he says, “A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely negative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”[15]


[1] Manuel Velasquez, Philosophy: A Text with Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), p. 51.

[2] Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (New York, NY: Oxford Univ Press, 1995), p. 625.

[3] Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies, 46.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 40.

[6] Ibid., 38.

[7] Religious Pluralism – “the belief that every religion is true.  Each religion provides a genuine encounter with the Ultimate.” Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 598.

[8] Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2005), 178 (emphasis added).

[9] A small snippet for clarity’s sake:

Fromm’s position is also an example of this same dogmatic selectivity. He presents his view as though there are reasons for rejecting the law of non-contradiction, and then argues that his view of the divine (he calls it “ultimate reality”) logically follows from that rejection. He ignores the fact that to make any logical inference — to see that one belief “logically follows from” another — means that the belief which is said to “follow” is required on pain of contradicting oneself. Having denied all basis for any inference, Fromm nevertheless proceeds to infer that reality itself must be an all-encompassing mystical unity which harmonizes all the contradictions which logical thought takes to be real. He then further infers that since human thought cannot help but be contradictory, ultimate reality cannot be known by thought. He gives a summary of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist expressions of this same view, and again infers that accepting their view of the divine requires him to reject the biblical idea of God as a knowable, individual, personal Creator. He then offers still another logical inference when he insists that:

Opposition is a category of man’s mind, not itself an element of reality…. Inasmuch as God represents the ultimate reality, and inasmuch as the human mind perceives reality in contradictions, no positive statement can be made about God.

In this way Fromm ends by adding self-referential incoherency to the contradictions and self-assumptive incoherency already asserted by his theory. For he makes the positive statement about God that no positive statements about God are possible.

Ibid., 178-179. In this excellent work Dr. Clouser shows elsewhere the impact of logic on some major positions of thought:

As an example of the strong sense of this incoherency, take the claim sometimes made by Taoists that “Nothing can be said of the Tao.” Taken without qualification (which is not the way it is intended), this is self-referentially incoherent since to say “Nothing can be said of the Tao” is to say something of the Tao. Thus, when taken in reference to itself, the statement cancels its own truth. As an example of the weak version of self-referential incoherency, take the claim once made by Freud that every belief is a product of the believer’s unconscious emotional needs. If this claim were true, it would have to be true of itself since it is a belief of Freud’s. It therefore requires itself to be nothing more than the product of Freud’s unconscious emotional needs. This would not necessarily make the claim false, but it would mean that even if it were true neither Freud nor anyone else could ever know that it is. The most it would allow anyone to say is that he or she couldn’t help but believe it.  The next criterion says that a theory must not be incompatible with any belief we have to assume for the theory to be true. I will call a theory that violates this rule “self-assumptively incoherent.” As an example of this incoherence, consider the claim made by some philosophers that all things are exclusively physical [atheistic-naturalism]. This has been explained by its advocates to mean that nothing has any property or is governed by any law that is not a physical property or a physical law. But the very sentence expressing this claim, the sentence “All things are exclusively physical,” must be assumed to possess a linguistic meaning. This is not a physical property, but unless the sentence had it, it would not be a sentence; it would be nothing but physical sounds or marks that would not) linguistically signify any meaning whatever and thus could not express any claim — just as a group of pebbles, or clouds, or leaves, fails to signify any meaning or express any claim. Moreover, to assert this exclusivist materialism is the same as claiming it is true, which is another nonphysical property; and the claim that it is true further assumes that its denial would have to be false, which is a relation guaranteed by logical, not physical, laws. (Indeed, any theory which denies the existence of logical laws is instantly and irredeemably self-assumptively incoherent since that very denial is proposed as true in a way that logically excludes its being false.) What this shows is that the claim “All things are exclusively physical” must itself be assumed to have nonphysical properties and be governed by nonphysical laws or it could neither be understood nor be true. Thus, no matter how clever the supporting arguments for this claim may seem, the claim itself is incompatible with assumptions that are required for it to be true. It is therefore self-assumptively incoherent in the strong sense.

Ibid., 84-85 (emphasis added).

[10] Metanarratives, or, Grand Narratives – “big stories, stories of mythic proportions – that claim to be able to account for, explain and subordinate all lesser, little, local, narratives.” Jim Powell, Postmodernism for Beginners (New York, NY: Writers and Readers, 1998), 29.

[11] Alister E. McGrath, Passion for Truth: the Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,  1996), 239.

[12] William Graham Sumner, Folkways (Chicago, IL: Ginn and Company, 1906), in Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), 46-47.

[13] Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), 47.

[14] Ibid., 48

[15] Modern Philosophy (New York, NY: Penguin, 1996), 6.  Found in: John Blanchard, Does God Believe in Atheists? (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2000), 172.

This is part of a larger audio piece on Relativism:

Okay, that should get us all prepped for the next section…

….which is slightly more historical.

THEISM & AMERICA’S FOUNDING

Theism was the basis for our Founding Documents that undergirded our nations birth. For instance the phrase in the Declaration of Independence,Law of Nature and Nature’s God.” AMERICAN HERITAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION discusses this phrase a bit, of which I excerpta portion of:

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 tells much about the founding philosophy of the United States of America.  One philosophical principle that the American Founders asserted in the Declaration was the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This universal moral law served as their moral and legal basis for creating a new, self-governing nation.  One apparent aspect of this law is that it was understood in Western thought and by early Americans to be revealed by God in two ways—in nature and in the Bible—and thus evidences the Bible’s influence in America’s founding document.

The “Law of Nature” is the moral or common sense embedded in man’s heart or conscience (as confirmed in Romans 2:14-15).  It tells one to live honestly, hurt no one, and render to everyone his due.  The law of “Nature’s God” as written in the Bible and spoken by Jesus Christ consists of two great commandments—to love God and love others (as found in Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-31, and Luke 10:25-28).  The first commandment, first found in Deuteronomy 6:5, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.”  The second commandment, often referred to as the Golden Rule and first found in Leviticus 19:18, is to “love your neighbor as yourself” or, as expressed by Jesus in Matthew 7:12, to “do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Thus the content for both the natural and written laws is the same.

The law of Nature and God can be traced through the history and writings of Western Civilization.  This principle is found, for example, in medieval European thought.  In his 1265-1274 Summa Theologica, published in 1485, Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas acknowledged a “two-fold” moral law that is both general and specific:

The natural law directs man by way of certain general precepts, common to both the perfect [faithful] and the imperfect [non-faithful]:  wherefore it is one and the same for all.  But the Divine law directs man also in certain particular matters….  Hence the necessity for the Divine law to be twofold.[1]

Aquinas explained that the written law in the Bible was given by God due to the fallibility of human judgment and the perversion of the natural law in the hearts of many.  In the 1300s, medieval Bible scholars referred to the “Law of Nature and God” as a simple way to describe God’s natural and written law, its two expressions.  The phrase presented this law in the same order and timing in which God revealed it to mankind in history—first in creation and then in Holy Scripture.

During the Reformation period, French religious reformer John Calvin affirmed this two-fold moral law in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, observing, “It is certain that the law of God, which we call the moral law, is no other than a declaration of natural law, and of that conscience which has been engraven by God on the minds of men.”[2]  He further explains, “The very things contained in the two tables [or commandments in the Bible] are…dictated to us by that internal law whichiswritten and stamped on every heart.”[3]  Incidentally, Puritan leader John Winthrop, who led a large migration of Calvinist Puritans from England to the American colonies, identified God’s two-fold moral law in his well-known 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, delivered to the Puritans as they sailed to America.  He taught,

There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversation one towards another:  the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law and the law of the Gospel….  By the first of these laws, manis commanded to love his neighbor as himself.  Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law which concerns our dealings with men.[4]

During the Enlightenment period, British philosopher John Locke, who was influential to the Founders, wrote of the “law of God and nature” in his 1689 First Treatise of Civil Government.[5]  This law, he further notes in his 1696 Reasonableness of Christianity, “being everywhere the same, the Eternal Rule of Right, obliges Christians and all men everywhere, and is to all men the standing Law of Works.”[6]  English legal theorist William Blackstone, another oft-cited thinker of the American founding era, recognized the two-fold moral law in his influential 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England.  This law, he believed, could be known partially by man’s imperfect natural reason and completely by the Bible.  Due to man’s imperfect reason, Blackstone like Aquinas observed, the Bible’s written revelation is necessary:

If our reason were always, as in our first ancestor [Adam] before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task [of discerning God’s law and will] would be pleasant and easy.  We should need no other guide but this [reason].  But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience, that his reason is corrupt and his understanding is full of ignorance and error.

This [corruption] has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence which, in compassion to the frailty, imperfection, and blindness of human reason, has been pleased, at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation.  The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.[7]


[1] Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, pt 2/Q 91, Article 5, trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Bros., 1947) in Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org <https://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html >.

[2] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3, bk. 4, trans. John Allen (Philadelphia, PA:  Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 534-535.

[3] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion:  A New Translation, vol. 1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh, Scotland:  Printed for Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 430.

[4] John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630, in Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing, 2003), 75-93.

[5] John Locke, First Treatise of Civil Government, in Two Treatises on Government, bk. 1 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 142, 157, 164.

[6] John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, Second Edition (London:  Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil, 1696), 21-22.

[7] William Blackstone, Blackstone’s Commentaries in Five Volumes, ed. George Tucker (Union, NJ:  Lawbook Exchange, 1996, 2008), 41.

The researcher may benefit from my “The Two Books of Faith – Nature and Revelatory

I also wish to commend to you an article by James N. Anderson (Professor of Theology and Philosophy, at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte) in the Reformed Faith & Practice Journal (Volume 4 Issue 1, May 2019).

Abraham Williams preached a sermon where he drilled down on the idea at an “election day sermon” in Boston Massachusetts’s, New-England, May 26. 1762.

  • “The law of nature (or those rules of behavior which the Nature God has given men, fit and necessary to the welfare of mankind) is the law and will of the God of nature, which all men are obliged to obey…. The law of nature, which is the Constitution of the God of nature, is universally obliging. It varies not with men’s humors or interests, but is immutable as the relations of things.” 

Amen pastor.

A good resource for resources on this topic is my bibliography in a paper for my class on Reformation Church History in seminary — and I steered the topic to the Reformations influence on America. The paper is titled, REFORMING AMERICA (PDF), the bibliography is from pages 16-19. I commend to the serious reader Mark Noll’s book, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln.

Moving on from the “do you even worldview bro?” section to the application process.

One area I see the Left saying YES! to Zuby is on Same-Sex Marriage (SSM).

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

SSM, I argue, flouts Natural Law in many respects, and becomes an utennable special right.

The “potentials” in the male-female union becoming a separate organism is not found in the male-male or female-female sexual union. Nor is this non-potentiality able to be the foundation [pre-exist] for society (Is Marriage Hetero?). The ideal environment – whether from Nature or Nature’s God – to rear children, sorry Hillary. Etc. Or religious: No Religious or Ethical Leader in History Supported SSM (does wisdom from the past matter?). [I would add until very, very recently.] Even gay men and women oppose SSM being normalized LIKE hetero-marriage:Another Gay Man That Opposes Same-Sex Marriage #SSM.

Another Example via Personal Experience.

Many Gays Reject Court Forced Same-Sex Marriage

For some time, a few years back, I and about 10-20 gay men and women… and at times their extended family would meet monthly. All were lovers of the Constitution — what brought us together was the website GAY PATRIOT (gaypatriot[dot]net – now defunct, sadly) and admiration of what Bruce Carroll and other gay writers boldly forged in countering current cultural trends.

Some of these people I met with and have communicated with over the years [friends] held the position that same-sex marriage should not be placed on the same level in society as heterosexual marriage, as, the family pre-dates and is the foundation for society. All, however, held that what is not clearly enumerated in the Constitution for the federal government to do should be left for the states. And thus, they would say each state has the right to define marriage themselves. Speaking out against high-court interference – as they all did about Roe v. Wade. (All were pro-life.)

As an aside, we met once-a-month at either the Sizzler in Hollywood or the Outback in Burbank, exclusively on Mondays. (All coordinated by “GayPatriotWest” – Daniel Blatt). Why? Those two CEOs gave to Mitt Romney’s campaign. And on Mondays because the L.A. City Council asked people not to eat meat on Mondays to help the planet.

A joint hetero [me]/gay [them] “thumb in LA City Councils eye.” Lol.

What I respect are men and women (gay or not) who protect freedom of thought/speech. Like these two-freedom loving lesbian women I post about on my site.

Here is a Christian, conservative, apologist — Frank Turek — making a point (in an article titled: “Freedom: Another Casualty of the Gay Agenda”):

  • …. Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should homosexual videographers be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?”

Now, here is a gay “Conservatarian” site, Gay Patriot’s, input (in a post, “New Mexico Gets It Wrong” – now gone in the ether of the WWW):

  • it’s a bad law, a law that violates natural human rights to freedom of association and to freely chosen work. It is not good for gays; picture a gay photographer being required by law to serve the wedding of some social conservative whom he or she despises.”

However, I also live in a Constitutional Republic — even if by a thread. So, items not clearly enumerated in the Constitution are reverted to the States to hash out. So, I get an opportunity to vote on items or influence state legislatures to come down on, say, marriage being between a man and a woman. So, as a Conservatarian, what I call a “paleo-liberal,” I get to force my morals on others for lack of a better term. (See my Where Do Ethics Come From? Atheist Convo | Bonus Material | and Norman Geisler and Frank Turek’s book, Legislating Morality: Is It Wise? Is It Legal? Is It Possible?”)

What those freedom loving gay men and women and I have in common is the rejection of Judicial Activism. We all agreed that in California, the H8 bill passed by a slight majority of Californians should have been law defining marriage as between male and female. Why? Because this is what the Constitution in the 10th Amendment clearly stated:

  • The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And that like Roe v. Wade, the courts interfering with the body politic hashing these things out on the state level. This Court interference created more division and lawfare down the road. As well as bad law. Some examples of this rather than just my statement:

Roe v. Wade — which ruled that the U.S. Constitution effectively mandates a nationwide policy of abortion on demand — is one of the most widely criticized Supreme Court decisions in America history.

As Villanova law professor Joseph W. Dellapenna writes,

  • “The opinion [in Roe] is replete with irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, and unsubstantiated assertions. The Court decides matters it disavows any intention of deciding—thereby avoiding any need to defend its conclusion. In the process the opinion simply fails to convince.”

Even many scholars sympathetic to the results of Roe have issued harsh criticisms of its legal reasoning. In the Yale Law Journal, eminent legal scholar John Hart Ely, a supporter of legal abortion, complained that Roe is “bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” He wrote:

  • “What is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded a protection more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I believe is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.”

Below are criticisms of Roe from other supporters of legal abortion.

  • “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” — Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor
  • “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose.Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.” — Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun
  • “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” — Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor, former U.S. Solicitor General
  • “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” — Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
  • “Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
  • “In the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of judges.” — Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor
  • “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy). … [C]lear governing constitutional principles are not present [in Roe].” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor
  • “[O]verturning [Roe] would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” — Jeffrey Rosen, legal commentator, George Washington University law professor
  • “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” — William Saletan, Slate columnist, writing in Legal Affairs
  • “In the years since the decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky. [Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution fellow
  • “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” — Michael Kinsley, columnist, writing in the Washington Post.

Abortion and Gays… Why Manny Are Pro-Life

Some gay men and women oppose abortion for religious reasons. Other view this as a life issue. Here is an example of what I am thinking of:

“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it.  Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”

— Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA:  Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.

THE BLAZE has a flashback of Ann Coulter saying pretty much the same thing: “The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting” — yep

Ann Coulter has a penchant for making controversial statements that often lead to snickers, jeers and plenty of other reactionary responses. In an upcoming episode of Logo’s “A List: Dallas,” the well-known conservative pundit told Taylor Garrett, a gay Republican and a cast member on the show, some things about liberals and abortion that will surely get people talking.

The general premise of her words: Gays and lesbians should become pro-life, because liberals may start aborting their unborn gay children once a homosexual gene is discovered.

“The gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are gonna start aborting,” she said. Watch her comments, below: ….

“All Gays Should Be Republican” | Ann Coulter Flashback

The rule of nature in this situation would be to always promote and protect innocent life. Once you start deviating from that rule that is the foundation of our Constitution found in the Declaration:

  • We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

You start to create “special rights,” and these “special rights” are then put under the jurisdiction of politicians and special interest groups. And we all know what happens to the integrity of an issue or topic when that happens. Here is one example:

Feminists, Gays, Abortion and Gendercide | Ezra Levant Flashback

So as much as the quote by Zuby at the outset is a good one in a universe governed by reason and natural law and Nature’s God…. the progressive Left will always destroy what it touches… life and family being two issues exemplified above. So to adopt a quote wrongly is on the easier side of the Left ruining an idea.

From the Boy Scouts to literature, from the arts to universities: the left ruins everything it touches. Dennis Prager explains.

An example of the BOY SCOUTS via PRAGER:

…. Take the Boy Scouts. For generations, the Boy Scouts, founded and preserved by Americans of all political as well as ethnic backgrounds, has helped millions of American boys become good, productive men. The left throughout America — its politicians, its media, its stars, its academics — have ganged up to deprive the Boy Scouts of oxygen. Everywhere possible, the Boy Scouts are vilified and deprived of places to meet.

But while the left works to destroy the Boy Scouts — unless the Boy Scouts adopt the left’s views on openly gay scouts and scout leaders — the left has created nothing comparable to the Boy Scouts. The left tries to destroy one of the greatest institutions ever made for boys, but it has built nothing for boys. There is no ACLU version of the Boy Scouts; there is only the ACLU versus the Boy Scouts.

The same holds true for the greatest character-building institution in American life: Judeo-Christian religions. Once again, the left knows how to destroy. Everywhere possible the left works to inhibit religious institutions and values — from substituting “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas” to removing the tiny cross from the Los Angeles County Seal to arguing that religious people must not bring their values into the political arena.

And, then there is education. Until the left took over American public education in the second half of the 20th century, it was generally excellent — look at the high level of eighth-grade exams from early in the 20th century and you will weep. The more money the left has gotten for education — America now spends more per student than any country in the world — the worse the academic results. And the left has removed God and dress codes from schools — with socially disastrous results.

Of course, it is not entirely accurate to say that the left builds nothing. It has built vast government bureaucracies, MTV, and post-1960s Hollywood, for example. But these are, to say the least, not positive achievements.

In his column this week, Thomas Friedman describes General Motors Corp., as “a giant wealth-destruction machine.” That perfectly describes the left many times over. It is both a wealth-destruction machine and an ennobling-institution destruction machine.

The Law Is Clear, Life Begins In The Womb (Scott Peterson)

I saw the video [to the right] on Seth Gruber’s Rumble, and I realized I did not have a post here concerning Scott Peterson.

So I wish to fill in the gap with this posting. What follows are some pro-life apologists using Scott Peterson as an example to argue for the life, from conception. Who is Scott Peterson? — for my younger audience.

Who Is Scott Peterson?

In a case that riveted the nation, Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his eight-month pregnant wife, Laci, in 2002. With the help of his mistress, who had not previously known he was married, the FBI was able to collect evidence for the case against him. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2004 for the first-degree murder of his wife and the second-degree murder of their fetus son.

(BIOGRAPHY)

In doing some searching for “stuff” for this post, I came across this blogpost by SECUALR PRO-LIFE… an atheist pro-lifer (yes, THEY EXIST, but they DO NOT… lol). Here is a portion of that post that mentions Scott Peterson — and brought me to a video I likewise isolated, edited, and posted to my RUMBLE. Both the text and the video discuss what pro-life philosopher, Trent Horn, calls “Golden Retriever Reasoning.”

Enjoy:

Gradualism

This is the argument that pro-life philosopher Trent Horn referred to as Golden Retriever Reasoning. This position essentially states that the unborn don’t have the same value that we do, but they do have some value, just like dogs do. It would be wrong for me to kill my neighbor’s Golden Retriever, not because he’s as valuable as humans but because he belongs to my neighbor. Additionally, you shouldn’t just kill them for a trivial reason, but if circumstances get very tough, then you are justified in killing them.

But as Trent points out in the video, this doesn’t account for why we treat the unborn as no different than infants in some situations (for example, in some states if you kill a wanted unborn child you are charged with murder, not animal cruelty, such as when Scott Peterson killed his pregnant wife and unborn child in California several years ago; he was charged with two counts of murder). In fact, many pro-choice people do treat the unborn as babies if they’re wanted.

We don’t become “more human” by developing further, we just develop more of the traits that humans possess. Similarly, we don’t become “more of a person” by developing further, we just develop the capacity to perform the functions that persons can perform.

So the Gradualist position just doesn’t account for why abortion should be available, especially on demand as we currently have it in the United States now.

(I also add a clip from Seth Gruber)

Much more can be found at my Roe v. Wade post: SCOTUS Overturns Roe/Casey!

SEA TURTLES VS. HUMANS

Bill Maher: Kathy, why do you oppose a women’s right to choose

Kathy Ireland: Bill, when my husband was going to medical school I underwent a transformation.  Because I used to be in favor of abortion.  But I noticed when I was reading through some of his medical teaching books, that according to a law in science known as the law of biogenesis, every living thing reproduces after it own kind.  That means dog produce dogs, cats produce cats, humans produce humans.  If we want to know what something is we simply ask what are its parents. If we know what the parents are, we know what the thing in question is.  And I reasoned from that because human parents can only produce human offspring, unborn human fetuses could be nothing but human beings, because the law of biogenesis rules out every other alternative.  And I concluded therefore that because human fetuses were part of our family, we should not harm them without justification.

Mr. B responds to the claim that “life begins at conception” is only a religious belief.

This is an excerpt from Randy Alcorn’s book (older edition), Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments Expanded & Updated


It is uncertain when human life begins; that’s a religious question that cannot be answered by science.

An article printed and distributed by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL [the original, and still largest pro-choice organization]) describes as anti-choice the position that human life begins at conception. It says the pro-choice position is, Personhood at conception is a religious belief, not a provable biological fact.

Bill O’Reilly of Fox News said on July 3, 2000, “No one knows when human life begins.” He made no distinction between biological life and any other kind of life. Mr. OReilly then went on to ask a guest if “is an embryo in a [petri] dish a human life”? Sen. Hatch’s claim that “an embryo in a petri dish is not a human life”?

1a.  If there is uncertainty about when human life begins, the benefit of the doubt should go to preserving life.

[One of the reasons the Supreme Court allowed the legalization of abortion is that they werent sure of when life began.] Suppose there is uncertainty about when human life begins. If a hunter is uncertain whether a movement in the brush is caused by a person, does his uncertainty lead him to fire or not to fire? If youre driving at night and you think the dark figure ahead on the road may be a child, but it may be just a shadow of a tree, do you drive into it or do you put on the brakes? If we find someone who may be dead or alive, but were not sure, what is the best policy? To assume he is alive and try to save him, or to assume he is dead and walk away?

Shouldn’t we give the benefit of the doubt to life? Otherwise we are saying, This may or may not be a child, therefore it’s all right to destroy it.

1b. Medical Textbooks and scientific reference works constantly agree that human life begins at conception.

Many people have been told that there is no medical or scientific consensus as to when human life begins. This is simply untrue. Among those scientists who have no vested (monetary) in the abortion issue, there is an overwhelming consensus that human life begins at conception. (Conception is the moment when the egg is fertilized by the sperm, bringing into existence the zygote, which is a genetically distinct individual.)

Dr. Bradley M. Pattens textbook, Human Embryology, states:

  • It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of a new individual.

Dr. Keith L. Moores text on embryology, referring to the single cell zygote, says:

  • The cell results from fertilization of an oocyte by a sperm and is the beginning of a human being. He also states, Each of us started life as a cell called a zygote.

Doctors J. P. Greenhill and E. A. Friedman, in their work on biology and obstetrics, state:

  • The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life.

Dr. Louis Fridhandler, in the medical textbook Biology of Gestation, refers to fertilization as:

  • that wondrous moment that marks the beginning of life for a new unique individual.

Doctors E. L. Potter and J. M. Craig write in Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant:

  • Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition.

Popular scientific reference works reflect this same understanding of when human life begins. Time and Rand McNallys Atlas of the Human Body states:

  • In fusing together, the male and female gametes produce a fertilized single cell, the zygote, which is the start of a new individual.

In an article on pregnancy, the Encyclopedia Britannica says:

  • A new individual is created when the elements of a potent sperm merge with those of a fertile ovum, or egg.

These sources confidently affirm, with no hint of uncertainty that life begins at conception. They state not a theory or hypothesis and certainly not a religious belief every one is a secular source. Their conclusion is squarely based on the scientific and medical facts.

1c. Some of the worlds most prominent scientist and physicians testified to a U. S. Senate committee that human life begins at conception.

In 1981, a United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee invited experts to testify on the question of when life begins. Al of the quotes from the following experts come directly from the official government record of their testimony.

Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated:

  • I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of a human life.

I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Downs syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee that:

  • after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. He stated that this is no longer a matter of taste or opinion, and not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence. He added, Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.

Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic:

  • By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.

Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School:

  • It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive. It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception. Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data.

Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School:

  • The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view as simple and straightforward matter the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological [familial, age, or medical advances], political [pro-choice], or economic goals [cannot finish school].

A prominent physician points out that at these Senate hearings, Pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single expert witness who could specifically testify that life begins at any other point other than conception or implantation.

1d. Many other prominent scientists and physicians have likewise affirmed with certainty that human life begins at conception.

Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the pro-life cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally, The basic fact is simple: Life begins not at birth, but conception.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist, was co-founder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL [Dr. Nathanson help start the entire pro-choice movement]). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion clinic in the Western hemisphere. He was directly involved in over sixty thousand abortions.

Dr. Nathansons study of developments in the science of fetology and his use of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was deeply troubled by his increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60, 000 deaths.

In his film, The Silent Scream, Dr. Nathanson later stated, Modern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from us. Dr. Nathanson wrote Aborting America to inform the public of the realities behind the abortion rights movement of which he had been a primary leader. At the time Dr. Nathanson was an atheist. His conclusions were not even remotely religious, but squarely based on the biological facts.

Dr. Lundrum Shettles was for twenty-seven years attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Shettles was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility. He is internationally famous for being the discoverer of male- and female- producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of preborn children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles staes:

  • I oppose abortion, I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest that human life commences at the same time of conception and, secondly, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian.

The official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the Human Life Bill, summarized the issue this way:

  • Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a humans being a being that is and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.

Does It Matter?

In a statement form the The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, Director of Media and Policy Daniel McConchie said:

  • “Stem cell lines are quickly becoming marketable items. Once some integral human parts can be bought and sold, we run the risk that democratic societies will decide that other weak and defenseless members of the human race in those societies can be utilized for profits as well.”

Jews and Blacks were once said by the courts to be less than human, I wonder if we are headed down that path again?

Democrats Don’t Actually Want To Debate Abortion (Matt Walsh)

Larry Elder and John Lott Discuss Violence Against Pro-Lifers

Attacks on Conservatives…They Won’t Let You Talk About This

See more at CRIME RESEARCH CENTER:

….we identified 135 attacks on pro-life entities and people between when the leak occurred and September 24th, 2022. By contrast, only six cases involve pro-choice people attacked. We obtained the cases from news searches and various sources, but the pro-abortion organizations refused to respond to repeated requests for additional cases despite efforts over three weeks. 

The bottom line is that after the Dobbs decision was leaked, there was over 22 times more violence directed against pro-life groups than pro-choice organizations. However, if the media is less likely to cover violence pro-life organizations, the 22 times estimate will underestimate the relative violence against these groups.….

Dem Rep Jeffries Threatens: Battles Lines Have Been Drawn, You’re With Constitution Or Pro-Life Cult

SCOTUS Overturns Roe/Casey!

I thought this was funny and have to kick off this long post with a hat-tip to LIBS OF TIC-TOC FANS for it:

I was elated when the Supreme Court overturned Roe and Casey. I first heard it was a 6-3 decision, but Clay and Buck dissect that a bit on their show. So it was really a 5-4 split. What a Justice Warrior that wimp is. The first thing I thought of however… was my use of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1996) case to make a larger point — which now has to be amended a bit to say this is the goal of the progressive Left, rather than law… law. Here is an excerpt from my post WHAT “IS” FASCISM?

(Originally posted in August 2007 on my old blog;
brought here originally in May, 2010; Updated April, 2015)

Agree or Not?

This is a combination of two posts, the first was a question I posed to someone in a forum. Below you see what that question was and where I led that person. The second is a bit of political science. Both repeat some of the same idea, but both are different.

So let’s highlight the first question by a court case that has, well, institutionalized the “post-modern” society. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1996), the 9th District Appeals Court wrote:

  • “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

In other words, whatever you believe is your origin, and thus your designating meaning on both your life and body is your business, no one else’s. If you believe that the child growing in you – no matter at what stage (Doe v. Bolton) – isn’t a child unless you designate it so. You alone can choose to or not choose to designate life to that “fetus”. It isn’t a “potential person” until you say it is first a person. Understand? That being clarified, do you agree with this general statement:

  • “If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own reality

Sounds really close to the 9th Courts majority view doesn’t it. The above is basically saying that your opinion is just as valid as another persons opinion because both are yours and the other persons perspective on something is formed from influences from your culture and experiences. So someone from New Guiney may have a differing view or opinion on eating dogs than an American.

Let’s compare a portion from both statements:

  1. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life
  2. the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own reality

Whether you’re an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, it doesn’t matter. Your reality is just that… your reality, or opinion, or personal dogma. I want to now complete one of the quotes that I left somewhat edited, not only that, but I want to ask you if you still agree with it after you find out who wrote it.

Ready?

  • “Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”

Mussolini, Diuturna pp. 374-77, quoted in A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (Ignatius Press; 1999), by Peter Kreeft, p. 18.

And like good little fascists… they immediately resort to violence. The Arizona Senate had to be evacuated and riot police called in who had to use tear gas to disperse this crowd:

We will see more of what has already transpired to happen:

APOCTOZ does a bang-up job in noting day one:

(Also… cue up LOS ANGELES)

I have followed the Leftist violence issue for some time…. but got interested in toto during George W. Bush’s term and the violent imagery used against him and Republicans. I even noted in 2013 that it will get worse. Steve Scalise is just one of many examples.

A LARRY ELDER FLASHBACK


LUNCH ROOM CONVERSATION


Here are some highlights to a conversation I had with an 18-year old.

Another response I followed up on the heels of this is that Democrats now believe men can give birth as well as menstruate. They couple this idea with men cannot “tell” a woman what ta do with their body regarding abortion… why?

Dem Witness Tells House Committee Men Can Get Pregnant, Have Abortions

  • The White House’s 2022 fiscal year budget replaced the word mothers with birthing people in a section about public health funding, prompting ridicule Monday from President Joe Biden’s conservative critics…. The pro-choice nonprofit NARAL defended use of the term, tweeting, “When we talk about birthing people, we’re being inclusive. It’s that simple. We use gender neutral language when talking about pregnancy, because it’s not just cis-gender women that can get pregnant and give birth. Reproductive freedom is for *every* body.” (NEWSWEEK)

This young man mentioned the it (the baby) is not it’s own person, to which I noted: different blood type, different DNA, brain waves, heart beat, fingerprints, and the like. Conversation turned to how the law should equally be applied to all people. I steered it to the idea that if a pregnant woman is violently attacked and her baby is killed, the perpetrator can be charged with murder. Life is precious if she was planning to have a baby. Or, an hour earlier the same woman could walk into a clinic and agree to have a doctor kill her baby. This is the only case I know of where the woman can decide “what life ‘is’ and if a criminal act has taken place.”

Then I brought up the racial aspect of abortion, via the founder of Planned Parenthood, and my recent response [that day] to the SCV NAACP’s post about Roe being overturned:

The linked video in my post is this one:

This youngster had some misunderstandings of babies being adopted versus put into orphanages.

Larry recalls a conversation with Gloria Allred where she mentioned that abortion is supported by the “penumbra” of the Constitution: “the partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object.” Lol.


RPTs ANSWER RESOURCE


IT IS A HUMAN LIFE ~ THE ONLY QUESTION IN THIS DEBATE

➡ Again, aside from religious arguments – biology and medical expertise put the conception of human life at conception (WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN)

NOT A RELIGIOUS CAUSE

➡ I showed some well-known atheists who get the importance of this idea as well (they are students of history… and one of these people in the video is my favorite atheist polemicist ~ Christopher Hitchens):

BIBLE

➡ The Bible clearly view the baby in the womb as human:

WOMEN’S RIGHT

➡ I posted a video of one of a few women who are survivors of abortion:

…it should be noted when Obama was Senator he voted to pass legislation that would allow doctors to take such babies and place them on a table to die from lack of care and food…

DEVALUED LIFE

➡ …In 1997, Obama voted in the Illinois Senate against SB 230, a bill designed to prevent partial-birth abortions. In the US Senate, Obama has consistently voted to expand embryonic stem cell research. He has voted against requiring minors who get out-of-state abortions to notify their parents. The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) gives Obama a 100% score on his pro-choice voting record in the Senate for 2005, 2006, and 2007. (for more info see: THIS DAY CHOOSE LIFE <<< CAUTION-GRAPHIC)

BABY PARTS FOR SALE

➡ When you devalue life I have shown clearly that they are used to power cities (BABIES: A RENEWABLE [GREEN] ENERGY SOURCE) as well as cutting up the babies and selling them on the open market ~ this next link details the many years old 20/20 investigation as well as the new info: BABY PARTS [STILL] FOR SALE ~ DEMOCRATS DEHUMANIZING HUMAN LIFE

THE FOUNDER OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD

➡ Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenicist that had NAZI doctors from Germany write op-eds in her newsletter for the foundation (MARGARET SANGER AND THE RACIST HISTORY OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD). This hatred of minorities still exists in the continued opening of PP in poor Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and the past disgrace of America is still alive today (EUGENICS: AMERICA’S PAST GENOCIDE OF POOR MINORITIES).

“We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” ~ Sanger’s letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, Dec. 19, 1939

DEMOCRATS AWARD RACISTS

➡ Obama and Hillary Clinton both support this dreadful past of these eugenicists ~

ADOPTION

➡ A 2008 study by National Center for Health Statistics found that 33.1% of women have at some point considered adoption. Of that number 4.9% were currently seeking adoptions. That’s 901,000 women looking for babies. By most recent statistics, there are approximately 129,000 children seeking adoption. Now I’m no mathematician, but that’s 772,000 women who want to adopt a child, but will not. It seems that if we killed less of our children, this would not be a problem. Shoot, even if we take the women who were currently seeking adoptions AND had already begun taking steps – 560,000 – there aren’t enough children to go around.

(An aside: someone does not have to adopt in order to speak to all these issues)

RAPE

➡ In a very powerful DVD 22 people are interviewed that either were given birth to by a mother who was raped and chose life over the horrible crime as well as some in the presentation who are mothers talking about why they chose life (here are descriptions of a couple DVDs. I noted on my site as well Rebecca Kiessling’s story of being conceived from a rape:

PUSHING MORALITY

➡ “Do you believe the government should be able to force someone to become a parent?” Well? This is precisely what is being done by the government à as I speak! You would argue that the government should stay out of your affairs when choosing whether to become a parent (i.e., to abort or not), however, you wish the government to be involved in telling the father that he has to become a parent and supply all the necessary needs for that child. Thus, you are forcing your morality on me Susan (as a defined group) and using the power of the Federal Government to boot!!! You cannot say any differently with what I just have shown above. This belief is self-refuting and shows you to-be-the hypocrite, and not me. You see… I am for equal rights under the Constitution. A “right” has no “moderation (see below). You, on the other-hand, are for special rights inferred upon groups of people. ~ See the rest of this conversation HERE.


Discussions and Afterthoughts


I wish to start the conversation off with a quote from our Founding Documents:

The Declaration of Independence: The Declaration of Independence states that our unalienable rights are, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The U.S. Constitution, which is the supreme law of our magnificent nation, reinforces this American creed by the fourteenth amendment; “Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The first unalienable right is life. As a result, the unborn have the right to life. To deny it to them is not only morally wrong, but also anti-American. It is anti-American in the sense that by supporting abortion, one is also going against the Declaration of Independence. Prenatal humans are still human beings since the moment of conception, and so they have the same right to life as the humans that are already born. It is hypocritical that human beings after birth deny the right to prenatal human beings, since the humans after birth get to exercise their right to life. The prenatal human beings have the same right, and so, they should be allowed to exercise their right to life.

The second unalienable right is liberty. Many people that are pro-choice states that it is the freedom of the woman that is pregnant to decide whether to abort the child or not. They arguethat since it is her body, she should have the right to choose. It is contradictory to this idea of liberty, for the unborn child does not have a say in the matter, and as a result, it is against the liberty of the unborn child. The moment a woman becomes pregnant is the moment that the body of the woman is no longer only hers, for there is life in her womb. Another aspect of abortion as a threat to liberty is that the government classifies prenatal humans as not human, just like in the case of slavery, in which slaves were not considered humans, and so the slaver masters that were considered humans were given the right by the government to treat the slaves however they wished. To permit abortion is equivalent to permit slavery, for prenatal humans are still humans. If one understands that slavery was wrong, one must also understand that abortion is wrong.

The third unalienable right is the Pursuit of Happiness. Abortion is against this right as well, for the unborn child was denied the right to pursue his or her happiness. How will he or she be able to pursue happiness if he or she was already murdered by the process of abortion? Prenatal human beings have the right to happiness, just as human beings that are already born do.Another aspect of abortion that threatens this right is that many of women that chose abortion start regretting their decision and as a result, start feeling depressed. These women thought that abortion would help them solve their problem, but instead, it hurts them internally in the long run. In short, abortion is a threat to happiness, and if Americans want to pursue happiness, they must abolish abortion.

The purpose of our government is to secure these three unalienable rights. However, when the government allows for abortion, they are not securing these rights. Roe v. Wade, which was a 1973 Supreme Decision holding that that a state ban on all abortions was unconstitutional, is a decision that is going against these three rights. If one truly understands the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of this country, one will be against abortion, for it threatens the country’s basis. Therefore, the Declaration of Independence is a pro-life document since the moment it became ratified.

(Profile Youth ~ see more at Renew America)

This leads into a conversation with someone from Australia that apparently does not get the idea that the only reason the law need step in in this issue is to protect life… and this is the main point of the above points in the post. Our Constitution says we cannot own another person. So the topic is is the baby in the mother’s womb, human. This is what was said immediately after the post:

“is it a human life” is absolutely NOT the only question in this debate- and this is what I mean about people wanting to make this a black and white issue when it clearly isn’t.

I responded:

(Question after explaining Being)

Besides all the well argued points in the links about medical textbooks, biology, atheists, etc. ….

Another argument I personally like is the argument from “being.” This is a complex issue and is intimately tied up in some forms of the cosmological argument (example: Kalam Cosmological Argument ~ History and Argument).

  • Being. Traditionally the most important philosophical category, the term is derived from the Greek ontos; hence the area of philosophy that deals with it is called ontology. In ancient and medieval thought it was a fundamental category. In Hegel it is the starting point of all the categories. Recognition of the importance of the term as pivotal to all serious philosophical discussion continues today and has been developed by Heidegger and many others. ~ (Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, by Geddes MacGregor)
  • Being is a subject-matter of ontology. According to a long tradition, there are kinds of being and modes of being. The kinds of being may be subdivided in various ways: for instance, into universals and particulars and into concrete beings and abstract beings. Another term for “being” in this sense is “entity” or “thing.” in a second sense, being is what all real entities possess – in other words, existence. Being in this second sense has various modes. Thus the being of concrete physical objects is spatio-temporal while that of abstract mathematical entities like numbers is eternal and non-spatial. Again, the being of some entities (for instance, qualities) is logically dependent upon that of others, whereas the being of substances is logically dependent.
  • Connected with some of these traditional categorical distinctions are certain grammatical distinctions concerning the verb “to be.” the use of “is” as a copula may be interpreted in a variety of ways. “This ring is yellow” features the “is” of attribution, since it ascribes a quality to a substantial particular. “This ring is golden” involves the “is” of constitution, as it states what kind of material that particular is made of. “The ring is my grandmother’s wedding-ring” features the is of identity. Finally, “This object is a ring” involves the “is” of instantiation, since it states what kind of thing the object in question is an instance of. Thus, although being yellow, being golden, being my grandmother’s wedding-ring, and being a ring are all properties of this ring, they are properties of very different natures. Moreover, none of these properties constitutes the being of this ring, in the sense of constitution its existence. “This ring is (exists)” apparently involves a sense of “is” distinct from any which in which “is” functions merely as a copula.
  • What is it to be a being or entity? Here we must distinguish between the question what it is for an entity of any given kind to exist and the question what is the distinguishing feature of entityhood…. In a special, restricted sense the term “being” is commonly used to denote a subject of consciousness (or self), and thus a kind of entity to be contrasted with mere “objects.” Such entities are often supposed to enjoy a special mode of being inasmuch as they are conscious of their own existence and posses a capacity freely to determine its course – a vie elaborated in the existentialist doctrine that, for such entities, “existence precedes essence” (Sartre). ~ (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich)
  • Three features of the argument are central. First, proponents must spell out what it is to be a dependent being; this is done by appealing to what is called the essence/existence distinction. A beings essence is its whatness or nature and its existence is its thatness (that it is). Proponents argue that one cannot move from a finite thing’s essence to its existence. By contemplating Fido’s dogness it does not follow that Fido really exists. If he does exist, being must be given to his essence. ~ (Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity, by J. P. Moreland)

Can you refer to yourself in your mother’s womb without using personal pronouns? Were you less of a person (having “being”) in the

Right out of the box I get this:

So are you also anti-war and anti-death penalty Sean?

The death penalty and war are based on persons who are not innocent. The baby in the womb has not killed anyone.

Clear enough… a thinking person would have connected the idea that the analogy breaks down, and maybe they would get into another topic? Nope.

You don’t think innocent people ever die in wars? You don’t believe innocent people have ever been put to death for crimes they didn’t commit?

I’ll take that as a “no, I am not anti those things”. Ok. So the issue is not whether or not it is a “person” then, you can NOT say that is the only issue.

There were over 20,000 innocent people that were said to die in the days and weeks of D-Day. Are these deaths due to the allies, or Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and the like?

My point has been made.

Someone else chimes in:

No it has not

You can NOT say the issue is ONLY if they are people or not because you are ok with SOME people dying, even some innocent people. You just said it!

The person is missing the idea that the only time our founding documents would [read here, should] kill the innocent fetus is if the mother is going to die, like in a tubal pregnancy where in which the fetus develops in a fallopian tube. LIFE is the only issue in this… in this case the life of the mother is more important than the life of the baby in the womb… LIKE collateral damage in war. Wanting to pursue educational goals without the encumbrance of pregnancy is NOT a LIFE question. Continuing to comment on the previous response: “My point has been made.”

You haven’t made one if you think you have — well — I don’t know whether to laugh or wag-my-head.

REMEMBER THIS NEXT SENTENCE!

Perhaps I should find more intelligent people to discuss this with.

I am willing to have an open discussion- you just want to declare you are always right and proselytize. Pointless.

Going to continue on the point the person thought they made and was done with…

So the allies are to blame for innocent deaths stemming from D-Day?

The person notes they are from Australia:

I don’t know. I have not studies American history, I am not American.

Dodge One

  1. Are you claiming innocent people NEVER die in wars at the hands of the “good guys” (who ever they may be)?
  2. Are you denying that innocent men and women have been put to death for crimes they did not commit?

Please answer these 2 questions directly.

The normal person would know that I already have, but I will try and re-word it, re-explain it for her:

Australia was an Allie. Do you think the innocent people Aussies killed in WWII were their fault or Germany’s, Italy’s, and Japan’s?

Probably Australians, if they fired the guns.

Now please answer my questions.

Sorry, The onus is on the evil guys.

By “onus” I mean the loss of innocent life in a war is the blame of the tyrants, dictators, and persons who think themselves deity.

Should we stop all court proceedings because once-in-a-while cases are decided wrong?

I am just following your logic to its conclusion.

I did not claim that did I? Why can you not answer a direct question? It’s so bloody annoying.

I have.

  • ALL babies are innocent,
  • ALL people killed in wars are not innocent [if they are they arecollateral damage, and the blame is on the tyrants, dictators, and persons who think themselves deity.],
  • nor are ALL the people on death row innocent.

The analogies you are attempting is a non-sequitur.

Keep in mind as the conversation progresses there are multiple points being responded to. So I talked about following ideas to their logical conclusions, which is the first response. The second was my repeating the same thing in a different way which finally clicked as a response to her question.

So we should just lock up all women who try to have abortions, I’m just following your logic to its conclusions” See how that shit gets us nowhere? Do you want a discussion or do you just want to be able to prance around in front of your son and tell him how right you always are?

No, you had not answered it, thank you for finally doing so.

I make the point that her contention about jailing mothers is not the position of ANY pro-lifer:

No, if abortion is made illegal (which will not happen), doctors would lose their license and/or be fined.

I did not deal with this myth, or, how abortion clinics are not run safely “above ground.” Women die in these clinics all the time because of lack of regulation. But the “coat hanger/back-alley” abortion thing is a myth. But here I will post a quick response:

…While preparing the League’s handbook, Sharing the Pro-Life Message, my staff and I searched high and low for evidence of an abortion ever having been performed with a coat hanger. We found none.

That isn’t to say it never happened. We know that women did attempt to do abortions on themselves, using all manner of objects. But I never found any specific evidence of a coat hanger abortion—until now.

Who Gave Her the Idea of Aborting Herself with an Coat Hanger?
What’s unusual about this case of a confirmed coat hanger abortion is that it isn’t one from the archives. It happened in 2009.

I came across the story in an article in Slate on women who decide to perform their own (illegal) abortions, despite the ready availability of legal abortion.

An account of the case says a 19-year-old woman pregnant with twins attempted to abort herself with a coat hanger and ended up in the emergency room. The babies died and the woman required a hysterectomy; she will never bear children….

(Pro Life Action League)

  1. “If abortion is made illegal, tens of thousands of women will again die from back-alley and clothes-hanger abortions.”
    1. For decades prior to its legalization, 90 percent of abortions were done by physicians in their offices, not in back alleys.
    2. It is not true that tens of thousands of women were dying from illegal abortions before abortion was legalized.
    3. The history of abortion in Poland invalidates claims that making abortion illegal would bring harm to women.
    4. Women still die from legal abortions in America.
    5. If abortion became illegal, abortions would be done with medical equipment, not clothes hangers.
    6. We must not legalize procedures that kill the innocent just to make the killing process less hazardous.
    7. The central horror of illegal abortion remains the central horror of legal abortion.
  2. “Abortion is a safe medical procedure—safer than full-term pregnancy and childbirth.”
    1. Abortion is not safer than full-term pregnancy and childbirth.
    2. Though the chances of a woman’s safe abortion are now greater, the number of suffering women is also greater because of the huge increase in abortions.
    3. Even if abortion were safer for the mother than childbirth, it would still remain fatal for the innocent child.
    4. Abortion can produce many serious medical problems.
    5. Abortion significantly raises the rate of breast cancer.
    6. The statistics on abortion complications and risks are often understated due to the inadequate means of gathering data.
    7. The true risks of abortion are rarely explained to women by those who perform abortions.

(Randy Alcorn)

…Continuing with the Convo…

What the left here in the states want to do is not allow the states (per the Constitutional rights states have) to put limits on abortions. For instance:

Seriously, my ONLY point was that you need to stop claiming that the only issue in the debate is “are they human”, because that’s a bullshit argument and it is patently false. There are multiple other issues at hand.

No, are we taking an innocent person’s life, that is the only question.

You have — really — no idea of our political process, the Constitutional protections on life, the debate between left and right, etc… How confident are you in debating these issues?

I don’t need to know your countries specific political process to know my own opinions on the matter, How fucking arrogant are you?!

…Um, yes, our Constitution protects life…

There was some cross-talk, I again get back to the starting exchange:

Can you refer to yourself in your mothers womb without using personal pronouns?

Dodge Two

No. Because like I have already stated I accept that a fetus us a human life. Why can’t you get that?

Is the reader getting that? I am not.

(Oh boy) Can someone who doesn’t accept it as life refer to themselves in their mother’s womb without using personal pronouns?

Dodge Three

I don’t know, you’d have to ask them. Why would I care?

Perhaps I should find more intelligent people to discuss this with.

BAM!

The conversation continues. What amazes me is this statement later in the convo, in part. To my son this was said:

…if you would like to pull back the ego for just a moment and go back to re-read our conversations you would see that it not facts and references I am interested in, because I am not trying to convince you of anything…

Later she said this to me:

Once again Sean, you are arguing against a position you assume I hold rather than one I actually hold- because you have placed all atheists and skeptics in a box and can’t fathom any of them being anywhere outside of that box. Bravo. Try listening to people for a change, it could really take you places in future conversations. Not with me though, I’m done….

To which I responded:

You are arguing -as if- you hold the position you don’t hold… bravo. You brought up positions that mirror the pro-choice challenges. You brought up the death penalty, war… not me. You used bad analogies to try and make a point — I was just fleshing that out.

  • if you would like to pull back the ego for just a moment and go back to re-read our conversations you would see that it not facts and references I am interested in, because I am not trying to convince you of anything. I was trying to have a conversation and get YOUR opinions and see where we could (if at all) come to a mutual agreement with our beliefs.

So why discuss a topic (see the original post) you say you ALREADY hold in order to not convince someone of anything by making arguments that mirror the position you do not hold to find mutual beliefs on something you say we have mutual beliefs on? The post at the top of this strain is the issue, as your death penalty and war analogies made clear.

Matt Walsh Discusses the Latest Roe v Wade News

The Left Temporarily Rediscovers Biology | Ep. 946 (May 6, 2022)

00:00 – Opening
02:02 – The Left Temporarily Rediscovers Biology
14:00 – Trying To Figure Out The Mind Of A Leftist Talking About Abortion
23:54 – Jen Psaki Doesn’t Denounce Doxxing Of Supreme Court Justices
29:33 – The Latest On Johnny Depp / Amber Heard Trial
35:56 – Man Accused Of Attacking Dave Chappelle Won’t Face Felony Charges
39:16 – Forbes Article Claims Trump Wanted To Launch Missiles At Mexico Cartel
41:50 – The Comments Section
48:38 – Huff Post Writer, Kelsey Smoot, Is Canceled

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the Left continues to struggle to find a compromise between their feminist pro-abortion talking points and their trans talking points. Also, the White House refuses to condemn “protesters” who are planning to hunt down conservative Supreme Court Justices and show up at their houses. The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard drama continues, but I think the lesson in this story is one that most people are ignoring. Trump allegedly suggested missile strikes against drug cartels. Sounds like a fine plan to me. Plus, the guy who physically assaulted Dave Chapelle on stage during a comedy show will not face felony charges, despite the fact that he was carrying a deadly weapon at the time. It’s almost like they want this kind of thing to happen more often.

Dems And Media Cheer While Pro-Abortion Terrorists Wreak Havoc | Ep. 947 (May 9, 2022)

00:00 – Opening
01:53 – Dems And Media Cheer While Pro-Abortion Terrorists Wreak Havoc
17:27 – Nobody Wants To Buy A Biography Of Jill Biden
19:30 – Media Propaganda On Abortion Is Egregious
33:23 – ABC Still Pushing Theory That A Conservative Leaked The Roe Decision
37:37 – Teacher On TikTok Explains How She Teaches Gender Ideology
40:05 – Chet Hanks, Founder Of White Boy Summer, Doesn’t Bow To The Mob
42:27 – The Comments Section
49:42 – NPR Abortion “Fact-Checker” Is Canceled

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, pro-abortion militants invaded churches, committed arson, harassed Supreme Court Justices at their homes, and did all of this with the implicit and sometimes explicit support of the most powerful Democrats in the country. We’ll discuss. Also, we’ll debunk some of the most outrageous anti-life propaganda we’ve heard from the media over the past week. Speaking of outrageous, a self-described “queer” teacher explains how she uses board games to sexually indoctrinate her kids. And Chet Hanks has an inspiring message for social justice warriors. Plus, we will fact check the fact checkers at NPR.

Democrats Don’t Actually Want To Debate Abortion (Matt Walsh)

I excerpted the main segment of Matt Walsh’s show dated May 4, 2022. I thought it was good enough to render it and upload it on my RPT-FACEBOOK site. (Here is the full episode from Matt’s RUMBLE)

U N I T E D States – Mark Davis

Mark Davis filled in for Dennis Prager, and when he does, the Constitutional guidelines are typically discussed. (See my previous upload of Mark “Roe v Wade and States Rights Explained“) In this segment[s], he takes a call from a challenger and opines more on his previous statements.

Roe v. Wade Is Bad Law ~ Per Liberal Scholars

The following is from LIFE SITE NEWS site:

Roe v. Wade — which ruled that the U.S. Constitution effectively mandates a nationwide policy of abortion on demand — is one of the most widely criticized Supreme Court decisions in America history.

As Villanova law professor Joseph W. Dellapenna writes,

  • “The opinion [in Roe] is replete with irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, and unsubstantiated assertions. The Court decides matters it disavows any intention of deciding—thereby avoiding any need to defend its conclusion. In the process the opinion simply fails to convince.”

Even many scholars sympathetic to the results of Roe have issued harsh criticisms of its legal reasoning. In the Yale Law Journal, eminent legal scholar John Hart Ely, a supporter of legal abortion, complained that Roe is “bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” He wrote:

  • “What is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded … a protection more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I believe … is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.”

Below are criticisms of Roe from other supporters of legal abortion.

  • “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” — Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor
  • “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose. … Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the … years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.” — Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun
  • “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. … Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” — Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor, former U.S. Solicitor General
  • “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” — Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
  • “Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. … Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
  • “In the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of judges.” — Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor
  • “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy). … [C]lear governing constitutional principles … are not present [in Roe].” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor
  • “[O]verturning [Roe] would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” — Jeffrey Rosen, legal commentator, George Washington University law professor
  • “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” — William Saletan, Slate columnist, writing in Legal Affairs
  • “In the years since the decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky. … [Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution fellow
  • “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” — Michael Kinsley, columnist, writing in the Washington Post.

Roe V. Wade ~ Bad Law

This comes by way of MCCL Blog:


…Even many scholars sympathetic to the results of Roe have issued harsh criticisms of its legal reasoning. In the Yale Law Journal, eminent legal scholar John Hart Ely, a supporter of legal abortion, complained that Roe is “bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” He wrote:

What is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded … a protection more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferrable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I believe … is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.

Below are criticisms of Roe from other supporters of legal abortion.

  • “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” — Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor
  • “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roeborders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose. … Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the … years since Roe‘s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.” — Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun
  • “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. … Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” — Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor, former U.S. Solicitor General
  • “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” — Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
  • Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. … Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
  • “In the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of judges.” — Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor
  • “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy). … [C]lear governing constitutional principles … are not present [in Roe].” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor
  • “[O]verturning [Roe] would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” — Jeffrey Rosen, legal commentator, George Washington University law professor
  • “Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” — William Saletan, Slate columnist, writing in Legal Affairs
  • “In the years since the decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky. … [Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution fellow
  • “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” — Michael Kinsley, columnist, writing in the Washington Post

`The Hammer` Weighs in on DOMA

Krauthammer via The Washington Post:

Under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages even in states that have legalized it. This week, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional.

There are two possible grounds, distinct and in some ways contradictory, for doing so. The curious thing about the court’s DOMA decision is that it contains both rationales.

 The first is federalism. Marriage is the province of the states. Each state decides who is married and who is not. The federal government may not intrude. It must therefore recognize gay marriage where it has been legalized.

If that were the essence of the argument, the court’s 5-4 decision would have been constitutionally conservative, neither nationalizing nor delegitimizing gay marriage. It would allow the issue to evolve over time as the people decide state by state.

It would thus be the antithesis of Roe v. Wade. That judicial fiat swept away every state abortion law that did not conform to the court’s idea of what abortion law should be. Even many liberal supporters of abortion rights have admitted that Roe was an unfortunate way to change the law. It prevented a stable social settlement of an issue, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, that at the time was headed in the reform direction. The Roe ruling removed abortion from the political arena, thus disenfranchising the citizenry, tainting the resolution of the question and leaving us with 40 years of social strife….

BAM!