Posts Tagged ‘liberal’

Gosnell. What does it say about us?

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

Some wonder why I keep swerving back into Gosnell’s trial.  I just find the total disregard for human life in this nation to be astounding.  It is a sign of a decay I don’t think we can escape from.  The more intellectual the person, the more excuses I hear about the right of choice.   Like I’ve said many times before, I’m pretty liberal on the issue of not getting pregnant.  Use a condom, avoid causal sex, take a pill.  That is all okay with me. But once you are pregnant take the time to realize exactly what is happening.

Obama is the living embodiment of the pro-abortion crowd. He doesn’t even realize how brutal he sounds when he says babies are equal to “punishment” when it comes to the lives of young women.  I would love to point out those same young women were at some time somebody else’s “punishment” and that person chose not to avoid it through abortion.

But the key here is the point of view.  Abortion is to the Left like the specter of institutionalized racism is to liberal Blacks.  It actually defines them.So Gosnell was intentionally ignored.  Why?  Because it demanded answers to questions the Left didn’t want to hear.  How did a man, who was a very creepy and unqualified monster, stay in practice for so long?  The answer is he provided a “service” that filled the desires of the progressive Left and feminists in America- he removed “punishment” from the lives of women.  American Thinker has a good piece.

The trial of Kermit Gosnell — the Philadelphia man accused of murdering a female patient and several babies who were “accidentally” born during abortion procedures — has struck a nerve in a numbed America.

Gosnell’s crimes were uncovered quite by accident during a 2010 FBI-DEA raid related to drug violations at Gosnell’s abortion clinic. What the federal agents found was shocking: a beautician assisting on late-term abortions, blood-covered floors, reused disposable medical supplies, body parts stuffed in plastic bags. Whatever you wish to call those to whom Gosnell’s macabre collection once belonged — unviable tissue masses, fetuses, babies — their remains weren’t even accorded the respect a highway-cleanup worker gives road-kill. A grand jury report aptly called Gosnell’s abortion mill a “house of horrors.”

As The Washington Post reported, albeit belatedly, state regulators had ignored complaints about Gosnell, including 46 lawsuits filed against him, and made just five inspections — which are supposed to be conducted annually — since the clinic opened in 1979. The woman whose murder he is being tried for succumbed to lethal doses of pain killers and sedatives. The babies Gosnell is accused of murdering — initial charges included seven newborns, but the judge threw out some of the cases — were not so fortunate as to be sedated to death. To its credit, once the Post got around to covering the case, its reporting included eyewitness testimony — too gruesome, too inhuman, too heartbreaking to include here — describing how horribly these and other newborns died.

That brings us to the raw nerve exposed by the Gosnell case.

For those without strong views on abortion and even for many abortion supporters — “reproductive-rights advocates,” in media parlance — the ghastly details of Gosnell’s multi-million-dollar abortion enterprise are forcing them to consider two truths:

First, the Gosnell case amplifies the mixed messages floating around a mixed-up country. The case provides an unsettling, discomforting reminder that partial-birth and post-birth abortions like those performed by Gosnell cause pain to the baby, put the mother at risk and end a life — just like the 1.2 million pre-birth abortions carried out in America each year. Indeed, if Gosnell’s infant victims had succumbed to Gosnell’s wares before they were born, the crimes Gosnell is being accused of would not be crimes in most cases or in some places. As Michael Geer of the Pennsylvania Family Institute observed, the difference is “a 15-minute or half-hour time frame and 10 inches of physical space.”

Second, this is where the slippery slope ends — this kind of callousness and contempt for life conceived by Roe. How far we have fallen: elected officials rationalizing infanticide; senators quibbling over how much of a child can be born in order to defend partial-birth abortion; major media outlets either ignoring or downplaying a case of premeditated mass-murder; lawyers and advocacy groups trying to explain Gosnell’s actions — my grandfathers’ America would have called murder — on grounds that the women wanted and paid for abortions; a taxpayer-funded organization refusing to say whether a newborn “struggling for life” deserves emergency care, refusing even to notify authorities of what was happening at Gosnell’s office. (As a Philadelphia newspaper reports, “women would sometimes come to Planned Parenthood for services after first visiting Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, and would complain to staff about the conditions there.)

 

How did we get here? Step by step. Steadily, the clarity of when life begins was blurred by agenda-minded judges and shoulder-shrugging doctors; Roe‘s legal loopholes came to rationalize virtually anything, from after-the-fact birth control to partial-birth abortion to post-birth infanticide; and happy-sounding euphemism numbed the nation’s conscience. Each step relied on the previous step for justification, and with each step America slid further down the slippery slope.

Are we all monsters?  Are we as monstrous as the German civilians sixty so years ago?  How is it as family members- knowing now what we know goes on there- we allow our daughters to enter any facility? (Although Crowder over at Hotair has an interesting little video about the “knowing” part.  Seems NOBODY has heard of Gosnell or what he’s done.  The blackout has been very effective, as intended by the MSM.)

The questions won’t go away.  The Left may be able to snip the spines of defenseless newborns in order to “free” their mothers. But they won’t be able to snip the voices of the people who remind them just how far they’ve slipped down the dark path.

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PS. Before you go “He’s down the Nazi comparison thing again.” here’s a little side note about another late term abortion doctor and his need for an incinerator. It seems a dog was found eating a baby at a dump. Did that shock anyone?  Nope, just made the good doctor realize he needed a way to get rid of the bodies- so nobody would be wiser…

Seriously, you complain about me?  Trust me, as humans we just aren’t that bright and tend not to learn lessons well, and we also tend to make the same mistakes again and again.

After Tiller, depicting Carhart   as a caring medical professional, is a great work of propaganda. During the agony of Christin Gilbert in Carhart’s abortion Nebraska facility, the record shows that when the medics were finally called, Carhart’s staff made sure to tell them, as recorded in the 911 call, “Please, please, please! No lights; no sirens.”

And what did the medics discover in our hero’s facility? They reportedly found Christin Gilbert lying on the floor in a pool of blood, fluids, and coffee grounds, “in huge amounts.” But there is more on our hero Mr. Carhart.  The medics reportedly found him on top of Christin.  It was reported that he was “…trying to pump fluids from her stomach.  Paramedics reported that they first thought he was a male nurse who may not have known what he was doing. The paramedics ordered Carhart away from the girl but he did not comply… One report indicated that the paramedics may have had to pull Carhart off her.” The report also said that Christin was bleeding from every orifice of her body. So much for the kind, courteous, and loving Mr. Carhart.

I also recall that, as families and children walked prayerfully back and forth at the Carhart clinic on Halloween Day of 2012, Carhart’s staff came out of the clinic with trick or treat bags and distributed them to the children, some as young as six years old, and in some cases before their parents realized what was happening. The bags were filled not with candy and sweets but full of condoms and contraceptive devices.

But there is more.  Shane and Wilson also forget to mention that Carhart, at one of his facilities in Kansas, maintained an incinerator inside of the abortion facility. There, indoors, he would burn the bodies of his young victims. After our promise that “Never Again” should such horrors be visited upon humanity, we have now tragically rediscovered in the 21st century, with Carhart and company, the smoke stacks of human flesh, billowing the remains of innocent human beings, in our so-called “civilized society.” This is the gut wrenching horror of the daily work of the hero of Sundance.

 

 

 

 

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And suddenly the little leftie let’s the word “colllective” go, but holds onto the principle. They aren’t your kids.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

Boy did she get in trouble for this! Even Bob Beckel as FOX’s “The Five” said he didn’t have a dump truck big enough to dig out from under it.  The word he thought used incorrectly here was “collective.”  Ya’ think!  But Melissa tried to double down with a better explanation. This time not emphasizing the collective.

 

—When the flood of vitriolic responses to the ad began, my first reaction was relief. I had spent the entire day grading papers and was relieved that since these children were not my responsibility, I could simply mail the students’ papers to their moms and dads to grade! But of course, that is a ridiculous notion. As a teacher, I have unique responsibilities to the students in my classroom at Tulane University, and I embrace those responsibilities. It is why I love my job.

Then I started asking myself where did I learn this lesson about our collective responsibility to children. So many answers quickly became evident.

I learned it from my mother who, long after her own kids were teens, volunteered on the non profit boards of day care centers that served under-resourced children.

I learned it from my father who, despite a demanding career and a large family of his own, always coached boys’ basketball teams in our town.

I learned it from my third-grade public school teacher, who gave me creative extra work and opened up her classroom to me after school so that I wouldn’t get bored and get in trouble.

I learned it from the men who volunteered as crossing  guards in my neighborhood even if they don’t have kids in the schools.

I learned it from the conservative, Republican moms at my daughter’s elementary school, who gave her a ride home every day while I was recovering from surgery.

 

Now Melissa, who lives in a bubble, still doesn’t get the real issue here. Nobody said the community or neighborhood doesn’t hold some kind influence over the kids, what we are saying is it isn’t their responsibility.  The responsibility, and thus the accountability, solely rests with the parents. That is the trouble with our society today, we find excuses for our kids’ behavior outside our own failings.  In some cases we are right. There is only so much a parent can do and that parent should have the surrounding community as a support mechanism. But as I said in an earlier post, if the parent is trying to do the right thing and the society is becoming unhinged who is really at fault?  And if Melissa is correct and the community should be part of the process, where is the voice and influence of the parent in that process.  This is where Melissa’s argument falls apart. She isn’t saying the community is a support role, she is saying the “collective” controls the process.

For example, I don’t want my kids exposed to drugs, early sexual experiences or dysfunctional educational curriculum as I find it dangerous to their minds and health.  So, as a parent, do I get to tell the “collective” they are in error and demand they fix it?  Does the collective have a responsibility to support me and my set of rules and ethical standards?  If not, then the collective isn’t really a positive part of my kids’ upbringing is it? I don’t want LGBT organizations holding classes with my kids.  Don’t want it, don’t need it, don’t think kids should be exposed. So can I tell them not to show up? To stay away?  Or am I “offending the collective”?

When I was working, I had a woman with a teenage lowlife as a son call me. The kid was screwing up and committing crime all the time. A real pain.  She was very upset and yelled. “It’s your fault he’s that way!” (Seriously)  I asked her why she felt the way she did.  She said, “He’s bored because you don’t have enough stuff for him to do.”  What she meant was we, the police and government, didn’t have enough programs to keep her kid busy so he turned to a life of crime.  Yeh, I know, hurts the head a little.  I pointed out to her that one he’s not my responsibility. The way I put it was “Let me ask you a question. When you were conceiving the baby, did you look up and see me?  If not, then he’s not my responsibility.  Further, if he is bored I can suggest he go down the street and mow the elderly neighbor’s lawn, or wash her car or join a club.  There are many things he can do other than steal cars.”

In America, parents are asked to be responsible and accountable for their children, sometimes to the point where some governments will actually arrest the parent for the acts of a child.  However, the government often supports acts and behavior- by the child and the community- that are harmful to the child. A recent example is the judge’s ruling on the Plan B pill.

What drive people of common sense like me crazy is the conflicting messages.  We are supposed to be responsible for our kids.  The community is supposed to support our effort to make our kids the best they can be. WE know our kids better than anyone else.  We know what is best for our kids.  But the community, the “collective” if you will, disputes that principle.  What they say is THEY know what is best for our kids, in their worldview, and we only need to accept that fact.  Now if the plans screws up and say for example our nation suffers seventy-plus something percent in unwed mothers in certain cultures, a massive welfare state, ignorant children as a result of  a horrifying inept public education curriculum, it is somehow OUR fault…again.

Boy Scouts of the sixties (when I grew up) is an example of how a “collective” supports the parents. We were taught honesty, fairness, hard work, ethics and a belief in God. All the things that my parents believed in.  Those principles stayed with me and made me a good person.  THAT is how collectives should work.

So do you understand how that makes normal people actually hate people like Melissa.  Not because she is a bad person or that her intentions are evil, but that she’s an idiot that demands we follow her.  And if we don’t, WE are the bad guys and the racists and the fools.

Then to make it worse, we allow people like her to teach our kids, which may not make us bad people, but it does certainly make us fools after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What happens when you bad mouth a rich guy. He might just plunk down money to prove you an idiot.

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Trust me, it is a dream of mine to get enough cash together to joust at windmills of corruption and complacency.  This guy has the cash and decided he had enough of the snubbing arrogant attitude of a university president.  Frankly, after reading the article I can’t see why anyone would send their kid there.  Diversity is not a religion, regardless of how many people worship it- on the parent’s dime.

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—It sounds like the setup for a bad joke: What did the Wall Street type say to the college president on the golf course? Well, we don’t know exactly—but it has launched a saga with weighty implications for American intellectual and civic life.

Here’s what we do know: One day in the summer of 2010, Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, a respected liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, met investor and philanthropist Thomas Klingenstein for a round of golf about an hour north of campus. College presidents spend many of their waking hours talking to potential donors. In this case, the two men spoke about college life—especially “diversity”—and the conversation made such an impression on President Mills that he cited it weeks later in his convocation address to Bowdoin’s freshman class. That’s where the dispute begins.

In his address, President Mills described the golf outing and said he had been interrupted in the middle of a swing by a fellow golfer’s announcement: “I would never support Bowdoin—you are a ridiculous liberal school that brings all the wrong students to campus for all the wrong reasons,” said the other golfer, in Mr. Mills’s telling. During Mr. Mills’s next swing, he recalled, the man blasted Bowdoin’s “misplaced and misguided diversity efforts.” At the end of the round, the college president told the students, “I walked off the course in despair.”

Word of the speech soon got to Mr. Klingenstein. Even though he hadn’t been named in the Mills account, Mr. Klingenstein took to the pages of the Claremont Review of Books to call it nonsense: “He didn’t like my views, so he turned me into a backswing interrupting, Bowdoin-hating boor who wants to return to the segregated days of Jim Crow.”

The real story, wrote Mr. Klingenstein, was that “I explained my disapproval of ‘diversity’ as it generally has been implemented on college campuses: too much celebration of racial and ethnic difference,” coupled with “not enough celebration of our common American identity.”

For this, wrote Mr. Klingenstein, Bowdoin’s president insinuated that he was a racist. And President Mills did so, moreover, in an address that purported to stress the need for respecting the opinions of others across the political spectrum. “We are, in the main, a place of liberal political persuasion,” he told the students, but “we must be willing to entertain diverse perspectives throughout our community. . . . Diversity of ideas at all levels of the college is crucial for our credibility and for our educational mission.” Wrote Mr. Klingenstein: “Would it be uncharitable to suggest that, in a speech calling for more sensitivity to conservative views, he might have shown some?”

After the essay appeared, President Mills stood by his version of events. A few months later, Mr. Klingenstein decided to do something surprising: He commissioned researchers to examine Bowdoin’s commitment to intellectual diversity, rigorous academics and civic identity. This week, some 18 months and hundreds of pages of documentation later, the project is complete. Its picture of Bowdoin isn’t pretty.

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“isn’t pretty” is an understatement.  Read some of what you parents are paying for.

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—The school’s ideological pillars would likely be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to American higher education lately. There’s the obsession with race, class, gender and sexuality as the essential forces of history and markers of political identity. There’s the dedication to “sustainability,” or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to “global citizenship,” or loving all countries except one’s own.

The Klingenstein report nicely captures the illiberal or fallacious aspects of this campus doctrine, but the paper’s true contribution is in recording some of its absurd manifestations at Bowdoin. For example, the college has “no curricular requirements that center on the American founding or the history of the nation.” Even history majors aren’t required to take a single course in American history. In the History Department, no course is devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history—the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender or sexuality.

One of the few requirements is that Bowdoin students take a yearlong freshman seminar. Some of the 37 seminars offered this year: “Affirmative Action and U.S. Society,” “Fictions of Freedom,” “Racism,” “Queer Gardens” (which “examines the work of gay and lesbian gardeners and traces how marginal identities find expression in specific garden spaces”), “Sexual Life of Colonialism” and “Modern Western Prostitutes.”

Regarding Bowdoin professors, the report estimates that “four or five out of approximately 182 full-time faculty members might be described as politically conservative.” In the 2012 election cycle, 100% of faculty donations went to President Obama. Not that any of this matters if you have ever asked around the faculty lounge.

“A political imbalance [among faculty] was no more significant than having an imbalance between Red Sox and Yankee fans,” sniffed Henry C.W. Laurence, a Bowdoin professor of government, in 2004. He added that the suggestion that liberal professors cannot fairly reflect conservative views in classroom discussions is “intellectually bankrupt, professionally insulting and, fortunately, wildly inaccurate.”

Perhaps so. But he’d have a stronger case if, for example, his colleague Marc Hetherington hadn’t written the same year in Bowdoin’s newspaper that liberal professors outnumber conservatives because conservatives don’t “place the same emphasis on the accumulation of knowledge that liberals do.”

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You want to make a change? Don’t send you kids to a liberal arts college.  Send them to some place like UF in Florida or Auburn in Alabama.  Sure, they have their lefties there, just not as  badly twisted as some.  Further, it would take very little time for the other universities to realize they are going under if they stay the course and make changes.  Trust me, given the choice between being unemployed liberal president and an employed “moderate” one, the guy will kick his far left wing teachers out the door.

We’ve learned over and over there is one thing for sure about liberals- they like cash and they lack loyalty.

Just saying…

 

 

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