Ask me anything

Ask me anything

Things I Love

• My apartment is HUGE. I know I’m completely deluded about the proper size of apartments due to my exposure to housing in NYC, but still.  HUGE!  I’m not even unpacked right now.  There are boxes and junk strewn throughout every room, but there is still plenty of space for me to perform cartwheels and make carpet angels in my living room.  Yeah.  ALSO, my bedroom has a garden tub in it!  So OSSUM!
• Everything is so cheap here! Again, my brain is addled by NYC living.  But still. I am LOVING the cost of living here.
• My grocery store is HUGE and OSSUM. They had all the crazy hippie food I wanted to buy including some pretty good chocolate.

Things I Hate

• Grocery stores can’t sell wine.  Beer cannot be sold in the same store as Wine or Liquor.  Liquor stores are closed on federal holidays.  I thought Georgia’s blue laws were annoying, but Tennessee’s outdo them if only by being a confusing maze of unintelligible rules and regulations.
• PEOPLE CANNOT DRIVE!
  • Listen to me, Nashville: “Yield” and “Stop” are not synonyms. Those signs aren’t even close to being the same thing.  So, please desist with the stopping at yield signs and stop rolling  through blowing through stop signs!!
  • Why do you have your hazard lights on when it rains?  Those lights are intended to be an indication that you have a problem with your vehicle.  It’s not an indication that you find the weather less than pleasant.

In general, Nashville is rocking.  I miss my friends and I miss NYC, but I’m trying to focus on this new, exciting adventure in a new place.

As such, I am very, very happy to announce the publication of a paper by Diana Hsieh and Ari Armstrong on the topic.

From www.seculargovernment.us/a62.shtml:

The Coalition for Secular Government is pleased to announce the release of its policy paper on the “personhood” movement by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh (Ph.D): The ‘Personhood’ Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception (PDF or HTML).

The ‘Personhood’ Movement Is Anti-Life
Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception

by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh, Ph.D.

A policy paper written for the Coalition for Secular Government (www.SecularGovernment.us)

Published on August 31, 2010

Formats: HTML or PDF

Contents

• Introduction
• The ‘Personhood’ Movement
  • “Personhood” and the Abortion Debate
  • Colorado Campaigns
  • Campaigns in Other States
• The Destructive Effects of ‘Personhood’
  • A Legal Quagmire
  • Harsh Legal Penalties
  • Bans of Elective Abortions
  • Abortions to Protect a Woman’s Health
  • Abortions for Rape, Incest, and Fetal Deformity
  • Bans of Common Birth Control Methods
  • Bans of Common Fertility Treatments
  • Bans of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research
  • Amendment 62 Is Anti-Life
• Individual Rights and Abortion
  • The Compromise of Roe v. Wade
  • Today’s “Pro-Choice” Rhetoric
  • The Core Arguments for “Personhood” Laws
  • Rights in Pregnancy
• The Morality of Abortion
• ‘Personhood’ and the Separation of Church and State
• Amendment 62 Is Not a ‘Message’
• Notes

From the Introduction

Amendment 62, set to appear on Colorado’s 2010 ballot, seeks to legally establish personhood from the moment of conception, granting a fertilized egg (or zygote) full legal rights in the state’s constitution. Following in the footsteps of 2008’s Amendment 48, Amendment 62 is the spearhead of a national campaign to outlaw abortion and other practices that could harm a zygote, embryo, or fetus.

If fully implemented, Amendment 62 would profoundly and adversely impact the lives of sexually-active couples, couples seeking children, pregnant women and their partners, doctors, and medical researchers. It would subject them to severe legal restrictions, police controls, and in many cases protracted court battles and criminal punishments.

Amendment 62 would outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, terminally deformed fetuses, and danger to the woman’s health. It would prohibit doctors from performing abortions except perhaps in some cases to save the life of the woman, thereby endangering the lives and health of many women. In conjunction with existing statutes, Amendment 62 would subject women and their doctors to first-degree murder charges for willfully terminating a pregnancy, with the required punishment of life in prison or the death penalty.

The impact of Amendment 62 would extend far beyond abortion into the personal corners of every couple’s reproductive life. It would outlaw many forms of birth control, including the pill, IUD, and “morning after” drugs. It would require criminal investigation of any miscarriages deemed suspicious. It would ban potentially life-saving embryonic stem-cell research and common fertility treatments.

Amendment 62 rests on the absurd premise that a newly fertilized zygote is a full human person with an absolute right to biological life-support from a woman–regardless of her wishes and whatever the cost to her. The biological facts of pregnancy, in conjunction with an objective theory of rights, support a different view, namely that personhood and rights begin at birth. Colorado law should reflect those facts, not the Bible verses so often quoted (and creatively interpreted) by advocates of Amendment 62 and other “personhood” measures.

About the Authors

Ari Armstrong publishes Free Colorado and co-authors a column for Western Colorado’s Grand Junction Free Press. He is the author of Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles, a book exploring the heroic fight for life-promoting values in the Potter novels.

Diana Hsieh founded the Coalition for Secular Government in 2008. She earned her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is currently working on a book on Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, based on her series of podcasts at ExploreAtlasShrugged.com. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

Read The ‘Personhood’ Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception (PDF or HTML).

For my birthday and my move, I decided to fly Mr. Zbornak He-Who-Has-Yet-To-Be-Named to NYC.  So, I went to Expedia and bought a ticket on US Airways.  He was supposed to arrive this morning at 7:43.  I then arranged to have a car pick him up and bring him to my apartment.  Fancy, right?

I have a lot of sympathy for airlines. The craziest, rudest, most impatient, most obnoxious people in the world get on airplanes every day along with everyone else.  Airlines have to balance not only the very reasonable concerns of their other passengers, but they have to contend with those maniacs, federal regulations, and the weather.  It’s no easy job. I understand and I am usually a patient, kind, gentle customer as a result.

But as a customer I expect a  basic level of service and respect.

Well, unfortunately, his plane broke down this morning.  They sat in the plane for nearly an hour before they were let off.  US Airways tried to arrange another plane, but they failed.  So, they started trying to get people on other flights and they even chartered a bus to get people to NYC.

Unfortunately, I have to pay for the car and driver even if he doesn’t show up.

So, I called US Airways in hopes of getting some sort of refund or comp or something due to the hassle and expense that their failure has cost me.  Did I mention it’s my birthday?  Yeah, this is all unfolding while I type this.

So, I reached a customer service lady and our conversation went a little like this:

Her: How may I help you?

Me: Yes, I’m calling for a refund or something because a flight I booked was cancelled due to some sort of mechanical problem.

Her: What’s your last name?

Me: My last name or the passenger’s last name? I bought this for a friend.

Her: (annoyed) OK. Sir. I need the passenger’s last name.

Me: OK. The passenger’s last name is Zbornak.

Her: Let’s seeee…  Yes, here it is. Hmmm…  Well, I don’t know why you would call for a refund on a non-refundable, non-transferable ticket, but let me see what I can find.

Me: (annoyed) You don’t have to give me a refund. I’m calling because in addition to the hassle and inconvenience US Airways has caused me, you’ve also cost me $XXX for a car and driver I had arranged and the failure was mechanical.  So, I am calling for some sort of restitution here.

Her: (Ignoring me and adopting a condescending tone) Uh huh, so, is he still going to DC?

Me: He was never going to DC. He’s coming to New York.  Right now he’s waiting for a bus.

Her: But this says he’s going from San Francisco to Philly to DC to New York.

Me: No, he’s going San Francisco to Philly to New York.  And right now he’s grounded in Philly waiting on a bus.

Her: (very annoyed) So, is he using the second half of the trip?

Me: He wants to, but your plane is broken and now the second half of the trip is a mess.  That’s what I’m calling you to make right for me.

Her: (condescending) OK. Well, I can’t do anything for you.  Customer Service handles…

Let me stop there.  The rest of the conversation was her continuing to be condescending, annoyed, and just an all-around bitch trying to pass the buck to someone else and blame me for the problem. I just agreed to call back later once they’ve managed to get him to NYC and stopped screwing everything up.

Newsflash: if you talk to customers YOU are customer service.

Also, you stupid, unmitigated afterbirth of troll, I called you because that’s what the US Airways website instructed me to do for a refund.  So, stop treating me like an idiot for not properly navigating the phone maze and bureaucracy of US Airways.

So, apparently, they think he is both flying to DC and taking this charter bus at the same time.  Right now he’s waiting for his bags at baggage claim so he can get on the bus.  We can only hope his bags didn’t get put on that plane to DC.

Once I’ve calmed down and can refrain from leveling all the new curse words I learned during my time in NYC I’m going to call back and see if they can refrain from annoying me further.

Get it here http://blog.shealevy.com/2010/09/02/fresh-hot-objectivist-roundup/ and tell all your friends, co-workers, and sexual partners!

So, now you know.

NEXT YEAR, SOMEONE WILL PAY DEARLY!

Ask me anything

I mean, we have a constitution which was written with Enlightenment principles in mind. Principles such as one’s right to one’s conscience and right to one’s property; individual rights.

But the people who so frequently complain about “activist judges” are also people who argue that we should have “rule of law” and that we should refer to the Constitution of the US to make decisions.

What I find so ironic about that line of argumentation is that while they argue against “activist judges” they also argue that America is a “Christian Nation” and that we should refer to the Bible as some sort of supplemental materials for our laws.

Basically, these people what to have their cake and eat it, too.

But I’m not particularly ired by their complaints. Liberals and Conservatives both argue for interpreting the Constitution in their favor and they use lots of non-rational arguments to that end. What I find galling is that so few of them argue that way because they’ve stopped even for a second to ask: What is the best form of government for human beings?

Basically, I see the whole discussion as a lot of argument from authority/tradition/mob. And I remain unimpressed.

Ask me anything

I’ll let you read it on your own, but I want to call out two remarks she made:

Ayn Rand’s “depiction of sex is anything but a “release of biological desire” between sexually marketable equals.”

and

“It has never been quite clear to me why in Rand’s world the most desirable men don’t sleep with other achieving men (even though Rand would be appalled by the idea)”

The first statement seems innocuous and accurate enough on the surface, I guess.  My understanding of Objectivism and the power of my own eyes, though, leads me to be confused about Gallagher’s apparent disagreement with that view.

The phrase “sexually marketable equals” is confusing, but I want to point something out to you that make shock and disturb you.  (I was shocked and disturbed when I found out.)  Please take a seat if you are not already so positioned.

Ready?

Ok. So: Men have penises and women have vaginas.  And by “vagina” I mean that they don’t have penises.  Also, women have squishy parts affixed to their torso called “breasts” and those organs are usually very apparent when you observe them next to males.

These facts and others less apparent lead me to this conclusion: Men and Women are not sexually interchangeable creatures. I know that if you swapped my beau’s brain into a woman’s body I would be quite upset and I would not be inclined to have sex with him.  I feel confident that Ms. Gallagher would agree with me here.

So, Ayn Rand was unmistakably clear about the roles of men and women in sex and, consonant with the physical reality that is the difference between men and women, those roles are different but compatible.  Ms. Gallagher’s summary of those roles is reasonably good for a non-Objectivist, I think.

I also think that in this Post Brown vs. The Board of Education world, it is easy to understand why she would leap to the conclusion that Rand’s view of men and women are not “equal” given the fact that Ayn Rand insists on pointing out that they are different from one another.

But if you ask me whether or not I like men or women more, sexually, I will consistently tell you that I like men.  Does that not state clearly that I think men are more valuable than women in a sexual context? I sure hope it does. I don’t think it would help anyone to be confused on that point.  Maggie is a straight woman, so she must hold similar values.

Holding those values and understanding the source of those values is not a claim to any objective superiority, though.  Rand didn’t think women were sexually inferior to men.  She thought they were sexually compatible with (straight) men by virtue of their physical nature as women.

So, the underlying premise that the hateful, mistaken, and rude Ms. Gallagher is operating under is that of an inapt sexual egalitarianism.

That leads me to her second comment.

When I first discovered Ayn Rand’s work, I was also confused about why the men in her books didn’t have sex with other men because they were so amazing and handsome and strong and smart and cool and everything good.

Well, the reason is simple: they’re men.

Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged is NOT “just, you know, a pretty competent railroad executive — for a woman.” The novel is eleventy million pages of examples of how Dagny Taggart is the most competent railroad executive in existence.  There is no railroad executive in the book better than her.  Sure, she has equals as a businessperson in other industries, but when it comes to running a railroad there is not a man alive in Atlas Shrugged who could hold a candle to her.

Also, Dagny Taggart is smart.  She’s smarter and more mentally capable than a good number of the men in the book.  I’d say the only man in the book who could be argued to be smarter than she is is John Galt, actually.  She seems clearly on par with D’Anconia and Rearden in the brains department.

Ayn Rand took care to show us Dagny in a number of contexts.  She talks to scientists. She talks to presidents. She works with other business executives.  She talks to composers.  She flies a damn plane into the mountains by herself!  She does all kinds of things that show that Dagny Taggart is as good, if not better, than most of the men you see in the novel.

But she is a woman.  And there is only one context in which her being a woman has any direct importance: sex.

Rand’s view of men and women in sex is perhaps not readily apparent to the modern eye.  If you hold that men and women are inherently equal, they’re also infinitely interchangeable in every single way, then you certainly will not be able to comprehend why Rand didn’t have Rearden and D’Anconia in a sweaty, rough-and-tumble embrace, each struggling to overpower the other by taking him to ever higher levels of pleasure until one of them submits and loses himself completely to the erotic prowess of his partner and becomes the quivering, panting instrument of his satisfaction– even though I TOTALLY wanted that to happen, like, several times.

That’s where the contradiction in Gallagher’s view is.  On one hand, she scorns Rand for pointing out that men and women are different biologically and that means they hold different sexual values because, in Gallagher’s eyes, that means that men are superior to women and we ought to see men and women as undifferentiated equals in sex as well as other contexts.  But on the other hand she argues that men and women are not interchangeable — which is what we would necessarily conclude if we held that men and women were undifferentiated equals — when it comes to sex. Why? Because, according to Gallagher, they’re different biologically and that should mean they hold different values sexually and that’s why men should only marry women.

The problem with Gallagher’s view — and that of so many others today — is that there is some sort of inability to differentiate between the relevant facts in particular contexts.  When it comes to sex, the difference between men and women are really, really important.  Elsewhere, those differences are not important at all even if they do affect how the individual behaves within those contexts. But Gallagher doesn’t seem to know why and rejects Rand’s explanation out of hand because it doesn’t jive with her view of men and woman in other contexts, like business.

Gallagher is also rabidly, ignorantly, hatefully, and stupidly opposed to gay marriage.  Why?  Because contrary to her views on “equality in sexual marketing” (Seriously, what does that even mean?) she contends that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

There’s an ironic inversion there.  When it comes to sex, Gallagher seems to want to say that men and women are equals, but when it comes to politics, marriage as seen by the government, she vehemently holds that men and women are not equals.

Note: Gallagher is certainly aware of the physical differences between men and women, but she refuses to draw any conclusions about how those concrete differences might affect behavior and sexual values.  So, I’m forced to say that she sees men and women as equals but since she offers no indication of what it means in reality to be “equal” it remains a bland, meaningless concept in her use of the term. If she did offer up any such indications, it would draw her closer toward Rand’s view of men and women in sex.  My use of the term “equal” in the second part of the above statement refers to civil rights and recognition by the government in defense of their individual rights.

If men and women were equal in the eyes of the government — where the concrete difference between their sexes are irrelevant — then they would be able to marry either other men or other women as they may so choose.

That’s the beauty of Rand’s view.  Ayn Rand held that men and women are equals in every way — in sex they are different, but complementary elements to one another in very particular ways, but still “equal” in the metaphysical sense of the term. Therefore, Rand also held that they should be equals in the eyes of the law, each having the same rights and are entitled to the same level of defense from the government.  She held that for both gay and straight people as well.

Maggie Gallagher, unfortunately, is confused and, as a result, sexist.

Via Swiss Miss