Is there a debate over whether the end is near for the theory that the End is Near?

Al Gore, arguing that there's no more debate over whether the End Is Near:

“I want to be polite to you,” Mr. Gore responded [to a Danish environmentalist who disputes his global warming alarmism]. But, no. “The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue,” he said. “It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake,” he added.

There should be no more debate over global warming. That undoubtedly means that there is no more debate about whether there is no more debate about global warming.

This is typical of the ruling Liberal Authoritarianism: liberal views simply must be accepted. We're just supposed to take our medicine and not complain. This is what James Kalb, in his book The Tyranny of Liberalism, calls "forced consent."

And by the way, where are the Darwinists to give Gore a long, boring, preachy lecture on how one should use the word "theory"?

John Derbyshire strikes again--this time on abortion

NOTE: This post has been moved back to the top because of the ongoing discussion in the comments section.

John Derbyshire once again admits of a subject he knows nothing about that he knows nothing about it--and then goes on to talk about it authoritatively. This is the man who reviewed Ben Stein's movie on Intelligent Design without actually seeing it--a feat that he apparently felt comfortable performing on the movie made by someone he claimed to know despite the fact that he had never met him.

This is an approach he also used on John Milton's birthday to discuss Paradise Lost, which he admitted he didn't actually read.

This time Derbyshire directs his lack of knowledge toward the abortion issue. "The whole 'right to life' business is over my head," he says today on his blog Secular Right. "I don't even know what it means," a judgment he then goes on to demonstrate in the rest of his post.

If I fall down the basement steps and break my neck tomorrow, what happened to my “right to life”? I do of course have the legal right to expect that, if somebody wilfully kills me, he will be punished (by the death penalty, if it’s up to me — no inconsistency here!) I’d extend the same privilege to a new-born baby. Back beyond that — five minutes, or five months before the baby is born — the mother is rather intimately involved (and the father somewhat less so), and you are in a different situation.

The assumption, of course, is that the mother is not "rather intimately involved" after the baby is born--the point at which Derbyshire thinks it should be protected with the full force of the law, as opposed to "five minutes" before, at which point it's fair game. Exactly what is the difference other than geographical location? And why should that matter?

I have no patience with the angels-on-pin-heads logic-chopping about “when life begins.”

Well, that's pretty obvious. In fact, Derbyshire seems not to understand the difference between the chopping of logic and the simple application of it--something else that seems to be over his head.

Without a moral metaphysic and a belief in ensoulment, neither of which I have, it’s all hot air.

As one of the commenters on the post observed, if he doesn't believe in ensoulment, then why should he care about the life of a baby after it's born any more than he does before it is born?

The killing of embryos and fetuses is intrinsically disturbing and disgusting to normal people, including me. As with other such acts — the eating of corpses, for example — an organized society needs some consensus, embodied in law, about what may and may not be done; though also (I’d argue) an understanding that that consensus is founded on nothing but those widespread common emotions — disturbance and disgust. I’d guess that most people in today’s U.S.A. would settle for unconditional abortion up to 12 weeks, conditional abortion up to 20, severely conditional thereafter. Whatever the consensus is, let’s settle on it and enforce the laws.

How can you view the killing of embryos and fetuses "intrinically" disturbing and disgusting to people, unless you have a "moral metaphysic"? And why, outside of some moral metaphysic, can you rationally prefer public consensus as the manner in which this issue should be resolved over any other resolution to the problem? Maybe if you have abandoned the application of reason to something, that's the only thing left.

Worthy and admirable civilizations can co-exist with all sorts of attitudes to fetuses, and even to newborns. The ancient Athenians exposed unwanted babies on the Acropolis. Were they not civilized? Abortion has been a human universal everywhere, among civilizations high and low, and also among primitives.

So has slavery.

And what do the right-to-lifers want? A total nationwide ban on all abortions, at any time? Yes, that seems to be what they want. Do they really imagine that’s going to happen? What a waste of political energy!

Yes, I'm sure the abolitionists could have been accused at some points of being in the same position.

...as an intellectual construct, [the right to life argument] loses most of its point once you drop ensoulment.

Yup. And so does any acknowledgment of human rights.

I wish, though, that some of the time and energy that conservatives give to thinking about fetuses could be diverted to real problems of governance.

And why are these "real problems of governance" any more amenable to rational treatment than the issue of abortion?

Yes, I know the arguments to the contrary. I never heard a non-believer make them, though.

It's fairly evident that he doesn't know the arguments to the contrary, and what difference would it make if no non-believers make such arguments? And anyway, non-believers have made these arguments. Has he really never heard of Nat Hentoff?

Of course not--one of the many pieces of evidence that this issue is over Derbyshire's head.

Don't give me no hand me down coats

Jake is slimming down, which means it is now technically inaccurate to call him a "big fat liar." His detractors will now have to find another, more accurate term--but it's nice that they'll only have to change two of the three words.

I’m down to a size 36 suit jacket. From a 48. Anyone need some fancy jackets that are barely worn? Maybe Martin Cothran could use them for some sort of Family Foundation ritual?

I can't think of any immediate need I have in any of my rituals for Jake's hand-me-downs, but I am out of pins for my Jake doll. Maybe he could send me some of those.

Disagreement as hatred

Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulliten, a gay rights blog, tries to answer the question why so many gays think that Christians hate them: "Maybe because this is the most visible face of Christianity."

And what is visible? Disagreement. That is all that is necessary to be charged with hate by gay rights groups. Merely dissenting from a gay rights political position is taken as conclusive evidence that you hate gays. This is the level of political maturity these groups display.

But perhaps James Kalb has a better explanation of this and other Orwellian methods of liberalism in his new book The Tyranny of Liberalism:

Words take on new meanings: "hatred" comes to include opposition to liberal initiatives, while "inclusiveness" requires non-liberals to abandon their principles and even identity. "Tolerance" treats objections to liberalism as attacks on neutrality that are oppressive simply by being made. "Diversity" means thought control, "openness" means shutting the door to recognition of differences, and "getting government out of our bedrooms" means sexual harassment law, training children to use condoms, and insisting that homosexuality be treated as equivalent to heterosexuality.

Obama vs. Limbaugh: Why Rush wins and Obama loses

I've been trying to figure out whether the Obama administration's strategy of getting into what I think could fairly be called a "pissing match" is good for the administration or not. I heard a commentator today say that it was good both for the White House and for Limbaugh--for different reasons.

I'm not so sure.

And anyway there are three parties involved here not just two: the Obama administration, Rush Limbaugh, and the Republican Party.

For Limbaugh there are clear benefits: it improves his ratings. Being basically a radio entertainer, that meets his needs. For the Republican Party there are some clear disadvantages, especially for those trying to broaden the party's appeal beyond the conservative base. But those disadvantages are limited, since most politics in this country remains local and what Rush says helps or hurts the national Party. But no one elects a national party.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, although it thinks it is being clever by identifying the Republicans with Limbaugh (an identification that, if the strategy worked, would be forotten by the next election), risks demeaning itself. Rush only feels more important (and rightly so) when the office of the President of the United States spends time and resources calling attention to him.

But does the Obama administration help itself in the eyes of the public by using the credibility of the Presidential Office arguing publicly with a radio entertainer?

I don't think so.

Lifting the ban on embryonic stem cells: Why let ethics stand in the way of science?

Obama vowed today that science policy would no longer be determined by politics, at which point he fulfilled a campaign promise by lifting of the ban on federally funding for embryonic stem cells by signing an executive order.

During the signing ceremony, the President paid tribute to the late actor Christopher Reeve, whose fall off of a horse could, apparently, have been prevented by cannibalizing human embryos.

Obama took several pot shots at Bush administration science policies, which took the misguided view that science should be held to ethical standards protecting the integrity of human life. "It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion," he said of his decision, "and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient especially when it's inconvenient."

Dr. Mengele, call your office.

Monday Evening Department of Jake Gets it Wrong Again

It's the strangest thing. Every time Jake at Page One Kentucky links to my blog, it shows up as a link at the bottom of my posts labeled "an informed, savvy take on media and politics in Kentucky," but every time I click on it, I get an ill-informed rant which inevitably involves accusing someone of being a closet homosexual.

"[A]ccording to most everyone we speak with in the State House," says the informed, savvy Jake, "Greg Stumbo IS, indeed, the stumbling block to the baby daddy bill [HB 28]."

I wonder if these are the same informants who told Jake that Stumbo WAS NOT, indeed, going to win the House Speaker's race. My theory is that Jake's informants are double agents trying to embarrass him.

You'd think he'd learn.

Is there a Secret Plot to Pass SB 68?

The Kentucky Equality Federation, a state gay rights group, criticizes the Senate Judiciary Committee for hearing Senate Bill 68 in an impromptu meeting last Friday:

Senate Bill 68 - We all knew it would pass the Senate Committee if it came to a vote. We also know it can pass the Senate without any problem. It passed unanimously in Committee today, with only the Family Foundation of Kentucky testifying in support of it; no one was present to oppose it. Why? Apparently this was a secret meeting, or one called at the last minute from the way I understand it.

The truth is that even if representatives from Kentucky Equality Federation or any other LGBTI organization had been present, we likely would not have been allowed to speak. I've been at the Capitol before when management of Kentucky Fairness Alliance wanted to testify about some anti-gay legislation and the Senate Committee would not hear any of us.

Well, for one thing is it wasn't a secret meeting. It was perfectly public. And the fact that no one from the Kentucky Equality Federation "or any other LGBTI organization" was present didn't have anything to do with skullduggery (the committee didn't give The Family Foundation any notice either). It probably had something to do with the committee chair being out sick for several days last week.

It also undoubtedly had to do with the fact that the Equality Federation didn't have its ear to the ground and The Family Foundation did. It isn't the Judiciary Committee's job to do the Kentucky Equality Federation's lobbying work for them. If they want to be effective in Frankfort, then they need to do the hard work it takes and stop blaming their failures on other people.

And if the conspiracy theorists like those at the Kentucky Equality Federation are right about the Secret Plot to Pass SB 68, then why did the committee leave the bill until the end of the second to the last week of the session, leaving it precious little time to pass?

Hint to Jake on HB 28's troubles: It ain't Stumbo's fault

We realize that mere personal acrimony often takes the place of legitimate political analysis at Page One Kentucky, but Jake's speculations about Greg Stumbo stopping the Adulterer's Rights Act of 2009 (HB 28) because of Stumbo's "past indiscretions" has all the legitimacy of ... well, of most of the other things Jake says.

There are legislators on both sides of the aisle who have problems with this bill, and if it went to the floor, it would easily be defeated. There are members of both parties ready to speak against it. When that happens, the rest of the members, who don't normally know much about the bills they are voting on because they don't read them, know it must be bad and they vote against it.

Owens demonstrated in the committee hearing that he either is not familiar with the issues surrounding his own bill or that he simply is not competent to debate. The lawyers in the House, who realize how poorly conceived the bill is, would use him for target practice during the floor discussion. Why would Democratic leaders put a bill on the floor that is doomed and embarrass one of their own members (sponsor Daryl Owens is a Democrat)?

This House leadership team, whether you agree with its members or not, actually knows how to run the place. You don't put a bill on the floor that is going down in flames.

That's something people who claim to offer an "informed, savvy take on media and politics in Kentucky" should know.

John Derbyshire, Moral Philosopher

At his blog, Secular Right, John Derbyshire is currently wrestling with the abortion problem, and the abortion problem seems to be winning. In a previous attempt at moral philosophy, Derbyshire reduced morality to a "common consensus" based on emotion:

The killing of embryos and fetuses is intrinsically disturbing and disgusting to normal people, including me. As with other such acts — the eating of corpses, for example — an organized society needs some consensus, embodied in law, about what may and may not be done; though also (I’d argue) an understanding that that consensus is founded on nothing but those widespread common emotions — disturbance and disgust. I’d guess that most people in today’s U.S.A. would settle for unconditional abortion up to 12 weeks, conditional abortion up to 20, severely conditional thereafter. Whatever the consensus is, let’s settle on it and enforce the laws.

According to this view of morality there is no position from which one can criticize any action or societal condition which commands cultural consensus. Unfortunately, this leaves us a little morally defenseless against things like slavery, or racial discrimination, or oppression in any form. I suppose someone could argue that there is no consensus in these cases, since slaves themselves, or oppressed groups, do not support their oppression. But the exclusion of parties harmed by a societal condition being excluded from the consense could hardly be a rebuttal of this point for Derbyshire, since he is excluding the unborn from his consensus when it comes to abortion.

And of course under this view you couldn't argue that there was some moral imperative to change the consensus, since, according to Derbyshire, the only moral imperative comes from the consensus itself.

Derbyshire expands on his emotive theory in another post, now positing a "module":

[W]e have, as part of our mental equipment, a module that, for any other human being, computes a sort of “potential-for-accumulating-experience” quotient, and assigns the human being a value on that basis. This module likely only kicks in when confronted with an observable human being, though. Probably our brains just didn’t evolve to have valuation modules for embryos and fetuses, which we didn’t much encounter until recently. Following on from that, I’d guess that much of the salience of the abortion issue in modern life is driven by the good-quality medical imaging that’s become available in recent decades. I’d guess, in fact, that really good quality imaging of fetuses, if cheaply and widely available, would lead to public demands for earlier limits on legal abortion terms. The theocons can metaphysic all they want, but further policy/legal changes in this zone will likely be driven by things we can see and hear, and by the effects those things have on our emotions. Metaphysics butters no parsnips.

Where this "module" is in your "mental equipment" is somewhat mysterious, as is the exact evidence for the assertion in the first place, although Derbyshire seems to know an awful lot about it. The only evidence for the existence of this "module" appears to be the fact that these "emotions," which somehow, inexplicably, constitute an ought, exist.

Such is the moral philosophy you end up with when you reject metaphysics--and when you start viewing human beings as simply advanced computers complete with components and computational capabilities. One wonders why advanced computers have any rights at all, whether they can "compute" emotions or not.

What, other than the existence of a soul, makes human beings any more worthy of respect than animals--or computers?

Poetic license on SB 68

Brian Gatewood redramatizes a telephone conversation he had with Sen. Gary Tapp, who sponsored SB 68, a bill that would make it more likely for foster and adoptive children to be placedin safe homes.

"Here’s a dramatic, although not verbatim, rendition of how my conversation with Senator Tapp went."

Is this something like "based on a true story"? And Jake calls it a "transcript" despite Gatewood's admission that he was jogging in Seneca Park when he took the call and reconstructed the call from memory.

More evidence of the high standards of journalism over at Page One.

"Pro-gay" newspaper runs article on adoption bill

I suppose it is sort of superfluous to point it out, but the media is congenitally incapable of objectively reporting on any issue having anything to do with gay rights.

When gay rights groups had a rally last week, the media descended on it, and we heard again and again how over 100 people showed up. But then, when family groups had a rally almost twice that size, not only was it not reported, there was only one reporter who showed up.

Today, when Senate Bill 68, which would ensure that children will not be placed in home where there is a live-in sexual partner, the Courier-Journal again mentioned the gay rights rally in their article, but, alas, no mention of the opposing rally.

They did quote David Edmunds of The Family Foundation the online story, but they let the Fairness Alliance write part of their headline: "'Anti-gay' Adoption bill advances."

It's going so be sad to see the newspapers go.