Moral high-ground is of course a very funny thing for an atheist to claim, and yet some do. The Greens, an Australian political party, were founded by avowed atheists, and yet in all their advertising, they claim to be standing up for what's "right".
"Right", by whose measure? It's like bulldozing a pile of dirt into a mound then climbing atop it and claiming you're king. If you invent the mound to favour you, it's easy to claim the "high ground".
But all this talk of "right" is just bovine excrement, as it were. My mound - my moral high-ground - is butchering people just for the sadistic fun of it. My actions are "right" by that standard, and I am the king of that castle.
So long Greens. Intellectually duplicitous. Moral crusaders for their own defined cause, against the obvious principle of nature : atoms have no moral value, and neither do collections of atoms, such as humans, if atheism's materialistic underpinnings are correct.
Of course, if there is a "god", as I maintain is evident, then the Greens are not merely duplicitous (aka hypocrites), but right royally stuffed. But hey - that's their choice, and who am I to deny them their right to choose?
If only they would hold the same in reverse - but they don't.
They are vehemently anti-choice, suggesting that babies be given no choice over whether they live or die, Christian business leaders be given no choice but to register with the government (presumably for "permission" to continue the pernicious pursuit of earning money whilst - horrors - holding different beliefs to the Greens) *1, suggesting that I be given no choice when it comes to questioning the unquestionable virtues of homosexual lifestyles, and the list goes on.
Greens would equal hypocrites, if it weren't for the not-so-subtle socialist undertones that permeate the party. They are, after all, only hypocrites insofar as their actions decry their public platitudes. But their public platitudes are not reflective of their core ideology. As their actions reveal, they are hell-bent on deceiving the public whilst they busily work on promoting their agenda of deep government control over pretty much everything that happens outside the four walls of your house, and much of what happens within.
So, Greens = hypocrites? No, just outright liars with a deadly agenda. So long, Greens, once more...
Footnotes :
*1 Yes, you read that right - Bob Brown issued a press release calling for all businesses owned by members of a particular religious minority to be forced to register. Kinda like forcing Greens supporters to wear a green triangle armband. Reminds me of a German who once forced a religious minority there to wear armbands with stars... And ANYONE takes this Bob Brown nuthead seriously? I'm not a fan of the particular religious group in question, but c'mon, surely requiring them to register - do you not know that that is exactly how the war against Jews started in Nazi Germany - they were merely required to register. It is completely unacceptable to anyone with any sense of decency that this kind of call can be made, when as very ably demonstrated by Senator Abetz in the following linked Hansard record, there are other APPROPRIATE courses available to be followed : Hansard - look for Senator Abetz's comments
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Please disengage your brains : The Greens want your vote
I've been surprised and delightfully amused by some nauseatingly MINDLESS ads by the Greens in the leadup to the Victorian state elections.
Utilising the Google ad platform, the Greens so far have brought me two stellar pieces of education :
"Standing up for what's right, not just what's easy. Vote The Greens"
Tell me, how do you know, oh omniscient Greens, what is "right"? Oh, that's right - you were founded by an "ethicist", Peter Singer, who says it's "right" to kill babies after they're born alive and well, and says that humans have no more rights than any other lifeforms (see my satirical article The Truly Green Party).
His entire religio-philosophical system is based on a materialistic assumption that there is no god, but then he makes himself a god by telling the rest of us how to behave.
Tell me, what is "right" about him imposing his sanctimonious and entirely arbitrary views on the rest of the nation?
But the Greens don't want you to think - they just want you to "feel" good 'coz you voted for what's "right" - after all, the Greens told you so, and they would know.
And then, today's doozy :
"The Victorian Greens - My values haven't changed, my vote has. Vote VIC Greens this election."
Um... my values haven't changed? Let's get this straight : you're either insulting the intelligence of the electorate by telling them that they used to vote against their values (neither Labour nor Liberal is pro-infanticide, both of those parties have many committed Christians who cherish the sanctity of human life, and generally members of those parties hold that the individual human is worth more than say a bacterium), OR ELSE you're insulting the intelligence of the electorate by telling them you're really a pretty moderate party, relying on their ignorance of your deeper political agenda to win their vote.
I think the latter - you think the voters are ignorant, and you're happy to exploit that.
A charming thought really, but I don't see any other possibility - "My values haven't changed, my vote has" is an insult to the voting public whichever way you look at it.
So thanks Greens for these tid-bits. Strangely absent from your ads is any detailed appeal to reason. You're soliciting knee-jerk unthinking "feel good" votes. Yup - that's what I like to see. Not. Needless to say, you won't be getting my vote - I actually think about issues. Oh wait - that removes me from your target market. Sorry about that.
It's happening very slowly, but mainstream media and public persons are finally beginning to discuss the bloody red so-called "Green" agendas. Two recent examples :
Read the fine print on the Greens' tin - former Treasurer Peter Costello
Kevin Andrews MP takes a look at the Greens' ideology
Utilising the Google ad platform, the Greens so far have brought me two stellar pieces of education :
"Standing up for what's right, not just what's easy. Vote The Greens"
Tell me, how do you know, oh omniscient Greens, what is "right"? Oh, that's right - you were founded by an "ethicist", Peter Singer, who says it's "right" to kill babies after they're born alive and well, and says that humans have no more rights than any other lifeforms (see my satirical article The Truly Green Party).
His entire religio-philosophical system is based on a materialistic assumption that there is no god, but then he makes himself a god by telling the rest of us how to behave.
Tell me, what is "right" about him imposing his sanctimonious and entirely arbitrary views on the rest of the nation?
But the Greens don't want you to think - they just want you to "feel" good 'coz you voted for what's "right" - after all, the Greens told you so, and they would know.
And then, today's doozy :
"The Victorian Greens - My values haven't changed, my vote has. Vote VIC Greens this election."
Um... my values haven't changed? Let's get this straight : you're either insulting the intelligence of the electorate by telling them that they used to vote against their values (neither Labour nor Liberal is pro-infanticide, both of those parties have many committed Christians who cherish the sanctity of human life, and generally members of those parties hold that the individual human is worth more than say a bacterium), OR ELSE you're insulting the intelligence of the electorate by telling them you're really a pretty moderate party, relying on their ignorance of your deeper political agenda to win their vote.
I think the latter - you think the voters are ignorant, and you're happy to exploit that.
A charming thought really, but I don't see any other possibility - "My values haven't changed, my vote has" is an insult to the voting public whichever way you look at it.
So thanks Greens for these tid-bits. Strangely absent from your ads is any detailed appeal to reason. You're soliciting knee-jerk unthinking "feel good" votes. Yup - that's what I like to see. Not. Needless to say, you won't be getting my vote - I actually think about issues. Oh wait - that removes me from your target market. Sorry about that.
It's happening very slowly, but mainstream media and public persons are finally beginning to discuss the bloody red so-called "Green" agendas. Two recent examples :
Read the fine print on the Greens' tin - former Treasurer Peter Costello
Kevin Andrews MP takes a look at the Greens' ideology
Sunday, 14 November 2010
The Truly Green Party
PRESS RELEASE
New political party : The Truly Green Party
A party that stands for ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.
No more rhetoric - just real action on real issues.
The Truly Green party.
A no-nonsense platform that faces the hard issues of justice in our time : legal recognition and protection of the inherent rights of nature and nature's products.
(Note : we haven't quite yet actually completed our registration process with the Australian Electoral Commission, but that's just a simple administrative procedure. The legal requirement for registration is a minimum of 50 registered members, and we have full confidence that once the Australian public has heard our campaign platform, we will amply meet that minimum requirement with ten thousand more beside.)
Legal rights can no longer be recognised as belonging to humans only. In the words of the infamous Australian Peter Singer, this is speciesism.
We must, as humans, do what is best for the greatest number of living organisms sharing with us this fragile eco-system called Earth.
Accordingly, it must be noted that bacteria outnumber humans by many millions to one, and each individual bacterium shares equal rights with our speciesistic race.
Therefore, the only proper solution that promotes the greatest benefit for the greatest number of living organisms is to kill all humans, allowing their carcasses to provide the fertile breeding grounds for tens of trillions more bacteria. By this means, the greatest possible number of living organisms will receive the greatest benefit.
Whilst various means are at our disposal to accomplish this aim, we are strictly anti-nuclear. Other weapons of mass destruction are viable considerations.
The uninformed and speciesistic bigots will decry our humane stand for justice as "extremist", but they are the true extremists, promoting beligerence of our species against those which greatly outnumber us.
Within the great scheme of Evolution arose the human mind. Despite it's startling complexity and delusion of self-direction, it's operations are purely deterministic, operating as a magnificent electromechanical machine.
Accordingly, not only the Evolution of the brain, but its operation, is entirely a product of Nature.
And tens of thousands of scientists unanimously agree that the blender is a product of the human brain. Without that ill-named characteristic of the human mind - "inventiveness" (really just a name for such incredibly complex mechanistic processes that we cannot yet fully comprehend) - without this inventiveness characteristic of the human mind, there would be no such thing as a kitchen blender, and since the mind and its operations are but a product of nature, so too is the blender.
And as a product of nature, the blender has inalienable rights.
The Truly Green Party is the only Australian political party which affords Nature's rights with due respect.
Once the Australian public has recognised the justice of our platform and entrusted us with governance of this nation, we will immediately enact laws to protect kitchen blenders from discrimination, harrassment, and abuse. Anyone found overloading their blender will be subject to fines, and those with such reprehensible disregard for nature as to torture their blenders to the point of emitting their blue smoke - that is, the very heart and essence of the blender's soul - will be imprisoned on terms comparable to such violence against fellow humans. That is, of course, until the successful implementation of policy the first.
Climate change - don't just stop it, reverse it!
The Truly Green Party takes climate change seriously.
A panel of tens of thousands of international scientists(*1) unanimously agree that Earth's atmosphere was very different only a few tens of hundreds of million years ago, with sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide, and a great many other gasses filling the air.
Evidencing the unacceptable bigotry of our present political parties, such natural gasses are commonly referred to as "noxious", due only to purported ill effects on the human species. The Truly Green Party will promote educational policies which help correct this bigotted speciesistic view of nature. Private schools will be defunded to prevent the further spread of disinformation, as only our public schools are fit for the propogation of knowledge. Rumours of falling academic standards over recent years and decades is entirely false, or if it is true, it is certain evidence that we must take greater state control of education to ensure no-one ends up believing anything with which the Australian Government disagrees.
We have also determined, through extensive scientific research, that the atmosphere and surface of the earth were once much hotter than at present.
In the interests of preserving Nature and thereby protecting its inalienable rights, we propose the following steps to take place via timed bombs and other mechanisms after the death of the last human (vis policy the first) :
(*1) Actually, just some random dude on the internet, but we don't have any policies against outright lies or misrepresentation of facts, as neither does our nearest namesake political party, except insofar as they don't think they'll get away with it.......
New political party : The Truly Green Party
A party that stands for ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.
No more rhetoric - just real action on real issues.
- Nature and nature's products
- Blenders
- Climate Change
The Truly Green party.
A no-nonsense platform that faces the hard issues of justice in our time : legal recognition and protection of the inherent rights of nature and nature's products.
(Note : we haven't quite yet actually completed our registration process with the Australian Electoral Commission, but that's just a simple administrative procedure. The legal requirement for registration is a minimum of 50 registered members, and we have full confidence that once the Australian public has heard our campaign platform, we will amply meet that minimum requirement with ten thousand more beside.)
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE - POLICY THE FIRST - PROTECTION OF NATURE
Legal rights can no longer be recognised as belonging to humans only. In the words of the infamous Australian Peter Singer, this is speciesism.
We must, as humans, do what is best for the greatest number of living organisms sharing with us this fragile eco-system called Earth.
Accordingly, it must be noted that bacteria outnumber humans by many millions to one, and each individual bacterium shares equal rights with our speciesistic race.
Therefore, the only proper solution that promotes the greatest benefit for the greatest number of living organisms is to kill all humans, allowing their carcasses to provide the fertile breeding grounds for tens of trillions more bacteria. By this means, the greatest possible number of living organisms will receive the greatest benefit.
Whilst various means are at our disposal to accomplish this aim, we are strictly anti-nuclear. Other weapons of mass destruction are viable considerations.
The uninformed and speciesistic bigots will decry our humane stand for justice as "extremist", but they are the true extremists, promoting beligerence of our species against those which greatly outnumber us.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE - POLICY THE SECOND - PROTECTION OF NATURE'S PRODUCTS
Within the great scheme of Evolution arose the human mind. Despite it's startling complexity and delusion of self-direction, it's operations are purely deterministic, operating as a magnificent electromechanical machine.
Accordingly, not only the Evolution of the brain, but its operation, is entirely a product of Nature.
And tens of thousands of scientists unanimously agree that the blender is a product of the human brain. Without that ill-named characteristic of the human mind - "inventiveness" (really just a name for such incredibly complex mechanistic processes that we cannot yet fully comprehend) - without this inventiveness characteristic of the human mind, there would be no such thing as a kitchen blender, and since the mind and its operations are but a product of nature, so too is the blender.
And as a product of nature, the blender has inalienable rights.
The Truly Green Party is the only Australian political party which affords Nature's rights with due respect.
Once the Australian public has recognised the justice of our platform and entrusted us with governance of this nation, we will immediately enact laws to protect kitchen blenders from discrimination, harrassment, and abuse. Anyone found overloading their blender will be subject to fines, and those with such reprehensible disregard for nature as to torture their blenders to the point of emitting their blue smoke - that is, the very heart and essence of the blender's soul - will be imprisoned on terms comparable to such violence against fellow humans. That is, of course, until the successful implementation of policy the first.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE - POLICY THE THIRD - REVERSION OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change - don't just stop it, reverse it!
The Truly Green Party takes climate change seriously.
A panel of tens of thousands of international scientists(*1) unanimously agree that Earth's atmosphere was very different only a few tens of hundreds of million years ago, with sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide, and a great many other gasses filling the air.
Evidencing the unacceptable bigotry of our present political parties, such natural gasses are commonly referred to as "noxious", due only to purported ill effects on the human species. The Truly Green Party will promote educational policies which help correct this bigotted speciesistic view of nature. Private schools will be defunded to prevent the further spread of disinformation, as only our public schools are fit for the propogation of knowledge. Rumours of falling academic standards over recent years and decades is entirely false, or if it is true, it is certain evidence that we must take greater state control of education to ensure no-one ends up believing anything with which the Australian Government disagrees.
We have also determined, through extensive scientific research, that the atmosphere and surface of the earth were once much hotter than at present.
In the interests of preserving Nature and thereby protecting its inalienable rights, we propose the following steps to take place via timed bombs and other mechanisms after the death of the last human (vis policy the first) :
- Simultaneous worldwide lighting of all known carbon sources - oilfields, coalfields, etc - to release gasses into the atmosphere which will restore it to its former glorious state.
- Simultaneous worldwide detonation of all mined uranium (having been pre-enriched and prepared for this use). We are anti-nuclear, but in fact detonating all uranium thusly will help prevent it being misused in the hands of whatever other species might evolve in ten trillion years from now and attempt to use it against future as-yet-unimaginable creatures which will then inhabit the earth. But more importantly, the heat released from these simultaneous nuclear detonations will help return the temperature of the atmosphere to its rightful former levels.
(*1) Actually, just some random dude on the internet, but we don't have any policies against outright lies or misrepresentation of facts, as neither does our nearest namesake political party, except insofar as they don't think they'll get away with it.......
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Cultural superiority - if your culture ain't superior, why do you subscribe?
Racial superiority vs cultural superiority : there's a vast difference.
Culture can be changed.
Race cannot.
When it comes to cultural superiority, I do happen to hold that a culture which lets widows live is superior to one which burns its widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres.
I do hold that a culture which celebrates and protects the unborn is superior to one which kills them at a whim.
I do hold that a culture which enjoys the occasional drink is superior to one which celebrates inebriation.
I hold this and much the more.
Your culture cannot be equal to all other cultures, unless you think stupidity is equal to wisdom, ignorance is equal to enquiry, violence is equal to forgiveness, and indolence is equal to diligence.
And if your culture is not equal to all others, then it must be superior and/or inferior to some.
And thus is born the quest for perfection of culture, and a rejection of the blind faith of our age that all cultures are to be equally revered.
Culture can be changed.
Race cannot.
When it comes to cultural superiority, I do happen to hold that a culture which lets widows live is superior to one which burns its widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres.
I do hold that a culture which celebrates and protects the unborn is superior to one which kills them at a whim.
I do hold that a culture which enjoys the occasional drink is superior to one which celebrates inebriation.
I hold this and much the more.
Your culture cannot be equal to all other cultures, unless you think stupidity is equal to wisdom, ignorance is equal to enquiry, violence is equal to forgiveness, and indolence is equal to diligence.
And if your culture is not equal to all others, then it must be superior and/or inferior to some.
And thus is born the quest for perfection of culture, and a rejection of the blind faith of our age that all cultures are to be equally revered.
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
My Choice Is No Crime
My Choice Is Not A Crime
I'm pro-choice, you see.
Choices are good.
Y'know - to pick your nose, or wipe your arse with your bare hands.
Even to rub that stuff in someone else's face.
Choices, right? We celebrate 'em, we love 'em.
And according to Aussie pro-death group GitStuffed (not their real name), "My Choice Is No Crime".
That's right.
I chose to burgle your house last night. Oh - thanks for the lingerie - and the jewelery was swisher than I expected - you've got class!
But wait - the moment my choice becomes an action, you think I can be held accountable?
Bullshit!
After all, My Choice Is Not A Crime.
Oh? Sorry - repeat that? Oh - a choice is not a crime if it doesn't affect someone else.
So that would make abortion a crime then, wouldn't it.
I mean - that cute little baby snuggled inside your womb feels pain independently of you - no bodily organs can do that.
And heck - he/she probably has a different blood type to you. Tell me, what bodily organ does THAT!
So without a doubt, little cutesie in your womb is a beautiful baby, distinct from you.
And you just told me that My Choice Is A Crime, if it hurts another.
So what are we arguing about? Sounds like it's case-closed.
Monday, 11 October 2010
A day in the life of the Australian Sex Party : genitals, yes; brains, MIA
It was a beautiful Spring day. The sun shone bright and full. A cool breeze gently caressed our faces.
We thronged the streets of Melbourne - thousands of us, gathered in a peaceful joyful celebration of life.
Passers by wondered at the long procession, and with us being such a peaceful sea of happy faces, we received many kind greetings from those we ambled by.
We had almost finished our walk before I heard the first nay-sayer. I was suprised we got that far with only one, or at least only one I heard. "Go home!' was his intellectually-stimulating shout.
But as we progressed further along those last few hundred metres, I began to hear a rhythmic sound that felt strangely angry. Very angry.
It was confusing and hard to decipher at first. There was music playing - I vaguely recognised the song. But out of sync with the music, there was some other chant. I could not hear the words, but I could immediately feel : whatever it was, it felt wrong. On the inside.
It wasn't a chant of love, of gratitude or thanks. Whatever it was, it was angry.
Was it some of us, having walked so peacefully, now angrily yelling a pro-life message?
I would have been surprised. It seemed so out-of-character with the group and with the lovely spirit of the walk so far!
What then?
Aha! I see now.
Did I mention they were angry?
Very angry.
And so they graced us as we peacefully gathered at our final meeting place.
We were there, representing those who died without a voice, without a choice.
Those whose lives and every chance of future hopes and choices was snatched from them, by cruel adults in a cruel world, emboldened by cruel legislation.
They were there to, well... it wasn't really that clear what they were there to do.
At one point during our proceedings, they chanted together :
"Not the Church,
"Not the State,
"WOMEN will decide their fate!"
Uh, really?
MORE than half of abortion victims are women.
So let's get this straight : that's a lot of women not getting to decide their fate.
In fact, the Australian Sex Party is anti-choice. If they believed in choice, they'd let the babies be born, and adopted by loving parents, and then let each baby grow up and decide for himself/herself whether they want to commit suicide or continue living.
Don't make that choice for them!
As soon as you choose for someone else that they will die, you are anti-choice.
In contrast, I am stridently _pro_-choice. Let the baby live, and make its own choices as it learns and grows.
On and on they chanted. "Not the Church, not the State. WOMEN will decide their fate!"
Such a ridiculous self-contradiction.
The only thing it seemed anything like was a monstrous four year old, furious at the world when things don't go their way.
What do you do when you're a spoiled brat and you want something to change? You throw a temper tantrum.
Yep - that's the ASP.
But evidently sensing that I detected a lack of intellectual integrity in that chant, they did eventually switch.
"No way, back to the backyard!
"No way, back to the backyard!
"No way, back to the backyard!"
On and on and on for minutes or maybe even tens of minutes.
If you want a political party that is able to coordinate the mindless yelling of short self-contradicatory slogans, the Australian Sex Party has definitely proven their prowess. I'd vote for them anyday. Highly intellectually stimulating.
But hang on a second - oh, yeah, I see.
It actually took me a minute or two before I could even understand their garbled chant - the "no way back to the backyard" one. Yeah, I was at a distance from them at that point.
But right, I get it now : they're saying that the legislative reform of two years past meant late-term abortions could move out of the backyard into the hospitals. You know - those places where the Hippocratic oath is held in reverence and lives are preserved by all possible means.
And they're saying that there is absolutely no way they will accept a re-criminalisation of abortion which would send abortions "back to the backyard".
Right... so now that I understand what they're saying, shall I bother tearing it to shreds?
No?
Ok, let's not bother. It is too pitifully stupid. It really is an insult to the intelligence of every person gathered there on the ASP platform.
I would love to have gone up and talked peacefully and quietly to one of them, and invited them to my house for a coffee. Clearly, when dripping with such extreme anger and seeming hatred towards "us" - "us", the much larger group who had peacefully gathered, and who were the only reason they too were present (i.e. to protest against our presence) - clearly, some of these poor folk had some pretty screwy ideas about "us" and the universe, to hate us so much. I thought a constructive conversation over a coffee - well, obviously we wouldn't leave united in opinion, but they might "discover the other" and feel the love and realise we're not quite as bad as they think...
But alas, perhaps a dozen police officers were standing twixt us and they (or perhaps a good thing? they were so angry - and without a cause - who knows, they would probably have thought themselves to be doing a good thing to physically assault us), and so I decided against visiting them on this occasion.
Most people don't think. Whatever is extremely obvious will still be missed by most people.
Need proof? (chuckle) I have loads of comments left by people on this blog, who made idiots of themselves by completely missing both the point and the obvious.
So - please forgive me and bear with me, those for whom this is obvious - please bear with me whilst I momentarily deconstruct the piercing insights of the Australian Sex Party, embodied in their insightful slogan, "No way, back to the backyard!".
For starters : where does crime belong? Does it not belong in the backyard, or elsewhere out of public eye? So, if abortion is a crime, should it not return exactly to that very place?
But abortion is not a crime, you say. Oh? By what standard?
By the standard of Victorian legislation?
Tell me : was abortion a crime 100 years ago?
What about late-term abortion - which was the subject of today's peaceful procession.
Was late-term abortion a crime three years ago?
Yes?
Did you advocate it nonetheless? i.e. was it morally right for a woman to have a late-term abortion, even though it was illegal?
See, the ASPers believe that abortion - at any age - is morally noble. A far better choice than - shock of shocks, horror of horrors - letting an unwanted child be adopted by loving would-be-parents.
So, to them, as far as they're concerned, abortion has always been legal, from a moral perspective. It's the morally right choice to let a woman choose to deny her baby choice.
And legislation is just a pesky thing standing in the way of what is morally right.
Thus sayeth the Australian Sex Party, and they must be right, 'coz no-one would be that angry if they didn't have an irrefutable lucid case to back up their stance... or not.
But hang on a second - the Australian Sex Party claims to be opposed to religion in politics.
But the very claim that a woman has a right to abort her baby - a right that transcends any legislation - is a religious claim.
Either law is determined entirely by humans - majority rule or whatever - or else law has some "transcendental" qualities.
ASP claims on the one hand they don't want religion in politics, and then on the other hand appeals to some nebulous undefined religious-sounding transcendental "right" of a woman to deny another woman the chance to be born and live.
Go figure.
So they're contradictory, once again.
So maybe they'll quickly back-pedal and say that no, abortion isn't "right" for any absolute reasons, but only because it is the will of the people.
Is it the will of the people?
There are plenty of stats that indicate otherwise. Like the flood of pro-life submissions - vastly outweighing the pro-death ones - sent to the Victorian Legislative Council when it proposed "legalising" late-term abortions a few years ago.
But let's grant for a microsecond that "the majority" want abortion to be legal, and let's suppose for a moment that there are no absolutes and the will of the majority makes things "right".
Even if so, what if the will of the people changes?
Clearly, a hundred years ago the "will of the people" was for abortion to be illegal.
In fact, homosexuality and marital infidelity too.
I don't suppose the Australian Sex Party would want that.
But to reject that, they either have to appeal to some indefensible notion of absolute women's rights - in which case they're taking a religious position themselves, the which they explicitly denounce - or they have to appeal to the will of the majority, in which case they have to concede that those laws were good and noble in their time.
And if so, then they also have to concede that if the will of the people is shown to be pro-life, or becomes pro-life in the future, then abortions should indeed go "back to the backyard".
And - yeah, sorry, I apologised in advance about labouring the point, but some people need everything to be shown step-by-step, so bear with me ...
The Australian Sex Party is engaged in lobbying designed to alter the "will of the people". If they think the will of the majority is the only rightful rule, and they think it's fine for them to try to alter the will of the people, then why are they so vehemently and spitefully opposed to us also seeking to alter the "will of the people" through careful research and education about the MANY bad outcomes inherently associated with abortion?
The only possible answer : they're hypocrites. Whatever promotes their cause is good; whatever opposes it is bad. There is no other morality to the ASP. They have a religious commitment to unfettered sex and unfettered murder.
They are a religion.
Their holy book is the ASP manifesto.
Their creed is mindless adherence to the belief that anything goes in sex or baby-killing, just because.
Or if they try to pin their credibility on Atheism and Humanism, they fall into the same trap once again : Atheism is an absolute belief in the absolute non-existence of any God, a belief that is simply unable to be substantiated via the scientific method. Atheism is thus inherently religious in nature, and in fact this is how Humanism has obtained income tax concessions - it is a registered religion.
So whichever way you slice the cake, the Australian Sex Party is full of religious zealots.
"Get religion out of politics" they say, but what they mean is "we will tolerate no religion except our own!".
Their religion, they tell us, must set all the rules, and all other religions must be banished. Hello? That seems fair... lol.
The most striking thing about this lovely day out with the Australian Sex Party was their absolute, total lack of rationality.
Slogans, yes. Anger, yes. Religious fervour and commitment, yes.
We have stats, we have research, we have interviews, we have personal stories, and we have a cogent worldview in which our position makes sense.
But them? All zeal. All unbridled anger. But no substance. Not a single intelligent comment from them, all day. Not that I was privy to.
Self-contradiction - yeah, loads of that. Truckloads.
But sense? Look elsewhere! :o)
But, I haven't finished : "back to the backyard". Bear with me whilst I deconstruct it just a little longer...
They yelled it over and over and over again.
But actually, they're already doing that.
The RU486 abortion pill is taken at home. A "backyard abortion" if you will.
And a new phenomenon in the USA, starting here in Australia too, is the abortion-via-internet. Skype or whatever to a trained professional who will guide you through the process of killing that pesky little baby inside.
In fact, it was not the legalisation of abortions and hence access to medical facilities that starting "saving women's lives" through "safe abortions", but the availability of antibiotics.
And do I need to point out the bleeding obvious once again, that when one in two patients die, an abortion can hardly ever be called "safe", and when a woman kills her female baby, it can hardly be called supporting women's choices when that woman-to-be never got a chance.
But I digress.
All I really mean to say is that abortion is already back in the backyard.
So much for "no way, back to the backyard!". Intellectual stimulation to the max, these ASPers. Maybe they really do only think with their genitals?
But hey, I'm sure they're all lovely people, deeeeep down, beneath thick layers of anger and other nasties. Somewhere in there. Surely.
I really would like to meet some of them, one-on-one in person in casual conversation around a coffee.
If they manage to climb out of their self-imposed prison of hate, they might just discover an interesting world of different opinions that aren't quite as wacky - nor quite as screwy - as they clearly believe.
And hey - we can always part friends, even if our ideologies never align. I don't mind having friends who are self-confessed murderers. Murder is wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that murderers are precious people who I can love and genuinely care about.
I'm not so sure it goes in the reverse - believing in moral absolutes different to their own is such a hideous crime, I doubt many of them could displace their own prejudices long enough to really get to know me. But hey - their loss.
And so, it was an interesting day, and made all the more interesting by the Australian Sex Party.
Until today, I thought they were weird but I knew little about them.
But thanks to their efforts, I am now much better informed : they are self-contradictory all the way, intellectually destitute and driven by blind anger. Maybe even rage. Kudos, ASP. Kudos.
"Trees aren't the only things worth saving."
That is an intelligent banner - one of many in today's procession.
It leaves open the question : what else is worth saving? Are babies worth saving? It doesn't directly answer the question. It invites intelligent discussion.
ASP, if you want to be taken seriously, you need to grow up beyond your four-year-old temper tantrums and invite discussion around intelligent questions, instead of making your list of hostile demands.
Thanks for a fun day, and hey - if you can bear to put your prejudice aside, let's have a coffee.
Oh - and mindless rants in the comments doesn't exactly constitute a coffee. Thought I'd better throw that one in... :o)
But the reality, ASPer, is that you believe abortion is right, not because it is the will of the people, but because it is morally right in some transcendant absolute sense of the word. But you're too much of a coward to attempt to argue it, because you realise that as soon as you start trying to argue for moral absolutes, you're in a losing battle against some pretty strong arguments in favour of theistic morality.
And hence today's demonstration : why engage the intellect if you know you'll lose? And why abandon an indefensible position? Best thing to do is yell and shout angrily and hope people ignore the problems in your beliefs!
We thronged the streets of Melbourne - thousands of us, gathered in a peaceful joyful celebration of life.
Passers by wondered at the long procession, and with us being such a peaceful sea of happy faces, we received many kind greetings from those we ambled by.
We had almost finished our walk before I heard the first nay-sayer. I was suprised we got that far with only one, or at least only one I heard. "Go home!' was his intellectually-stimulating shout.
But as we progressed further along those last few hundred metres, I began to hear a rhythmic sound that felt strangely angry. Very angry.
It was confusing and hard to decipher at first. There was music playing - I vaguely recognised the song. But out of sync with the music, there was some other chant. I could not hear the words, but I could immediately feel : whatever it was, it felt wrong. On the inside.
It wasn't a chant of love, of gratitude or thanks. Whatever it was, it was angry.
Was it some of us, having walked so peacefully, now angrily yelling a pro-life message?
I would have been surprised. It seemed so out-of-character with the group and with the lovely spirit of the walk so far!
What then?
Aha! I see now.
Enter stage left: the Australian Sex Party, riding on a pink stallion!
Waving placards advertising themselves as the "Australian Sex Party", a small but angry mob (30 people?) were coordinating their efforts by chanting in unison.Did I mention they were angry?
Very angry.
And so they graced us as we peacefully gathered at our final meeting place.
We were there, representing those who died without a voice, without a choice.
Those whose lives and every chance of future hopes and choices was snatched from them, by cruel adults in a cruel world, emboldened by cruel legislation.
They were there to, well... it wasn't really that clear what they were there to do.
At one point during our proceedings, they chanted together :
"Not the Church,
"Not the State,
"WOMEN will decide their fate!"
Uh, really?
MORE than half of abortion victims are women.
So let's get this straight : that's a lot of women not getting to decide their fate.
In fact, the Australian Sex Party is anti-choice. If they believed in choice, they'd let the babies be born, and adopted by loving parents, and then let each baby grow up and decide for himself/herself whether they want to commit suicide or continue living.
Don't make that choice for them!
As soon as you choose for someone else that they will die, you are anti-choice.
In contrast, I am stridently _pro_-choice. Let the baby live, and make its own choices as it learns and grows.
On and on they chanted. "Not the Church, not the State. WOMEN will decide their fate!"
Such a ridiculous self-contradiction.
The only thing it seemed anything like was a monstrous four year old, furious at the world when things don't go their way.
What do you do when you're a spoiled brat and you want something to change? You throw a temper tantrum.
Yep - that's the ASP.
But evidently sensing that I detected a lack of intellectual integrity in that chant, they did eventually switch.
"No way, back to the backyard!
"No way, back to the backyard!
"No way, back to the backyard!"
On and on and on for minutes or maybe even tens of minutes.
If you want a political party that is able to coordinate the mindless yelling of short self-contradicatory slogans, the Australian Sex Party has definitely proven their prowess. I'd vote for them anyday. Highly intellectually stimulating.
But hang on a second - oh, yeah, I see.
It actually took me a minute or two before I could even understand their garbled chant - the "no way back to the backyard" one. Yeah, I was at a distance from them at that point.
But right, I get it now : they're saying that the legislative reform of two years past meant late-term abortions could move out of the backyard into the hospitals. You know - those places where the Hippocratic oath is held in reverence and lives are preserved by all possible means.
And they're saying that there is absolutely no way they will accept a re-criminalisation of abortion which would send abortions "back to the backyard".
Right... so now that I understand what they're saying, shall I bother tearing it to shreds?
No?
Ok, let's not bother. It is too pitifully stupid. It really is an insult to the intelligence of every person gathered there on the ASP platform.
I would love to have gone up and talked peacefully and quietly to one of them, and invited them to my house for a coffee. Clearly, when dripping with such extreme anger and seeming hatred towards "us" - "us", the much larger group who had peacefully gathered, and who were the only reason they too were present (i.e. to protest against our presence) - clearly, some of these poor folk had some pretty screwy ideas about "us" and the universe, to hate us so much. I thought a constructive conversation over a coffee - well, obviously we wouldn't leave united in opinion, but they might "discover the other" and feel the love and realise we're not quite as bad as they think...
But alas, perhaps a dozen police officers were standing twixt us and they (or perhaps a good thing? they were so angry - and without a cause - who knows, they would probably have thought themselves to be doing a good thing to physically assault us), and so I decided against visiting them on this occasion.
Back to the... BACKYARD! HILARIOUS!
But wait - writing a blog has proven one thing to me, and that is :Most people don't think. Whatever is extremely obvious will still be missed by most people.
Need proof? (chuckle) I have loads of comments left by people on this blog, who made idiots of themselves by completely missing both the point and the obvious.
So - please forgive me and bear with me, those for whom this is obvious - please bear with me whilst I momentarily deconstruct the piercing insights of the Australian Sex Party, embodied in their insightful slogan, "No way, back to the backyard!".
For starters : where does crime belong? Does it not belong in the backyard, or elsewhere out of public eye? So, if abortion is a crime, should it not return exactly to that very place?
But abortion is not a crime, you say. Oh? By what standard?
By the standard of Victorian legislation?
Tell me : was abortion a crime 100 years ago?
What about late-term abortion - which was the subject of today's peaceful procession.
Was late-term abortion a crime three years ago?
Yes?
Did you advocate it nonetheless? i.e. was it morally right for a woman to have a late-term abortion, even though it was illegal?
See, the ASPers believe that abortion - at any age - is morally noble. A far better choice than - shock of shocks, horror of horrors - letting an unwanted child be adopted by loving would-be-parents.
So, to them, as far as they're concerned, abortion has always been legal, from a moral perspective. It's the morally right choice to let a woman choose to deny her baby choice.
And legislation is just a pesky thing standing in the way of what is morally right.
Thus sayeth the Australian Sex Party, and they must be right, 'coz no-one would be that angry if they didn't have an irrefutable lucid case to back up their stance... or not.
But hang on a second - the Australian Sex Party claims to be opposed to religion in politics.
But the very claim that a woman has a right to abort her baby - a right that transcends any legislation - is a religious claim.
Either law is determined entirely by humans - majority rule or whatever - or else law has some "transcendental" qualities.
ASP claims on the one hand they don't want religion in politics, and then on the other hand appeals to some nebulous undefined religious-sounding transcendental "right" of a woman to deny another woman the chance to be born and live.
Go figure.
So they're contradictory, once again.
So maybe they'll quickly back-pedal and say that no, abortion isn't "right" for any absolute reasons, but only because it is the will of the people.
Is it the will of the people?
There are plenty of stats that indicate otherwise. Like the flood of pro-life submissions - vastly outweighing the pro-death ones - sent to the Victorian Legislative Council when it proposed "legalising" late-term abortions a few years ago.
But let's grant for a microsecond that "the majority" want abortion to be legal, and let's suppose for a moment that there are no absolutes and the will of the majority makes things "right".
Even if so, what if the will of the people changes?
Clearly, a hundred years ago the "will of the people" was for abortion to be illegal.
In fact, homosexuality and marital infidelity too.
I don't suppose the Australian Sex Party would want that.
But to reject that, they either have to appeal to some indefensible notion of absolute women's rights - in which case they're taking a religious position themselves, the which they explicitly denounce - or they have to appeal to the will of the majority, in which case they have to concede that those laws were good and noble in their time.
And if so, then they also have to concede that if the will of the people is shown to be pro-life, or becomes pro-life in the future, then abortions should indeed go "back to the backyard".
And - yeah, sorry, I apologised in advance about labouring the point, but some people need everything to be shown step-by-step, so bear with me ...
The Australian Sex Party is engaged in lobbying designed to alter the "will of the people". If they think the will of the majority is the only rightful rule, and they think it's fine for them to try to alter the will of the people, then why are they so vehemently and spitefully opposed to us also seeking to alter the "will of the people" through careful research and education about the MANY bad outcomes inherently associated with abortion?
The only possible answer : they're hypocrites. Whatever promotes their cause is good; whatever opposes it is bad. There is no other morality to the ASP. They have a religious commitment to unfettered sex and unfettered murder.
They are a religion.
Their holy book is the ASP manifesto.
Their creed is mindless adherence to the belief that anything goes in sex or baby-killing, just because.
Or if they try to pin their credibility on Atheism and Humanism, they fall into the same trap once again : Atheism is an absolute belief in the absolute non-existence of any God, a belief that is simply unable to be substantiated via the scientific method. Atheism is thus inherently religious in nature, and in fact this is how Humanism has obtained income tax concessions - it is a registered religion.
So whichever way you slice the cake, the Australian Sex Party is full of religious zealots.
"Get religion out of politics" they say, but what they mean is "we will tolerate no religion except our own!".
Their religion, they tell us, must set all the rules, and all other religions must be banished. Hello? That seems fair... lol.
The most striking thing about this lovely day out with the Australian Sex Party was their absolute, total lack of rationality.
Slogans, yes. Anger, yes. Religious fervour and commitment, yes.
We have stats, we have research, we have interviews, we have personal stories, and we have a cogent worldview in which our position makes sense.
But them? All zeal. All unbridled anger. But no substance. Not a single intelligent comment from them, all day. Not that I was privy to.
Self-contradiction - yeah, loads of that. Truckloads.
But sense? Look elsewhere! :o)
But, I haven't finished : "back to the backyard". Bear with me whilst I deconstruct it just a little longer...
Already back in the backyard!
The ASP are hypocrites still further. "No way [will we let abortion go] back to the backyard!"They yelled it over and over and over again.
But actually, they're already doing that.
The RU486 abortion pill is taken at home. A "backyard abortion" if you will.
And a new phenomenon in the USA, starting here in Australia too, is the abortion-via-internet. Skype or whatever to a trained professional who will guide you through the process of killing that pesky little baby inside.
In fact, it was not the legalisation of abortions and hence access to medical facilities that starting "saving women's lives" through "safe abortions", but the availability of antibiotics.
And do I need to point out the bleeding obvious once again, that when one in two patients die, an abortion can hardly ever be called "safe", and when a woman kills her female baby, it can hardly be called supporting women's choices when that woman-to-be never got a chance.
But I digress.
All I really mean to say is that abortion is already back in the backyard.
So much for "no way, back to the backyard!". Intellectual stimulation to the max, these ASPers. Maybe they really do only think with their genitals?
But hey, I'm sure they're all lovely people, deeeeep down, beneath thick layers of anger and other nasties. Somewhere in there. Surely.
I really would like to meet some of them, one-on-one in person in casual conversation around a coffee.
If they manage to climb out of their self-imposed prison of hate, they might just discover an interesting world of different opinions that aren't quite as wacky - nor quite as screwy - as they clearly believe.
And hey - we can always part friends, even if our ideologies never align. I don't mind having friends who are self-confessed murderers. Murder is wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that murderers are precious people who I can love and genuinely care about.
I'm not so sure it goes in the reverse - believing in moral absolutes different to their own is such a hideous crime, I doubt many of them could displace their own prejudices long enough to really get to know me. But hey - their loss.
And so, it was an interesting day, and made all the more interesting by the Australian Sex Party.
Until today, I thought they were weird but I knew little about them.
But thanks to their efforts, I am now much better informed : they are self-contradictory all the way, intellectually destitute and driven by blind anger. Maybe even rage. Kudos, ASP. Kudos.
The better way to argue
In contrast to the total lack of anything intelligent heard from the ASP today, I will end with this :"Trees aren't the only things worth saving."
That is an intelligent banner - one of many in today's procession.
It leaves open the question : what else is worth saving? Are babies worth saving? It doesn't directly answer the question. It invites intelligent discussion.
ASP, if you want to be taken seriously, you need to grow up beyond your four-year-old temper tantrums and invite discussion around intelligent questions, instead of making your list of hostile demands.
Thanks for a fun day, and hey - if you can bear to put your prejudice aside, let's have a coffee.
Oh - and mindless rants in the comments doesn't exactly constitute a coffee. Thought I'd better throw that one in... :o)
Concluding remarks
If late-term abortion was actually a crime here in the state of Victoria, just three years ago, then re-criminalisation could occur just as soon. If morality is determined by the will of the people, what's wrong with re-criminalising the murder of unprotected babies, if that is the will of the people? And if you can't answer that question, ASPer, you really are as intellectually bankrupt as today made you seem. That's alright - failing to think is not a crime, but your life will be better if you think well instead of not at all. I promise. :o)But the reality, ASPer, is that you believe abortion is right, not because it is the will of the people, but because it is morally right in some transcendant absolute sense of the word. But you're too much of a coward to attempt to argue it, because you realise that as soon as you start trying to argue for moral absolutes, you're in a losing battle against some pretty strong arguments in favour of theistic morality.
And hence today's demonstration : why engage the intellect if you know you'll lose? And why abandon an indefensible position? Best thing to do is yell and shout angrily and hope people ignore the problems in your beliefs!
Go home - such piercing brilliance
P.S. I would be remiss not to mention : clearly once again detecting that I saw through the intellectual paucity of their second major slogan, the ASPers turned to a final, and most thought-provoking slogan, the which they spent the final ten minutes or so chanting, angrily, repeatedly, loudly : "Go home!". Such piercing insight, as I said before, truly should be enshrined in print, published and distributed throughout the four corners of our land. Such depths of perception caused great lights to awaken within our minds, as we understood life like never before. Ah, no. I mock. But they really did chant that, and really for that long. Based on their intellectual, ummm, lightweightness shall we say, demonstrated today, I can see them boasting "we drove away that crowd of pro-lifers! We told them to go home, and they did!" Uh, yeah. Stand there telling someone to go home for an hour until they finished what they came to do and go home anyway, and hey, if you need that kind of thing to boost your ego and make you think you're having some kind of effect, uh, I have some psychologists I could recommend. So, it'll be very amusing if they do try to make that claim : "Australian Sex Party dismisses pro-life rally" or something equally absurd. Like I said, the intellectual integrity of a four-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. That's about all I saw from them today. Plus anger, to the max and a strong dose of hatred. Nice work, bro, nice...
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Abortion : good bu$ine$$, bad ethics
Adiel Hope was murdered by unusual means.
Drowned in a bucket of formaldehyde.
It would sound amusing - wtf - what was a bucket of formaldeyhde doing lying around anyway?
Except that it's true, and Adiel ain't the only one.
She was born alive. Most babies are.
But someone wanted her dead.
Her caretaker took her - immediately after her live birth - and dropped her in the bucket.
Yep. Breathing, squirming and all.
Kinda like you might drown a rat if you didn't care about cruelty to animals.
Except even crueller, 'coz the formaldehyde hurts like heck.
Especially when you breath it.
The trainee nurse was traumatised.
You bet!
I reckon the baby was too.
But according to the Australian Sex Party, and the Victorian government, this is a good thing - or at least much better than the unthinkably horrible outcome of letting the baby live.
I guess they haven't met Melissa Ohden.
Nor would they want to!
Someone who survived an abortion attempt on her own life, grew up with adopted parents and lived a rich and fulfilling life despite a poor medical prognosis and never meeting her blood parents - it proves that every life is worth giving a chance, even if only in the hands of adopted parents.
Life - imagine the potential.
Melissa has gone on to make truckloads of inspiring choices with her life.
Choices that would have been snuffed out of existence had the abortion "succeeded".
Abortion is anti-choice.
But Melissa is pro-choice, in the truest sense of the word.
Giving babies a chance is pro-choice to the max : the mother can still live life they way she wants - just give the baby out for adoption - there are loads of desperate would-be-adoptive-parents denied the chance to ever have a baby to call their own. And of course the baby will face more choices than the mother has remaining in her own life, assuming average lifespans, 'coz the mother has already used up some of her years and opportunities to choose.
Pro-life is pro-choice. Pro-abortion is anti-choice.
It doesn't matter which way you cut the cake - abortion is good bu$ine$$, but bad ethics.
Drowned in a bucket of formaldehyde.
It would sound amusing - wtf - what was a bucket of formaldeyhde doing lying around anyway?
Except that it's true, and Adiel ain't the only one.
She was born alive. Most babies are.
But someone wanted her dead.
Her caretaker took her - immediately after her live birth - and dropped her in the bucket.
Yep. Breathing, squirming and all.
Kinda like you might drown a rat if you didn't care about cruelty to animals.
Except even crueller, 'coz the formaldehyde hurts like heck.
Especially when you breath it.
The trainee nurse was traumatised.
You bet!
I reckon the baby was too.
But according to the Australian Sex Party, and the Victorian government, this is a good thing - or at least much better than the unthinkably horrible outcome of letting the baby live.
I guess they haven't met Melissa Ohden.
Nor would they want to!
Someone who survived an abortion attempt on her own life, grew up with adopted parents and lived a rich and fulfilling life despite a poor medical prognosis and never meeting her blood parents - it proves that every life is worth giving a chance, even if only in the hands of adopted parents.
Life - imagine the potential.
Melissa has gone on to make truckloads of inspiring choices with her life.
Choices that would have been snuffed out of existence had the abortion "succeeded".
Abortion is anti-choice.
But Melissa is pro-choice, in the truest sense of the word.
Giving babies a chance is pro-choice to the max : the mother can still live life they way she wants - just give the baby out for adoption - there are loads of desperate would-be-adoptive-parents denied the chance to ever have a baby to call their own. And of course the baby will face more choices than the mother has remaining in her own life, assuming average lifespans, 'coz the mother has already used up some of her years and opportunities to choose.
Pro-life is pro-choice. Pro-abortion is anti-choice.
It doesn't matter which way you cut the cake - abortion is good bu$ine$$, but bad ethics.
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