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Friday, September 05, 2008
Sarah Palin nonsense and moral illiteracy in the Toronto Star
Link. Lorraine Sommerfeld trashes Sarah Palin in the Toronto Star. An illustrative quotation:
"[Palin's] kids don't get any privacy. After all, their mother has already introduced them as pawns. That bear lying on the couch behind her in a photo was a more protective mother than she is."
Here's one non-argument I'd like to address: Sommerfeld and other leftists are saying that Palin is a hypocrite for claiming she "chose" to allow baby Trig to be born.
Suppose abortion is a terrible moral wrong, one that the law happens to allow. Question: does that not make the person who knowingly chooses to refrain from committing this wrong -- even though the law allows it, and no human could punish her for choosing the other way -- doesn't that make her just slightly more admirable?
A person's character is best shown when she could do wrong with impunity, and still chooses to do otherwise.
Do left-wing folks like Ms. Sommerfeld not understand moral common sense?
Posted by Terrence Watson on September 5, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
Just another misinformed, biased, small, petty, catty, confused, socialist journalist.
Nothing to see here.
Posted by: John V | 2008-09-05 1:50:39 PM
(1) It seems appropriate to repeat something I wrote here: http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/09/liveblogging-sa.html
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To steal Bill Maher's bit....
NEW RULE: You can't complain about people using your kids (Bristol) to score political points if you want to use your kids (Trig) to score political points. You son is also soon to be a war hero. That's great ... for him. But if you want us to love you because you care about your Down's kid and because you have a war hero-to-be son, then you have to be ready to take it from the people who hate you because they think you raised a daughter of questionable vurtue. You know, the kind of thing Christian conservatives have been so good at doing.
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For what it's worth, Jaws replied "You're right, Fact Check. Open season on the kids?"
(2) Terrence, the point you are making about Sarah Palin's "choice" might be better made to those who don't get it with a non-abortion example. John McCain made the choice to stay as a prisoner of war for four years longer than he had to to honour the military code of "first-in, first-out". He made a choice and could have done differently. The choice he made was difficult and resulted in great suffering for himself personally, but it was the noble and infinitely praiseworthy choice that makes him heroic. Had he chosen to leave, we would understand it even if we do not think it praiseworthy or admirable at all. But to say that the praiseworthyness of one choice makes the other just as legitimate is wrong.
The Daily Show did a whole bit interviewing Republican delegates where they tied them up in knots trying to avoid using the word "choice" to describe her keeping the baby and Jon himself tried to pin down his guest (Newt Gingrich, I think?) by claiming if we should respect her choice she should respect people who make different choices. But the logic just does not hold up. As you point out, that a choice is available and that taking one option is praiseworthy does not make the other option a legitimate one.
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-09-05 2:17:26 PM
Yesterday I saw a TV show that promised to take apart Sarah Palin's wardrobe, millimetre by millimetre. Lord protect us from the chattering classes. Better still, give them real work.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-09-05 3:18:16 PM
Yesterday I saw a TV show that promised to take apart Sarah Palin's wardrobe, millimetre by millimetre.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 5-Sep-08 3:18:16 PM
At least she doesn't wear an orange pant suit and screeches like an crow.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-09-05 3:27:05 PM
This is why freedom of association, the right to exclude, is so important. Stewart does not allow choice either. Excluding Jews from your restaurant or hotel or country club would invoke Stewart's or Maher's rage.
Free speech runs empty if free association is inhibited by the Leviathan. Being able to rail against homosexuality, for example, means little if the state forces inclusion. If you must rent to, sell to or include gays in your community being free to criticize their life style means nothing.
Free association let's the common community set the standard for speech or choice.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-09-05 3:31:29 PM
Excluding Jews from your restaurant or hotel or country club would invoke Stewart's or Maher's rage.
Posted by: DJ | 5-Sep-08 3:31:29 PM
It probably would in Stewart's case as his last name isn't really Stewart.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-09-05 3:52:27 PM
"This is why freedom of association, the right to exclude, is so important."
Freedom of association and the right to exclude are logically distinct. Freedom of association just means if two or more people want to associate together, they should be free to do so. The right to exclude is the right of any person not to associate with others. In Canada we have freedom of association. We also have the right to exclude when it comes to our private relationships (who our friends are). We do not have the right to exclude when it comes to public relationships (who we hire, what customers we do business with). There is no logical contradiction in this. Furthermore, it is how things should be. Only bigots who want to keep the Jews out of their store or don't want to hire black employees have a practical problem with this.
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-09-05 4:40:41 PM
Only tyrants deny freedom of choice.
"...it is how things should be."
"...if we should respect her choice she should respect people who make different choices."
Where's the respect for different choices? There is none because "it is how things should be." If some chose to sell to Jews or hire blacks, they should respect people who make different choices. But they don't of course.
Hypocrites all. Too funny.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-09-05 5:05:25 PM
We do not have the right to exclude when it comes to public relationships (who we hire, what customers we do business with).
Posted by: Fact Check | 5-Sep-08 4:40:41 PM
Except when it is government enforced affirmative action programs.
Posted by: The Stig | 2008-09-05 5:06:12 PM
"We do not have the right to exclude when it comes to public relationships (who we hire, what customers we do business with)."
Canadians did of course have the right to exclude, until it was taken away by organised Jewry, minorities and the Leviathan.
"Dresden was one of the first issues facing this new committee. NUA Executive Secretary Hugh Burnett had attended a JLC-sponsored Race Relations Institute as a delegate from his carpenter’s union, and deeply moved the others with his stories of discrimination in Dresden. As a result, the Ontario human rights community took the issue to the new Conservative premier, Leslie Frost, on 7 July 1949. Accompanied by about 35 other human-rights activists, Irving Himel presented a brief from the Toronto Association for Civil Liberties on behalf of a "policy network,"62 of various churches, different ethnic organizations (including Jewish, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, and black), several women’s groups, and a number of non-communist trade unions: the International Bookbinders Union, the ILGWU, the Oil Workers Union, the Printing Pressman’s Union, the Street Railwaymen’s Union, the Textile Workers Union, the United Packinghouse Workers Union, the CCL, and the TLC-affiliated Toronto and District Labour Council.
The main request was passage of a Fair Employment Practices Act prohibiting discrimination in employment, similar to those already existing in several American states. The policy network, however, also asked for action on discriminatory restrictive covenants, and suggested permitting municipalities to cancel the licences of any provider of public services which practised racial or religious discrimination. Although Dresden was not mentioned, it was clearly a part of the brief’s sub-text.64
A few days later, Mahood travelled to Dresden to see the situation first-hand. On the basis of this trip, she began planning a course of action, and her first step was to get in touch with Pierre Berton, the editor of Maclean’s. The subsequent article by Sidney Katz helped turn the Dresden story into a national issue, and also singled out Morley McKay as one of the main segregationists. Katz quoted the restaurateur as saying, "Do you know that for three days after [each attempt by a black to obtain service] I get raging mad every time I see a Negro. Maybe it’s like an animal who’s had a smell of blood."65
Meanwhile, the issue of non-discriminatory business licensing was finally put to the town voters in a referendum in December of 1949. It was defeated by a vote of 517 to 108, and the town became a lightning-rod which attracted a fire-storm of attention and criticism. As a Toronto Globe and Mail editorial put it, "The decision brings shame to Dresden and to all Ontario."
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/47/03lamber.html
In an unyielding effort to suborn their freedom to chose, the people of Dresden were demonized because the pursuit of their freedom to chose, to not fit the political agenda of special interests.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-09-05 5:17:31 PM
"But the logic just does not hold up. As you point out, that a choice is available and that taking one option is praiseworthy does not make the other option a legitimate one."
One choice is to live with your mistake and honor your child by giving it a chance at life.
The other choice is to selfishly kill the baby so you can forget all about it and go on with your unfettered life.
They may both be legitimate options but the latter just somehow seems sleazy and wrong. Maybe it's just me. FYI ... I am atheist. This ain't a god issue, it's about being a decent and honorable person.
Posted by: John V | 2008-09-05 5:24:32 PM
That Palin publicly introduced her family, and maybe used them to score political points, therefore she can't complain if others use them to score political points, is questionable thinking. If it is wrong for the media or her opponents to use her children to score political points, it is wrong under any circumstances.
Even if it were OK, she can still possibly score more political points by complaining. In the end, scoring political points is what it is all about. What else should we expect politicians to do?
Fact Check, you are always thought provoking, especially when I disagree with you. When you say "Freedom of association and the right to exclude are logically distinct", I disagree with you. You can't freely associate without also being free to exclude. I may want to associate with someone on my private property. But I may then change my mind and want them off my property. The reason ought to be mine alone. How can you have the right to associate without the right to exclude? They are opposite sides of the same coin.
If I am so small minded to exclude blacks and Jews from my private business, I will be at a disadvantage compared to my competitors, and my business will suffer. I should be free to let my business suffer.
Posted by: TM | 2008-09-05 10:20:55 PM
TM,
"How can you have the right to associate without the right to exclude?"
Let me give you a very simple example. suppose a new social networking site opened up. People can create their own pages and create "buddy" lists. If the site had rules that meant there might be some people you want to add that you are not allowed to add as buddies, then it would be a site lacking freedom of association. If the site had rules that did not allow you to refuse a buddy request from some people then it would be a site lacking freedom of exclusion.
So a site allowing freedom of association without allowing freedom of exclusion would be one where they say they will not prohibit you adding anyone you like as a buddy, but that you must also accept buddy requests from anyone who asks. Simple. You *CAN* have one without the other. They *ARE* logically distinct. So then the issue for each of whether it is a good policy can be adjudicated separately.
The tradition of enshrining freedom of association comes from attempts by governments in the past to disallow groups of people form gathering together (usually people who want to form a political organization or who share a common religious practice). The right that was threatened had nothing to do with exclusion of people joining together - quite the opposite.
Freedom *TO* associate and freedom *FROM* association are two entirely different things. The former is a very good thing and one our constitution protects. The latter is a very good thing in private relationships, but not in public ones. You don't have the right to refuse to rent to a homosexual, hire a Morman, or sell to an Asian. This is a very good thing, and not at all in conflict with the freedom of asociation.
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-09-05 11:28:19 PM
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