Monday, November 19, 2007

Mike Huckabee: Hates your Freedom

Mike Huckabee is running an ad featuring Chuck Norris as his plan for Securing the Borders.

Before you start thinking of Mike Huckabee as a jovial guy with whom you would share a beer and swap Chuck Norris jokes please read the political positions of Mike Huckabee.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Mike Huckabee would personally rape you and force you to keep the child. But...


Q: South Dakota had some proposed legislation to outlaw all abortion except saving the life of a mother, no exceptions for rape or incest. You said you'd sign that. Why?

A: I always am going to err on the side of life. I believe life is precious. I hav been in the pro-life camp since I was a teenager. It's because of my view that God is the creator and instigator of life. But those of us in the pro-life movement have to do also some expanding. Life begins at conception but it doesn't end at birth. And if we're really pro-life we have to be concerned about more than just the gestation period. [My administration] passed pro-life legislation, but we also did things that improved the environmental quality that would affect a child's air and water; that he had a better education, & better access to affordable health care. So I think that real pro-life people need to be concerned about affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, access to a college education. That, for me, is what pro-life has to mean.

Source: Meet the Press: Meet the Candidates 2008 series Jan 28, 2007

12 comments:

Andrew said...

"a child's air and water; that HE had a better education."
"HE"
i know there is a lot here to say, but i think that statement is really at the root of who Huckabee is.

_J_ said...

Women are not for educating. Women are for shooting out babies.

And fuck if they get any say in that.

Lady Enide said...

I use "he." I think all the alternating he/she protocol is nonsense. It's just how people *talk*, for Pete's sake.

Also, I have to agree with his policy on abortion, at least. Two wrongs don't make a right; and if you think the government is right to outlaw murder, then you can't complain against it outlawing abortion, because it is literally the same thing. Science is not yet capable of proving otherwise, at least.

_J_ said...

It's not murder! Murder is killing a human being. A ZYGOTE is not a human being.

And it's not "Science". It's semantics. Identify the trait which all human beings share then find that same trait in zygotes but not any other animal or the zygotes of any other animal. What does a human being zygote have that bear zygotes do not have? What you'll identify will either be

1) A potentiality argument.
2) Some unempirical hippy crap.

Arguments from potentiality are insanely irrational and idiotic because they aren't based on the thing in itself but rather potentiality, some undefined unempirical "whatever the crap" based in not observable phenomena but rather "well it might/could/may" be. "Hey, maybe if we let this mass gestate it may one day be born and then become a human." Well, la de da. Maybe if X then Y. Huzzah! Now we have to operate with the assumption that every potential X then Y situation needs to be heeded.

And if the quality is "a soul" well, fuck, I can posit the existence of a metric ton of unempirical unobserveable unfalsefiable unicorn shit too.

And why the god damned hell would someone start at a girl who had been raped and say, "You know what? We're gonna let this play itself out."

Even assuming that zygotes are human beings (which they are not) and even assuming that fetuses are human beings (which they are not) who the fuck cares? We aren't running out of people. And if we start to run out of people? We can MAKE MORE.

And how the fuck can someone be pro-war and anti murder? Explain that to me. We need to kill brown people so that we don't die (explain that) but we can't let rape victims have a say in what happens to them? That would be crossing the line?

Not that I LOATHE Fetus Fetishizing Fucks but...

I can't think of a way to end that sentence.

Where the hell is that zygote picture...

_J_ said...

There we go

Roscoe said...

The goverment doesn't outlaw murder, without definining it in a very specific way, though.

You're opening a door to semantics on a level we are all, despite our semantic love, unprepared to deal with, Stephanie.

I mean.. Semantics that TERRIFY me.

_J_ said...

When this was briefly discussed last night via IM we touched on the potentiality argument and then fell into the rabbit hole of trying to define "human being". Bypassing the whole definition of that which cannot be defined argument I want to talk about potentiality versus actuality.

When the senate debated funding Stem Cell Research someone, I can't remember who, displayed a poster his "daughter" drew which featured little circles with smiley faces and bows. The depiction was of frozen embryos, each worried and concerned for its own well-being.

That argument needs to die.

Potentiality arguments do not make any sense because they are naught but, "This thing may one day be a human being so it is a human being."

That argument is nonsense. If we were to apply it to chickens and eggs its form would be "Chicken is egg! Egg is chicken! Black is white!"

Literally.

An egg is not a chicken. A chicken is not an egg. A fertilized egg is not a human being. I do not care how much bullshit is added to the argument to embelish it; I do not care how much rhetoric is utilized.

The argument makes no sense.

Even bypassing the "egg is chicken" idiocy we have to think about what is being said: Is it an accurate description of reality? Of course it isn't. Fertilized eggs are not in and of themselves people.

That's where the conversation ends. No amount of flowery rhetoric or potentiality or lobbying will change the actual situation.

Because we are talking about the actual situation. We are not talking about some ideal or some other reality. We aren't talking about smiling, happy fetuses bouncing around a playground with bows in their hair.

We're talking about zygotes. We're talking about eggs with sperm in them.

Roscoe said...

Which semantically, MIGHT BE LIFE.

or it might not.


Prepare yourselves for Semantic Combat.

_J_ said...

I'm fine with single celled organizms being life. Amoebas are alive. Plants are alive. It's fine to say that an egg with a spermy in it is life.

But to say that such a thing is a human "fucking" being is entirely different and requires proof of a more substantial nature than, "Dude, it totally is!".

Because the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim. If you claim that there is a God you have to prove it. If you claim that there is a leprican you have to prove it. If you claim that eggs with sperm in them are human beings you have to prove it.

That's how it works.

And, yeah, like you said it is entirely based upon semantics. Unless we want to make blanket statements about what is or is not a human being in a manner seperate from our system of categorization. Which, right now, seems crazy to me.

And if anyone pulls out the "a person's a person no matter how small" seuseism they can go fuck theirself because they've yet to prove that the sperm'd egg is a person.

Short persons can be persons. But they have to be persons.


And while I'm thinking about it, why don't people who think fertilized eggs are people have funerals (or, for mikey, funitarls) for miscarriage? Because, you know, a person died and with them died their hopes, dreams, and ambitions.

Can I get life insurance for my fertilized egg? Man, that would totally kick ass. What about health insurance? Can I claim my fertilized egg as a dependent? Is it included in the census? Oughtn't we baptize fertilized eggs? Can a pregnant woman be on a merry-go-round? Within her is a person that doesn't meet the height requirement.

But, _J_, those are absurd extreemes which result from our assumption that fertilized eggs are people! We can't go to absurd extreemes?

REALLY?! You want to argue that a fertilized egg is a human being and you don't want to go to extreemes?

REALLY?

I'm going to have to disagree.

Roscoe said...

except your definition of Human Being carries a specific semantic weight. One that is NOT carried by the Fertilized Egg Crowd's definition of a Human Being.


Neither of you have to PROVE what human being is, as it's obvious, self-evident even. But it's not a shared and equivalent context.

The ENTIRE argument is built upon semantic misunderstanding and contention.

Among other things, it's your fatal flaw in arguments. You take a position that seems clear to you, and you argue it with all of your own personal facets intact. Whether or not anyone else grants those facets any credence. It's no different than you and I arguing Magic or what makes for a Good Guitar Hero game, or anything else.

But it's on a topic that has some honest weight,some meaningful application. It's not Seinfeldian minutae, it's somehow important. Which gives the argument it's vehemence. And the vehemence gives way to the frustration, and... well... honestly....from here it goes Sith.

_J_ said...

"Neither of you have to PROVE what human being is, as it's obvious, self-evident even. But it's not a shared and equivalent context."

So we both know what a human being is because that is obvious but we disagree on what a human being is.

Oh.

Roscoe said...

Of course it is. About as obvious as what Blue Control is in Magic. or Red Sligh. or Sui-Black.

What's more, Jay, you KNOW this. Fundamentally.