What I am about to write here is not another tome about the abortion debate within the GOP. I have found over the years that, if we conservatives were to listen to each other more than we preach at each other, we would find that there is very little substantive moral distance between the positions of most Republicans who are pro-life, and most Republicans who still claim to be pro-choice. To debate and disagree over the edges of the inalienable rights of life and liberty is a strength, not a weakness, of American Conservatism, as long as we eventually recognize that we agree on so much more than we disagree.
But my concern today is not over where to draw the line in that debate, but over how we have damaged the morality of liberty over the last generation, and how that damage is now manifesting itself in a courtroom in Philadelphia.
In the Grand Jury Report supporting the indictment of Dr. Kermit Gosnell [http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf], the chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, when asked to justify why the agency failed to investigate horrific complaints about Gosnell’s clinic over the years, is quoted as answering “People die.”
Well, yes they do, Ms. Dutton, but it is your Marie-Antoinette-style indifference to who died, and how and why they died, that is so shameful—and so remarkably telling about who we may be becoming as a people.
To place my thoughts in a context, I want to quote the 17th Century British theologian and poet, John Donne, who wrote the following in 1642:
…all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language…God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another…. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Over the last 40 years we, as a society, have tried to disprove Donne’s timeless observations that “no man is an island,” and that when the bell tolls for one of us it tolls for all of us. Our attempt to isolate ourselves from our neighbors in the name of liberty has poisoned our sense of community, and dulled us to the requirements of common decency. Although we still can recite the Golden Rule, we forget that it is a rule that requires that we care for each other.
For forty-odd years we have promoted a society that no longer seeks to foster caring relationships among neighbors. In the process, we have become self-absorbed—forever striving to become independent from each other, from our society, and from our nation, and forever strengthening our allegiance to ourselves rather than to others. Without the solace of neighbors, we seek the protection of the state, or of a self-anointed class of experts, in a vain attempt to save us from the inevitable risks of everyday life. And we call this “liberty”.
This definition of “liberty” is not what our founders meant by the term. They believed that we were to be vigilant in maintaining our independence from the control of our lives and wills by the state or an elite class, but we were never meant to be independent from each other. The founders didn’t declare independence from King George then say to each other, “so long, and see you when the war’s over!” They ended their declaration with a pledge of loyalty and solidarity: the pledge of their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Folks, that’s as interdependent as it gets!
Liberty is not autonomy, and a society of free people can’t survive in a place where every man is an island unto himself. The morality of liberty is a life in which we try to live by the Golden Rule.
The irony is that the security we need to live autonomous lives doesn’t exist. Without caring human relationships that support a society, no government or elite class can give us the security we crave. When we disengage from each other, and stop caring for each other, “all the kings horses and all the kings men” cannot replace the bonds we’ve lost.
If you don’t believe me, and you need the re-assurance of experts, you need look no further than to the ongoing research conducted by Professor Robert Putnam at Harvard. In several noted books and papers published over the last 20 years, including the bestseller, Bowling Alone, Putnam describes this forty-year phenomenon through the use of detailed sociological data. In these works, Putnam presents his basic findings of how we have become disengaged from our communities, and from the traditional forms of association that built our communities. He finds that the phenomenon of disengagement cuts across all age groups, genders, socio-economic, educational and ethnic groups.
Now, the consequences of this disengagement—the consequences of abandoning the Golden Rule—are vividly unfolding in the trial of Dr. Gosnell. A person who loves their neighbor, and who treats their neighbor as he would treat himself,
- doesn’t kill children after they are born alive—healthy, breathing, and crying—by plunging scissors into their backs and cutting their spinal cords;
- doesn’t keep the hands and feet of the murdered children as trophies in his kitchen;
- doesn’t maim and kill women just to remove a viable baby in order to kill the baby;
- doesn’t subject such injured women to unsterile environments, or fail to provide life-supporting medical treatment to them, or fail to get them to an emergency care facility in time to save their lives;
- doesn’t prey on the vulnerable members of at-risk communities, and kill their children in the name of family planning; and
- doesn’t look the other way and not investigate complaints about such conditions for decades.
And that last point applies to so many of us today—the bystanders. Where were the families and neighbors of these women, who knew what they had endured but stayed silent? Where were those government agencies that we’ve created to replace caring neighbors so we could be autonomous? Where has the media been since the existence of this case first broke several years ago? Where is the outrage of community activists and politicians, whose mouths seem to be in perpetual motion about the alleged outrages suffered by the members of their communities at the hands of the ever-present oppressive majority, but whose silence now is deafening when the perpetrator is found among them?
And finally to my conservative friends … Dr. Gosnell’s evil is a perfect example of what has festered in too many neighborhoods for too long because we haven’t engaged in the lives of those communities.
Dr. Gosnell’s evil is a price we’ve all paid for our autonomy. That autonomy we’ve purchased may be a lot of things, but it’s not liberty.
I am wearing out adjectives but this is so right. Maybe that’s the best adjective I can use. Your piece is RIGHT.
How much Liberty do poor women have if they want an abortion but have no one except a back alley abortionist like Dr Gosnell to perform it? Some good Christians would deny her safe accessable government regulated clinics. Say what you will about the doctor but realize you must that the real butcher is we. No man is an island, perhaps, yet we force pregnant women to stand alone on one. We impose our Christian values on her and in so doing, often ruin her and her spawn. We are our brother’s keeper not his dictator. You can’t put a diaper on a zygote.
In his Meditation VII, John Donne reminds us for whom the bell tolls.
Hemingway wrote about Liberty in his famous book which quotes Donne in it’s title.
From Wiki:
The novel explores political ideology and the nature of bigotry. After noticing how he so easily employed the convenient catch-phrase “enemy of the people”, Jordan moves swiftly into the subjects and opines, “To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.”[10] Later in the book, Robert Jordan explains the threat of fascism in his own country. “Robert Jordan, wiping out the stew bowl with bread, explained how the income tax and inheritance tax worked. ‘But the big estates remain. Also, there are taxes on the land,’ he said. ‘But surely the big proprietors and the rich will make a revolution against such taxes. Such taxes appear to me to be revolutionary. They will revolt against the government when they see that they are threatened, exactly as the fascists have done here,’ Primitivo said. ‘It is possible.’ ‘Then you will have to fight in your country as we fight here.’ ‘Yes, we will have to fight.’ ‘But are there not many fascists in your country?’ ‘There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.'”[11] Also in the same conversation Robert Jordan is having with the others, he realizes how there are populist policies right in America, namely homesteading which was widely used by American settlers to settle the West from 1863 onward:[12] “Robert Jordan explained the process of homesteading. He had never thought of it before as an agrarian reform. ‘That is magnificent,’ Primitivo said. ‘Then you have a Communism in your country?’ ‘No. That is done under the Republic.'”[13]
Abba sung about the Spanish Civil War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHYn7LHV7fg
Great to hear from you, Izzy. Whether we agree or disagree, I always find your comments interesting.
As I tried to convey in my post, we all have some soul-searching to do. Gosnell’s clinic existed, and his atrocities occurred over so many years, because we all looked the other way.
Liberals/progressives looked the other way because they believed that these women had the right to end their pregnancies, that Gosnell was providing them a service to facilitate the exercise of that right, and that the appropriate state agencies would ensure the safety of Gosnell’s practice. With these beliefs in mind, they looked the other way—and continue to do so, even as the gruesome facts dribble out of the courtroom through alternative media sites.
Conservatives looked the other way, because we weren’t there. While we crossed our arms and preached about abortion, we failed to acknowledge that two lives and two futures are intertwined physically in every pregnancy. We’ve not done enough to address the conditions that lead our neighbors to make this choice. We haven’t acknowledged or addressed the underlying problems that so many people face in their daily lives in too many communities like the one where Gosnell practiced—problems that left the women involved in this tragedy feeling that they had no alternative other than to put their lives in Gosnell’s hands.
Although I could spend a lot more words debating or discussing all of the points in your comment, I would just observe that even a cursory reading of the Grand Jury Report shows that no one is talking about the fate of zygotes in this case, but rather of 30+ week old, viable unborn children, who are protected from abortion under Pennsylvania law, and who were delivered alive and breathing before they were killed. You can put a diaper on such a child.
Thanks for the informative post and interesting riposte Ed,
Of course viable unborn children should not be aborted, and this back alley abortionist should be punished. That’s the easy part. To argue otherwise is silly and a little offensive. Those who would skew the argument inside those parameters do not deserve the Liberty they are not willing to fight for. And what about the young woman, let’s call her Mary, who is twelve weeks pregnant, wants an abortion and has and no money? What about her Liberty? Some (Christians) would force her and her baby into permanent poverty saying that it is immoral to abort her fetus. And these same folks will work hard to pass legislation to make sure that she doesn’t have the option. This is tyranny. BuBuBuBut what about the baby they say ? Breaking news…It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus. It can’t live outside the womb. Hey right wingers, can you hear that bell? It rings for thee.
Izzy, I am not going to get drawn into an argument over abortion in this post and these comments, because I do believe it is beside the point when it comes to the observation I was trying to address in this post. I know that some people believe that a life before viability is not a baby or a human life, while others do; and science doesn’t seem to clearly end this debate. I, for one, believe it is a life worth protecting, and have a moral problem arguing otherwise. But this argument is decades, if not centuries, old, and you and I aren’t going to resolve it here.
However, I think you identify a real blind-spot in many pro-life arguments: we most-often talk as if there is only one life involved in a pregnancy—the life of the unborn child. In fact, there are two lives physically intertwined, both with rights to life and liberty, which sometimes can tragically come in conflict during pregnancy for reasons of health, or for reasons of external pressures on the mother. Conservatives, if we are to be credible on this issue moving forward, need to address the problems and pressures that lead to unwanted pregnancies and that create the circumstances under which women choose abortion.
In the end, condemning the choice without offering help either to avoid the problems that lead to the choice, or to help mothers through what we believe is the correct choice and its consequences, is not the way to protect both lives. “Loving our neighbors” means caring for them before, during and after the circumstances that lead to unwanted or unplanned pregnancies; and still loving them if they make a choice we belive is wrong. Of course, I believe help and caring love is best delivered by or through family, neighbors, churches and private organizations, but it should be given.
Ed, My point addresses your post re: Liberty. To make that woman have a baby is tyranny. It should be her choice, not yours or mine. GONG, GONG.
Izzy, my point is that there is a morality that is required of all of us to maintain Liberty. Liberty is not autonomy; it is freedom from the state, the Pharisees, the self-anointed elite. The morality required from all of us is the anti-thesis of autonomy—it is a caring love that forms the relationships that build society. Your definition of liberty seems to disregard this moral component–reminding all of us to care for neighbor is not to advocate tyranny.
Just as this morality requires that I love my neighbor to maintain my own liberty, it requires parents to love and care for their children, and places a special and tremendously stressful responsibility on mothers to love their unborn children—and for all of us to help the mother and child through the pregnancy if and when we are needed. In the end, none of us can flatly compel a mother to bring her baby to term, for none of us knows all of the conflicts that may require her to end a pregnancy; but equating liberty with autonomy should never be used as an excuse to ignore our moral obligations to maintain a caring love for both the unborn child and the mother. When the bell tolls for either of them, it tolls for me.
Just watched a segment on FOX’s ‘The Five’ on the Gosnell trial in Pennsylvania. Kimberly Guilfoil attended the trial today and said she had prosecuted many murderers in her day but had never been as repulsed as she was hearing the testimony. Others said this guy is evil and wondered why the mainstream media is just now picking up the story. Kudos to Ed for bringing this story to BJP.
It was the State of Pennsylvania that denied these women safe, accessable, government- regulated clinics”. Pennsylvania HAD regulations in place and under pressure from Planned Bullyhood and NARAL everyone looked the other way. There was nothing safe and legal that went on in Dr. Gosnell’s clinic.
Ed.
“Liberals/progressives looked the other way because they believed that these women had the right to end their pregnancies, that Gosnell was providing them a service to facilitate the exercise of that right, and that the appropriate state agencies would ensure the safety of Gosnell’s practice.”
Sounds like a consumer-protection agency.
Yvonne, How many more Dr. Gosnells would there be if not for Planned Bullyhood? Pressure from liberal groups? Ha ha. What happened to Dr Tiller in Kansas?? Do you think other abortion providers are under any pressure? Spare us the sanctimony.
Wiki:
During his tenure with the center, which began in 1975 and continued the medical practice of his father, Tiller was frequently targeted with protest and violence by anti-abortion groups and individuals. After his clinic was firebombed in 1986, Tiller was shot in both arms by anti-abortion activist Shelley Shannon in 1993. On May 31, 2009, Tiller was shot through the eye and killed by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder, as Tiller served as an usher during the Sunday morning service at his church in Wichita. Roeder was convicted of murder on January 29, 2010 and given the maximum penalty allowed under Kansas state law.
Are other abortion providers under pressure??
United States
[edit] Murders
In the U.S., violence directed towards abortion providers has killed at least eight people, including four doctors, two clinic employees, a security guard, and a clinic escort.[8][9]
March 10, 1993: Dr. David Gunn of Pensacola, Florida was fatally shot during a protest. He had been the subject of wanted-style posters distributed by Operation Rescue in the summer of 1992. Michael F. Griffin was found guilty of Gunn’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
July 29, 1994: Dr. John Britton and James Barrett, a clinic escort, were both shot to death outside another facility, the Ladies Center, in Pensacola. Rev. Paul Jennings Hill was charged with the killings. Hill received a death sentence and was executed on September 3, 2003. The clinic in Pensacola had been bombed before and was also bombed subsequently, in 1984 and 2012.
December 30, 1994: Two receptionists, Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols, were killed in two clinic attacks in Brookline, Massachusetts. John Salvi was arrested and confessed to the killings. He died in prison and guards found his body under his bed with a plastic garbage bag tied around his head. Salvi had also confessed to a non-lethal attack in Norfolk, Virginia days before the Brookline killings.
January 29, 1998: Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer who worked as a security guard at an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, was killed when his workplace was bombed. Eric Robert Rudolph, who was also responsible for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing, was charged with the crime and received two life sentences as a result.
October 23, 1998: Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot to death with a high-powered rifle at his home in Amherst, New York.[10] His was the last in a series of similar shootings against providers in Canada and northern New York state which were all likely committed by James Kopp. Kopp was convicted of Slepian’s murder after finally being apprehended in France in 2001.
May 31, 2009: Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder as Tiller served as an usher at church in Wichita, Kansas.[11]
[edit] Attempted murder, assault, and kidnapping
According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers.[12] Attempted murders in the U.S. included:[8][13][14]
August 19, 1993: Dr. George Tiller was shot outside of an abortion facility in Wichita, Kansas. Shelley Shannon was charged with the crime and received an 11-year prison sentence (20 years were later added for arson and acid attacks on clinics).
July 29, 1994: June Barret was shot in the same attack which claimed the lives of James Barrett, her husband, and Dr. John Britton.
December 30, 1994: Five individuals were wounded in the shootings which killed Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols.
October 28, 1997: Dr. David Gandell of Rochester, New York was injured by flying glass when a shot was fired through the window of his home.[15]
January 29, 1998: Emily Lyons, a nurse, was severely injured, and lost an eye, in the bombing which also killed Robert Sanderson.
[edit] Arson, bombing, and property crime
According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidents of trespassing, 1264 incidents of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid (“stink bombs”).[12] The New York Times also cites over one hundred clinic bombings and incidents of arson, over three hundred invasions, and over four hundred incidents of vandalism between 1978 and 1993.[16] The first clinic arson occurred in Oregon in March 1976 and the first bombing occurred in February 1978 in Ohio.[17] Incidents have included:
December 25, 1984: An abortion clinic and two physicians’ offices in Pensacola, Florida were bombed in the early morning of Christmas Day by a quartet of young people (Matt Goldsby, Jimmy Simmons, Kathy Simmons, Kaye Wiggins) who later called the bombings “a gift to Jesus on his birthday.”[18][19][20] The clinic, the Ladies Center, would later be the site of the murder of Dr. John Britton and James Barrett in 1994 and a firebombing in 2012.
May 21, 1998: Three people were injured when acid was poured at the entrances of five abortion clinics in Miami, Florida.[21]
October 1999: Martin Uphoff set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, causing US$100 worth of damage. He was later sentenced to 60 months in prison.[22]
May 28, 2000: An arson at a clinic in Concord, New Hampshire resulted in several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. The case remains unsolved.[23][24][25] This was the second arson at the clinic.[26]
September 30, 2000: John Earl, a Catholic priest, drove his car into the Northern Illinois Health Clinic after learning that the FDA had approved the drug RU-486. He pulled out an ax before being forced to the ground by the owner of the building, who fired two warning shots from a shotgun.[27]
June 11, 2001: An unsolved bombing at a clinic in Tacoma, Washington destroyed a wall, resulting in $6,000 in damages.[22][28]
July 4, 2005: A clinic Palm Beach, Florida was the target of an arson. The case remains open.[22]
December 12, 2005: Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe threw a Molotov cocktail at a clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana. The device missed the building and no damage was caused. In August 2006, Hughes was sentenced to six years in prison, and Dunahoe to one year. Hughes claimed the bomb was a “memorial lamp” for an abortion she had had there.[29]
September 11, 2006 David McMenemy of Rochester Hills, Michigan, crashed his car into the Edgerton Women’s Care Center in Davenport, Iowa. He then doused the lobby in gasoline and started a fire. McMenemy committed these acts in the belief that the center was performing abortions; however, Edgerton is not an abortion clinic.[30] Time magazine listed the incident in a “Top 10 Inept Terrorist Plots” list.[31]
April 25, 2007: A package left at a women’s health clinic in Austin, Texas, contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death. A bomb squad detonated the device after evacuating the building. Paul Ross Evans (who had a criminal record for armed robbery and theft) was found guilty of the crime.[32]
May 9, 2007: An unidentified person deliberately set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Virginia Beach, Virginia.[33]
December 6, 2007: Chad Altman and Sergio Baca were arrested for the arson of Dr. Curtis Boyd’s clinic in Albuquerque. Baca’s girlfriend had scheduled an appointment for an abortion at the clinic.[34][35]
January 22, 2009 Matthew L. Derosia, 32, who was reported to have had a history of mental illness[36] rammed an SUV into the front entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota.[37]
January 1, 2012 Bobby Joe Rogers, 41, firebombed the American Family Planning Clinic in Pensacola, Florida with a Molotov cocktail; the fire gutted the building. Rogers told investigators that he was motivated to commit the crime by his opposition to abortion, and that what more directly prompted the act was seeing a patient enter the clinic during one of the frequent anti-abortion protests there. The clinic had previously been bombed at Christmas in 1984 and was the site of the murder of Dr. John Britton and James Barrett in 1994.[38]
April 1, 2012 A bomb exploded on the windowsill of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, resulting in a fire that damaged one of the clinic’s examination rooms. No injuries were reported. On April 3, the FBI arrested 50-year-old Francis Grady on charges of “arson of a building used in interstate commerce” and “intentionally damaging the property of a facility that provides reproductive health services”.[39]
[edit] Anthrax threats
The first hoax letters claiming to contain anthrax were mailed to U.S. clinics in October 1998, a few days after the Slepian shooting; since then, there have been 655 such bioterror threats made against abortion providers. None of the “anthrax” in these cases was real.[13][40]
November 2001: After the genuine 2001 anthrax attacks, Clayton Waagner mailed hoax letters containing a white powder to 554 clinics. On December 3, 2003, Waagner was convicted of 51 charges relating to the anthrax scare.
Looks like Izzy just discovered John Donne and is trying to use him as another Alinsky weapon in his “progressive” arsenal. There are so many logical fallacies in his arguments it’s hard to keep track.
“To make that woman have a baby is tyranny. It should be her choice, not yours or mine.”
In 99.9{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of all pregnancies the choice was made long before a child was conceived. It is not tyranny to require responsibility. For Pete’s sake, we require pet owners to be responsible for their dogs. How is it tyranny to expect men and women to be responsible for their progeny?
And Ed, I think you’ve fell into his trap of vilifying pro-lifers to guilt us into listening to his ghoulish drivel:
“However, I think you identify a real blind-spot in many pro-life arguments: we most-often talk as if there is only one life involved in a pregnancy—the life of the unborn child. In fact, there are two lives physically intertwined, both with rights to life and liberty, which sometimes can tragically come in conflict during pregnancy for reasons of health, or for reasons of external pressures on the mother.”
There are any number of groups out there trying to help the other victims of our culture of death – the mothers. Project Rachel is one of them. This group is run by Catholics who know the power of God’s redemption, and that that redemption is there for all of us, even those who have chosen abortion.
But what I find most disturbing about folks like Izzy, who worship at the bloody altar of abortion, is this tactic of blaming the pro-life movement for monsters like Gosnell. This ghoul is borne in the image of the high priestess in your death cult, Margaret Sanger. Sorry buddy. You OWN this. GONG. GONG.
Mark, thanks for the information about Project Rachel. I know there are groups like this out there, but we don’t talk enough about the mothers, their plight, and these efforts. So, too often, our side is perceived and depicted as not caring about both lives. I wasn’t trying to vilify pro-lifers, rather I was trying to point out that we need to promote and expand these efforts like Project Rachel as loudly as we advocate for the unborn children.
Ed, sorry if my post wasn’t clear. That part of the comment wasn’t directed at you. Izzy has a long history of vilifying the pro-life movement. My sights were squarely drawn on him.
My point to you was that people like Izzy are the ones responsible for the perception that our side doesn’t care about both lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. They know it. But if you tell a lie long enough and as many times as they do their hope is people will start believing it. In short, I think you play too nice with him and his comrades. They have no desire to reach any understanding. You must think “progressive” or else. Then they have the audacity to characterize the pro-lifers as fascist. Incredible.
“How many more Dr. Gosnells would there be if not for Planned Bullyhood? Pressure from liberal groups?”
How many more John Donnes or Ernest Hemingways would there be if not for your abortion-on-demand dogma? How many Martin Luther Kings? How many Albert Einsteins? How many Jonas Salks or Michael Debakeys? How many cures for cancers or musical or literary masterpieces were lost in those 56 million babies butchered since Roe v. Wade?
you’re not my buddy Cabin Boy. Now get back down on your knees and pray to your Catholic God that he is merciful to welching perverts like you. Keep your snotty nose out of my wife and daughters business. Would that you had either.
Very nice. Truth always elicits ad hominem attacks from you Alinskyites when your toolbox is empty.
By the way, Izzy, you seem to think you know an awful lot about my personal life. Are you stalking me? Maybe I need to see about a restraining order.
Kinda creepy.
Let me know when you want to hear from a 20 year old who chose adoption over abortion….
Mama, I don’t want uh ‘bortion
Shaneequah, you IS getting’ uh ‘bortion. I can not afford another baby roun’ hyur. I’m already raisin you and yo first baby DaQuan and you is jus’ seventeen year old.
Please Mama, don’t make me go to dat Dr. Gosnell. Kyetha say he feed festuses to his cats.
I can not afford any ‘spensive doctor, Shaneequah. Dey cost five hundred dollas fo uh ‘bortion. An he don’t feed festuses to no cats neither.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYiwxM_RVEI
Dr. Gosnell a good man. He do ‘bortions fo free sumtime. Listen to me Shaneequah, we ain’t got de money fo no mo kids. Desmond is dat baby daddy an he dix lexic. DaQuan jes a baby an you can already tell he dix lexic. Does you want another dix lexic baby cuz I jes can’t take care of another one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR234BH9Cr4
I luvs you Shaneequah. You know I do, I’m yo Moma. But puhleez don’t hav dis baby. Whut kinda life can you give a retarted baby? You already gots one baby. You is already twelve weeks along. Soon enough there won’t be any ‘bortion doctors will do it.
Oh Moma, Iz scared. Whut if I give dis baby up fo ‘doption?
Who gonna ‘dopt uh black baby Shaneequah? You seen dem kids over at de Catholic Charity. Dey some sad kids. All the Meskin an white babies gits ‘dopted but nobody wants de black ones. When you walk by there you gonna wonder ‘bout yo baby. It gonna hurt you de rest of yo life. Shaneequah, I want you to git down on yo knees wit me.
OK Moma, but I’m so scared.
Sometime its best to give dat little life back to God. Pray wid me Shaneequah like de Lawd taught us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOKaircCiGI
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Thank you Moma. Moma I is hungry.
Dey is a hambone in de fridge. You can gnaw on dat.
Again?
Child, dats all we got.
Hambone sucks.
I know child.
RRRIIINNNGGG! RRRIIINNNGGG!
Hullo.
No DaQuan, I is not gonna have yo baby agin.
Bucuz Moma an me cain’t affod it.
Desmond, you don even pay fo Daquan, how you gone pay fo he brother?
I mo call you later.
I luv you too Desmond. Click
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV5UParW4zw
Shaneequah
Yes Moma
Does you want dis hambone?
Smell it Moma
It kinda stanks.
Let me smell it. It do stank Moma. Put it back in the fridge. We can make soup wid it.
Shaneequah, you know you can’t be alone wid dis decision. You needs yo family and choich rat now.
Dat reminds me Moma, I learnt a new woid.
What’s dat?
Autominous. What you is tryin’ to say is I can’t be autominous Moma?
Dat’s right child. You can’t go through this by yosef. You needs yo family. You need Daquan too child.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaP8NGML_QE
republicans=chiquitita
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=yiJMln3q7GU
Holy cow.
What started out as almost lucid quickly devolved into some sort of racist ramble that made zero sense.
Pro-abortion people like to claim that there is no support for mothers who **choose** to give birth to their babies. As Mark said, Catholic Charities have very in-depth programs to aid mothers who choose (there’s that word again) to keep their babies or give them for adoption. The “progressives” don’t like those programs or any others run by other faith-based organizations because they don’t get to exercise control over the activities like they would if their religious institution, the government, were to run them.
All I can say is … wow. I see you’ve finally embraced your inner Sanger and went in full-on eugenics mode. The fact that you’re teaching our children is deeply disturbing.
http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html
Is this a good time to talk about teachers having guns in the classroom? Hold on a minute…….OK I’m back. Had to go make a deposit. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Dr Gosnell and the societal price for autonomy. I’m not exactly sure what Ed is saying, you know Ed, a bit heavy on the lawyer speak sometimes. Sort of like birding with a kaleidoscope instead of binoculars, but I think he’s attempting to warn us about who we may become as a people. To quote Ed:
In the Grand Jury Report supporting the indictment of Dr. Kermit Gosnell [http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf], the chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, when asked to justify why the agency failed to investigate horrific complaints about Gosnell’s clinic over the years, is quoted as answering “People die.”
Well, yes they do, Ms. Dutton, but it is your Marie-Antoinette-style indifference to who died, and how and why they died, that is so shameful—and so remarkably telling about who we may be becoming as a people.
Ed then references John Donne’s famous lines about no man being an island and for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. In other words, Ed is saying that we all need to be responsible for each other. I think that’s true, Mark. The bible teaches us that we are our brothers keeper. I think that the difficulty is ….hold on a minute. OK I’m back. Wow, that was rough. Anyway, Ed also cleverly points out that when we hear a bell ring, like at a funeral for example, that that bell you hear is not for thaqt dead guy, he can’t hear anything. It reminds us that our life is short, and getting shorter. Hold on a minute my phone is ringing…. OK I’m back. It was just somebody wanting me to vote for Ed Hubbard for the SBOE. Is he running?
Izzy, I’ve been told that I can be pretty opaque, but “birding with a kaleidoscope” is a pretty funny and vivid way to put it.
As for your last question, I don’t know who may be ringing your line, or pulling your chain, but I don’t ever plan to subject myself or my family to campaigning for office again–I’ve had enough of that fun to last a lifetime.
I do think it is probably time for Izzy to drink some kaopectate, and for the rest of us to bring this thread to an end–it seems as though we’ve exhausted ourselves on this subject for now.
Hey Mark, Could you carry something back to your boat for me? Give it to Shannon. I borrowed it from him sometime back and have really enjoyed it. Thanks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybAyDFrhhI
I agree (at least partially) with Ed @ 9:34AM.
Maybe the couch critters or those who find it fruitful to argue with them should keep it behind the couch, eat a big chill pill, or even partake of my stash — whatever. This thread ceased to be informational or educational yesterday morning.
just one more…
If you find the John Donne line you get an A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHAzv2FD8jQ
Well the dawn was coming,
heard him ringing on my bell
He said, “My name’s the teacher,
that is what I call myself
And I have a lesson
that I must impart to you
It’s an old expression
but I must insist it’s true
Jump up, look around,
find yourself some fun,
no sense in sitting there hating everyone
No man’s an island and his castle isn’t home,
the nest is for nothing when the bird has flown”
So I took a journey,
threw my world into the sea
With me went the teacher
who found fun instead of me
Hey man, what’s the plan, what was that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there in bed
I try to socialize but I can’t seem to find
what I was looking for, got something on my mind
Then the teacher told me
it had been a lot of fun
Thanked me for his ticket
and all that I had done
Hey man, what’s the plan, what was that you said?
Sun-tanned, drink in hand, lying there in bed
I try to socialize but I can’t seem to find
what I was looking for, got something on my mind
Ed, I am continuing my writing and would ask your permission to use this post and comments in a stage play. Hope you are well. Thanks, Loren Smith (Izzy)