An
audiologist was discussing hearing aids with a new patient. “I have good news and bad news,” he
said. “The good news is I can help you
hear better; the bad news is I can help you hear better.” That seems very similar to the internet and
cyberspace. The good news is you can
find lots of information; the bad news is you can find lots of
information. Most of the information is
straightforward and much of it is useful but it ranges from the innocuous to
the disconcerting to the terrifying.
Some
of it is politically sardonic. One wag
posted “I don’t understand how the
Constitution is a ‘living document’ that protects phone calls, emails, and text
messages, yet the Second Amendment only applies to muskets.” Another noted that “The media obsesses over Romney at seventeen and Bush at twenty-five
but declares Hillary and Benghazi at sixty-five to be ‘old news.’” Another poster declared that “Having government watch your health care is
like having Michael Vick watch your dog!”
Maybe that’s why Moody’s downgraded the entire health care sector from
“stable” to “negative” because of Obamacare.
It’s
interesting to note that New York, one of the bluest of Democrat states, is attempting
to attract new business in order to cope with their 7% unemployment. Surprisingly, the centerpiece of their ad
campaign is to reduce/eliminate taxes for start-up companies. It’s estimated that “The Tonight Show” will
save $20 million in taxes by moving from Los Angeles to New York. This reduction of taxes (along with
reductions in spending!) sure sounds like a conservative principle.
It’s
disconcerting to follow the $85 billion taxpayer bailout of General Motors. When the Treasury Department sold off the
last of the GM shares, taxpayers lost from $10.5 to $20 billion on their
investment. If you want to rub salt in
the economic wounds, check out the video of Dan Akerson, the GM CEO in 2011, on
YouTube. He clearly outlines the plan to
shrink U.S. operations and expand China operations. He points out that seven of ten GM vehicles
are already made outside the U.S. Now they
have eleven joint ventures, eleven assembly plants, and 2,700 dealerships
planned for China. Their research and
development and state of the art technology is now being jointly shared with a
communist country. If that’s not
unsettling enough, how about the Cadillac Division sponsoring a film
celebrating the birth of the Chinese Communist Party, complete with the hammer
and sickle!
All
that pales compared to an article in “Slate”
by William Saletan. He was
commenting on an article in the Journal
of Medical Ethics by two “philosophers” named Alberto Giubilini and
Francesca Minerva. It has been noted
that there is no theory so bizarre that you cannot find an intellectual to
defend it. This seems to be the perfect
case on point. Most human beings would
condemn killing newborn babies but Giubilini and Minerva write that: “We
propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than
‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is
comparable with that of a fetus…rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn
could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would
be. Such circumstances include cases
where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at
risk.”
Last
year, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist named Alisa LaPolt Snow answered a question
before the Florida legislature as to what would happen if a baby was born alive
as a result of a botched abortion. Her
answer was that “any decision that’s made
should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.” To all these people, a living baby is not
a person and it is perfectly acceptable to kill them. If there is any doubt as to this conclusion,
Giubilini and Minerva conclude: “Although
fetuses and newborns are not persons, they are potential persons because they
can develop, thanks to their own biological mechanisms, those properties which
will make them ‘persons’ in the sense of ‘subjects of a moral right to life’
that is the point at which they will be able to make aims and appreciate their
own life.”
If
social, psychological, or economic costs are grounds for abortion, they are
then acceptable grounds for infanticide.
Would they then advocate euthanasia for the elderly, the infirm, or the
terminally ill? Some things you just
don’t want to know, but you must…even if it’s terrifying.
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