My Right to Deny Yours
There’s a very simple rule: your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. Your rights, freedoms, and liberties are not to be used as a license to abridge the rights, freedoms, and liberties of others. It’s not hard to figure out.
There’s a whole new strategy amongst the Religious Right: to deny those rights, freedoms, and liberties to groups and classes of people, and to restrict a range of activities, against which religious conservatives are prejudiced, all in the name of their own “religious freedom.”
You want access to birth control? Well, so long as I am even peripherally involved as a taxpayer or an employer, my freedom trumps your right: I can deny you access, either by restricting what insurance you receive, or even by being a pharmacist.
You want equal rights as a human being? Well, not if I have to interact with you. I have the right to treat you like a non-person if I happen to be any random person doing business with you, even as a doctor or law enforcement officer.
You know what? That’s not only wrong, it’s asinine. It’s so clearly wrong that it should be obvious to anyone and everyone. If any such law is passed, it is an embarrassment; if any such law is upheld, it will be a violation of the most essential principles of our society.
The Religious Right is on a new kick: I get to use my religion to harm others.
No you don’t. You have no such right. Period.
Late note: when even religious bigot Newt Gingrich says you’re going too far, take that as a hint.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/166787/liberal-self-identification-edges-new-high-2013.aspx
2 out 5 people are conservative
1 out of 3 moderate
1 out of 4 liberal
The conservatives still have the votes to fight a helluva rearguard action.
Plus they still run the House, and SCOTUS.
Only 1 member of the Progressive Caucus in the Senate, and he’s an Independent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Progressive_Caucus
Obama’s a moderate Republican but the conservatives think he’s the return of Marx.
The depth of their damage is breath-taking. I don’t think they’re ever going to be able to fix themselves, to understand what their stupidity has done to this nation, 1980-now.
Rich Lowry, of ‘We’re Winning’ [in Iraq] prescience,
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8647.html
defends this new attempt at right-wing discrimination against objectionable minorities.
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2014/02/fighting-last-war.html
“The market has a ready solution for these couples: There are other bakers . . .”
assholes. How conservatives outnumber progressives in this country is utterly mysterious to me.
Well, it looks like JS Mill was right, that not all conservatives are stupid, but all stupid people are conservative.
If you thought invading Iraq in 2002 was the way to go, you were stupid.
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/most-americans-support-war-iraq-shows-new-pewcfr-poll—commentary-lee-feinstein/p5051
80% of the GOP wanted to go to war in 2002, vs. 50% of conservative Dems and 40% of non-conservative Dems.
If you think the earth is 6000 years old, you are immensely, catastrophically, stupid.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12/30/republicans-growing-more-skeptical-about-evolution/
says 50% of GOP and 30% of Dems are creationists.
a strong majority of Dems are down with AGW, while only about half that level of intelligence can be found in the GOP side (and among the Tea Party rationality is a one-in-ten thing.
http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data-points/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/
There is simply no fixing this place. Stupidity is going to win.