The Abortion Discussion

Hello everyone, it has been a very long time since I have wrote anything, hopefully I can write a little more regularly now. I thought I would try to write something over the current hot topic that seems to always spring up from time to time, the topic of abortion. It has sprung up recently due to a leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could overturn Roe v. Wade. I could probably write a bit about just that, but I think what’s more important is the overall abortion discussion that has picked up again because of all of this. Which in itself is a little silly since an overturn of Roe v. Wade would probably just mean this gets kicked down to the states and several of them already have laws on the books that would take effect once that happens.

So let’s go ahead and define the sides of this discussion and their motivations. This may come off a bit biased since I find myself much more on the “pro-life” side. The argument for those on the “pro-choice” side would be that abortion is a necessary part of women’s healthcare and that the state has no right to dictate what a woman can or can’t do with their bodies. They tend to appeal to those women who are victims of sexual assault, rape, a complicated birth or pregnancy that puts the lives of the child, the mother, or both at risk. And while abortion may be regrettable, it is a necessary choice that some women have to make due to their unfortunate circumstances.

Now let’s define the “pro-life” side of this argument. This side sees abortion as murder, they see this as the termination of an innocent life, no matter what unfortunate situation the mother may be in, this is still a life that is being purposely terminated. And the state has every right to interfere since at the very least the state is responsible for the preservation of life.

The biggest criticism for the “pro-choice” side of this discussion would be that they are not really considering the life of the baby. Their priority is the life of the mother and the life of the newborn doesn’t really seem to come into question, even if they lament on how hard an abortion is, they never seem to state why exactly that is. Many activists on this side of the argument will pull at the heartstrings and use the cases of women who have been through sexual assault, rape, or have birth complications, even though this is a very low percentage of all abortions. Most abortions take place due to socio-economic reasons.

The biggest criticism of the “pro-life” side is ironically the polar opposite of the criticism of the “pro-choice” side. They have a larger priority on the innocent life of the child and not so much on the mother. They are criticized for not giving viable alternatives to women seeking abortions. While I think they can certainly do a better job, their are resources out there if you are in need, such as pro-life pregnancy centers. In 2021, there are about 3,000 pregnancy centers, in 2019 when there were about 2,700 pregnancy centers, they served almost 2 million people with a total value of $266 million of total care given. The biggest issue with these pregnancy centers is that their aren’t enough of them around the country for everyone to get to and they aren’t as lucrative as places like Planned Parenthood. For example, Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups are reportedly spending $150 million on the midterm elections. Pro-life pregnancy centers will no doubt have a tough time competing with that.

I think it’s pretty obvious from all of this that you can see I’m fairly “pro-life”. As with most arguments, I think their are things that can be learned from the extremes of both sides. I think we can come closer to a middle ground on this debate. At the very least I think we should give more resources to pregnancy centers so that their are viable alternatives to abortion. I would hope everyone can agree that abortion as simply another form of birth control is morally wrong. If we are to allow abortion in our country, it should only be allowed under the grounds of sexual assault, rape, or the health of the mother if at all.

I could go on for awhile on this and in much more detail in both sides of this debate, but I wanted to make this short and go over my general ideas on this topic. I have barely touched on what the actual effect of Roe v. Wade being overturned would actually mean. But what do you think? Did I do an OK job hitting the main argument for each side? Do you think their is anywhere else for compromise in this general debate?

Inefficient Cancel Culture

I wanted to talk a bit about cancel culture. Specifically how we all participate in cancel culture whether you are on the right or left politically speaking. Right now it seems like if someone or something (organization, entity, corporation, etc.) messes up and gets “cancelled” there is nothing they can really do to be forgiven of that, even if they reverse whatever got them cancelled in the first place. The best thing that can happen is if you can get cancelled from one side, you can hope that people from the other side will support you.

I’m hoping that people who participate in cancel culture are few and far between, not the majority of people, but this has not been my experience. I see this on both sides, everywhere I go. I see it in mainstream culture, gaming, books, movies, restaurants, etc. Outside of just talking to people, one of things I like to do is go through large posts on Facebook or Twitter so I can look through the comments and gauge how people are thinking. Maybe this isn’t a good idea, maybe these places are full of political partisanship and I’m not getting a good enough sample size just looking at social media posts. The comments I see on there aren’t looking good, I don’t care about the vulgar language or personal attacks, as much as the ideas I see being spread around. I’m hoping there is a quiet majority that are moderate in their politics, but I’m not sure how true that is anymore with respect to cancel culture.

To just come up with an example, there was a big story on Coca-Cola and their “be less white” diversity curriculum. While this supposedly came from an internal employee at Coca-Cola, this also seems to credit some parts to Robin DiAngelo (who also tried to separate herself from this), so who knows where this come from and if Coca-Cola actually forced this on all of their employees. The consensus (at least on one side) is that most large corporations are promoting this sort of curriculum in their DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Training, so people took this at face value of being correct that Coca-Cola was pushing this on their employees. There was obviously tons of backlash for this. So naturally, many people on the right and center thought this was a “cancellable” offense and stopped buying Coca-Cola products. This seems to have continued even though Coca-Cola has released a statement , they denied this being a part of the curriculum and this curriculum was not something they were focusing on. Either way, it seems like they felt the backlash and are backing off on this. So why are they still cancelled? If they stopped doing this or admitted they are not going in this direction, shouldn’t we give them the benefit of the doubt and go back to buying Coca-Cola?

Obviously this Coca-Cola cancellation isn’t a situation that I know in great detail. My point isn’t necessarily about Coca-Cola, but about cancel culture in general. Once someone is cancelled, what is the point that they can get un-cancelled? If you are someone that was in favor of cancelling Coca-Cola, what is the point for you to go back and buy Coca-Cola (assuming you liked Coca-Cola to begin with)?

Beyond just the general act of forgiveness if someone turns away from doing something that hurt or offended you, I don’t think this type of cancel culture has the effect that people think it does. I think this type of cancel culture is very inefficient. For example, if you continue to not buy Coca-Cola products even after they reverse the action they took with this DEI Program, what incentive do they have to respond to cancel culture? Nothing has changed, they are still noticing even after they reverse on this DEI Program, the same people who aren’t buying their product, STILL aren’t buying their product. So what’s stopping them from just going back to that program and accepting this is what things are going to be like since their decisions on this really don’t have any predictable outcome on their bottom line? All they can do is try to get ahead of any cancelling trends that might come in the future.

Am I totally off on this? Do you agree? Please let me know what you think.

The Is-Ought Problem

Our world has become unneccesairly polarized, espicially since COVID-19 hit. Our world was obviously polarized before it hit, but somehow dealing with a worldwide pandemic has worsened it, not made it better. Which is unfortunate since many people were hoping some sort of common enemy would be able to unite us.

A part of this extra polarization is that it seems one side of the conversation insists if you think a certain way you are pro-science, but if you don’t think that way then you don’t believe in science or are anti-science. This doesn’t seem to be true, this seems to instead be based on two different value systems. On on side there seems to be a belief that if a science supports us giving up our freedoms to help the collective then that is the correct way to go. Another side seems to be that we should balance the costs before we give up our freedoms, it may be that each person’s costs would be different then anothers. Both of these should be debated, so that we can all end up with a happy middle ground. Although I have to admit, I mostly agree with the side of freedom, in that, I believe everyone should be able to decide for themselves the best way to behave in every situation, espicially in a pandemic.

My intent with this is not to look down on one side of this arguement versus the other. There are very valid reasons for both sides of this debate. If you have a condition that puts you at risk or puts others you care for at risk, then you have good reason to be on the side that is more cautious and you may be more comfortable to give up your freedoms. That, of course, isn’t a big deal since you are giving up those freedoms of your own free will and can go back to them at any time if you desire. But if we try to push legislation to enforce a lock down, then you and no one else is free to use those freedoms unless that legislation is changed. And nothing is as long-term as a shot-term government program, I”m not sure who originally said that, but the older I get, the more true that statement gets. But back to my original intent, my original intent is about the “The Is-Ought Problem”.

“The Is-Ought Problem” is articuled by David Hume in his book “A Treatise of Humane Nature”. This basically states that you can’t state what ought to be based on what is. A specific example, would be if you leave your home, you have a higher chance of getting COVID-19 than if you just stayed at home, so you should never leave your home. But this is of course, not how we live our lives, we take tons of risks every day through tasks that we don’t think is a big deal. We drive to and from work every day, we eat food that strangers cook for us, we get on a plane and fly across the country, etc. There are risks that are associated with all of these tasks, but we don’t stop doing them because their are risks associated. We do them because the benefit outweighs the risk.

Again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t take the risks of COVID-19 into account, but to act like this is a one-sided equation just isn’t reasonable. We must determine if the choices we make on a personal level are worth the risk, like any other decision. We can’t let the media, politicians, or any other external source keep us from biasing us from the facts and our own value systems that decide how we make decisions on a day to day basis. So please, live your life, these are days that we aren’t getting back.

The Death Penalty

I thought I would write about something that came up awhile back when the U.S. Attorney General ordered the first federal executions since 2003. More broadly, I wanted to talk about the death penalty and the thoughts I have about it.

The argument for and against the death penalty is a very polarizing, complicated one. I tend to lead more towards there are unfortunately cases that we do need the death penalty. I think the article above from the The Daily Wire showed that there are people that commit truly heinous crimes and perhaps they are beyond rehabilitation, so what other choice do we have? Do we just let them stay in prison for a lifetime? Is that any more moral than the death penalty? This is going to be a very opinionated post.

I think this has to do with a larger discussion about the reason for our prison system. What is the reason for our prison system? Is it to rehabilitate people? Is it to punish people? Maybe both? Do we have to decide what a person has done to determine if they should and can be rehabilitated? What if they can’t be rehabilitated? Where is the line of what crimes can or can’t be rehabilitated? And if they can’t be rehabilitated, then do we leave them in prison for the remainder of their life, regardless of how long that may be, or are they executed?

I tend to lean towards the large majority of people who committed a crime are capable of rehabilitation and they should be rehabilitated. But we can’t deny that people who commit some sort of crime, deserve to receive some sort of punishment. It seems that best way would be decide upon what a fair prison sentence should be, but also to rehabilitate that person to become a functioning member of society by the time they are released. Based on the rate upon people who go to prison, end up back in prison, it doesn’t seem like our rehabilitation efforts are working. Especially when you consider what living in solitary confinement can do to you.

To keep this relatively short, I think the discussion about the death penalty is a much more specific discussion that we can only reach a resolution on once we have a much broader discussion about our prison system. Once we reach that point and have a successful way to rehabilitate people who have committed crimes, I think at that point, we can discuss what needs to happen to those we can’t rehabilitate. Even if we do decide that the death penalty is something we think we need, we need to discuss how can we be the most certain that this person is guilty of their crime. Once we reach that point, only then can we decide if the death penalty is necessary.

Ignorance

I’m sure everyone has heard some sort of advice along the lines of “clean your room”, from Jordan Peterson’s Book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” to Admiral William H. McRaven’s “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World”, I recommend both of these books, but definitely Peterson’s. While these two books tackle this advice from different angles, Peterson’s angle is more of making sure you have your own life in order before you tackle any larger problems. While McRaven’s angle is more of knocking out something small and easy like making your bed so you have more confidence to take on the rest of your day. While I think these are good things to live by in your day to day life, I think this is just as important in the conversations we have today, especially given how polarized everyone is right now.

So why do we even have conversations? Seriously, is the purpose of having a conversation to learn more from someone else, to challenge your thoughts, to further a relationship or gain a relationship, or is it just so you can feel good about proving the other side wrong? It seems like we have lost what the purpose is of having conversations to begin with. We should all sort out the reasons we have for engaging with someone else in conversation before we start having it. If you find yourself reacting to something that makes you angry, maybe you shouldn’t have that conversation right now. Maybe you should calm down, gather yourself, gather the facts, then engage in a civil discussion, and be open to the fact that you are probably wrong. You could spend your entire life studying one subject and still not have mastered it, so it seems pretty likely that you are wrong in something you aren’t an expert in, and also pretty likely you are wrong in something that you are an expert in. There is something called the “Unread Library Effect” which is mentioned in a book called “How to Have Impossible Conversations” by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay. This comes from a 1998 paper titled “The Shadows and Shallows of Explanation” by Robert A. Wilson and Frank Keil, which studies the ignorance a person can have on a subject, even though they believe to be knowledgeable on that subject. In the book “How to Have Impossible Conversations”, they refer to this as the “Unread Library Effect”, they describe it using this analogy: “Think about this like borrowing books from the great library of human knowledge and then never reading the books. We think we possess the information in the books because we have access to them, but we don’t have the knowledge because we’ve never read the books, much less studied them in depth.”. It is important to realize just how ignorant you are and how much knowledge you have to gain from everyone else.

It’s not my intent to insult anyone by posting all of this, but rather an attempt to humble anyone reading this. In a world where everyone is sharing posts on social media that make bold statements with no room for a difference of opinion or nuance without assuming the other person is evil, we need to be humbled. The person that holds a different view from you that is on the “other” side, they hold that view for a reason and it’s probably a good reason. So instead of attacking them, why don’t you try understanding them? Maybe once you understand them, you can give them an argument that makes them change your mind. Or better yet, maybe they can change your mind.

Why the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team won, but still lost.

As many of you know, the US Women’s Soccer Team won the World Cup this year. What should have been a happy occasion turned into another chance for us to use sports to bash one another with our own politics. Even though I don’t really care for watching soccer on TV, I’m always happy when a US Team is able to bring home achievements. Every time that happens, I believe that is a call for celebration. This should be a shared victory for the entire country.

Their were a few big subjects that got brought up after the US Women’s Soccer Team won. One of the biggest ones was a supposed pay gap between the Men’s Soccer Teams in the World Cup and the Women’s Soccer Teams in the World Cup. Another, but less important subject was the refusal to go to the White House over disagreements with the President. The final big subject was the matter when the players dropped the US Flag.

For the first subject, the supposed pay gap between the Men’s Soccer Teams and the Women’s Soccer Teams. The argument is that the Men’s Soccer Teams are making far more than the Women’s Soccer Teams, which would be true if you are looking at just the dollar amounts. But this seems to be an unfair metric to use considering how much more the Mens World Cup generate in revenue versus the Womens World Cup. According to this article from Forbes, the Mens World Cup generates over $6 Billion in revenue, while the Womens World Cup generates $131 Million. The Mens World Cup Teams are expected to share $400 Million of that revenue and the Womens World Cup Teams are expected to share $30 Million between the teams participating. The percentage of $131 Million out of $6 Billion for the Men is about 2.1%, meanwhile, the percentage of 30 Million of 400 Million is about 7.5% (I hope my math is correct). According to those, percentages, the Mens Team shared a significant amount less of their revenue than the Womens Team shared compared to the percentage of their revenue generated. So really if pay equality is the concern, then the Mens Team should be the ones complaining.

The second subject was the refusal to go the White House due to the teams disagreements with President Trump. Megan Rapinoe (a star player on the team) has been kneeling during the National Anthem in protest and has been a supporter of Colin Kaepernick. Normally, when it comes to teams that are mostly within the US and are representing different cities or states and you decide to kneel during the national anthem, I may find that objectionable, but I respect your right to do so, because we live in a country where you have that right (probably a reason you should stand for the national anthem and respect the flag). But I think especially when you are representing a country, you should absolutely respect that country’s traditions, which would include the National Anthem. While I think you should respect that country’s tradition, I don’t think you have to agree with that country’s leadership. No leadership should ever be free from criticism, especially our country’s leadership. In fact, if I was in the position of the US Women’s Soccer Team and I disagreed with President Trump so much, I would absolutely go to the White House. I would take that opportunity to ask if I could talk to the President and tell him how wrong I think he is and where he could improve. One final thing on this subject, I can’t understand why a lot of the Presidents most vocal critics, who seem to be most concerned with the way he expresses himself, don’t act in a more virtuous manner that would be setting a good example. It seems to me, a great way to display the President is acting in a less than desirable manner, would be to show the President the virtuous way to act, not to match him in the same manner you find undesirable. Because it’s pretty obvious, no one can out-Trump, Trump.

The final subject is the the US Womens Soccer Team dropping the US Flag after they won. This goes back to my point above how I believe if you are representing a country, you should respect that country’s traditions, especially the national anthem of that country. In addition, I think you should respect the flag of the country you represent and not do this. I do appreciate that after it was dropped another player on the team picked the flag up, it should never have been dropped to begin with. If you are representing a country, I don’t think it makes sense for you to disrespect the most recognizable symbol of that country. If you are doing that, then why are you even there representing that country?

Am I dead wrong on this? Am I dead right on this? Am I a little of both?

Let me know what you think.

As always, thanks for reading!

Parallel Worlds

In my opening post, I mentioned how it seems as though the political discourse we are reaching is becoming dangerous. We are all going into our own groups, while “othering” the opposite group. One thing that has become obvious during this is that each group has their own parallel world. This has never been more clear than during the attack on Andy Ngo by Antifa in Portland.

You might be wondering who Andy Ngo is. According to Quillette, he is a Sub-editor and Contributing Writer at Quillette, Andy claims that he focuses on free expression, the culture wars, and religion. The Editor-in-chief of Quillette claims that Quillette has basically a center left, moderate bias. Antifa seems to be a radical left wing group that uses violent extremism. Andy Ngo has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal about what happened.

I wanted to get that bit out of background out of the way, from what it seems is that Andy Ngo is a journalist who was trying to cover an event that Antifa was covering because he believes it is important to cover their violent extremism. What I think is odd, is how each political group seems to be covering what should be a non-partisan incident.

As an example here is a couple different clips on how news publications that tend to be considered on the opposite side of the political aisle have been covering the same story. Here is a Fox News Interview with Andy Ngo after the incident and here is an interview with CNN about the same exact incident. There are different news publications that have far more polarizing views, but I figured CNN and Fox News are among the most well known news publications that seem to be on opposite sides of the political aisle. In the Fox News interview, they were very sympathetic and sensitive to the incident that happened, in the description beneath the video feed of the interview they labeled Andy Ngo a conservative and actually outright titled in the description that Antifa attacked him. In the CNN Interview, they were fair, but were a bit more straight in the interview with less sympathy than Fox News. I don’t think less sympathy is bad thing, they seemed respectful and gave him a straight interview. In the description beneath the feed of the video feed of the interview in the CNN Interview, they also labeled him a conservative, but they state that Andy Ngo said Antifa was behind the attack. They stay clear of proclaiming that Antifa actually did attack him, even though during the interview, they show footage of the attack happening by Antifa to him. Which is obviously much different from the interview I mentioned with Fox News where they downright stated that he was attacked by Antifa.

It seems clear that this was Antifa attacking him, but what isn’t clear is that Andy Ngo considers himself a conservative, which both CNN and Fox News seem to claim. I have been watching several podcasts/interviews that have had Andy Ngo on to talk about him getting attacked by Antifa, it wasn’t until I watched the Joe Rogan Podcast in which he finally mentioned him being on the center right. Every other podcast/interview that asked him that, he seemed to dodge that question until then. Until that point, I think everyone thought of him as center left, either way he definitely seems like a moderate. I feel this is important because he seems to be portrayed as something he is not by two different news publications that are on opposite sides of the political spectrum for what seems to be two separate reasons.

It seems that Fox News is trying to play the sympathy card in a time that they feel that conservative views are not acceptable and being censored by big tech. And it seems that CNN is trying to play a little bit more neutral as a couple of their news anchors have tried to defend Antifa or at least point out that Antifa isn’t that bad because they are supposedly anti-facists.

Sorry if this seemed a little too long, but I thought these things are important to point out. This should be a simple non-partisan issue. A politically moderate journalist who is trying to cover an extremist group and ends up getting beaten to the point of brain damage should be something we should all be coming together and saying this is wrong. Instead, we are still trying to score political points. Please let me know what you think and thanks for reading!

What is this and why am I doing this?

I have noticed that the political discourse has been reaching dangerous heights recently. We have all broken out into our tribes where the only thing we seem to care about is how to make the other side look worse.

I typically refer to myself politically as a conservative libertarian. Although I have heard people refer to me as just conservative or middle right. I also consider myself to be a Christian. That is the point of view that I will be writing from. I’m sure many of you will disagree with me, but I’m hoping that you will at least be patient enough to read what I have to say.

Why do this?

  • I’m hoping this will give people with a different perspective than my own a glimpse into what I think and why I think that way.
  • I’m also looking forward to hearing opposing arguments. I hope that this will change my argument and make it stronger. Which is what I feel is most important about having this tough discussions.

I hope I can share my opinion in a reasonable, respectful, understandable manner. In doing so, I hope that I can change your mind and maybe you can change mine. Even if neither of those things happen, I hope that I can help you better understand my opinions, and I can understand yours.

To get started, a few questions to ask of myself:

  • Why am I blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
    • I have tried writing on my own a little bit before, but I have a very tough time with procrastination. This also doesn’t give me the same satisfaction or opportunities to learn as sharing my ideas with others would be on a public platform. I can write all I want to myself, but it’s more difficult for my ideas to expand since I won’t be open to thought or criticism by others.
  • What topics will I write about?
    • I plan on writing about everything from politics, religion, to the culture in general. I may even write about something peculiar that has happened to me throughout the week.
    • I will try to stay away from topics that I know little about or have not had enough time to form my own opinions on. While I would like to improve my opinions, I don’t think it will do much good to share my opinions on subjects that I know not to nothing about.
  • What kind of audience I am trying to target this towards?
    • I am hoping to aim this towards anyone who wants to have a serious conversation about serious topics. I’m not interested in getting into arguments or debates. It seems like the point of an argument or debate is to prove the other side wrong. I don’t want to get caught in my own bubble, I would like to have conversations with people to better understand the difficult issues that face us.
  • What does a successful blog look like for myself?
    • I have never really done this blogging thing before, I would like to be able to put up a blog post once a week. I may get into this and figure out this is too much to keep up with on a weekly basis and may miss a week or two. But overall, I hope to have a post once a week and have some good conversations about some tough topics.

Well I hope we can have some difficult conversations