mikelee999

I should call this post, "Who's afraid of the big bad bomb? I believe there's a fundamental difference between the nuclear threat posed by terrorist organizations and Axis of Evil states and the Cold War situation. In the Cold War, you had two sides that threatened to launch hundreds or thousands of missiles in any confrontation. That could have been a civilization-ending event. But no terrorist organization or state is likely to get off more than a handful, even worst case, at a time. It will be tragic, but not disastrous, if they manage something of that magnitude. But I doubt they're capable of that. Getting a nuke to go off just right and in just the right place is not easy. What worries me more than the random and occasional 100,000+ death toll that the Islamists might inflict is that Europe and Asia will be slowly assimilated by their barbaric faith. And then we'll have to fight a WWII style war that will cost millions of American lives and hundreds of millions of Muslim lives. No matter what, they're not going to take over America. But if we don't do a better job soon of making them realize they should give up trying, this is really going to get out of hand. Mike Lee More in sorrow than in anger

It is almost always difficult to draw sharp, atomic lines between transition states. When does a baby go from being an infant to a toddler to a child to a teenager to an adult? Nonetheless, most of the time, we find it pretty easy to tell the difference not just between infants and adults, but between infants and toddlers. The law, in all kinds of cases, must use the fiction that it is possible to draw sharp dividing lines between transition states. Setting the drinking age at 21 does not imply that at 20 and 364 days a person is too immature to drink responsibly, but that at 21 and 1 day, they have magically and suddenly acquired maturity. (I don't want to argue here whether there should be a legal drinking age or what it should be--I'm just using this as a convenient example of a legal fiction about sudden status changes). It isn't necessary to define the exact moment when a blastocyst becomes an embryo becomes a fetus becomes an infant before you can tell the difference between them, or make reasonable public policy. Roger Bissell, in his excellent Reason article from 25 years ago, argued that the 28th week was a reasonable line. Personally, I'd set the line at the 24th week, just to err on the side of the fetus, and because the beginning of the third trimester strikes me as an easy line to draw without much of a fundamental difference from Roger's line (fundamentally, I still accept Roger's analysis of fetal developmental milestones). There's nothing magical about week 24 or week 28, but nothing irrational about picking either one as a legal line (once you grant that a fetus becomes the moral equivalent of an infant sometime before birth but well after conception, and that there are criteria that can be applied to detect at what point in development this line is likely to have been crossed). One last comment before I stop goofing off and get back to work: There's nothing magical about birth in settling when a fetus becomes a person. Birth as the finish line for personhood is just another convenient fictional line we use because it so easy to draw. There are quite a few developmental specialists who would tell you that a newborn baby is not yet developed enough that it should be considered a person yet. This seems repugnant and counterintuitive because we're so used to treating birth as if it were a developmental milestone. These specialists argue that it is no different, morally, to kill a severely deformed infant than to abort it in the first trimester. In both cases, you got there before there was a person there. Any parent who has held an infant will tell you these specialists need to put down the crack pipe, and the response will be that the parent is anthropomorphizing the infant and mistaking random biological automatic responses for consciousness. I'm not pointing this out because I agree that infanticide should be as up to parental whim as circumcision. I just want to say that it's not self-evident that birth is the right bright line. Regardless of which side of the abortion debate you take, you can't escape having to deal with the serious issue of at what point in development, because of characteristics in its own identity, does a fetus become a human being with rights of its own, regardless of whether those rights conflict with anyone else's. Mike Lee Hello, world

There are a few implicit propositions in this statement that deserve unpacking: 1. The right to self-ownership entitles a woman to do anything she wants with her body (assuming, I will add because I'm sure you would, that she's not violating someone else's rights). 2. A fetus is part of a woman's body, and therefore she can do whatever she likes with/to it. 3. Whether or not a fetus (at some stage) is a being morally equivalent to an infant, a woman has a right to evict it with lethal force. There are a few questions that it might be interesting to consider: The radical libertarian idea of self-ownership says that it's ok to sell yourself into slavery (even if that's a bit self-ownership-contradictory) or to take harmful drugs, or be a prostitute, or commit suicide, or even accept payment to let someone torture and kill you to death. In this forum, there's nothing inconsistent about most readers and writers asserting this radical idea of self-ownership. But in general, it's rank hypocrisy for the great majority of pro-choicers to stand on self-ownership. While you're considering whether being part of someone else's body means you're not a full fledged person, you might want to consider Siamese twins. Is lethal force justified in all cases of self-defense? Nearly every legal tradition says No. You can't kill someone for threatening or taking your property. You can't even kill someone for beating you up, unless you can establish you were in fear for your life. Even most Objectivists would agree that the right to self-defense is not absolute. While your body is more intimate property than most, the burden is still on the pro-choicers to justify making an exception to proportionality in this case. Mike Lee Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition....

I saw "The Bad Seed." Good movie, bad kid. so tell me, even if not exhaustively, what are the criteria that justify a parent killing a kid, even if a jury might not agree? Here are some I doubt you will agree with: "Kid too smart, college tuition too much" "Kid cuter than me, likely to alienate me from my spouse" "Must buy diapers instead of Schlitz" Here is the least far-fetched one I could think of that fits your criteria: "Great, he's got me holed up in the closet and he has a machine gun. Guess it's time to set off the mines." Way plausible. Mike Lee Die, you little bastard! Die!

Just to update you on moral progress the last couple of hundred years: Persons are not property. Mike Lee Bring me a beer, boy!

That's a very good point. Though the directions for the pill say, implicitly at least, "...and don't forget to take it!" My overall point, made clearly enough that I don't think I need to apologize again for being unclear if you didn't get it, is that contraceptive failures are common among the non-"dumb slut" population and that lots of women who have abortions have been conscientiously trying to use less drastic forms of birth control, and those attempts failed. While straw men are fun to burn, I think you should read a little more carefully. You have plenty of real disagreements to argue with me about. My obvious point was that abortion was the SUREST form of birth control, and that other forms of birth control fail frequently, for whatever reasons, and lots of perfectly nice women have had abortions and even multiple abortions. Actually, it's the airy ease and smugness with which many women defend their right to kill putative children that's the problem. You don't have a right to shoot trespassers in your garden, and it's not self-evident you have the right to shoot children in your womb. As patriotism is to the scoundrel, so accusations of hostility are to the female. I'm going to do something that few men have the guts to do. I'm going to admit that I don't much like women anymore, as a group. I say this in the same sense that people say, "I don't like politicians" or "I don't like lawyers." I know several splendid politicians, and Rudy Giuliani is a lawyer. But women, like politicians and lawyers, are a narcissistc, under-performing, privileged pain in the ass class. (Before all the "good women" get all offended, let me say if the shoe doesn't fit, don't charge $800 to your boyfriend's credit card to wear it. Go ahead, be offended by my generalization, like honest lawyers and politicians would be. Claim that you're the exception, not the rule, and I applaud you, assuming you're really the exception, not the rule, because the rule includes believing you're the exception, even though you're the rule.) Here's a gauntlet: The majority of women have their self-interest so tied up in the "right" to an abortion that their opinions are as tainted as an Exxon study showing that global warming is a myth. While I am defender of a woman's right to an abortion, I find it very difficult to defend most womens' reasons to assert that right. Their reasons are mostly narcissistic, stupid, and selfish in the bad way, like a criminal or 3 year old is selfish. If a woman has an abortion, and that woman doesn't know/care/hasn't considered and decided whether the act she is taking kills another human being, she's not a moral exemplar for the rest of us. And this applies to most women who have had abortions. They go la-la-la past the dead baby in the dumpster to enjoy their post-abortion Egg McMuffins. This doesn't mean that most women are moral monsters, but it does mean that most women are moral infants. At any given stage of life, on a moral scale of 1 to 10, the typical woman is at least 3 points behind the typical man. Mike Lee Fwow hew to the fwoow, vewwy woughwy!

This is the kind of Churchillian doughtiness that's keeping the Muslim Menace from making you all wear burkhas. Your fight is with God, not me. I didn't link sex and risk, including the risk that you might create another human being to whom you owe some kind of moral duty that trumps your right not to have stretch marks. Sex is what it is, biologically. You might as well pass a resolution affirming your right to eat whatever you want and not get fat. Let's assume, purely for the sake of argument, that there is no important moral difference between an embryo 5 seconds after fertilization and a 5 year old child. Pro-lifers assert that very thing, and say that if that is true, then abortion is an abomination. They think a woman who would murder a 5 year old for being in her uterus, when that child would naturally leave in a few months anyway, should be a moral pariah. So I would really like to hear you sign on to one of these statements, or assert another if I've not been exhaustive: EVEN IF a fetus has the moral rights and status of a 5 year old child, I assert my right to kill it to avoid [the list of risks and inconveniences you cited] because it's squatting in my tummy. IF a fetus has the moral rights and status of a 5 year old child, then I have some moral duties to it beyond my own self interest. Mike Lee Ball's in your court

nothing to say here - draft posted inadvertantly. Pretty good draft if I do say so myself. Too bad I deleted it.

Ok, I'll argue it then. I wuv arguing! Aside from the Virgin Mary, rape victims and some very dumb women, few women who get pregnant have no clue how it happened. It's a shock that comes as no surprise. In the overwhelming majority of cases, women who have abortions were taking a calculated, forseeable risk when they had sex. It's not like they were randomly kidnapped by aliens and implanted with an alien life form. And, if you decide not to raise the baby, it really is, more or less, a "semester of school" inconvenience to carry a pregnancy to term. And, you do bear at least a certain percentage of responsibility for the current situation. It's one thing to say, no, I won't give up a kidney for a stranger who needs it; it's another thing if the stranger needs the kidney because you were horny. My apologies for not being clear. No, I don't think relying on abortion is preferable to remembering to take your pill or get your patch changed. But I do believe that all other methods of birth control other than abortion are uncertain, and abortion is the sure way to git 'er done. I know plenty of women who say they were taking the pill, not taking tetracycline, and they got pregnant anyhow. Evidently, the fine print effectiveness statistics are FDA BS or don't apply to suburbia or, more likely, most of these women are damn liars. Parenthetical paragraph: I don't want to turn this into a men's rights thread. What we're discussing here is more fundamental than cui $$$$$. Contraceptive failures, other than abortion, are very common. My point is that perfectly rational, careful people end up having abortions despite their rationality and carefulality, in numbers higher than most people think. A whole lot of women in the US who aren't dumb sluts have had more than one abortion. This does not gibe with drug company advertisements, I know. Every sexually active woman who is at all responsible who doesn't yet want to be a mom should be ready able and willing to get suctioned after every sexual encounter. Birth control, like Christianity, if practiced sedulously, would change the world. I'm saying that given actual human nature, forgetfulness, self-deception, spouse-deception, malice, biological imperatives, jealousy, stupidity, quality control issues and pharmacy hours, all other forms of birth control except abortion work less often than most people think. If I'm wrong, why are there so many abortions? I don't want to take offense where none was intended, but reading back now over what I wrote before, and what you wrote in response, I'm having a hard time understanding how you thought I was suggesting that women should go off the pill and rely on abortion instead. And the whole Jesus! and Are you Effing serious? crap is starting to get right up my nose. I don't know you, but you seem to think, like many women, that you can snort and paw, declare critical parts of the debate off limits, and still retain the illusion of intellectual seriousness because you have a vagina and I don't. If that's what you think with, then bring it on! If you think you'll never need an abortion because you're in a Brave New World of technology, then I hope you hit menopause before your illusions do. Mike Lee Girl Fight Tonight

First, I want to thank Roger Bissell for his 1981 Reason article. It had a huge influence on me, though until today, I didn't realize Roger had written it. I have not read this article in 25 years, but still remember it. In 1981, I was a faithful Mormon kid, fervently pro-life. Roger's calm arguments were the first ones that brought me up short and made me consider the other side objectively. Roger, thank you! I hope you're as glad that your article had such a big influence as you should be appalled that it was on the likes of me. Some more or less (mostly less) random thoughts on this subject: A decade after reading Roger's article, I helped a 16-year-old girl (my little brother's girlfriend) avoid Utah's restrictions on abortion by driving her to Green River, Wyoming in the dead of winter, in a caravan of other pregnant girls and Utah doctors--the doctors making this trip every weekend. No regrets, glad I did it. But I do have doubts (not reasonable ones) about whether I assisted in infanticide. Had I abandoned that girl to her pregnancy, I would have real regrets today, but I am open to the possibility that one day I may come to deeply regret what I did. There are two kinds of abortion activists I can't stand: 1. Pro-lifers who make exceptions for rape/incest. The only seriously compelling pro-life argument is that fetus=person. Supporting killing a baby because it makes her mommy cry to look at her is as morally unserious as it gets. 2. Pro-choicers who shrug off the question of whether/when a fetus is a person in favor of their right to their bodies. Ma'am, anyone who can say, "I don't know and I don't care if it is murder, I'm not missing a semester of school!" is no gentleman. There are several reasons why the state might/should restrict or regulate abortion: * Normal licensing and medical safety concerns * Public interest (like China, in the other direction--that's an instructive thing to think about) * Parental rights/inability of minors to consent * It's the killing of a human being *It's the killing of something with not the same moral status as a human being but not the status of a tumor. Something at least like a cat or dog. In the USA, the only issue that really matters is the status of the abortee as a non/person. (Well, there is minor skirmishing around parental consent, but it's not fundamental.) No feminist would survive 5 minutes on a talk show if she granted the personhood of a fetus and still defended her right to kill it. So I'm going to stand pat that it's all about personhood, not bio-property rights. There are two "self-evident" bright lines drawn by masterful debators of this issue: conception and birth. Typically, pro-lifers take it for granted that conception is the beginning of being a person, and pro-choicers say it's birth. Neither are self-evident lines. Actually, there are two other bright lines that aren't really all that bright: that a woman's right to her body trumps another person's right to life and that a fetus's right to life trumps a woman's right to her body. Again, both sides assume, neither side bothers to argue. Most women I know aren't tormented by their decisions to get abortions. And I don't think most women I know are heartless, atypical sluts. Make no mistake, most women who sleep with men in the USA have had abortions. I use the word "abortions" in the plural because it is way more plural than most people want to admit. The tired trope accepted by both sides of the debate that "abortion should not be a method of birth control" is asinine. Of course, that's what abortion is. An intelligent woman won't make it her first line of defense, but she'll punt when she has to. And, because, like it or not, other birth control methods suck, abortion is resorted to far more frequently by intelligent women than men who women think might be judgmental about this subject would believe. Shocked me too, I know. Ladies, you know I'm saying the truth, please don't have me greased, I mean you no harm. Nobody who is against abortion who is not certain they are infertile should have sex out of wedlock. And a lot of them shouldn't have sex in wedlock. Unless you are ready, willing and able to responsibly raise a child, you have no business having sex unless you're pro-choice. Relying on other birth control is still Russian Roulette. We have this idea that sex is primarily about fun and romance, but if it can result in a child, it is about the children and eff your fun. Fetal viability is a sucker punch for the pro-choice side. Technology will inevitably move the ok-to-abort line back to conception or nearby. Roe v Wade is a sucker punch for pro-life side. An issue that should never have been federal will keep you people backing dips**t candidates for decades to come. If the religious right backs Guiliani this time, I declare them on their feet before the 10 count. They just might, too. Genetic uniqueness does not a person make. Are twins one person? Are clones? Are blueprints buildings? I'm a staunch pro-choicer who wants to see Roe v Wade overturned so we can fight this out where it belongs. Mike Lee I like UFC

I thought I read on Noodlefood that Diana was all stressed and taking the site down because of her surgical rotation. That's what I get for reading every third word and fourth paragraph and fifth post. It must have been because of her husband's rotation. Or maybe because her cat needed surgery. Anyhow, her site is currently in the bit bucket so I can neither confirm nor deny that Diana would make a damn fine doctor. But I will say this, and it will sound strange coming from me, but I think everyone is getting a little too harsh on her. I have to give her mad props for quoting the "Comrade Sonia" thing on her own blog. Wicked, Chris, just wicked. Cracked me up and everyone else too and she'll never wash it off. Something's up. I hope she's ok. Mike Lee Social worker to the stars

Having just read Ms. H's skewering of Chris... Ok, I confess...I didn't read it all but I tried. And I promise at my earliest convenience to nominate it to the Guinness people for the longest bloggy rant ever. One thing about it did strike me: The tortured justifications for breaking her admitted promise to Chris of mutual discretion. Diana reminds me right now of Danielle on Survivor last night. We hates Danielle, since D cost the amazing hero Terry his million bucks by correctly supposing that she would have a better chance of beating the feckless Aras, even though a better chance was no chance at all since she couldn't beat either Terry or Aras. My point here is if you don't watch Survivor then you might as well stop reading. Me and my wife were hissing at D last night because she was spending her whole last days making excuses and justifications for her huge and inevitable and futile moral betrayal of Terry. D made a promise and when the time came to honor or betray it, she didn't make a decision to break her promise. She just did it like a lizard flicks its tongue. It wasn't a betrayal but an inevitability. Diana's excuses for breaking her promises to Chris have a similar reptilian quality. Chris hasn't trashed her publicly (as far as I know). And exposing private email to win a personal fight is the sure sign of the asshole. Diana is pursuing a medical career, and it's stressing her out, and she will probably be a damn fine doctor. That really does count for more in the end than the fact that lately she blogs like she has BPD. Mike Lee Defender of the Devil

Paul's essay approached manners from the internal, psychological perspective. I'd like to touch on the functional perspective: What functions do manners actually serve? One of the most important functions of good manners is communicating predictability and respect for mutually agreed on rules. Your manners signal a shared context and interactional framework. If this is so, it's more important that your manners *match* those of people you encounter than that they be Poupon passing perfect. When I was a teenager, the thugs in my neighborhood always started out when mugging someone with an ostentatious, sinister display of inappropriate good manners. This would confuse the victim until it was too late. "Hey, how you doing? You having a good time today?" said heartily and inappropriately to you by a stranger on the street is a signal to anyone who's at all streetwise to respond with anything but politeness. Politeness is introducing yourself as their next victim. Notice also that in movies when the writer wants to portray the villain as particularly scary and unpredictable, it's easily done by having the villain display good manners just before or during an act of pure evil. I don't think most people are more than amorphously aware of the mechanism whereby this gimmick creeps them out so much. Mike Lee Yes, ma'am, I was an only child...eventually.

First, let me say, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!! Ok, now that I've introduced myself and set everyone's expectations... I'll start by disagreeing with Paul--I am frequently not "respectful." While I wouldn't put myself in the same league as Mencken, O'Rourke, Dennis Miller, Voltaire or Tom Leykis, I love what they do and I'm glad they are/were anything but respectful. Let's leave aside the point that being disrespectful to the disrespectable can be very important political speech. Verbal roughhousing also makes public debate lively, interesting and honest. It pushes the boundaries and reminds people that free speech isn't for sissies. It puts the primly and grimly censorious on notice that if they stick their noses into the ring, they're going to get them bloodied. Girls don't like it. I can see why. Except for Molly Ivins, who's about as much of a girl as Janet Reno, they're no good at it. 9 times out of 10 when a woman tries to best a man verbally, she'll get her clock cleaned--as long as he's got his guilt-proofed, tear-proofed tighty-whities on. Women hate it when men bring logic, problem-solving skills, humor or rhetoric into a conversation because those are all weak points for them. They want all conversation to go the way it does when they're nagging and browbeating their mates about what they learned on Oprah today. When women of either sex demand that public debate be "nice" they're just trying to put kryptonite down our shorts. Mike Lee "Don't you use that tone of voice with me, young man!"

I think most Rand admirers think of her like their first girlfriend. I learned a lot from her, but I'd never go back to her. Man, was she hot!