1) Concede nothing, or rather concede nothing on foreign policy or social issues, and either tow the center-left line on economic issues or become more economically populist.

Because of course John Kerry lost as a result of the swift boat liars and the Rovean noise machine, not because people are scared to death of terrorism and noticed that Kerry had no particular vision for ending the threat…

The Deaniacs and other white, white collar liberals that make up a good swath of the party’s base embody this position.

2) Concede social issues, that is pander to America’s worst instincts on women’s rights, gay rights, and immigration, while conceding nothing on foreign policy, and either towing the center-left line on economic issues or becoming more economically populist.

Because as everyone knows what all those Christian fundamentalists down south are really pissed about is that Bush didn’t get UN approval before he invaded Iraq…

This position seems popular among a certain cross segment of middle-aged white male Democrats. Mickey Kaus appears to belong to this faction.

3) Concede foreign policy, that is make Arab democracy promotion the chief preoccupation of the party, while conceding nothing of substance on social issues, and either towing the center-left line on economic issues, or becoming more economically populist.

This is the Peter Beinart camp, and the only one that seems vaguely in touch with the political and strategic realities of our time. The party as a whole won’t bite though, which means they’ll likely continue to lose presidential elections for years to come…

When it comes to “Arab democracy”, why does the biggest obstacle in the whole reagon, Saudi Arabia, always seem to be exempted? Those fascists in the “House of Saud” are, in my opinion, as much our enemies as the followers of Bin Laden.

I had previously read Sarah Blustain’s piece that was so widely quoted, because of my ambivalence regarding abortion. And, no, that does not mean I think abortion should be illegal. There is something very wrong with the idea of forcing a woman to stay pregnant. Yes, yes, I know, unless raped she made a choice that ended in becoming pregnant. But arguing the right and wrong of abortion is not what I want to do here. It’s the idea that changing rhetoric will address the issue.

I listened to a talk by Michael Crichton on Book TV and he said a line that stuck with me: data is not Republican or Democrat, it’s data (yes, yes, ironic given his address to a crowd at AEI, but the rhetorical point stands). Technology has changed things. These days, an ultrasound sent by e-mail may very well be the first ‘picture’ you get of a baby. You see your baby moving on an ultrasound image, preemies that are born at only a few months live, babies are ‘conceived’ in test-tubes, ‘artifical’ wombs may be on their way to help infertile couples in which women cannot carry their own baby and don’t wish to have a surrogate. The “data”, as it were, keeps coming in. “Data, and data and data”.

As a pathology resident, I had to ‘gross’ in specimens: this means anything taken out of the body is examined and submitted for histology (you look at the specimen, take the sections you want to examine, and submit them for processing and making into slides to look at under the microscope). During that time, I saw many ‘therapeutic’ and ‘non-therapeutic’ abortuses (and spontaneous abortions – miscarriages, too). I cut in placentas from fetal reduction procedures – in multiple pregnancies sometimes the woman chooses to have only one or two babies (for lots of different reasons) so the ‘extra’ fetuses are injected with saline. They look like little pink ‘ghosts’ attatched to the outside of a placenta.

Anyway, I’m not describing these things to put people off, or go on an anti-abortion rant. I still think in a free society a woman should have control of her body, not the state. But if the ‘rhetoric’ need to be changed, why is that? It is because technology has shown us things – that amorphous blob of cells is more than just nothing. The data keeps coming in. I think those of us that favor keeping abortion legal have to take the new things we’ve learned into account. We have to think, and think hard, about what is at our core, what is the essence, what is human and how do we protect it? And that’s the problem with abortion: there are two humans, or at least one human, and a ‘version’ of a human, connected.

I’m getting this all wrong. I don’t know. I just don’t know. But it’s not rhetoric I’m looking for. It’s clear thinking, honest thinking, hard thinking that doesn’t ignore the truth.

Sorry for the long post.

Conflicted as usual…..

As for the broader issue of reviving the Democrats, rather than offer advice or pontificate from my position on the right I would ask a single question:

Set aside for a moment the talk of strategy (improving grassroots party building), forumlation of tactics (retooling the message), and practical maneuvers (electing Howard Dean to be DNC Chairman); what if the core beliefs, ideas, and policies that the Democrats hold are unsupported or opposed by a majority of the US voting population?

Isn’t that the first question? Doesn’t the lack of recent national political success at least hint that there may be such a problem?

Tomasky is doing the right thing by asking hard, fundamental questions. Right thinking liberals and Democrats should thank him – even if they end up disagreeing with his conclusions.

“On my way, I passed piles of those pro-choice signs, and a small group of protesters standing silently on a street corner. They were holding signs that read “I regret my abortion.””

That’s just the point, if the anti-abortion rights coalition get what they want–abortion defined as ‘murder’–they couldn’t hold that sign in public without fear of being sent to jail. And that is really where the wierdness of the whole argument on abortion begins, people believing that women, doctors, nurses, partners should be sent to jail for participation in ‘murder’. Or they think it’s ‘murder’ and should be punished like a traffic violation…go figure.

Let’s take another example, that has the potential to ratchet down by just one notch from abortion. Investing your money is fundamentally about information, and people have a lot more information than they once did. Not just guesses about the market, but also about how much they will make, how long they can keep working, whether they will have to continue providing for their family, their housing costs, etc.

I think that a gut-level understanding of the need to plan for one’s own situation is one of the appeals of the “your social security contribution is yours to play with” rhetoric we hear from Bush. A lot more people now feel that they are capable of managing their retirement, more than in the 1930s or 1950s. These people see the attractiveness of a less paternalistic system.

I know this is a multifaceted issue, and that the phrase in quotes above is really a lie, but we have to understand when the ground has shifted out from under the original problem (and the original solution).

Why can’t one be anti-abortion (I’m also anti death penalty) and not call it murder?

Making abortion illegal without legally encoding it as an act of murder is impossible, that’s why in a nutshell.

The whole point of overturning Roe V Wade is to make abortion illegal and punishable as an act of murder. Otherwise, how can it be punished? On what grounds– Beyond the already existent restrictions on it that is.

Poll after poll tells us that a majority of Americans do support Democratic positions on nearly all core domestic issues, from taxation to abortion to health care to gay rights. The trouble for Democrats now is foreign policy (remember: Democrats got reamed in 02 – the first election after 9/11) and their lack of commitment to Arab and Muslim democracy.

Marc,

I agree with you, and I’ll go a step further. Hillary is a high risk candidate, loathed by at least 40% of the American people, but I think she may be the only liberal hawk who can weasel her way past the primary gatekeepers (and quite possibly the only liberal hawk in the primary field), and because a commitment to Arab reform is I believe now the fundamental pre-requisite for anyone wanting to become president she may be the only Democrat who is electable in 08. Note to Democrats: Bill Richardson is a loser.

I’m not a softy on national security (I supported going after Osama in Afghanistan, and frankly wish we’d done a better job and more focused “nation-building”) and I like the IDEA of Arab democracy although, the recent Iraqi elections included, I don’t know what the hell it means in practice (more political openings for Islamists, perhaps) that’s necessarily so great for us. Maybe, in some cases or as the century unfolds, but in other cases and in the foreseeable future, probably not. Iran is far more democratic now than it was under the Shah, for example. (And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, anything that isn’t balanced by – if not based in – “what’s good for us” isn’t going to fly.)

People who simply praise the mechanisms of “democracy” as necessarily bringing about a pro-American or pro-Western agenda abroad in country’s where religious fundamentalism, ethnic strife or long-festering, often justifiable anti-Americanism prevail are naive. Frankly, economic integration based on some form of equitable trade and productive investment (not neo-con…I mean neo-colonial exploitation of their weaknesses) is far more likely to yield long-term postives for us than making assumptions about reshaping their politics, and certainly not by exercising our military dominance. Also cultural interaction – again, not simply by shipping over our cultural products – including the most corrosive but also tempered by authentic cultural and educational exchange and Peace Corps-like projects that bring our citizens face-to-face.

I guess all I’m saying is that this idea that there are formulas for something as daunting as “Arab democracy” strikes me as Imperial Hubris, to steal a phrase. Islam and the politics/history of the middle east are far too complex for us to try to dig away in the center. Our first concern – post-911 – HAS to be national security vis. al Qaeda and its allies. That needs to be approached through three avenues that have served us well with far greater, more powerful threats – deterrence, containment and intelligence. (Clearly border protection, domestic security precautions and scrutiny of entrants plays a larger role than in the past in any current deterrence strategy, along with our traditional military superiority.) But we can’t make democracy a prerequisite to working with governments overseas in uprooting al Qaeda. Frankly, I don’t know what approach one could take toward Pakistan other than something close to what we’re doing. Are we supposed to push Musharref to hold elections ? Will that make us safer. Or Mubarak ? I don’t see any evidence, just arguments rooted in ideology or morality. And frankly, I think that Green Dems’ assertion that the average American’s fears of terrorism lead to them therefore supporting any quasi-messianic crusade to promote democracy for democracy’s sake in the Middle East is more than a bit out-of-touch.

I’m a pragmatist when it comes to national security (as most things) and I just don’t see the evidence here. The Iraqi election doesn’t cut it. Nobody knows where this thing is going, to say the least. I’m hopeful, but I’m neither naive or prone to jump to unwarranted conclusions because I stupidly supported a war that had virtually nothing to do with U.S. national security (and arguably undermined it.)

I haven’t gotten through Tomasky and the rest – but I’m glad marc posted it. The American Prospect is the only “left/liberal” magazine I’m truly comfortable reading because The Nation often strikes me as in denial on national security issues and TNR seems, at the top, like just one hairbrained scheme short of neoconservatism on “defense” issues and are often dreadful when it comes to objectivity re: Israel) The Prospect published the best critique of Michael Moore I’ve read long before the one linked above appeared. They are definitely “left”, in that Kuttner and Co. are consistently social-democratic and have a coherent political/economic philosophy to counter bullshit free-market ideologues and the corporate crony-capitalists who hide behind that facade, but they defy the crackpot, marginally-informed characterizations of the “left” (as it actually exists outside of the political margins) that are routinely dispensed by some of the commenters who grace marc’s pages. Of course, the fact that I’m comfortable reading the Prospect is at least one reason I make sure to read a bunch of other stuff, ranging from the Nation to American Conservative. I’m not going to address the Howard Dean/Democratic party arguments beyond this, because it’s one moment in a long process and a lot of the critiques I find reductive and based on an the assumption that one or another group thinks they have the answer in their pocket. I don’t think that, and I don’t think most others – with the possible exception of the DLC – really think that. My only other comment is regarding Hillary – Ugh! Decent woman, excellent senator…terrible Prez candidate. We’ll likely do better than that. Although I hope this isn’t the only scenario and that things get more interesting, if fear of GOP dominance marches the party to the center in picking a Prez, a la the DLC, Even Bayh is certainly capable of countering the hollow men being talked up around the GOP, like Frist or Bush III. I think he could take either of those two on with no problem, since they’ll have Bush II’s economic albatrosses around their necks.

Thank you for your substantive and thoughtful post, but I think you and other liberal internationalists are missing several things.

The two chief sources of anti-American sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world are Washington’s uncritical support for Israel (something liberals are quick to point out), and Washington’s enabling relationships with repressive Arab regimes (something liberals are generally not so quick to point out.)

Once you recognize this latter fact, you realize that continuing the kind of protective relationships we’ve had with repressive Arab and Muslim regimes is both mean spirited to the people of the Muslim world (who tell us they want democracy more than anything else) and a detriment to our own national security. And I wish I could say that simply isolating ourselves from the Muslim world and ignoring them was a realistic option, but in a globalizing world – with supersonic jet planes, the internet, and nuclear weapons – multiculturalism ends at the place where bloodshed begins, and simply ignoring a civilization with at least one foot in the 10th century is just not an option anymore.

This is not to say that democracy leads inevitably to liberalism (it doesn’t – just look at Nigeria), or that poverty abatement and economic development shouldn’t be high on our priority list as well, but democracy does afford the more illiberal elements of Muslim society the chance to express their passions in electoral politics rather than by blowing themselves and us up with them. Hopefully, as this all plays out, there will be constitutional limits in Iraq and elsewhere against the excesses of Islamist illiberalism until these societies can come to terms fully with modernity on their own terms, and of course that process may take years, or decades, or even centuries.

With respect to Iraq, even the liberal internationalists who accept the basic importance of democracy promotion in the Arab world will often say that Saddam wasn’t a threat, and that you can’t “bomb them into democracy.” I agree that Saddam wasn’t a threat to us – even if he did have WMDs – but he was an impediment to the development of democracy in the Arab world, and with respect to America’s violation of international law, the fact of the matter is that until superpowers and tyrants are willing to forego more of their sovereignty to the UN or something like it, or there is universal democracy, international law and the security council don’t and won’t matter that much in the real world.

The other line attack against the Bush foreign policy by liberal internationalists is that Bush is doing little to promote democracy in the places that really matter – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc. I agree, but when did you hear John Kerry or virtually any Democrat making this argument against him? John Kerry wanted “stability” in Iraq, not democracy.

That’s the strategic case for aggressively pushing democratic reform in the Muslim world. As a political matter, Democrats need to be serious about this agenda if they wish be taken seriously in the coming years, but I could point to a hundred polls showing Bush and the GOP with double digit leads on national security among virtually all crucial demographics Democrats need to win, and many if not most Democrats will still chalk it up to Bush’s “image” and “framing” and not to their own party’s tragically substantive deficit in this area. That’s too bad, because they’re sacrificing virtually the entire liberal agenda on their unwillingness to support democratization and liberalization in the Arab and Muslim world.

I apologize for the long post, but someone on the left needs to say these things…

http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/2/9/31049/84149

Some conservatives in my comments section agreed, but most ducked and obfuscated, including those who DON’T seem to like torture.

I don’t expect Mike Tomansky will have any better luck than Sebastian Holsclaw. If you tell people what they don’t want to hear they simply WON’T hear it if it makes their “side” look like it’s not perfect.

That said, I still believe that unless you can offer a concrete alternative for how to deal with a specific country like Pakistan, I don’t know what “promoting Arab democracy” means. Maybe supporting “human rights” is more coherent than promoting democracy, per se. Frankly, I’d take a relatively “liberal” paternalistic-but-modernizing monarchy like Jordan’s over a democratically elected fundamentalist regime (which is entirely concievable as you youself note.) And I think, being more than a bit marxist philosophically (although in a sense that none of the right-wingers here could possibly even begin to understand, so I hesitate to hang that one out there), that economic productivity – as distinct from oligarchic oil wealth – is a fundamental driver in the direction of more liberal political regimes, simply because closed, medieval ways of seeing the world clash with the essentials of a modern, productive economy. (Oil wealth has been a curse in the Middle East – it’s given inordinate power to completely incompetent anti-modernist oligarchies that couldn’t oversee the emergence of productivity-based wealth for their countries if their lives depended on it and it’s put them historically and globally square in the sights of the imperial monster, in it’s various incarnations.) I’m all for promoting Western values in the Middle East, but I think we have to be canny, constructive and pragmatic in doing it – and that to rely primarily on military dominance, overly aggressive strategies that appear to attack the majority of these regimes at their core rather than by cultural “osmosis” or economic integration, or proclaiming anything resembling a messianic crusade directed at the Middle East or Islam per se and not “human rights” across the board, is foolish on the face of it. The fact is that in situations where we face security threats, as with elements based in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, we’ll have to compromise some of our principles and deal with very creepy folks. The idea that the neocons are going to bring democracy to Saudi Arabia, incidentally, given the relationship of that nasty place to our economy in terms of both securing our debt and providing oil, is nonsense. Won’t happen beyond what the sheiks themselves see as necessary to pacify their own population. One of the funniest things about the whole BushCo rehetoric as re: bin Laden is that they actually caved on one of his key demands, i.e. remove U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia. Coincidence ? I think not. It was pragmatically sound and keeping our people based there under the rules of a medieval theocracy was an insult to our troops as well as giving bin Laden a bit of ongoing propaganda. But I found it amusing that they caved, while claiming that the worst thing we could do is actually change any of our policies that were on his list of grievances.

As for Israel, the death of Arafat has changed the picture. The question there is, will we actually lean on Sharon to fulfill a just peace or is the neo-con/Likud alliance going to screw up the best chance for a resolution of the conflict in over a decade ? I don’t know. But the liberals are going to be essential to pushing the administration in a better direction than indicated by their past performance in kissing Ariel’s ass. I hope Condi redeems herself with this one. She could change her image from an incompetent hack to a serious diplomatic force if she keeps the neo-con nutcases in check. Time will tell.

Not a very elegant response – just some thoughts that popped up reading Green Dem’s continuing adventures.

This morning on MTP Buchanan was debating Sharansky. Lynn came home from mass, caught Buchanan saying things like:

“Intervention doesn’t control terror, it causes terror.”

and

“If we start messing with Saudi Arabia, the Arab Howard Dean is not going to emerge as leader of the country.”

She said, “Oh my God–I’m agreeing with Pat Buchanan. What should I do? Shoot myself?”

We need more and more better parties, and coalition government, to reinstall actual political dialog, rather than the worst consequence of information-overload: parties that only play the major faultlines. We’ve gone way too anti-faction in America–ironically, factions now rule the hydraheaded parties, because they have been so thoroughly crushed from Madison on down. Factions are like cholestrol–mostly bad news in overload, but when they’re at low levels, their optimal for the body politic.

I thought that this kind of eyes-wide-open dialogue among Dems wasn’t happening, especially among the “Bill Moyers” end of the liberal spectrum. And I find it interesting that marc touts rethinking the way the pro-choice position is framed as an important part of this “eyes-wide-open”, “let’s-be-more-creative-and-inclusive” approach for Dems. I thought that doing such was simply brazen political opportunism when Hillary Clinton did exactly the same thing. I also find it bizarre that MoveOn, an advocacy 527, and Kos, a popular blogger, are representative of coherent political strategies, as opposed to flash-points for a cluster of people at the grassroots who share some common aims, but little else. I don’t read Kos cuz it’s boring, but I’m a “member” of MoveOn. Yet I don’t conform to the stereotypes I see thrown around here and I’m sure I disagree with many other MoveOners on various issues. It’s just one channel that happens to function fairly well in a narrow context. They’re not gurus. But on the issue of grass-roots fundraising, which the internet “elitists” have proven a pretty good track record, it’s absolutely crucial to pump up those channels that can raise money for outreach, organizing, etc. Depending soley on corporatists, or even unions for that matter, is stupid and anti-democratic, in every sense of the term. Playing “either/or” as regards to the Democratic Party reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the party and who/what it represents. It’s a tension, hopefully creative. The point “joseph” made about factions, as long as you have enough of them so that a single faction doesn’t dominate, is a very good point, by the way. Howard Dean is more likely to embrace and work for a MORE inclusive party, not less. Guys like McAuliffe and the other pros have done a terrible job of getting ANYBODY excited about the party. And, of course, ultimately it’s up to the candidate…

I guess being officially agnostic allows one a lot of latitude in scattershot criticism without actually staking out a coherent position, or even a coherent set of hopes. That’s it for me.

One small step, and a mostly “inside baseball” one at that… Don’t piss on Howard’s shoes, unless you’ve got a better man for the job in mind (or you simply hate Democrats, in which case be prepared for us to piss back.) Oh, and I would love for anyone here to tell me something you know about RNC head Ken Mehlman that is interesting. (Aside from the “lifestyle” rumors.)

Howard Dean, in his statements, simply is not serious about National Security. Why is that? He’s a very bright man, has wide life experience, was a moderate Vermont Governor (though he took office by accident, when the incumbent died in office and was moved up from Lt. Gov).

To me it speaks to the wider problem of the Democrats on National Security, they are not able to seriously understand the problems facing the country in this area and so cannot respond to them. It’s the reverse, btw, of the Republicans who have no clue about what the Domestic issues are, but have at least a glimmering of the problems facing us internationally. This wasn’t arrived at all at once, but 9/11 did seem to force a sea change in their perception of the world. Dems are still trying to stop the American Military from launching Dr. Strangelove, and that’s not the problem anymore. We live in a Die Hard universe, and have to deal with THAT movie.

Green Dems (sorry to pick on you Green) statement that the problems with Arab resentment to the US are Israel and support for repressive regimes is common among Dems, but a complete misreading IMHO. American actions do not cause illiberalism among Arabs, they are simply America’s fudging response to illberalism. What does Israel, and Jews, have to do with a Morroccan, a Libyan, an Egyptian, a Saudi, an Omani, or a Yemeni? The existence or non-existence of Jews and Israel has about as much to do with their lives as Northern Ireland has to do with me (I’m Irish-American). Other than a maudlin bit of sentiment which soon passes, the troubles in Northern Ireland occupy my life not at all. Nor does America’s support for repressive regimes like Mubarak’s cause anti-American sentiment, particularly when the official regime media organs trumpet one bit of anti-American propaganda after another. The average person on the street would simply not believe you if you told them Mubarak’s government gets billions of aid each year.

Green’s on much firmer ground when he says that oil wealth has masked the illiberalism of the society in the first place. The problem is that the modern technology of the West can be used by illiberal, anti-Modern societies to kill great masses of people, even including at the worst nuclear weapons. Bin Laden is the representative of this, but there are others. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, Jemiat Islamayyah, and other groups have refrained in degrees from launching Al Qaeda type attacks, but there is no guarantee this will remain.

The problem is illiberalism (in the sense of the rejection of modern society in the sense of the fading Weimar Republic) and the solution is to remake these societies while maintaining a strategy to prevent a mass casualty attack. Dems are still stuck in the Cold War mode, where the sensibly sought to limit American response (implicitly nuclear) to stop the world from blowing up. This isn’t the problem anymore, the problem is a few cities being blown up by Comic Book madmen.

The fix for this has three legs, and includes deterrence, particularly including military force to remove regimes, and the demonstrated ability and will to use this force so nations/leaders understand the American threat is real. Deterrence alone however will not work. There is a limit to how much military force America can use around the world, and places we can remove dangerous regimes. Getting rid of Saddam, however, in this context shows we are serious and can remove even a powerful man in a big country.

Border control, domestic anti-terrorism spending, and other domestic security measures are part of this too. Republicans tend to neglect it, Democrats in part support it. This means anti-terror investigations, the FBI in Mosques and social organizations likely to harbor logistic networks for terror, and other things we’d rather not do. This means more control of the borders, including stopping illegal immigration, and control/inspection of the ports. However, here too there is a limit to what we can do, there is no way to be perfectly safe even in a Gestapo or Mainlaind China type police state, and no one would want to live in a true Fortress America with neighborhood watch being a Cuban style secret police spy network.

Diplomacy and coalition building, including serious horse trading, is the third leg of the national security stool. America can’t and shouldn’t try to control the world, and has to horse trade in order to get things done. This means concessions to some nations, and none to others, depending on the needs of what needs to be done. Hard but fair bargaining, not just rolling over for international institutions that failed in the Cold War and are less than useless now (UN, NATO, EU).

So Richard, Beinart is not proposing endless war, but rather a strategy for dealing with a long term threat. The societies of the Middle East are sick, you can tell that just by visiting, and even remote and distant lands like Afghanistan (which had no WMD, and no massive army) can pose a threat to thousands and potentially millions of us. No Party can gain national leadership until they have a plan for dealing comprehensively with this threat, and that’s what Beinart is arguing.

OT sorta: Note that there are no serious Democratic think tanks on National Security, and Military Affairs. This MUST change. It’s far too important to leave only to the Republican, but the mindset of the Party (as shown by Marc in the male/two-female vice chairs) must change. Stop obsessing about PC issues and start debating seriously the great security issues of the day.

Sorta back OT: It’s an orthodox position among Dems IMHO that the US can achieve “peace in the Middle East” by pressing nasty Likud Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. To me this misreads the situation completely, or blames Arafat too much. Arafat was part of the problem, but the larger issue is the Palestinian people themselves who are not willing to accept Israel’s existence and a two-state solution. The Israelis are not leaving their country, and as long as that reality collides with the Palestinian dream of driving the Jews out/into the Sea/whatever there will be no peace just at best a cold truce. Which is likely what we will get, until a few more successive wars drive home the futility of the current course or there is a Palestinian Michael Collins. Right now there are just too many Eamon De Valeras, and no one willing to crush them militarily which is what it will take to get peace.

I had previously read Sarah Blustain’s piece that was so widely quoted, because of my ambivalence regarding abortion. And, no, that does not mean I think abortion should be illegal. There is something very wrong with the idea of forcing a woman to stay pregnant. Yes, yes, I know, unless raped she made a choice that ended in becoming pregnant. But arguing the right and wrong of abortion is not what I want to do here. It’s the idea that changing rhetoric will address the issue.

I listened to a talk by Michael Crichton on Book TV and he said a line that stuck with me: data is not Republican or Democrat, it’s data (yes, yes, ironic given his address to a crowd at AEI, but the rhetorical point stands). Technology has changed things. These days, an ultrasound sent by e-mail may very well be the first ‘picture’ you get of a baby. You see your baby moving on an ultrasound image, preemies that are born at only a few months live, babies are ‘conceived’ in test-tubes, ‘artifical’ wombs may be on their way to help infertile couples in which women cannot carry their own baby and don’t wish to have a surrogate. The “data”, as it were, keeps coming in. “Data, and data and data”.

As a pathology resident, I had to ‘gross’ in specimens: this means anything taken out of the body is examined and submitted for histology (you look at the specimen, take the sections you want to examine, and submit them for processing and making into slides to look at under the microscope). During that time, I saw many ‘therapeutic’ and ‘non-therapeutic’ abortuses (and spontaneous abortions – miscarriages, too). I cut in placentas from fetal reduction procedures – in multiple pregnancies sometimes the woman chooses to have only one or two babies (for lots of different reasons) so the ‘extra’ fetuses are injected with saline. They look like little pink ‘ghosts’ attatched to the outside of a placenta.

Anyway, I’m not describing these things to put people off, or go on an anti-abortion rant. I still think in a free society a woman should have control of her body, not the state. But if the ‘rhetoric’ need to be changed, why is that? It is because technology has shown us things – that amorphous blob of cells is more than just nothing. The data keeps coming in. I think those of us that favor keeping abortion legal have to take the new things we’ve learned into account. We have to think, and think hard, about what is at our core, what is the essence, what is human and how do we protect it? And that’s the problem with abortion: there are two humans, or at least one human, and a ‘version’ of a human, connected.

I’m getting this all wrong. I don’t know. I just don’t know. But it’s not rhetoric I’m looking for. It’s clear thinking, honest thinking, hard thinking that doesn’t ignore the truth.

Sorry for the long post.

Conflicted as usual…..