Weighing in on the Kevin Williamson firing
The Atlantic‘s firing of conservative columnist Kevin Williamson about a week and a half after hiring him has been a huge story lately. Talk about revolving doors! The sides have lined up as one might expect: the left in favor of the firing, the right against it.
I’ll start by saying that Williamson has the right to say anything he wants short of defamation and a few other exceptions, the Atlantic has the right to hire him and fire him, and everyone else has the right to approve or disapprove of, agree or disagree with, either Williamson or the magazine.
The controversial statements Williamson made (in 2014, by the way) that apparently got him fired went like this:
KEVIN WILLIAMSON (CO-HOST): And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, “If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.” And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging….
Later in the same episode of the podcast, Williamson continued that when it came to punishment for those who had abortions, he “would totally go with treating it like any other crime up to and including hanging” — going so far as to say that he had “a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment” because “if the state is going to do violence, let’s make it violence. Let’s not pretend like we’re doing something else.”
Here’s the audio (it’s in two segments). Note that his statements were part of a lengthier discussion that had to do with capital punishment and murder. But Williamson unequivocally states that he believes that abortion is murder and should be penalized like other murders, and if capital punishment is in force then capital punishment it should be, preferably hanging (the first video is the more important one). Many people have defended him by saying he was not being serious about this, but on listening to him I have to say that he sounds pretty serious to me:
So, did the Atlantic know about these views before Williamson was hired, and did they just cave to the mob? The magazine apparently already knew something about this view of Williamson’s even before they hired him, because he’d expressed it briefly in a tweet back in 2014. But a tweet—a rush job, written in the spur of the moment—is not the same as this podcast, which re-surfaced last Wednesday, although it had also occurred in 2014.
The magazine’s position is that they didn’t realize how deeply-held these views of Williamson’s were and originally had not been aware of the podcast. Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote this about it: “The language he used in this podcast ”” and in my conversations with him in recent days ”” made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views.” So Goldberg’s argument is a version of “every dog is allowed one free bite”—meaning they shrugged off the tweet but they couldn’t (or wouldn’t, anyway) shrug off the statements made (in cold blood, as it were) in the podcast.
One argument against what Goldberg did in firing Williamson is that if you want diversity of opinion and you want to publish conservative opinion, you shouldn’t fire someone for expressing such an opinion. But is a magazine (or any publication) required to give its op-ed writers free reign to say anything publicly without facing the possibility of firing if what they say goes beyond the pale in the opinion of the editors? Is the writer not the representative of the magazine, in a way, and if a viewpoint publicly stated seems not just wrong but beyond the pale to them, wouldn’t it make sense to fire the writer?
There is little question that Williamson’s opinion on this is logically consistent: if a person believes that abortion is first-degree murder, and that person also believes that people who commit murder should be executed, then it would be quite consistent to believe that women should be executed (either by hanging or otherwise) for having abortions. Williamson is actually a bit iffy on whether he does believe in capital punishment in general, but that’s not really the issue here—it’s that he believes that women who abort should be subject to the full penalties for murder, whatever those penalties are.
However, this is not a mainstream conservative position. In fact, it’s so extreme a position that even Vox—which seems to have searched very hard to find someone in politics or punditry on the right who concurs with Williamson on this—could only unearth a few who did (and one was a state senator from Idaho who reversed his position one day after stating it). The title of that Vox article is “Plenty of conservatives really do believe women should be executed for having abortions: Atlantic writer Kevin Williamson may have been fired for suggesting the death penalty for abortion, but he’s not alone.” But the article itself indicates that “plenty of conservatives” believe no such thing. Although some (not the majority) do believe that there should be some sort of penalty for women who have abortions, only a few (very very few) are willing to characterize the act as murder and apply the same penalties to it.
In fact, not only are Williamson’s views on the proper penalties for abortion not at all mainstream, even among people who believe abortion is murder, only rarely has any society enacted into law the idea that abortion is murder and should be treated with the penalties for murder (see this).
So what should the editor of the Atlantic have done about Williamson? Well, if the magazine didn’t want extremist points of view, it shouldn’t have hired Williamson in the first place. Williamson is a columnist who was already well known for being edgy and way out there (in addition to having a colorful and fluent writing style), and the editors had to have known that’s what they were buying.
They couldn’t handle the details of what that meant, but they certainly must have known he was capable of something like this, and that they might expect it. As explained in September of 2016 in the pages of the Atlantic, of all places, Williamson isn’t just a conservative, he’s a provocateur. That article quoted a 2016 National Review column of his that had sparked enormous controversy, in which Williamson (not a Trump fan) wrote:
Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence””and the incomprehensible malice””of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.
The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs ”¦ The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.
You want to hire the guy who wrote that, surely you know you’re not going to get politeness and a tentative touch. You’re going to get someone who will write hard-hitting articles that will offend a lot of people (probably on both right and left), although those same people will be talking about those articles a lot. The Atlantic wanted an entree into that kitchen, but they couldn’t take the heat.
[NOTE: Jonah Goldberg makes the point—and I think it’s a good one—that Williamson was fired for what he thought rather than what he wrote for the magazine, and that therefore he was fired for thoughtcrime. But I don’t think it matters in this case quite as much as it might in others. After all, Williamson was hired as an opinion writer, a columnist, and this was an opinion that Williamson had publicly expressed two times, once on Twitter and once in a National Review podcast, rather than in a private exchange.]
There’s a lot of talk about rights, but no mention of duty, responsibility, or caring.
This would be expected for an age where the hearts of men (and women) grow cold.
Also, why would a woman be executed for hiring a doctor for abortion? It is the medical profession that broke their Hippocratic Oath that should be penalized, if civil justice wants to interfere here.
All have come short, and since this mortal realm is a test for people’s choices, it is better that they stay longer and repent than to die in their sins.
Prison, however, is not good for much of anything, Some, though, make good use of it to study the holy text of one faith or another and make a spiritual conversion off of it. But if people want to put people in prison, killing them under human laws will work too.
Life Imprisonment is a rather cruel and unusual punishment, because it is Execution on top of Life being Imprisoned and held captive…
If people want to kill people and send them to Purgatory or Spirit Prison or the other realm, then do so. But to keep them in confinement on this mortal plane, then kill them, steps beyond the line.
Back when two people, a husband and wife team, sold their property to donate it to the congregation of the Nazrenes, in front of Peter, they didn’t “die” on the spot because they were punished by Peter for lying about their contributions and money. By committing a violation in the presence of a direct apostle and representative of the Divine Counsel’s authority, all souls are subject to recall and adjudication. They were not merely lying to a human or Apostle, but to the Godhead as well. Thus the only proper punishment is for them to be recalled from this plane and face adjudication procedures in the Divine Courts. Human punishment lacks the jurisdiction to rule and judge over certain matters out of their jurisdiction.
Life Imprisonment is the mortal claim that we have the ability and right and power to judge mortal crimes, and then we’ll kill them to send them to hell or the Divine Courts for them to get another judgment too.
Makes no sense whatsoever. State/Federal courts do not judge that a person needs to be punished with A, and then the Supreme Court interjects and adds another punishment Z on top of it later on. Double jeopardy there.
Human law is subordinate to Divine Law. All abortions are penalized under divine law, although not necessarily under human law. Thus humans only have limited jurisdiction on the judgment of human life on this matter. It’s not going to end here, so there’s no point trying to come up with a complete fitting punishment.
An economic fine and penalty, as well as time serving the community and orphans, would be a sufficient penalty whether it be for a woman that chose abortion or a doctor that performed.
The niggardly bastard like lack of compassion and divine grace of human judges and human state nationalists and just humans in general, knows no bounds apparently.
I’ve read quite a few articles on this from the Right blogs, but none from the Left, so thanks for the analysis and the rebuttal of Vox’s claim. There isn’t much point in rehashing things, as NRO and The Federalist, along with PowerLine and others, have covered most of the territory, as you summarized here.
“I’ll start by saying that Williamson has the right to say anything he wants short of defamation and a few other exceptions, the Atlantic has the right to hire him and fire him, and everyone else has the right to approve or disapprove of, agree or disagree with, either Williamson or the magazine.”
For an experienced news-magazine editor, though, Goldberg doesn’t seem to have done much more than look around and see that Williamson was offending conservatives today, so he must be turning away from the Dark Side and thus fit for the Purer Realms of The Atlantic (aka, becoming a Tame Lion, like most of the erstwhile conservatives writing for left-wing publications).
Which means, he’s never read much of Williamson’s work (very unlikely) or he viewed it very selectively (confirmation bias) and didn’t dig around for anything he hadn’t already seen.
(That’s a similar position to that faced by conservatives once Milo Y.’s interview on coming-of-age (deliberate euphemism) surfaced, although it had never been hidden, as happened with the accounts and youtube clips actively deleted by some people after being caught saying things they were chastised for.)
What is it with journalists these days, who don’t seem capable of doing the simplest kind of vetting or fact-checking that a first-year stringer would have known to do back in the day?
Pretty sure that even an opinion that a woman who has an abortion be tried as a criminal and given imprisonment and a fine would have gotten Williamson canned as well.
Williamson has become a rather nasty jerk and Trump hater. I thought it would be a good match. I suspect The Atlantic, which keeps sending me unordered copies of the magazine, wanted a “right wing” Trump hater for their stable of writers. He was a little too toxic in the end.
They deserve each other.
They wanted their very own NeverTrump pet just like the Times and Post have with Stephens and Rubin only they chose poorly.
(That’s a similar position to that faced by conservatives once Milo Y.’s interview on coming-of-age (deliberate euphemism) surfaced, although it had never been hidden, as happened with the accounts and youtube clips actively deleted by some people after being caught saying things they were chastised for.)
I had already obtained sources that stated that Hollywood and Americans had pedo rings pretty much in every major city. The human organized religions have them as well, with the most infamous one, the Vatican’s, being looted by trial lawyers of 1 billion dollars or so in damages. 70% ish of it went to trial lawyers, who money laundered it back to the Left.
This came up when people were arguing about whether homos were natural or socially conditioned. I stated that the Gaystapo were often composed of people who were turned into homos by child abuse.
Roger Kimball weighs in with a bit that seems to strike towards the center of the issue:
““I would also prefer, all things being equal [but of course they never are], to give people second chances and the opportunity to change,” Goldberg wrote. “I’ve done this before in reference to extreme tweeting.”
What a guy! He is sometimes willing to overlook “extreme tweeting,” whatever that is, even unto three offenses. He is willing to hire conservatives, because even they deserve “second chances.” Chances to do what, you ask? Why, to “change,” of course! To become liberals.
I’ve known Kevin Williamson for more than a decade. Unlike me, he is opposed to capital punishment. He is about as likely to want people hanged as Jonathan Swift was to want children sold as food. Yet Swift, pondering the famine in Ireland, could suggest just that: “A child,” he wrote, “will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.”
As a perspicacious female friend of mine observed, “On the liberal scale of sins, making women feel bad about themselves is worse than infanticide.” Williamson is particularly sensitive about that species of infanticide we refer to with grisly lexical litotes as the exercise of “women’s reproductive rights,” a.k.a. abortion. On the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 2015, he noted that he never needed reminding which anniversary it was because it was also his anniversary. He was born three months–“call it a ‘trimester’”–before Roe.”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/04/07/why-kevin-williamson-matters/
Okay, this is a new hash, triggered by a post linked by Roger Kimball at American Greatness.
Both are interesting reads, but here’s the subhead quote from a writer at the The Ringer (a publication previously unknown to me) about a similar farce at The Times earlier this year (the one-day wonder-hire).
https://www.theringer.com/2018/2/14/17012778/new-york-times-quinn-norton-bari-weiss-bret-stephens-editorial
“The paper of record’s solicitation of reactionary opinions from the likes of neocon Bari Weiss, climate change denier Bret Stephens, and Nazi sympathizer Quinn Norton has raised an essential question: Why?”
Justin Charity’s* rant against NYT for daring to print ANY op-ed, or even news article, not 100% negative about the right (in any form and Trump in particular) led me to put on my tin-foil thriller-writer’s hat and look for an answer to his question.
Q: Why is the Times hiring reactionary provocateurs?
A: Because they want to elicit exactly the reaction Charity gave them.
Note that The NYT (and The Atlantic) are NOT hiring people like Victor Davis Hanson, David French, or even Jean Kaufman**: clearly conservative, but not radical in any way.
They want to hire fringe elements, or at least edgy ones, whose writings they know will be attributed to the majority of conservatives, who don’t agree with those opinions at all.
They don’t have to do anything more than publish the not-representative personal views of their writers and contributors, stir up the Leftist opposition, and sit back to gather the rewards: (1) credit from some on the right for at least attempting to present some viewpoints outside their usual readers’ ken; (2) validation for the left that considers all conservatives as holding views identical to the radical and UNrepresentative ones published; (3) discrediting the writer with another part of the right for daring to deal with the devil; (4) raking in money from the hits and publicity-churning (Charity alleges this to be the primary motive).
Win-win-win-win for the paper; why wouldn’t Atlantic follow that lead?
Maybe Jeff Goldberg isn’t as stupid as I thought he was.
Maybe.
If he didn’t know specifically about Williamson’s abortion=murder riffs, I bet he knows there are plenty other stories out there that would generate enough ire to “force” him to fire Kevin eventually.
My suggestion is that the storm that upset the boats of Williamson and Norton were premature: there should have been a period for readers to build up their hate for the dastardly righties, reinforcing their negative views of every conservative , and then the perfidious past of the unsatisfactory hires would be “discovered” and they would be (oh-so-sadly) dismissed, and others brought on board for the same charade, after suitable furor to generate revenue.
BTW, here’s Kimball referring to the aforesaid Charity vs. Norton post, and quoting Hanson, because VDH was correct :
“The thing to appreciate in this despicable case is that Kevin Williamson was fired from his job as an opinion journalist for uttering an opinion. It is far from being a unique circumstance. Indeed, the New York Times (as perhaps befits a daily) managed to hire and fire an op-ed columnist within hours. Why? Because someone dug up evidence of opinions expressed elsewhere that didn’t pass muster with the Times’s censors.
The rancid, totalitarian stench of enforced orthodoxy may be most patent on college campuses today. But the case of Kevin Williamson shows that those toxic plumes are wafting throughout the once-liberal institutions of American society.
A few hours before Kevin was defenestrated from The Atlantic, Victor Davis Hanson responded to Kevin’s combination maiden essay and swan song for that once-great journalistic shambles. Kevin’s piece included some critical remarks about Victor, which Victor answered. But given the course of events, Victor’s concluding remark is especially resonant: “Sadly, I think Kevin Williamson will soon find that National Review was far more tolerant of his controversial views than will be true at The Atlantic.”
Got that right.”
*Like all of the “tolerant” left, even his name is hypocritical.
**Shameless pandering to our hostess, whose estimable works probably are unknown to or ignored by both publications.
http://www.neoneocon.com/2017/04/05/the-neo-archives/
** Waves to vanderleun **
New question: do any of these conservative
dupespundits hired by leftist publications really believe their opinions are so esteemed that they are going to be given an opportunity to make converts?Or, are they at most hoping to influence some of the undecided or less-doctrinaire readers?
One point about Williamson’s opinion on abortion: he was adopted. My husband is a post Roe v. Wade adoptee, and he (and I assume other like him) is keenly aware of the fact that he was exactly the type of “fetus” abortion proponents so easily dismiss; an inconvenience that should be terminated. Progressives love to confer moral authority on victims, but they never want to hear from victims/near-victims of their own policies.
I stopped reading Williamson a few years ago because of his provocative style. Not sure how Goldberg could have hired him without noticing Williamsons’ provocative style. Maybe more likely he didn’t want to cross the feminists in the office over abortion.
AesopFan Says:
April 7th, 2018 at 12:54 pm
** Waves to vanderleun **
New question: do any of these conservative dupes pundits hired by leftist publications really believe their opinions are so esteemed that they are going to be given an opportunity to make converts?
======
Nolte has one of the main attractions that glittering prizes such as The Atlantic hold out to those wandering in the wilderness of cucked-faux-conservative views…they are the standard ones, money and status.
=========
Nolte: Kevin Williamson’s ‘Atlantic’ Firing Should Wake Up #NeverTrump (But It Won’t)
Take a look around, NeverTrump morons… You can either go the full-woke – in which case you are so immune you can still work at the Atlantic even after confessing your belief that “the police and firefighters who sacrificed their lives” on September 11 are “not quite human” – or you can find yourself a target for annihilation for using the word “whining” or some dumb provocation about hanging women who have abortions.
Take a look around, you pious preeners… The only way those who once described themselves as “conservatives” survive in the Prestigious Media is if they agree to sellout completely and forever – if they agree to Big Brother’s terms and on TV screens all across the country repudiate everything they once stood for (see: Scarborough, Joe or Wallace, Nicole or Frum, David). Otherwise, they get the Jeffrey Lord treatment.
Them’s the rules, nitwits – that is the current Cold War we are in, and it is an existential war launched by a billion-dollar media establishment populated by corporate blacklisters determined to destroy our speech platforms by shrinking the window of acceptable debate. And while the moral cowards in NeverTrump pretend to live in some Masturbatory Fantasyland where they can cozy up to the villains while cowering under a blanket of “muh principles” and Stormy sanctimony, the rest of us have figured out that this is the only fight that matters.
“What did you do during the war, daddy?”
“I was a squealing little gerbil.”
Maybe Kevin Williamson will take his own advice to the working class – rent a U-Haul and learn computer coding.
=========
Quelle ironico, but Williamson probably got his Atlantic position via his unlikely fan, Ta-Nehisi Coates. From back in the good old days (ten days ago):
_________________________________________________
Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic said he loves to read the outlet’s new conservative hire, Kevin D. Williamson, in a recent interview on Jamie Weinstein’s podcast hosted by National Review.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/28/ta-nehisi-coates-gives-atlantic-hire-kevin-williamson-props-for-writing/
Of course, Williamson was also hired as a NeverTrump conservative and indeed that was what Williamson delivered in his first and only Atlantic article:
“The Passing of the Libertarian Moment:
The end of the Cold War and the rise of Donald Trump have left classical liberals without a political home.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/defused/556934/
This is an old idea, isn’t it? I don’t get the shocked reaction.
Way back in a NY art school in the 80’s, a couple of African American women in the filmmaking department asked to film me for their project, because I looked “like an Italian film star”:-D
Turned out the film was about the trial of a woman sentenced to death for having an abortion. My part was to sit tragically in a dark room under dramatic lighting.
I’m not actually sure which ‘side’ they were on, come to think if it. I’d assumed they were feminist activists, but I don’t know.
The specter of a death sentence for women who had an abortion was actually a commonly discussed scenario at the time. There also weren’t the required rigid PC belief standards like now. Plus, reading Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” was a freshman requirement.
The two women were cousins and one of them lived near me. She and her mom were religious Christians and active in a local church. She told me they never finished the film. Lucky I guess.
This is an old idea, isn’t it? I don’t get the shocked reaction.
Esther: Old and new. There’s a considerable amount of law on the books now in which the fetus becomes a child if damaged or killed in a crime and the penalties are therefore worse.
Of course, if a consenting mother and doctor get together to kill a fetus, that’s different.
The firing of Williamson, who has long been too NeverTrump for me to keep reading, is quite important.
As @vanderluen says — “conservatives” survive in the Prestigious Media is if they agree to sellout completely ”
Here’s another, against wrongthink:
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/if-you-have-wrongthink-you-will-not-be-allowed/
Conservatives need to be honest about the censorship and the willingness of Democrats (not the seldom identified “Left”) to take away our rights.
My current fantasy:
for Facebook, a $40,000 fine (to US gov’t & victims, Half to gov’t, half to victims.)
For each person whose private data was wrongly sold; some 80 million (* 40k = 3.2 trillion).
Facebook goes bankrupt, equity & loan investors get nothing. The US gov’t gets Facebook, operating, with recapitalization based on the unpaid amount to victims getting shares, instead.
Nationalization thru fines on illegal corporate behavior.
Reminds me of the 70s feminist joke that if men gave birth, abortion would be a religious sacrament.
Today women still give birth and abortion is practically a sacrament.
To impose an opinion upon other people who disagree is the heart of fascism.
You cannot ‘murder’ an animal, an animal may only be killed.
Williamson cannot prove that abortion is murder because science has yet to factually establish that a fetus becomes a child before birth.
Thus his desire to enforce his opinion upon those who disagree is fascist.
What’s science go to do
got to do with it?
What’s science
but a second hand opinion?
“Williamson cannot prove that abortion is murder because science has yet to factually establish that a fetus becomes a child before birth.”
More fumbling fun with word play.
Word play? My, your or anyone else’s opinion, based in religious belief is NOT a valid basis for imposing it AS LAW upon other people who disagree.
When science, i.e. irrefutable proof confirms both the existence of a soul and convincingly demonstates when it enters the fetus, then we’ll have a rational basis for declaring abortion to be murder. Until then, it’s opinion and a majority of opinion does not equate to fact. No matter how much we might wish it.
You don’t seem to understand what science can answer. That science will give an answer that is irrefutable is an essential error.
Neither do you need to shout.
Ooooh ALL CAPS for EXTRA AUTHORITY!!!
Zygote to fetus to premie to baby to child….
Just kill them all and let SCIENCE! sort them out.
What’s missing? “Love.” As if science could find and measure a soul, or love.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Love_Got_to_Do_with_It_(song)
om,
Drop an anvil on your big toe and then get back to me on science’s “essential errors”…
And I’m all for “Love” except when it’s used as cover for imposing religious opinion upon others.
vanderleun,
I guess 3 all capped words out of 81… is pretty pathetic when trying to establish “EXTRA AUTHORITY”. I’ll try to do better next time. That is unless I’m all capping a few words for emphasis and then I guess I need to include a note to that effect, just for you.
It takes an extraordinary thin skin to not only jerketh his jerking knee into his chin, but then to go back and actually count the words to make some kind of because math remark. You might want to strap on your surge protector to keep you from feeling that kind of pain.
You need to resign your job as commentator in order to spend more time with your brain.
Geoffrey:
Put down the ego before you hurt yourself. Do you seriously propose that science will be able to tell when and if a person has a soul? And then will the soul quotient (not science unless it can be quantified ?) of individuals be the basis for law? Really.
But not that “science” hasn’t already been used to determine who is or isn’t protected by the law; consider the untermenschen.
vanderleun,
I assure you my skin is thick enough to handle inconsequential verbal barbs. But I appreciate your concern. I counted the words to quantify exactly how ludicrous was your charge of using ALL CAPS.
“Resign my job”? Interesting that you seek to invalidate the expression of an opinion that simply disagrees with yours.
om,
I seriously propose that science is the only means that currently exists on this matter for the formulation of laws, when proof is absent for the assertion that at conception a soul enters the body. As it is our soul that contains the spirit that makes us children of God and that forbids abortion. Absent proof of that soul/spirit’s presence in a fetus, I’m unaware of any objective basis for outlawing abortion.
And yes, I do not imagine that science will never be able to answer this question. As I don’t believe God wishes us to live in permanent ignorance.
Science has limitations. Which of the sciences do you propose to base these wonderful laws upon? Social science, political science, or just the “hard” sciences? A fools errand.
Since you can’t measure “scientifically” when or if adult has a soul, why is murder a problem in our legal system? Riddle me that.
How did we get any laws before the scientific revolution and the enlightenment? Mysteries to be solved by science I assume.
GB: I guess I get your reasoning but most people don’t understand God or Science the way you do. I certainly don’t. Yet you seem to demand others accept your approach as the one true way.
I’d be a bit slower to call other people “fascist” because they don’t follow your method or reach your conclusions.
vanderleun Says:
April 7th, 2018 at 1:16 pm
* *
Thanks for the Nolte link; hadn’t seen his reaction yet.
@ om: I actually came across a person, quite young though, who said that humans have no souls. I asked how did he know. He said science.
Tom G Says:
April 7th, 2018 at 3:37 pm
* * *
Thanks for the link; always good to discover a new writer, although it’s getting hard to find time to read them all…
huxley,
If memory serves, this is the very first time that I have ever applied fascist to another. So it’s not my habit to do so. I think it applies here because it’s inherent to what Williamson has said, he would impose his personal opinion upon other people who disagree. Is that not fascistic?
How is pointing that out about Williamson demanding that other people see it ‘my way’? Show me where I err. I don’t desire to demean the man, I apply that label to what he has advocated because it logically fits.
Personally, I abhor abortion and think at some point it probably is murder BUT I will not accuse those who disagree of supporting murder because I cannot prove them wrong. Thus, it’s a moral choice, one between them and God and IMO, I do not have the right to legally impose what I suspect to be true upon those who disagree.
om,
I have not proposed using science to determine our laws for the very reasons you state. I have proposed that when all that objectively exists is subjective personal opinion, then laws must not be used to impose personal beliefs upon those who disagree.
GRA,
Anyone who states that Science’s current inability to detect the presence of a thing ‘proves its nonexistence’ has a basically flawed understanding of the scientific method.
Science does not claim to have disproven the existence of the soul, or of anything it cannot detect. If anything there is anecdotal evidence of the soul/spirit’s existence, thought that evidence is not (yet) independently duplicable. So, an intellectually honest scientist is forced to admit that “the jury is out on that one”.
Today is quite the day: The predictably sensible Geoffrey Britain has become unhinged.
He requires “science” to prove the creation of a soul at the moment of conception.
Come, Geoffrey, come. Has “science” proved the existence of a soul at any age: 21, or 30 or 50 or 75? Do you await the 2nd coming of Stephen Hawking?
Do you await the ‘scientific’ proof that God created the universe?
What does the existence of a soul have to do with whether or not the taking of a human life is or is not ‘murder’?
In my book, the deliberate taking of an innocent human’s life is murder. Always. Period. Double Stop.
Pretty low bar for what constitutes fascism. But then its better than communism because fascist states don’t last as long. /s 🙂
Frog:
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding Geoffrey B., but I took his remark to mean that there is much disagreement on whether a fetus is a human life in its early stages, and that since reasonable people (and even some religions) differ on this, a law should not be passed declaring abortion to be murder and providing the penalty of murder for it. I do not think he meant that for a person to hold the belief that a fetus is a human life from conception, and that abortion is murder, some sort of empirical proof is required.
At least, that’s how I read the meaning of what he wrote.
I think Jonah Goldberg’s argument is pretty strong. Opinion writer or not; many other outlets do not punish opinions not presented in the publication. He mentions his own, National Review, has some pro choice writers. They just don’t write about that for National Review. Now that we are doing it this way we have to keep in mind the left keeps narrowing the definition of what is not racist, white nationalist, and/or acceptable opinion. We will all be out of their definition of reasonable soon… while antifa beating people for wrongthink will be like WWII vets or something.
Geoffrey B — for one person to force his opinion on others is fascistic; for the majority to force its views on those who disagree is democratic.
Frog,
neo has the right of it in understanding what I mean.
Of course science is currently inadequate on this issue. But objectively speaking, it is all we have when subjective opinion is all that exists upon the issue.
“What does the existence of a soul have to do with whether or not the taking of a human life is or is not ‘murder’?”
Why nothing, IF you believe that a fetus is a human life. I do, you do, many do. BUT many do not. Since we can’t prove that our personal opinion is in fact so, my position is that we don’t have the right to impose our personal opinion on them… as law.
“In my book, the deliberate taking of an innocent human’s life is murder. Always. Period. Double Stop.”
That’s your ‘book’. It happens to be mine also. But my and your book is just that, our POV. I cannot support the imposition through law of my subjective POV upon another.
om,
I entirely agree that fascism is a lesser evil than communism.
Richard S,
Good point. However, when the majority creates law that imposes a consensus of personal opinion that is entirely subjective, then IMO they do so in error.
“Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men.” R.A. Heinlein
A long closing quote from and article base on the search of “Jordon P Peterson on abortion”
https://thebridgehead.ca/2017/09/12/dr-jordan-b-peterson-abortion-is-clearly-wrong/
“Dr. Peterson concluded his thoughts by noting, quite accurately, that, “I think the eternal debate about abortion, horrible as it is, is the surface manifestation of a much deeper problem,” and that the cultural mess surrounding sexuality and marriage will probably have to be sorted out before any progress can be made in criminalizing abortion.
And again, I think Dr. Peterson is both right and wrong at the same time. There is an enormous amount of work to be done surrounding the mess that our society has made of sexuality and relationships, a mess that is celebrated as liberation. But especially in the United States, the number of people who identify as pro-life has steadily climbed, and many are recognizing that abortion is an issue of human rights: Human beings have human rights, human rights begin when the human being begins, and science tells us when a new human life begins.
We’ve made a mess of a lot of things. But children don’t need to die while we figure everything out.”
“science tells us when a new human life begins.” Science does not tell us when the soul becomes manifest in that human life. I argue it cannot, and moreover it is of no consequence to the pro abortion forces. They just don’t care. (No caps need be used.)
Saying that science will answer the soul conundrum regarding abortion is akin to saying slavery cannot be illegal. The abolition movement was in large part based on Christian moral subjective arguments, not science. Laws were passed and enforced, worldwide. But it still persists. But hey, to be especially harsh, partial birth abortion is just a subjective judgement.
om,
With one caveat, I’m in agreement with your comment. That caveat is; “Saying that science will answer the soul conundrum regarding abortion” Not to quibble, but I did not say that science will answer the soul conundrum regarding abortion. I said that, “I do not imagine that science will never be able to answer this question. As I don’t believe God wishes us to live in permanent ignorance.” (on any issue). My position is that, (absent massive divine intervention) only independently verified scientific evidence can ever permanently settle this issue.
thomass:
It depends on how extreme the opinion is, and on what subject—and “extremity” is in the eye of the editors (and their reading public).
For example, NR did not fire Williamson for his POV that women who have abortions should be tried and penalized as murderers. And yet, I doubt that anyone at that magazine shares that POV. However, I am pretty sure that NR would have fired him for other viewpoints, such as (for example) if he’d said something very very racist or anti-Semitic.
For the Atlantic, his opinion on women and abortion turned out to be the tipping point, unlike with NR. But I am relatively sure that all publications have their tipping points. They’re just not always the same ones.
In other words, the Atlantic didn’t just fire Williamson for having an opinion, even a controversial opinion. They fired him for having that particular one. NR didn’t fire him for it, but they might have fired him for a different opinion.
The Atlantic has now published a very long piece by one of its writers, Conor Friedersdorf — “A Dissent Concerning Kevin Williamson”; here’s some of it:
Lots more here.
The Atlantic certainly has the right to fire him, and I can understand them doing so, but they should have known Williamson was not exactly staid or even civil. I mean, many of his opinions offended conservatives who are nearly traditionalist. The attack on the white working class is one example. He should never have been hired in the first place I think if Goldberg was going to be this touchy. I find Williamson’s take on abortion and capital punishment wrong and shocking but that’s the kind of writer he is. Not sure why Goldberg wanted to play in the Kevin Williamson trough at all, if he didn’t want the edge that came with it.
Maybe they did want a conservative that was often patently offensive in order to paint all of us with the same brush. If so, they succeeded to some degree since all my left wing friends are howling about this on FB and fail to see the difference between this sort of opinion and a mainstream conservative opinion.
Kevin Williamson is a very good writer and while his views are often appalling, he’s a good read. I’ll say that in his favor, even if I disagree violently with some of his characterizations and ideas.
Liberty Wolf:
That’s a pretty succinct statement of my beliefs on this, as well.
I don’t agree that Jeffrey Goldberg set out “to paint all of us with the same brush” in his hiring of Williamson. In reading him over the years before he became editor of The Atlantic, I usually found him trying to be fair, liberal of course, but fair. I think he’s still striving for that; right now, for example, the lead article on its website is “The Terrible Cost of Obama’s Failure in Syria”.
neo-neocon Says:
“In other words, the Atlantic didn’t just fire Williamson for having an opinion, even a controversial opinion. They fired him for having that particular one.”
Ok; but the tipping point is low and one sided. We were not thinking about firing them for supporting murder of the unborn… but maybe we should. Or anyone who supports using deadly force to seize private guns. They have a lot of opinions along these lines but we haven’t thought about using them to exclude them from public life…
om Says:
April 7th, 2018 at 5:53 pm
What’s science go to do
got to do with it?
What’s science
but a second hand opinion?
I find that rather peculiar, since OM was on the bandwagon that geoscience was right and I was wrong.
What’s science got to do with it other than it being a second hand opinion indeed…
As for GB’s view, I find it ironic that people here are reacting in the way they do.
I believe that Williamson’s position is not in line with Divine Law or the Divine Counsel. People can’t really argue with that (first they need to understand it to argue against it).
Thus this concurs with GB’s view that Williamson type laws on abortion are unwise or fascism based. I wouldn’t call Williamson a fascist, although he seems to be veering towards that kind of extreme for his own life profit. I would call it a human law that lacks the jurisdiction over Divine Law.
Frog Says:
April 7th, 2018 at 11:39 pm
Today is quite the day: The predictably sensible Geoffrey Britain has become unhinged.
He requires “science” to prove the creation of a soul at the moment of conception.
Frog, known predictably for criticizing the masses for being uneducated in medicine since Frog is a medical doctor of some experience, is now criticizing other people for using science…
Can you conservatives and humans not try to act like the Leftist alliance at this rate? Because this rate is too high even if I had predicted it myself.
Richard Saunders Says:
April 8th, 2018 at 4:31 am
Geoffrey B – for one person to force his opinion on others is fascistic; for the majority to force its views on those who disagree is democratic.
The tyranny of the majority is why the Founding Fathers didn’t like a democracy. Democracies just lead to oligarchies which lead to dictatorships.
https://www.biblica.com/bible/niv/leviticus/20/
Americans might want to stop acting like the 10 commandments is in their law. It is not.
1The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him. 3 I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people; for by sacrificing his children to Molek, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. 4 If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molek and if they fail to put him to death, 5 I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek.
6 “‘I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people.
7 “‘Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your God. 8 Keep my decrees and follow them. I am the Lord, who makes you holy.
9 “‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.
10 “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife–with the wife of his neighbor–both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.
11 “‘If a man has sexual relations with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
12 “‘If a man has sexual relations with his daughter-in-law, both of them are to be put to death. What they have done is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
13 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
14 “‘If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is wicked. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that no wickedness will be among you.
15 “‘If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal.
16 “‘If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
17 “‘If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They are to be publicly removed from their people. He has dishonored his sister and will be held responsible.
18 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a woman during her monthly period, he has exposed the source of her flow, and she has also uncovered it. Both of them are to be cut off from their people.
19 “‘Do not have sexual relations with the sister of either your mother or your father, for that would dishonor a close relative; both of you would be held responsible.
If people want to obey the Law of Moses… well, they are already in transgression and should look up the penalties and curses for that first.
Geophysics isn’t about finding a soul or deciding wheher abortion should be considered murder. Nor are “most” fields of science. The back and forth between Geoffrey and me concerned the concept that science (a tool of inquiry) has limitations.
But that’s just me, I don’t have a brain the size of a planet. Do I have to draw a picture for “johnny come lately?”
Apparently a soul has more evidence for it from primary witnesses and sources reporting direct experience of near death and after death experiences than humans have of a direct core or mantle sample.
The core of the Earth in geoscience might as well be a god for all the evidence people think they have. But I’m sure dogma that requires faith still satisfies people. No wonder.
Still full of it. Carry on. Tell us more about the disk world and what is under Antarctica. What a wealth of “knowledge.”