Category Archives: Natural Law

UPDATE III (1/1/021): Abortion And A Woman’s Title In Her Body

Abortion, Conservatism, Ethics, Feminism, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property

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It is clearly untrue to say that a paleolibertarian is one who always opposes a woman’s absolute dominion over her body, as a poster on Wendy McElroy’s Facebook Wall has implied.

Abortion is one hill I do not care to die on; I’ve committed enough professional Seppuku over the years. However, I have repeatedly stated that, for a classical liberal (at least), “it’s [highly] problematic to say that by virtue of her fertility, a woman loses a title in her body.”

To repeat, for me, abortion is not the hill to die on. It seems prudent not to come out on this issue. Division of labor and all that stuff; I’ll leave it to Wendy McElroy, who, I am sure, agrees that “libertarians can agree that no state funding, local or federal, should be allocated to such a procedure.”

Otherwise, here is Wendy’s brilliant articulation of self-ownership. Watch Wendy on Stossel’s, 7:28 minutes in:

Wendy McElroy: As far as I’m concerned, this is my skin. Everything beneath this skin belongs to me, or I don’t own anything. I am a self-owner-

John Stossel: Even if there is a living being inside you?

Wendy McElroy: If there is a living being inside me, I’m glad you used the word “being” and not “individual with rights,” if there is a living being inside me, it exists on my breath, it exists by my, the blood pumping through my veins, by the food I eat. It is within my skin, and if you say to me that there, that I do not have jurisdiction over my body, that, in fact, society or someone else has jurisdiction, the, the word that describes someone else owning my body is slavery.*

UPDATE I: Glad people have remained civil on Facebook, so far. That’s the way. Always. However much one disdains the procedure, you can’t get away from the fact of self-ownership. You have no right to take custody of another person’s body. They either own themselves or don’t.

You can’t “own” your body in conjunction with other busybodies.

UPDATE II (July 21):

From the hopeless Facebook thread:

Your tortured analogy, MW, does not hold or even come close. Any reasoning about this fraught topic must proceed, at the very least, from a correct analogy. This is why this debate cannot proceed from logic. People lose their logic (or perhaps they never had the ability to reason to begin with) when it comes to abortion. Enough, now folks. The most honest position the anti-a-woman’s-right-in-her-body proponents can advance is this: a woman, by virtue of her biology, does not have total title in her body. As a propertarian, I find this position untenable, but agree that individuals who hold it will try to finesse it. So this is the final word. “Respek,” as Ali Gi would say.

JV: This is what I mean by a lack of reasoning faculties on the topic, and plain dissembling. What irks here is not only that I said, “enough,” and this is my Wall. But that you, JV, frame your “distinguishing” argument” as exhaustive. The initiation of force is most certainly not the only distinguishing feature between the mother and the fetus. (Unrelated: there is a prerequisite for Facebook Friendship.)

UPDATE III (1/1/021):

Libertarians view women as having dominion over their bodies! My comment, then, is on the cultural specter of females freed from men, morality and tradition: how quickly they turn into diabolical libertines. Most women need traditional strictures to balance exhibitionism and promiscuity.

The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia

Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Law, Natural Law, Regulation, Terrorism, The State, The West

“The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia” is the current column, now on RT. Here is an excerpt:

I imagine readers would prefer that I discuss the TSA’s breach of Jonah Falcon’s “formidable” breeches. But there are better ways to keep the terrorists of the TSA in the news, than to spotlight a well-endowed individual who, to go by his boasting, suffers from “small man syndrome.”

… For a while, the natives were restless over being handled like meat at a packing plant. Travelers, however, have begun to relax, and have eased into the role of stunned cattle.

A jury of ‘submissives’ has even gone so far as to enjoin any resistance to TSA tyranny.

You know the drill. During a routine TSA screening, Carol Jean Price, aged 59, had her buttocks, breasts and genitals touched by an agent. Except that Price didn’t think the prodding should be routine. She became upset, as victims of sexual assault often do.

“When TSA supervisor Kristin Arnberg approached the outraged Price after the initial screening,” Price had the temerity to demonstrate the anatomy of “gate-rape” on The Super.

A jury not of her peers convicted the victim (Price) of battery.

In a constitutional republic, The Law should apply to civilian and civil servant alike, with no exceptions. If a country’s legal code outlaws sexual assault—then the act of fondling an innocent and unwilling stranger, without probable cause, between her thighs and around her breasts, must be proscribed to all people, in all places.

Correspondingly, Ms. Price was correct to instinctively infer that if certain forms of touching are legal in her “great” country, governed as it allegedly is by laws and not men—then everyone should be able to practice the treatment these laws prescribe on everyone else. …”

READ the complete column. “The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia” is now on RT.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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Mitt Must Answer For … Working Overtime

Barack Obama, Business, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Natural Law, Republicans

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a rogue agency. It is in the business of turning productive people by legislative fiat into common criminals. The SEC hunts for corporate prey using ill-defined, unconstitutional laws. It operates with the understanding that competition in capital markets must proceed from a level playing field. All investors are entitled to the same information advantage irrespective of effort and abilities. In a word, information socialism.

Mitt Romney, says the ponce of a president who has never done an honest-day’s work in his life, has done something to annoy the terrorists at the SEC. He “must answer questions about his ties to Bain Capital.”

On Thursday, Stephanie Cutter, the ponce’s handler, accused Mitt Romney of “misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony,” or “misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investment.”

Boiled down, the charge against Romney is: working overtime.

I kid you not, it is just that: In addition to working “’12 hours a day, six days a week’ on the Olympics from 1999 to 2002,” Mitt might have been putting in a few extra hours at Bain.

OMG!

When will Romeny stop turning the other cheek?

UPDATE IV: Bullied ‘Jail Bus’ Lady: Fearful Fatty, Not a Hero (I Am ‘Old’)

Education, Family, Feminism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Natural Law, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Reason, The Zeitgeist

HERE are excerpts from “Bullied ‘Jail Bus’ Lady: Fearful Fatty, Not a Hero,” my weekly column, now on RT. It deconstructs the latest episode of infantilism in America:

The new ‘poster child’ for a bully victim in America is, wait for it, not a helpless small child, robbed of lunch money by the schoolyard ruffian, but an adult entrusted with supervising them.

The Internet watched 68-year-old Karen Klein, who was charged with ‘monitoring’ bused children in the town of Greece, N.Y., dissolve in tears to the taunts of her 13-year-old charges.

Klein’s failure to fend off the feral children was captured on YouTube by her tormentors, students at the Athena Middle School in suburban Rochester.

To the sight of a feeble adult, who occupies two seats on the vehicle she’s supposed to supervise; too fat to budge and too powerless to perform the task for which she is being paid—the Internet erupted in cheers.

Klein was quickly catapulted to fame for her, yes, courage. ‘God bless, you are my hero,’ effused a woman with the handle ‘Marykate,’ in an online post.

Charitably put, Klein has not advanced adulthood in infantile America. …

… In defense of the wolverines who preyed on Klein, how is an adult such as herself to command their respect? From whom are these fiends, out on a wilding spree, expected to learn a lesson? From Supervisor Klein, who was not adult enough to holler for help? Klein lacked the wherewithal to ask the bus driver to stop the bus and set the kids straight, then and there. …

… Or, perhaps the bus drive is another fearful fatty, who was unable to dislodge herself from her seat? Perhaps the two live in fear of potential law suits, lodged by the parents who sire these good-for-nothing seventh graders? …

… Natural order is not predicated on state-enacted laws. The natural order that has worked throughout the ages to tame young terrors is predicated on hierarchy; on the preservation of clear, never-to-be-blurred boundaries between adults and kids. These boundaries were once upheld in-house—in the principal’s office, the home and the church. …

… Restore old-fashioned discipline to classrooms and school buses.

… Better still: Drain the septic tank that is our federalized education system, and with it the auxiliary personnel that infest the schools and feed off a dwindling tax base. There is now one non-teaching adult for every 8 or 9 children. …

The complete column, now on RT, is “Bullied ‘Jail Bus’ Lady: Fearful Fatty, Not a Hero.”

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” “Return To Reason” on WND, and the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT.

The paperback edition (softcover) of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” is available on Amazon. It features bonus material, including an Afterword by Burkean philosopher, Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

UPDATE I: If you must have the visual:

UPDATE II: A Facebook Friend writes on my Wall:

Sean Sheedy:

I’m appalled by these Lord-of-the-Flies adolescents. But I also recall my Irish grandmother, who would have stuffed their words back down their throats ’til they choked, and then settled back for a nip of her favorite whiskey.
The U.S. these days is sadly lacking in cranky old folks.

I reply:

SS: I love your comment. Exactly my sentiment. I grew up around wiry little old Israeli ladies, who were so tough and scary that we kids used to imagine they were witches who would eat us up if we got close enough. (There were no Idiot Pads in those days; we’d think up scary stuff for fun.) Anyone taunting these former pioneers of the Holy land, who had drained swamps in their youth, would run for his/her life. We respected our elders.

UPDATE III: Guys start fighting on my Wall over abortion. I write: “AMM: There is not a thing you can do when people go off about fetuses (which I, of course, love). As I once wrote: “Would that Republicans fussed as much over the many fully formed human-beings dying daily in Iraq, as they do over fetuses.” Fuss all you like, but not on this Wall, fetuses (which I love) are not the subject here. But, I have a very low regard for your average Republican’s “culture of life.”

UPDATE IV: A comment at WND:

Ilana Mercer, one day you will be old, and fat, and powerless, and someone will heap on the last straw…and you will break, and sob, and understand what this woman went through. Until then, you’ll be a soulless fraud.

How does the fool writing this know I am not “old”? Because of the way I look? American slobs make me sick. You know nothing about real suffering, but you think a cruel word qualifies. (Read Into the Cannibal’s Pot to get a perspective on just how disgustingly self-indulgent and full of self-pity you are.)

Americans are blind to anything and anyone that isn’t like them; you can identify with Klein because she looks like you. You cannot identify with those who do not mirror indulgence and sloth (“old” though they may be).

From the fact that someone looks OK, you deduce that they are young, have it easy, haven’t suffered like the Klein woman has (she doesn’t know what real suffering is)?

If someone looks OK in middle age, you think that comes easily and doesn’t involve hard work and disciple, and isn’t achieved despite a difficult life? You pity the slack and pile on hard-working disciplined folks, for what? Driving themselves hard (I do that)? Running 12 miles a week for the last 22 years? (I do that, come rain or shine). Not wallowing in pity (I don’t do that). Anything to excuse the way you eat and look, and the arrogance with which you treat others not like you.

How old does the writer think I am, what with a daughter who is 29-years old?

Misplaced compassion and envy; that’s what this country is increasingly about.

What I once said in an interview about reason and misplaced compassion obtains: “In well-functioning people, the intellect is not separated from the affect (i.e. the emotional). They are integrated. When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion.”