The Lord of the Dance

I like Atlas Shrugged, but I don't know anything about this blog or the blogger. I appreciate the logic of the argument very, very much. This is the reason why, for right now, though maybe not for all time, presenting the Real-Life-position will help our side in the abortion-war. I don't think our faction will win the argument over Roe vs. Wade (alas, American and all of society is in a downward looped-y-loop), but the salvation of a single life is and should be counted as a Win in the end.

And it is.

---

the opposite of lying

If you're like most people, then you probably think the opposite of lying is truthfulness.

If I say "yes" when I know the truth is "no," then I am lying. But if a liar says "yes" when the answer is "yes," it doesn't mean he is not a liar. Lying, you see, is not about being untruthful -- it is about controlling the information a person receives, distorting reality, so that they act on flawed facts. It is about making another person your own means to an end. This is the reason fraud ranks right up there with force as an enemy of reason. And it is why we should expect a liar to say "yes" when it's the answer that suits him best. He's not concerned with being untruthful; he's concerned with controlling your actions by altering the information you use to make decisions.

Because of this, I am not satisfied calling mere truthfulness the opposite of lying. The opposite of lying, to me, is being informative.

Yesterday I saw this: States passing bills requiring ultrasounds prior to abortions. This is actually brilliant, not because of how it will influence women's decisions, but because of how it tests the liberal position on abortion.

A fetus, women are told, is just tissue. If you believe that is a lie, you might think the remedy is to deny it. This law is different -- it says: "See for yourself." And liberalism has a problem with this, not because it refutes their "tissue" argument, but because it truly allows a woman to make an informed choice. And here you thought they were protecting a woman's right to choose. Are you so sure?

Similarly, abortion activists are suing states over specialty license plates with slogans like "Choose Life." Tell me, if you wanted to make abortion "safe, legal and rare," do you think choosing life more would make abortion rarer? I do.

The truth is that we've been told that one side is about life, while the other side is about choice. When I see the life side clobbering the choice side by espousing choice, it puts the choice side in a very uncomfortable position of having to face what it is they really seek. And that's a lot like looking into a baby's face and calling it tissue.

So what does liberalism really seek, with regard to abortion? Well, it seeks what it always wants: a way to escape the consequences of irresponsible action by shifting some cost (in this case a very brutal and violent one) -- onto an innocent, but politically unrepresented, minority. And it relies on misrepresentations like "it's just tissue," to garner support from people who simply don't know better. Liberalism relies on lying.

Consider the source.

---

and the babies.