Happy Mother’s Day: mothers and babies

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo-neocon, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.

My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-six years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.

Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.

The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.

Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.

We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).

My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.

I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.

So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?

The Pill turns fifty: are we having fun yet?

The New Neo Posted on by

According to Gail Collins, tomorrow—Mother’s Day, May 9—could be considered the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, although there are several days contending for that honor. By the time I was growing up the Pill was already a fact of life, albeit a new one. I certainly used it, and I believe that on the whole I, personally, benefited greatly from it. But that doesn’t mean it was an unmitigated plus in all respects.

Collins manages to write an entire column devoted to Margaret Sanger and her crusade for the dissemination (pun intended) of birth control information without once mentioning any of the other huge controversies that dominated Sanger’s life, such as her socialism and her advocacy of eugenics, including her drive to convince members of races she considered inferior to reproduce less, as well as the forced sterilization of the mentally feeble.

Sanger began her contraceptive-promoting activities in the early decades of the 20th century, during a time when it was against the law to teach about birth control, but later exploited an exception that was made for doctors. But even prior to that, women in all cultures have had a folklore of remedies (mostly ineffective), as well as the most drastic (and dangerous) ex-post-facto measure of all, illegal abortions—not a type of contraception, of course, but a way to prevent birth when contraception was unavailable or failed.

Collins ignores this fact in her piece, as well. But abortions were very common even when Sanger began her work; for example, I recall reading a biography of a turn-of-the-century working class woman from New York City who mentioned that the women in her neighborhood had almost all had abortions numbering in the double figures, performed by a local guy whom everyone knew was employable for a small fee for just that purpose. Abortions were also sometimes self-induced; those were free in monetary terms, although they could be costly in other ways. The consequences of either type of abortion, in those pre-antibiotic days, could easily be major infection and/or death. Of course, that was true of childbirth as well.

The Pill plus Roe v. Wade changed all that. One would think that with the former there would hardly be any need for the latter. But if one thought that, one would be wrong. The advent of easy and extremely effective contraception has brought with it a cavalier attitude towards it. This is partly because abortion is also seen as so relatively easy, safe, and available; partly because unwed motherhood has turned into something so acceptable and is even romanticized as desirable; and partly because sex is now ubiquitous even for the very young and very irresponsible.

These things are not coincidental to the Pill—they are at least in part a direct result of what Sanger envisioned, the freeing of women to enjoy sex without its previous built-in consequences. But, as with so many things, consequences follow us around nevertheless; they are just different consequences.

Now we have to worry about rampant promiscuity among teens and even preteens, and the deep psychological and even physical damage it can cause (such as STDs). Girls who once were protected by the mores of society and their own fear of the shame of pregnancy are free to enjoy sex—but how many of them are really having all that much fun, and at what cost? How many of them have the maturity to understand what they want and with whom they might be happy? How many are giving in to the age-old pressures of popularity and the needs of teenage boys? How many boys are fathering kids early in life and bearing that burden? How many boys and men are brokenhearted at the loss of their potential child when a women unilaterally decides to abort?

There were terrible costs to the bad old pre-Pill days. But there are huge problems today as well, and they are not limited to teens—women who delayed pregnancy for so long that they find their biological clocks have run down, for example, or those who have a long series of meaningless relationships in a chase after that elusive and perfect (and non-existent) sexual partner who will fulfill their every desire. When we have more choices, we must bear the consequences of the decisions we do make

[ADDEUNDUM: Gay Patriot has some observations, including a classical one.]

[ADDENDUM II: Glenn Reynolds links me and Raquel Welch, a combination not usually seen in nature.]

Political change: Hitchens encounters Margaret Thatcher as dominatrix

The New Neo Posted on by

The inimitable Cristopher Hitchens relates an early anecdote about Margaret Thatcher that gives a somewhat different perspective than we usually get on the Iron Lady:

…[T]he Tories were having a reception in the House of Lords in order to launch a crusty old book by a crusty old peer named Lord Butler, and there was a rumor that the new female leader of the Conservative Party would be among those present for the cocktails. I had written a longish article for The New York Times Magazine, saying in effect that, if Labour could not revolutionize British society, then the task might well fall to the right. I had also written a shorter piece for the New Statesman, reporting from the Conservative Party conference and saying in passing that I thought Mrs. Thatcher was surprisingly sexy. (To this day, I have never had so much anger mail, saying, in effect, “How could you?”) I felt immune to Mrs. Thatcher in most other ways…

Almost as soon as we shook hands on immediate introduction, I felt that she knew my name and had perhaps connected it to the socialist weekly that had recently called her rather sexy. While she struggled adorably with this moment of pretty confusion, I felt obliged to seek controversy and picked a fight with her on a detail of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe policy. She took me up on it. I was (as it happened) right on the small point of fact, and she was wrong. But she maintained her wrongness with such adamantine strength that I eventually conceded the point and even bowed slightly to emphasize my acknowledgment. “No,” she said. “Bow lower!” Smiling agreeably, I bent forward a bit farther. “No, no,” she trilled. “Much lower!” By this time, a little group of interested bystanders was gathering. I again bent forward, this time much more self-consciously. Stepping around behind me, she unmasked her batteries and smote me on the rear with the parliamentary order paper that she had been rolling into a cylinder behind her back. I regained the vertical with some awkwardness. As she walked away, she looked over her shoulder and gave an almost imperceptibly slight roll of the hip while mouthing the words “Naughty boy!”

I had and have eyewitnesses to this. At the time, though, I hardly believed it myself. It is only from a later perspective, looking back on the manner in which she slaughtered and cowed all the former male leadership of her party and replaced them with pliant tools, that I appreciate the premonitory glimpse””of what someone in another context once called “the smack of firm government”””that I had been afforded. Even at the time, as I left that party, I knew I had met someone rather impressive. And the worst of “Thatcherism,” as I was beginning by degrees to discover, was the rodent slowly stirring in my viscera: the uneasy but unbanishable feeling that on some essential matters she might be right.

A mind is a difficult thing to change—and sometimes change arrives through strange pathways.

[Hat tip: commenter “will.”]

Jobs added, unemployment up

The New Neo Posted on by

Seems like a oxymoron, no? But not really:

Beyond government jobs, the report showed that the private sector created 231,000 jobs. Manufacturing continued to trend up, rising by 44,000. The industry, which is leading the economy’s recovery, has added 101,000 jobs since December. Construction, a sector that has been suffering, added 14,000 jobs in April…

Economists expect the unemployment rate to fall very slowly as discouraged job seekers who had stopped looking for work return to the labor force and are counted as unemployed. The size of the labor force rose by 805,000 in April, the Labor Department said.

The job increase is partly due to temporary census workers, but only partly. There’s been a real increase as well. Of course, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed—as every MSM paper on earth would be declaring in screaming headlines if it were George Bush who was president right now.

Speaking of Bush—is his reputation poised for a revival?

The ozone hole and the law of unintended consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember that ozone hole and all the brouhaha it engendered? Here’s a piece about the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the hole’s opening, and the circumstances of its more-or-less closing.

The cause of the thing appeared to be the increasing use of CFCs in aerosols. The cure seemed relatively straightforward: there was a supposedly single cause and an easy fix, since adequate substitutes were available.

Ah, the good old days—a textbook case of environmental intervention that solved a thorny problem, and was done with virtually unanimous global cooperation and approval, a record that AGW activists can only envy. But in one of those twists of fate, it turns out that the fix could be contributing to global warming:

Ozone itself is a greenhouse gas. A thinner ozone layer not only reduced heat trapped over the region, it helped stir circumpolar winds, which in turn created sea spray that formed reflective, cooling clouds.

“It’s very difficult to quantify the impact on a global scale, but I think the evidence suggests filling the hole will have a regional effect on the Antarctic, possibly leading to more warming for the bulk of the Antarctic,” Shanklin said. “That could drastically change predictions about global sea level change.”

Be careful what you wish for.

As for the entire CFC-ozone hole connection itself—there are, of course, so-called “deniers;” just Google something like “ozone hole natural fluctuations” and you’ll see what I mean. Before AGW and Climategate, I wouldn’t have given them much credence, and I still have no idea whether they are just cranks or whether they are onto something. But one of the casualties of the AGW struggle has been my faith not only in the ability of scientists to understand, predict, and intervene successfully in such complex systems, but their credibility and intentions in advocating how to do so.

British election uncertainty

The New Neo Posted on by

In the US, the direct election of the president usually leads to certainty as to the winner. It’s not perfect, however, as we learned in 2000, when it took months to make the decision and required the assistance of the Supreme Court. There are many people who still don’t accept the results.

But the Brits have a system that’s even more confusing—at least to me. The majority party in Parliament gets to choose the prime minister to match, and although this often works just fine, this year we’ve got what everyone is calling a hung Parliament—the first since 1974.

The Tories (otherwise known as Conservatives—Britain’s more conservative major party; however, the entire system is skewed somewhat more to the left as compared with ours, as best I can tell) gained 92 seats, which would seem to be a strong statement of voter intent. So when Timesonline writer Peter Riddell notes that “As politician after politician said overnight, the public has spoken, but it is not clear what they have said” I disagree. I think it’s very clear what they have said, and they said it fairly loudly: a change towards a more conservative government. They just didn’t shout it at the absolute top of their lungs.

The result, as Riddell writes, is that:

Any government formed in the next few days will not be able to command a stable or overall majority in the Commons. So the new Parliament is unlikely to last more than a year or so. A second general election is probable either later this year or in the spring of 2011.

Till then, what? There’s jockeying for position as various leaders try to form workable coalitions. In the meantime, Clegg concedes that:

I have said that whichever party gets the most votes and the most seats has the first right to seek to govern, either on its own or by reaching out to other parties and I stick to that view.

That would be Cameron and the Tories. But then there’s this:

Asked if Labour would do a deal to stay in power, Lord Mandelson said: “The constitutional conventions are very clear. The rules are that if it’s a hung parliament, it’s not the party with the largest number of seats that has first go – it’s the sitting government.”

I assume Cameron will win out in the end, at least for a while, as Ian Martin indicates. But I am hardly certain, and I make no firm predictions whatsoever. How about you?

Corporations getting ready to dump health insurance?

The New Neo Posted on by

Not at all sure, but they’re certainly considering it.

And why not? Suggesting that this would be a very possible result of the HCR bill was not scaremongering, it was logic. But how many people are aware of the details? And if the president and Congressional leaders lie, and the press covers for them….but I grow weary of repeating myself.

[Hat tip: Artfldgr.]

Stripping an American terrorist of citizenship

The New Neo Posted on by

The Lieberman proposal to strip terrorists who are Americans of citizenship rights has a great many critics. That is not surprising, since the idea appears at first glance to be a fairly radical one.

Here’s a typical critique, taken from our very own comments section:

[Shahzad] is an American citizen, and he was caught on American soil (i.e. not taken as a prisoner on a foreign battlefield, like John Walker Lindh.) That means, regretfully, he deserves the full panoply of rights we would extend to any other American citizen suspected of committing a crime. To me, that’s a bright line that you don’t want to mess with.

That argument makes sense—except for one thing: that bright line has already been messed with. The relevant statute is quite explicit about the conditions under which an American may lose his or her citizenship, and you will see if you study it that the Lieberman suggestion could easily be considered a logical extension of the older statute to the present circumstances of a terror war.

I can’t find a date for when the stature was passed, but it appears to have been quite some time ago, since the last section (on page 2 of the link) involves a 1978 repeal of a certain rule that had been in place since 1952. There are quite a few conditions currently listed that would cause forfeiture of citizenship; some of them having to do with formal renunciation by the party involved, and/or accepting posts in foreign governments. The most relevant sections for our purposes, however, are the following:

(3) entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if
(A) such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States, or…

(7) committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Lieberman is apparently proposing that the act be amended in order to encompass the modern realities of terrorism and jihad. One may certainly disagree with his suggestion, but not on the grounds that this represents something completely new and different.

Currently, it’s the State Department that makes decisions as to whether to attempt to apply the law already on the books in any individual case. The same would be true with the proposed Lieberman extension. Here’s more:

You would still have the right to contest this in court. And if you did, the burden of proof would be on State — not on you — to persuade the court that your involvement with a terror organization is sufficient to justify taking away your citizen status.

It doesn’t seem all that revolutionary to me. If a person is opposed to Lieberman’s idea, perhaps he/she ought to oppose the earlier manifestation of the statute as well. Should it make any difference if a person joins the regular military of an enemy versus a group such as al Qaeda? In my opinion, it should not.

[ADDENDUM: The original statute is from the 1940’s. The Greatest Generation.]

Spam of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

This spammer doth protest too much, methinks. To begin with, the name “TNT Courier Service” does not inspire confidence. And then there are the disclaimers I have bolded:

I am Mr.David White , i have been waiting for you since to contact me for your Confirm able Bank Draft of $850.000.00 United States Dollars, but I did not hear from you since that time.

Then I went and deposited the Draft with TNT COURIER SERVICE, West Africa, I Traveled out of the country for a 3 Months Course and I will not come back till end of July.What you have to do now is to contact the TNT COURIER SERVICE as soon as possible to know when they will deliver your package to you because of the expiring date.

For your information, I have paid for the delivering Charge, Insurance premium and Clearance Certificate Fee of the cheque showing that it is not a Drug Money or meant to sponsor Terrorist attack in your Country. The only money you will send to the TNT COURIER SERVICE to deliver your Draft direct to your postal Address in your country is ($150.00US) Dollars only being Security Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far.

Again, don’t be deceived by anybody to pay any other money except $150.00US Dollars. I would have paid that but they said no because they don’t know when you will contact them…

Etc., etc., and so forth…

On Mirandizing Shahzad: there’s good news and bad

The New Neo Posted on by

First, the good news:

[Shahzan was initially] interrogated “pursuant to the public-safety exception of the Miranda Rule,” says the GOP aide. That exception allows officials to question a suspect for a period of time without reading him his rights if officials believe there is an imminent threat of other attacks. “They said he provided important and actionable information,” the aide continues.

The bad news:

He was then Mirandized.

The good news:

…[H]e then waived his right to remain silent and to counsel and to be brought before a magistrate.

The bad news:

he could assert his right to remain silent at any time. And that is a result of the administration’s decision, similar to one made in the Abdulmutallab case, to read Shahzad his rights early in the process.

Here’s more:

Administration officials point out that Shahzad is a naturalized American citizen and thus is entitled to the full range of U.S. constitutional rights. That’s not entirely accurate. While being an American citizen means that Shahzad will ultimately be tried in civilian court ”” the Military Commissions Act applies only to aliens ”” there is no reason that Shahzad could not be declared an enemy combatant, held indefinitely and questioned at length during that period without Miranda rights…

So in the case of Shahzad, authorities are holding a Pakistani man who has been a naturalized citizen for the last year, much of which he spent in Pakistan apparently training for an attack on the U.S., who returned to this country to attempt to set off a bomb in the most heavily populated location imaginable, and who was headed back to Pakistan when he was caught. The courts have said such a man, a U.S. citizen, can be designated an enemy combatant. But so far, the Obama administration ”” just as it did in Detroit ”” has declined to take that course.

I’ve been wondering about Shahzad’s citizenship and when and how he obtained it. This is the first article I’ve seen that indicates it might have been very recently indeed—perhaps even after he had decided to return to Pakistan and train as a terrorist. This brings up the question of whether his becoming a citizen might have been intended expressly for the purpose of being tried as a civilian in our regular court system, should he be caught. After all, Shahzad had no plan to become a suicide bomber. He intended to survive, and he must have known he might be linked to the bombing. Did he want to make sure his legal circumstances would be the most favorable possible?

[ADDENDUM: Apparently, Shahzad become a citizen about a year ago because he married an American.]

Making excuses for Shahzad

The New Neo Posted on by

The meme is shaping up: poor pitiful Faisal Shahzad, helpless hapless victim of the economic crisis (i.e. Bush, capitalism, Wall Street, fat cats…).

If it’s not said outright, it’s implied: the capitalist devils made him do it. After all, when you fall on economic hard times, don’t you want to go out and bomb a bunch of tourists and theatergoers in Times Square? Doesn’t everybody?

Here’s a typical article in the press, entitled, “Times Square bombing suspect’s life had unraveled.”

This concept as described in the article—a life unraveling—does not take into account personal responsibility. But although it is most certainly true that people can fall on hard times through no fault of their own, sometimes a person is in fact the cause of his/her difficulties. What’s more, even if that is not the case and the person is completely a victim of circumstance, it is still up to that person to react in a way that shows (dare I say use this archaic word?) character. Shahzad showed his—a bad one.

We don’t really know the cause of Shahzad’s hard times. We are told he “left” a good job, “lost” a home to foreclosure, and moved into a rundown apartment in Bridgeport, Connecticut. No explanation of why these things happened. For example, was he fired or did he quit? Was his job performance poor? Spokespeople for the company where he had worked, Affinion Group, say he “left on good terms.” This is ambiguous, but it certainly doesn’t immediately conjure up the idea that Shahzad was fired.

What’s more, he and his wife left their home very precipitously. According to neighbors, “”It was like they just picked up everything they wanted and just left one day.” They “moved out abruptly and left behind a mess of food, broken dishes and baby formula in the cabinets.” In addition, Shahzad told a broker trying to sell his home that the bank should be allowed take it, and that he intended to return to Pakistan. Sounds like a plan—and one that Shahzad proceeded to implement. When returned to this country (apparently minus his wife and kids), he rented the seedy Bridgeport apartment, which came equipped with a private garage. The latter seems to have been the major draw, because that was where he stored his bomb-making materials.

Just an average Joe driven mad by a combination of Bush’s Iraq War and Bush’s recession, right? Wrong. Not only do we not know which came first, Shahzad’s terrorist choices or his hard luck, we don’t even know whether his financial reversals were of his own doing or not. Either way, however, it does not matter. If he’d been Joe Schmo from Connecticut, rather than Faisal Shahzad from Connecticut via Pakistan, it would have been highly unlikely (despite the left’s desire to equate the right with Islamic terrorists—if Timothy McVeigh had not existed they would have had to invent him) that he would have dealt with whatever reversals he’d had by loading a van with explosives and trying to light it in Times Square.

That almost always requires a mindset formed by Islamic terrorism and macerated in its beliefs. Nor was Shahzad any sort of lone wolf; he had help in Pakistan (although fortunately, not enough to enable him to get his bomb to work properly). The significance of Pakistan in all of this should not be lost. Although it is nominally our ally, Pakistan has been a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism for quite some time.

Pakistan’s history of pan-Islamism does not mean that all Pakistanis, much less everyone of Pakistani origin, hold extremist views. But it does explain why a larger percentage of Pakistanis than, say, Indonesians or Tunisians, are likely to see the world through the narrow prism of their faith. The ISI’s reluctance to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism””training camps, a web of ultra-orthodox madrassas that preach violence, and terrorist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba””ensure that Pakistan remains a magnet for any Muslim with a grudge against the world and the urge to do something violent about it.

These are the factors that created a Faisal Shahzad—and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We ignore them at our peril.

[ADDENDUM: Shahzad is reported to have resigned from his job at Affinion Group in mid-2009.]