RIP Midge Decter

The New Neo Posted on by

My first thought on hearing that Midge Decter had died was mild surprise that she had still been alive. And yet it turns out she wasn’t all that old, just 94 – an age that sounds increasingly young to me. I’d not known all that much about her anyway, except that she was one of the original old-fashioned neocons and Norman Podhoretz’s wife and John Podhoretz’s mother.

I’d picked up a book of her essays in the 1980s. I think it was on a remainder pile, and it had some sort of title that intrigued me (I no longer remember what it was). I read it thinking it was pretty good, and only later learned that she’d been a political changer (a term I didn’t use at the time) and was on the right. Little did I know I’d follow suit in less than two decades.

In one of several essays in memory of Decter that I’ve read in the last few days, this statement of hers caught my eye and made me chuckle at its aptness:

The 1980 election was a watershed moment for Decter. She and Podhoretz supported Reagan, whom they had first met in 1978. By now, Decter had broken with the Left, and though she did not love the Republican Party, she recognized that it was more aligned with her worldview. “There comes a time when you need to join the side you’re on,” she said.

There comes a time when you need to join the side you’re on – that’s the way it finally becomes for left-to-right changers (neither Decter nor I were ever really on what you’d call the left, but I’ve used “left” as a convenient shorthand here). Many people cannot make that switch, however, as I wrote in this post about political affiliation as a sort of “birthmark.”

Decter also said this:

In 1983, when some of the old crowd tried to revive the CDM in advance of the 1984 elections, she was not interested: “We tried to wrest the Democratic Party back from the left, and we failed.”

Boy, did they ever.

RIP Midge Decter.

[NOTE: I was curious but unable to find anything about Decter’s opinion on Trump, but I recall that her husband was for him and her son mostly against him.]

Putin celebrates Victory Day…

The New Neo Posted on by

…not with a bang but a whimper:

The smaller number of marching units, the absence of the “Z” sloganeering, any air units, and the elite of the Russian Army all gave the parade a more subdued air. It was not a victory or an on-the-cusp-of-victory celebration. Putin’s speech was a departure from previous statements on the war. He seemed reflective on the cost. In light of the propensity of Putin and his lackeys to casually threaten nuclear war, I think the absence of the “doomsday plane” that had been previewed only a couple of days ago and of any mention of nuclear weapons by Putin is a sign that Russia has weighed the “escalate to de-escalate” option and found it to be unworkable.

I sure hope so.

There were bangs plenty yesterday, however, when a school in Ukraine was bombed:

As many as 60 people are feared to have been killed when a bomb struck a village school in eastern Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday while Russian forces continued shelling the last holdout of Ukrainian resistance in the ruined southeastern port of Mariupol.

Luhansk region Governor Serhiy Gaidai said the school in Bilohorivka, where about 90 people were sheltering, was hit on Saturday by a Russian bomb, setting it ablaze.

NOTE: The poetic reference in my first sentence is to this:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar….

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Misconceptions about Roe

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve long thought that if I were to poll my acquaintances, most of them except the lawyers among them (and maybe even some of the lawyers too) would say that repealing Roe would make abortion illegal. That answer is incorrect, of course; it would merely make it possible for a state to pass a law making it illegal in that particular state.

In reality, I doubt that all that many states would make it completely illegal, and they would almost certainly be very red states. The very blue states would probably make it completely legal on demand at any point in a pregnancy, and all the other states would limit it in some way.

Now I see that someone has actually done a poll on the question I’ve wondered about. In this article, Marc Thiesson references the study:

A 2019 study reported that 65.7 percent of Americans incorrectly believe that if Roe were overturned, abortion would be illegal everywhere in the United States.

The only surprise there for me is that the figure isn’t higher. Why do so many people misunderstand? I think the Democrats have made it their business for people to misunderstand, and a certain portion of the MSM has cooperated in that endeavor. But I also think that most people are bored by the finer points of legal argument and it’s easier to think in either/or terms.

It is possible that overturning Roe might lead to a correction of these misperceptions, something that frightens the left:

But a Fox News poll released this week finds most Americans agree with the Mississippi abortion law at the heart of the Supreme Court case. The survey found that 54 percent favor state laws banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except in the case of a medical emergency — exactly what the Mississippi law does — while just 41 percent oppose such a law. This is consistent with the results of a 2018 Gallup poll that found most Americans want abortion restricted to the first trimester (the first 12 weeks of pregnancy), while only 28 percent support allowing abortions in the second trimester and just 13 percent in the third trimester.

So, if Roe is overturned, Americans will wake up the next morning and discover that the justices have not in fact banned abortion nationwide but have simply upheld the right of states to impose restrictions — including restrictions that most of them support. That is unlikely to spark the kind of popular outrage Democrats are hoping for.

That Mississippi law is the statute that SCOTUS is being asked to rule on, and it might end up being the conduit for the end of Roe as overarching US legal doctrine. It may even be that, as a result, the majority of Americans will come to a better understanding of the law of abortion. One can hope.

A mindboggling Kentucky Derby upset

The New Neo Posted on by

I love this story. I love an underdog (underhorse?) winning, and this is one of the most dramatic ever. I’m sorry I didn’t see long long longshot Rich Strike win the Kentucky Derby live, but fortunately we’ve got all kinds of videos.

The first one is an aerial view, which makes the situation most clear:

Next we’ve got the ordinary view of the race, with the announcer’s comments. Note, when Rich Strike makes his successful move, how jockey Sonny Leon urges him on and how excited the jockey becomes when he realizes that yes, this really might happen. Here’s some background on the jockey:

“You know we had a difficult post but I know the horse,” Leon said. “I didn’t know if he could win but I had a good feeling with him. I had to wait until the stretch and that’s what I did. I waited and then the rail opened up. I wasn’t nervous, I was excited. Nobody knows my horse like I know my horse.”…

Adam Beschizza had ridden Rich Strike in his only previous victory, a maiden claiming race last September at Churchill Downs. But after riding him to a fourth-place finish in the March 5 John Battaglia Stakes at Turfway Park, Leon dismounted and declared, “This is a Derby horse.”

Apparently.

And here’s the owner, somewhat stunned but very happy:

Happy Mother’s Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of my traditional Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is one of the very first pictures you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo, 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-eight 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 story of my left eye – so far: Part IV

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here.
Part II can be found here.
Part III can be found here.]

Part III ended with my discovery – just a few days before my scheduled Boston surgery with a doctor whose prognostications for the success of my eye surgery were very gloomy because of the large extent of the adhesions that had stuck my cataract to my iris – of an eye surgeon in Los Angeles specializing in complex cataract surgery. He seemed to have glowing testimonials and excellent credentials, but was this just a slick advertising campaign? I didn’t know, but my next move was to see whether I could get a timely appointment with him, and so the next morning I called his office.

The receptionist was friendly, and the news was better than I’d even hoped for – an appointment about three weeks from my call. I said “yes!” with enthusiasm, and then called the Boston office and canceled. I explained to them that I needed time to reflect on what I was doing – which was certainly true.

And then I emailed the eye surgeon who was a friend of my brother’s, who had been giving me some advice during the decision-making process. I explained to her that I had decided to have the surgery in Los Angeles, that I had in-laws there with whom I could stay, and that the surgeon’s name was Uday Devgan.

I was a bit frightened about what she would write back – would it be something like “don’t go to that quack”? But the gist of her reply was, “He is fantastic. Great choice.”

Great choice. She obviously had already known about him, and I wondered why she hadn’t suggested my going to him when she’d learned I was searching for someone who might be able to tackle my case. But I quickly realized that I hadn’t made it clear to her that I was willing to travel that far, and she had thought I was limiting my search to New England.

Her response was all I need to feel a sense of tremendous relief. I knew that this doctor might not consider me a good candidate. I knew that after he examined me he might be just as pessimistic as the Boston doctor had been. But I also felt very strongly – much as I had felt when I saw Dr. Jobe over twenty years ago for my arm problems (see this as well as this) – that I was going to just about the best person possible to have a much-needed surgery, although of course the risks had not evaporated.

I required help on the trip; for example, I certainly couldn’t drive. My ex-husband kindly consented to go with me (we’re friendly), and it was his brother with whom we were going to stay. And so there was a flurry of preparations to leave in three weeks.

One of the quite unusual and I think amazing things about Dr. Devgan is that if a patient emails him with a question he will answer it by email, and he’ll do so pretty quickly. But I decided not to ask any questions prior to my appointment, because I figured whatever I needed to learn would be revealed after my examination. And so I went to California without knowing what he would decide, but I was at peace with that.

I was still somewhat frightened, but much less frightened than I’d been for many months. I continued to have a good gut feeling about this doctor – a literal gut feeling, because my GI symptoms improved.

In his office the examination took a long time, most of it performed by assistants who were uniformly pleasant and efficient. The doctor himself was cheerful and calm as well as friendly. He told me that my case was indeed more complicated than the usual and would take a bit longer to perform, but he would do it. He radiated a quiet confidence but not arrogance. I was given a surgery date in six days. I think his schedule was probably organized that way because so many people came in from out of town, including many who had come further than I, and the idea was to avoid the necessity of two separate trips.

As the date approached my nervousness increased, but never about the doctor himself, just about the surgery. I’d been told I would be awake but groggy, much like a colonoscopy but with a little more consciousness because more cooperation would be required from the patient. For example, sometimes I would be told to look at some lights, and I had to be aware enough to do that.

And that’s exactly what happened. One of the only things I remember about the surgery itself was being asked several times to look at three bright lights in front of my eye. I also remember something Dr. Devgan said two times during the surgery that made a very deep impression on me – so deep that I remember them, and the feelings they engendered in me, with great clarity. Twice I heard him say, “Beautiful.” These two statements were separated in time, and I knew (or thought I knew) that he meant that he had succeeded in performing some technically challenging maneuver. Each time he said it, I could feel my whole body relax. Through the haze of tranquilizers and numbing agents I had still retained quite a bit of fear, and this was the first time I thought that at the very least he had succeeded in getting that scar tissue cleared, removing my cataract, and inserting the new lens.

The rest remained to be seen – literally.

[To be continued in Part V…]

Recent poll: the existence of certain areas of bipartisan agreement

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a discussion of a poll from April 19-27 that shows the GOP with a 10-point lead in the generic ballot (the poll itself can be found here and the crosstabs are here). Whether that will stand now that Alito’s draft has been leaked is anyone’s guess, but my opinion is that although the margin may shrink somewhat it will remain the case that the GOP leads.

It’s also unclear how the election will go. Many things can happen between now and November, and that includes fraud. So I make no predictions at this point.

But there’s a different reason I’m bringing up the poll. Embedded in it was this:

When asked if they supported anti-grooming laws, such as one recently passed in Florida, that prohibited government school employees from exposing elementary school children to sexual topics without the consent of their parents, 70 percent of respondents said they supported such laws. Support for anti-grooming laws transcended both party and ideology, according to the poll results. Fifty-nine percent of Democrats and 69 percent of self-described progressive liberals said they supported anti-grooming laws that protect elementary school children from being forcibly exposed to sexual topics by school employees without parental consent.

On the issue of transgender sports, 69 percent of respondents said it was unfair to force female athletes to compete against male athletes who identify as transgender and claim to be women. Majorities of Republicans (74 percent), Democrats (63 percent), and Independents (71 percent), as well as majorities of self-described conservatives (74 percent), moderates (69 percent), and progressive liberals (65 percent), said they believed it was unfair to force women to compete against men who claim to be women.

When asked if they supported entrepreneur Elon Musk’s bid to purchase Twitter and eliminate political censorship from the social media platform, voters said they supported Musk’s free-speech takeover of Twitter by a more than 2-to-1 margin, with 59 percent saying they supported his bid compared to just 28 percent who opposed it.

Unfortunately, the Musk question wasn’t broken down by party affiliation, although I noticed that both black and hispanic voters had a majority in favor of it, which indicates pretty strong Democrat support for the move.

These are indication of the fact that both in cultural sexual matters involving children and women’s sports, as well as the issue of free speech online, the left has moved too far for all but its most radical leftist base.

What did Roe do?

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much confusion on this issue that I thought I’d try to clarify. Much of this confusion is purposely sowed by fearmongers on the left who want people to be afraid that overruling Roe will start a cascade of events that will take away long-established rights such as that of interracial marriage. It’s an absurd assertion but a very useful one for the left because it preys on (and furthers) the ignorance of the American public.

So what did Roe do? It didn’t “legalize” abortion, not exactly, because abortion was already legal in any state that had voted to make it legal. By the time Roe was decided, abortion already had been legalized under certain conditions in twenty states, and in Hawaii, New York, California, Alaska, and Washington had few restrictions. Any state could have legalized abortion through the usual channels. So abortion was either legal or illegal as the states decided for themselves and under the restrictions they chose.

What Roe did had to do with which government entity was allowed to decide the question: the states or the federal government. In Roe, a branch of the federal government (SCOTUS) ruled that abortion was a right that states could not deny their citizens. Abortion was declared to be a federally and constitutionally established right. To rule that way, the SCOTUS justices had to find a constitutional right that had not been felt to exist before, and that was the aspect of the case that even some pro-abortion people found troubling. Certainly those who were against abortion found it very troubling.

And that is the basis for the Alito draft, as I understand it (having only read summaries and discussions of it): that abortion is not a constitutional right and that states can therefore decide for themselves, as before. It seems rather simple and obvious to me, but as I’ve said, it’s in the interests of the pro-abortion crowd – and especially the left – to lie about it and make a repeal seem much more restrictive than it is.

If you think about it, though, Alito’s draft is indeed “pro-Choice” – although it locates the “choice” in the states rather than in each individual. Roe took away that choice from the states and gave it to the individual, but made it mandatory that states allow abortion. Also, since abortion would remain legal post-Roe in many states, women who want abortions will retain the choice to get them in other states that allow it.

However, it’s likely that such a situation will make it more difficult for poorer women to get them; travel is more of a hardship on the poor. I predict that, as before, an illegal abortion network will therefore spring up in states that don’t allow it legally. That will endanger the lives of women somewhat, because of the lack of controls, and that troubles me. However, it’s not a reason to keep Roe in place. Roe was always a bad decision that set a bad precedent, and it’s regrettable that SCOTUS decided to go ahead with it rather than waiting for the states to continue to sort it out.

On protesting at the homes of SCOTUS justices

The New Neo Posted on by

From Jen Psaki:

White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to condemn on Thursday plans for protests to take place outside of conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes over the leaked draft opinion that suggests they plan to overturn Roe v. Wade.

‘Look, I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,’ Psaki said. ‘We obviously want people’s privacy to be respected.’

She added to the query, asked by Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy, ‘I don’t have an official U.S. Government position on where people protest.’

People’s privacy should be respected, but the White House has no position on the matter?

Furthermore:

Doocy was citing a Fox News report that said pro-choice activists – under the moniker ‘Ruth Sent Us,’ after the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a proponent of Roe – published what are likely the home addresses of Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed abortion should be legal, but “proponent of Roe” doesn’t really fit her. Here are some of the things Ginsburg said about Roe:

“Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication,” she argued. “Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade.”

Ginsburg noted that Roe struck down far more than the specific Texas criminal abortion statute at issue in the case.

“Suppose the court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force,” she said. “A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day, I believe and will summarize why, might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy.”…

Ginsburg went on to contrast the court’s landmark decision in Roe with a slew of decisions from 1971 to 1982 in which the court struck down “a series of state and federal laws that differentiated explicitly on the basis of sex.”

Rather than creating a new philosophy of law and imposing it on the nation immediately, “the court, in effect, opened a dialogue with the political branches of government.”

“In essence, the court instructed Congress and state legislatures: rethink ancient positions on these questions,” Ginsburg noted. “The ball, one might say, was tossed by the justices back into the legislators’ court, where the political forces of the day could operate.”

And that’s exactly what Alito and the other conservative justices are proposing to do by overruling Roe: toss the ball back into the legislators’ court, where the political forces of the day can operate. But the left doesn’t want people to know that.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and by the way, it’s against the law in Virginia to protest at a home. Quite a few SCOTUS justices live in Virginia.