Do you know this person?

Anthony says:
February 25th, 2012 7:48 am

Phil…. Seriously….. Please put a share button at the bottom of your blog posts. There is not excuse not to have one! I am tired of condensing the link and squeezing it on Facebook with a tiny comment a no picture! I’m done! If I don’t get a share button I will just have to picket your blog!! 😛

Tom says:
February 25th, 2012 9:35 am

Hello Phil, Great post. The blind still will not see; but, great post.

harmonicminer says:
February 25th, 2012 11:22 am

Yo, Anthony, I’m working on getting sharing links installed in posts. However, the theme I’m using for the wordpress installation of harmonicminer seems not to respond to the wordpress.com Jetpack sharing options in the same way as the theme I use for http://www.philshackleton.com, where, as you can see there, I have the sharing options at the bottom of posts working just fine. When I installed them in harmonicminer using the same technique, they didn’t work. I may have to cast around for another facebook plugin that works with the harmonicminer theme, or else bit the bullet and change the harmonicminer theme (after all these years…. but I LIKE how it looks now….. sigh).

And all because you’re too lazy to cut and paste.

harmonicminer says:
February 25th, 2012 11:54 am

OK, Anthony, now there are enough share buttons at the bottom of every post or page to satisfy even the most networked linker. Click away.

Anthony says:
February 25th, 2012 1:29 pm

Thank you so much!! I love sharing your posts, this makes it slot easier to do, and now even more will do it.

Justin says:
February 26th, 2012 12:50 pm

I very much like this because I am a human person. Too bad many little guys don’t have a CHOICE.

innermore says:
February 26th, 2012 3:23 pm

um… this poster forgot to mention what Pro-lifers think I am.

harmonicminer says:
February 27th, 2012 9:51 am

I don’t get the connection. Baby on chopping block?

innermore says:
February 29th, 2012 3:19 pm

wedge

harmonicminer says:
February 29th, 2012 11:06 pm

Sorry, innermore, but I’m still not getting it. Unless you’re implying that being against unjust killing is a “wedge” issue?

If so, try this on for size: being against human ownership of other humans would also have been considered by you to be a “wedge” issue in about 1859.

Maybe you meant something more subtle. As is often the case, I can’t tell.

Elucidate?

innermore says:
March 1st, 2012 5:14 pm

You’re absolutely right, maestro. Being against the ownership of human beings in 1859 would’ve put me squarely on one side of a disastrously destructive wedge. Being morally correct about it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a wedge.

The wedge issue in 1859 was the controversy regarding the definition of the words “ownership” and “human beings.” The wedge issue today is the controversy regarding the definition of the words “unjust” and “killing”, as you put it. Respectfully, there can be no possible controversy as far as you’re concerned (just like John Brown). Understandably, the whole discussion would naturally be laughable to a pro-lifer (or an abolitionist). That’s exactly half of the noble deafness driving this particular wedge so deep. And it continues chopping away — endlessly. (Alarmingly similar to the 1859 wedge?)

When will both “sides” of this so-called “issue” stop hurling insult grenades at each other (and then giggling about it to their buddies)? I would think the first “side” that swallows enough moral pride to pursue a constructive conversation with “the other side” about this “issue” would probably be the “side” who’s the most confident in the truth behind their position. (I put quotation marks around those words because I suspect you don’t think this is an “issue” with any “sides”, and you may be correct.)

It doesn’t matter if it’s a wedge issue or not, looking at your poster, it sure LOOKS like a wedge issue. To be precisely elucidative: a contrived wedge.

harmonicminer says:
March 1st, 2012 6:37 pm

Hmm, Innermore, the usual use of the term “wedge issue” is to refer to something which doesn’t really have that much importance or significance, but is just used to excite people into taking sides in a controversy, hopefully with the effect of splitting people away from the political/social group with which they are usually allied.

Generally, an issue is called a “wedge issue” by the side that disagrees with how the other side is using the issue. It’s hardly an objective term, or observation.

Your use of the term would allow us to apply the term “wedge” to ANY issue that divides people, regardless of moral weight or which side has the better view of it. Any issue at all. Generally, my observation is that a term which is of such universal application is also of very little real significance. It’s like accusing the other side of being “divisive.” Your use of the term “wedge” in this instance, in combination with your other comments, seems to suggest that there is no issue sufficiently important that it is worth people fighting over, strongly advocating for or against, etc.

Is that your position?

harmonicminer says:
March 1st, 2012 6:42 pm

Try this on, Innermore: One person thinks we should just nuke the major cities of Islamic nations that produce most of the terrorists that kill westerners. Another person thinks that would be terribly immoral. They debate a lot. People choose sides behind one or the other. They both advocate for their position in the media, and both try to control the political situation to bring about their desired outcome.

Can either side (or someone who pretends to be on neither side) legitimately call the question of whether or not to nuke Islamic cities a “wedge” issue? Now: imagine the “nuke ’em” side got control, and nuked a couple of cities. The anti-nuke-em side cries foul, and even greater political controversy ensues. Is it still just a “wedge” issue?

Your use of the terms seems to say anything where people strongly disagree is a “wedge” issue.

Jesus brought a sword… metaphorically speaking.

innermore says:
March 2nd, 2012 10:22 pm

Oh yeah, I forgot. There’s a whole chapter on the term “wedge issue” in that Political Dogma 101 textbook you were referring to. Using your definition of a wedge, both sides of this abortion issue have repeatedly called it that. Each side rabidly disagrees about how, along with what when where why and whichever way but Tuesday, the other side is using the issue. Um, thank you for agreeing with my point?

You measure the significance of an issue partly on how strongly people disagree with each other and partly on moral weight, whatever that means. Sounds good, but I’m sure you know that’s only the over-emphasized half of it. The other half is measuring how prudently the issue is being solved. Or how efficiently opportune a solution is developing. The histories of Magna Carta and the US Constitution are good examples.

I rarely notice any terms like “agree,” “resolve” or “consensus” being used with this issue. I’m sorry, but I thought the goal of an especially important social problem was to find a solution. But no, both sides seem to be fighting to win, way WAY more than fighting to agree. Fierce competition is the most successful negotiation style, replacing good ol’ fashion give-and-take compromise. The original problem, too much abortions, has morphed into an ever-larger more frightening weapon used to wipe out the enemy. A race for the largest sledge hammer, as each side takes turns driving that wedge.

Despite all that, I’d say us un-bravado-ed commoners have come a long way with this issue. The Sexual Revolution is winding down along with its related abortion statistics, thanks to The Pill. We don’t abort babies for racist reasons in the South like we used to. Most of the stubborn old pro-abortionists don’t have the stomach for late term abortions anymore. Other than father-abandonment due to incarceration causing abortion rates to go up in our overcrowded inner cities (which could be a form of natural selection), I’d say we’re in the process of lickin it pretty good. But NO, don’t acknowledge any past successes and build on them. “We, **insert political affiliation here** will stop at nothing until every single **insert offensively worded abortion credo here**!!” C’mon, that’s not a passionate plea for any realistic result. That’s a delusional sideshow.

If you guys really wanna change your surrounding morality, try planting seeds instead of ultimatums. Feed them with rain instead of venom, so when the sexual mores start tilting your way again someday, maybe you can keep it there longer than a few minutes.

harmonicminer says:
March 2nd, 2012 10:44 pm

As usual, Innermore, your Olympian position above the fray is secure. When the pro-life side finally does win the political calculus (which will not happen by “compromise” that its OK to kill some babies, just not all of them), you can even claim credit for the restraint of people such as yourself, and how measured and conciliatory you were in your approach, as if that has ever won a political contest…. which this surely is, though one with enormous moral implications.

The delusion is yours, my friend. You seem to misread history, and not to understand the basic calculus that led, finally, to freeing the slaves. It was not through sweet reason and being inoffensive to slave owners, and enablers of same. It was through the horror of slavery finally coming home to enough people. The civil war intervened, and might have been avoided for a time… but it was probably inevitable, since the entire southern economy was based on the horror, and they weren’t about to give it up through peaceful social change.

Abortion, while enormously lucrative for some providers, is not so firmly entrenched as slavery was in the south, and putting an end to the shoah of abortion will not require pitched battle, other than rhetorical and political. But there IS a war on. One side will win. One will lose.

You may decry the battle. You may think it’s hopeless. You may even take credit for it when we win, if we do before our nation is ended.

But the constant reminder of the horror of the deed, and the horror of the “ethics” of those who defend it, is a crucial part of the war. First, the northeners had to really understand the total brutality and horror of slavery. They had to learn disdain for philosophical and theological defenses of it. Without that education of the north, the slaves might still be on the plantation.

innermore says:
March 4th, 2012 4:28 pm

As usual, Sir Miner, you assume that since my boxing gloves aren’t a familiar color, size or weight, my fight must somehow be, in fact, insincere? Um, in my delusional war, there’s no such thing as above or below or “in” the fray. It’s all fray.

In my deluded world, it is history that is a misreading of past reality. US History books are narratives that mostly depict the propagandized heroes and elites of an era. So obviously, established historic methods are inherently biased in portraying the poor and oppressed. I would especially include the distorted opposite effect of the so-called “Social History” method btw. Historical tradition can be inspiring when waging battle against the ills of poverty (i.e. drug addiction and abortion). But in my beguiled mind, it would be foolish to design any moral/political war strategies or policies based mainly on historical parallels (including revisionist history).

The Civil War certainly eliminated the primitive concept of homo-sapiens as property. But in my hallucination, even in the face of all that bloodshed, the slavery didn’t actually end. Its name just changed from sharecropper to gangbanger, Uncle Tom to welfare co-depender, foodstamp-collecting abortion-mama, Democrat-voter, you name it. It’s still servitude, just more palatably subtle, and affectively concentrated. Voting rights and civil rights sounded good, but were overcome by subsequent partisan hysteria, stemming from white guilt. We’re writing our own lengthy public history books filled with disenfranchising polices for blacks, forged from the whimsical arbitrary struggles between self-contradictory liberalism and undisciplined conservatism. I suppose today’s enslavement is better than yesterday’s brutality, but not by much. Microscopic progress is being payed for with generation upon generation of ongoing spiritual death, suffering and deceitful oppression. In my fallacious world, that’s an appallingly overpriced levy.

And you guys seem to be waging a similar Perpetual War on abortion. Good luck with that. I don’t have forever to wait around, so I’ll have to pass on all that credit, but thanks for offering. I’m trying to stand for something a little more efficient (civilized?). You can call it aloofness or delusion or whatever.

innermore says:
March 4th, 2012 4:35 pm

oh hey, I just remembered. We all forgot what the main culprit in this scenario, the child-deserting DAD, thinks I am (warning: not very tasteful).

harmonicminer