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American Politics Is Changing
For decades, Democrat politicians have based their campaigns on the idea that capitalism was mean to poor people. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Poverty and inequality can be cured only through socialism. The only reason for you to complain that your taxes are too high is if you hate poor people.
Now that Democrats are in charge, and are implementing their preferred policies, we are seeing their impact in real-time. Particularly on poor people. Inflation bothers rich people like me, but it’s devastating to those trying to live on $50,000 a year. Voters are starting to wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, centralized control systems are less humane than Democrats have claimed. Bernie Sanders is responding to this as one might expect, by demanding expansions of Social Security and Medicare. But other Democrats are reading the tea leaves differently.
I think that all Democrats can do, at this point, is double down on racism and global warming: “Ok, our fiscal policies are horrifying. But if you elect Republicans, they’ll kill black people and destroy Mother Earth! Do you hate black people? Do you hate our planet? No? Well then, you have no choice but to vote Democrat. Never mind the economy, the border, European wars, or all those other petty complaints. You vote on the side of the angels!” This is an interesting, but fundamental, change to our national discussion. But wait – there’s more!
Because Democrat policies were obviously destructive, Americans have long been hesitant to put too many Democrats in power. Bill Clinton was a “New Democrat”. Barack Obama was a saintly figure above earthly politics. Joe Biden didn’t campaign on anything – in fact, he didn’t campaign at all. No Democrat could win running on Democrat policies.
But the Democrat party continued our leftward surge with two institutions: the media and the Supreme Court. The media did their best to promote leftism, and the Supreme Court wrote new laws that Congress could never pass. This worked fairly well, for a long time.
But the internet has created problems for the old media. Fox News was the first crack in the dam, but The Daily Wire, Powerline, Ricochet, and many others have provided a source of alternative viewpoints that didn’t exist until recently. Not just conservative viewpoints. But alternative viewpoints. People started to think, just a bit.
And the Supreme Court has changed. It has recently developed an interest in the U.S. Constitution. Which is obviously a very serious problem for Democrats.
So I look at the Democrats being forced to change their message from hope for a better day, to simply avoiding mean tweets. And I look at alternative forms of media gaining a foothold. And I look at a new Supreme Court which seems more interested in our Constitution.
And I think to myself, “The Democrats have a very serious problem, here…”
Of course, my optimism is based on the idea that America selects its leaders via elections. If that is no longer true, then never mind – forget I said anything.
But if elections resume in the future, then perhaps the Democrats have a problem, and perhaps America has hope.
What do you think?
Are these changes as significant as I suggest?
Is there hope that America can climb out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves?
Perhaps things are changing. Perhaps there is hope.
What do you think?
Published in General
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Meaning what? Preventing a fertilized egg from implanting – by artificial means – is certainly abortifacient. (If not artificial means, it’s an early miscarriage.) That’s why you get Catholic groups etc refusing to provide Plan B under “medical insurance” and why Barack Obama and Joe Biden sic’d the DOJ on the Little Sisters Of The Poor etc.
I get that CATHOLIC groups don’t like it, OBVIOUSLY.
But they don’t just not like it because they don’t like it, or because the pill is the wrong shape or something, they don’t like it because it’s an abortifacient. Maybe not always, but sometimes. I expect more often than not, really, based on timing and statistics and stuff. (Blocking ovulation is a pretty small time-frame versus preventing implantation.) Otherwise, as I’ve been pointing out from the start, it wouldn’t be very effective at what it’s supposed to do: i.e., if it ONLY prevented ovulation.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t find it surprising that a Catholic organization is against being forced to dispense contraception.
Many – perhaps most – Catholics in regular life have little if any problem with actions that prevent fertilization/conception. Especially if you’re concerned about them wanting to impose restrictions on non-Catholics. And even “natural family planning” – the “rhythm method” etc – does that. But once fertilization occurs, any artificial interference is a form of abortion.
I chose my words carefully.
Are you agreeing with the Democrat/leftist position that “you can pray however you like, silently, at home, but whatever you SAY and DO outside your home must be in compliance with whatever rules we decide to make”?
Seems like several Supreme Courts for example, have given that a big thumbs-down. And not just by 5-4 either.
Someone doesn’t want to follow Catholic rules? Fine, don’t be Catholic. Don’t work for Catholic-operated/oriented organizations, etc. Otherwise, STFU and MYOB.
That’s a far cry from “don’t like abortions? Fine, don’t have one.” What’s next, “don’t like bank robbery? Fine, don’t rob banks.”
Old news. Time to move on to Biden trying to use an executive order to mandate abortion.
I am only talking about forcing Catholic organizations to provide any contraception. They don’t want to provide any contraception for any reason and it’s logical that the government can’t force them to do that.
Well then we agree. Except for the bit where you apparently don’t understand that Plan B isn’t just “contraception.” “Contraception” would mean to prevent conception. But that’s not the ONLY thing that Plan B does.
Yeah I’ll go with doctor surveys on this. I will also go with my comment #115.
You realize that doctors surveys could be about as credible as the “official” housing-cost inflation figures that are at least in part based on “guesstimates” by homeowners of what their rent WOULD BE if they were renting?
The biggest reason I can see for asking doctors about this kind of thing, rather than pharmacists etc who get more into the chemistry etc, is that they can more easily be depended on to regurgitate whatever “information” they were previously given.
It’s not necessarily a fail. Sperm can live up to three days inside a woman’s body and ovulation is at most a 24 hr period. Sex 2 days before ovulation would be helped with plan B. You are right that it wouldn’t help much in that 24 hour period, but the window is small enough that plan B would prevent a decent number of pregnancies without resorting to the abortifacient mechanism.
I don’t know anything about Plan B other than what is being discussed. Just a bit about NFP.
Except there are professional groups and people who admit that it can block implantation, which makes it an abortifacient, even if others won’t say it out loud. I suppose “plausible deniability” is okay for some people – “it MIGHT have blocked ovulation, so therefore I didn’t give myself an abortion” – but it’s not certain enough for people who care more about that.
I agree that it does sound like they are walking back previous claims under suspicious circumstances. I was just pointing out such a medication as described wouldn’t be a total wash.
How widely is this opinion shared in medicine?
What’s the difference between this and the regular pill?
My understanding is that The Pill has a few different formulations, some of which may include the possibility of preventing implantation after ovulation and fertilization have already occurred. That would also be considered abortifacient. But not all of them are like that, unless the non-abortifacient formulations have been abandoned as not sufficiently “effective.”
I want to see surveys of doctors that say the Plan B pill is an abortifacient.
I also want to see surveys of conservative religious people that think that the plan B pill is an abortifacient.
The other thing I’m interested in is, how many levels of decent prenatal care can the government force and how dependably can they force it?
You trust doctors – physicians – to necessarily know stuff like that, but the fact is that they may not. They may tell you what they BELIEVE, because they didn’t read the actual detailed information, because as I mentioned before, if they did that for all the medications they deal with, they wouldn’t have time for anything else.
I think it’s preposterous that plenty of anti-abortion GPs haven’t studied this and talked about it enough as you imply. Statistically, we are talking about millions of doctors.
We already know that many doctors have not been honest about covid, because they were threatened with loss of job, loss of license, etc.
I’m not talking about people that are lying.
I found many articles with a simple google search “does the catholic church consider plan b pill to be abortifacient?”
I’m sure you did.
Not all of them were from Catholic groups, either. And you asked for citation of conservative groups that see Plan B as being abortifacient, which I did.
I’m not sure what your problem is here, if you were as credulous about economics as you seem to be about The Pill etc, you’d think Biden is doing a great job. Why the difference?
You think it’s publicly settled on the right and with pro life doctors I don’t see it.
The fact is it’s the most efficacious policy move to reduce abortion.
It reduces medical/surgical/whatever abortion, but an abortifacient is chemical abortion. It still ends with the loss of a developing/nascent/whatever human being. Not like condoms etc, which actually prevent fertilization and nothing else.
If you want to claim that an “abortion” at 3 days is sufficiently different as to not merit unlawfulness, that’s an argument, but it’s not because a fertilized egg at 3 days somehow wouldn’t fully develop into a typical human being if only it wasn’t chemically blocked from implantation, any more than a fetus at 3 weeks or 3 months wouldn’t fully develop and be born if only it wasn’t removed and sometimes deliberately killed. (Drug use during pregnancy can also cause a chemical abortion, although in those cases it might be called “miscarriage” but that implies no responsibility.)
But ultimately, at some point, if you want to insist that it’s totally different, that’s just factually wrong, and we might be left with a version of the Churchill bit, “we already know what kind of person you are, now we’re just haggling over timing.” Or something.
I already explained the other side of this.
If you think more net social good (or however you want to put it) is going to happen by banning the Plan B pill, then have at it.
Same thing for the super conservative religious types, which I don’t see a lot of discussion from those guys about it.