Pat Political

Once more--Abortion

One of the more pressing questions before us now is whether abortion should be legal.

Constitutionally, yes. No government under our Constitution has the right to force a woman to bear a child she says she cannot or to punish those who assist her. Roe vs Wade was a proper Constitutional decision.

But why any woman should want or need an abortion is a problem which cannot be looked at in any real way unless we look at all three parts of our religions/culture in which women are under attack.

Rape, prostitution, and abortion.

We have recently learned that rape is regarded as a proper disciplinary procedure in Islamic Pakistan. And in this instance the complaining woman was raped not for her own crime but for her brother’s.

If a husband in this country complains about his wife’s nagging, he is not going to call in his neighbors to rape her in order to get her to behave.

But the fear of rape molds the behavior of all of us women. We are urged not to dress provocatively, to be careful about where we go, always to be aware of the threat of potential danger.

Prostitution is a crime and women are arrested for being prostitutes. But why does prostitution exist as the “oldest profession”? Because there are men who are customers, who want and use this service. So, if prostitution is a crime, why are not the customers being arrested along with the women..

Prostitutes used to be called “fallen women”. Nowadays we use the more dignified term “sex workers”. But our male relatives still congratulate us on being “good women” who would never fall to such a level.

Abortion is murder we are told by all its opponents. Absolutely so. Whether you insist in believing that life begins when a woman’s egg is fertilized or in believing that a life is not destroyed if abortion happens in the first trimester, nature’s biology, or God’s biology if you prefer, is very clear that both beliefs are wrong. Life begins when metabolism begins. This for humans is when the fertilized egg implants in the wall of the uterus.

But where is the other murderer in this picture-- the man who helped create this unwanted pregnancy. the man who either raped or abandoned this woman who now stands alone and unprotected by any man

“Who now stands alone and unprotected by any man.” That phrase is at the heart of the matter isn’t it.

If a woman doesn’t abort, she usually becomes a single mom, struggling to raise her offspring alone.

And a single independent woman, a single mother family, these are also under attack by the men who want to keep this culture, these religions, that tell us men are superior to and more important than women, that men are free to do as they wish and women are obliged to live according to the wishes of their men. Think the Adam and Eve version of creation in the bible we all use, Jews, Muslims, and Christians. And remember who gets freed of blame and who assumes all blame.

Here again nature’s biology, or God’s biology if you prefer, has made it clear with our understanding of DNA that male and female are absolutely equal. These religions, this culture, is just plain wrong.

Until men are made to take responsibility for their equal share in these murders, until men are made to support the children they help create, there can be no real and just solution to the problem of abortion.

What can be done.

First of all we need to work for the defeat of all Bush Republicans in the House and Senate next election. Because of his own fundamentalist religion, this president has committed himself and his supporters to making his view of women a legally enforceable part of our lives. Until all Bush Republicans are out of office, none of us are safe.

Finally we need to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. The men who wrote our Constitution were very much men of their time, and to most of them women were as much non-existent citizens as were slaves. We have long since rectified our thinking about slavery. Women’s time has now come.

This is not a gender battle. None of the men in my family, or men whom I generally know, would rape or visit a prostitute. And all of them are responsibly supporting their offspring. I rejoice in the many equal marriages I see among my younger friends. There may easily be more men for us women than there are against us.

But action is the key word. Don’t wring your hands over this situation. Find candidates who will work for you. Or be a candidate yourself. But get active.

Supreme Court Nominee

I sent the following email to President Bush.

Dear Mr. President: We are not under the rule of Law. We are under the rule of a Constitution. You swore an oath to defend it. Remember?

And any candidate for appointment to the Supreme Court needs to answer only two questions.

This person needs to say yes, the Constitution provides the framework for all our law; yes, the intent of the Constitution should be the basis for all Supreme Court decisions.

Is the intent of the Constitution that clear?

Absolutely.

The men who fought the Revolution and met together to forge a new kind of government for their fledgling country had differences on the details but were united on the whole. They never wanted to see again any form of government in which they had no representation and no power.

Accordingly they created, to put it simplistically, a watchdog government. The three functions of government were separated with each branch to act as a check on the others. And the every two-year election for Representatives provides the check on the whole government structure by we the people.

If you read the ten first Amendments which define our protections as individuals, you will note that each one of these is concerned quite specifically with what your government may not do to you as an individual.

The Preamble states very clearly the general intent: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The test of all law coming before the Supreme Court should be whether that law is doing something that the ten first Amendments say specifically it shall not do to any one of us and/or whether it curtails the individual liberty, the right of personal choice for our lives, of each one of us.

There is today a whole range of obfuscating notions about the Supreme Court with which a commentary for Brooke Shield’s radio program for July 22nd On The Media deals far more effectively than I can, and I urge you to listen to it.

Quick thought about Rove/Libby

The Rove/Libby scandal doesn't seem to be fading away as quickly as the White House might like.

What President Bush now needs is an equivalent to the suicide bomber, someone willing to do even a possible jail term to get Rove and Libby away from the focus of the investigation.

Does the President inspire that sort of idealistic devotion to a cause among his staffers, I wonder.  But then the idealism of the suicide bomber is usually helped along by cash assistance to his family.  Certainly the White House can make such splendid volunteering financially very worthwhile.

Developments will be very intersting to watch....

Why does Blair follow Bush?

I came awake this morning in the midst of addressing the present governors’ conference. I had been invited to do so by Businesses for Social Responsibility, which group felt that an Independent voice should be also be heard. I was, of course, in the middle of telling all these governors that for the sake of their states’ economies, the ‘business community’ needs to stop thinking of itself as separate from the community from which it makes its profits and begin to share in all this community’s infra-structure expenses...Amazing how dreams can set themselves up so logically...

I know why such a dream was triggered for me. I had a long and as usual rewarding talk Sunday night with my one son with whom I can discuss matters political. Discuss is the operative word here. With my other three sons any opinion I offer is usually argued against petty vigorously.

I was commenting on how much it upsets me that Blair now seems to be adopting Bush’s characterization of terrorist attacks against innocent civilians as evil. How will he label the attacks we both perpetrated against so many innocent civilians when we bombed Berlin and Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nara reminded me that when the British and we began to develop air forces after WWI, it was understood that an air force was a weapon against the general public, ie, ‘innocent civilians.’ Indeed the British carried out some early ‘experiments’ in bombing attacks, by using planes against rebelling Arab forces during the 1920s.

Both Britain and we have ugly experience with slavery. We know what making another race sub-human can do to the soul of the enslaver. One would think that we should both have learned not to fall into that trap again. And yet we allow the Bush administration insist that ’terrorists’ are not enemy combatants under the Geneva Conventions. We have let this administration treat all their prisoners as non-human, evil, and in doing so we have tacitly encouraged all the prisoner abuse which has occurred.

But what really puzzles both Nara and me is why Tony Blair has been so willing to follow George Bush into Iraq despite all that is presently coming out about opposition to this in Blair‘s own government, despite the very strong unpopularity of the Iraq war with the British public. Has some secret deal about oil been concluded? What do you think?

A bomb in Barre, Vermont!

Horrific news-- A bomb was exploded early Monday morning in Barre’s Highgate Apartments, destroying five automobiles.

The people who live here are among our most vulnerable-- good families in need of housing at an affordable price, who are working responsibly to bring up their children to be good citizens.

I have had the pleasure of working with their community organization through a summer program my church and others support, and know these people well.

This is terrorism by any definition.

President Bush, if the war against terrorism is to brought to the enemy, then let’s start right here in Barre!

Freedom for the press?

Judith Miller is going to jail. Matthew Cooper is not. Is this of any real importance to any of us?

Yes, indeed it is. This is not a question of freedom of the press or reporter privilege. It is about whistle blowing-- when someone in a position to know that something bad is going on decides to leak this knowledge to the rest of us.

No incumbent government, Republican or Democrat, likes a whistle blower. Neither does any well established business.

But the public always gains from such information.

And we the public should insist that all our whistle blowers themselves and the reporters who pass on their information should be protected from attack by any government or business whose nasty secrets are being revealed.

Vermont is not one of the thirty-one states which provides statutory protection for whistle blowers. And in the Miller/Cooper case the federal government is attacking their efforts to shield their sources. Maybe we had better tell our legislators, state and federal, that we want them to enact law which will protect this important public function.

And now London

7/7 now joins 9/11 and 3/11 as another grimly memorable date. London along with New York and Madrid now also has the distinction of having been attacked by Al Qaida.

I have a very deep respect for the courage and resilience of Londoners, having watched how they survived the first foray into modern warfare by Hitler. For modern warfare has now become primarily against civilians. Night after night Hitler’s planes bombed London, which had no military targets, in the expectation Britain’s resolve to resist would crumble and an invasion would be simple.

Hitler was wrong, and any Al Qaida member who thought that the bombs yesterday would throw the Brits into panic, demoralize world financial markets, or disrupt the G-8 meetings was very, very wrong. If whoever planned these attacks wanted to get the British out of Iraq, they should simply have waited for British public opinion which has been angry over the all the deception to do it. Now public opinion may have solidified behind Tony Blair and staying in Iraq.

And I do not recommend to any Al Qaida planner that he now consider Paris a potential target. Paris is a city every bit as tough as London.

I was struck by the response of a commentator on BBC to our Condaleeza Rice’s remarks that the use of suicide bombers is not normal. Not true, he said, the use of suicide bombers is perhaps the only possible weapon they have. We don’t like the concept of the suicide bomber that he is willing to give his life in the process of killing as many others as he can. We train our soldiers to kill as many of the enemy as they can and still try to stay alive. But all soldiering is essentially a suicide mission. Ask any woman who sends a soldier off to war whether in her heart she absolutely expects he will return alive.

Salute to one of the great women

I want to offer my salute to one of the great women of this world--  Wangari Maathai who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2004.  If you click on the link, you can find the full story of her wonderful achievments in Kenya.

Goodbye little sparrow!

Sunday was the sparrow’s declaration of independence day.

Sunday morning when I woke up she was watching all her relatives busy eating out on the deck. She was so eager to join them that she wasn’t pecking at any of the seed which I had scattered on the floor for her breakfast. As soon as I opened the door for her, she was out and away.

I saw her once more that day. She came in briefly in the afternoon with a companion. Her friend almost followed her inside but skidded to a stop just over the door sill and quickly flew back out to the deck. My little sparrow didn’t fly over to me, but seemed to be taking a quick look around. Then she was off. I was really expecting her to turn up at sunset, which she had been doing.. But as the sky began to darken, I realized that this was the night.

I have seen most of our barn sparrows since. They have been eating the seed on the deck. But I have not been able to recognize her nor has she given any sign of knowing me.

This is success!

Grace and I can be happy indeed that we were able to raise this baby, who bonded so closely with the two of us, and return her to her own community.

July 4th thoughts

Today is the day we celebrate our Declaration of Independence, the spiritual basis for our country, its Constitution, the first ten Amendments that give us the primary statement of our liberties.

And I am reminded on this particular July 4th of the two Amendments which are presently most under attack by the Bush Republican administration.

The First, yes. We hear everywhere much concern about dangers arising from the Patriot Act.

But how many of us are aware that the Second has also been severely curtailed. Certainly I don’t believe that either the NRA or Gun Owners of America understand what has been happening although each insists that it supports the rights of gun owners.

Article II reads: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The reason for this Amendment is clearly expressed in the Declaration of Independence: 

     He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of  our  legislature.

    He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to, the civil power.

It is clear both from the Declaration and the Constitution that the men who worked to create our country wanted no part of a professional army.

And until this administration our army, whether based on a draft or relying on voluntary enlistment, has remained a truly civilian army, under the control of all of us through Congress.

But Rumsfeld has succeeded in privatizing many functions which our civilian army previously performed for itself. Not only does Congress have no control over such private companies but their existence makes maintaining our army in Iraq far more expensive for us taxpayers than it should be.

Even more disturbing to me are the private armies which have been given a mandate as strong as the army’s to maintain order and provide security for the many foreign to Iraq at least businesses operating there. None of these private armies are in any way under the control of Congress, and there is no redress for any Iraqi for any damage or harm from any private security person. The army at least assumes some responsibility for damage it causes.

What would I propose to do to reinforce our Second Amendment?

First we need a draft. Yes, I know that too many people still equate a draft with their anger against Viet Nam. But recruitment for both our services and military academies is down. And for good reason. At the moment only someone with extreme financial need is being pursued by recruiters. Wouldn’t it be far more truly democratic if the Bush twins and all of the young people related to our federal Congressmen were offered the same opportunity to serve their country as young people who see their only hope of a college lies in signing up for what is now a highly indeterminate time period.

Second I believe that we need mandatory gun education in our high schools. We know that driver education has made our young people better drivers. Not only will being sure that all young people know how to shoot a gun and how to handle it safely make gun accidents much less likely, but we will truly finally have a solid base for a civilian army in time of need. And, as I pointed out to a granddaughter, she would never have to fire a gun again unless there was a real need.

How about it, my NRA and Gun Owners of America friends, do you support strengthening our Second Amendment as much as I do?