Outrageous!

The response to Nick Provenzo's blog post on Sarah Palin and abortion continues and has reached even more outrageous and offensive levels. It is now reported on Nick's blog Rule of Reason that Barbara Simpson, a right wing talk show host, has said the following:

There was a day when someone would take somebody like this Provenzo guy out in an alley and beat him beyond whatever. He deserves it.

As Nick writes, "this is the disgusting nature of the "Pro-Life" movement in action." Clearly this is the logical consequence of talking about "killing" and "murdering babies" when describing abortions. In this respect Nick's response is the proper one, I quote his conclusion below:

And if some moron you whipped up into a frenzy does beat me or does kill me as so many who think like you have wished in this past week, I feel secure in guaranteeing you this: thousands will take my place. You and your ilk cannot win here and you will not; not when right and reason are on the side of the good.

Abortion as a Moral Right

My friend Nick Provenzo has stirred up quite the controversy at his blog The Rule of Reason. Nick has written a perfectly reasonable, thoughtful article about the Palin's decision to give birth to a Down syndrome baby. For that he is now being unjustly insulted on the comments to the blog which number 115 as I'm writing this. Nick points out that:

Given that Palin's decision is being celebrated in some quarters, it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)—a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny.

I think this is the crucial issue which hinges on the more fundamental right to abortion, a derivative right which is derived from two principles: The woman's right to her own life and therefore her right to control what happens within her own body, and the fact that individual rights belong to separate actual individuals, not embedded potential ones.

Therefore, it is the woman's right to have an abortion as part of the right to her own life -- yes, contrary to what the anti-abortionists would have you believe, abortion is pro-life, pro-the life of the only actual individual involved -- the woman.

With respect to Down syndrome, I also agree with Nick here:

...it is completely legitimate for a woman to look at the circumstances of her life and decide that having a child with Down syndrome (or any child for that matter) is not an obligation that she can accept. After all, the choice to have a child is a profoundly selfish choice; that is, a choice that is an expression of the parent's personal desire to create new life.

This is what the opponents of abortion will never understand since they take the morality of sacrifice as a given and apply it to parenting. In accordance with altruism, devoting your life to a being that will always lead a somewhat stunted existence would be considered highly virtuous. But I think it is profoundly wrong to view parenting as a sacrifice. As Ayn Rand pointed out:

“Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values (since help to a stranger or an enemy is regarded as more virtuous, less “selfish,” than help to those one loves). The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one.

But your children, if you love them, can be your highest values, therefore what you do for them need not be considered a sacrifice but rather an instance of the virtue of integrity, of standing in action by the values you hold dear. It is true that if you love your children you will deal with the inevitable illnesses and the like but why should it be highly moral to give birth to what amounts to a kind of permanently ill child. If one had a choice, and fortunately we still do, one would make the perfectly moral choice and prefer to have a healthy child, at least so far as one knows.

Reisman on Obamanomics

After an absence of three months, George Reisman returns to blogging with two posts. In the brief, more recent post, he shows that Sarah Palin and Barack Obama have much the same approach when it comes to economics. After illustrating how their equivalent policies are wrong headed, Reisman declares:

Obama and Palin are both obviously ignorant of economics. John McCain, who picked Palin to be his running mate, has admitted his own lack of knowledge of the subject. Knowing little or nothing of the subject himself, he could not be expected to realize that Palin knew nothing of the subject either. An examination of the record of Obama’s running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, would probably turn up a more extensive record of comparable ignorance of economics, given his greater number of years in public life as a leading spokesman for the Democratic Party.

But Reisman's long August 28 post is the more worthwhile one. In it Reisman defends the proposition "Why Everyone Should Be in Favor of Tax Cuts for the “Rich”" on detailed economic grounds, taking for granted that individuals are interested in greater prosperity and economic growth. In addition, it shows the counter productivity of tax cuts without corresponding reductions in government spending as well as the negative long term effects of the Federal Reserve's easy credit policy. Reisman's conclusion is as follows:

Of course, in a further display of their ignorance and blindness, members of the left will undoubtedly characterize the line of argument I’ve presented in this article as the “trickle‑down theory.” There is nothing trickle‑down about it. There is only the fact that capital accumulation and economic progress depend on saving and innovation and that these in turn depend on the freedom to make high profits and accumulate great wealth. The only alternative to improvement for all, through economic progress, achieved in this way, is the futile attempt of some men to gain at the expense of others by means of looting and plundering. This, the loot‑and‑plunder theory, is the alternative advocated by the redistributionist critics of the misnamed trickle‑down theory. The loot‑and‑plunder theory is the theory of Obama, of the Democratic Party, and of much of the Republican Party. It is time to supplant it with the sound economic theory developed by generations of intellectual giants ranging from Smith and Ricardo to Böhm-Bawerk and Mises.