David Harsayni is a senior editor at The Federalist, a conservative blog that gets a great deal of attention nationally. I regularly keep tabs on Real Clear Politics for articles about the election and current events. This shoddy piece of pseudo politics caught my attention and immediately hit a land mine with me. At the risk of making him more popular, a few things need to be said.
The article itself:
The Fedralist: 10 Abortion Questions Hillary Clinton Won't Answer
A good political thinker starts by getting fired up about something. They let their emotions flow about an issue and let those emotions fuel investigation and debate. They explore the ideas with the choir of voices like them then pit those ideas against their opponents and fight it out. But the good political thinker is debating and battling to test the limits and contours of the issue. Like a old grave rubbing, you run the crayon back and forth over the whole area and the outline of the message on the stone gets clearer and clearer.
Once debate is done and you're comfortable in your position, the next thing a political thinker should do is calm down. Emotions have no place in the creation of practical policy or reasoned position. They also have a nasty tendency to interfere with learning because the more fired up you are about your issue, the less you pay attention to information that may be asking you to mitigate, dial it back, or even turn around.
David Harsayni is not a good political thinker.
The following excerpts from his article.
But Democrats, like Republicans, have a talking point associated with this hot button issue and it's pretty much boiler plate: "I support letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved." This is a calculated statement to keep in line with the Democratic platform and not get drawn into a bickering war over circumstances. Asking them outrageous hypothetical situations specifically designed to push the ethical boundary of what is reasonable in terms of abortion is something you can do with any position on any issue.
See, rules, positions, and laws are generic on purpose: They exist to cover the most possible situations. This means there is ALWAYS a circumstance where the rule must yield. To use the boiler plate generic response to a crafted exception designed to break that rule as evidence that they'd kill a any baby about to be born isn't just wrong, it's deceptive - it's a way to lie.
Notice, too, we're not getting an objective approach to the question in any way, shape, or form. 'huddled with her doctor' likely changes to 'consults with her physician' when it's something David agrees with. Calling the fetus a 'superfluous appendage' is deliberately antagonistic and designed to stir outrage not understanding.
David doesn't want to inform you of anything.
David wants to make you ANGRY!
The whole article reads like this.
What's the operative word in her answer?
The answer is 'federal'. Words have meaning. They don't just sit out there and take up space. There's a reason Clinton answered 'any federal limitations on abortion'. A calculated statement that is actually quite moderate by comparison to most liberals - it allows the states regulatory say in where and how abortions can happen.
The rest of his article engages in about every major logical fallacy you can find packed with colorful, deliberately insulting language to twist the statements he takes from her around into some deep abiding desire to show that Clinton engaged an unlimited and merciless campaign against babies supported by Democratic throngs of murderers.
We call it telescoping to boom: You find an exception to a general rule, then you take it one step further, then one more, then one more, and eventually you arrive at a truly perverse conclusion.
Example:
But David doesn't care that his logic makes no sense.
What's important is tying her to this conclusion if he has to ignore the presence of words and shoot an swarm of paper tigers to do so:
The fact is that Democrats understand that abortion has been going on a lot longer than Roe v. Wade. It's been around and practiced since before we were a country. What Roe v. Wade did was make a surgical procedure legal instead of forcing women to use their own means and risk even more lives.
Conservatives like David Harsayni get confused. They seem to think abortion was invented in 1973. They think if Roe v. Wade can be overturned, abortion will stop. You know. Kind of like if you close all the hospitals, nobody will get sick.
The irrational hatred and unwillingness to think in regards to this issue is a perfect example of what's wrong with modern politics. David can't think straight about this issue. He gets so outraged at his imagined fantasy of liberals running around with stick blenders chasing pregnant women that he doesn't' want to actually understand or discuss solutions or seek constructive progress on how we might change the law as our science gets better.
He just wants you to join his hate.
And for that reason, I won't link him again unless he responds here. We have to be better than this and more willing to talk about complex and difficult issues constructively. This kind of thing only fuels the destructive fires between us and keeps us divided against challenges we very desperately need to unite to face.
The article itself:
The Fedralist: 10 Abortion Questions Hillary Clinton Won't Answer
A good political thinker starts by getting fired up about something. They let their emotions flow about an issue and let those emotions fuel investigation and debate. They explore the ideas with the choir of voices like them then pit those ideas against their opponents and fight it out. But the good political thinker is debating and battling to test the limits and contours of the issue. Like a old grave rubbing, you run the crayon back and forth over the whole area and the outline of the message on the stone gets clearer and clearer.
Once debate is done and you're comfortable in your position, the next thing a political thinker should do is calm down. Emotions have no place in the creation of practical policy or reasoned position. They also have a nasty tendency to interfere with learning because the more fired up you are about your issue, the less you pay attention to information that may be asking you to mitigate, dial it back, or even turn around.
David Harsayni is not a good political thinker.
The following excerpts from his article.
It’s not widely known, for example, that most elected Democrats support legal abortion on demand to the moment of crowning — as long as the woman has huddled with her physician and family members and decided the fetus is a superfluous appendage and not a human being.It's not widely known because it's not true. Democrats, as a whole, believe that regulation of abortion is appropriate and must stage upwards as the pregnancy progresses. The closer to birth the mother is, the more drastic the justification needs to be to terminate. This was, in fact, the core conclusion of Roe v. Wade.
But Democrats, like Republicans, have a talking point associated with this hot button issue and it's pretty much boiler plate: "I support letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved." This is a calculated statement to keep in line with the Democratic platform and not get drawn into a bickering war over circumstances. Asking them outrageous hypothetical situations specifically designed to push the ethical boundary of what is reasonable in terms of abortion is something you can do with any position on any issue.
See, rules, positions, and laws are generic on purpose: They exist to cover the most possible situations. This means there is ALWAYS a circumstance where the rule must yield. To use the boiler plate generic response to a crafted exception designed to break that rule as evidence that they'd kill a any baby about to be born isn't just wrong, it's deceptive - it's a way to lie.
Notice, too, we're not getting an objective approach to the question in any way, shape, or form. 'huddled with her doctor' likely changes to 'consults with her physician' when it's something David agrees with. Calling the fetus a 'superfluous appendage' is deliberately antagonistic and designed to stir outrage not understanding.
David doesn't want to inform you of anything.
David wants to make you ANGRY!
The whole article reads like this.
This issue was broached by “Face the Nation” moderator John Dickerson when he asked Hillary: “Do you support a federal limit on abortion at any stage of pregnancy?” At the time, Clinton answered that she did not support any federal limitations on abortion. So, in other words, not at any stage. Period.I'm very certain David knows how to read. I'd like to think he has some understanding of basic logic and the ability to deconstruct a statement into it's probable meaning. I would hate to have ANYONE carrying around the title 'senior editor' - even of a coloring book - if this was the conclusion he drew from the above quote.
What's the operative word in her answer?
The answer is 'federal'. Words have meaning. They don't just sit out there and take up space. There's a reason Clinton answered 'any federal limitations on abortion'. A calculated statement that is actually quite moderate by comparison to most liberals - it allows the states regulatory say in where and how abortions can happen.
The rest of his article engages in about every major logical fallacy you can find packed with colorful, deliberately insulting language to twist the statements he takes from her around into some deep abiding desire to show that Clinton engaged an unlimited and merciless campaign against babies supported by Democratic throngs of murderers.
We call it telescoping to boom: You find an exception to a general rule, then you take it one step further, then one more, then one more, and eventually you arrive at a truly perverse conclusion.
Example:
"Well... if you let her go outside, she could get in a car. If she got in a car, she could drive to a party. If she drove to a party, she could drink. If she drank, she could get drunk. If she got drunk, she could pass out. If she passed out, she could be taken advantage of! So obviously... obviously.... women shouldn't go outside."Each one of the steps, by itself, is a possibility, but the idea that the first step risks the last ignores all the potential decisions and shades of color that could have come in to render that final outcome a lot less attached to the first step that the fallacy tries to suggest.
But David doesn't care that his logic makes no sense.
What's important is tying her to this conclusion if he has to ignore the presence of words and shoot an swarm of paper tigers to do so:
He does, however, get this part right - most Americans think a 'no limits' position is extreme. That's why almost no Americans hold it - including most Democrats. Hillary Clinton doesn't hold this position either. He's made that part up by ignoring mountains of data in his own article. This is a right-wing fear fantasy created by allowing emotions to run so wildly with their hatred over the idea that abortion happens that he can't actually process the real information and examine a more nuanced position.So yes. No limits. This position, judging by almost any poll, is considered extremist by a majority of Americans, including women.
The fact is that Democrats understand that abortion has been going on a lot longer than Roe v. Wade. It's been around and practiced since before we were a country. What Roe v. Wade did was make a surgical procedure legal instead of forcing women to use their own means and risk even more lives.
Conservatives like David Harsayni get confused. They seem to think abortion was invented in 1973. They think if Roe v. Wade can be overturned, abortion will stop. You know. Kind of like if you close all the hospitals, nobody will get sick.
The irrational hatred and unwillingness to think in regards to this issue is a perfect example of what's wrong with modern politics. David can't think straight about this issue. He gets so outraged at his imagined fantasy of liberals running around with stick blenders chasing pregnant women that he doesn't' want to actually understand or discuss solutions or seek constructive progress on how we might change the law as our science gets better.
He just wants you to join his hate.
And for that reason, I won't link him again unless he responds here. We have to be better than this and more willing to talk about complex and difficult issues constructively. This kind of thing only fuels the destructive fires between us and keeps us divided against challenges we very desperately need to unite to face.
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