This Whole Cindy Sheenan Thing

Bereaved mother calls Bush a hypercrite and suggests he send his party animal girls to Iraq. Didn't this already happen in F 9/11? What is there interesting to say about this whole escapade? It's embarassing to read her assertions that Israel's occupation of Palestine and America's occupation of Iraq is similar to Syria's occupation of Lebannon. Or her suggestion that Iran ought to be able to develop Nukes because the US and Israel have done so. Yeah, that's responsible.

Here is an article that nails the whole issue. Sheenen is allowed to say whatever she wants - this is America, after all....but she is also subject to criticism, massive, harsh, criticism.

And that's the part of Free Speech that so many (esp on the left) are threatened by these days...the fact that one's opinions and values can (and ought to be) challenged. Free speech and debate isn't a support group to validate one's opinions, it's a market place of ideas, where one should be able to support why they feel or think a certain way and should learn to defend that position rationally.

The left, which has been right about a lot of things this past century, has become super lazy in this regard, expecting to have the moral upper hand simply because they championed Women and Civil Rights in the 1960s and opposed the Vietnam War. They see affirmative action, abortion rights, and the Iraq war as extensions of these same principles, and hence, unchallengeable. But there are other factors that I think the left needs to factor in - Does affirmative action work? We've had it for 30 plus years, there should be some reliable statistics to see how effective it has been as a policy. I'm interested in this, but most on the left aren't - they are only interested in keeping it around because of it's perceived effect.

Abortion rights - we need to have a rational discussion that begins with the fact that there is something intrinsically valuable about the human fetus (not that it's human and not that it's a glob of cells) - because it ain't human and it ain't just a glob of cells. If we continue to let the "feminists" and the "Christians" take over this debate, as we have for the past 30 years, we're continuing to have an unnecessarily divisive debate.

And the Iraq war, well, there's enough being written about both sides that anyone who is interested ought to be able to understand the issues - I guess the problem I have is that the left hasn't properly stated any position on Islamic Fascism or proposal to deal with it other than the standard Bush Sucks position. Maybe the Iraq war is ill conceived, I just don't think the left has done a very good job of convincing anyone but themselves.