David Brooks; need I say more? Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American...read on "
April 20, 2005

David Brooks; need I say more?

Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American...read on

" The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can't stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better."

There is so much to comment on in his article. The suggestion that the overturning of Roe vs. Wade would somehow restore civility in politics is the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Religious zealots hate our freedom. We are a nation of laws that are not predicated by religious doctrine. Freedom of religion thrives in our country because of this principle. With that freedom, we also have the freedom to make choices. What comes with the freedom of religion is the freedom not to be held hostage by it.

Every man, women and child is free to practice any form of religion they want. Here's a shocker too. They don't have to practice any religion at all either. Really? I've never read in Roe vs. Wade that a women must have an abortion. But I watch the new 24/ 7-700 Club cable news television where the religious right wing elites get more air time than any re-run of Cheers ever did, and that's what they keep telling me.

The Rude Pundit has his take on David Brooks: ...But the fact remains that Reagan became an anti-abortion amendment advocate when he needed the votes, thus continuing the pattern of pandering to the religious right that empowered so many of the so-called leaders of that movement. And perfected by Lee Atwater and buffed to a fine polish by Karl Rove.
So Brooks would rather a nation where abortion is legal in, say, Illinois and illegal in Arizona? He'd like to go back to bloody alleys and that type of shit? He'd rather a nation where the tyranny of the majority, in the states and in the nation, can enforce its will on individual bodies and voices. What a stooge. What an apologist. What a depressing waste of editorial space.

Michael Berube has his take on David Brooks

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