Because it’s completely absurd to worry about widespread abuse in high school relationships. Right.

Still, does it have a third and fifth “ever?” I think not!

My favorite part is here:

R.T.: I was surprised that so much of your book was about Gloria Feldt, Ellie Smeal, Catharine MacKinnon. Only at the very end do you mention someone like Rebecca Walker.

K.O’B.: Are you asking about [why I didn’t discuss] twenty- or thirty-something feminism?

R.T.: Yes. The MacKinnon quote about how “all heterosexual intercourse is rape” is old news. There has been a whole other wave of sex-positive feminism in part in response to ideas like that. …

Because, you know, the “quote” that is “old news” does not exist.

Not that that’s ever stopped anyone from throwing MacKinnon to the wolves in order to unsuccessfully insulate their own hip sexyclub from antifeminist criticism, of course.

This…

R.T.: But social expectations make that —

K.O’B.: Society will never, ever, ever, ever validate it. Ever. Ever. So, next question. [Because] now we’re baying at the moon: Damn, life’s unfair! Damn! Life’s unfair!

… comes in as a close second. I think it’s the third and the fifth “evers” that really make the quote.

“Why shouldn’t this model be extended to teachers? Why shouldn’t schools be co-operatives/partnerships of teachers who compete against each other?”

They used to have these things in Europe; I believe they were called “Universities.”

The multiple layers of administrative bureaucracy that have piled themselves up on the shoulders of scholars are a relatively new “innovation,” which grew like a tumor and metastasized throughout the world mostly over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century.

No rational person would invest such a huge amount of time and money into pharma if there wasnt a protection in place that made it possible for them to make a profit off of their findings.

Again, boo hoo. This is an explicitly protectionist argument, and like all protectionist arguments, the answer is: if they can’t earn a profit on their product through honest labor, without the benefit of protectionist trade barriers, then they need to think harder about their business model. Big pharma’s failed business model is their problem, not mine.

I’m dubious about the validity of this map. Michigan and Delaware are highly likely to ban abortion?

I don’t know anything about Delaware, but I do live in Michigan, and am quite sure the map is accurate so far as that goes. The NARAL “Report Card” gives Michigan an “F” rating for state abortion laws (we’re tied with Mississippi and Arkansas; only Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Louisiana, and North Dakota have more onerous restrictions) are worse. The pre-Roe abortion ban has never been repealed (so will remain on the books to re-activate if Roe is ever overturned). Both houses of the state legislature are controlled by the anti-abortion Republicans heavily influenced by the Religious Right in Western Michigan and by Michigan Right to Life.

Womble: Distrusting any government anywhere anytime in any matter is a case of a clinically paranoid mindset. People like that should seek professional help.

Sham medical diagnoses for political disagreements isn’t going to get you very far in rational argument. It is, frankly, a sleazy rhetorical tactic, and you ought to feel guilty about having indulged in it.

That said, the issue I mentioned didn’t have to do with whether or not you categorically distrust all government action. It specifically has to do with how far you trust incumbent parties (who have the power to set the legal criteria, if we allow legal criteria to be set) to put up legislative barriers against competing parties. Because the ability to exclude your own challengers is a dangerous thing for governing parties to have.

Womble: Believing that the rights of any party, however violent, anti-democratic and racist, must be defended no matter the cost is a case of either total loss of morals or deliberate blindness to reality.

I don’t care about the rights of any “party;” I don’t think they’ve got any. I do care about the rights of party members to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, etc. I don’t really care very much about the ability of folks to challenge in an election either, since I don’t regard government elections as having any legitimate authority (I think there are some weak pragmatic reasons to resist moves like that, but not principled moral objections). But your dark suggestions that you’d be fine with using “harsher measures” against anti-democratic parties is troubling, because it’s hard to imagine what that would mean other than compromising those rights, and suggests that you’re fine with violent retaliation beyond simply delisting their candidates (for what crime? If their candidates can’t be recognized as standing in the election, what “resistance” do you have in mind suppressing through the use of violence? Advocating political views? Electioneering for qualified candidates? Printing literature? Meeting? Assembling in public? Something else?)

N.B.: I am quite willing to take the stance in question for Kach as well as Hamas, for Maoists, for the Ku Klux Klan, and just about any other example of bare-fanged evil organized that I can think of.

“I always thought the vanilla thing came from vanilla being the default icecream flavor, ie if there’s only one flavour of icecream available, it’s going to be vanilla. Thus making BDSM, I don’t know, the Spumoni of the sex world.”

Yes. It’s an intentionally condescending term, and frankly I think it’s disingenuous in the extreme for vocal BDSM advocates to pretend like they don’t mean anything derogatory by it.

I don’t have much in the way of an opinion on whether it’s possible to have a social environment in which abortion is safe, legal, and also rare. It seems to me that this is an empirical question that hasn’t adequately been answered.

But whatever the answer may be, why anyone should care about minimizing the number of abortions as a policy goal in the first place? I mean, really, who cares? Is there supposed to be something wrong with having an abortion?

scott: Rad Geek, From the comments here and at your site, I think we’re just coming at things from totally different angles. I’m looking at these things as givens, for the time being, that have to be considered regardless of if we support them or not. You’re looking at the more theoretical aspects of all this – governments, elections, etc – which are important questions on the whole, but not as immediately pertinent to me at the moment.

Well, I’m sure there is a difference of focus here, but I’m not convinced that it’s best understood in terms of the distinctions between theoretical and practical. It seems to me that the very real problems with government-to-government aid make for good practical reasons to take the “purist” stance: because government-to-government aid is actively harmful (in particular, in the P.A., it has propped up and lined the pockets of a corrupt, unaccountable, and co-opted one-party state under Fatah for years), complaining about it being cut seems rather like complaining about someone getting a reduction in their dose of arsenic-laced wine.

scott: At the same time, because of the occupation and destroyed economy, the Palestinians need aid right now. I don’t see anarchists stepping up, or the left, so until then, we’re left with the Japanese government giving UNWRA $500,000 donations, and the EU funding PA programs. Certainly not an ideal situation.

Well, so why not make an effort to get anarchists (and for that matter, statist Leftists and humanitarians of various stripes) to step up like they should and give direct mutual aid? It seems to me that they’re probably more open to persuasion than U.S. policy makers, more likely to give money to the right people, and, if you fail to hit the goals that need to be hit, that’s still more money to people who need it than the nothing that results from failed political pressure campaigns.

scott: Rad Geek, From the comments here and at your site, I think we’re just coming at things from totally different angles. I’m looking at these things as givens, for the time being, that have to be considered regardless of if we support them or not. You’re looking at the more theoretical aspects of all this – governments, elections, etc – which are important questions on the whole, but not as immediately pertinent to me at the moment.

Well, I’m sure there is a difference of focus here, but I’m not convinced that it’s best understood in terms of the distinctions between theoretical and practical. It seems to me that the very real problems with government-to-government aid make for good practical reasons to take the “purist” stance: because government-to-government aid is actively harmful (in particular, in the P.A., it has propped up and lined the pockets of a corrupt, unaccountable, and co-opted one-party state under Fatah for years), complaining about it being cut seems rather like complaining about someone getting a reduction in their dose of arsenic-laced wine.

scott: At the same time, because of the occupation and destroyed economy, the Palestinians need aid right now. I don’t see anarchists stepping up, or the left, so until then, we’re left with the Japanese government giving UNWRA $500,000 donations, and the EU funding PA programs. Certainly not an ideal situation.

Well, so why not make an effort to get anarchists (and for that matter, statist Leftists and humanitarians of various stripes) to step up like they should and give direct mutual aid? It seems to me that they’re probably more open to persuasion than U.S. policy makers, more likely to give money to the right people, and, if you fail to hit the goals that need to be hit, that’s still more money to people who need it than the nothing that results from failed political pressure campaigns.