timeimmortal

That would be Bill Clinton, speaking out in defence of Sarah Palin, as well as her daughter Bristol and her son Trig, and against the horrific treatment that the Palin family have received in the media and from many others on the Left.

Bill Clinton said Monday he understands why Sarah Palin is popular in the heartland: because people relate to her.

“I come from Arkansas, I get why she’s hot out there,” Clinton said. “Why she’s doing well.”

Speaking to reporters before his Clinton Global Initiative meeting, the former president described Palin’s appeal by adding, “People look at her, and they say, ‘All those kids. Something that happens in everybody’s family. I’m glad she loves her daughter and she’s not ashamed of her. Glad that girl’s going around with her boyfriend. Glad they’re going to get married.’”

Clinton said voters would think, “I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They’re wonderful children. They’re wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy.”

…

“I get this,” Clinton said. “My view is … why say, ever, anything bad about a person? Why don’t we like them and celebrate them and be happy for her elevation to the ticket? And just say that she was a good choice for him and we disagree with them?”

You know, I wasn’t a fan of the guy when he was in office, but more and more I find that, with noted exceptions, he’s actually got a decent head on those shoulders. And when he comes out and says something like this, it’s hard to find him disagreeable.

Now, if only his fellow Democrats could be convinced to pay him some heed on this issue.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Dr. Andre Lalonde is worried:

Dr. Andre Lalonde, executive vice president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Ottawa, worries that [Sarah Palin]’s now renowned decision may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit.

Because obviously, it’s a WRETCHED AND TERRIBLE THING that Canadian women opt not to engage in eugenics by targeting for abortion those unborn babies which test positive for genetic defects after blood screenings and amniocentesis, both of which may not give accurate results in the first place.

He says not every woman is prepared to deal with the consequences of Down babies, who have developmental delays, some physical difficulties and often a shortened lifespan.

I think Ms. Lucas says it best:“Just, WOW…You know, I was just thinking, not every woman is prepared to deal with the consequences of BABIES IN GENERAL, some of whom have developmental delays and other problems. Abort! Abort! Abort!”

George Jonas, not exactly known for his pro-life stance (if I recall correctly), said something interesting at the end of his most recent article: “So close to power with a woman so far removed from every reason for which feminists would wish to exercise it! The matriarchy feels betrayed. “Sadly, this election has become all about the rights of the unborn, and not about the rights of the born,” a correspondent wrote to me. Well, I don’t know: The born can at least vote and write letters to the editor. The unborn can only kick, squirm, and wonder whether Mommy grants them vacuum suction or life.

As an ex-fetus, in this predicament I’d like a pitbull on my side.”

And it’s worth mentioning Ace’s turn of phrase as well:“Hmmm… their “choices” will be reduced by their choice of a choice you obviously don’t approve of.”

Too true.

Dr. Lalonde frets that the example of Sarah Palin — and hers is a good example, to be sure — may cause more women to opt to keep their babies instead of choosing to abort them. Why should he care? If it’s really about women having “choice,” then is not one choice as good as the other? Is not the choice to keep the baby every bit as valid as the choice not to? Ah, but the doctor protests: the women might not be ready for the challenge of raising a disabled child. But so what? What does readiness have to do with it? I could have sworn the issue was concerned solely with choice, not readiness. If it’s really about women having “choice,” then can we really say that it matters if a woman chooses something for which she may not be entirely ready?

And if Dr. Lalonde insists that women must make informed choices, then would he support legislation mandating that abortion clinics provide information on alternatives to the procedure (e.g. Adoption services, parental support groups)? Would he support legislation mandating that prior to obtaining an abortion, young girls must seek parental permission and counselling? Would he support legislation mandating that prior to obtaining an abortion, women must view and/or read reference material about the development of the unborn child, and that they must be presented with images of the results of abortion as well?

Of course, it is unlikely that the doctor would support such things. So we must ask again: why his objection? Why does it matter if fewer women choose abortion?

As usual, Mark Shea has an excellent take on the matter:: “Golly, who could foresee that somebody who profits from death would want to have more death to profit from? And who could possibly have imagined that those who target a particular population for murder would come to hate that population in order to convince itself that the murders are justified and they aren’t committing grave evil? And who could have foreseen that somebody who defies this murderous wisdom and chooses to love a baby with Down’s instead of kill him would become a national lightning rod for all the guilt, shame, fear, and rage that comes from making this appallingly wicked choice? And who could have predicted that the very people who profit from the exploitation of this evil would continue encourage the hatred and tell soothing lies on behalf of the evil?”

Finally, the Shaidle suggests sending Dr. Lalonde pictures of your unaborted Down’s child, whom you very much love.

alalonde@sogc.com
phone extension 227

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada
780 Echo Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5R7

Tel: 613-730-4192
or 1-800-561-2416
Fax: 613-730-4314

I’d suggest sending him pictures of your unaborted child, period, O Reader.

The little guy is still an infant still, but he has become the focal point for a lot of seething rage and hatred from various quarters of the Left. I just learned that Bill Maher — supposedly a funny man — has taken to referring to Trig as “it,” a rather hateful polemic. And then, of course, there is this cretinous website.

Why is this? Why all this rage and animosity directed toward a simple infant?

I think, at some level, seeing Trig Palin up there, loved by his siblings and celebrated simply for the fact of his being alive, fills many on the Left with shame. After all, the Left is caught up in a contradiction. While they obviously support the rights of the disabled, and cheer things like the Special Olympics, they also support a woman’s right to on-demand abortion for any reason whatsoever. And one very common reason for abortion is the discovery that the unborn baby is less than perfect, thanks to some manner of genetic defect .

90% of Down’s babies get aborted. Ninety percent! As Michael Gerson notes:

This is properly called eugenic abortion — the ending of “imperfect” lives to remove the social, economic and emotional costs of their existence. And this practice cannot be separated from the broader social treatment of people who have disabilities. By eliminating less perfect humans, deformity and disability become more pronounced and less acceptable. Those who escape the net of screening are often viewed as mistakes or burdens. A tragic choice becomes a presumption — “Didn’t you get an amnio?” — and then a prejudice. And this feeds a social Darwinism in which the stronger are regarded as better, the dependent are viewed as less valuable, and the weak must occasionally be culled.

Most pro-abortion/pro-choice sorts tend to shy away from the reality of that which they support, but it’s the ugly reality of abortion. In other countries around the world (and in North America to a certain extent as well), abortion is being used for a different, but no less ugly, eugenic purpose: the elimination of female children because of social pressures which give preference to male children. In India, Pakistan, China, and many other nations, the birth rate for boys is unnaturally higher than that of girls…and it’s not hard to fathom the reason why.

Indeed, only a handful of dedicatedly pro-choice people can honestly admit the ethical dilemma that supporting abortion presents. Camille Paglia is one of these, and her summary of the issue is at once revealing and damning:

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

Paglia also notes that there is both room, and a need, in modern feminism for the pro-life perspective, contrary to all the naysayers who are busily crucifying Sarah Palin — Trig’s mother — simply because she is unabashedly pro-life, in word and in action.

To which, Vox Day adds this analysis:

This was my position before I became a Christian. I always believed abortion was murder, but then, murder is the way of the world. This is why the feminist position has to hide behind a whole host of specious reasons that aren’t capable of standing up to even the most cursory examination — there is, for example, no such thing as a right to one’s body or the government would not collect DNA evidence — and why Democrats consistently lose on this issue. Nearly every left-liberal blog I’ve read since Palin was nominated has blathered on about how her pro-life stance politically dooms her, despite the fact that she has 80 percent approval ratings in Alaska. Since her pro-life position is presumably well known to Alaskans [and since we can probably assume, in safety, that Alaskans have a fairly normal distribution of political opinions, and that they are not abnormally right-leaning -- Ken], we can safely conclude that, as usual, these left-liberals have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

It is their guilty knowledge of their immorality when judged by traditional and historical standards that lies behind the drive of the Enlightenment 2.0 crowd to attempt creating a new and better moral system.

And it’s that same guilt that drives this fanatical hatred not only of Sarah Palin, but of baby Trig as well, and then perhaps even more viciously.

I think this also explains why 17-year old Bristol Palin took so much flack from the Left when it was revealed that she was pregnant and would a) be keeping the baby, and b) would be marrying the father, Levi Johnston. The Left expected Palin to “reveal her true colours” and to act as they themselves would; they expected Palin to be mortified. They hoped that she would either cave in and insist that Bristol abort the pregnancy, or else that she would withdraw herself and her family from the spotlight until the “mistake” had been born and its mother duly married off.

In other words, the Left hoped to expose Palin as either a hypocrite or a narrow-minded bigot where women’s sexuality was concerned (a little bit of projection there, methinks?).

But Palin didn’t do that, nor did her family. Nor did the Republicans — instead, they applauded Bristol’s decisions, applauded Bristol herself, and applauded her husband-to-be who had summoned the courage to “man up” and accept his responsibility for the child he fathered.

And the Left ended up looking like the misogynistic troglodytes that they have spent the last umpteen years warning us all that the Right is comprised of.

A Rasmussen poll ranks her popularity highter than that of Obama — but let’s remember what’s happening here. Barrack Hussein Obama is running for President, while Sarah Palin is not: if John McCain wins the election, she will be Vice President.

The Republican VP pick, then, is more popular than the Democrat front-runner. Politics is not my field, but it seems to me that for Obama, that’s not a good place to be. Hard-core lefties are beginning to realize this, and some are even, as is traditional, threatening to leave the country should McCain and Palin prevail in the election.

And let’s be honest: a week ago, most of us had no idea who this woman was, if we were even aware of her existence.

To say that this has inspired fear and rage among the Left would be a vast understatement. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen such a broad spectrum of liberal-minded folk come So. Completely. UNHINGED. This website, a heartless mockery of Trig Palin’s Down’s syndrome is probably the most extreme example I’ve come across, but it’s hardly the only one.

Consider: Oprah Winfrey refuses to allow Palin on her show. The woman who introduced Obama to millions of American women, and who is ostensibly a champion of women’s rights and the advancement of women in all areas of the job market, including the political arena, will not allow the first woman on the Republican ticket to speak on her show. Even more egregiously, she will not allow the woman who will probably the first woman to hold the Vice Presidential (if not the Presidential) office in the U.S. on her show.

Indeed, supposed feminists have been forming ranks against Palin with a ferocity that makes no sense whatsoever. In an excellent column for the Wall Street Journal, Barbara Amiel (Lady Black) makes an excellent point (and not just when she compares Palin to Margaret Thatcher):

American feminists have always had a tough sell to make. To the rest of the world, no females on earth have ever had it as easy as middle-class American women. Cosseted, surrounded by labor-saving devices, easily available contraception and supermarkets groaning with food, their complaints have always seemed to have no relationship to reality.

Education was there for the taking. Marriages were not arranged. Going against social mores had no serious consequences. Postwar American women (excluding those mired in poverty or the odious restrictions of race) have always had the choice of what they wanted to be. They simply didn’t decide to exercise it until it became more fashionable to get out of the home than to run it.

Sarah Palin has put the flim-flam nature of America feminism sharply into focus, revealing the not-so-secret hypocrisy of its code and, whatever her future, this alone is an accomplishment. As she emerged into the nation’s consciousness, a shudder went through the feminist left — a political movement not restricted to females. She is a mother refusing to stay at home (good) who had made a success out in the workplace (excellent) whose marriage nevertheless is a rip-roaring success and whose views are unspeakable—those of a red-blooded, right-wing principled pragmatist.

The metaphorical hair stood up on the back of every licensed member of the feminist movement who could immediately see she was a monster out of a nightmare landscape by Hieronymus Bosch. Pro-life. Pro-oil exploration in Alaska, home of the nation’s polar bears for heaven’s sake. Smaller government. Lower taxes. And that family of hers: Next to the Clintons with their dysfunctional marriage, her fertility and sexually robust life could only emphasize the shriveled nature of the one-child family of the former Queen Bee of political female accomplishment.

Mrs. Palin’s emergence caused a spasm in American feminism. Caste and class have always been ammunition in the very Eastern seaboard women’s movement, and now they were (so to speak) loading for bear. Sally Quinn felt a mother of five had no business being vice president. Andrea Mitchell remarked that “only the uneducated” would vote for Mrs. Palin. “Choose a woman but this woman?” wrote Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer, accusing Sen. McCain of using a Down’s syndrome child as qualification for the VP spot.

The hypocrisy was breathtaking. Only nanoseconds before the choice of Mrs. Palin as VP put her a geriatric heartbeat away from the presidency, a woman’s right to have a career and children was a shibboleth of feminism. One always knew that women with views that opposed those of official feminism were to be treated as nonwomen. To see it now out in the open was the real shocker.

Other left-wing commentators haven’t displayed even as little restraint in their open contempt as the likes of Sally Quinn have. Indeed, Mark Steyn correctly notes that based on their responses to Palin, feminists and progressives — supposed champions of working mothers and of shattering “glass ceilings” wherever they can be found — seem to have “as narrow and proscriptive a view of what women are permitted to be as any old 1950s sitcom dad,” and all because Palin is openly Christian and ardently pro-life.

And when those criticisms ring hollow, Palin’s detractors turn instead to her “downscale” appeal, noting that she’ll certainly make the Republicals more popular with “the lower class” voters, while simultaneously alienating “the upper class” voters.

Leave it to Mark Steyn to note that one would “be surprised how crowded it is down at the “downscale” end.”

And remember: all this rage and animosity has emerged within the last week, and then in response to a woman John McCain picked at his presidential running mate, who was — prior to that point — all but unknown to most Americans, and who was enjoying an 80+% approval rate with the Alaska electorate as their governor.

John who? That’s almost what this campaign has become. And the Left are soiling their pants over it.

Every so often, something I write gets wildly misinterpreted. NH provides us with a decent example of what I mean when I say this, in his (?) response to my recent article concerning Bristol Palin, the daughter of presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin. For those who have been living under a rock since last week, Bristol is, at age 17, pregnant. She will be keeping the baby, and will be marrying the father. Moreover, she will be doing both with the full love and support of her family, as has been pledged in a public statement by the Palins.

Not the most ideal of situations (teen pregnancy never is), but certainly not the worst of circumstances either.

So you’d rather she NOT get married and go on welfare?

You Obama nuts kill me.

You’re willing to support some dangerous racist fringe candidate and attack a woman who’s kid did something she had little control over.

Shame on you all.

It would seem I am being mistaken for a supporter of Barrack Hussein Obama, an allegation which even a cursory search of this site should dispel. Perhaps it would be beneficial to re-state some of that which I wrote previously.

Firstly, the point of my writing was to note a disagreement I had with the opinion of another blogger, albeit one with whom I usually agree. I noted, correctly I think, that there was a moral argument to be made in the case of Bristol’s pregnancy: pregnancy out of wedlock is not something which should be encouraged, and is (in fact) wrong. That she is pregnant does, in fact, indicate that Bristol Palin has made some poor choices in her life. I think we’re within our rights to note as much.

But that’s also where our rights end, in that regard. At the end of the day, what has happened? A teenager made the choice to sleep with her boyfriend, and she got pregnant because of it. This is her mother’s fault…how? Yes, her mother is ardently pro-life, to the point of putting her money where her mouth is and choosing to carry a child with Down’s to term. Yes, her mother is pro-abstinence, and supports teaching abstinence as a part of sex-ed in schools. And yes, legally speaking, Bristol Palin is still the responsibility of her parents, and will be for another year.

She’s still her own person, and she made a bad choice. I don’t see how her bad choices reflect poorly on her mother. Some have speculated that Sarah and Todd Palin have been lax in their duties as parents to impart good sex-ed to their children. Maybe they have been lax — we cannot and do not know — but even if they were, their daughter still had a choice to make between right and wrong, and chose “wrong.” And as to the matter of the possibility of the Palins having been lax in teaching their daughter about sex…well, I come back to the observation that she is still her own person.

As my wife noted previously, one of her sisters is pregnant (indeed, at the time of this writing, I may already be an uncle) out of wedlock — this despite being raised by devout Catholic parents, and despite receiving (I am told) education about sexuality and sexual morality within that framework. The best a parent can hope for is that the lessons imparted to children will, somehow, stick. But there is no way to know for sure, and sometimes even those children raised in the most optimal, moral fashion will choose to go astray. That’s. Life.

And given her situation, I do think Bristol Palin is making the best choices she can. She will not be seeking an abortion¹, she will be getting married to the father of the child, and she will be doing so with the full love and support of her family. She’ll have a tough life ahead, at least initially, but she stands a better chance of making it work than the welfare mamas that Kathy decried in the post that I was responding to. And while it’s still not good that Bristol is pregnant at this early age, and then out of wedlock, it is good that she is making the right decisions now.

And no, I don’t think it would be better for Bristol to remain unmarried and go on welfare.

I didn’t say that explicitly, but I did note that Kathy is exactly right that we should want “people better than ‘tacky and low class’ in the White House.” But really, given the respective examples of Sarah Palin and Barrack Obama — the latter of whom defended his stance on abortion by stating his desire to protect his daughters from being “punished with a baby” if they should happen to make a bit of a mistake in the sex department — who is the one who is really tacky and low class? Sarah and Todd Palin, with their messages of accepting responsibility, reminders of just how difficult the road ahead will be for their daughter, and emphasis on the importance of the love and support of family in such times? Or Obama’s “screw now, abort later” attitude?

Who really has the Hamilton ghetto attitude?

Kathy notes that she is happy that Bristol has chosen not to seek an abortion, less happy that she has chosen to wed. I don’t share this view: I think both are positive steps, and I think she will grow up quite a lot thanks to both of them. Bristol Palin will indeed have a tough road ahead. But she will have the loving support of her family, she will have a child to nurture and love, and she will have a husband who may just turn out to be a decent sort who will love and care for her “till death do they part.” Stranger things have happened, and as fates go that one is not so terrible at all. Bristol is unlikely to become another welfare baby mama…and that is a good thing.

And in the end, I don’t think Bristol’s pregnancy will be detrimental to the McCain/Palin (or, as George Jonas suggests, Palin/McCain (can’t we flip the ticket?)) campaign. If anything, it will increase the already broad appeal that Palin has with the Heartland voters. Even many liberals are noting the brilliance of Palin’s selection:

“We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling,” said Camille Paglia, the cultural critic. “That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.”

…

“Good Lord, we had barely 12 hours of Democrat optimism,” said Paglia. “It was a stunningly timed piece of PR by the Republicans.”

At the same time, Palin’s appeal on the “traditional values” scale couldn’t be higher, I don’t think. She hunts and is a member of the NRA. She has five kids, all with the same husband, to whom she has been happily married for 20 years. She’s a former teen beauty queen runner-up, he’s an oilpatch roughneck and commercial fisherman. They’re both active churchgoers. My goodness…John Mellencamp could not contrive a more “All American” couple on his best day. And here’s the best part: it’s not uncommon to find her youngest two children in her office as governor of Alaska — Trig, the youngest, even has his own crib therein, a point David Warren did not miss:

To the people who work hard for a living; who pay taxes instead of collecting food stamps and subsidies; who face the vagaries of life with gratitude for existence, and take their lumps and setbacks in their stride; who raise multiple children instead of perhaps one designer child; who go to church on Sunday, and believe on Jesus; who volunteer for civic tasks, donate money to real charities, help each other materially in distress; who otherwise mind their own private business and expect others to mind theirs; and who, among other quaint customs, love the fresh air, and indulge such pleasures as hunting and fishing, through which they acquire a sense of stewardship over the land — Sarah Palin is the bee’s knees.

…

That she could wind up as President, inspires a gulp — with a Down’s syndrome kid in a playpen by the executive desk in the Oval Office. If God were to contrive a pro-life statement, it might look like that.

And let us not forget to mention the whole “Margaret Thatcher of the Frozen North” vibe that even a cursory glimpse at Palin’s record in office makes plain. She took on the corruption of her own party, even to the point of resigning from a six-figure-salary position when adequate action was not taken. She then ran for election against a popular incumbent and won, despite the fact that elements of her own party actually held fundraisers for the other guy. And she has consistently shown no tolerance whatsoever for corruption or money-wasting projects. Yes, she supports drilling in the wildlife reserves in Alaska…but by the same token, she is no friend of big oil either: she signed into law a massive “windfall tax” levied against oil developers in the state.

1) Ace remarks upon something interesting about Bristol’s pregnancy, balancing it against the statistics for unexpected pregnancies in the general population, and against the general pool of children of other presidential candidates (and those of their running mates).

Although it would be unnecessarily cruel and invasive to wonder about which specific daughters of previous presidential and vice presidential candidates may have had an “invisible pregnancy” — that is, one terminated by abortion — it’s less invasive to simply take the cohort as a group and play the percentages game.

Saletan here, for reasons I would call “mystifying” but are anything but, restricts the possible candidates to those between ages 17 and 30 when their fathers stood for election, rather than stood for election and then served, which is an utterly contrived parameter designed specifically to exclude Chelsea Clinton (who was of course dating during her dad’s term, and was 16 when he ran for re-election) from consideration. Note how they yet bend over backwards to refrain from smearing a child whose parents they like.

Nevertheless, that’s a minor quibble, and if Saletan had to do that to get his piece published and/or not send liberals screaming blue murder, fine, we’ll work with his transparently contrived parameters. There’s no particular reason we need Chelsea Clinton in the cohort.

Doesn’t matter. Might be even better if we didn’t name any particular names listed at all (just ages) and just dealt with the presidential daughters as pure actuarial abstractions, anyhow. We don’t care which of the presidential and vice presidential daughters may have become pregnant; that’s their business.

We only care about the likelihoods that one or several of them have been pregnant, “invisibly,” at some point, whomever they might be.

An unintended pregnancy rate of 6 to 7 percent, in a population of 37 women, means two to three pregnancies per year. Even if you discount the rate further, on the grounds that these are the wealthiest and best-educated families, the notion that none of these young women got knocked up before their parents’ nominations or elections is—pardon the term—almost inconceivable….

Most unintended pregnancies in the higher income and education brackets end in abortion.

Remember that before you judge or poke fun at Sarah Palin. She’s not the candidate whose daughter messed up. She’s the candidate who didn’t get rid of the mess.

Have all the presidential and vice presidential daughters really all been either abstinent, infertile, or extraordinarily well-disciplined in using birth control properly, even during those fumbling and reckless late teenaged years? Extraordinarily doubtful.

Bristol Palin is an anomaly, and is a first, and is noteworthy. And she is, I suppose, therefore worthy of media commentary, but not for the reason they insist–

She’s the only one who decided to have her baby rather than abort it.

Ace goes on to note that if we don’t just restrict the sample population, above, to daughters, the numbers only become more damning when weighed against the statistics.