On this national day of mourning, a.k.a. Inauguration Day, I am going to offer a radical idea on how to fix Social Security. Ready? Here it is.
We stop sending Americans to get killed.
Consider: At the end of “Schindler’s List,” it is stated that due to the 1100 Jews saved because of Schindler, the result was 6000 Jews who lived that would never have been born.
So over a period of ten years back in the 1960s, we lost 50,000 Americans. I’m not mathematician enough to calculate the number of Americans who were never born as a result: Americans added to the workforce, whose salaries would have contributed to social security, or who would have founded companies to hire people whose salaries, etc. But I would not hesitate to guess that would be a lot of warm bodies, all paying in to the program.
But they were killed or never existed. If, as Bush and Company believe, life begins at conception, then certainly they must give a nod toward conception that won’t occur.
Apparently, though, not so much. Because there’s already 1300 names on Bush’s list. So that’s…what? Another 6500 Americans who won’t be born over the next thirty years? We can’t even begin to wrap ourselves around the immensity of the tragedy involved in the sheer waste of young life. We can barely comprehend the “Daily News” headline that reads “Iran Next! Secret US commando teams already inside to identify potential targets, report claims.” So instead we must dwell on the pragmatic aspects, because the human horror and waste of American lives (not to mention Iraqi lives ranging anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000) is just too ghastly to contemplate.
Fix Social Security. Stop Bush’s list from growing.
PAD
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That is why I made absolutely no implication towards that point. Deliberatly withholding food is a blatant crime against humanity. These kids are starving as a consequence of, at least in part, of this country’s actions. We do bear some responsibility for this situation.
If the details of this story are true (and I am assuming they are), then yes, we do bear some responsibility. However, the insurgents bear far more. The insurgents have far more to gain by this being true than we do, and they will do everything they can to see it continue. And that is a blatant crime against humanity.
Iowa Jim
Actually, concerning Bush’s words relating to his actions, I found The Daily Show’s “Bush vs. Bush” very informative. I think it’s still on their site at http://www.comedycentral.com
I think your rose-colored glasses need a cleaning. In just one year alone, 1968, there was the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (which, by the way, killed nearly 550 U.S. soldiers in ONE WEEK, and wounded more than 2,500 more); the My Lai massacre; the Martin Luther King Jr assassination; the Robert Kennedy assassination; the bloody, savage riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; a series of nation-wide bombings and murders by the Weather Underground and other assorted anarchist groups; the horrible race riots (and resulting fires and looting) in almost every major city in the country that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses; the election in November 1968 of Richard Nixon; and plenty of other unrest and mayhem that bubbled around the U.S. that “idyllic” year.
PAD never claimed that the 1960s’ were idyllic; his point (as I perceived it) was that some very positive events, trends, and developments took place during that particular decade. You are quite correct in pointing out that alot of negative things took place during the same period, but that doesn’t nullify the positives, now does it? Every single year in recorded human history is marked by triumph and tragedy, and neither is nullified by the other. I can say that 1945 was a spectacular year because Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were finally beaten and the extermination of European Jewry halted, but in that same year, millions of people died horribly and unnecessarily.
Fond recollections of a certain point in time in no way implies rose-coloured glasses.
Maybe those 30 million aborted babies would’ve been useful…
John, you assume that any significant number of those 30 million babies were viable. It’s really silly to characterize abortion as just a method of birth control (not that you were specifically, but in general I’ve noticed that opponents of abortion seem to think that’s what happens). A lot of abortions happen because the fetus is severly deformed or has other major genetic problems, or in some instances might be “crack babies”, or would kill the mother during birth. It’s not a black and white issue.
Monkeys.
So, your proposition is that abortions are performed almost exclusively for medical reasons and that these fetuses would not have been able to live their lives. Do you have anything to substantiate that? Whether you believe abortion is murder or not (I’m undecided), if we’re going to have this discussion then we ought not to discard 30 million lives.
i don’t have any statistics handy, but I never said that abortions were performed almost exclusively for medical reasons. I just don’t like the characterization of abortions being performed almost exclusively as birth control. I’m also saying that “30 million” lives is a bit misleading, because many of them would not have lived anyway, and in the context of the current social security discussion, many of the ones that did live would not have been able to be productive members of society and thus contribute to S.S. Again, I haven’t dug up an exact numbers, I’m just trying to point out that the whole issue is muddy when you use a statistic or a number that is generalized (i.e. 30 million abortions were performed) instead of more specific (x number were performed for medical reasons, while z were performed for šhìŧš and giggles.).
Monkeys.
Monkeys, just what number (somewhere below the 30 million number) would be an acceptable number of non medical necessary abortions for our society to practice?