Emoting Over Thinking

     I recently saw this on Facebook, and its lack of depth in thought meant I had to respond. Obviously the abortion debate has been raging in recent weeks with several states passing laws that either restrict or outright ban abortion. I've seen the arguments (and more often insults) hurled back and forth across the aisle on this(had quite a number tossed inadvertently my way as well.) That said, let's think clearly about the first assertion in this post, that one can be "pro-choice" without being "pro-abortion". This fails on its face. This may seem black and white, but if you are for the "right" of a woman to "choose" to abort her child, them you are tacitly pro abortion. This type of mental gymnastics is akin to "I'm pro-choice but would never have an abortion myself." This is attempting to have your cake and eat it too. It's also pure emotionalism. To be "passionately pro-choice" means you aren't thinking about the issue or its ramifications, you're just trying to play both sides. Abortion is the ending of a life. This is scientific fact. There is no way to be "pro-choice" and "pro-life" at the same time. I may understand the sentiment, the libertarian ideal, but this is one time where radical libertarianism fails. I hate to make it sound like an "us versus them" mentality, but in this case it is sadly close to that. It comes down to this, are you for a woman eliminating the life growing inside her, or are you for protecting that life? All of the pro-abortion talking points and arguments fail when subjected to real scrutiny. It all comes back to convenience and a lack of taking responsibility for ones actions.

     Now, the "toddlers torn from their parents" canard. This didn't happen. This is all based on a single image falsely reported as a little girl crying in the night because the border patrol had caught her and her mother crossing the border. Fortunately the truth was later revealed, and the little girl was never taken away from her mother. In fact, the mother was the irresponsible one, taking the child from her father and siblings over his protest. https://beta.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/06/22/the-crying-honduran-girl-on-the-cover-of-time-was-not-separated-from-her-mother-father-says/?outputType=amp This is never reported as widely as the shock value stories. The other half "locking them in cages" also comes from a hoax started on social media. The original image shows another small child crying while behind the bars of a small cage. However this was a protest set up the parents of these children, and the "cage" was a fake. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/18/viral-photo-toddler-crying-miscaptioned-not-ice-custody/710396002/
The other images widely circulated, are generally from the Obama administration, and depicts children under reflective blankets in large pens. However, once the context is added, we find that these areas are temporary as they check the children for medical assistance placement in another facility that is closer to a dormitory. However, in the shallow thinking of most today this heinous, and history only goes back to January 20, 2017. Their are two reason for the separation of children from the adults they cross the border with illegally. First is that there is a standing law that children cannot be detained in the same facility as adults. This is for the safety of the children. Second, this also stops the rampant problem of "Coyotes", human traffickers, from smuggling people across the border. In fact, a recent report showed that at least thirty percent of the children brought across by "family" are completely unrelated! https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/dna-tests-reveal-30-of-suspected-fraudulent-migrant-families-were-unrelated So we see the premise of this second assertion is horrendously flawed, and a few minutes of actual contemplation and research shows us that we cannot simply shut our brains off and emote our way through life.

     Finally, we move on to the "scary guns" argument. Another one where a few minutes of thoughtful research would alleviate the ignorance of this comment. "Demand gun laws befitting the circumstances of our modern times". How wonderfully pedantic and vague. I get it, I'm asking a lot from a meme, but this is just ridiculous. Does it never occur to these people that the cities with the strictest gun laws have the highest gun crimes? For instance Chicago Illinois, one of the most left wing cities in America, had over 1500 gun homicides in 2018. They're currently on track to eclipse this figure, yet they have among the most strict gun laws in the nation. So what other piece of paper would stop this? What other law would you like for criminals to ignore whilst shooting law abiding citizens? When one breaks down the oft repeated "32,000 deaths per year" by firearm, you find that roughly two thirds of those deaths are either suicide (60%) and accidental discharges(3%). Those who advocate "common sense gun laws" are generally completely ignorant of how the system already works. For instance, all firearm purchases must go through a federal background check. The only exceptions are things such as a father passing a gun down to his son. While the federal government has dropped the ball numerous times in the last few years (Parkland anyone?) those who advocate for more gun control don't seem to realize it's the same federal government that would implement these laws. If they can't get the current ones right, why would we want to give them more of our civil liberties. (As a brief aside, the reason we Americans are supposed to be well armed is for protection from our own government should it ever turn tyrannical. Don't think that could ever happen? Do a quick search of what the Naxi's did to disarm the Jews.) Generally these people are the same folks that claim that Cops are racists and are just looking for an excuse to kill black people. Yeat out of the other side of their mouths they want Cops to be the only ones allowed to have guns? You see when you only emote, and you do not think, hypocrisy comes baked into the ideology.