When the Right is Wrong and the Left is Right

Please excuse my little play on words but there’s meaning behind this title. But it has real meaning and significance because, for the last 20 years we have been indulging in black or white, either or thinking (today younger people favor the term “binary” but it’s 100% the same meaning). Mean what you say and say what you mean, dammit.

Either/Or, Black or White thinking is evidence for cognitive deficit, nothing more. So if a person wants to appear stupid, that’s the way to go. “Binary” loyalty is what I’m talking about: about 30% of adults in America are “loyal to” the Democratic Party and about the same percentage are “loyal to” the Republican Party. Fortunately we have about 42% of American voters who decide not to support any given party or at least a specific office holder when they can be proven to be correct in their thinking and action. We Independents act as a kind of buffer between Democrats and Republicans, being loyal to neither of them.

Case in point: the so-called Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. (49 years ago).

“Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.

The decision struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws. Roe fueled an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. It also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication.”

Okay now the conservative-leaning 5 members of the Supreme Court are reportedly preparing to “strike down” the earlier decision because “conservatives” believe that the federal government should violate a woman’s right to decide whether or not her unwanted pregnancy should be medically terminated. The opposite tack was taken by the 1973 version of the Supreme Court: government should have only limited ability to infringe the right of any pregnant woman to decide whether or not to continue her pregnancy to term.

Here’s where the first contradiction in conservative beliefs takes hold: conservatives all believe in limiting the power of government but here they are insisting that government should infringe on that right to decide and make the decision “yes” when it comes to allowing pregnancies to come to term. Contradiction!

So given that Conservatives are being radically inconsistent and that standing up for pregnant women’s right to decide whether each pregnancy is each case may be harmful you see at once that the Right is wrong and the Left is right.

Also, given that the original position for forced live births of every child comes from the Catholic Church is must be taken into consideration that the Vatican is a recognized city state located inside the boundaries of Italy. Since when do Americans allow a foreign city state dictate to American women what they must do if they become pregnant? It’s not a big jump to realize this violates U.S. sovereignty “by the back door.”

Roughly 22% of the population of the United States is Catholic. Catholicism is the largest religious denomination in the country with approximately 77.4 million members as of 2017. Okay — there is no way that 22% of the population can be allowed to assume control of any issue in the United States. The fact that there are other branches of Christianity which also have some radicalized “fundamentalists” with the identical belief still doesn’t add up to 50%. Close but no cigar.

One of the oft-encountered arguments of the American fundamentalists is based on the question of when a fetus gets to be born and of course fundamentalist want no limits on government’s ability to infringe this particular right. (Another contradiction given their equally strong stand for the 2nd Amendment.). I’ve even seen claims showing they believe that even at the molecular level, DNA has “the right to be born.” If you can find a more ridiculous claim, please let me know.

And we (Americans) are not going down the same path taken by Islamic dominated countries, either. If you can read and see, you know what’s happened in every Islamic dominated country and that result is unacceptable. Violence breaks out among the Sunni and Shia sects of that “unified” religion with regularity.

The other Big Fix regarding the Supreme Court is how it’s kept at full strength. It’s kept a full strength (9 sitting justices) through political appointment proposed by the presidents who happen to be in office when a vacancy occurs. “Approved by Congress” is therefore also a matter of which party is currently in the majority. And of course that may be a Republican or Democrat majority and we also know they have their own sets of often contradictory beliefs and policies.

Instead I think it is time to make the choice between candidates for the Supreme Court up to the people through elections. It should never have been a “for life” position in the first place. It appears that it will take an Article V Constitutional Convention to accomplish this but there’s already a nearing-successful drive to have one of those. We’ve had about 16 Constitutional Conventions since 1789. A big deal but far from unique and far from impossible.

So in summary we can see this is really a situation where the Right is wrong and the Left is Right.

But this is just in the current episode of “As The World Turns.” Stay tuned for the next episode because, dammit, there will be one.