Big Sky Cairn

Yale senior, Aliza Shvarts wanted an art project that would provoke debate and spur discussion. So, she chose a topic that was sure to piss off everyone.

Over the course of 9 months, Shvarts artificially inseminated herself multiple times and then used herbal abortifacient drugs to terminate the pregnancies. She then documented the resulting miscarriages using video and photo. She even preserved samples of the blood.

The display of Shvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Shvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

Though I have my doubts, Shvarts insists that the project was not done for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

So let me see if I have this straight. She violated her own body, risked her own health and killed her own children to incite a discussion about one of the most talked about issues of all time? But Shvarts argues that the conversation shouldn’t be about abortion. She argues that the project is about the relationship between art, beauty and the human body.

Sure it is.

The idea that a woman would recruit “sperm donors” and impregnate herself only to terminate those pregnancies is abhorrent. That she would then celebrate her lack of perspective, not to mention he lack of conscience, is deeply disturbing.

The only common ground in the debate about abortion is the understanding by both sides that a woman’s decision to have an abortion is not one to be taken lightly. Shvarts and her “art” trivialize not only abortion but demean the millions of women who agonize over the decision to terminate a pregnancy. Her exhibit is also a horrific insult to any woman who has had a miscarriage or is unable to conceive a child.

I am appalled by Shvarts actions, but I am enraged by how easily she can dismiss them as necessary and unimportant. Her actions demonstrate an unfathomable callousness. I fail to comprehend how a person could see this shocking display as art. And even though I am a pro-choice Republican, I find Shvart’s actions insulting to my very humanity.

The sick part is, she will probably enjoy that I wrote this post.

Update: Though Yale University is claiming that Aliza Shvarts project was a hoax, Shvarts is standing by “her work” even explaining her method further.  Hoax or no hoax, this chick is one sick human being.  Her callous disregard for the legion of women who read this story and were brought to tears by memories of miscarriages and abortions is truly mesmerizing.  The fact that she was and still is unable to comprehend the damage that this “art” could do to herself and others is astonishing.

Jeff over at Speedkill has responded to my Global Warming Axioms. His contribution is constructive and well-articulated - although I do disagree with some of his points. I appreciate the opportunity to engage him in such a debate - since it is actually the debate itself that my axioms are concerned with. Note that none of my axioms make a declarative statement that global warming is false. While I am a skeptic, my skepticism is not held in those axioms. What my axioms serve to do is make discursive room for my skepticism in the face of suggestions that there is no room for debate - that the question is answered. I intend to challenge the way the left carries out the debate on catastrophic man-made climate change. And to illustrate my point, let me skip to the last sentences of Jeff’s post:

Stop debating what’s already been debated and start talking about policy. Start promoting solutions.

One of the rhetorical foundations espoused by proponents of debate is that all meaningful argument must derive from common ground. This is why discussion between pro-life and pro-choice, evolution and creation are so pointless. The sides are coming to the debate with a completely different set of assumptions that shape their beliefs. Those differences alter how they view the same set of facts and even the very rules for how the argument should be waged. Without a nugget of common ground, their ability to persuade each other dissolves and the point of argument - beyond intellectual masturbation - is nullified.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday on Montana Headlines, we took note of Montana Democrats distancing themselves from Sen. Obama over his recent comments at a San Francisco fundraiser. 

While there has been a lot of ink spilled over Obama’s “guns and religion” comments, today’s piece by George Will is particularly worth reading.  We’ve been enjoying Will more of late — he is drifting back toward his more old-fashioned conservative roots.  Like the recently passed dean of conservative writers and thinkers, William F. Buckley, Jr., Will has been increasingly critical of the Iraq War and the abandonment of the principles of limited government and fiscal discipline by many Republicans in recent years.

In this column, Will reminds us that Obama’s statement is just part of a continuum of American liberal thought that has a long history:

When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, “Yes, but I need to win a majority.”

He quotes Michael Barone as writing:

“Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture - the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting.”

Will continues by saying that Obama’s comment is in line with an approach pioneered by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter: 

The tactic is to dismiss rather than refute those with whom you disagree.

Obama’s dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.

Hofstadter dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders - a “paranoid style” of politics rooted in “status anxiety,” etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension.

One recalls Lionel Trilling’s famous comment in the post-war era that American conservatives had no ideas, only “irritable mental gestures.” 

Anyone who has read Albert Jay Nock, Donald Davidson, or John Don Passos knows that Trilling was exaggerating about the right having a lack of intellectual credibility (but to be fair, all one has to do is read Jeffrey Hart’s New Criterion retrospective on WFB’s mentor at Yale, Wilmoore Kendall, to know that the “irritable” part wasn’t exactly groundless.)   

Such attitudes toward the right are convenient — the progressive/liberal wins debates by default because the opposition simply has psychological “issues” and is not worthy of debating.  And so the endless task of reminding the public that there are options — preferable options — to the solution offered by Sen. Obama.  That solution is a sort of progressive ”end of history” notion in which we will be swept up by the rapturous winds of change and converted to the true faith.  And because it is so inspiring and wrapped in colorful “post-partisan” rhetoric — we aren’t supposed to notice that it’s just the same old leftist pablum, preached with the same aloof hauteur that we have come to know so well.

The balance of the United States Senate majority hung on 3,562 votes right here in Montana. For some reason - probably because national media decided to focus on the 8,805 margin of victory in Virginia which is closer to Washington, DC and easier to cover - this story hasn’t been told.

On November 7, by a margin of 3,562 votes, Montana replaced Republican Conrad Burns with Democrat Jon Tester and in doing so gave Democrats the one seat they needed to put them over the 50-50 mark and into the majority.

So when the question is posed, can Obama win in Montana? Yes, he can. Or more accurately, McCain can lose like Burns did. In the waning months of the 2006 election, I did some volunteer work for the Burns campaign that included some unpleasant phone calls. I lost track of the number of people I talked to who considered themselves conservative Republicans, were proudly voting for Rehberg but were not going to vote for Burns. Statewide, this sentiment was enough to cost Burns the election.

I hear a lot of the same comments from Montana conservatives about McCain - they will never vote for him, they’d rather not vote. This is a serious problem for McCain, just like it was for Burns. I’m not saying that voters did anything wrong here - the truth is, it was Burns’ fault that he lost these voters and he should have been more careful.

At the same time, the stubborn refusal to vote for the more conservative candidate had real consequences. 3,562 of them gave Harry Reid the Senate Majority. The consequences for the Presidency over the next four years are going to be even more profound.

The questions therefore, are whether McCain can win back support from the conservative base or, barring that, whether he can pick up enough votes from the independent center as he loses from the right.

I commented before about how irrelevant Jim Hunt’s first-quarter fundraising was.  What I failed to mention was that the small margin of victory Jim Hunt managed to achieve was also in a quarter that saw both major Democrat presidential candidates visit Montana - a banner month for the Party.  Given this, Hunt’s numbers look more anemic than ever.

As I mentioned before, global warming is not a scientific hypothesis since it can’t be proven or disproven. A convenient side-effect of this reality is that global warming can be used to explain any evidence after the fact. Lots of hurricanes? Global warming. Not many hurricanes? Global warming. Convenient political platform.

Of course, the unprovable nature of global warming also relegates it to the realm of things held true by faith (another of my axioms). There’s a name for when a faith is preached in a classroom as if it were scientific fact. Brainwashing.

William Gray, the well-known Colorado State University hurricane forecaster, routinely uses the annual National Hurricane Conference as a platform to bash global warming. In a statement to Florida Today, Gray argued that the scientific consensus on global warming is bogus — and “a mild form of McCarthyism has developed toward those scientists who do not agree” that mankind is in danger.

“We are also brainwashing our children on the warming topic. We have no better example than Al Gore’s alarmists and inaccurate movie which is being shown in our schools and being hawked by warming activists with little or no meteorological-climate background,” Gray wrote.

Read the whole article.

Last night, I was watching Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC when I got the shock of my life. Before me was Hillary Clinton telling the story of how her father taught her to shoot a rifle when she was little girl and following the telling with a passionate defense of my right to possess a firearm. Given Hillary Clinton’s record on this issue, a zero from Gun Owners of America, an F from the National Rifle Association and a 100% from the Brady Campaign, I was stunned by her comments.

She considers possession of a firearm a right? She understands my passion about the issue? She respects that many Americans pass the lessons and responsibilities of proper gun ownership onto their children as part of their heritage?

Is this not the same Hillary Clinton who in 2000 wanted every handgun in America registered and the records kept in a national database? Who in 1999 wanted to require that guns and ammo be stored separately (vastly limiting their effectiveness for self-defense)? Who voted against legislation that would have prevented victims of crime from suing gun manufacturers?

The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

Keep the faith, brothers and sisters in Hot Air.  And don’t forget to tithe.  Until it hurts.

A lot.

Amen.

Today the tax man cometh, and he is not gentle.

Of course, we’ve still got more than a week until Tax Freedom Day.

Expect Jim Hunt’s camp to come out ecstatic about out-raising Denny Rehberg in last quarter’s fundraising (is that article title a typo?). Certainly the Democrats will try to spin this as a sign that the tide has turned and Jon Tester Jim Hunt is going to send that bumbling Republican Conrad Burns Denny Rehberg packing in 2008.

Truth be told, though remember Kennedy did pretty well against Rehberg in his first quarter too, but his fundraising dropped off after that. Once your regulars max out - which they are going to do no matter what - every new dollar becomes harder to raise. It’s a bit like selling Cutco Knives - once you burn through the family and close friends - who are more or less obligated to buy a set of knives - the sales get a bit tougher.

We’ll see how Hunt does next quarter. Especially with realists in the Democrat Party saying Denny’s around until he chooses to leave in 2012 and optimists saying he may be defeated as early as 2010. Yeah, people are going to be flocking to give this lost-cause a chunk of their hard-earned money.