uk

We’ve been doing this column for two and a half years now. The driving force and the inspiration for skipmaclure.us is my editor, Dee. She’s the unsung hero behind the scenes that makes this whole thing work.

Like myself, she has a full time career, making this conservative outreach a labor of love. Dee’s a rare creature. She’s a rock-solid conservative in a country that has surrendered itself to the opiate of government cradle-to-grave entitlements, known as socialism. I’ve learned much from her about the nuts and bolts of everyday life under the ‘soft tyranny’ which is the British social welfare system.

She has related stories to me such as entire extended families, none of whom has ever held a paying job. The ‘dole’ has become trans-generational. You have more and more people in the UK living off of smaller and smaller productive segments of society. It brings to mind something that the ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money”.

European style socialism is communism light. By its very nature it lacks the fierce entrepreneurial spirit that has imbued the people of America with the indomitable will to achieve, and instead drowns the people in a deluge of government regulation and ever increasing demands for more and more taxes, a crushing burden on citizens and the economy. Beginning to sound familiar?

The citizens of Europe have been beaten down by political and social class systems that our forbears left behind for the new world. That’s what socialism does… it destroys, it never builds, it takes and never gives. It destroys the heart and soul of nations.

Our mercifully brief encounter with socialism, a la Barack Hussein Obama and the DeMarxist clown college, has America up on its feet and raging. The message… and it’s resonating throughout this land… is that we will not tolerate ‘government as usual’. Politicians of all stripes have been using America and Americans as their own private fiefdoms for far too long.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s as good a way as any to describe the mood of the country going into the 2012 elections. If the ObaMarxists thought they got their clocks cleaned in 2010… well, as we used to say in the Corps… Stand By…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011

[Edit]: A summary that exposes deeper ramifications:

New Scientist, a popular site with over 3 million unique visitors a month, initially responded to the nation's first abortion ban based on fetal pain in April 2010 with a simple "briefing" that wasn't widely repeated throughout the web. The article focused on discrediting Nebraska's 20-week abortion "Fetal Pain" restriction as "debatable."

Late last week, New Scientist followed up (HT Tabitha Hale's Amplify) with a direct refutation of the "pain claim" by citing a UK study that had been picked up by UPI and the AP for mass distribution.

This study has subsequently appeared in Time, CBS, The Money Times, MSNBC, and The Washington Post.

The headliner for these articles on the UK study generally state, " Fetus Can't Feel Pain  Before 24 Weeks." What these articles aren't telling the public is that this study advocates absolutely no regard for the pain (and therefore treatment of pain) of the unborn before or after 24 weeks - throughout the duration of the pregnancy, in fact - even for corrective procedures performed on fetuses in utero, something that is typically done here in the United States.

In the United States, we have our own studies concluding the opposite of the UK study. Methods of administering fetal anesthesia are widely discussed. This is the neonatal care standard we've practiced here in the United States as our technology advances. Neonatal care is a profession.

The widespread dissemination by the leftist mainstream media of this worthless UK study that can readily by discredited by medical studies and medical methodology accepted and practiced here in the US flies in the face of reason -- so much so, one can easily assume why abortionists would be interested in dismissing the pain of the littlest ones.

Back in April, Nebraska passed the first-ever "Fetal "Pain" abortion bill -- the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (LB 1103 ) -- to prevent the abortions of fetuses older than 20 weeks...

...by an overwhelming pro-life majority of 44 in favor and 5 against. The governor wasted no time in signing the measure into law.The law portends a fresh challenge and new look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases, which led to the virtual legalization of abortion on demand. The Nebraska law applies a different standard – that of the unborn child’s ability to feel pain - for restricting abortion, while the high court used the standard of what they then considered to be point of fetal viability.

The Supreme Court considered fetuses "viable" beginning at 24 weeks when deciding Roe v. Wade, a mistake subsequent Justices would argue :

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued in a 1983 decision that Roe was on a "collision course with itself." She said that improvements in technology would continually push the point of fetal viability closer to the beginning of the pregnancy, allowing states greater opportunity to regulate the right to an abortion.

Nebraska's LB 1103 would be is the first state to regulate abortion according to the interests of the baby, not according to the interests of the mother:

"The Nebraska Legislature took a bold step today which should ratchet up the abortion debate across America," said Julie Schmit-Albin, Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life in a statement.

"LB 1103 creates a case of first impression for the courts to acknowledge the capability to feel pain as a compelling state interest to protect those unborn babies from an excruciatingly painful death.”

The legislation bans abortions after 20 weeks of post-fertilization age except in two cases: first, when the pregnancy puts the mother in danger of death or “substantial and irreversible” physical harm to a major bodily function. The second exception allows an abortionist to perform an abortion in order to increase the probability of a live birth, or to preserve an unborn child’s life and health after a live birth.

This is important, because this law shifts the argument from the focus of time restrictions for would-be aborting mothers to the focus of the effects of the abortion itself on the fetus -- from the interests of the mother to the interests of the child. It forces society and the courts to admit the human-ness of the fetus and consider their suffering in a very real death.

To pass LB 1103, Nebraska cited the 2004 testimony of Kanwaljeet Anand from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center who testified on the federal partial birth abortion ban (subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007):

Kanwaljeet “Sunny” Anand, a pioneer in the study of fetal pain and now a professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, testified in 2004 on the federal partial birth abortion ban that after 20 weeks gestation, an unborn child would experience “severe and excruciating pain” from an abortion.

The pain may even be more acute than it would be for older humans, as some research indicates their immature nervous systems have not developed coping mechanisms that help the body better endure pain.

The law notes that unborn children have been observed to “seek to evade certain stimuli” in a manner that “would be interpreted as a response to pain.” Additionally, the bill says unborn children exhibit “hormonal stress responses to painful stimuli” that were reduced with the application of pain medication.

Abortion supporters want to call that evasion of "certain stimuli" a reflex action, similar to a knee-jerk responding to a tap on the knee or a finger removing itself from a heat source before being sensed by the brain.

When Nebraska passed LB 1103 in April of this year, New Scientist.com came out with a 2-page rebuttal to the law's fetal-pain argument. The site claimed that changing the terms of abortion is inappropriate because pain experienced by fetuses as young as 20 weeks is "far from certain." The site's most vile assertion is the lie that "before most abortions the fetal heart is stopped by a drug – usually digoxin or potassium chloride . The fetus cannot feel pain after that."

Using digoxin or potassium chloride on fetuses did not begin to be seriously considered by abortionists until after the Supreme Court upheld the federal partial birth abortion ban in 2007, and only then for the abortion of fetuses older than 20 weeks. Even so, an "interest" by those who slaughter the unborn does not constitute a widespread, enforceable mandate.

Potassium chloride is also the same chemical used for the lethal injection of prisoners, a practice New Scientist claims is inhumane .

So while New Scientist will consider the inhumane manner of death of a condemned person, this same publication will blatantly dismiss the pain of the unborn as merely "reflexive," "irrelevant," and even "completely irrational."

Last week, New Scientist reiterated their support for abortion by using a study by the UKs Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to refute the opinion of American researchers. Keep in mind that the UK has full-blown socialized medicine , where abortion on demand has been rising for years and where medical procedures are pre-determined by committee according to "harms and benefits" -- or cost-effectiveness.

New Scientist cited a "working party report " that argues that since the pre-born fetuses exist in a state of unconsciousness, that consciousness is needed to experience pain. Therefore, pre-born fetuses, regardless of gestational age, "even after 24 weeks" would not benefit from pain medication.

"After 24 weeks there is continuing development and elaboration of intracortical networks" .. "Such connections to the cortex are necessary for pain experience but not sufficient , as experience of external stimuli requires consciousness . ..[T]he fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero ... [ i]s in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness ... [that] suppress[es] higher cortical activation in the presence of intrusive external stimuli. ..

[I]n the light of current evidence, the Working Party concluded that the use of analgesia provided no clear benefit to the fetus. ... [F]etal analgesia should not be employed where the only consideration is concern about fetal awareness or pain . Similarly, there appeared to be no clear benefit in considering the need for fetal analgesia prior to termination of pregnancy, even after 24 weeks , in cases of fetal abnormality.

New Scientist ends their article with

"It is only after birth, with the separation of the baby from the uterus and the umbilical cord, that wakefulness truly begins."

According to the RCOG, only once that umbilical cord is cut can a child experience pain, never before.

By citing this wretched study, the argument of New Scientist and all pro-abortion advocates is clear:  pain experienced by fetuses in utero is hardly significant, and whatever ground the pro-life camp makes, the tide must be turned around, 360 degrees. Therefore, define fetuses as sub-human, never requiring pain medication, regardless of gestational age.

If the Supreme Court were to agree with the RCOG study, the issue of viability in Roe v. Wade would be moot. The experience of pain would be the true threshold, and that would only occur once the umbilical is cut when everyone can hear the newborn cry.

Abortionists like these subscribe to ideas similar to this one:

When a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, it doesn't make a sound.

Since these abortionists aren't there in the womb with the baby to see it writhe in pain, the baby's pain must not exist.

It would follow that neither does "a baby."

Crossposted at Redstate.

Most of you who are regular readers of this column are aware that my hardworking editor Dee lives in the UK. Living in a socialist environment has given her a unique perspective on the ills of this failed and failing system. The same system (or worse) that the DeMarxists would see instituted here. Unfortunately for them they have run smack dab into the American people. We do not want your socialism. We will not permit you to take our country and freedoms from us.

What follows is Dee’s reply to a critic of the US, excerpted from a chat forum from the island of Guernsey, a British Crown Dependency off of the coast of France. I thought that it would prove instructional. I love the English people, but they have been so inculcated with leftist dogma and institutionalized welfare that all vestiges of independent thinking outside the socialist envelope is lacking along with the spirit of independence. Dee has taken them on and as a Brit she is in a unique position to tell it the way it is.

Forum post in reply to a critic of the USA, 05/19/10, whynotguernsey.com :

Let’s take your points in turn here. First, socialism. Socialism never has and never will work in any country. It’s been tried many times, always with the same result – financial and social disaster. A free economy is the only tried and trusted system. Ok, you get the propaganda a la Michael Moore and Cuba. Have you seen the everyday hospitals that the ordinary folks get treatment in? Socialism means greater state control and big government which swallows up the hard-earned money of the people through taxes.

It would be great to have a university education without the debt to repay….. uh, but who’s going to pay for it? The government I guess – that means us, the taxpayers. I can’t recall anything in the Bill of Rights about further education being a right given by God. If it was, and health care, then surely the three things that all humans need to survive should be free too? Who can survive without air, food and water? Only one of these is free (at the moment, although the left are trying to change this with cap and tax).

No one is refused emergency treatment in the US, insured or not. True, insurance is expensive. That’s the fault of the system which allows huge lawsuits by slip-and-fall lawyers. 60% of a physician’s overheads is legal insurance. The GOP has promised tort reform along with interstate insurance policies to cut these costs. Obama, instead, is dismantling the best medical services in the world in favor of a NHS style one-size-fits-all system. It would be a punishable offense not to purchase health cover from the government. Still sound so good?

Oh, that increasing US debt you mentioned is partly due to the staggering cost of his health reforms, I believe it was one trillion at the last count. Medicare, which provides a wonderful service for seniors, will be cut to help cover the cost of his new scheme. It’ll probably finish up like the UK, where a senior might not be worth the cost of treatment.

While the national debt is rising (naturally, under a socialist), the country can still afford to contribute 25% of the IMF fund, money now being used to bail out EU countries, and possibly Britain (again) soon. To say that the US is one of the poorest countries when it is still the world’s largest economy is a total contradiction.

To quote you: “Teaching something as fact, when it is not proven is wrong. It is ultimately brainwashing, and should be illegal.” Do you agree, then, that global warming should not be taught in schools? It is certainly not proven, in fact the evidence gets flimsier as time goes on.

As for California, as much as I love it, it is a financial and social disaster, thanks to the liberals that have controlled it for so long. Again, it is a victim of socialist policies – unrestrained spending, high state taxes that have forced businesses to other states and too much regulation and bureaucracy in Sacramento. Is it any surprise that there is a backlash from the people?

The difference between the US and Britain is that the US was founded by the people, with government as their servants. This current administration is taking a route towards Euro-socialism, where they believe that rights are granted by government. That won’t wash in the US, as the current mid-term elections are proving. At least they have seen the danger before it sinks into the abyss completely.

When the US economy is rebounding, the UK will still be increasing everyone’s taxes to cover a failed health system, an ineffective police force (now that its teeth have been taken away completely) and development of cleaner, eco-friendly power sources. Well, that’s what the BP ad said, while they screwed up the entire Gulf coast.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Barack Obama's snub of Gordon Brown was mystifying.  But the consquences are obvious.  Let's connect the dots:

He has a reputation for being the archetypal senior civil servant professional, unflappable, and, above all, discreet.

But Sir Gus O'Donnell risked sparking a transatlantic tiff today with an imprudent remark about Downing Street's relations with the White House.

The head of the civil service, Sir Gus said the handover to President Barack Obama's administration was severely hindering preparations for next month's G20 summit.

In an extraordinary blunder, the usually-guarded Sir Gus said no-one in the U.S. Treasury department was answering telephone calls.

He said it meant the Government was finding it 'unbelievably difficult' to hold discussions ahead of the meeting of world leaders in London.

Even though the world was in the grip of the worst economic crisis in decades - top of the G20 agenda - Number 10 was having trouble getting in touch with key personnel, said the Cabinet Secretary.

'There is nobody there,' he told a civil service conference in Gateshead.

'You cannot believe how difficult it is.'

The comments will certain anger Sir Gus's paymasters in Downing Street, as well as raising eyebrows in irritation in the White House.

Do you really think that discreet old pro is going to say something that will "anger" Gordon Brown?  Uh, no.  It is just payback.  To start with.  Kind of like a brushback pitch.  

I really enjoy reading the work of converts -- people who were formerly on the left but through some epiphany became conservatives. They have the most keen insights into what animates leftist thought, and they also understand the tactics that the left uses to advance their causes. David Horowitz, who edited Ramparts in his youth, is probably the best known.

Janet Daley of the UK Telegraph is another such voice. She has a wonderful column this morning that wraps up the Obama administration's response to the economic crisis, and pairs it with Gordon Brown's leadership.

She notes that while Obama may not meet the textbook definition of a doctrinaire socialist, he meets her own practical definition, one with which Great Britain, particularly in the 15 years before Margaret Thatcher, became all too familiar:

You may quibble at my use of the word "socialist" to describe people who generally present themselves as friends of the free market, and who have repudiated full-scale nationalisation (even of the banks at a moment when that option might have appeared irresistible). So, as someone who spent her formative years on the Left, let me make clear that I am using the word to designate those who accept the primary tenet of Marxist ideology: that the economy can and should be controlled by the state.

Like Krauthammer last week, she calls Obama on the odd, revisionist story he told during his speech to Congress, a statist vision of the causes of economic upheaval:

...he actually seemed to suggest that the present crisis had been caused by America's failure to develop a universal health care system and to attend to the impending environmental disaster of global warming ("we made the wrong choices"), and that by focusing on these matters a way can be found out of the country's economic problems.

Is he quite mad? Does he really believe that the banking crisis and the recession were some kind of divine retribution for the absence of universal health care, and excessive carbon emissions? Or is he suggesting that a practical solution lies in spending money on health care and the development of alternative energy sources?

No, not "quite mad," just clever, in a ham-handed way.

I grew up with the Left and what this looks like to me is a power grab: a seizing of the moment by the forces which always believed in state domination. The Left sees an opening here, first for telling a critical lie about the historical origins of this crisis, which was propelled as much by the Left-liberal determination to spread prosperity through easy credit to the poor, as by the greed of bankers. And then, out of the wreckage, to restructure the economy along the lines that it always wanted, complete with central controls over the pay levels in private financial institutions.

We are being led to believe that public debate should be all about economic mechanics when it should really be about political principle: just how many freedoms do we want to lose while governments pretend that they are the solution?

On the lighter side, another UK voice worth reading is James Delingpole, whose book, Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn't Work!, is a real hoot. Delingpole is no convert, but he understands the Obama attraction well, and has good fun comparing it to the Blair years to let us know what's ahead in the former colonies. It'll make all but most humorless Obama acolytes laugh, too. Among other things, he chronicles the left's campaign to ban fox hunting, "the only sport," he notes,  "FACT - where alcohol actually improves your performance."

Gun confiscation enthusiasts, led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, argue that we would virtually eradicate violent crime if we rid our society of guns.

There is no modern, Western society more gun free than Great Britain. Legal guns are in the hands of the State: The police and the military. Private citizens are forbidden to own guns.

Has this ended violent crime in this society? NO.

In the past year there have been 20,000 serious crimes commited at knife point. In fact panic has set in British society and politicans are now thrashing about for solutions to the problem.

Here's an idea: Allow law abiding citizens to carry guns. That would reduce the number of crimes.

The net has been abuzz recently with the recent success of David Cameron's Conservative Party in the recent English local elections, and how it impacts, if at all, the fortunes of the Right here in the United States. David Brooks  went so far as to declare the English Tories the leader of conservatism worldwide, a role traditionally held by the American Right. If I may be as bold as to offer my own humble thoughts and the lessons and cautions of the Tories recent victories and prospective majority.

First, the cautions, what must Americans seeking to understand the English Conservative Party's successes keep in mind.

1) Cameron's Tories are benefitly greatly from being the opposition, a luxury that the GOP may have in Congress but not in the White House and in the US, most people focus on the White House when determining who to blame for problems and economic downturns, a result of our wonderful presidential system. So unfortunately the GOP cannot campaign on not having been in power for 11 years like the Tories can. We have plainly seen in poll after poll and indeed vote after vote how independents and soft GOP voters are migrated to the Democrats when given a palatable alternative, something the Democrats have been stellar at since 2006, tailoring candidates perfectly for districts. Voters are tired of the GOP or more accurately what they perceive to be the GOP. Bush fatigue is real, as apparantly Labour fatigue is real on the other side of the Atlantic 

2) English Conservatism is different. Ever read National Review's The Corner blog and found a post which seems oddly out of place on a conservative blog? I have, and more often than not the "offending" post is from one of the English born writers on the website. Why is this? Well, the simple fact of the matter is that English conservatism is a different type of conservatism. The type of conservatism that exists in England is far more class conscience, than US conservatism. The GOP has become more and more the party of the white working class whilst the same is not true of the English Tories, who draw their base clearly from the monied classes of England (and I do mean England, the Tories are still pathetically lacking in support in Scotland and Wales.) In this vein, the Tories lack the broad support that the GOP enjoys from religious conservatives and gun owners, a support which all but guarantees the GOP 40 percent of the electorate and most the South and Plain states. Additionally, the welfare state is more firmly entrenched and comprehensive in Britain than in the United States, for example the Tories present themselves as defenders and more compentent administrators of the socialised National Health Service, whilst the American Right is in the position of opposing Democrats efforts to introduce government health care at all. All these factors lead to conclusion that Cameron's new Conservatives are more socially libertarian while at the same time being less economically libertarian than the American Right could ever be.

So, are we to conclude that Cameron's success offers no solutions to the position the GOP finds itself in? By no means. Cameron has shown two excellent traits in particular that I will explore in my next post