The Right Wing's Idea of "Freedom"

[paft.livejournal.com]

From Statepress:

Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.


‘I believe we live in America. We don’t live in the Soviet Union,’ Lesko said. ‘So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.’

Jezebel points out that Arizona is an “at will” state. This means that bosses in Arizona will be able to fire women for being depraved enough to take birth control pills to prevent pregnancy.

As we all know, what made the Soviet Union infamous were not the gulags, its treatment of dissidents, and the rigid control over the press, but the fact that women could take pills for the purpose of contraception without fear of losing their jobs over it.

Yes, here it is -- the right wing's idea of "freedom" is a society where a woman has to ask her boss' permission to use oral contraceptives.

Does anyone else find this more than a little weird?

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Forced collectivization in the USSR produced a country-wide deliberate famine, which in places like Ukraine and Kazakhstan verged into genocidal territory. The AAA did nothing of the sort, unless you're claiming FDR killed 10 million Americans and the Commie history writers wrote this out of the history books.

The massive military build-up only started before the war in the FDR Administration, we did not have anything of the sort into the fall of 1942. The USSR, by contrast, had the largest army in the world before WWII (and spent the first years of WWII showing why quantity minus quality is a handicap. Namely in that this huge army was saddled with obsolete weaponry, and that its leadership thanks to the Purges had no idea what it was doing.

Centralized planning is not the same as the New Deal, the Gosplan worked on a very different pattern. Namely that it literally specified to factories in Bumfuck, Siberia, to produce Quantity X or it'd be a bullet in the brain. The New Deal, by contrast, focused on public works and the establishment of a skeleton welfare state. Nowhere did FDR tell General Motors to make 200,000,000 automobiles or he'd ship them to die in interior Nevada. Stalin, by contrast, did this quite a bit and paid the price for it in 1939-42.

My inability to see that reflects reading on the Reconstruction era, and repeatedly raising points about the White League and Red Shirts and things like the Hamburg and Colfax Massacres you have never answered at any point, which leads me to the conclusion that you are either approving of said massacres by omission or you're selectively illiterate. Because I have brought them up to you in virtually all of these threads (saying virtually because it may not have been in alll of them and there has been deafening silence from you.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

An addendum to that first point-from some statistics I've seen IIRC in Montefiore and other post-1991 sources the death toll in Kazakhstan was as much as 25% of the total population. Unless the AA killed a quarter of the population of an entire US state in peacetime then you indeed made mass murder the moral equal of FDR's Administration. And this is without factoring in the Holodomor. Unless the AA deliberately starved American farmers, you are indeed proclaiming mass murder is the equal of something it is not remotely akin to.

And now I predict you will in fact claim FDR *did* murder 10 million Americans through the New Deal in lieu of admitting you were wrong. Or alternately this will be another conversation to come up in the future because you'll claim your direct words meant nothing of what I'm responding to without ever saying what they do mean.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Dude don't bother, I'm still waiting for him to get back to me on how "large parts of The New Deal were dismantled before the war" (WWII).

Apparently he believes The New Deal never happened because legislation that was struck down in 1933 and then put back up in subsequent years in nearly the exact same form with some wording changes and upheld by the exact same SCOTUS "doesn't count".

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it happened in 1938/1939 after the second dip. I'm pretty sure I did get back to you on that.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

actually, they happened before the second dip. In fact, they caused it.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

A common myth, yes.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

that they happened after the dip? Yes.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Do you have a response on my asking you whether or not the AA, which you have said was 100% identical to Soviet collectivization, depopulating US states to the tune of a quarter of their population being butchered wholesale by the US Government? To be 100% identical to Soviet collectivization which is what you said, this is what's required, and why I stopped having any respect for you as a human being when you made the original statement.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I did so here (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1381463.html?view=110078295#t110078295).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Your link didn't work, so I'm going to assume this was accidental and not a confession that you really think FDR did deliberately starve to death millions of Americans during the New Deal, which is what Soviet Collectivization did, and what you said was 100% identical in both cases..

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Well, it might work here (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1381463.html?thread=110078295#t110078295), or you can hit parent a few times. You replied to it with a tangent that I'm not bothering with.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Why do yOu think Jeff should be killed?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

When did I ever say anything of the sort? I said he's the one that claimed it's an 100% accurate comparison of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act and the Soviet Collectivization policy. He's too afraid to admit he's wrong on the Internet. How the flying FUCK did you get he should be killed anywhere from any of that?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I absolutely, solemnly, wholeheartedly affirm that I will never, ever think that disagreeing with someone on matters historical over the Internet is a reason they should be killed or threatened in any way. It's a digusting, immoral, illegal, puerile abuse of a discussion matter, and I in all manners, ways, and fashions disavow any statements that could be remotely attributed as such.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually it didn't happen then or later. In 1938-9 Americans weren't focused on the New Deal so much as the latest Hollywood films, and certainly weren't in the least concerned about Japan's barbarism in Asia and the beginning of Germany's barbarism in Europe. In fact, as I remember, the 1940s version of the Tea Party vehemently and totally opposed US entry into either war because it would cost money.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

No, you didn't. You told me that FDR was packing the court (he didn't) and that the SCOTUS was illegitimate and thusly the New Deal legislation doesn't count because you personally believed it was unconstitutional.

Go ahead and tell me how The New Deal was dismantled in 1938/1939. You never told me about that.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm gonna need a cite on that.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

On what? Your claim that FDR was packing the court? Or your idea that the US government hasn't been following the Constitution since 1933? I'm not sure how to search for these things. I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't 100% positive.

And I'm still waiting on your explanation vis a vis the whole 1938/1939 thing. You're the one that offered it as an excuse.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Specifically, that I said what you think I said. I'm sure you think you're 100% positive, but underlankers thinks he is too, and the record doesn't support him at all.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I asked you to show me how to search for these things. Interestingly, you're not denying that you said these things, but that I'm not "understanding" you correctly. I'll take that as a tacit admittance and ignore your usual diversionary tactics until I'm informed of how to search for the comments in question.

And I'm still waiting on your explanation vis a vis the whole 1938/1939 thing. You're the one that offered it as an excuse.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And just to be clear-is this stating that FDR and the New Deal was Stalinist, meaning the forcible collectivization of US farms, a massive military build-up, a secret police empowered to murder its way through everything it wanted to, a gigantic set of slave-labor camps that were the biggest employer in the system, and a system of centralized economic planning with mandated state quotas, and NKVD-led enforcement of said quotas. You are saying that this was the FDR Administration, am I correct?

To which you responded in the following fashion:

Pretty much. The only parts that aren't 100% accurate are the secret police and the slave-labor camps. I'm not sure the internment camps actually involved slave labor.

No, the reality of your own words supports me.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually FDR threatened to pack the Court and thus ensured it backed down on a lot of what it was doing, he just never actually packed it. If Jeff actually said he went ahead and did it, it belongs in the "AA slaughtered a quarter of the population of US states" category of nonsense.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know he threatened to do it, but jeff went on to say that not only did he do it, but that the subsequent SCOTUS upheld legislation that the previous SCOTUS tore down, even though I looked at history and noticed that not a single Justice had changed in that period of time.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Ah. So that belongs with the "Agricultural Association was identical to the All-USSR Terror Famine" school of nonsense.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't say I wasn't surprised that he again played the coward and once again proved my point that he either doesn't understand or doesn't have the intellectual capability to understand his own words.