Planned Parenthood vs the NRA: Constrasting models of freedom
Economics, not culture wars, may determine this election - but culture wars need to be understood on their own terms.
Last Modified: 29 Apr 2012 14:35
San Pedro, CA - In the 1960s, progressive movements in the US made unprecedented breakthroughs in achieving formal freedom and equality for women, blacks and other minorities, shattering long-standing moral frameworks of subjugation. The powers of subjugation did not go away, of course, but their instinctively presumed morality had been shattered.
In reaction, the right began serious mobilising during the following decade, aimed at reclaiming the "moral high ground", in what would come to be known as "the culture wars". The National Rifle Association was a key organisation in promoting a rival libertarian definition of "freedom", while the anti-choice movement claimed it was "pro-life", not anti-freedom. Both were deeply inflected with racism, largely unrecognised by millions of their followers. This election cycle brings potential harbingers of a long-brewing shift.
On the one hand, the killing of Trayvon Martin highlights the NRA's paranoia-driven promotion of vigilantism, undermining the very foundations of the social contract that secures the totality of all our liberties against just such violence. On the other hand, the anti-choice shift of focus to birth control, trans-vaginal ultrasound and the like, makes the pro-choice perspective inescapable: the basic issue really is: who will control womens' bodies - themselves? Or remote, unaccountable male power-wielders of church and government? Connecting the two is the question of which organisation represents and defends the more authentic and robust model of freedom - the NRA, or Planned Parenthood?
Inside Story Americas - Is there a war on women's health care?
The NRA's recent political activities have pushed it increasingly into fringe positions that even its own membership does not support (as revealed in a 2009 poll by Frank Luntz) - but without adverse consequences, so far. While the NRA claims to only be protecting gun rights of virtuous "law-abiding citizens", it opposes crucial provisions to weed out dangerous individuals - provisions its membership strongly supports. It does this largely by promoting a paranoid vision of "gun-grabbing" others who cannot be given an inch, even to keep guns out of the hands of potential terrorists, convicted felons or those with potentially dangerous mental problems.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/20124289267406755.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Come on now, you're 4 posts in and I have the pleasure of your wisdom, is that it?
Lucky me.
