'Fetal Pain' Measure Sent to N. Dakota Governor - Yahoo!
"I believe it has taken a lot of the oxygen out of the room when it comes to other challenges we are facing this session," Schneider said. "This is another bill that will be litigated — that much we know."
The article here is not so much the point. My personal feeling is that if there is a medical procedure available, humans will use it. If they're going to use it, the only responsibility the government has in deciding when or how is that of ensuring that all medical procedures offered by anyone are the safest available and that they're performed by highly qualified practitioners. I believe it's up to patients to decide what available treatments or procedures they're interested in having done, and up to doctors to decide which ones they'll offer.
But this quote applies to all things political, all the time. We're distracted with issues that will never satisfactorily be decided as long as any given side believes it's the government's duty to come down in their favor - abortion, gun control, marriage in any form, whatever the moral-issue-du-jour might happen to be - and we get so busy arguing about those things that not only do we fail to pay attention to what else our government is doing, but when we finally do wake up and smell the fungi we've divided ourselves into millions of tiny factions incapable of uniting ourselves with the common goal of repairing our system. It's time for the government at every level to let autonomous, responsible adults do what they're going to do - assume they can handle themselves - and deal with those who are not autonomous, or not responsible, or just plain no good. The federal government needs to be dealing with inter- and intranational issues like infrastructure and our relations with other countries. State governments need to be dealing with interstate and intrastate issues along the same lines. County and city governments are the best-equipped to know what's necessary in their communities, they're the most accessible to their constituents, they're the most closely affected by the governemental choices they make. A person can often move out of a city he or she doesn't care for without having to change jobs, but to move to another state is often prohibitive, and another country nearly impossible, especially since we're all gettin' so greedy with our stuff.
Which brings me to another interesting point: A certain subset of people on Earth have this tendency to move to a place and just decide that everything that was there before is inferior. We seem to be taking this mindset to space, this idea that, well, if it's there and it doesn't serve us, we'll just get rid of it... Mm-kay. Y'all go right ahead and do that. I think that's why that same subset of people is often resistant to the idea of intelligent extra-terrestrial life. We feel like we've proven our superiority here on Earth, we are the 'dominant specie' it's so important in our minds to be, or so we believe at least, ha ha. :D Oh, that's funny, but anyway, if we run into someone who can make an intelligent (to us) argument about why we might want to be a little polite and not just think we can come in and take all their stuff, well then we'll have to reevaluate... everything. I mean, if we're not the supreme beings of the universe then... what are we? (Perhaps a functional and necessary aspect thereof, but no, that's never good enough for us, is it. It has to be about who's better or more than, or superior to. Whatevs... Again, y'all have fun with that. :D )
But I was talkin' about social white noise. There's a lot of it, and it distracts us from paying attention to what really matters, which is gettin' the beam out of our own eye before we go after someone else's mote. (If that quote is not familiar, look it up, Matthew 7:5. :) ) I'll gladly let you stick your finger in my eye and grab that speck of dust, Mr. President or Ms. Congresswoman, when you get that log out of yours and I can trust your vision enough to let you. Until then, keep your laws where they belong, in the business of keeping our country out of the shit-hole, which does not involve telling adult Americans what is acceptable or what we're allowed to believe in but rather trusting that the people who make up your country are capable of and interested in doing the right thing. I realize there is much evidence to the contrary, but when that's what you focus on, that's what you get. Have some faith in your people and we will strive to deserve it, or continue to treat us like irresponsible imbeciles and it seems that's how we'll behave. Stop the white noise and start an honest, intelligent conversation; you might be surprised what you learn.
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