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Editors note: This commentary is by Judith Levine, a writer and activist from Hardwick.

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue said it eloquently and succinctly last week: Access to safe, legal, affordable, universally accessible abortion is not a single issue or a social issue. It is a proxy for women to have control over our lives, our familys lives, our economic well-being, our dignity, and human rights.

Criticism in advance of the rally did not move Sanders to change his plans to appear with Mello as part of a national unity sweep for the Democratic Party. Instead, he and party leaders doubled down on their unnecessary decision to get behind a flawed local candidate. These apologists noted that in spite of personal opposition to abortion, Mello has pledged to uphold the law protecting womens access to abortion if elected. But when Mello was in elected office and as a legislator had the opportunity to uphold the law, he voted to change it in order to make abortion more onerous to obtain.

A week later, in The Nation, D.D. Guttenplan provided a more nuanced picture of Mellos role in Nebraskan reproductive politics, interviewing some pro-choice activists in the state who argued, essentially, that it was more pro-choice than outside critics had made it look. But before the rally, neither Bernie nor the Democrats had even thought to look into the issue. Having failed to look, they then refused to retract their endorsements once they got wind of Mellos numerous radical anti-abortion bills and votes. And, having relegated womens rights to an afterthought, they exacerbated the oversight by turning it into political principle.

Sanders, both as candidate for the Democratic Partys presidential nominee and now as its de facto progressive torchbearer, has distinguished economic equality from social issues, including abortion rights the former a set of principles from which no party member, particularly no progressive, may diverge, and the later from which they may. While granting wide latitude to Mello, Sanders recently dismissed Jon Ossoff the Democrat who nearly flipped former Republican Rep. Tom Prices Georgia district as not a progressive, in part because he didnt talk about single-payer health care.

The Democrats must cease demanding that women compromise our economic, social, sexual and existential equality in the name of party unity.

The party has largely done the same. In response to the Mello dustup, even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi reiterated that while the Democrats are officially pro-choice, they welcome members who are anti. Arguably, granting its imprimatur to anti-choice Democrats is as damaging as Republicans straight-out attack on abortion, because it makes opposition to choice look like a widely held, bipartisan position. In fact, a recent Pew study found that a majority of Americans support Roe v Wade, including 84 percent of Democrats. Meanwhile, according to Gallup, only 73 percent of Democrats support a federally funded single-payer health care system, one of Sanders apparent criteria for progressivism.

In fact, for women theres no distinction between reproductive freedom and economic equality; a large and growing body of literature confirms the link between the ability to determine whether and when to have children and educational, social, and economic benefits for women. Access to abortion affects poor women disproportionately. As Sejal Singh wrote in an excellent piece on Feministing:

Nearly 70 percent of women who obtain abortions live below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, often because they cannot afford to care for a (or another) child. . . . The landmark Turnaway Study tracked women across 21 states who sought but were denied abortion care; researchers found that women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.

Forcing women to have babies against their will was one of the vilest aspects of Americas foundational crime, slavery. And just as mass incarceration is a modern iteration of legal racial subjugation, the slow re-criminalization of abortion is the 21st century form of the sanctioned violation of womens bodily integrity. In 2015, 32-year-old Purvi Patel (not incidentally, a woman of color) was sentenced in Indiana to 20 years in prison for killing her baby in a self-induced late-term abortion. A judge overturned the feticide conviction but upheld a charge of felony neglect of a dependent; she deemed Patels 18 months already served as appropriate punishment.

The Democrats must cease demanding that women compromise our economic, social, sexual and existential equality in the name of party unity. And no one, not even St. Bernie, should be credited with the mantle of progressive if he does not defend womens reproductive freedom as an inviolable pillar of his or her values.

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Judith Levine: Progressives don't compromise on women's rights - vtdigger.org

There are actual chauvinists, who think women are inferior as a matter of principle, and then there are feminists, who assume the way for women to realize themselves is to emulate the masculinity of men. That leaves no one defending actual femininity. No one, that is, except for romantics such as myself.

Every view of gender is essentially religious, in that it isnt possible to talk about gender without getting to fundamental beliefs about what it means to be human. Progressives have already made their decision, with their ideology of gender fluidity and social construction. On the other hand, the general conservative perspective seems to be that man and woman are metaphysical realities before they are social constructs, and that man and woman complement each other in a deep and primordial way.

In the beginning, there was Adam; and because it was not good for man to be alone, the Lord created Eve out of Adams own rib. But maybe this was just the repetition of a more ancient trick? Before the beginning, there was the Lord. But it was not good for the Lord to be alone, so he made the woman called Nature out of his own rib. This fits the premise that humans are made in the Lords image. This is also a foundational and unabashedly religious understanding of the essence of gender.

Following Sren Kierkegaard, Ill suggest the human being is a fusion of two components: the spirit and the body. The spirit is inherently masculine, and the body is inherently feminine. (In that sense, it could be suggested that all humans are vaguely androgynous, given that both men and women are both body and spirit.) Although perhaps offensive to modern ears, a wide range of mythical thought strongly reinforces this vision. The Sun is a man, and the Moon is a woman; the Sky is a man, and the Earth is a woman; et cetera. Reality seems to be naturally poetic like that.

Man is tilted toward the spirit, while woman is tilted toward the body. Awareness of this is probably what led Albert Camus to write that in contrast to the nurturing ethos of women, men go whoring after ideas; a man runs away from his mother, forsakes his love and starts rushing upon adventure. And heres G. K. Chesterton on the matter: Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. Realism and idealismbody and spirit. Meeting in the middle, generating the living human soul: well, that could be called the project of romance.

Given that people who identify as transgender make up only a small fraction of 1 percent of the national population, why have they received such an absurdly outsized share of media attention? This is a good tip-off that theres something else going on. The transgender issue isnt primarily about transgender persons. Rather, it has become terrain that progressives want to claim, believing the existence of transgender persons vindicates their view of gender as arbitrary and fluid.

Never mind that transgenderism actually does quite the opposite. It is self-evidently obvious, for anyone who cares to think the matter through, that transgender could be nothing other than a form of severe psychosis. It is fundamentally a matter of a very serious misrelation between the mind and the body. I could hold the sincere and deeply felt belief that I am in fact a kangaroo. But no matter what I do, I will never be a kangaroo; it is not within the scope of possibilities of my nature to become one.

For that matter, I would love to have a self-concept that includes me having wings. But alas, the physical world will not cooperate. I must resign myself to the parameters of this human condition.

Transgender is thus not actually a thingfrom which it logically follows that progressives cannot use transgender persons as ammo for their own arguments about the nature of gender. I strongly suspect that for progressives actual transgenderpersonsmay have never been as important as the use of those persons as symbols.

This would explain why such progressives so blithely think it compassion to encourage a crazy person to jump off his own cliff. The conservative understanding would instead suggest that compassion consists of trying to talk him down from it. Thats because conservatives tend to believe that there is an objective thing called sanity, and that the attempt to break all limits inherent to the human condition will ultimately result in madness.

In a way, transgenderism can be understood as an apotheosis of progressive ideology. Progressivism is fundamentally about: one, the rejection of any concept of unchanging human nature; and two, loving ideas more than really existing persons. These twin impulses come to a frightening head when it comes to the progressives supposed advocacy for such deeply troubled human beings.

Its odd that such basic insights now meet howling demands for political correctness. This suggests men having forgotten what it means to be men, and that women have likewise forgotten what it means to be women. What else could be expected to happen, once people have accepted the idea that the concepts of man and woman are not founded on solid ground, and can be deconstructed at will? Progressives have reversed the categories: theyve chosen to identify psychosis as ultimate reality, and to consign to the realm of delusion the most basic facts of being a person.

Feminism has ruined everything. The point here is not, of course, to argue against womens liberty. In regions of the world governed by sharia law, actual feminismas in, a movement for the freedom of women to express themselves, pursue their dreamswould be a wonderful thing.

This isnt a question of whether women should be able to become doctors or pilots. Of course they should. But thats not the meaning of modern feminism. This is an ideology whose endgame is the abolition of gender altogetherand romance along with it. One symptom of this consists of D.C. McAllisters well-put observation that modern feminism, according to its own logic, automatically classifies all chivalry as chauvinism.

The effect is that of a poisoned well. There is never a strict one-to-one correlation between ideology and reality. Rather, the dominant ideology becomes the general air that everyone within a culture breathes, permeating and twisting everything through its lens in diffused and myriad ways.

What would many women actually dream of, if feminism hadnt told them what to want? Likewise, what would men think it means to be chivalrous toward women? The sad truth is that now we cant know, because people have been drinking this water for just far too long. The only way to go is forward.

The vision of gender Ive been describing is not prescriptive, which means it isnt a matter of telling any individual man or woman what to do with his or her life. This is a religious vision of genderand the whole meaning of religious liberty is that you can hold what ideas you want, express them without fear of revenge, and engage in free association with other like-minded folk. It would be both absurd and wrong to attempt to coerce or force anyone to adhere to this understanding of gender. The point, rather, consists of persuasion, seduction: create and express a thing of beauty, and hope people will come around to seeing it, out of their own free wills.

You cant negotiate with fanatics; for all their pretty talk, they have no real concept of living and letting live.

Unfortunately, this is not how the progressives tend to see the matter. They want to impose their own religious vision of gender on everyone else. If you dont agree with them, then you become a bigot by default. They want to punish people who hold heretical views through whatever means are available, including the levers of governmental power. You cant negotiate with fanatics; for all their pretty talk, they have no real concept of living and letting live.

The idea isnt to tell living men and women what to do. The idea is freedom, and to oppose a culture that is increasingly hostile toward the old-fashioned beliefs and methods for living in comfort within your own gendered skin. No one must accept this vision. But anyone who attempts to foreclose on it, give it no space to exist, surely must be resisted.

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Why Transgenderism Is Progressive Totem - The Federalist - The Federalist

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Posted: Apr 29, 2017 12:01 AM

THE GOOD (ACTUALLY GREAT)

A fifteen percent top tax rate for business and the repatriation of trillions of dollars of untaxed funds stuffed overseas is beyond good. And if there is a single President Trump tax proposal that should be embraced by progressives, this is the proposal they should embrace.

If corporate income is going to be taxed at 15% instead of 35%, corporate profits will explode. If corporate profits explode, the stock market should explode. Who are the largest holders of U.S. stocks?

Today, virtually every government pension plan is dramatically underfunded. These pensions have begun to squeeze state and municipal budgets and ultimately the required funding of these pensions will strangle the ability to provide public services in virtually every governmental organization in the United States. All services will be reduced including every public service, including police and fire. The thought of the tax dollars necessary to fund these pensions is absolutely mind boggling. The staggering amount of taxes needed would have to be paid through regressive taxes, sales taxes. There is no other source of funds that could make a dent in the state/municipal pension fund deficits.

Perhaps a reduction in the Federal corporate tax rate is the only way to right the governmental pension ship; those public companies are about fifty percent owned by the pension plans. A lower tax rate will increase the value of those stock portfolios and provide a onetime increase in the value for every pension plan in the United States.

The most monstrous and unforgivable legacy of progressive state and municipal governments is the unfunded government pensions that they have created. A fifteen percent corporate tax rate and return of trillions of dollars currently overseas may be the only possible solution to the progressive created problem of underfunded pensions.

And if there is anything wrong with the rest of America catching a break from higher stock prices, this author has no idea what it is.

And yes, a 15% corporate tax rate will keep more jobs and more business in the United States.

Winner, Winner, Winner.

"Climate Change" PageRemoved From EPA Website

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Progressives Should Love and, in fact, Embrace the 15% Corporate Rate - Townhall

MiloYiannopoulos has seemingly laid low in the months following his departure from far-right onlinepublication Breitbart amid his comments on pedophiles, but in the time since, he says hes already bankrolled millionsoff his provocative (leaning toward offensive) conservativestances.

On Friday,Yiannopoulos announced the launch of hismedia startup venture geared toward promoting conservativism and free speech while bashing anyone to the left of his far-right views. The business, MILOInc., will be based in Miami with a staff of 30, and itll act as a conservative talentpool of libertarian and conservative comedians, writers, stand-up comics, intellectuals, and more, YiannopoulostoldVanity Fairs the Hive.

And the best part? Yiannopouloss goal of thecompany, which has already raised $12 million from anonymous donors, is to contribute to his newfound pledge to use every waking moment of the rest of [his]life making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, and other professional victims a living hell.

This isnt some vanity nameplate on a personal blog, Yiannopolous saidin the press release. This is a fully tooled-up talent factory and management company dedicated to the destruction of political correctness and the progressive left.

MILOInc. will kick off its dive into conservative media with a livestreamed party dedicated to promoting Yiannopolouss new book on May 5, the event offensively named Cinco de Milo, a parody of the Mexican holiday.

MILO Inc. will also congregateatU.C. Berkeley, where its foundersspeech from earlier this year led tomassive rioting,for what Yiannopolous calls a week-long celebration of free speech. At the event, theyll hand out their inaugural Mario Savio Award for Free Speech, named after one of the leaders of Berkeleys Free Speech movement in the 1960s. Savios son has called the award some kind of sick joke.

Currently Yiannopoulos is MILO Inc.s main talent, basically meaning that the right-wing provocateur talkedinvestors intogiving himmillions to continue spreadinghis own progressive-hating rhetoric. But he told the Hive that he has access to an undiscovered talent pipeline of YouTubers and other bashers of political correctness, and he plans to expand MILO Inc. to include other of these personalities.

Essentially, it sounds like Yiannopoulos is looking to pump MILO Inc. withTomi Lahrens to his Glenn Beck (pre-pro-choice comments, of course)someone who is young, opinionated, and parrots his own set of ideals better than he does.

This generation thats coming up now have very different politics than most other generations. They love us. They love me, and Im going to be actively hunting around for the next Milo, Yiannopoulos said.

H/T Mediaite

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Milo Yiannopoulos's latest online venture will make lives of progressives 'a living hell' - The Daily Dot

Common Dreams

With Support Surging, Progressives Push Pelosi on Single-Payer Common Dreams But the time to act on the legislation is now, said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). In fact, it is "long overdue," she stated Friday. "Because of my family's harrowing experiences with failures of the American ... and more »

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With Support Surging, Progressives Push Pelosi on Single-Payer - Common Dreams