There are some scenarios I don't like to blog about. Take, for instance, the murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly at the hands of Luigi Mangione. I saw little sympathy (as we did for Charlie Kirk). Brian was survived by a wife and 2 children. Yet Mangione has perversely become the poster boy for the politically oriented opponents of for-profit healthcare businesses. Via Google AI:
Sadly, political perspectives can obfuscate the tragedy of violent murder devastating any family. When I was young, one of my friends lost his Army dad during the Vietnam War. Personally, I opposed the Vietnam War; I didn't understand why thousands of young American men were being killed or injured in a nondefensive war. But I did not think my friend's dad "deserved" to die.
A similar point involves the Capitol cop (Byrd) murder of unarmed J6 protester Ashli Babbitt. I opposed the Trumpkin assault on the Capitol. But Babbitt did not pose a mortal threat to Byrd.. Leftists on X come out of the woodwork to attack Babbitt as deserving of losing her life for advancing her trespass in defiance of Byrd's warnings.
I think my post is probably a bit harsher than I would write now, but as my post suggests, I didn't expect Nicks to release a song like this. I don't think it charted on the Hot 100, but it did chart in the top 20 in digital song sales. My post got few reactions, even from my mostly pro-life relatives. I didn't know my new niece-in-law was a strident pro-abort, and she responded with a personal attack, ridiculing my point of view. Now, to a certain degree, I understand how many raised in a post-Roe America will reflect the ideological orthodoxy they were taught. I was surprised because I thought my nephew wanted more children (he has a son from his first marriage). We're no longer on speaking terms.
Finally, there's the MA resident Lindsay Clancy tragedy trial.. Lindsay allegedly strangled her 3 young children (5, 3, and 8 os.), suffering from postpartum depression. (She reportedly blamed the older children for interfering with her ability to mother the youngest.) The defense responded with a mental defect defense, which shifts the burden on the prosecution; with the MA McHoul precedent shifting the burden of proving criminal intent to the state. The trial ended up with a hung jury, with 11 jurors voting Clancy innocent, despite compelling evidence of the murder.
One of the subjects I often don't talk about directly that often is abortion. I'm the oldest of 7; yes, I was raised Catholic, part of my Franco-American heritage, with a paternal aunt who was a sister/nun and a maternal uncle who was a priest. I never heard the priests discuss the topic of abortion pre-Roe, and the subject was never raised at home. I stumbled across the word "abortion" in the newspaper and asked Mom what it meant. My mom gave a clinical definition without any judgment. I still recall my utter shock at the notion that any mother would choose to kill her own child. I remember saying to my mom in disbelief: "But Mom, that's murder! What does the Church say? It has got to be against this!" Even when I attended OLL, a Catholic college recently turned coed and run by sisters/nuns (I initially thought I had a religious vocation to the priesthood), I was even more shocked to discover that pro-aborts were everywhere. Even among my Latino classmates. I remember one guy asked me, "You don't think a woman has a right to control her own body?" SS and I finished our undergrad degrees in a dead heat for highest GPA in the college class; she was pre-med and a strident pro-abort. This had nothing to do with a desire to control women's behavior. For me, it was the ultimate violation of the libertarian non-aggression principle. For me, it's hard to understand the ideological principle of "choice" taking precedence over innocent human life. I had to deal with the reality of the SSs in everyday life, maintaining civility. I try to persuade in a positive tone, as in my daily blog post feature, "Choose Life." But I've gotten heat, even from other pro-lifers. A former nephew-in-law was an impassioned abortion abolitionist. I logged into my Facebook account and found my feed obsessively swamped with dark memes. (At some point, I realized I could toggle off my following option.) But when I raised concerns with my niece, he turned against me like I was worse than a pro-abort: I was a despicable"hypocrite". Eventually. I exercised de-friend and blocking.
But that wasn't my only experience with a crackpot relative. My youngest brother's first son, a UT engineering graduate who had divorced his first wife, started dating this Aggie graduate woman, probably at least 2-3 years, because I had met her at least a couple of times on annual holiday trips to visit my late mom . I never really talked to her. Around the time of their wedding, I had added her as a Facebook friend. In 2024, Stevie Nicks released a pro-abort anthem called "The Lighthouse". Having grown up during the Vietnam era, I was familiar with protest songs and knew that some favorite entertainers, like the Wilson sisters of Heart, were pro-abort. I also knew Stevie Nicks had reportedly aborted a child fathered by the Eagles' Don Henley (apparently the inspiration for the Fleetwood Mac song "Sara"). This seemed to be a reaction to the Dobbs decision (restoring traditional state regulation of abortion).
Even as I struggled to cope with an ideology that arbitrarily defined away the scientific fact of a preborn child's unique DNA, the pro-abort side was particularly uncivil. Some even sought to honor the connection of women who had aborted their children! They ridiculed pro-life arguments and sought criminalization of pro-life protest. etc. They exaggerated the Dobbs decision, which did not roll back abortion-friendly state abortion laws, especially in blue and/or purple states. There were no restrictions against pregnant women traveling to pro-abort "choice" states. Stevie Nicks brought back the images of coat hangers, the symbol of women resorting to crude, desperate methods to abort unwanted preborn children, and the like.
I don't like entertainers who use their platform to promote divisive political views. They may alienate up to half of their fans. In my case, I bought multiple Floodwood Mac records and some solo Stevie Nicks recordings in earlier decades. It's not that I opposed Nicks' right to another point of view.. This is a different case from Seals and Crofts' "Unborn Child", which hurt their career. That song tries to persuade pregnant women to choose life; they suffered radio bans, boycotts, and concert protests. Nicks' song was in-your-face.
I think my post is probably a bit harsher than I would write now, but as my post suggests, I didn't expect Nicks to release a song like this. I don't think it charted on the Hot 100, but it did chart in the top 20 in digital song sales. My post got few reactions, even from my mostly pro-life relatives. I didn't know my new niece-in-law was a strident pro-abort, and she responded with a personal attack, ridiculing my point of view. Now, to a certain degree, I understand how many raised in a post-Roe America will reflect the ideological orthodoxy they were taught. I was surprised because I thought my nephew wanted more children (he has a son from his first marriage). We're no longer on speaking terms.
The Dobbs decision was fully consistent with our federal system of government, and the incorporation doctrine underlying the original Roe decision was constitutionally dubious at best; even pro-abort activists like RBG questioned it. Even if I held "pro-choice" views on the issue, I would have felt the same. This is not to say that I agreed with Trump's political manipulation of the issue. Recall that Trump supported "choice" when he ran for the Reform Party nomination in 2000. Even during his 2016 campaign, he dodged the question of whether he had contributed to Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion provider). Notably, Trump advocated prosecuting women who violated abortion restrictions in red states. I would not claim to represent all pro-lifers in my opinions, but most of us empathize with any woman losing her child during pregnancy It is not really possible to restrict pregnant women's freedom to travel or to engage in risky behavior (like illicit drugs or alcohol); we still need to be morally persuasive.
This extends to other pro-life positions as well, including capital punishment. Many of us pro-lifers see capital punishment as premeditated murder by the State. Trump and his Defense Secretary, Hegseth, not only reinstated military executions for the first time since the early JFK Administration in over 6 decades. They also wanted to bring back firing squads, last used in WWII, for the planned execution of Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood terrorist. They recited the weakly supported deterrence argument for public execution.
Then there's the failed Tennessee execution of Christa Pike:
