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Self-esteem, self-respect, self-absorption

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An interesting article, by the famous British psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple, largely about how we esteem ourselves much too highly:

Self-esteem is, of course, a term in the modern lexicon of psychobabble, and psychobabble is itself the verbal expression of self-absorption without self-examination. The former is a pleasurable vice, the latter a painful discipline. An accomplished psychobabbler can talk for hours about himself without revealing anything.

Hello, [insert the celebrity of your choice, but I’m thinking of Tiger Woods’ “apology” right now.]

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother

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A book about the effect of the one child policy in China. Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother, Stories of Loss and Love, by Xinran. A quote, as cited in the March 6th version of The Economist:

At the tiny restaurant where Xinran eats lunch, the waitress tries to kill herself twice, each time after a little girl’s birthday party. The woman is tortured by the happy faces because, thinking it her duty to produce a male heir, she had smothered her baby daughters. She survives because, as well as the bottle of agricultural fertiliser she swallowed, she drank one of the waching-up liquid, thinking that any chemical in a bottle was poison. The detergent diluted the fertiliser’s fatal dose.

We don’t pay enough attention to China’s one child policy. Neither do we pay enough attention to women who have aborted here at home, and the grief they suffer.

_______________________

Brigitte can’t help but wonder: Think this is related?

Toronto types and abortion

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This article is weak, insofar as he claims to not be able to find up to date statistics polls on abortion in Canada, which means he is dismissing the annual Life Canada poll, which means he has his ideological blinders on. (Andrea adds after the fact that abortion statistics are indeed very hard to find.) I think this is what happens when your office lies in the shadow of the CN Tower. Go west, young man, go west.

But I liked this part, which is very true, so let’s focus on the positive. Also, this drives the pro-abortion side crazy, because they know it:

Also, the voices of the pro-life movement are younger, there are many younger women heading the movement, and their arguments go to both the well-being of the mother and unborn child. By contrast, the abortion-rights movement has been highly visible in opposition to very popular measures, including bans on intact dilation and partial birth abortions, parental involvement, enhanced informed-consent provisions for women seeking abortions, and the like. I think since the late 1990s, pro-lifers have seemed more reasonable in tone and substance.”

And do vote in the Globe’s online poll about the morality of abortion. I know it’s unscientific. I know people tell others to vote. Do you think the pro-abort side doesn’t have exactly the same capacity to do so? And so it’s all fair, in the end. I tend to note that pro-lifers are very passionate. They’ll vote, they’ll raise this issue, they’ll tell others… and the other side is old and grey and self-satisfied. They are above online polls. I actually enjoy watching our side push the thing in the right direction so that latte-loving, condo living downtown Toronto types are forced to raise an eyebrow.

James O’Keefe, an update

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For those of you who’ve been following the adventures of James O’Keefe in Louisiana:

NEW ORLEANS – Federal prosecutors filed reduced charges Friday against conservative activist James O’Keefe and three others who were accused of trying to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office.

The new charges are contained in a bill of information, which can only be filed with a defendant’s consent and typically signals a plea deal. The new filing charges the four with entering a federal building under false pretenses, a misdemeanor. They had been arrested Jan. 25 on felony charges.

The missing Liberals

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FYI:

Oh to be a fly on the wall of the Liberal caucus this morning.
After tabling a motion about child and maternal health, hoping to use contraception and abortion as wedge issues on the Conservatives, the Liberals got caught in their own wedge Tuesday, losing the motion by a vote of 144 to 138.
While much of the focus was on three Liberals who voted with the Conservatives – Paul Szabo, John McKay and Dan McTeague – a bigger factor in the vote was perhaps how many Liberals didn’t show up for the vote.
While the House of Commons journals recounts who voted it doesn’t name the no shows.
While all parties had missing MPs who weren’t paired, the Liberals were missing far more than anyone else, 13 out of 77 MPs – or roughly one out of every six members of their caucus. Either a particularly virulent strain of flu is ravaging Liberal ranks at the moment or some Liberals decided to duck the vote.

Here’s who missed the vote in alphabetical order:

Angus, Charlie – NDP
Calkins, Blaine – Conservative
Dion, Stéphane – Liberal
Guarnieri, Albina – Liberal
Hughes, Carol – NDP
Jennings, Marlene – Liberal
Kania, Andrew – Liberal
Karygiannis, Jim – Liberal
Kennedy, Gerard – Liberal
Kent, Peter – Conservative
Lee, Derek – Liberal
MacAulay, Lawrence – Liberal
Malhi, Gurbax – Liberal
Neville, Anita – Liberal
Rafferty, John – NDP
Roy, Jean-Yves – Bloc Québécois
Tonks, Alan – Liberal
Volpe, Joe – Liberal
Wasylycia-Leis, Judy – NDP
Wrzesnewskyj, Borys – Liberal

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