ICYMI Thursday

By Tom Goodman

Extrovert? Introvert? How about Ambivert?

What’s The Actual ‘Oldest Joke in The Book?’
We Just May Have Found It.

David Skeel in the WSJ says Now Isn’t the Time to Flee the Public Square: "At a time when religious freedom is viewed by many as expendable, and appears in scare quotes or their equivalent in major U.S. newspapers for the first time in American history, the practical consequences of reduced engagement could be considerable."

Good quote in Gerard Alexander's NYT op-ed on the departure of Jon Stewart from The Daily Show:

Many liberals, but not conservatives, believe there is an important asymmetry in American politics. These liberals believe that people on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum are fundamentally different. Specifically, they believe that liberals are much more open to change than conservatives, more tolerant of differences, more motivated by the public good and, maybe most of all, smarter and better informed.

The evidence for these beliefs is not good. Liberals turn out to be just as prone to their own forms of intolerance, ignorance and bias. But the beliefs are comforting to many. They give their bearers a sense of intellectual and even moral superiority. And they affect behavior. They inform the condescension and self-righteousness with which liberals often treat conservatives.

Rachel Larimore at Slate, on the claim that abortions make up only 3 percent of the services that Planned Parenthood provides: "It might not be a technically incorrect number, but it is meaningless—to the point of being downright silly....Planned Parenthood gets at least a third of its clinic income—and more than 10 percent of all its revenue, government funding included—from its abortion procedures. Ask anyone who runs a for-profit business or nonprofit charity if something that brings in one-third of their revenue is "central" to their endeavor, and the answer is likely to be yes. So yes, abortion is central to what Planned Parenthood does.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft says that there are only four options to the question of whether a fetus is a person, and there are legal implications that follow should one abort a fetus:

The fetus is a person, and we know that: Aboriton is murder

The fetus is a person, but we don’t know that: Abortion is manslaughter

The fetus isn’t a person, but we don’t know that: Abortion is criminal negligence

The fetus isn’t a person, and we know that: Only in this case is abortion reasonable, permissible, and responsible choice.

The Washington Post "The Cities" series recently focused on the joy and challenges of Austin living: