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I’ve finally figured out why the popularity of the “Kony 2012” video has irritated me so much recently. There are a number of reasons, but the biggest is that it once again allows spoiled, ignorant, narcissistic westerners the chance to feel good about themselves — while their attitudes proclaim, “It’s all about me.”

The half-hour film called “Kony 2012” is an emotional propaganda film made by an organization called Invisible Children. It’s about a lunatic African named Joseph Kony, who operates a tiny (and shrinking) band of armed thugs in the jungles near Uganda. His group is called the Lord’s Resistance Army, and it’s been known to press children into service as its soldiers for years, in addition to mutilating people for various reasons. Kony is clearly an evil guy, but he’s more like a crazy man with a small group of remaining followers, not someone who’s growing in power.

The film features the director promising a man who’s been a victim of Kony that he will bring the murderous nut to justice. (The same director was arrested a few days ago for reasons that might have dealt more with substance abuse or psychiatric problems. It’s hard to say.) It also features the director’s young son as he learns about Kony and what he’s done. In other words, it’s all us.

I think something about this is reminding me of the various other “awareness” campaigns that come and go. Remember “We Are the World“? How about “Farm Aid“? Band Aid? Or any of the other things that become fashionable among trendy people with money — who feel some tiny bit of empathy for starving people or hurting people or victimized people for a brief minute in the middle of a concert or something — and feel really good about themselves as a result.

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Cleaning out the old notebook again…

A week after a U.S. soldier murdered 16 Afghan men, women and children, it’s mostly become a non-story among people I talk with. The news stories I see have taken a tone that seems to be looking for a way to excuse what happened, asking what could have “caused him to snap” or speculating about brain injuries from previous combat.

Honestly, I’m a little tired of people looking for excuses. What if this had been an Afghan soldier and he was in this country for some military reason — training, perhaps — and he had taken a weapon to a few homes near where he was based and murdered 16 Americans. Do you think we would all be looking for things to blame it on then? Would we be wondering about how his previous injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever had made him “snap”?

No, we would have a country full of angry people who were ready to kill Afghans and and were ready to blame all Muslims for what had happened. Why can’t we understand how serious it is when we send soldiers into other countries and they do bad things?

Every time there have been instances of U.S. soldiers committing such atrocities, it seems that there are similar justifications. When are we going to learn that when you train people to kill and then dehumanize the people they’re fighting, this is what we’re going to get? And when are we going to learn that the sooner we get out of these countries we’ve invaded, the sooner we’ll quit making new enemies?

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If you kill a baby — in its mother’s womb — 10 minutes before it’s to be born, that’s called abortion. If you kill a baby 10 minutes after it’s born, it’s murder, according to our law. In a new academic paper, a pair of medical ethicists argue that the two are morally and ethically identical — and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with killing babies.

I don’t think many people would disagree that any sane and civilized society should prohibit murder. The question has been when to define a human being as attaining “personhood.” Many who have argued for the morality of abortion have generally said that a human being comes into existence only at birth, arguing that late-term abortions — in which the developed baby’s head is cracked open and destroyed — are perfectly legitimate. (Read about “intact dilation and extraction” here. This was made illegal in the United States in 2003.) Others have argued that the point at which the growing baby would be viable outside the womb is when it’s a human being.

In pretty much every moral or ethical area, I want people allowed to make their own decisions, just as long as they’re not violating someone else’s life or property to do so. I’ve argued that abortion is immoral, because at some point it’s the same as killing a baby. And since we don’t know exactly what that point is, my view is that the benefit of doubt should go to the baby — since the mother and father had to decide to take the actions that created it.

In discussing the issue, I’ve many times made the point that it’s legal in many places to kill a baby minutes before birth, but it’s considered murder right after birth. So I’ve asked why there was something about the birth process that made the baby different from what it was minutes ago. I never dreamed that anyone could use the same argument to make the case for infanticide.

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