The Militant Takes a Holiday

SWP Oberlin Conference Attendees (Photo credit: Mike Shur; The Militant)

The Militant's masthead claims

Published weekly except for one week in January, one week in June, one week in July, and one week in December.

So it's odd that the paper missed four issues, from that dated June 10th until the issue dated July 8th (posted on the web today). Are they still gonna take the week off in July?

I think The Militant can no longer afford a weekly publication schedule, at least not in print format.

Of course the proximate cause for the pause was the Oberlin Conference, the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) annual meeting held on the eponymous college campus in Ohio. The paper has a teaser article about this year's conclave, promising a fuller account in subsequent issues. I already have a lot to say, but I'll reserve my comments until after I read the reports.

There are two articles in the current issue that are worthy of note. The first is an excerpt from James P. Cannon's book The Struggle for a Proletarian Party. I read that book a long time ago, as a companion to Cannon's A History of American Trotskyism. The two together are the standard introduction to Trotskyism that every new comrade reads.

I'm astonished how Cannon makes the Party look like a religious sect.

Our conception of the party is radically different. For us the party must be a combat organization which leads a determined struggle for power. The Bolshevik party which leads the struggle for power needs not only internal democracy. It also requires an imperious centralism and an iron discipline in action. ...

For the proletarian revolutionist the party is the concentrated expression of his life purpose, and he is bound to it for life and death. He preaches and practices party patriotism, because he knows that his socialist ideal cannot be realized without the party.

Big words, that. And I know that's the intention, but the reality is different. First, it's not really a democracy--Jack Barnes has held the leadership post since 1972! No genuinely democratic organization would tolerate that. All self-proclaimed vanguard parties share the problem, notably Jeff Mackler at Socialist Action (in office since 1984), and the recently collapsed International Socialist Organization (because of a leadership sex scandal). And second, it stretches credulity to think the SWP is "combat organization." Just look at the picture above. They're too old. Does the friendly church lady in the front row look like she's ready for combat?

I'm not gonna be too hard on my former comrades. They all look like really nice people. I'm proud to say they were my friends back in the 1970s, and given a chance they'd still be my friends today. Their only flaw is they can't muster the fierceness they claim to represent. Not a problem for me--peaceable friendliness is a virtue in my book. (I'm ashamed to say I can't recognize a single face.)

It's worth mentioning that this year's Oberlin meeting is celebrated as "100 years 'on the right side of history.'" The century mark refers to the founding of the Communist Party of the USA, founded on May 1st, 1919, which the SWP takes as the beginning of its own trajectory. Since then it's everybody else that's gone astray--not them.

Our comrades' core good nature is evidenced in this issue's second article worthy of comment. Of course when 300 comrades descend on the small town of Oberlin, Ohio, for a week, it behooves them to cover local issues. And boy, do they do it in style! The piece is entitled "Victory in bakery’s lawsuit against ‘racism’ smear by Oberlin College," written by Janet Post. It is by far the best article on the topic I've read anywhere, including many rightish blogs, some mainstream news sources, and especially InsideHigherEd that I read daily.

Gibson's Bakery, an Oberlin landmark for many generations, was libeled by students and Oberlin College as "racist." As Ms. Post writes,

A Lorain County jury June 7 ruled in favor of a lawsuit by Gibson’s, a family-owned and operated bakery, and its proprietors David and Allyn Gibson, against Oberlin College and Meredith Raimondo, the vice president and dean of students of the northern Ohio college.

She relates the key events.

The Gibson’s complaint described how Raimondo and other Oberlin College authorities orchestrated a demonstration outside the bakery and distributed a libelous flyer saying its “owners racially profiled and discriminated against” three students. The students had been arrested after one of them tried to use a fake ID and shoplift two bottles of wine from the bakery on Nov. 9, 2016, and then pummeled a store employee who pursued them.

The three students, who are Black, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, including theft, in 2017, and acknowledged that the shop owners’ response had not been racially motivated.

When the guilty parties acknowledge that their accusers aren't racist, that pretty much closes the case. Nevertheless, with campus connivance, students organized large protests in front of the bakery accusing them of "racism". The College (the bakery's biggest customer) discontinued any commercial relationship.

Gibson's Bakery was awarded $44 million in actual and punitive damages. It is reasonably likely that they'll collect $33 million of that.

Ms. Post notes that the students come predominantly from "upper middle class families," attending a school located in a blue-collar part of Ohio. I can vouch from personal experience: there is nobody more obnoxious than a self-righteous 18-year-old who's been told since birth that he's the smartest thing since white bread, and whose parents are paying his way. I know--I was one of those kids myself, and I had the misfortune of teaching them during my career. (They do grow up. While the students are assholes, the alumni are courteous, helpful, smart and successful people, tamed by the school of hard knocks.)

The students can possibly be forgiven (though maybe not). The faculty and administrators, on the other hand, have no excuse. They really should know better, and the fact that they tolerate this behavior is a scandal.

The Militant deserves great credit for taking the side of the Bakery. It's something that courageous people do, but not fierce people. Fierce people were the ones out there carrying signs and shouting insults. James P. Cannon got it wrong.

Here's another issue that I wish The Militant would cover. Oregon (my home state) tried to pass a cap & trade law regulating carbon emissions. This is supposedly going to prevent climate change, but in reality all it will do is increase poverty. I'm against poverty, and The Militant is against poverty, so I'm hoping we're on the same side on this one.

In any event, 11 Republicans left the state so that the state senate wouldn't have a quorum to pass the legislation. There was a large demonstration against the law (and in support of the GOP) dominated by farmers, ranchers, truck drivers, and loggers. These, of course, would be the people driven into poverty by the self-righteous, virtue-signalling urban elite. (Sorry, but I can't find a link to the article covering the demonstration.)

Anyway, if you're against poverty you'll run this one down and cover it properly. Thanks in advance.

Further Reading:

• The Militant Visits Manila
• Three From The Militant
• Oberlin, 2018

Book Review: Kim Jong Un

The book is by Anna Fifield and is entitled The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un. Ms. Fifield is the Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post and has made many trips to North Korea (DPRK). She speaks and reads Korean--already an accomplishment, since for English speakers it is among the hardest languages to learn.

Born in 1984, Kim Jong Un led a very protected childhood. He was not allowed to play with other children--indeed, his Japanese sushi chef was appointed as his playmate. He lived in the royal palace in Pyongyang, but not just that. The palace was separated into family units that were sealed from each other, so Un couldn't even play with his half-siblings or cousins. On summer holiday he went to the beach resort of Wonsan--the regime's playground--on lavish but similarly isolated holidays.

Un had four siblings (mentioned in the book; Wikipedia lists some others). The oldest was Un's half brother Kim Jong Nam, whose mother was Kim Jong Il's mistress. She was an actress who spent many years living in Russia. Because Nam was Jong Il's eldest son, he was the logical successor to the throne. Which is why he was assassinated by North Korean agents in Malaysia in 2016.

Kim Jong Il eventually took a real wife, Ko Yong Hui--a dancer born in Japan--who bore him three children. The eldest was Kim Jong Chol, described as effeminate and "bosomy," and never a serious contender for leadership. Then came Un, whose mother worked hard to earn him pride of place, purposely discrediting both Kim Jong Nam and his mother. Finally, they had a baby sister, Kim Yo Jong--the woman who represented the DPRK at the Olympics in South Korea in 2018.

Chol, Un, and Yo lived in luxurious isolation from other relatives--and from the rest of North Korea. It's possible that Un didn't even know about the famine that ravaged the country in the 1990s.

In 1996 Un joined his brother Chol in Switzerland to attend school. They lived with a maternal aunt. Un was not especially interested in academics, but in those days cared more about sport.  There are photos of Un swimming on the Riviera and skiing in the Alps. Most of all he was a basketball fanatic, spending all his spare time shooting hoops. A devoted fan of the Chicago Bulls, in later years he befriended Dennis Rodman, who made several trips to party with the Great Successor.

Un made few friends--his language skills stood in the way, and he hated playing with other children, accustomed as he was to adult company. But all that Franco-German food began to take its toll--during those years he acquired his double chin.

Today, standing 5'7", Un weighs nearly 300 lbs. He suffered gout in his ankle, necessitating an embarrassing, weeks-long absence from public life. He returned to service walking with a cane. Short hikes with South Korean president Moon Jae In--30 years Un's senior--left the Great Successor breathless.

[W]hen they all went to Mount Paektu together in September, Kim Jong Un was panting heavily. He observed that Moon didn't seem out of breath at all. Not for a walk as easy as this, responded the South Korean, who loves to hike.

Mount Paektu, the peninsula's tallest peak, has spiritual significance for all Koreans. Kim Il Sung claimed the mantle of Mt. Paektu. His son, Kim Jong Il (born in a Russian labor camp) was (in legend) born on Mt. Paektu. According to Pyongyang's leading newspaper, "The Majestic Comrade Kim Jong Un, descended from heaven and conceived by Mt. Paektu."

So no wonder that Western leaders, including Donald Trump, couldn't take this very strange, funny-looking, little man seriously. The insults flew as only Trump can throw them: mad man, little rocket man, maniac, bad dude, to name a few. Here's a list of 15 insulting nicknames directed at the inheritor of Paektu.

The surprise is that Kim Jong Un is in fact a master Machiavellian. President Trump has learned that the hard way.

Upon Kim Jung Il's death in 2011, Un had to consolidate his power. The first step was to eliminate any rivals.

Generally, the risk in this early period is killing too many people, not too few, Bueno de Mesquita told me when I went to see him in his office at New York University. If you get rid of too many, those who remain think their leader is indiscriminate and have a reason to live in fear. But if you kill too few? Well, that's easy enough to fix.

The assassination of his older brother, potentially a rival claimant, was essential. Then his father's cronies--older men who saw themselves as regents or as powers behind the throne--had to be eliminated. Most consequential was the execution of his powerful, gregarious, and charismatic uncle, Jang Song Thaek. And not just him but dozens or even hundreds of his coterie. Most dramatic was the killing of General Hyon Yong Chol, who apparently fell asleep during one of the Great Successor's speeches and "was publicly executed by antiaircraft guns, a method that would have blown him to a pulp."

Un understood that he needed friends to stay in office. So he allowed a sizable clique of people to become rich--a group with a sufficient stake in the system to defend it, who also understood that their wealth depended entirely on Un's pleasure.

Then he realized that economic progress was essential. Failure to improve living standards across the country would lead to his downfall. So he liberalized the economy allowing private markets to flourish. It was a capitalist-like solution, but definitely not capitalist. A capitalist owns the means of production. In the DPRK Kim Jong Un owns everything--nobody else can profit except by stealing. But the crime was ignored--until it wasn't. At that point, from one day to the next, the "capitalist" could lose everything and end up in a prison camp.

Still, the reform improved people's lives across the board.

Finally, North Korea is always afraid of attack from the US or one of its neighbors, and for that reason feels it must have nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Much to everybody's surprise, Un built and tested a hydrogen bomb, along with true, intercontinental ballistic missiles. Accordingly, Un followed a policy of byungjin: pursuing both nuclear weapons and economic growth at the same time.

According to Ms. Fifield the North Koreans have no further need to test either instrument, and their concession to stop blowing up mountains and shooting rockets over Japan is, in fact, an empty gesture. They weren't going to do that any more anyway.

I don't think Trump understood that before, but I believe he realizes it now. He still claims credit for stopping the DPRKs missile tests, but that's just for public consumption. Unlike previous American administrations, he's kept the sanctions on full blast--not relieving them even a little bit. Until Un makes some real concessions, Mr. Trump isn't going to make any, either.

American sanctions under Trump are somehow made of sterner stuff than in past times. They have real bite--the DPRK is under what amounts to a naval blockade. That, along with bad weather, is resulting again in widespread famine. This has to undermine the Kim regime.

Kim hopes to die peacefully in his bed and pass power on to one of his children (it seems he has at least three). But at age 35 he's seriously obese, a heavy smoker, and suffers from heart disease and diabetes. He may not be long for this world.

The Paektu dynasty might be coming to an end. Let's hope so.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Gorbachev
• Book Review: Grover Cleveland
• Book Review: Lih's Biography of Lenin

"The Worldwide Crisis of Capitalism and the Relevance of Socialism"

The article with the above title (by prez candidate Jeff Mackler) is based on a resolution adopted by Socialist Action's (SA) 2018 convention. The provenance isn't very clear. It claims to be the introduction to a soon-to-be issued pamphlet of the same name (which I will definitely read). There are some introductory remarks by SA's editor (or Mr. Mackler?), followed by more introductory remarks by Mr. Mackler (or is that actually in the pamphet?). Then much of the article is in quotation marks (but not all of it), apparently quoting from some other joint statement or something.

So I'm going to ignore all italics and quotation marks and just treat it as a single piece all written by Mr. Mackler.

My Trotskyist friends understand nothing about economics, as demonstrated by the lede substantive paragraph.

Global capitalist competition, including the current trade wars, is a completely unavoidable aspect of the system of private profit. Competition results in new innovation/automation that increases the rate of profit for the initial innovator. But these gains are offset again by the rapid adoption of ever more advanced technology by competitors, and profit rates continue to fall.

Taken literally, they're true Luddites, seemingly opposed to any "innovation/automation." Apparently we should get rid of backhoes so that real men can dig ditches the way they used to--with a pick and shovel. But who needs those tools? Why not just use human hands, like a chimpanzee?

They claim capitalism has a "falling rate of profit," but fail to mention that it stems from lower prices. That is, consumers are better off and everybody has a higher standard of living. Our problem today is not too much "innovation/automation", but rather too little. Productivity growth (i.e., new technology) is only about 1%.

In their desperate struggle to fight the falling rate of profit capitalists try to reduce costs and increase their competitive edge by attacking trade unions and workers’ rights, by attacking wage and benefit levels, by attacking general social benefits such as education, health care, and pensions, by refusing to accept responsibility for the massive environmental damage caused by cutthroat capitalist competition, and by transferring production to low-wage, unregulated areas both within and outside their own countries…

This makes no sense. Until recently profits have been at record highs--there is no evidence of the long-term, secular decline that Trotskyists predict. While one can complain that wages are not growing as fast as one would like, there is no secular decline there, either. This chart shows that real wages have been increasing most months since 2009. There certainly has been no decline in spending on education and healthcare! Both those industries are growing faster than the economy. Social Security is still solvent (just barely). Only pensions have suffered, specifically because public employees have been promised benefits that were never realistic to begin with.

It is worth noting that apart from casual references as in the above quote, the document makes no mention of the "environment." Yet SA is on record as subscribing to catastrophic climate change, in which case long-term problems such as pensions are irrelevant. We'll all be dead by then. Yet somehow (at least in this document) the imminent end of the world has been put on indefinite hold.

SA obviously doesn't believe its own climate bullshit. But I will point out that making stuff cheaper with more "innovation/automation" is good for the environment. After all, cheaper means using fewer natural resources, less labor, less electricity, lower shipping costs, etc. SA needs to let us know how all of that hurts the environment.

With this background, the article then takes on several issues.

Russia & China: We're promised another pamphlet (by John Leslie) entitled China: A New Imperialist Power. I'll read that one, too, though maybe I shouldn't bother. SA's position on China is very similar to that articulately expressed by Lynn Henderson (here), and rebutted by me (here). No need to rehash it.

Teacher's Strikes: My Trotskyist friends are in love with last year's teachers' strikes, beginning with the one in West Virginia. Hate to break the news, but they're yesterday's news and will have no lasting impact on our politics. Nobody in the presidential campaign, for example, is discussing them at all.

I commented on the strikes in West Virginia and Kentucky here and here. The West Virginia strike was successful, but only on a narrow wage dispute. It hardly augers a new age. The Kentucky strike was a hail-Mary pass in an effort save an irreversibly bankrupt pension plan. The strike accomplished nothing. I have not followed the other strikes closely, but I believe the California strike was also about pensions, i.e., futile howling at the moon.

Mr. Mackler goes on to claim that the teachers' biggest problem is their alliance with the Democratic Party. Really? The Democrats actually control purse strings, unlike the losers over at SA. If you're trying to save your (hopeless) pension plan, working with the Dems is the best option. Real teachers need real money, not just a bunch of gobbledygook sloganeering from the likes of Jeff Mackler.

Tax the Rich: That's Mr. Mackler's solution to all problems. The richest man in West Virginia is the governor, Jim Justice. He's worth $1.6 billion, and owns coal mines (that look to be near bankrupt), hotels and golf courses. If you assume a 10% rate of return on his wealth (very optimistic), then his annual income is $160 million. By comparison, West Virginia's total annual income--the state GDP--was $74 billion in 2018. Jim Justice's income is 0.2% of the state's total--hardly enough to solve all the problems in the universe as Mr. Mackler proposes.

Socialism: Mr. Mackler disses the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Though they call themselves “democratic socialists”—falsely implying that other socialists oppose democracy—we prefer the traditional label, “social democrats,” which makes clear that the DSA and similar organizations are Democratic Party supporters first and foremost, who pretend that socialism—a fundamental break with capitalist exploitation and rule—can be won through electoral reforms and other incremental changes to the capitalist system.

The irony is that SA does oppose democracy--they call all elections phony unless they win them (which they never do). So the DSA's distinction is apt.

Foreign Affairs: SA doubles down on its support for the world's worst dictators: Kim Jong Un and Bashar al-Assad. Yes, they hide behind the fig leaf of only demanding US "non-intervention," but that's not much of a hiding place. In reality they support brutal, totalitarian regimes.

They discuss the "pink revolutions" in Latin America. Apparently--in Mr. Mackler's opinion--Venezuela didn't go full Venezuela enough. In addition to merely destroying the country, they should have nationalized it as well. That'll teach them evil imperialists! Of course SA touts Cuba as a successful example of socialism--a country that's much poorer than the Philippines, can't feed itself, and survives only because it's a police state.

I'm not sure what on this list makes for a viable election campaign. The only superficially attractive slogan is Tax the Rich, but that falls apart on even cursory examination. Nothing else here will have any popular appeal whatsoever.

So SA is publishing two new pamphlets. Here's how you order them.

Below is a partial list of pamphlets published by Socialist Action Books. To order send a letter with a list of the pamphlets you would like to purchase to P.O. Box 10328, Oakland CA 94610, along with a check made out to “Socialist Action Books.” Please add $2 for postage to any order of pamphlets, along with the listed price.

So far, at least a few pamphlets are available for free download; the rest are priced to simply cover printing costs.

That's pretty old-fashioned. My millennial children, for example, don't use either postage stamps or paper checks. I don't even use paper checks anymore, and maybe I'll send a snail-mail letter once every six months or so.

I hope the new pamphlets will be available for download. Yes, I would be willing to go to the bank, pay for a cashier's check, write it out and send it snail mail to the address above. But I doubt it would work. SA has never responded to anything I send them, so I think they'd probably pocket the money and not send me the pamphlet. That's just the way they roll.

Oh well.

Further Reading:

• Heather Bradford on Abortion
• Boring Jeff Mackler Runs for President Again
• The Philippines

Heather Bradford on Abortion

Heather Bradford, Socialist Action's candidate for Vice President, publishes an article entitled New anti-abortion laws: How should we respond?  Ms. Bradford is a good writer. The article is worth reading.

I have generally stayed out of the abortion debate because I'm conflicted. While I'm very sympathetic to the pro-life cause, it is clear that in this era of modern medicine totally banning abortion is utterly impossible. However bad abortion may be, it is occasionally a necessary evil. Somebody has to make a decision about when that necessity arises, and our current compromise--that the mother makes that choice during the first three months, while the law and the courts render judgement later on--seems reasonable. So I generally support abortion laws as they have existed since 1973.

So I'm not here to defend Alabama's draconian legislation essentially banning all abortions. Indeed, I'll suggest the law was passed precisely because it will never take effect. If Roe v Wade is ever overturned, the gross cruelty and impracticality of such a ban will force its repeal.

My mission here is not so much to disagree with Ms. Bradford's conclusion as to analyze her argument. Her argument doesn't make very much sense.

While she never comes out and actually says it, it appears Ms. Bradford is against any restrictions on abortion at all. She likely supports the bills floated in New York and Virginia that would permit abortion up to and even after birth--essentially legalizing infanticide. People who support those kinds of laws must really hate babies!

It's one thing to suggest that aborting a 20-week fetus isn't the same thing as murder. But killing a nearly-born or already-born baby certainly is.

Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. An appropriate role for pro-life groups is to ensure that last condition. Laws that demand a waiting period, suggest counseling, or offer other alternatives are, I think, entirely appropriate. Making abortion completely illegal is not.

The connection between abortion and working class politics has always been mysterious to me--even when I was a Trotskyist myself. The issue crosses class, racial, and gender lines, and is more a moral and religious issue rather than an economic one. Ms. Bradford attempts to justify her political interest in abortion, which is the weakest part of her article.

She writes:

Social Reproduction theory grounds the tasks of building a global anti-capitalist feminist movement. Understanding social reproduction theory (SRT) is vital to combating anti-abortion laws in the context of capitalism. SRT posits that capitalism does not reproduce the labor power required to perpetuate itself. In other words, capitalism produces goods and services, but doesn’t in itself produce workers and due to profit motive (wherein profit is derived from surplus value of labor), capitalism does little to provide for the upkeep of workers. Thus, women are tasked with supporting the continuation of capitalism through biological reproduction, the care of non-laborers such as children, elderly, or people with illnesses, and unpaid household labor such as cooking and cleaning.

The premise is that capitalists pay workers so little that they can't support their families. Were this true then poor people would have a lower fertility rate than rich people. This is not true--indeed, quite the opposite. Fertility is lowest in the richest countries--Japan, Germany, Italy. And highest in very poor countries--Yemen, Uganda, Philippines.

In the US the evidence doesn't support SRT, either. The most fertile populations in our country are Amish and Orthodox Jews, who number among the poorest populations. More generally, birth rates are highest for the lowest income groups, and decrease as family income rises.

SRT also states that capitalist governments will "force" women to bear children. If so, they are remarkably unsuccessful at it. Presumably Socialist Action believes China to be a capitalist country--yet far from maximizing fertility they enforced a one-child policy for several decades. Accordingly their fertility rate is well below replacement: 1.65 children per woman.

Social Reproduction Theory is false.

Ms. Bradford does not think activists should wait for the Supreme Court to overturn the Alabama law. She correctly suggests that the Roe v Wade ruling is constitutionally shaky. "The courts have never framed abortion rights as fundamental to ending the oppression of women or gender minorities." Not sure how she comes up with ending oppression to be within the remit of the Supreme Court. The word "oppression" does not appear in the Constitution at all.

Reliance on the Supreme Court

...has lent itself to a cultish following of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is viewed as a liberatory figure who must never retire (or die), lest abortion rights be overturned once and for all. The centrist justice is celebrated for her support of women’s rights, but her critique of Kaepernick’s taking a knee (which she apologized for), ruling against paying overtime to Amazon workers, support of warrantless searches in Samson v. California, and failure to condemn solitary confinement within the prison system in Davis v. Ayala mar her record.

In other words, court rulings should not be based on the Constitution, but rather entirely on Ms. Bradford's personal opinions about this or that. So it's a little rich for her to claim that

[t]he presidential nomination of and lifetime tenure of Supreme Court justices and federal judges is fundamentally undemocratic. The feudal nature of these courts should be questioned and challenged.

She wants to substitute the rule-bound, Constitutionally-appointed Supreme Court with Heather Bradford as dictator and Empress of all the Americas. This hardly seems like a step toward greater democracy.

Ms. Bradford is convinced that access to abortion is a fundamental human right, and therefore it should be included in the "free" medical care that all socialists want to provide for us. Of course it's not free--somebody's got to pay for it. Since abortion is less a medical decision than a moral or religious one, it is not obvious that it should be included with "medical procedures." So I think her opposition to the Hyde amendment (which prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortions) rests on weak ground.

Society has at least some interest in ensuring a healthy population--at very least curtailing the spread of contagious diseases. We likely have some right to insist that everybody get a measles vaccine, for example. But no such reason exists for funding abortion. The people who are required to pay for it don't object primarily for financial reasons--that's trivial--but rather for moral ones. In a free society one should not be forced to violate one's moral conscience but for overwhelming necessity. Abortion does not rise to that occasion.

I disagree with Ms. Bradford and I support the Hyde amendment. Given the fact that it's received bipartisan support over many decades, I suggest the majority of Americans agree with me.

On most issues the Millennial generation is more liberal than the Baby Boomers. But polls show that there is little difference in opinions about abortion between the two generations. While most people of any age will oppose the Alabama law, few people will agree with Ms. Bradford and claim that abortion is a fundamental human right. It's too complicated for that.

I'm uncomfortable with abortion. Yet I think it has to be legal. Like a majority of Americans, my opinion is conflicted.

Further Reading:

• How Trump Wins
• Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl