McBride plays the rhetorical questions game

Since she doesn't allow comments, any question she asks on her blog would have to be rhetorical now, wouldn't it?

Anyway, inspired by Carrie's divine take-down of McBride's weekend column, I have decided to try my hand at today's post, "Who's pro choice?" She writes that she has come to the conclusion that liberals are against choice, but not, of course, in the abortion rights sense. In what follows, my responses are in italics, as she refers to liberals as "they":

• They don't want the public to have the choice over the ideology of Supreme Court justices. The fact that President Bush clearly stated that he would appoint conservatives before the election, and people picked him anyway (or as a result), means nothing to those Democrats who would block the nomination of Sam Alito.
  Perhaps McBride is unaware of polling data suggesting that if people knew what Alito really stood for, they wouldn't want him. The people wanted another O'Connor, not another Scalia.
  
  
• They don't want poor people to have the choice of which schools to send their children.
  Oh, please. Do we have to do this again?
  
  
• They don't want women to have the choice to stay home and raise their kids, without being treated with derision.
  Ah, the great straw (wo)man of anti-feminism, that stay-at-home moms are the object of scorn among the enlightened. While not a woman, and not stay-at-home at that, I do consider myself an adjunct second-and-a-half wave feminist, and that's not the sort of thing anyone actually believes. Anti-feminsists believe feminists believe it, but we don't. The key is, of course, agency: No woman should be forced, as some conservatives would have it, into that role.
  
  
• They don't want universities and other employers to have the choice over who to admit or hire but rather would force them to make selections based on race.
  There is and has been demonstrable bias in how universities or employers make these decisions. Once a month we are treated to some news show or another's "special report" to tell us that racism--explicit or implicit, institutional or individual--exists in the job or lending or housing industries. When the playing field is level, regulatory efforts will be unnecessary.
  
  
• They don't want citizens to choose whether they want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In otherwords, they don't think the people should have a say in the uprooting of centuries of societal tradition.
  This reminds me P-Mac's claim that he ought to be free to be a bigot. Moreso, it's a misreading of our side--we're perfectly ready to beat this in a referendum on the merits--but the larger point is that this isn't even something government should be concerned with. When there are pressing matters before the legilsature, why are they debating this?
  
  
• They don't want taxpayers to have a choice in how much of their money is spent. So they are against a Taxpayers Bill of Rights.
  I thought we had that choice. It's called elections. We have them several times a year.
  
  
• They don't want people to choose whether or not they would feel more protected if they carried a concealed gun.
  I want the choice not to be paranoid that the guy tailgating me isn't packing.
  
  
• They don't want people to choose whether their children should pray in school.
  Wow. This is probably the worst misreading of the facts on the list. Organized or mandatory prayer is out, of course, but there are not ACLU hall monitors stopping the wee ones from saying grace before lunch or praying that the pop quiz is easy.
  
  
• They don't allow women to choose a stance opposing abortion, without being called "anti-woman."
  Anti-choicers aren't all anti-woman. They are anti-women's rights, which is again about agency. We prefer women to be able to make their own decisions in conjunction with their families and doctors. In the same way McBride wants women to be allowed to stay home and raise kids without derision, we want women to choose how and when to have those kids without government interference.
  
  
• They don't want Christians to choose their beliefs on things like homosexuality, without being called bigots.
  There is a difference between believing, as many devout people do, that homosexuality is a sin, and seeking to curb the civil rights of gays and lesbians based on that belief.
  
  
• They don't allow minorities to choose political parties, without being called names.
  She's right, you know. I call them Republicans. Or Democrats. Or Greens. Or whatever.
  
  
• They don't let people choose to side with the opposite political party on issues, without fear of being called racists and idiots.
  I don't know what this means. But I know that in the past couple of days, in the heated debate around vouchers and the impending cap train wreck, I have been called all sorts of things by her side of the Cheddarsphere.

After this series of misrepresentations, distortions, and us-versus-theming, she says, "There's nothing like the tolerance of the Left, is there?" To that, I say, see my next post.