Recently, I debated on Twitter with Dr. Michael Austin, president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. He supported Kamala Harris, because he thought that both parties are the same on abortion. I explained that Kamala supported legislation to end state-level pro-life laws, and Trump didn’t. He claimed that the total number of abortions had gone up after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

If you get a challenge like this one, I would start by explaining that it’s possible for the overall number of abortions to go up, even as the numbers declined in pro-life states because of restrictions on abortions passed in those pro-life states. In that case, the increase in abortions in states with no restrictions on abortion would be larger than decrease in abortions in states with pro-life legislation. Then I would explain how Kamala had previously supported legislation to end those state-level restrictions. That makes her position on abortion different from Trump, who would leave those restrictions in place.

Today’s post counters the original claim that Michael Austin made that the total number of abortions went UP after Roe v. Wade was repealed.

This is from Daily Wire:

Abortions of unborn babies fell 2% the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC’s annual abortion surveillance report, published on Wednesday, found that a total of 613,383 unborn babies were legally aborted within 48 reporting areas in the United States in 2022, the year the High Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe.

Out of the 47 areas that were consistently reporting data between 2021 and 2022, there was a 2% decrease from the 622,108 unborn babies who were legally aborted in 2021, to 609,360 in 2022.

By the way, I’ve noticed that a lot of Christian philosophers want to reduce policy debates down to abortion. They don’t seem to have thought through how other policy areas affect a Christian’s ability to live out a Christian life. For example, my ability to work and earn in the competitive private sector as a software engineer is affected by many, many different areas of policy. That’s why I have to know a little about many different areas, like energy policy, education policy, guns and crime, basic economics, health care policy, etc. I am affected by the prices of gas and electricity. I am affected by the price of health care. I am affected by government regulations. I am affected by bans on firearms and bans on self-defense. I am affected by rising costs due to illegal immigration. If I lived in an ivory tower, and was mainly concerned with impressing my colleagues with words, then maybe these topics wouldn’t matter to me. I get the impression that philosophers are not informed in these areas, because they have chosen a discipline that often insulates them from the need to solutions that work in the real world.

If I wanted to understand something about economics, I would read Thomas Sowell. If I wanted to understand something about guns and crime, I would read John Lott. If I wanted to understand something about health care, I would read Regina Hertzlinger or Avik Roy. And so on. In the real world, you can’t arrive at correct beliefs with “thought experiments”. You need to run real experiments – in the lab. You need to write real code – in the lab. It’s so important for people to have private sector work experience, developing solutions for customer problems in the competitive private sector.

Philosophers are the people LEAST LIKELY to understand basic economics. They tend to support bigger government in order to get more bailouts and redistribution of wealth.

Here’s an article from Newsweek:

Overall, socialism isn’t winning over the majority of college students. When broken down by major, though, its popularity doubled with philosophy students.

[…]Only 39 percent of the 10,590 undergraduates polled had a favorable view of socialism, and the same percentage responded that they had an unfavorable view. When respondents were broken out by major views of capitalism shifted considerably.

Philosophy majors were most likely to view socialism positively, with 78 percent of those polled saying they had at least a somewhat favorable view of it. Anthropology majors were a close second at 64 percent, followed by English majors at 58 percent and international relations, sociology and music majors all at 57 percent.

Least likely to view socialism favorably were accounting and finance majors at 20 percent and 22 percent respectively.

Why are most philosophers so wrong on areas that touch on reality, like finance and economics? Maybe, it’s because they make their living with words. Libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who is one of the good philosophers, calls people like this “wordsmiths”.

He explains the consequences of being a “wordsmith” here in this essay for the Cato Policy Report (Cato Institute):

What factor produced feelings of superior value on the part of intellectuals? I want to focus on one institution in particular: schools. As book knowledge became increasingly important, schooling–the education together in classes of young people in reading and book knowledge–spread. Schools became the major institution outside of the family to shape the attitudes of young people, and almost all those who later became intellectuals went through schools. There they were successful. They were judged against others and deemed superior. They were praised and rewarded, the teacher’s favorites. How could they fail to see themselves as superior? Daily, they experienced differences in facility with ideas, in quick-wittedness. The schools told them, and showed them, they were better.

The schools, too, exhibited and thereby taught the principle of reward in accordance with (intellectual) merit. To the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher’s smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.

The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority “entitled” them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?

Now, it’s important to be fair and acknowledge that some “wordsmiths” do understand finance and economics. But it’s the minority. It’s a sad thing when one of these wordsmiths manages to get to the top of an evangelical organization, though. Which is why you need to be careful what you let your children study, and where you send your donations. Giving money to evangelical wordsmiths who think that “Jesus didn’t care about politics” and “both parties are the same on abortion” and “abortions went up after the repeal of legalized abortion” is a waste of money.

Now that we have a new Republican administration incoming, I’m getting ready for lots of good news. Some of that news will be at the federal level, but some will be at the state level, too. I have a couple of interesting stories to blog about that happened in two different states. If you have any more good news stories, you can leave them in the comments.

Here’s the first one, reported in Life Site News:

Missouri can continue to protect gender-confused children from damaging drugs and surgeries, a judge ruled recently.

Cole County Judge Craig Carter upheld the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act. It prohibits transgender drugs and surgeries intended to make minors look more like the opposite sex. The law also prohibits taxpayer funding of the procedures.

These procedures are sometimes called “sex change operations,” although it is not possible to change one’s sex.

Judge Carter ruled in favor of the state on several grounds. He cited a recent 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Indiana’s similar law. The Supreme Court of the United States will hear a case next week, on December 4, concerning Tennessee and Kentucky’s prohibitions.

Now, I am hearing that some transgender activists are arguing that the science is not settled on this issue, so they should be allowed to prescribe puberty blockers and hormone replacement drugs to children, and maybe chop their bodies up a bit, too. However, it’s not always prudent to go ahead with something if you don’t know what the long-term effects will be. For example, suppose you are washing dishes in the kitchen, and your oldest child says “Parent, may I kill this?” It’s probably fine to say yes if the child has caught a spider, but not if the child has his younger sibling around the neck. Similarly with firing a gun through a closed door when someone knocks at 3 AM. It could be a burglar, but it could be the police looking for the burglar. So you have to be sure before you take actions that can do irreversible harm, like making a child infertile. And besides, I think the science is setttled, and it’s 100% against transing kids.

Here’s the next story from Breitbart News:

Haitian migrants are reportedly self-deporting from Springfield, Ohio, and fleeing to sanctuary jurisdictions such as Chicago, Illinois, and New York City, New York.

Springfield, a city of 50,000 that lies between Columbus and Dayton, garnered national attention months ago when President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance noted that the community had been inundated with thousands of Haitian migrants as a result of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

Many of the 10,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants who arrived in Springfield over the last few years are in the United States on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a quasi-amnesty program. Others were awarded parole after being released into the United States at the southern border.

As Breitbart News reported in September, the arrival of thousands of Haitians has driven up housing costs in Springfield, created more welfare dependency, and coincided with a surge in car crashes that police and firefighters must respond to.

With Trump and Vance’s election victory this month, Haitian migrants have told CBS News and The Guardian that they plan to flee to sanctuary jurisdictions like Chicago and New York City.

Although some mayors of sanctuary cities and governors of sanctuary states are vowing not to allow the Republicans to deport dangerous illegal immigrants, the incoming Republican administration doesn’t seem likely to accept that.

Daily Wire says:

We’ve heard a lot from Tom Homan lately, and for good reason. He’s the incoming border czar for the second Trump administration. And he’s vowed, unapologetically, to deport as many illegal aliens as possible — and to arrest any local officials who try to intervene.

We talked about that promise yesterday, in the context of the mayor of Denver, who’s suggesting that he will defy federal immigration authorities who try to carry out deportations in the second Trump term. Homan’s response was the correct one — if the mayor of Denver wants to go to jail, then ICE will happily oblige.

If you’re a Bible-believing Christian and a conservative, you should expect good news like this to happen more and more. I’ll be tweeting about it on Twitter, so give me a follow there and I will find you some.