The various counter-posts to mine are deeply flawed, and each one is worth a letter in itself-- but I don't have time.

Though China is often portrayed as a model stable society, the reality is that China hangs by a thread-- and the leadership is smart enough to know that. The largest loser of mfg. jobs in the world? China. Problem with loss of land to deserts? China. Working on bringing up educational standards of the peasantry in the shortest time? China. They are ALWAYS running against the clock-- because the leadership knows. They have no buffer.

A friend of mine working for a large international oil company visited a refinery there in the mid '90s, as part of a technical exchange. Their refinery employed 15K people, as opposed to the one in the US that had only 400, and produced 10x the amount of gasoline. When my friend was asked the first thing he would do, he recommended getting rid of 90% of the people, as most of them were used to dig holes (big holes) and could be replaced by three backhoes. The Chinese looked at him like he was insane. "What would these people do if they couldn't dig holes?" they asked. The managers were people that understood social instability.

Re: individual privacy rights. This is a Western value judgment. When societies have been faced with survival-- and this is a real survival issue-- they make tough choices. Some of these are not very palatable to us in the West. But not every violation of our ethos leads to the domino effect that posters like to talk about. Sometimes various things end up being off-limits (like having kids) while the rest of everything dramatically improves. Just because we insist, because of our cultural background, that certain rights are coupled doesn't mean that they are. On a more pedestrian level, contrast the way the English deal with personal defamation and the way we do. In the US, libel is only held to be true when there are cash damages. Not so in England-- but no one in England would think for a minute that they didn't have the right to free speech.

As far as plenty of arable land, this is surreal. The only solution that I can come up with is for people that post such nonsense to go live in West Texas, where they're advocating migration. Just remember General Phillip Sheridan's famous quote from 1866, when asked about living there-- "Live in Hell, rent Texas."

For those that need a classic to convince them of the inanity of this, I recommend Wallace Stegner's 'Beyond the 100th Meridian.' True now as ever, and applicable to marginal landscapes around the globe. Nothing like reading how Montana was depopulated during the 1890s to send the 'plenty of land' folks back to the intellectual starting line.

Though it may seem obvious, if you support a woman's right to rent out her womb, you must support her right to rent out her vagina. Both are deeply intimate acts that one would hope are made relatively intelligently, but the notion that either are made free of some level of external coercion such as poverty, is relatively naive.

Instead of having a detailed debate whether pleasure should be subjugate to procreation, I'm on the side of 'it's her body, she should be able to do with it as she pleases.'

Funny how our country's Puritan-Protestant background will inevitably dominate this debate.

A quick note for those that are interested. Read:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/09/beck.twelvesteps/index.html?iref=newssearch

Glenn Beck's latest missive, which, of course, blames the U.S. population for all the problems, instead of the elites actually committing the crimes. It's so exhausting, after all the street marches, letters, and such, to have an asshole like him go on and on. And his view is sold by CNN as 'unconventional.'

Utah Phillips said it best-- there are people behind the bad things that happen-- and they have names and addresses.

You know, Joan,

Hagee et. al-- all those racist, fascist bastards-- not a peep from the prominent R commentators, other than to say, on rare occasion, "stout-hearted men"-- because they fundamentally GET in a way that the Left, and YOU-- do not, that to repeat your enemy's message only amplifies it, and much more than if Rush et. al. amplify it.

Do you think you're capable of stealing a page from the winners' playbooks and help elect someone who will keep us out of WWIII? Elections are not confessionals. They are elections.

If the other part of the D party that is behind Hillary had bothered to pick a candidate that wasn't so universally, reprehensibly hated by a good portion of middle America, it might not matter who was up on the D side. But, unfortunately, because people respond to name recognition (the devil that you know) which is a product of repetition, we have one serious candidate, and that is Obama.

It is not our job to criticize, in a serious way, a marginally related party to the Obama candidacy. Our enemies will do that well enough. Soul-searching is best done in a bar in SF with your buddies. Out here in the Red-State trenches, we could do without your solipsistic luxuries.