1:03 AM
4) Plugging North Korea into the statement in place of the United States doesn't work - I didn't argue it was wrong to overthrow any conceivable government, I argued against overthrowing the government of the United States. If you'd like to know why I believe the US system is superior to the North Korean system we can have that discussion...but since virtually nobody (except the governing officials in N. Korea) who has lived in both countries thinks N. Korea is a better place to live
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't try to change how things are - I'm arguing against overthrowing the US government.
In your haste to critique my understanding of how the government works I respectfully suggest you've failed to see how it works.
Those in positions of political power do not have unlimited power. They cannot simply do whatever a majority of them would like to do.
If the Federal Government tried to abolish the Constitution they would, in so doing, abolish the legal claim they have to govern.
They can propose amendments to the Constitution, but those amendments must be approved by the states. The Constitution became a legal document not because the delegates in 1787 signed it, but because over the next few years the states approved it.
Tearing up the Constitution = overthrowing the Federal government, which without the Constitution has no authority to do anything at all.
So even if 100% of Congress agreed to abolish the Constitution they don't actually have the power to do so.
When I appealed to formal logic earlier you started claiming I was being illogical...the nice thing about formal logic is that if I'm being illogical in my use of formal logic you can just point to where the logic is invalid (which you have not done)
Re violinist--you've contradicted this one (formal logic discussion above) and, more recently, you've suggested the argument isn't compelling--even to you--by accepting the possibility that banning abortion at the point of consciousness might be okay (you were fairly non-committal on this point, but if the violinist argument holds, you would eviscerate the case for banning abortion at 21 weeks). In any event, I showed why the violinist argument justifies things you don't believe.
Re we also don't just blindly assert that some right exists - please forgive the humorous take, but I found this one downright funny. I offered reasons why humans should have a right to life (and some other rights too), and have pointed out repeatedly that you are blindly asserting that humans should have rights because they are human...without providing any justification for this claim.
Fair or not, this makes it look like you haven't answered the question because you do not actually have a basis for claiming that humans should have rights.
I agree though that the crux of the argument is whether a fetus has rights. Re how does using that assertion as an argument make sense in a conversation with me - because you asserted the opposite in disagreeing with me. Your argument to which I was responding only held if a fetus does not have rights.
Re paternalism, I thought it was interesting because you were giving me a hard time for being (in your view) paternalistic earlier.
I suggested (and cited an article arguing it at greater length) that the abortion industry was not acting compassionately toward women. I made an analogy to show that sometimes, actions which may appear or even be intended as compassionate, are not really compassionate.
I made a simple analogy about compassion, the intent was not to offer a fully-detailed policy proposal on abortion, and it certainly wasn't to equate getting pregnant with driving off a cliff.
But neither of these 2 responses actually respond to the original claim I made by presenting the analogy.
I don't see anything wrong with using the same analogy to tell multiple stories--we probably could come up with a dozen more variations--but none of them actually respond to the argument being carried by the original analogy (this is what I meant by tearing apart the analogy)
I could have just reused the putting butter on burns analogy to make the same point (people used to do it because they thought it was compassionate), but I used a different analogy to keep things interesting. If the analogy distracts from the main point I'm happy to summarize it: the abortion industry is not very compassionate to women.
Re many conservatives are also very much opposed to welfare - no, many conservatives are opposed to government welfare. The fundamental difference is not opposition to helping the needy, but how best to help them. In general (with notable exceptions) the left tends to favor larger, government programs and the right tends to favor smaller or local programs.
Re fetal pain, I was simply responding to the assertion you made that there doesn't seem to be too much uncertainty about fetuses given our current understanding of biology -- whether it's terribly relevant to your argument or not, I disagreed with the assertion.
Re rational basis. But we can't make an irrational decision based on the risk that a different choice will be discovered to be the rational one later on -this is not the position I am presenting. Rather, given everything we know (and acknowledging that there is much we don't know), I believe it is rational to extend rights to fetuses.
Every decision we make is a decision without all variables being known, so I happen to think most human decisions involve some amount of error or unjustified assumptions. If we claim by being rational we do not "err on the side of anything", then either we are acknowledging that we are irrational or claiming that everybody who disagrees with us on anything (that would be everybody else) is less-rational or less-informed than we are...both of which would be pretty indefensible claims
Erring on the side of something can be quite rational. If I'm driving and visibility is poor, and on my right is an open field and on my left is traffic coming the other way...until I can safely get off the road, if I'm not 100% sure where the line is, I would be rational to err on the side of the field.
So if for sake of argument the line on when to respect human rights is nebulous (I'm not necessarily saying it is, but I understood that you were suggesting it was), I suggest being at the most "death" end of the spectrum on a potentially nebulous question is not a compelling position.
2:26 AM
18 hours later…
8:29 PM
@HoldToTheRod "In your haste to critique my understanding of how the government works I respectfully suggest you've failed to see how it works" - ditto. You fail to see my point, which is that a piece of paper means only as much as the people involved decide it means (on a continuous basis). There is NOTHING stopping everyone involved from getting together and saying "let's get rid of the constitution", except for some/most/all of the people involved not wanting to do so at this point in time.
"those amendments must be approved by the states" - so? I said "if everyone agrees".
"Re violinist--you've contradicted this one (formal logic discussion above)" - still nope. I did explain it (to a limited extent, because my objection would be far more effective if you use your own brain cells to figure this one out, but I guess that's not going to happen). You combined 2 distinct arguments into 1, to dismiss 1 of them (or both, apparently), which is simply misusing logic, even if the logic you're misusing doesn't have any problems in itself.
"Re violinist--you've contradicted this one (formal logic discussion above)" - still nope. I did explain it (to a limited extent, because my objection would be far more effective if you use your own brain cells to figure this one out, but I guess that's not going to happen). You combined 2 distinct arguments into 1, to dismiss 1 of them (or both, apparently), which is simply misusing logic, even if the logic you're misusing doesn't have any problems in itself.
"But I'm not discussing this point again" ... and for this thing that you keep bringing up, despite it already having been discussed to death, and me already having objected multiple times to you bringing it up, and it ultimately severely hurting constructive discourse (which I've already pointed out), you somehow managed to / chose to bring it up multiple times in the same response.
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