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Checking my premises

Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago to The Gulch: General
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I was unsure as to whether I would title this, "Unlearning what I have learned" or "Checking my premises", because in it, I have done both. A couple of recent posts by AmericanGreatness and Eudaimonia, along with a couple of posts from 1-2 weeks ago are relevant.

I have long thought that the US military was an agent for liberation from totalitarian regimes. Now should I think they are mere pawns of their political masters, most often performing altruism to societies that do not appreciate their presence?

I had long thought that having a strong military meant having a strong national defense. After seeing 67 out of 70 purposeful attempts by TSA employees to evade TSA screening in a "test" of TSA security, I know differently. Moreover, the strong military and even the border agents were unable to protect us from an invasion of illegal immigrants because the one holding the leash kept the military and border agents on so tight a leash that they were unable to do what used to be their job.

I had long thought (because I had thought that the US military was an agent for liberation from totalitarian regimes) that the US had the "moral high ground". I still think that abortion is not the best moral decision and have been criticized (perhaps rightly) within the Gulch for that opinion. Moreover, I see a commentator (sorry, but I forget whom) on FoxNews suggest that America has lost the "moral high ground" in light of the Planned Parenthood situation (The commentator said that Muslims must consider us barbarous for having so many abortions. The term barbarous ironically is derived from the Barbary Pirates in Libya.).

I'm just checking my premises.


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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The problem with this is that you are ignoring the original choice: the choice to have sex and risk pregnancy in the first place. You want to place the burden of choice sometime after that period, when the appropriate time is actually prior to the act of sex. Pregnancy is not an act of sheer will, but a result of union of sperm and egg. Cause -> effect. If you don't want the effect, the only sure way to avoid it is to eliminate the cause. To try and shift the moment of choice to sometime after sex is merely an attempt to circumvent the repercussions of the original choice. One is trying to undo what can not be undone because one does not want to take responsibility for the consequences of action. One who is grounded in reality recognizes cause and effect and acts accordingly.

    I would also point out that the right to life is not a limited right. It can not be. It either is, or is not. Thus the criticality of determining when that binary condition is fulfilled and the right granted. To make the right to life into a "gradual" right is in and of itself a fallacy of reason. One is then arguing that life is not valuable because it is life, but because of some subjective quality of utility, which is by definition individual and highly subjective.
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 9 months ago
    as well, by law if a woman goes into labor and the fetus is born live the hospital has to resuscitate the baby. Why is it that when that happens in an abortion procedure, there is no obligation to do that? It's a double standard that should be addressed
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I disagree. The conversations were so carefully worded as to avoid what was really being discussed. I am not a doctor, but am familiar with some procedures used and have some idea of the research being done. A fully intact "cadaver" must be "delivered." If it isn't directly inducing labor, then I'd be curious to know what the procedure that can deliver a dead fetus, fully intact and untainted by chemical is. To your second point about profit. Most non-profits provide services and/or products for a price above cost. The fact that they can legally sell your tissue to a third party but you cannot legally is part of the insidiousness here, and if made legal, might change the landscape for the better.
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    • khalling replied 8 years, 9 months ago
    • ewv replied 8 years, 9 months ago
  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Pure science is not to prejudicially eliminate any premise until there is evidence to eliminate it from consideration. Pure science is to posit any possibility and then seek for evidence which either corroborates or discredits. Pure science is to seek the understanding of the universe. Pure science admits - as did Albert Einstein - that the root of knowledge comes in knowing what we do not know. And then we work from there.

    Philosophy affects how we use that science. Philosophy is what leads us to ignore certain conclusions in favor of our own biases, or to use science in furtherance of our philosophy, as did the State Science Institute.

    Science is the what/how, philosophy is the why.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago
    The payments were to cover costs, which is legal. The extended "negotiations" were the attempts of the activists to draw out the people at PP to try to get them to say something, anything, that could be used against them to be interpreted as inflammatory. The video recordings were surreptitious and were later edited to try to exploit selected excerpts. The full videos were also released but are many, many hours long that few can go through to see the contradictions with the hype.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So here's a question for you: every post you make is immediately upvoted. Do you have an alternate account you are using to artificially give yourself points?
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If not done for profit then why the negotiations? I'm genuinely curious about that. I've never seen negotiations like that on a T&M agreement (which are also done for profit, by the way). I find your take on this interesting. Why not just deliver the parts for free? Perhaps the PP people in these videos are just actors(?)
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    • ewv replied 8 years, 9 months ago
  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Having rights does not depend on "sentience". Your non-response ignored what he wrote.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    They aren't "babies" and it isn't done for profit. The interviews are real, but the excerpts were carefully selected portions that could be "interpreted" to be mean what they want to portray it as in contradiction with the rest, in order to make the whole PR package inflammatory. Their whole "case" rests only on a prior anti-abortion belief.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Sentience as you use the term needs to be defined."

    That is precisely the argument as it stands, yes. One can hold that sentience and self-will are present from the beginning, or sometime after. It is the nebulous nature of the "sometime after" that abortion proponents must objectify and substantiate.

    The rest of your argument is an attempt to discredit an argument I have not made. What one should remember, however, is that it does nothing to substantiate your own view on the matter, and that is what is under the microscope at this point.

    You posit that it is only "when the umbilical cord is cut". Do you have any scientific evidence to support this? Is a change in environment all that is necessary to endow sentience and human rights?
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Their own characterization of their own videos..." Now, I'm confused. I thought you mean that they admitted it. To me, the videos are pretty clear in showing that they are harvesting aborted babies and selling the parts for profit, even positioning the babies for better harvest. Perhaps that's all just made up. I admit that it could be a bunch of malarky.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The rights of abortion are not based on and have nothing to do with eugenics and no one else is trying to connect them aside from religionist smear propaganda. Even Planned Parenthood doesn't do that. Objectivism is the name of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. That is why you can't divorce them. Crude rationalizations that are so bad they make our ears wilt are not saved by repeating "A is A".
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Sentience" is not unclear. It means conscious awareness at the perceptual level, which has nothing to do with morality and rights. Neither do self-generated actions, which are characteristic of all life.

    The development of limited rights over time concomitant with developing abilities beginning with the birth of a human being has nothing to do with abortion.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No he's not jesting. He is a serious confused religionist who is bound to find "slippery slopes" everywhere there are non-believers in the dogma, which he refuses to stop inappropriately pushing on this forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason.

    He doesn't understand the concept of 'sentient', the meaning of human being, the difference between the potential and the actual, the source of moral principles, and much more. With that as a starting point it's no wonder that he sees "slipping" into "eugenicism", "racial cleansing", "nazis", and "The Black Holocaust" everywhere -- and demands a religious version of the Moratorium on Brains to stop all activity "interfering" with everything from conception on.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Blarman is attributing Sanger to the abortion rights movement and its motives.

    No one is exchanging anything with Sanger. She is dead.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    John Birch Society conspiracy theories against "bankers" and "the Rockefellers" are very old and ignored for good reason. They hold an anti-intellectual "evil men" theory of history, disregarding the role of fundamental ideas.

    That doesn't mean that ideas implement themselves. Some particular people have to act. That has included some Rockefellers (notably in the viro movement, but also other areas), but many many more, all following bad ideas while the public accepted them.
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