Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#221

Post by lemonlime » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #170

lemonlime wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Have you read Roe v. Wade. Where do you get the idea that it's eerily close? Can you quote the specific words from that decision? Here are some that are at odds with what you are saying: "The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close rela…

That doesn’t help. It just asserts that “oh no, it’s obviously not unlimited” but not how or why, in line with the core arguments used. Did you read the article? Its whole point is that Roe is a dubious application of privacy, even if you support the ruling’s conclusion. I assumed from your confident tone, and insistence that the parent comment was a strawman, that you would be able to shed more light on this topic.…

Their reasoning in Roe is pretty detailed and they do not come anywhere close to saying that the right to privacy legalizes everything done in private. Have you read Roe v Wade?

Let's look at fraud. Who do you think is arguing that fraud is illegal if done in private. Can you link me to any example anywhere on any medium?

Which part of the article do you think is relevant here? I have read many books by actual constitutional law scholars on these cases. I don't understand what you think I'm supposed to see in a 1,000 word blog post by a random non lawyer that doesn't know anything in particular about constitutional law.

>I assumed from your confident tone, and insistence that the parent comment was a strawman, that you would be able to shed more light on this topic.

I'm not just insisting it's a strawman. It is a straw man. Can you link me to any argument made by anyone ever on any medium that is even remotely close to what he is saying? (that everything done in private, say, fraud, murder, arson, etc.) should be legal?

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#222

Post by rat87 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #104

astrange wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People certainly do believe these things and I don’t know if it’s even something they can be “logically” wrong about. Where they are factually wrong is that they think they’re traditional but these are fully modern ideas. The actual Jewish tradition is against several of those; the actual Christian tradition may be for them, but the idea that you should actually read the Bible, know what an official position is, or d…

> The actual Jewish tradition is against several of those I think that Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, would have something to say[0] about that: “The law, moreover, enjoins us to bring up all our offspring and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, an…

While some more traditional Jews dislike legal abortion for cases that don't relate to health/mental health and are after 40 days Jewish law is pretty clear that a fetus is not alive/a person with rights until it born and that abortion is not murder.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#223

Post by woodruffw » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #162

robonerd wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An amendment seems ideal, but wouldn't a regular federal law also get the job done? They could even strengthen it like the Federal Reserve Act: "The right to amend, alter, or repeal this Act is hereby expressly reserved."

The federal government derives much of it's power over the states using a controversial interpretation of the commerce clause: To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause Abortion tends to be single state centric, meaning the person getting the abortion and the abortion clinic are in the same state. Because of thi…

I think that oversells it. The current interpretation of the commerce clause is not particularly controversial in contemporary American politics (both dominant political parties are "big Federal government" parties; they just disagree on how to apply the USG's heft.)

> Abortion tends to be single state centric, meaning the person getting the abortion and the abortion clinic are in the same state. Because of this, the federal government couldn't pass a law that only affects intrastate commerce.

It's not this straightforward. One of the initial challenges to the 1964 CRA was that intrastate racial discrimination fell outside of the purview of the Federal government; SCOTUS has consistently determined that state acts may not restrict rights where interstate activity is likely (e.g. motor lodges, economic activities near state borders, etc.).

On net, I think the 9th Amendment provides perfectly sufficient cover for a right to abortion, and that it would be reasonable to interpret the nonenumeration clause in a similar manner to the commerce clause (i.e., permitting federal law where required to protect rights that individual states might wish to infringe). But that's a parallel justification.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#224

Post by wbsss4412 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

alkaloid wrote: post #139

MockObject wrote: post #17

It is frustrating. I am on one side of the abortion debate, but I understand the other side, yet I have no success in even explaining it to my side.

Quoted post unavailable.

You’ve got some strong self rationalization going.

No one has forced you to do anything. There are plenty of people who aren’t extreme, in fact, most people don’t take extreme positions on abortion.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#225

Post by riskable » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #112

xg15 wrote: post #28

> There’s a certain phenomenon I often wonder about, one that only seems to occur with culture war topics. I mean, the term "culture war" itself is part of the "conservative" vocabulary in that issue. So I can see why the whole thing is not easy.

Personally I use it because it’s descriptive. Hard lines being drawn, people unwilling to even talk with others based on ideological labels, economic sanctions against ‘offenders’, propaganda clearly targeted at specific identifiable groups used to raise funds and attack the ‘other’ side, fear and loathing/us vs them. I have an aunt who for economic reasons moved to what she called ‘Trump country’, and she legitimate…

> Hard lines being drawn, people unwilling to even talk with others based on ideological labels, economic sanctions against ‘offenders’, propaganda clearly targeted at specific identifiable groups used to raise funds and attack the ‘other’ side, fear and loathing/us vs them.

You're describing today's conservatives. Liberals seem to be always willing to entertain the discussion of basically anything. It's sort of a core tenet of liberalism... Open discussion and debate.

Where liberals shut discussions down is when they ask for evidence or at least sound reasoning and aren't presented with anything. That's the logical point where you can't really discuss something anymore.

I've seen conservatives get extremely frustrated that liberals won't entertain their religious myths or traditions as justification for any given policy. "They just don't listen!" No, the conservative just revealed that the entire basis for whatever they believe in isn't founded in reality. No amount of arguing is going to sway them so there's no point in discussing it anymore... "Agree to disagree" is about as far as you can go.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#226

Post by dvt » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

corrral wrote: post #138

dvt wrote: post #42

Almost every serious non-partisan legal scholar agrees that Roe v. Wade is on tenuous legal footing. It's purely a logical argument, and it doesn't follow very well from the Constitution. We have a very simple mechanism to rectify this: amend the Constitution. But that ship has long sailed, and the problem now is stare decisis †, which complicates things further. So there's a very real justification for keeping Roe i…

The fundamental problem, which isn't going to get addressed short of the country falling apart, most likely, is that our particular system of government is a bit shit , and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it. Its very shittiness is why we can't realistically fix it. We've been relying on courts really stretching reasoning on the constitution to its breaking point, just to be able to have a most…

> our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it.

I agree that a "Union of States," being profoundly anti-federalist, is a pretty shit way of running a homogeneous world power with a shared language, shared culture, and (for the most part) shared ideals.

The US fundamentally changed after the Civil War (which was probably the breaking point of anti-federalism) but unfortunately the Constitution didn't change along with it.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#227

Post by AftHurrahWinch » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #98

ramesh31 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The phrase "your rapist's baby" is linguistically a bit like "the time traveler's wife": The wife is not a person; she is chattel belonging to the (male) time traveler. Likewise with this hypothetical baby: It has no identity of its own. That we believe we can justly inflict capital punishment on a rapist's child is also interesting. You know, there was once another Supreme Court case where individual rights (namely,…

> the people most disproportionately impacted by restrictive abortion rules are women of color. If Republicans were ruthless consequentialists, this is exactly the person whose abortion rights they would not want to restrict.

Maybe! Or, maybe:

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." ~ Frank Wilhoit

...some political philosophies are strongly hierarchical and see a benefit in having a numerous and economically precarious out-group.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-high-cost-of-unintend...

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#228

Post by happytoexplain » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #178

timoth3y wrote: post #68

The answer to the question in the title is contained in the title. For a number of reasons, we seem to have reached the point where hyperbolic, emotional statements get attention and calm, rational discussion is ignored. A world where everyone is trying to position themselves as the persecuted, besieged voice of reason defending simple truth against irrational attractors, does not leave much room for common ground. I…

Here is Milton Friedman discussing a politically charged topic with Bernie Sanders in a very civil manner. (though Bernie doesn't speak much) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sElz_P6QsZo (ignore the inflammatory title and intro screen) Civility and decorum are what is missing today. And if it was taught in our schools today, and valued in society at large, maybe it we could still have debates like this.

True - and it's complicated by the popularity of pointing to other people's rationality and claiming it as your own in an attack on or exaggeration of the opinions and behaviors of others. Look at all the people in the comments who ostensibly want this, and yet are behaving exactly like all the people supposedly being contrasted with the example in the video. It's not "rationality is missing from politics" to most people, it's "rationality is missing from my political enemies".

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#229

Post by Clubber » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

sieabahlpark wrote: post #58

blueberrychpstx wrote: post #10

Titles like this irk me. It clearly isn’t It should be something more like: “how has general discourse become so polluted and toxified in its perceptions for it to appear that the following statement yields any factuality” … I guess that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it though.

It's almost as if an entire platform is built on making sure the arguments are misconstrued and using buzz phrases like "science believer" and "anti-vaxer". It completely destroys what actual argument exists because it's using targeted language. It's subversive and a direct influence on how politics are taken. You can be against unnecessary medication and be called an anti-vaxer. You can doubt a scientific conclusion…

It's beneficial to the political class that wedge issues not get resolved. It keeps the populace arguing with each other rather than arguing with the state. It's also beneficial to news organizations. How much total ad revenue do you think has been earned across all political outlets since Roe v Wade was decided? I couldn't even guess, but I assume the issue has earned in the 10s if not 100s of millions in ad revenue over the last 49 or so years.

Re: Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?

#230

Post by riskable » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #121

> Is this a ridiculous opinion? I don’t think so. But I can see why someone might disagree with it. For one, what’s the “privacy” thing? Maybe I misunderstand the court's rationale, but it seems really flimsy to hang abortion on "privacy" in this way. > We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to a…

> Legalizing abortion implies asserting that life begins after some date.

I think you mean, "human life" not just "life". Because as far as we know life began about 4.2 billion years ago.

With that out of the way we must now talk about, "what makes human life special?" and "at what point does it become special?"