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

dynomight.net

331–340 of 388 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also hard to understand why a fetus is to be protected but homeless children and people shouldn't be sheltered or fed. I believe it's the distinction between active killing vs. the passive lack of support.

This argument falls down when talking about sending American troops to any situation, however. Not sending troops in would be a passive lack of support. Sending in troops would be the active killing, on a national level.

The counter argument to that is:

If pro lifers are assuming that a fetus is indeed a living human being, then it follows that the child is completely innocent and its survival is completely dependent on the mother.

A soldier signing up for the army knows very well what he is up against..

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

#332
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the commerce clause cover basically everything? You can't grow wheat to feed your own horses because it affects interstate commerce.

You can't even grow your own weed, inasmuch as it affects the prices on an interstate black market . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

Which is absolute hogwash and FDR's most unfortunate mistake. It lead us to the war on drugs and a barrage of unconstitutional gun laws that should have all been outside the feds' perview.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not just insisting it's a strawman. It is a straw man. It wasn't a strawman (I do not claim anyone argued everything in private is legal), it was reductio as absurdum - taking the privacy argument to its logical limit. If a right to privacy makes abortion legal because it is private, why does this apply only to abortion? Actually, only to a subset of abortion, since "this right is not unqualified and must be co…

> Or do I misunderstand, and they derived this right from some other amendment or combination of amendments? Yes, they derived it from the 14th Amendment's Due Process clause.

Could you explain how?

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Ruth Ginsburg stated the reasoning in Roe was incorrect.

Did she say the reasoning was wrong, or merely that it wasn't ideal? As far as I know, she took umbrage with Roe v Wade being physician focused rather than woman focused. In other words, that the provides for a physicians right to perform abortions more than it does a woman's right to receive abortions.

> She also argued for a different legal rationale, one based on equal rights for women rather than privacy. Laws banning abortion had been written by men and were enforced by men, but their burden fell entirely on women.

RBG was a brilliant legal mind and invoking the Equal Protection Clause (which is what she argued for) would have been orders of magnitude more robust than invoking some vague "right to privacy" that's barely in the Constitution to begin with.

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

#335

> 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?"

Yes, that's implied because we're talking about abortion in humans.

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

Ugh, I'd rather not. There's no good reason to dive into this, and it always ends in ugly eugenics territory. E.g., "Just hear me out, what if the mentally disabled aren't really people?". I'd prefer to keep a wide berth around that--the great thing about human rights is that (apart from the abortion issue) every human gets them.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (100% pro-choice) think they just get bored with hammering on the bodily autonomy aspect, so they start making posts about what the bible "really" says about abortion and other weak, as you say, arguments. I really think they get tired of saying the same thing over and over, even though it's important. I know I do.

Bodily autonomy is still ignoring the pro-lifer position though, who would argue “what about the baby’s rights?”

Not ignoring it. Just refusing to accept that the rights of the pregnancy supersede the rights of the human carrying it.

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

#337
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-fed…

I think the intersection of culture and ideals between different regions in the US is too small to merit a description of the country as homogenous. And that intersection is becoming increasingly smaller with the collapse of mass media and the balkanization of media preferences (news and entertainment).

We have a shared cultural history, but we can't even come close to a consensus on its interpretation.

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bodily autonomy is still ignoring the pro-lifer position though, who would argue “what about the baby’s rights?”

Not ignoring it. Just refusing to accept that the rights of the pregnancy supersede the rights of the human carrying it.

Perhaps "ignoring" means refusing to entertain it even for the sake of argument.

Bodily autonomy is probably a weak argument, because it assumes that the fetus isn't a living human being deserving of the same protections against slaughter that you and I enjoy.

If it is, bodily autonomy doesn't justify murder.

If it's not, then protecting it from abortion is absurd.

In neither case though, is bodily autonomy a compelling argument.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where hyperbolic, emotional statements get attention and calm, rational discussion is ignored. Rational and nuanced discussion requires patience, tolerance, energy, and a big heart to sometimes acknowledge that one is wrong. It's just so much easier to be angry, to be righteous, and to destroy the "enemies".

Rational and nuanced discussion requires all of those items from both sides . The problem is that as such it devolves to a prisoners dilemma, so it is impossible for one to be invested into the mutually beneficial tactic of rational and nuanced discussion without opening oneself to being exploited by someone using game theory.

That's probably why rational and open discussion works best with people you know and trust and not necessarily with random people on the internet - at least when the stakes are high.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? A lot of the Christian people I know and like fall in between. Regardless of their personal views, they look at the idea of legislating morality as counter to the basis of their religion, and then also the moral fiber of the current GOP, and go "nope", and either abstain from voting, vote third party, or vote Democrat (potentially while holding their nose). I've yet to meet the hardliner who wants to ban abort…

> Christian people [...] look at the idea of legislating morality as counter to the basis of their religion Isn't reforming pagan Rome essentially the foundational act of the Christian religion? Christ critiqued the system and was tortured to death for it. Followers of Christ continued to critiqued the system and many more were tortured to death for it. The strength of their conviction in the face of death inspired m…

Not really, no. The entire New Testament takes place during a time Christianity was a weird sect of Judaism, and at best ignored by Rome (persecution was by Jewish authorities). Not sure what the 'foundational act' of Christianity would be, maybe Jesus' death and resurrection, maybe something in the Book of Acts (badum-tsh, but like, Pentecost), but it wasn't caring about Roman governance.

Christ didn't critique Rome. He didn't really have words for Rome at all, beyond "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's". The threat he embodied to 'the system' was specifically the Judaic priesthood who didn't view him as the Messiah. Well, arguably he embodied a broader threat to Rome, in that as you say, living in ways counter to Rome (and 'the world' at large) it challenged institutional assumptions and gave way to reform, but that wasn't a threat Rome really recognized, and, key to your point I think, was not trying to affect Roman law, nor lead to it even amongst those who were citizens of Rome.

Other than the aforementioned "give to Caesar what is Caesar's", which certainly doesn't seem to challenge Rome, or indicate any political stance beyond "pay your taxes", can you come up with any time Jesus even -acknowledged- Rome? He didn't even disobey Roman law; both Pilate and Herod Antipas acknowledged they could find "no guilt in him". It was a Jewish affair.

Even Paul didn't seem particular interested in Rome. He was a citizen of Rome, afforded rights, which he availed himself of when it came to who could judge him, but which he never talks about using to vote (despite as a citizen of Rome having that right, at least for local leaders). He doesn't instruct citizens to vote, let alone how they should vote, nor does he instruct them to be active in civics. He does give instruction for how to engage with civic leaders - pray for them, and obey the law.

That hardly paints a picture of getting religion into politics.

More to the point though, what I was referencing was specifically Jesus' and Paul's statements regarding the law. Namely, that all the law could do is condemn. It's part of a broader understanding that one aspect of the Old Testament is that it serves as a demonstration that even God's chosen people are unable to live up to the law; people can't be good enough. Everyone who lived under the law was condemned by the law. That trying to legislate morality just serves to punish people for being immoral. That something different is needed to actually make people righteous (Christ, sanctification through grace, etc etc). It is ironic, then, how many Christians end up deciding that what this culture really needs is more law, morality via legislation, rather than trying to affect the culture by, well, living counter culturally, loving those who persecute you, etc.

If the Christian voting bloc collectively shrugged its shoulders at abortion as a law, while at the same time showing up at abortion centers to love and support those who were there, ensuring their needs as potential mothers, as well as any needs from having an abortion (which is oftentimes still traumatic) were met, voting not to punish and condemn ("you got raped at 14? Too bad; you get to be a single teenage mother now. Have a good life") but instead to enable (mandatory paid maternity leave, welfare programs to ensure children would be taken care of, healthcare coverage, etc, so that having a child wasn't an economic burden), it would likely lead to a much better reception to their message than the current most highly visible tact of political partisanship.

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