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

dynomight.net

211–220 of 388 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know followers of "religion" invented empiricism (and logic and rhetoric, etc.), right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon

You know followers of invented , right? There's no dots to connect between one thing and the other. Someone can be a hardcore Catholic and invent an abortion device or an atheist could come up with a fancy new way of manufacturing crosses. Their stance on religion is irrelevant.

In this case, there are lots of dots. There are a disproportionate amount of Catholic priests represented within the scientific sphere, including the vast majority of famous ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lay_Catholic_scientist...

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

#212
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…

We do have a simple method, in amending the Constitution, but that’s been incredibly difficult to do for pretty much the entire history of the United States. For an issue like this one, it’s basically impossible. The true simple solution would have been to codify the right to an abortion in federal law, as candidate Obama promised to do but President Obama failed to even attempt. Recently I’ve been introduced to the…

Your hypothetical doesn't make much sense to me because it assumes Obama had more power than he did- Obama wasn't elected king of America.

You need 60 votes in the senate to pass anything unless you eliminate the filibuster (the so called nuclear option). Obama had 60 Democrats exactly which means if even a single Democrat was willing to vote against a federal right to abortion law Obama couldn't have done it.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! Awesome reply. I'm pretty much anti-abortion myself, but draw the line at your point. So, I'm practically pro-choice. > it is the government's job to enforce Which is where I say we stop on the whole abortion thing. So, I'm an anti-abortion pro-choicer? Kinda weird I suppose. Falling between two camps isn't popular these days.

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…

> the idea of legislating morality as counter to the basis of their religion

And this is what I've been finding lately as I've been reading and researching the bible.

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

#215
post #93
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I find it very annoying that on most major issues, the sides argue at right angles to one another. They say the other side is wrong without saying what they believe is wrong. Anti-abortion activists don't address the issue of bodily autonomy and pro-abortion activists don't address the issue of the definition of personhood. If you're like me and settled on strictly-consistent stances on the topic you find…

If we were debating at what term we should allow abortions until then I think there is room for discussion. But the extreme position of "no abortions at all at any term" I'm simply uninterested in discussion. It's not that I don't understand their thinking. I simply do not agree and thus do not care to discuss or debate it. Here is the thing, the majority of people who actually reason and think about these topics hav…

Well see that's the thing. What makes killing a human murder? I'm of the opinion that the human mind is what makes a human more valuable than a lower animal. Killing a cloned body with no cerebrum wouldn't be murder. I'm forced to concede, however, that that belief doesn't give me a reason that newborns should be more protected than fetuses as it takes months for infants to begin demonstrating consciousness and memory. If consciousness isn't the dividing line, then what is? You could say the ability to sustain life on one's own is the dividing line, but then that line is always moving. A one year old infant will die without care. A thousand years ago a six month old fetus would almost certainly die shortly after birth, but today the survival rate is nearly 100%. With today's technology a 24 week fetus has between a 60 and 70 percent chance of survival. Is killing a 24 week fetus murder? If murder is contingent on its ability to survive with modern technology, what happens as technology pushes that age smaller and smaller?

Adopting a Least Convenient Possible World principle makes the questions even harder. If you could push a button to have a Star Trek style transporter instantly and painlessly teleport the fetus into an artificial womb, should you still be allowed to kill it instead?

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

#216
People don't want to understand. Earnestly listening means you might change your mind. There is nothing to be gained "strategically" by listening. Claiming to want open discourse and free discussion is a tactic promoted by those who would lose any popular poll or vote. Further, most people don't hold their opinions because they've thought things through. They are told "good people believe A," and they want to be seen as (and think of them self as) a good person, so they espouse A.

It's one thing to wish people were more rational and less tribal. But to really not understand human nature after the last decade? The author is either naive beyond absurdity or feigning ignorance as a different form of virtue signaling.

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

#217
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it’s not a huge jump from the 4th amendment to a generalized right to privacy, you’re wrong when you say it’s not true, the fourth amendment does not actually say anything about privacy, it is at most implied. The fourth amendment, much like the third, was passed in response to an explicit practice that occurred during the pre revolutionary period, and sought to remedy it.

My non-lawyerly opinion believes that both the first amendment and the fourth amendment when taken together provide a decent foundation to a generalized right to privacy. Specifically when you look at all of the cases over time defining actions as speech. Is abortion a form of free speech? possibly!

I am totally on board with there being a right to privacy, I was only responding to the facts within the thread.

It’s a very straightforward jump from the text of the fourth amendment to a right to privacy, but at the end of the day, the amendment itself does not actually say there is a right to privacy.

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

#218
post #53

Morality and law both work like mathematics. This means that my beliefs are constructed, and once I have a construction, the only in bounds way to convince me to change my mind about them is to show me that my beliefs are inconsistent. Moreover, understanding someone who has already demonstrated an inconsistent belief system is easy. They believe X because they believe something and its negation, and at least one of…

To add to this, _everyone_ has some kind of inconsistent belief system. It's fairly simple to determine this, when people get defensive it's almost certainly based on something incongruous between their beliefs and actions, or possibly broaches a belief they hold to be true, but are unable to demonstrate why it's true. Therefore causing defensive behavior when challenged. I.E., very few people get upset if you say "t…

In my experience, the reason people get mad when questioned like that isn't because they're unable to justify it. It's usually because you're insensitively pestering them to describe their opinions in careful detail when that's not a conversation they're interested in having at that time.

Kind of like how when someone's complaining to you about a problem and they get angry when you keep pestering them with solutions, because they aren't looking for a solution and just want someone to vent to.

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

#219

> Given this disagreement, it’s not entirely obvious to me that we should resolve it through the Supreme Court rather than having people debate with each other and vote for legislators who will pass laws that reflect their views. This misunderstands the role of a Constitution. One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy. People cannot debate with each other and vote f…

> One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy.

This only applied to federal portion of "democracy" until the 14th amendment which added restricting the states re Bill of Rights. 14th wasn't adopted until 1868. I don't think it's that central.

> The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without a fair procedure. The Supreme Court has ruled this clause makes most of the Bill of Rights as applicable to the states as it is to the federal government, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

The Constitution is primarily about limiting the powers of the Federal government vis a vis State government, and then both vs people. As outlined by the 10th amendment.

> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The government can't pass laws against "Turtles Suck!" because that power is not granted them. It is reserved to The People. This is why "people" like youtube and twitter and cancel culture are free to censor and ban.

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

#220

> The Constitution doesn’t mention abortion. But what about privacy? Well, it doesn’t mention privacy either. That's not true - the 4th amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. The search part prevents the police from reading your mail or wiretapping your phones without a warrant (which declares the search reasonable), except illegally.

While it’s not a huge jump from the 4th amendment to a generalized right to privacy, you’re wrong when you say it’s not true, the fourth amendment does not actually say anything about privacy, it is at most implied. The fourth amendment, much like the third, was passed in response to an explicit practice that occurred during the pre revolutionary period, and sought to remedy it.

Privacy is about maintaining an inviolable personal space, and the fourth amendment is very explicitly about limiting state violation of the individual person, their property, papers, or effects.

Papers in particular is important because it is quite literally in reference to information. To this day information has to be acquired legally in order for it to be admissable in court.

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