Liberalism Vs Conservatism

[CBVan]

That doesn't even warrant a response.

(in response to penal colonies)
Why not? Surely the idea is just as valid as any other - you can't just make baseless statements like this one and expect to convince anyone. Go ahead. Tell me why my idea is a bad one.

 

[Ausmerican]

(in response to penal colonies)
Why not? Surely the idea is just as valid as any other - you can't just make baseless statements like this one and expect to convince anyone. Go ahead. Tell me why my idea is a bad one.

Because "Survivor: Penal Island" is just going too far for ratings.

 

[Piggy]

Preach it brother, in principle, but I will ask: why the racial epithet in the first line?

I didn't mean it as a racial epithet. "Crackers" (like myself) are natives of south Georgia / north Florida, or natives of any part of either state, by extension. (The Atlanta baseball team used to be the Atlanta Crackers, and the type of one-story wooden home of the sort that was commonly built around the mills is called a "cracker house".) It's used to distinguish between natives and the out-of-staters who now seem to dominate the demographics here. And by and large it's the crackers (and in some areas college students) who are picking the shrooms. The Allman brothers (also crackers) were quite fond of them.

 

[Piggy]

Who pays for that abortion?

Which one?

 

[Piggy]

Careful there. One might think you're setting up a strawman. I would agree with the statement "unlike the current Republican leadership", but that's not synonymous with "today's conservatives".

Point taken.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple, because while other marriages may not affect your marriage, per se, it DOES affect you as a taxpayer, because marriage and proposed civil unions have tax consequences. So it's not correct to say that the public at large has no interest in who can get married and who cannot - they do, because of those tax consequences, which are a shared social burden.

I don't accept this as a valid argument for denying equal rights.

 

[Piggy]

Society ought to be focused on the advancement of knowledge and understanding. How do drugs aid this?

How does golf do this? Should golf be illegal?

How does balancing a bicycle on your chin do this? Should that be illegal?

And why does your vision of what "society ought" get to impose itself on my vision and everyone else's?

And should any vision of what "society ought" be allowed to take precedence over individual rights?

 

[Darth Rotor]

Which one?

"Abortion on demand." Who pays for it?

Your cracker response is an interesting parody of ghetto rappers calling one another ******, while getting mad when others use the same slang.

I smell a cross-cultural irony somewhere.

DR

 

[Piggy]

"Abortion on demand." Who pays for it?

That's like asking who pays for any other elective surgery. Which abortion are you refering to? Whose abortion?

By "on demand" I didn't mean that a doctor/hospital is obliged to perform the operation for anyone who shows up. I mean that (within a certain period of gestation) no special circumstances are required, such as rape or incest.

Your cracker response is an interesting parody of ghetto rappers calling one another ******, while getting mad when others use the same slang.

First, it's not a parody of anything, and second, it doesn't bother me if anyone else uses the term. Why should it?

Anyway, if anyone was offended, I apologize. I wasn't using it to mean "white person". And I also didn't mean "farmer". And it doesn't mean "redneck" either -- there are lots of crackers who are doctors, attorneys, politicians, and such who are not rednecks. In context, it meant something similar to "sand gnat".

 

[Darth Rotor]

I mean that (within a certain period of gestation) no special circumstances are required, such as rape or incest.

OK, I got that part now. What rules do you think should apply to how that procedure is paid for?

DR

 

[Piggy]

What rules do you think should apply to how that procedure is paid for?

That's a really big question. If you're looking at all possible scenarios, it involves insurance, public assistance, the pregnancy itself (does it threaten the health of the mother?), the woman's age, etc., and might vary state-to-state and hospital-to-hospital.

Is there a particular angle you're interested in?

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't accept this as a valid argument for denying equal rights.

I'm not saying it is. I'm ONLY saying there's a valid reason taxpayers in general are interested in the topic of who can and cannot be married. The argument against gay marriage requires a lot more than that statement, to be sure, but in turn the argument FOR gay marriage also requires more than just saying it doesn't affect your marriage directly. And I say that as someone who thinks we should, and probably will, eventually have gay marriage or civil unions (the legal word chosen to describe it being essentially irrelevant in my opinion).

 

[Darth Rotor]

That's a really big question. If you're looking at all possible scenarios, it involves insurance, public assistance, the pregnancy itself (does it threaten the health of the mother?), the woman's age, etc., and might vary state-to-state and hospital-to-hospital.

Is there a particular angle you're interested in?

I have seen a lot of different arguments pro and con on how abortion should or could be funded. (There were some interesting cost/benefit analyses going around in the mid 1980's about how much welfare and indigent support for a child's first 16 years costs, for example. ) I paid for an abortion before I turned 21, out of my own pocket, in a very painful consensual decision by two young, horny people who screwed up. I take a dim view of publicly funded abortion when the root cause is "after the fact" birth control.

Abortion could be a covered option for anyone's health insurance, as an elective coverage or part of any number of packaged coverage options. How one reconciles that with one's church, or one's conscience, one's husband, etc, is a complex and very personal matter. It does not come without cost.

Abortion (basically an assisted miscarriage) as an emergency intervention to a bona fide medical threat to the life of the carrying mother seems an uncommon event (in comparison). It should be treated as a medical emergency like an appendectomy.

That latter isn't what the battle is about.

The battle is over elective abortion as "after the fact" birth control. On any other basis, my cousin's three miscarriages (technically aborted pregnancies) become cases of "negligent manslaughter" under an absurd "strict liability" rubric, or might be if she was less than perfect in her check up regimen, taking of vitamins, or a whole host of other pre natal details that not everyone can afford.

DR

 

[Piggy]

I'm ONLY saying there's a valid reason taxpayers in general are interested in the topic of who can and cannot be married.

Why do you think this reason is "valid"?

 

[Ziggurat]

Why do you think this reason is "valid"?

Because it affects their tax burden. If someone else gets a tax break, that means everyone else has to pay more (now or later). Like I said: this is a valid reason for an interest in the matter - what to do about that interest is a separate question.

 

[Piggy]

Because it affects their tax burden. If someone else gets a tax break, that means everyone else has to pay more (now or later). Like I said: this is a valid reason for an interest in the matter - what to do about that interest is a separate question.

Well, we disagree there. It would ease my tax burden if public services were denied to minorities, but that's no valid reason for doing so.

And in any case, affecting my taxes and affecting my marriage (which is what, I believe, I originally stated) aren't the same thing.

Sure, there will be indirect impacts in certain areas, such as tax revenues. But that's not valid grounds for objection.

We just see it different as far as this goes.

 

[Piggy]

It would ease my tax burden if public services were denied to minorities, but that's no valid reason for doing so.

And in fact, that's probably not true, either, considering other costs that would increase as a result.

Similarly there may also be some savings from increased marriage in the USA.

But anyway, I don't see this as relevant to the issue.

 

[Ziggurat]

Well, we disagree there. It would ease my tax burden if public services were denied to minorities, but that's no valid reason for doing so.

That's not my line of argumentation, though. You do indeed have an interest in public services provided to anyone. But it is not your ONLY interest. There are other interests involved, and in this case, the interest of equal protection outweighs your interest in saving money. That does not make your interest disappear, however. But I've gone on at length about this before on this board: the case for equal protection in regards to gay marriage is actually not the same as the case for equal protection for minorities. There is a rather critical technical difference (namely, as a matter of law, marriage currently makes no reference to the sexual orientation of the participants and so does not deny equal protection based upon sexual orientation), and technicalities matter in law.

And in any case, affecting my taxes and affecting my marriage (which is what, I believe, I originally stated) aren't the same thing.

I know, and that was actually part of my point: opponents need not believe that it will affect their individual marriages in order to have an interest in the matter.

 

[Piggy]

That's not my line of argumentation, though. You do indeed have an interest in public services provided to anyone. But it is not your ONLY interest. There are other interests involved, and in this case, the interest of equal protection outweighs your interest in saving money. That does not make your interest disappear, however.

I'm not saying it disappears. I'm saying it's not valid.

This is also something other than saying one interest outweighs another.

Either there's a case of equal rights here or not. I believe there clearly is.

If there's not, then it may be valid to talk about the tax issue.

But if there is, then the tax issue doesn't matter because it has no weight at all, any more than it would in the case of denying, say, Social Security benefits to minorities.

But I've gone on at length about this before on this board: the case for equal protection in regards to gay marriage is actually not the same as the case for equal protection for minorities. There is a rather critical technical difference (namely, as a matter of law, marriage currently makes no reference to the sexual orientation of the participants and so does not deny equal protection based upon sexual orientation), and technicalities matter in law.

I disagree.

If one segment of the population is granted a whole slew of rights and privileges based on their ability to marry, and another group is arbitrarily -- or not arbitrarily, but on an extra-legal basis, such as religion -- denied these rights because they're denied marriage, then that's discrimination.

I see no legal justification for the state denying marriage to same sex couples. Churches and other religious groups can do as they please.

 

[Piggy]

I know, and that was actually part of my point: opponents need not believe that it will affect their individual marriages in order to have an interest in the matter.

I agree. But my original purpose in bringing it up was as a counter-point to a standard right-wing meme that allowing other people to marry somehow "redefines marriage for everyone" or is an "assault on marriage".

 

[glsunder]

Taxes, I believe, should be low, entitlements like welfare limited, and capitalism allowed to function as it ought to.

What if it were shown that that didn't work as well as something that was based on a (still) balanced system of capitalism and socialism, but was further left? Is capitalism a means or an end?

I'm not trying to debate either, but most of the time, it seems people talk of capitalism as the end, not the means. For example, what if societies who pay for 100% of college tuition (or passed classes) were better off because of the societal investment? How would things like that fit in?