Theocrat/neocon hybrids - is there such an animal?

[Ron]

To me, a theocrat is anyone who tries to use legislative powers to enact as law the tenets of their particular belief system, thus restricting the rights of others who don't believe as they do.

That's right!! We only want godless materialistic elites enacting the tenants of their belief system!

[Perd Hapley]

Theocrat is definitely a pejorative outside of the Middle East, not the same at all as "social conservative."  Really, one could be a social conservative without favoring any "restrictive" legislation.  I'm a social conservative, but I don't want to outlaw sodomy and I'd even consider legalizing prostitution and drugs.

That POV doesnt match up well with your sig line.

Then you're probably not understanding one of them.  What's not clear to you? 

[glockfan.45]

Then you're probably not understanding one of them.  What's not clear to you?

Perhaps I am just misinterpreting things but your signature line would imply you to be pro-life which would logically make you against legal abortion.

Really, one could be a social conservative without favoring any "restrictive" legislation.  I'm a social conservative, but I don't want to outlaw sodomy and I'd even consider legalizing prostitution and drugs.

Which doesnt work well with this sentiment. Explain yourself   .

[Matthew Carberry]

You can be against something without wanting to make it illegal.

[Perd Hapley]

gf45,

I prefer "anti-abortion."  I don't feel the need for euphemisms.  As I have explained in this thread, I believe law should impose the moral idea of human rights.  That is, if you violate someone's rights by killing them or stealing from them, you should face legal consequences.  Abortion is a clear violation of the rights of the child.  The fact that you would equate infanticide with prostitution or drug use is very sad.   

[Stand_watie]

Then you're probably not understanding one of them.  What's not clear to you?

Perhaps I am just misinterpreting things but your signature line would imply you to be pro-life which would logically make you against legal abortion.

Really, one could be a social conservative without favoring any "restrictive" legislation.  I'm a social conservative, but I don't want to outlaw sodomy and I'd even consider legalizing prostitution and drugs.

Which doesnt work well with this sentiment. Explain yourself   .

Why doesn't it work well with his sentiment?

[Stand_watie]

To answer your question fistful, no, I don't think there is such an animal. At least not in American politics.

[glockfan.45]

I believe law should impose the moral idea of human rights

Morals are relative, you will find the nation to be pretty well divided on the issue (abortion) so I fail to see where any one group has the right to declare an act moral or immoral in this case. I personaly find the practice to be grotesque  beyond a certian point, however the debate is still on about what passes as life so its hardly prudent for you or I to dictate personal philosophy to others on the matter.

That is, if you violate someone's rights by killing them or stealing from them, you should face legal consequences.  Abortion is a clear violation of the rights of the child.

Depends on what you consider to be a child. I dont buy the "at the moment of conception argument".

I'm a social conservative, but I don't want to outlaw sodomy and I'd even consider legalizing prostitution and drugs.

Summed up you either believe in the right of personal freedoms and responsibilities, or you believe that people can be dictated to based upon what a certian group feels is moral and right. My question for you is which is it?

[CAnnoneer]

g45,

If a fetus is a person, then he/she is protected by anti-murder laws. That I think is the core of fistful's position. From that POV, anti-abortion legislation is not additionally restrictive, at least not more than any anti-murder law already in effect. So, there is no inconsistency in his position.

The problem is to what extent the enforcement of an anti-murder-abortion law would necessitate new auxiliary grotesque laws which will be more than restrictive to females. Now that is where his position is highly assailable especially from a pragmatic standpoint.

The other weak spot is at the very beginning, namely when does a fetus become a person. Since it is probably a person when born, and just a cell at conception, it is not obvious to me where the dividing line is. And even then, it is not clear to me that society has the right to stipulate that the mother's life and well-being is less worthwhile than a fetus's. My logic is that the mother's personhood is beyond doubt while the fetus's is in doubt. Therefore, the safest bet is to give all rights and responsibilities to the mother, as that maximizes our chances of being right.

[Perd Hapley]

CAnnoneer, thanks for doing half my work for me.

Glockfan, if you want to understand me, I'll have to hash out this notion of imposing morality.  All law, from laws against murder to equal opportunity laws to the tax code, is an imposition of morality of some sort.  In a free country, the morality imposed by law would be what we might call the libertarian ethic.  In other words, you have a right to live and believe as you wish, provided you don't infringe my right to do the same.  Such a standard of law is not concerned with belief, and usually not with speech, but with action.  You're free to disagree with the libertarian ethic in theory, but not in practice.   To some extent, you are forced to live by it.

So, you have a right to believe and say that embryos are not persons, but not to kill the embryo based on that belief.  We know that an embryo is of the same species as its parent and that it is a new organism.  That is what reproduction does; it adds new members to the species.  So we can agree that a human embryo is a human being and a new individual.  It is not a part of its mother's body.  Like other immature humans, it is not allowed to exercise all of its human rights, but it does have an inviolate right to life.  That is, if you agree with the concept of human rights or at least agree that innocent humans must not be killed out-of-hand.

When we move from an objective concept of the embryo as a human (defined by biology) to a subjective concept of the embryo's personhood, and then kill embryos based on a denial of personhood, we are indeed imposing our morality on that embryo in a way that violates the notion of human rights.  To accomodate CAnnoneer's view, we would have to replace human rights with personhood rights.  Such a regime is far more flexible, thus more open to abuse.  A human, the way I am using the term, is defined by fact (DNA and other physical characteristics).  A "person" is defined in any way one chooses.  It is a way of classifying others as sub-human in the same way the "lower races" or the mentally deficient have been dehumanized (or in our parlance de-personized) in the past. 

[Perd Hapley]

The problem is to what extent the enforcement of an anti-murder-abortion law would necessitate new auxiliary grotesque laws which will be more than restrictive to females. Now that is where his position is highly assailable especially from a pragmatic standpoint.

The other weak spot is at the very beginning, namely when does a fetus become a person. Since it is probably a person when born, and just a cell at conception, it is not obvious to me where the dividing line is. And even then, it is not clear to me that society has the right to stipulate that the mother's life and well-being is less worthwhile than a fetus's. My logic is that the mother's personhood is beyond doubt while the fetus's is in doubt. Therefore, the safest bet is to give all rights and responsibilities to the mother, as that maximizes our chances of being right.

What a jumble of patently absurd notions, poor logic and worse ethics.  I could spend a week untangling them all.  Where to begin?

Equal enforcement of murder laws would certainly involve no new laws.  People participating in abortions would be treated as participants in any other contract murder.  Mothers, abortionists and other parties would, of course, be liable to prosecution as murderers.  CAnnoneer's ramblings on this angle are a result of his speculation that maternal psychology affects miscarriage.  He imagines trials in which juries would convict miscarrying women of murder on the basis of their being "stressed" or being angry with their husbands.  Or he thinks that women would be force-fed and kept in hospitals to assure a successful pregnancy.  Though of course we don't do this sort of thing with parents whose children are already born.  Assail away, CAnny.

CAnnoneer, you are correct that there is no bright line between conception and birth.  How you can then see some legal line between a child being a "person" on one side of the womb and "just a cell" on the other side is puzzling, except that you simply want to avoid any alignment with Pat Robertson on domestic policy.  Conception is obviously the bright line at which we know that a new life has begun, and a human one.  There is no reason not to respect that life from the beginning. 

Being a man of science, I wonder how you can speak of a zygote being "just a cell."  As if you were unaware of one-celled organisms.  As if you didn't know that every elephant, dog and zebra, like every human, began life as a cell.  We're all clumps of cells, you know.  Some have more than others.   

You speak of balancing the rights of the fetus against those of the mother.  A true conception of rights doesn't need to balance anything.  My rights do not, and cannot, infringe on yours.  Nor can the fetus infringe on the mother's rights.  After all, he is there at his mothers' and/or father's behest.  If she chose to have sex, then she chose to hazard the child's existence inside her.  Killing the child would be worst sort of refusal to accept responsibility for her actions.  If she was raped, then our quarrel is with the rapist, not the hapless child, nor with those who would deny her an abortion.  He was the one who violated her rights.  She can no longer exercise the right not to be pregnant.  That's part of the horror of rape.  A man violated her right to control her body.  Killing the child cannot change that.  Rape cannot be undone. 

If you want to maximize your chances of being right, then by all means allow the child to be born.  Why not?  The stakes are desperately high for the fetus, not so much for the mother.  The fetus loses everything.  The mother may lose her reputation.  She may suffer a set-back in her education and never have the career she wanted.  She may have to give her baby for adoption and always suffer that loss.  She may spend her life in poverty.  You may not be convinced that the embryo is really a person worthy of protection, but will you take the chance of allowing a murder just to avoid these things?  Am I saying that she is less "worth-while" than the child?  How so?  I simply ask that the child be allowed to continue to live.  As I have already stated, either she agreed to engage in pregnancy-inducing behavior or she was raped.  In the first case, she has no right to weasel out of the consequences of her decision, when that would involve killing an innocent person.  In the second case, murdering a child does not "undo" rape. 

[CAnnoneer]

Hehe. fistful, I cannot do a better job at discrediting your position than what you did yourself in your second post. So I will remain gleefully silent for the moment. Hehehe.

[roo_ster]

CAnnoneer, thanks for doing half my work for me.

Glockfan, if you want to understand me, I'll have to hash out this notion of imposing morality.  All law, from laws against murder to equal opportunity laws to the tax code, is an imposition of morality of some sort.  In a free country, the morality imposed by law would be what we might call the libertarian ethic.  In other words, you have a right to live and believe as you wish, provided you don't infringe my right to do the same.  Such a standard of law is not concerned with belief, and usually not with speech, but with action.  You're free to disagree with the libertarian ethic in theory, but not in practice.   To some extent, you are forced to live by it.

So, you have a right to believe and say that embryos are not persons, but not to kill the embryo based on that belief.  We know that an embryo is of the same species as its parent and that it is a new organism.  That is what reproduction does; it adds new members to the species.  So we can agree that a human embryo is a human being and a new individual.  It is not a part of its mother's body.  Like other immature humans, it is not allowed to exercise all of its human rights, but it does have an inviolate right to life.  That is, if you agree with the concept of human rights or at least agree that innocent humans must not be killed out-of-hand.

When we move from an objective concept of the embryo as a human (defined by biology) to a subjective concept of the embryo's personhood, and then kill embryos based on a denial of personhood, we are indeed imposing our morality on that embryo in a way that violates the notion of human rights.  To accomodate CAnnoneer's view, we would have to replace human rights with personhood rights.  Such a regime is far more flexible, thus more open to abuse.  A human, the way I am using the term, is defined by fact (DNA and other physical characteristics).  A "person" is defined in any way one chooses.  It is a way of classifying others as sub-human in the same way the "lower races" or the mentally deficient have been dehumanized (or in our parlance de-personized) in the past. 

But, hey, dehumanizing inconvenient others makes social/sexual experimentation in a consequence-free environment possible!

fistful pretty much nails it: objective criteria for being a human versus subjective criteria for being a person.

Of course, forcing folks to think about uncomfortable topics in a rational way that does not allow for fudging doesn't make one popular.

[roo_ster]

CAnoneer:

I disagree with the "discrediting" comment.  fistful's argument logically flows from the fact that at conception, a new human it tossed into the mix.

Most don't like to follow logic down to so far, though.  They'd prefer to have contradiction to logical application, if that application offends some other sensibility they might hold.

At risk of provoking the anti-Straussian troglodytes, I shall quote a bit from the man:
"Finite, relative problems can be solved; infinite, absolute problems cannot be solved. In other words, human beings will never create a society which is free from contradictions."
----Leo Strauss

In our case, we have a society that values human rights quite highly, but is willing to look the other way and see them eviscerated* when upholding the human rights of an unseen, silent, and physically small human could possibly inconvenience another visible, vocal, and full-grown human.


* Perhaps "dismembered" or "dilated & extracted" would be better terms here?

[Ron]

Most don't like to follow logic down to so far, though.  They'd prefer to have contradiction to logical application, if that application offends some other sensibility they might hold.

Rights don't really exist to the materialists any more than absolute morality does.

They are both customs of convenience to them.

Our rights flow from our culture in their world and can be taken away at the whim of whomever is in power. They will not be able to decry this infringement on our God given rights.

They will not be able to argue consistently for inalienable rights because in their world rights are only a human construct. They are not something we are imbued with by our Creator but constructs that evolve with time.

The only real law to them when it is boiled right down to the essence is might makes right. The law of the jungle.

They use fancy words and arguments to dissemble, just keep taking what they believe to its logical conclusion and you will see that those in power make the rules.

The materialist who claims to believe in inalienable rights has no basis for his argument other than it is his preference.

[Perd Hapley]

I suspect the cannon man is misunderstanding some of the things I have said.  This has happened before.  If he will point out the "discrediting" I will oblige him with a clarification. 

Perhaps this passage was confusing.

You speak of balancing the rights of the fetus against those of the mother.  A true conception of rights doesn't need to balance anything.  My rights do not, and cannot, infringe on yours.  Nor can the fetus infringe on the mother's rights.  After all, he is there at his mothers' and/or father's behest.  If she chose to have sex, then she chose to hazard the child's existence inside her.

Allow me to expand.

You speak of balancing the rights of the fetus against those of the mother.  A true conception of rights doesn't need to balance anything.  My rights do not, and cannot, infringe on yours.  If I am violating your rights, it is not because I am exercising my rights.  It is because I have overstepped what I have a right to do.  Nor is it possible for a fetus to infringe on the mother's rights, as the fetus is not capable of choosing to take residence in the womb or of choosing to leave.  After all, he is there at his mothers' and/or father's behest.  If she chose to have sex, then she chose to engage in behavior that might impregnate her.  There are instances where very young or very ignorant girls might not understand the consequences of sex, but this is why we don't allow twelve-year olds to consent.  In any case, I submit that no girl too naive to understand the birds and the bees would not still know that sex is something she is not supposed to be doing.  Her conscience would tell her there are consequences, even if she doesn't know what those are.

[CAnnoneer]

Ron,

I agree with your post. But, since you have reached this level of clarity, I think you owe it to yourself to try to take a few steps further down that line of reasoning and think about the broader implications, inclusive of those whom you deem "non-materialist".

fistful,

The discreditation boils down to a few simple points:

1) My "ramblings" will be confirmed by any ObGyn MD as well as literature I have suggested. But, instead of educating yourself on the subject, you choose to caricature my position blindly.

2) You are clearly ok in treating women like criminals, if the life of what you perceive as a person is in potential danger. So you are ok with infringing the rights of one person for the sake of the preservation of the rights of what you deem as another. So you contradict yourself in two posts simultaneously.

3) a fertilized egg is a cell. As we have talked previously, if there were something special about it, cloning would not be possible, but it is and has been demonstrated on mammals and is claimed to have been demonstrated with humans. Again, why do I have to rehash this?

4) Is it a serious stance that true rights are never to be balanced and can never be in contradiction? All human history is based on exactly a balancing act of rights between the individual and society, among individuals, and individual and environment. (Also a trivial counterexample - two castaways and one lifevest.) If maintaining the above (and actually repeating it just in case I misunderstood) is not discrediting, what is?

5) Maximization problem: since the rights of mother and child add up to a constant, while the probability of personhood is 1 vs unknown, the "rightness maximization" approach is clearly "all bets on the mother".

[Perd Hapley]

Educate myself?  I learn somethin' new everyday.  Today I learned that I can easily discredit myself by disagreeing with CAnnoneer and having, dare I say, a more correct and sophisticated view of rights than is common.  Forgive me the long reply folks, I have to do some lecturing.

I know my view of rights is different than the distorted view so common today.  I suppose I can't complain if I'm misunderstood.  I keep trying to tackle two issues at once.  When we speak of "balancing" one person's rights against another's, or one person's rights conflicting with another's, it is indicative of an incorrect view of rights.  It supposes that you and I can have a right to the exact same thing at the same time.  If we're in the lifeboat together with one vest, how can we both claim a right to it?  If the vest belongs to one of us, that person has a right to it.  If the vest belongs to neither of us, then no one of us has a right to it.  What's so complicated? 

The old saw goes that "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."  The old saw is correct.  I have a right to swing my fist; I do not have a right to swing it in the near vicinity of your nose.   In your way of thinking, Cannoneer, you would have to say that my right to swing my fist at your nose is outweighed by your right not to be hit.  Your way of thinking still leaves me with a right to hit you in the nose.  Why? 

The child's rights don't have to be "balanced" or wieghed against anyone else's.  The child, like any human, has a right not to be harmed without good cause.  The only good cause that seems apparent would be to save the life of the mother.  Certainly, we all have a right to "control our own bodies," but we should also agree that my control of my own body is forfeit when I'm pointing a gun at you.  I have a right to point a gun in a direction that doesn't  violate your rights, but not to point it at you at whim.

We don't need to "bet" on one person's rights against another, because rights never conflict.  Children have a right to expect care from their parents, whether this be a womb, food, shelter, etc.  The mother simply has no right to withhold necessary care from a child that is totally dependent on her for survival.  When a man impregnates a woman, that woman and child now have a claim on him.  He used to have a right to sole control of everything he owned - not anymore.  In a way, he no longer has control over his own body or property.  Women are in the same boat.  Either she chose to have sex, or she was forced to.  In any case, an irreversible decision has been made.  In case of rape, her rights have been violated.  That does not grant a right to kill innocent third parties.

If I always bring up rape, it is because it is the one exception to the fact that "choice" is a canard.  The vast majority of pregnancy results from chosen behavior known to result in pregnancy.  Choice occurs BEFORE conception.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

So any Ob/Gyn can confirm for me that women deliberately, premeditatively miscarry their children?  I think they must be keeping that a secret, so they can keep making money from those totally unnecessary abortions.  CAnny, I am aware that psychology has a bearing on miscarriage.  Where you go off the deep end of fantasy is in thinking such things would even come close to being legal proof of malicious intent.

2) You are clearly ok in treating women like criminals, if the life of what you perceive as a person is in potential danger. So you are ok with infringing the rights of one person for the sake of the preservation of the rights of what you deem as another.

That is just emotionally loaded rhetoric, and you know it.  It's obvious that if I perceive one person as attempting to murder someone else, I will consider them a criminal.  I'm not just OK with it, I demand it. 

3) a fertilized egg is a cell. As we have talked previously, if there were something special about it, cloning would not be possible, but it is and has been demonstrated on mammals and is claimed to have been demonstrated with humans.

Please expand; I don't know what your point is and I don't recall reading this before. 

[Perd Hapley]

fistful pretty much nails it: objective criteria for being a human versus subjective criteria for being a person.

I appreciate the compliment, especially considering the source.  I'm very frustrated with anti-abortion Christians acting as if abortion were a religious issue.  I don't know if I can bear another iteration of "it's not a political issue; it's a moral issue."  As if the two could never coincide.  The anti-abortion side needs to totally abandon the scriptural argument outside of the church, and just stick to scientific fact, coupled with the concesus that innocents ought not be killed. 

[Manedwolf]

I find many arguments presented by several sides of the political spectrum to be patently hypocritical and self-contradictory, myself.

Like, for example, from the extreme religiousity sorts...Abortion is Bad. Right. AND...from the same people, the Morning After Pill is bad, and even The Pill is Bad and Condoms are Bad. Okay. So...the means that PREVENT one from getting to the stage where they'd need an abortion are bad, too? Come on! Choose. People will have sex, like it or not. They can do it safely, or in an unsafe manner, and are more likely to want an abortion if it's the latter. If the Pill is denied to them or denounced enough through misinformation that they don't use it, they're also more likely to want an abortion. If you want less abortions, stop freaking getting in the way of the effective tools that can prevent people from getting to the point where they're likely to want one!

And another argument, from certain conservative groups. From the same people...Abortion is Bad. And...Welfare For Mothers and Children is Bad. Ooookay...So you don't want to pay for Welfare Queen And Her Six Mouths To Feed, BUT...you want to disallow abortion, too. What's the solution, there, then? Choose, allow abortion, or keep doling out funds to welfare mothers as they keep having more and more kids they didn't want. You're against abortion, you're for taxpayers paying the bill. Simple as that.

And from the left, too, not innocent in all this. One solution to welfare mothers has been a suggestion of Norplant implants for welfare recipients as a condition for receiving welfare. BUT...the ACLU fights that as "violating their rights"!

End result, ALL sides of the issue are MEDDLING in a way that not only tells people what they can and can't do with their bodies, but ends up causing taxpayers to pay through the nose for an out of control welfare state and a vicious cycle of poverty as unwanted children have unwanted children. This, in turn, drags down everyone, as that sort is, I believe, statistically more likely to end up in the hood/barrio crime cycle that kills cities.

See why I like LIBERTARIAN viewpoints instead? 

[Matthew Carberry]

Heck, I'd be happy if folks on both sides would quit stating that the reversal of Roe would automatically "criminalize" abortion.

All it would do it place the decision to criminalize at the level where all other homicides (criminal, negligent or justifiable) are, the individual state level.

What is "crim. neg homicide" in one state may be "manslaughter" in another and the criteria for "justifiable" are not universal either.  There is little outcry that this somehow deprives the rights of those who take a human life in other fashions nor that it forms a "patchwork" of laws that require Federal standards.

If you don't like, say, North Dakota's laws, move or try to change them or live with them.  If you want an abortion and can't have it in your own state, it is up to you to travel somewhere you can do so legally or choose to break the law and put yourself at greater risk by having one illegally.  As long as you are free to travel, it doesn't have to be easy or convenient.  If PP or others want to give you a bus ticket, great.  If not, suck it up and take care of business yourself, as was stated, if you weren't raped you had the ultimate ability to avoid the situation in the first place.

In any event, just like any other medical treatment, don't order me to pay for it with my tax dollars.

[richyoung]

I find many arguments presented by several sides of the political spectrum to be patently hypocritical and self-contradictory, myself.

 

Like, for example, from the extreme religiousity sorts...Abortion is Bad.

As is most murder...

Right. AND...from the same people, the Morning After Pill is bad, and even The Pill is Bad and Condoms are Bad.

I have no problem with contreception.   Other than the roman Catholics, I know of no other Christian sect that does.  From whence does thou get this mistaken opinion?

Okay. So...the means that PREVENT one from getting to the stage where they'd need an abortion are bad, too?

What's wrong with abstinence?

Come on! Choose. People will have sex, like it or not.

Actions will have consequences, like it or not.  Or, alternately, we should allow children under 12 to have sex?  Teachers and students? How about the mentally retarded?  Alzheimer's patients?  People in a persistant vegatative state?  The fact is, we have no problem declaring that in some circumstances, sex between certain groups of people is OFF-LIMITS, with varying degrees of consequences that can be prison, loss of job, or both, etc.

They can do it safely, or in an unsafe manner, and are more likely to want an abortion if it's the latter. If the Pill is denied to them or denounced enough through misinformation that they don't use it, they're also more likely to want an abortion. If you want less abortions, stop freaking getting in the way of the effective tools that can prevent people from getting to the point where they're likely to want one!

Refresh my memory - where in the United States to adults have any problems getting condoms or birth control pills?

And another argument, from certain conservative groups. From the same people...Abortion is Bad.

...that is correct...

And...Welfare For Mothers and Children is Bad.

Yes.  The applicable commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Steal."  Please note there is no weasle out clause, such as "Thou Shalt Not Steal, Unless Thy Has A Majority Vote To Steal, And Callest Thou It "Welfare", or "Progressive Taxation", or "Economic Redistribution".  Christians are also admonished to be good citizens - in this country, that means not only fulfilling our citizenly duties, but also attempting to prevent the government from seizing power and authority it does not have.  Under the Constitution, where, oh WHERE, is the Government granted the authority to take money from one person, in ordxer to give it to another?  Search all you want, but it isn't in there.

Ooookay...So you don't want to pay for Welfare Queen And Her Six Mouths To Feed, BUT...you want to disallow abortion, too. What's the solution, there, then?

Solution One:  Keep your legs together, woman.
Solution Two: - Fail to follow Solution One, we put your kid up for adoption and snip your tubes.

Choose, allow abortion, or keep doling out funds to welfare mothers as they keep having more and more kids they didn't want.

You present a false dicotomy.

You're against abortion, you're for taxpayers paying the bill. Simple as that.

I'm for INDIVIDUAL RESPONSABILITY.  Simple as THAT.

And from the left, too, not innocent in all this. One solution to welfare mothers has been a suggestion of Norplant implants for welfare recipients as a condition for receiving welfare. BUT...the ACLU fights that as "violating their rights"!

If you are on the government teat., your rights are gone....

End result, ALL sides of the issue are MEDDLING in a way that not only tells people what they can and can't do with their bodies, but ends up causing taxpayers to pay through the nose for an out of control welfare state and a vicious cycle of poverty as unwanted children have unwanted children. This, in turn, drags down everyone, as that sort is, I believe, statistically more likely to end up in the hood/barrio crime cycle that kills cities.

Its this simple, maned - you tax something, you get LESS of it - you subsidize it, you get MORE of it.  Guess what welfare does - subsidize the creation of fatherless children already in poverty - so we get more of it.

See why I like LIBERTARIAN viewpoints instead? 

"I don' thin you know what that word means..."  - Carlos Montoya

[Perd Hapley]

Maned, it is interesting that you fail to refute my case for the rights of pre-born children.  Shall I conclude that you don't care about their rights?  In the meantime, maybe I can help you sort out some misconceptions.

Some birth-control pills are abortions in pill form (potentially).  They may prevent pregnancy in some cases, but in other cases, they are used to murder people.  Thus the controversy.  Can you at least agree that such a position is consistent with the anti-abortion point of view?

Like, for example, from the extreme religiousity sorts...Abortion is Bad. Right. AND...from the same people, the Morning After Pill is bad, and even The Pill is Bad and Condoms are Bad.

Riiiight.  Your brush is slanderously broad.  General opposition to birth control is not part of the anti-abortion movement.  There are some people that oppose all birth control for religious reasons.  This has nothing to do with abortion.  There are many more religious people who use birth control methods but don't want schools teaching them.  This has nothing to do with abortion. 

RE: Welfare
Conservatives (and Libertarians) wish to reform or eliminate welfare because it is seen as an incentive to have MORE children (among other reasons).  Unlike your view, which is that poor women are animals who can't stop having sex, my view is that human beings can control themselves when they understand the consequences of having children they cannot support.  They need not murder their children to avoid wasting my money.  Besides, ever heard of adoption? 

This, in turn, drags down everyone, as that sort is, I believe, statistically more likely to end up in the hood/barrio crime cycle that kills cities.

Your suggestion is that we kill potential criminals in the womb.  That IS some freaky economics.  Very libertarian of you. 

[Perd Hapley]

I have no problem with contreception.   Other than the roman Catholics, I know of no other Christian sect that does.  From whence does thou get this mistaken opinion?

Rich, I'm sure you've seen this a thousand times before.  Discredit your opponent by equating his reasonable position with the extremism of those more radical than he. 

From what I'm told, opposition to birth control was almost universal in Christianity until the last few decades.  I ran across a fundamentalist (Calvinist) group a little while ago, that taught that we should let God control the womb.  I guess those people don't lock their doors or get vaccines, either. 

[Matthew Carberry]

Of course libertarian-minded Christians who thought contraception was not good but not criminal would say "I won't use contraception, here's why, but whether you do or not is between you and G-d.  Remember there are always consequences for actions."

Make sure the law is in the appropriate venue (as low as possible, based on the Constitution) and either work to change it, move to somewhere where folks agree with you or put up with it.