Oddbean new post about login | logout It would appear that leftists/progressives/liberals redefine certain evils to justify carrying them out. Thus, abortion is not murder, and taxation is not robbery. Am I right? Is this a fair statement? (aside from calling them "evils"; I'm sure leftists would object to that) #progessive #liberal #democrats
I think there is some truth to this - falling in love with the appearance they have given things rather than looking at the things in themselves I think also there is a certain religiosity - certain ideas get encoded into a utopian system and the State as their God on Earth carries them out
Yes, I think this makes sense. The Republicans do the same. Initiated war is defense (Bush Doctrine preemptive war concept), death penalty is protection from bad people, etc....
Death penalty works because it makes other potential criminals reconsider.
Only Just way for it would be as a sentence determined by a jury of the accused peers.
If it is immoral/illegal for an individual to commit murder then it is only logically consistent for it to be immoral/illegal for a group of individuals to commit murder (sentence another person to death that has not transgressed directly against them). Groups of individuals do not possess magical powers that provide them with special moral privileges that individuals don't possess.
The death penalty is murder. Every judge and jurer that has given the death sentence should be locked up for the remainder of their lives. I say this as a mostly conservative leaning person. Anyone advocating the death penalty is a probably a psychopath, and should be under the care of a psychiatrist, and kept away from children and other vulnerable people.
I was being understanding of your point, until > Anyone advocating the death penalty is probably a psychopath I'm certainly not a psychopath. Neither are the billions of people who support it. Maybe misled. Your hyperbole works against you, and if it isn't hyperbole, you're disconnected from reality. I could agree with you that the way it is administered by the state is not the best it could be or something like that. There is a certain percentage of the population that, no matter what you do, what deterrent you set, they'll harm those around them because either they can't control their outbursts or they like it. Those people must be removed. Besides that, I firmly believe that people have a right to revenge, that that subset of people I talked about is only deterred from praying on you if they fear retaliation. The death penalty is killing. It is not murder.
Psychopathy simply means "mental disease" - 'psych' = mind, 'pathy' = illness. Its probably a spectrum, and probably everyone is a little bit messed up in the head. I do think that stronger meaning of the word applies to people who advocate the death penalty. Maybe some people simply haven't thought it through, but I don't think most people fall into that category. I do agree with you that people have a right to revenge, but this is the only instance I can think of that a right should be denied. Justice is supposed to work better than revenge, so we should ensure that our justice system is actually delivering justice. I live in the US, and I would emphatically argue that there is no justice in our court system, for many reasons. There are three main problems with the death penalty. First, as someone already wrote, if an individual doesn't have the right to kill, for any reason, then a group cannot magically have the right to kill by virtue of being a group or having some higher status. Second, no human is perfect. If no individual is perfect, then no group is perfect. Their judgement may be wrong. Evidence and testimony may be faked. Incentives may reward them for judging wrongly. Power structures may be threatened, and the politics may demand the death of an innocent. None of these possibilities can be ruled out. Third, similar to how the judge and jury are imperfect and subject to incentives, the same is true of someone who actually did kill. Even if you know absolutely that they did it, its still wrong to kill them. Incentive structures are generally out of our control, and they work in positive and negative ways, and they work in both the short and long term. For example, the current monetary system of usury and perpetually devaluing money causes some amount of stress in people. How much stress? Impossible to know. It affects different people differently, and social emergent phenomena could amplify stress more on particular people, and those people will be more likely to break and do something violent. Entire belief structures are built around compensating for felt oppression. For example, both the state and religion are belief structures that relieve people's anxiety - these social structures emerge from fear. And both the state and religion cause people to kill, and they will never define such killing as murder. But would these structures even exist without the constant application of stress on people, subconsciously felt, from the devaluing of people's savings and work? You can see that, at least partially, incentive structures are self perpetuating cycles. The things that motivate behavior are mostly subconscious and out of an individual's control. Its not simply, "he decided to kill, he's just bad." That doesn't exist. That's a fantasy. And if justice boils down to such a simplistic view on behavior, then there's no hope of ever having 'justice.' This is too long already. I'll reiterate that the death penalty is wrong, and say that there are other options. And I'll reiterate that someone who thinks society should repay murder with murder is a psychopath. Definitely.
Why should the victim’s family be forced to pay the murderer (free room and board in jail)?
No one said they would be. That's an assumption, and a straw man argument. And you must either read 10x faster than me, or you didn't read my note and opted to skip to this brainless response. Shame on you for all three things. You must be quite a specimen.
If you put a murderer in prison- the victims families will help pay for their food with their taxes. That is unjust on its face
This is incorrect. The negatively affected parties are paid compensation. If the murderer isn't able to pay, society pays. Its worth it. I an as anarcho capitalist as anyone, but that doesn't mean we stop having a court system. You can find all sorts of ways of paying for it, it doesn't have to be taxes. But if any tax is justified, its the tax that pays for the judicial system.
Also retard you don’t seem to understand crime- there are punishments and levies that are Just when the jury demands it of the criminal. The murderer is no longer a free person after they (proven with jury trial) aggressed against the free person and ended their life intentionally.
You are 100℅ a genuine psychopath. You respond with name calling after refusing to read a detailed argument. Clearly you love the death penalty because it provides moral camouflage for your desire to commit murder. There are a lot of people like you.
Psychopathy simply means "mental disease" - 'psych' = mind, 'pathy' = illness. Its probably a spectrum, and probably everyone is a little bit messed up in the head. I do think that stronger meaning of the word applies to people who advocate the death penalty. Maybe some people simply haven't thought it through, but I don't think most people fall into that category. > I live in the US, and I would emphatically argue that there is no justice in our court system, for many reasons. I am 100% with you. The way we do it is unjust. I don't think that means that a group putting people to death is unjust though, as I'll explain later, I just think we need a better way of doing it and better reasoning about when it's warranted. > First, as someone already wrote, if an individual doesn't have the right to kill, for any reason, then a group cannot magically have the right to kill by virtue of being a group or having some higher status. An individual does have the right to kill though in some circumstances. > Second, no human is perfect. If no individual is perfect, then no group is perfect. Their judgement may be wrong. Evidence and testimony may be faked. Incentives may reward them for judging wrongly. Power structures may be threatened, and the politics may demand the death of an innocent. None of these possibilities can be ruled out. Yup, which is why I agree with you that putting people to death the way our society does it is wrong. > Even if you know absolutely that they did it, its still wrong to kill them. I am in complete disagreement with you about this. I reason that if someone is a threat to the safety those around them and will continue to be, it is just for a group to kill them. > Incentive structures are generally out of our control, and they work in positive and negative ways, and they work in both the short and long term. For example, the current monetary system of usury and perpetually devaluing money causes some amount of stress in people. How much stress? Impossible to know. It affects different people differently, and social emergent phenomena could amplify stress more on particular people, and those people will be more likely to break and do something violent. Entire belief structures are built around compensating for felt oppression. For example, both the state and religion are belief structures that relieve people's anxiety - these social structures emerge from fear. And both the state and religion cause people to kill, and they will never define such killing as murder. But would these structures even exist without the constant application of stress on people, subconsciously felt, from the devaluing of people's savings and work? You can see that, at least partially, incentive structures are self perpetuating cycles. The things that motivate behavior are mostly subconscious and out of an individual's control. Its not simply, "he decided to kill, he's just bad." That doesn't exist. That's a fantasy. And if justice boils down to such a simplistic view on behavior, then there's no hope of ever having 'justice.' There's a lot going on here. I think you're right, there are plenty of social structures that make people behave erratically and violently, often they convince themselves they are justified when they're not. But in the world, we still can't let those people run wild. They present a danger *now.* Ultimately we have to hold individuals responsible for their behavior, and then we have to fix those other issues separate from that. > This is too long already. I'll reiterate that the death penalty is wrong, and say that there are other options. And I'll reiterate that someone who thinks society should repay murder with murder is a psychopath. Definitely. I can say, when I talk about the death penalty, I'm saying that when a group is threatened by an individual, either by words or demonstration of intent with action, that group has a right to neutralize that threat. So it's not really repayment, not a penalty by my reasoning, it's more of a self defense measure. But I do believe that groups killing individuals is just in such a scenario.
Why can't we just put a wall around the state of New Jersey and throw the convicts in there? Technically a prison, but we don't need to pay all the upkeep of a prison, beyond making sure the wall isn't breached. The land is decent enough that they can grow food. Its not killing, and it removes them from society. And it fixes the problem of New Jersey existing. That shithole is an embarrassment and should be put to better use. My point is, all the reasons for killing are moot while there are other options. The reasons you mention for killing sometimes being justified are really only two scenarios. Self defense and rebellion against oppression. And this is why IMO we should stop violating the 2nd Amendment. Those two scenarios don't carry over to the justice system. Justice is only administered with the defendant in custody, which means they don't pose a threat. The threat is neutralized. Justice can't be revenge.
I'd add a third scenario, vengeance. You're talking about exile now, which I also think is justified. But now you've got to consider, is it just to put someone in a cage with monsters? If it's not just to kill someone for being bad to those around them, it's certainly not just to lock them in a cage with people who will prey on them, that's more akin to torture. If someone is damaged in some way to the point where they present mortal danger to those around them, it is unjust to subject anyone to that behavior, even another like them. I have some very unpopular views on this topic, and some popular ones, but I've thought a lot about it and I think I understand pretty clearly what a just justice system would look like, and it doesn't preclude the death penalty, or other corporal punishment, but it does preclude prison.
Exile, imprisonment, forced servitude as a monk while getting to know God... Doesn't matter. Imagine whatever. The only bottom line is that murder is wrong, for several reasons - its so wrong that its wrong from multiple viewpoints. Don't do it. The state is definitely committing murder when it executes someone because that person is already in custody. Not a threat. They are under control. So a jury deciding to kill them is no different than you colluding with your buddy to kidnap someone and then murder them. Its the exact same scenario. You and your bud may think you're entirely justified. Its the same.
Well, I think imprisonment is cruel and unjust, but aside that, you and I have already agreed that killing someone in self defense is just, and you haven't actually responded to my reasoning at all. You're reiterating your position, which is fine but doesn't lend itself well to fruitful discussion. A jury, the state, all that I can agree with. That doesn't mean though that a group putting someone to death is always unjust, just that our mechanisms for doing it are. I'd argue that me and my buddy deciding to go grab someone and kill them for, say for example, killing my cousin or raping my nephew or threatening to do so is entirely just.
Which part haven't I responded to? I'll do my best.
Well, youre saying "bottom line murder is wrong", I'm saying it's not always murder, we seem to be in agreement on that. You're saying when the state does it they commit injustice because of the process by which they do it, I'm in agreement with you. But you keep making those same points which aren't in contention at all and which we have already addressed.
I think I used up all my brain cells this morning. Anyways... I can respect that you read everything and still disagree.
A jury is explicitly not the state. We haven’t had real juries for a long time. My entire argument about death sentence rests on first restoring the true jury trial. https://mises.org/library/book/lets-abolish-government
That's construing it as murder though. It is moral for an individual to *kill*, for various reasons, and so it is moral for a group to kill for analogous reasons. A person may kill in defense of itself for example, and so a group may do the same. There's no logical inconsistency whatsoever.
A group of individuals sitting in a court room completely uneffected by the actions of the human they are sentencing to death are not under threat by that person. They are not protecting themselves. They are bureaucratically murdering another human that has not transgressed against them. It is moral for a human to kill another human if that human is protecting his/her life or someone elses' life against direct transgression. Likewise, it is moral for a group of people to kill in the same manner.
So a group putting individuals to death is just in some circumstances, just the way it's done in our society is unjust. I can agree with that.
If it is immoral/illegal/what have you for an individual to commit murder, how is it moral/legal/what have you for a group of people to commit murder. Logically inconsistent. I would require proof that the death penalty "works" before accepting your argument. Anyhow, this post was about how Democrats (and Republicans) both relabel certain "evils" (in this case murder) to justify carrying them out (protect good people from bad people, or, as you say, deter other bad people from commiting murder).
If the jury decides the death penalty then it works as a deterrence Of course government cannot do death penalty sorry I wasn’t clear
The jury sentencing a person to death is a specific deterence to that individual because that person is dead and unable to commit murder. People in favor of the dealth penalty usually argue that the death penalty is so harsh that is deters OTHER people from committing murder because those potential murderers don't want to die themselves. If one trys to argue for deterence against people other than the person being murdered by the state, then one would need to provide statistics that can prove humans have avoided committing capital crimes so as to prevent themselves from being murdered by the state.
For pedos for example Sentence decided by jury only not judge(government)
A jury is a group of individuals sanctioned by the state to legally commit murder. If murder by individuals is immoral/illegal, then, by logic alone (unless you can prove those jury members possess some magical powers that an individual doesn't possess) murder by a group of individuals is also immoral/illegal regardless if it is sanctioned by the state or colluded to by a group of individuals. Again, the original post was changing the semantics of an "evil" to fit political needs. Here, murder is being linguistically transmutted into "protection" or "justice" or "deterence" or any other number of rationalizations produced.
You can't just call it murder and make it murder. "Murder" has a definition: it is the deliberate unjust killing of another human being. You can argue that the death penalty is unjust, but you can't just say "it's unjust because it's murder" because that's circular reasoning, you have to demonstrate how it is unjust in order to call it murder in the first place.
I disagree. Murder certainly has a definition. Sentencing another person to die in a premeditated fashion (from the comfort of a courtroom) who poses no threat to you is unjust. It is unjust because the people making the decision are separated from the basic facts of what happened by many layers (lawyers' financial motivations, time, memory, corruption, religious biases, etc) that play out in a courtroom drama. Far too often (and there is a ton of data on this) people are wrongly convicted and either serve sentences or are murdered by the state for crimes they are not guilty of committing.
I am not an expert but the difference between death penalty and abortion is that there must be a trial of the accused by a jury of their peers. How many babies would condemn an unborn child to death? The baby is obviously innocent and thus it could be called murder. However the woman and “doctors” who commit it could only be “punished” by an honorable accusation and a jury of their peers. The thing is we don’t have a proper legal system right now Jury trial isn’t being respected in its true form. https://mises.org/library/book/lets-abolish-government
I agree with you, but here, we are talking about the legal process by which the person is given the death penalty. That can be unjust even if the death penalty itself is justified when used in a just manner. Let's take it to first principles. If a guy walks up to you and tells you "I am going to kill you if you don't kill me first" do you have a right to kill him? I'd say yes, what do you think? Now, you and a group of people are hanging out. Some guy walks up to you guys and said "I'm going to kill one of you, I promise." Do you as a group have the right to kill him? Again, I'd say yes. We can take that and do this thought experiment and find where it stops being justified. The man says "I'm going to rape all your kids and I won't stop until I'm dead", he doesn't say it verbally but demonstrates it with his behavior, etc. Then, what qualifies as a group? Does a jury that is part of the group qualify? You'll find plenty of scenarios where it is not done in a just manner, or when what someone is going to do if left to their own behavior doesn't justify killing them, but you'll find plenty of scenarios where it is justified. Therefore, the death penalty is just, even if the way it is done in our society is unjust.
To your first question, I would have to say no, because a threat of violence (even if backed with a promise) is still just words. One step further, if that threat was then followed by the person punching you in the face, I do not think it is moral to kill (disproportionate reponse...one can only morally kill another human if the person is in danger of being killed himself). If a gun is being drawn, now the situation has shifted to life-threatening and one has a right to protect life (so admitedly, we get into difficult territory delineated exactly where the threat against life precisely occurs, I think this area is ripe for debate and certainly different people perceive threats in varying degrees). To your second question, essentially my answer above applies although now, with multiple people acting with varying threat perceptions the entire situation has become more difficult to summarize (if that makes sense?) In the rape example, if the person is actually doing the act, witnesses to the act can morally take increasingly aggressive action toward the perpetrator to the point at which the violation ends. Again, the verbiage "raping until death" consitutes a threat, and is not the same as the act of killing, therefore it is not moral to automatically kill a human in the process of raping (even though it may feel like the "right" thing (emotionally) to do). The rapist should be stopped and penalized proportionately (certainly another area of discussion). All of the above is not to be lenient on violence shitbags that want to harm innocent people. These individuals should face penalty proportionate to their crimes, but I do not think pre-meditated murder by uneffected agents acting on behalf of the state is proportionate. Additionally, given our highly flawed/corrupt legal and political systems, we need to be careful not to use the mechanism of state-sanctioned violence to kill innocents that manage to get caught-up in the someone elses' crime drama. I always come back to the thought, "What is the maximum number of innocent lives lost (to be clear - false conviction ending in death penalty) I am willing to accept before deciding that the death penalty is not a moral choice of state-sanctioned penalty?" I always land on 0 for this question.
> ...I do not think pre-meditated murder by uneffected agents acting on behalf of the state is proportionate. I'm 100% with you. The way it's done in our society is unjust. But what I'm trying to get at is, if putting people to death is fundamentally unjust. Most people I've talked to that are opposed to it tie the two inseparably and it clouds the morality of the fundamental question. As far as your other points, I disagree entirely. Any credible threat of violence can be met with whatever preventative measures the potential victims warrant appropriate. I don't have to wait til I'm about to be killed to protect myself, if I know an attempt on my life is impending I can justifiably act.
So, this is only true in a limited set of circumstances. If the public doesn't have faith that death is always (or almost always) given justly, then it doesn't work as a deterrent. It's like having an unpredictable abusive parent, stern parenting helps a child know how they should behave, erratic unpredictable abuse doesn't teach anything. If a person knows they could wind up punished for nothing accidentally, or knows they could get away with it, it won't act as a deterrent anymore, they won't take the deterrent into account when making decisions because the result is unpredictable. Second, the deterrent only applies to a subset of people who are opportunistic predators behaving rationally. There is another subset of people who, either because they're unstable or because they enjoy it, will prey on those around them. These people must be removed, nothing will deter them, a group has a right to protect itself from them.
Well, if that were true, there wouldn't be murder. What is true, though, is that innocent people have been capitally punished, and there's no undoing that.
Infantile argument
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Acton). I would trust street vigilance before I'd trust the government with capital punishment.
If you read the thread you would notice I prefaced my entire argument on the restoration of jury trial as defined by the Magna Carta https://mises.org/library/book/lets-abolish-government
Post Jim Crow, "progressive" reform Republicans. The Bushes embraced it, but the globalist doctrine of third world imperialism is straight out of the left, a direct product of Woodrow Wilson's Federal Reserve Act. By the time Daddy Dubya took office, we already had a hyperinflated fiat currency, backed by a military industrial complex, with artificial interest rates set by international oligarch bankers who fund all sides of wars, and control governments through central banks, propped on globalists' markets by strongarming imperialistic third world puppet regimes to trade their people's oil to the world in USD.
While I believe abortion is baby killing, it's definitely not an objective belief.
What is subjective about it?
There's not an object line that says when a baby is a baby.
Is it a "human" life, though? It's not a dog or a plant of some kind.
Yeah, but there's not objective evidence of when it becomes another person. That line is purely subjective.
What is objective is the outcome; abortion ends what is or would be a human life, right? And it's not like it is something other than human.
I think that an objective line would be "the point at which, if the process is allowed to go on uninterrupted, it will be overwhelmingly likely to result in a baby." Gestation is a process, there are points in the process that occur all the time that don't result in a baby. Most fertilized eggs don't result in a baby for example. But there are points where it almost always does, and all of them fall after the fertilized egg attatches to the wall of the uterus. If you consider the process as one that exists to result in a baby, then the point in the process which, if left uninterrupted from that point on, it almost always will would be the point it becomes a human being. Just like a baby, if left to grow, will become an old person eventually, so we consider a baby as human as a working age adult. Because otherwise, we cant make either claim, a baby has no agency, it is not objective that it is human except by that same criteria.
It's not objective fact that an embryo is a baby human
OK, now respond to what I said.
You didn't make any coherent point so I don't even know what your perspective is? You think baby's should be thought of as middle aged people
would it be less bad to murder an old person, a middle aged person, a teenager, a child? if you want to draw lines about what constitutes a human that doesn't start with a fertilised egg where are you going to allow it to be moved to is it at the convenience of the slut who wants to get nutted in or what? would you expect that someone should be liable for a mistake they make with a firearm that causes harm to others? then i don't think it's really any different i'd even say that the dude who nuts in the girl has liability in this also making the creation of human life an arbitrary line of when you designate it to be valid beyond the actual biological life cycle is not doing real jurisprudence it's making excuses for psychologically immature and pathological people to do things that they should pay for
It's not objective is all I'm saying. Many women don't even know they are pregnant early on. And no I don't consider a zygote a baby human.
abortions can happen spontaneously and accidentally at this stage, that doesn't change the definition of human if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, how can anyone know it happened? you can't make a rule about a thing that is not known, of course if a woman has suspicions and tests herself, she and the man who did it are now liable for a human life if it's testing positive for a baby the whole point of making this specious argument about what constitutes human is to narrow it so a politically expedient excuse for murder can be accommodated be it war, assassination, execution, or abortion, which is very popular with slutty whores and immature man-children with sexual maturity and the emotional maturity of a 2 year old child if you move the goalposts, you are allowing them to be moved again... it's human once it contains complete DNA and the capacity and environment to develop and be born
You would argue plan b is abortion then?
if there was no plan there was no A if you are an adult and you cause something to be put at risk of harm, an ADULT must take responsibility for it, or their freedom has to be limited in order to prevent them continuing to make such bad decisions and causing more harm it is not the fault of the child as it grows up to not be properly educated and trained to fulfill the responsibilities of an adult human if you don't feel regret at a thing which by all measures of jurisprudence constituted harm and you got away with it, then idk, maybe we can't have a conversation
Plan b is the morning after pill. By your logic, that is abortion. Also, your argument was that the organism was human because it had human DNA, which dead people also have.
Oh that's what I said? Your reading comprehension is lacking my dude. Your supposition, I responded to it with my reasoning. You just re state the same supposition. That's not a path to a fruitful discussion. I can re explain my reasoning. Life is a process. What makes a human? Hands? Speech? Bipedal walking? All that is true. But a baby can't do any of that. So is a baby objectively human? If so, how do you reason about that consistently? You do it by stating "that is it's fate if it is not killed first". The process of life, if left uninterrupted, that baby will walk and talk and make things. It will do human things, it will behave like a human unless someone stops that process. So it is human, just as a caterpillar is a butterfly. Take that same reasoning back before birth. Will a fetus become a grown adult if it it's life process is not interrupted? Yes. Keep going back. At what point in that process, if left undisturbed, does it become the case that the thing will become a full grown person? Where prior to that, there's no likelihood, just a possibility? That's the objective point where you can say it's a person. Without this, you can't say anyone is objectively human until they can say "yes I am a human". By your reasoning, a baby is not objectively human. We know this is untrue.
I never made the claim that a human has to say it's a human. All my claim is is that it's not objective to pinpoint a specific time when it's a person or not, it's your subjective opinion. At every day of the pregnancy, there is a probability that the zygote, embryo or whatever will not be born. And most of the time, the reasoning for this is not abortion, miscarriage happens often. And your dismissive point adding "uninterrupted" is illogical because it implies that interruptions in a process are Unnatural. People can do everything right and then have a miscarriage, people can do everything wrong and have a perfectly normal baby. But by your logic, if someone has a miscarriage, then they are responsible for the death of a human because it's a human baby from the moment of conception, which is your subjective belief. You can say a baby is objectively human. It doesn't live inside of another organism, it eats and drinks through its mouth, it's consciousness consciousness can be measured and tracked, etc. If you don't think a baby's humanity is different than that of an unborn one and you think that that belief is objective, then how is a sperm or an egg not an unborn baby even before they meet?
There is a possibility that humans die by accident, from disease, we don't say that that means we can't objectively call them human or that because of this fact it is OK to kill them. Same with one developing in the womb. Nobody holds anyone responsible for an accident happening to somebody unless it's the result of negligence. I don't see any inconsistency here whatsoever. By "uninterrupted" I mean deliberately interrupted. > It doesn't live inside of another organism This is irrelevant. Living inside another person is part of our natural life cycle. It's part of the nature of the human being, just as a butterfly spends time in a cocoon. All the other details that you say make a baby human are the same as my examples earlier, it talks, it walks, they aren't the reason we call it a human. A baby on a feeding tube is still a human. If you use these as the criteria then of course it's going to be murky to you. Find the fundamental differentiator, not a list of most-of-the-time criteria with tons of corner cases and caveats and you'll see my point. > If you don't think a baby's humanity is different than that of an unborn one and you think that that belief is objective, then how is a sperm or an egg not an unborn baby even before they meet? I've told you already, the criteria that is most objective is, at what point in development does it occur that, if the process is not *deliberately* interrupted, more than likely it will result in a baby. That's the point you can call it a person. This precludes sperm, eggs, even fertilized embryos, most of which go unnoticed.
None of what your saying is objective fact. Again, I don't think abortion is wrong, but defining it at the moment of fertilization is not objective because personhood is not a scientific fact, it's subjective philosophy. And your point about uninterrupted process, is basically just a short hand for viability. Which has changing goalposts every decade. You dismissed my point about living inside of another organism because of circular logic btw
> None of what your saying is objective fact. Again, I don't think abortion is wrong, but defining it at the moment of fertilization is not objective because personhood is not a scientific fact, it's subjective philosophy. I do thing abortion is wrong. I did not define personhood as the moment of fertilization. The goal of subjective philosophy is to get closer to objective reality, saying that can never be achieved means saying that philosophy and morality are irrelevant. We can just define person hood however we want, throw pur hands up and say "welp, subjective!" and treat whoever we want however we want. That is obviously not our goal here. We are trying to find that place where it's immoral to snuff the zygote. I say, that place is when it's probably not going to spontaneously snuff itself. > And your point about uninterrupted process, is basically just a short hand for viability. Which has changing goalposts every decade. No, it's not. "Moment of viability" is the point when the fetus could survive on it's own outside the womb. This is of course constantly changing with medical technology, and the moving goalposts are not just that, but things like "detectable heartbeat", "can it feel pain" etc, not just with viability, and usually by pro abortion people. I'm not talking about any of that, I'm talking simply, if left undisturbed, does this thing become a baby by itself. An egg, no. A sperm, no. A fertilized embryo, also no. So when? That's the answer to this question, "is it murder to stop the process of development?" Because that's what we are doing, we are trying to find an objective point when it does, you're saying it doesn't exist, but then you can objectively tell me that smothering a newborn is murder, I would guess you think that aborting the day before the due date is murder, those are objective facts, but at what point does it become murder, you say there's no objective measure of that. I'm saying that's not true, and not only that but that it is absurd, if you can claim that killing a human at any age is murder objectively then you can pinpoint when in the life cycle that becomes the case, and further I'm offering a coherent argument for a specific moment, a specific part of the process, not reliant on time or any of that, reasoning why I think that, if your only argument is "no that can't be it because there isn't one" youre arguing with the wind. >You dismissed my point about living inside of another organism because of circular logic btw Living inside another organism is part of our natural life cycle. To say it isn't a human being in that part of the life cycle is the actual inconsistent thing here. Humans are dependent as babies on their mothers for survival for quite a while, so should the mother be able to just not feed it? See, that's entirely inconsistent. As organisms, we live inside our mothers for a while. We are still organisms, and a specific type of organism, a human being.
"The end justifies the means". The problem is that the story ends in a gulag.
taxation powers the law enforcement machine that enforces law on those who commit murder. without taxation you have eye-for-an-eye law. there are no prisons. that means you murder the murderer, which makes two murderers. so in your non taxated utopia, will you murder the one who murders their unborn baby? : D : D
Bear in mind that it was the leftist/"progressive"/"liberals" who reformed the American Experiment of a minimalistic, noninterventionist, Pro-Minding-Its-Business republic, and free-market capitalist economy, to be the 16th AMD's human capital stock, toiling away for their massive, oppressive, corrupt, one-size-fits-all socialist New Deal, and their Great Society of money-pit middlemen bureaucrats with domain over our bodies, legislating over every aspect of our lives! How "progressive!" Chickens come home to roost, mutherfuckers.
I can barely stand leftists called "liberals." Or "progressive," for that matter. These are not 17-18th Century, John-Locke, Age-of-Enlightenment liberals, for individual freedom and independence, like The American Experiment and the Land of the Free. These are big-government, neoliberal socialists like Wilson, FDR, LBJ... of the "Illiberal Left."