I like how the day I post that I don't trust Bush, I find this article. I really hope both Obama and McCain have enough sense to avoid this kind of crap.
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Election 2008, United States
- Thread starter Great Sage
- Start date
One question:
Taking the statement to its logical conclusion (any parasitical entity should be removed on your whim), why should we stop slating children for death after they are born? It'd be a lot easier to just leave a baby in a dumpster then it would be to risk all the complications in an abortion. It is still by all acounts stealing the mothers nutrients (most babies require breastfeeding to be healthy, production of breastmilk is involuntary and can cause pain if not realeased) and causes even more burdens after birth than before. An in utero baby doesn't require a crib, diapers, or hugs.
The pictures I pulled plainly refute the argument that abortion removes "a clump of cells." I even, as it turns out, pulled the images from an overpopulation paranoia site that supports abortion. The images are no more emotional than any scientific diagram ever created. If they make you flinch, it's because you want your brain switched off to reality, not because they are in and of themselves emotional. If I wanted to post images solely for shock value, I'd have linked to a youtube video I found depicting an abortion where you can see stills of little arms and legs flailing out of a vagina, fighting for life. I gave you the most mild nudge possible.
The fundamental difference between the anti-abortion position and the pro-abortion position (you can add "rights" to the end of those if those characterizations offend your sensibilities) is that people who oppose abortion believe new life is primarily a blessing and people who support abortion believe new life is primarily a burden.
I can't believe so many young people here are either so brainwashed or so apathetic that they can't recognize what little children do: when mommy is pregnant they are going to have a little brother or sister, not an intestinal infection brought on by a stomache parasite. Nobody needs to explain to a child that life is valuable; that fundamental concept has to be "educated" out of them by bitter, resentful, unfulfilled adults.
Whether it is a stalemate of opinions between the two is irrelevant. A majority believed in flat earth theory, geocentric universe, and then the heliocentric universe, and they were all objectively wrong. The evidence against abortion is overwhelming and obvious, and yet some people still think when reality stares them in the face, it is "sentimentality." If someone is trying to teach you about electonics and then shows you a diagram of a AA battery, are they manipulating you by employing sentimentality?
Akuchi have you ever once thought that pregnancy isn't a zero sum game? In your universe it appears either a worthless fetus dies or a valuable mother is burdened, and there is no logical way you could care for both human lives equally. "Potential person" is bullshit. You can't kill a potential child just like you can't throw a potential rock. You can only kill actual children and throw actual rocks. A child in utero has substance and form, otherwise destroying it through tangible means would be impossible. "Meaningful" form and substance is arbitrary. Why if an in-utero child burdering a woman can be destroyed shouldn't a born child burdening a woman be destroyed. If a born child isn't a meaningful form of life to the mother, why shouldn't she be able to destroy it? The difference between abortion and infanticide is 6 months time.
This is the last I'll post on this. There's no point going back and forth anymore.
Anyway, the point relevant to the election is this:
Not only does Obama support abortion, he opposed a bill that would save the lives of children that managed to survive abortion procedures. In that single vote he crossed over from abortion to infanticide, not that the Clinton's support of partial-birth abortions is any better.
In short, this means that any African-American churchgoers that finds abortion and Barack's other social views abhorrent will not vote for him. If the Republicans finally get a clue and realize that conservatives and religious African Americans have a lot in common, they can deprive Obama of enough of the black vote to make him a sure loser. Obama is already trailing with the white guy vote, and whether you want to accept it or not, the white guy vote is the biggest vote group out there.
'You can't kill a potential child just like you can't throw a potential rock. You can only kill actual children and throw actual rocks.'
Thankyou, exactly. It's not killing, it's not murder, it is removing cells from a woman who doesn't want them.
The pictures upset me because I've recently suffered a miscarriage. Any other time and I'm quite capable of looking at partial-birth abortions.
Open heart surgery isn't pretty, either.
And I think you'll find that's a pretty vital six months.
Thankyou, exactly. It's not killing, it's not murder, it is removing cells from a woman who doesn't want them.
The pictures upset me because I've recently suffered a miscarriage. Any other time and I'm quite capable of looking at partial-birth abortions.
Open heart surgery isn't pretty, either.
And I think you'll find that's a pretty vital six months.
The main point of difference between a baby and a foetus is that a baby can survive without the mother, but a foetus can not. There is no possibility of the foetus being punished, as punishment is not possible if you are not conscious of it.
The question is where does the value of the foetus's life come from. You obviously value the lives of foetuses, and value them quite strongly. But the foetus itself is unconscious and cannot make value judgements. It does not value it's own existence.
Therefore the mother who is being prevented from having an abortion is being forced to carry the child for your benefit. She has become a vehicle for your satisfaction, which a lot of people have an issue with but I dont really give a shit about. But like people who value freedom above all else would find the mother being forced to have the child for anyones sake but her own utterly unacceptable. As irrelevant as this concern may be, it is no more so than your own opinions, and therefore the two effectively cancel each other out.
The difference here is with a born child, the mother can give the child up for adoption. You are happy, the libertarians are happy, and the mother is happy. It's win win.
Furthermore, the child who has been born is conscious (to some degree, apparently kids dont become fully conscious till they are about 4, but I think we ought to err on the side of caution here), and should be protected for plenty of other reasons. Like so that parents shouldnt be so worried that they will both die and then as nobody is left alive who gives a shit about the child it will be killed or whatever.
I do not see new life as a burden.
The overall costs of making abortion illegal are:
Fear among women of the threat of unwanted pregnancy.
Unhappiness among pregnant women who would otherwise have had an abortion.
Men having to wear condoms.
Costs of abortion:
Outrage among those who think it is murder.
Possible eternal damnation?
Have a nice day.
The question is where does the value of the foetus's life come from. You obviously value the lives of foetuses, and value them quite strongly. But the foetus itself is unconscious and cannot make value judgements. It does not value it's own existence.
Therefore the mother who is being prevented from having an abortion is being forced to carry the child for your benefit. She has become a vehicle for your satisfaction, which a lot of people have an issue with but I dont really give a shit about. But like people who value freedom above all else would find the mother being forced to have the child for anyones sake but her own utterly unacceptable. As irrelevant as this concern may be, it is no more so than your own opinions, and therefore the two effectively cancel each other out.
The difference here is with a born child, the mother can give the child up for adoption. You are happy, the libertarians are happy, and the mother is happy. It's win win.
Furthermore, the child who has been born is conscious (to some degree, apparently kids dont become fully conscious till they are about 4, but I think we ought to err on the side of caution here), and should be protected for plenty of other reasons. Like so that parents shouldnt be so worried that they will both die and then as nobody is left alive who gives a shit about the child it will be killed or whatever.
I do not see new life as a burden.
The overall costs of making abortion illegal are:
Fear among women of the threat of unwanted pregnancy.
Unhappiness among pregnant women who would otherwise have had an abortion.
Men having to wear condoms.
Costs of abortion:
Outrage among those who think it is murder.
Possible eternal damnation?
Have a nice day.
This is an absurd line of thought. I derive no benefit from a woman suffering because she can't off her child. By that line of logic, any woman obtaining an abortion is doing so for your benefit because you support abortion. For someone who supposedly vaules freedom so much, you certainly don't value the freedom of that child to grow and develop like it normally would without being killed before birth. You have to remove the child from the equation at all before "support for abortion = support for freedom of all people" makes any sense at all. Also, no one "forces" a woman to be or remain pregnant bar rapists. If a woman decides to have sex, she subjects herself to the risk of becoming pregnant, period. After that it is all bitching and whining. "But I didn't WANT to get pregnant I just WANTed to have sex!" This is the Thief's argument "But I didn't WANT to get arrested I just WANTed a free car!"
My ideal is to create a world where we aren't such a pathetic scum-sucking species that we think killing a child is a legitimate answer to a crisis pregnancy. I back my philosophy up with support for organizations that help women with crisis pregnancies by showing them love, care, and material support. Anyone who supports abortion has given up on these women. They want to do what is easy and immediate, not what is difficult and right.
Abortion is not like putting a bandaid on a papercut. Women have been rendered infertile, killed or permanently damaged, and suffered instense guilt if they (or a family member) has children in the future, without any prodding from anyone. The risk of uterine rupture increases the more abortions a woman gets. The only one who knows you had an abortion is you. Its not like they use magic to teleport the baby out before giving it antibiotics and lethal injection. Abortion generally requires an invasive procedure or body-altering chemicals. I don't know if you were ignorant of this reality or deliberately ignoring it in order to take a jab solely at religious reasons to oppose abortion.
Moreover, access to abortion does not remove the fear of an unwanted pregnancy. In fact, the consequences-free sex access to abortion encourages increases unwanted pregnancies. It also doesn't force men to wear condoms unless they too want the act of sex without its logical consequences (nevermind the condom failure rate. Many unwanted pregnancies have been caused by condom failure). Access to abortion also doesn't prevent women from unhappiness.
And really Hip, you are literally saying a woman's happiness has more moral worth than a child's life. You are literally saying that consequence free sex (insofar as pregnancy. No sex is ever consequence-free) is a higher value than protecting the earliest stages of human life. I don't agree with that ethos, but I want you to recognize that is the practical meaning of your philosophy.
Welcome to generation I, me, and my.
Deck Knight, the problem with your views on abortion is that you see pregnancy as a perfect little "married mid-twenties couple, supportive enthusiastic family, upper/middle class, working father" and all that. In that case it's just selfish to go through with an abortion if you can have other people take care of the child. But many abortion cases are far less "sitcom-like" than that.
You can argue "responsibility for your own actions", but in this case the punishment can far outweigh the crime. It's like being sentenced a life term in prison for smoking in a smoke-free zone, or being hanged for tax evasion.
And what exactly are you doing when you abort a child? You are taking its life. But what life, you must ask? It has never experienced any form of self or consciousness, so how can it be deprived of life? It knows no life.
Also, I'll buy into your "make the human race not a pathetic scum-sucking species" when you drop your anti-illegal immigrant (I highly doubt you are Native American, who are you to complain that these immigrants sneaking into a country built on immigration makes them "less American" and are "stealing your jobs" when your ancestors immigrated here from other countries?), anti-gay (So what if they have a different sexuality? Are you going to spout out some debatable scripture from some "magic book" now?), etc.
You can argue "responsibility for your own actions", but in this case the punishment can far outweigh the crime. It's like being sentenced a life term in prison for smoking in a smoke-free zone, or being hanged for tax evasion.
And what exactly are you doing when you abort a child? You are taking its life. But what life, you must ask? It has never experienced any form of self or consciousness, so how can it be deprived of life? It knows no life.
Also, I'll buy into your "make the human race not a pathetic scum-sucking species" when you drop your anti-illegal immigrant (I highly doubt you are Native American, who are you to complain that these immigrants sneaking into a country built on immigration makes them "less American" and are "stealing your jobs" when your ancestors immigrated here from other countries?), anti-gay (So what if they have a different sexuality? Are you going to spout out some debatable scripture from some "magic book" now?), etc.
Shut the motherfuck up about abortion. This thread is about the election. Last warning.
In my opinion, both Obama and McCain have terrible plans for the economy, Obama's just sucks a bit less because he won't make the Bush tax cuts permanent (even though he's pushing for another round of stimulus checks, which is fucking goddamn retarded). Bottom line: Obama will end the Iraq nonsense, which will set the cogs in motion to balancing out our ridiculous budget and work on the ludicrous debt we're in.
In my opinion, both Obama and McCain have terrible plans for the economy, Obama's just sucks a bit less because he won't make the Bush tax cuts permanent (even though he's pushing for another round of stimulus checks, which is fucking goddamn retarded). Bottom line: Obama will end the Iraq nonsense, which will set the cogs in motion to balancing out our ridiculous budget and work on the ludicrous debt we're in.
Neither candidate has a sensible economic policy. Obama may end up being better, because he is more likely to go after the structural problems in our economy, particularly health care and education. His protectionism is probably campaign bluster, but his tax-and-spend tendencies are most likely all too real. I am hopeful that both candidates will do the most important thing - rebuild the dollar, which has suffered mightily from Bush's economic policies and the war in Iraq.
Sadly, I see nothing from either candidate that really addresses the awful state of education in this country.
Basically, the U.S. education system is broken on so many fundamental levels - whether its the awful social environment that children are exposed to, to the lack of discipline, to the fact that people who are illiterate are getting high school diplomas to the fact that college is being dumbed down because HS graduates are of lower quality...
it's been overlooked because of the many other important issues, but I think that the education system is only going to get worse.
Basically, the U.S. education system is broken on so many fundamental levels - whether its the awful social environment that children are exposed to, to the lack of discipline, to the fact that people who are illiterate are getting high school diplomas to the fact that college is being dumbed down because HS graduates are of lower quality...
it's been overlooked because of the many other important issues, but I think that the education system is only going to get worse.
If i could vote id be voting for Mccain. I support many of his ideas including staying in Iraq. I think its important to finsh what we started, and spread democracy. I'll never forget the monday night football intro where barack said something like go bears. Didn't fly to well around here. Just throwing in my 2 cents, though.
Once again I stand with the conservative wing of the Republican party on school vouchers and full support for homeschooling, charter, and parochial schools. Educational institutions were around long before the government started to get involved; the fact so many private institutions are successful is modern proof of this.
I know I'll get it yet more trouble with my enlightened betters here, but the fact is we've turned public education from a place of applicable knowledge and learning to a social experiment for wacky "progressive" ideas like Bobby has two daddies and Placing condoms on cucumbers 101. I don't think they even teach civics anymore.
These days what we have is "professional educators" who manage to get a solid B+ in graduation rates and an big fat flipping F in proficiency rates. You can't really expect me to believe 50% of public school kids are too stupid to learn math and english. I heard a few nightmare stories from our Spanish Lab teacher at Bryant (she worked in an inner city schools for a day job and did the labs at night,) and essentially they were doing art projects to plaster on walls like 1st graders.
http://www.pde.state.pa.us/newsroom/cwp/view.asp?A=256&Q=115223
When the %$*!$% targets are mother*&^%&# 35-54%, you've got a problem.
Then:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_390.asp
It's a little tl;dr, but you'll be happy to know we blow Mexico out of the water in education. (60% of their students got L1 or below, making them the dumbest country surveyed after Brazil and Tunisia).
We then get to share double digit "below L1" status with Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey.
Really, the numbers speak for themselves.
Japan, Korea, and China beat the snot out of us as you'd expect, but even Austria, Germany, Poland, the UK, Spain the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic top us, along with Canada, France, Australia, and New Zealand.
In fact, our score is below the standard mean of of the test. That's a bad thing.
People actually hailed Bush as the education president at one time (before he became the left's favorite ranting center) because of No Child Left Behind. It's a good thing he put it in place, who knows where we would be if these places didn't even have targets to shoot for. Our tax dollars at work paying pompous morons who can't teach with public funding what broke grandparents could during the depression.
If you never considered homsechooling or private school before, now would be a good time.
I know I'll get it yet more trouble with my enlightened betters here, but the fact is we've turned public education from a place of applicable knowledge and learning to a social experiment for wacky "progressive" ideas like Bobby has two daddies and Placing condoms on cucumbers 101. I don't think they even teach civics anymore.
These days what we have is "professional educators" who manage to get a solid B+ in graduation rates and an big fat flipping F in proficiency rates. You can't really expect me to believe 50% of public school kids are too stupid to learn math and english. I heard a few nightmare stories from our Spanish Lab teacher at Bryant (she worked in an inner city schools for a day job and did the labs at night,) and essentially they were doing art projects to plaster on walls like 1st graders.
http://www.pde.state.pa.us/newsroom/cwp/view.asp?A=256&Q=115223
PA 2004-05 Report of Doom said:
When the %$*!$% targets are mother*&^%&# 35-54%, you've got a problem.
Then:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_390.asp
It's a little tl;dr, but you'll be happy to know we blow Mexico out of the water in education. (60% of their students got L1 or below, making them the dumbest country surveyed after Brazil and Tunisia).
We then get to share double digit "below L1" status with Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey.
Really, the numbers speak for themselves.
Japan, Korea, and China beat the snot out of us as you'd expect, but even Austria, Germany, Poland, the UK, Spain the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic top us, along with Canada, France, Australia, and New Zealand.
In fact, our score is below the standard mean of of the test. That's a bad thing.
People actually hailed Bush as the education president at one time (before he became the left's favorite ranting center) because of No Child Left Behind. It's a good thing he put it in place, who knows where we would be if these places didn't even have targets to shoot for. Our tax dollars at work paying pompous morons who can't teach with public funding what broke grandparents could during the depression.
If you never considered homsechooling or private school before, now would be a good time.
No Child Left Behind has always been horrible. Every student has to take the same standard tests. Even the 'special needs' children.
I went to a public high school that was pretty amazing as far as public schools go. They were also well-known to be really amazing with these 'special needs' children. So when it came time for the standardized tests, our scores really sucked on average and we were considered a failing school. I guess we all got 'left behind'. Woohoo!
I don't remember anyone ever supporting No Child Left Behind on the left in the town I came from.
"corner case blah blah" but that's a really inexcusable oversight.
Out of curiosity, wasn't there something in your religion like...you know...thou shalt not kill? And to learn forgive? Nah, must be just me...
My old high school fell into the exact same situation. Even if you ignore the fact that nationwide education standards are stupid, No Child Left Behind wound up being terrible because it became an unfunded mandate. The government paid the states' education systems money to require these tests, standards, etc., but then for whatever reason gave no additional money to implement the tests, so the extra money that was supposed to help state education systems instead was just used to pay for the tests. My old school was like 1/3 ESL kids, and this year the budget for special English learning programs got cut and the specifically ESL teachers had to be fired. So now my old school will almost definitely to badly on the tests, but only because the tests were implemented in the first place; and as a result my school will get less money and the vicious cycle continues etc etc. No Child Left Behind raises the standards required to graduate, but at the same time made it harder for schools to educate the students.
Anyway, I know that my school and Surgo's are not unique in getting screwed by this piece of legislation. Sadly, neither of the current candidates shows much promise in terms of any seriously helpful education plan. I know it's cliche to say that children are our future, but it really is the truth. Having an educated country is good for economics, the sciences, foreign relations, and gobs of other things.
And what about people whose home environment does not value education, whose parents would rather go to a bar or something than homeschool them, or kids who would rather do just about anything than attempt to meet the standards private school has set. If this voucher system takes off, we can only imagine how racist and classist it would be(but wait that stuff doesnt exist anymore LOL. ps welfare is for lazy people!!!!).
ENORMOUS public education reform is the only way to go. Our entire system needs to be completely overhauled - the subjects we teach, grading systems, how its structured, its inefficiency, the American public education system at the moment is completely outdated and worthless. And funding needs to be corrected too - don't fucking replace all the chalkboards with interactive monitors in upper-middle class high schools while inner-city high schools don't have up-to-date textbooks(if poor people don't learn anything it's their fault, they're lazy!!!). Education is a fucking mess, at this point to make it as good as it should be the system will look entirely different when these reforms, hopefully someday, are done. The answer isn't to go to private or homeschools because that fucks over a lot of people, of course conservatives don't care about that though because they were born to upper, upper-middle class families who valued education, so EVERYONE must be like that, and if they screw it up, THEIR FAULT!
And yeah things like spreading awareness about things like homosexuality, and teaching sex ed is a good thing, probably one of the only good things public school does right now. As long as there are still people who think homosexuality is "wrong" there obviously needs to be a lot more of it.
nclb was a joke, I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. Yeah, setting goals seems like a great idea, until you fucking neuter the education system for the sole purpose of teaching to a test.
In general, tests are a bad way of measuring how much meaningful content they got out of school - an example is the people at the school I graduated from, where the people with the 4.0s/2000+ test scores/4 to 5 AP scores were really no more knowledgeable, intelligent, creative, etc than the rest of the population - just better at doing the various tasks associated with "education".
God said:
you seem to be assuming that
1: Public education wouldn't exist at all if homeschooling was encouraged
2: Forcing kids to go to school will make them interested in learning
If it were needed, there would be public education for those who can't afford other methods (though entry would be carefully screened to weed out the parents who don't want to put in the time/effort to teach their kids from those who can't afford private school/homeschooling because of job/other life concerns).
btw people have the right to be racist/classist. It's a free country, and I'd rather people be racist patrician dicks in a free country than decent people in a country where decency is compulsory.
God said:
dude
do you honestly believe conservatives think like that, or is that your obssession with denouncing the "capitalist bourgeois overlords?" First, nobody's saying completely abolish public education (at least until the point (if it ever occurs) that a private system could effectively replace it). Second, private schooling/homeschooling is feasible for lower-income people - under the voucher system, homeschooling effectively represents a tax break, that can be put towards private school or purchasing homeschooling materials.
not really, it was basically "blah blah diseases blah blah" while knowing about STDs and such is obviously important, sex ed also needs to emcompass the more emotional aspects of sexuality (how does sex make you feel/what are your values on sex/is it okay to have sex in x situation?) as well as alternative means of sexual interaction, as well as how one feels about it.
I disagree with the Right on "abstinence-only education" as:
1: it doesn't work
2: abstinence only is primarly a moral position (though there is nothing wrong with saying that it is the only way NOT to get pregnant/catch an STD), which is the job of the parents. (part of the reason for 1 is that many parents use AOS as a cop-out because they don't want to talk about sex - statistics show that parent-child discussion about sex DOES have an effect on sexual activity rates)
I tend to disagree that the schools should teach morality, though it should discuss morality in regards to sex.
oh I bow before your superior progressive liberal beliefs (btw gayness actually *doesn't* offend me, what does offend me is the arrogance of many "progressives" that people's values mean nothing and they know everything about how society should be)
Vouchers seem like a terrible idea because they would further increase the inequality in the schooling system - i.e. benefiting people who live in nice neighborhoods and screwing the poor neighborhoods. A school isn't a product; it's a necessity of a fulfilling life. There are a handful of things free markets shouldn't be involved in, and I think schooling is one of them.
God, I really hope whoever you get as your next president does sink a lot of money into your educations. Unless it's McCain, because he has made it clear that his idea of education simply isn't. Obama isn't much better, both have defied the scientific community's hard work and falsely claimed that there are links between vaccines and autism.
It's actually like American politicians have a death-wish for their countrymen.
It's actually like American politicians have a death-wish for their countrymen.
Well, I can definitely say very very many of them do. And lol capitalist bourgeois overlords in quotations. do you think they do not exist or something.
Yes but under a voucher system or something similar then inner-city public schools would likely receive less attention than they already do. And what do you me in saying entry would weed out students based on parents who don't want to educate/afford private school and those who can't? What would be the difference in regards to the student?
Well overall it's not great or anything, but in a lot of more liberal areas at least it's something.