God is an Iraqi

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A baby one day before birth is essentially identical to a baby one day after birth. It certainly can't care for itself in either case. In fact, humans have the longest postnatal development process of any animal on the planet. We're essentially helpless for years. So if it's simply a matter of viability that determines someone's personhood, why not extend the period of time where an "abortion" is allowed to the first few years of life?

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I really agree. There's not much difference. On a sentience level it's also true. There's not really anything going on in a baby's head. Not particularly more than in Terri Schiavo's. The brain isn't actually fully build unitl a child is two years old, so technically before that it isn't fully human. When you consider the rate at which animals become aware, which is often within minutes, vs. the couple years on humans, it is clear that this biological fact of they have no brain, no fully formed human brain, that babies are pretty much not people. Let's just kill them too. You could probably notice before that brain is done certain identifiable traits starting to develop, or maybe just go by genetics. Perhaps the father was arrested for a double murder.

Okay, not I'm doing it. Not just being facetious but arguing abortion. I have to unjack my own thread. Other than abortion, anyone have any views?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:

Okay, not I'm doing it. Not just being facetious but arguing abortion. I have to unjack my own thread. Other than abortion, anyone have any views?

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Agreed. Again, apologies for this. It really is hard to unjack a thread once it finds its way to this subject. I think it's especially hard this time, because for once we seem to have a group of uniformly reasonable people debating. But still, all good things must come to an end, and I'd rather not contribute to the sudden but inevitable betrayal of goodwill here.

In response to what you said about Liberty, I do agree that it's another can of worms with (possibly) fuzzier edges than life. However, I don't agree that my point is a logical fallacy. I believe it's an accurate and valid analogy. If your argument is that giving the government some control over the life and death of a criminal means that they never truly have a right to life, then giving the government some control over the basic freedom of a criminal would then (by analogy) imply that the none of us truly have a right to liberty. It would lump liberty in along with the privileges you mentioned. We don't need to discuss the details of what exactly right to liberty encompasses in order to make this connection.

As for what you said about the state handing out punishments rather than criminals inviting them - yes, I agree that is how the law is organized in the strictest sense. However, barring any false convictions and other judicial miscarriages, the state has absolutely no power to hand out punishment save for the power the criminal gives them.

Another analogy to demonstrate this point... You cannot give me a speeding ticket unless I am speeding. I know that speeding is a ticketable offense. If I choose to speed, I understand that the consequences may include a ticket which will deprive me, in some small measure, of my right to property (my money). Of course, I don't want this to happen, but I know that it might. So I speed in the hope that I will be spared.

Maybe I get away without a ticket. Maybe I do get a ticket. In that sense, the state does have the power to punish or not punish as they see fit. But the power to give them the power to punish me was mine alone.

This is why I see laws as a contract, with criminals simply making transactions as outlined by the laws. Since I don't want to be put to death, I simply won't do anything that would give the government the power to execute me. If I do commit any acts that rise to that level, then I have only myself to blame.

Someone said something earlier to the effect of, "If what goes around comes around, then what about the executioners?" The way I see it the executioners do not kill anybody. The criminals killed themselves. They handed a gun to the state, which originally had no guns of its own, and said, "Shoot me if you want, but I'd rather you didn't."

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Originally posted by SignyM:
So- how do we make "human" life "precious" to everyone- that includes corporations, governments, and fathers? Seems to me that as long as people and institutions think it's okay to trade life for something else (profit, convenience, power, ideology) then we have no claim to being RTL.

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This is the bottom line as far as I can see. RTL is just a concept (and a noble one), but the world is a fierce and unpredictable jungle, albeit one with a very civilized facade.

So civilized in fact, that if an criminal is attacking you, you are under a legal obligation to judge the motive of the attack correctly, and use only the reasonable force in responce to protect yourself. I.e., you cannot break the neck of someone who only wishes to beat and sodomise you; you can only break the neck of someone who wishes to break your neck.
In my opinion, RTL would include the right to not HAVE to defend yourself from rape, beating, or murder, and as such, any defense should be appropriate. An attacker is by his actions noting that he is operating outside the rules of society, therefore giving up his RTL in the attack, and should legally be able to be repelled w/deadly force, even if he only means to bloody you up a little, or rob you under the threat of same. How in the world is a person supposed to see the attacker's envisioned outcome of his attack? He might leave you alive, he might WANT you dead, who can tell?

Remember Bernard Goetz? He should have gotten a ticket for having an unliscensed weapon, period.

RTL should include being free from nonsense.

This post courtesy of the Libertarian in Chrisisall

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Originally posted by Mugtwaine:
Another analogy to demonstrate this point... You cannot give me a speeding ticket unless I am speeding. I know that speeding is a ticketable offense. Maybe I get away without a ticket. Maybe I do get a ticket. In that sense, the state does have the power to punish or not punish as they see fit. But the power to give them the power to punish me was mine alone.

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Ah, the other side of that coin.... there was a place on the Long Island Expressway where it dips down (near Roslyn/Glen Cove exits for you NYers) and anyone going 55 in an easterly direction would invariably exceed the speed limit for a short time due to the decline; only the most speed-aware would use their breaks for such a small run. However, the police became aware of this section, and had it manned round the clock as it became the 'fish in a barrel' area to shovel out tickets. Was it helping anyone be more safe? NO. It was a cash cow for the local authorities. Laws= money, not safety or protection.

Chrisisall, who believes in CREAM

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Hi folks - I don't much to add here, save for one tiny little point, and then I will go back to lurking...

A most fascinating, informative and civil discussion on a topic most folk can't keep polite for 3 posts in a row, as someone said, go us.

I think it's a *good* discussion because it addresses a lot of points in a civil and honest fashion.

Anyhow, my point is thus - in my experience, i have come across some of the places that these children who are given up for adoption wind up when they are too old to be likely to be adopted, and if there is a hell, it is these places, the foster care system is also it's own nightmare.

So when a child is put up for adoption in order to avoid being aborted, and then winds up in this system - they may well face years of being tortured by the system and come out of it a monster who spends every waking moment wrecking havoc on our society.
(See Also: Lifestyle-violent juvenille offenders)

So one also has to contemplate the usual fate (death, obviously) of these unwanted children after years of torture, abuse, neglect and mayhem.

Conversely, those who ARE willing to adopt are subjected to a nightmare of red tape and legal fees.

You see, we tried to adopt, but while we have enough to raise a child, $35,000.00+ USD in legal fees, years of red tape and hassle made this impossible, especially with the complications of a religious belief that isn't 'socially acceptable' to the state - which has NO right to dictate beliefs to us, but does in cases like this.

I am not in any way, shape or form RTL, however a good starting position would be to educate and support young folks BEFORE they wind up pregnant alone and scared - the whole 'birth control is evil' thing simply has to be chucked from the RTL argument, and actual education beyond 'sex is evil, don't do it' would do wonders for reducing the number of potential abortions we are talking about.

Reality trumps theory much of the time.

A second help to the starting position would be dismantling or streamlining the adoption process so that potential parents (like myself) are not driven off in defeated frustration, still childless and a lot poorer for the trouble.

But really, the whole RTL position should best be summed up "Do no harm that you do not have to."
Which is said in different words in many beliefs.

THAT position, I can agree with - in fact, I think we all can no matter what else we believe.

-Frem

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:


So when a child is put up for adoption in order to avoid being aborted, and then winds up in this system - they may well face years of being tortured by the system and come out of it a monster who spends every waking moment wrecking havoc on our society.
So one also has to contemplate the usual fate (death, obviously) of these unwanted children after years of torture, abuse, neglect and mayhem.

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I take it that you don't mean every child will have this experience, but a large number of them will...
In any case, let's make it personel.

To those who would respond, would you rather have been born to young or troubled girls who put you into the adoption machine, only to wind up too old to adopt, and never having a family experience thinking the world was a cold, hatefull place where sadness was your only friend....
Or would you choose a second or so of pain your un-developed brain wouldn't be able to recognize anyhow, and be born to those prepared to accept and love you?

I guess your answer will be based largely on whether you believe you will be here no matter what. If each fetus is our one and only shot at getting here...well, no offence, but that's kind of a sad belief, don't you think?

Consciousness finds a way...



Dr. Malcolm Chrisisall

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giving the government some control over the basic freedom of a criminal would then (by analogy) imply that the none of us truly have a right to liberty. It would lump liberty in along with the privileges you mentioned.

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I can't accept this because right ot liberty is undefined. It's possible when we define it, it will have your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins, and then the incarceration is not a restriction of freedom of the convict, but an enforment of the freedom of the non-convict as a minimum measure. It's also possible that an investigation into right to freedom might stike down incarcetation, and we might end up replacing the system completely with penal colonies or some other solution.

Right to life is pretty cut and dry relatively, and I think if it can be revoked than it becomes priviledge to life, which is not the same thing.

The same argument that I just made for incarceration, which may itself be a fallacy, would certainly not hold for life. Killing the murderer is not a minimum measure to protect the lives of the not yet murdered, since incarceration already does this as well.

Again, you have no right to speed, or a right to drive. You have a licensed priviledge to drive, and never had a priviledge to speed.

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he way I see it the executioners do not kill anybody. The criminals killed themselves.

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I think this just isn't so. By the power vested in me, but not by anything you gave to me. It's a punishment system and comes dangerously close to having a legal system based on vengeance.

The legal system should be based on prevention, if it is to exist at all. I am coming from an extremist position where I wouldn't be heartbroken if I woke up tomorrow and there was no govt. and so it wouldn't bother me if there was no law either. The only problem with lawless society is that it falls to easily into law by vengeance, and if we legislate it as such, then we really haven't created an improvement on total lawlessness.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:

The only problem with lawless society is that it falls to easily into law by vengeance, and if we legislate it as such, then we really haven't created an improvement on total lawlessness.

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I take it you're not a fan of most Clint Eastwood movies...

The good, bad and ugly Chrisisall

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Chrisisall,

The attack cannot give up his RTL because it is a right, not a priveledge, just as you cannot give up or lose your right not to be tortured.

It's one of a minimum preventative measure. The attackers motives cannot be clearly determined. If someone is trying to rape you, you can't be sure that the attack does not have HIV or any of a number of infections that his rape of you would actually kill you, and so the rapist can be treated the same as a murderer. Also, anyone who is seeking to simply knock you out or knock you down, might also kill you. So really there is a big grey area here where in order to be sure not to be killed, you might have to take action.

In the case of theft, If the thief is taking an item off of your desk, that has cash value to you, and then attempts to flee in possesion of that, you certainly have no right to kill them. In the case of Geotz, if someone attacks you with a sharpened screwdriver and threatens to kill you if you do not give him your money, your life is in danger, because he might kill you anyway. It's again a grey area, but I would agree with you, it's not normal behavior to try to kill someone, and in a crowded area a group of four who would kill someone might kill other people as well.

In the whole balance of RTL, if the situation is kill or be killed, and rape and various other attacks that might well end in death have to be more or less equated to being killed, then the RTL is a balanced issue. Either posisble outcome results in loss of life, and so there is no net gain, so by default, I would agree, you have the right to do everything in your power to not die.

But I do not agree that the attacker has sacraficed his right to life.

Take a hypothetical example. The year is 2033, and RTL is law.

An armed gangster breaks into your house, intent on stealing the code file for the design of the personal atomic paralyzer. You come dowm and recognize him as former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. He's sporting an H16 laser cannon. He sees you, and recognizes that you will be able to identify him to the police as the theif, and so he begins to charge up his H16 to annihilate you, but you pull out your smith and wesson and fire.

Mr. Chavez is now bleeding on the floor, and has dropped his H16, which being made of crystal, breaks into a billion pieces. Chavez cannot move much and no longer poses any serious threat to you. He attempts ot reach a phone to call 911 and get an ambulance to take him to the hospital, but you pull kick the phone from his hand, breaking it, and Chavez dies on the floor.

Now you have murdered Chavez, because his right to life was not sacraficed by his attack on you. After he no longer posed a threat to you, and had been defeated in combat, he still had a right to life, and had a right to medical attention. He may have to face, and probably would, other possible criminal charges after being sown up, but he would have a right to see a doctor so he can go on living.

Now, consider this scene with a different ending, and one in which Chavez has given up his priviledge of life by making the attack on you. In this scenario, You shoot Chavez but he still gets away, but uninentionally drops the plans on his way out the window. Since Mr. Chavez' priviledge of life is fofeit, you now track him down at his home with your smith an wesson.

You see the madness that such a society that had accepted the latter interpretation would find itself in.

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