I was not speaking to the validity of the cause itself, I was speaking to the value of your assertion that lots and lots of women are anti-choice. They may claim to be anti-choice (or whatever term they prefer to use for that), but look away from the brass tacks. Your assertion about the prevalence of that attitude amongst women does not appear to be practically meaningful.
That’s like saying water is wet. Nearly everyone was religious to some degree prior to the modern age. And abortion is a lot slipperier as far as ‘correctness’ is concerned. For example, a significant number of pro-life advocates who base their objections to abortion in their religious beliefs can justify it in certain circumstances. How does that work out? If they define it as murder, what difference should it make to them if a fetus was the result of a rape? Shouldn’t it be ‘God’s will’ if the mother’s life is endangered?
Then what about, for instance, Christian Scientists? Isn’t that counter to freedom of religion?
The latest poll there is 4 years old at best, whereas the Gallup poll is one year old. Still, every poll that you cite shows women being at a higher rate of pro-choice than men.
Try to stick to the point. I think by now we’re all aware of your sarcastic objections to Desert Storm and 41, which has nothing to do with the topics under discussion. So in other words, Democrats are to blame for the War on Drugs regardless, because they couldn’t enforce their ideology in the face of political considerations?
Welcome to the real world. You can’t always get what you want.
Then you’ve answered your own question about Catholic social teaching.
And as I pointed out, the fellow who conducted the study offered no widespread evidence of this attitude, merely that some women did.
And even to-day most people are at least nominally religious. Don’t you think that, as a result, religion would continue to make a significant impact in politics?
And you could say the same about those in the “pro-choice” camp. Where does the right to an abortion come to an end? At viability? At birth?
I don’t think the First Amendment gives fundamentalist Mormons the right to marry their 12-year old daughters to a man five times her age or Baal worshipers to sacrifice their children to their daemonic deity. Odd that a secular liberal like you would object to this principle.
Erhm no. The one poll there that asks for specific policies with regards to abortion and not just vague labels of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” shews the following.
Abortion should be…Generally Available
Women-37%
Men 40%
Available, but with stricter limits then now
Women-37%
Men-40%
Not permitted
Women-24%
Men-20%
Except as the very text you quote says, it wasn’t just that Clinton decided not to make that issue a priority. As your very quote says:
What was my question about Catholic social teaching? The point I was making by bringing it up was that there can indeed be forms of social conservatism that don’t subscribe to Horatio Alger-style pro-capitalist moralism.
25% identifying with no religion is pretty significant. No one would publicly identify that way in the 19th century. But beyond that, the only ones for whom religion significantly affect their decisions are socons.
Thank you for agreeing that you can’t compare the abortion question to abolitionism.
Secular moderate with some liberal leanings. Get it right.
Nearly everyone agrees that the examples you give are unacceptable. Roughly half the nation doesn’t agree with you on abortion.
Are you serious? That comes from a poll done 13 years ago. Try again.
We have a black box here. You’re judging based on the end result without even considering the decision-making process that went into it, which is very much idealist vs. realist.
You asked me to explain it, and then provided a rationale yourself.
You will notice that the vast majority of those who identify themselves with no religion still don’t consider themselves atheist or agnostic but are essentially culturally Christian. And actually, the situation was not all that different in the 19th Century-while the vast majority of Americans may have considered themselves Christian, church membership was lower even as a percentage of population then they are to-day. That said, plenty of those who are not socons are also informed by their religious beliefs. Are Quaker opponents of America’s foreign wars not informed by their religious beliefs? What about Martin Luther King Jr.?
Since I was comparing abolitionism to the anti-abortion movement in that both were driven heavily by religious sentiments, my point still stands.
Sam Ting. Besides a few exceptions, both your expressed views and rhetoric are indistinguishable from modern American liberalism.
We were discussing requiring children to get medical treatments regardless of their parents’ religious beliefs which you expressed scepticism towards.
As I said, that poll is better then one vaguely assigning the labels of “pro-choice” and “pro-life” since it asks about specific policy proposals with regards to abortion. If you can find a more recent poll of this type broken down by gender that’d be great. Even if you are completely right, the fact would still be that until comparatively recently there was no real gender gap on abortion and even with your poll it is a relatively small one if one accounts for margin one.
I’m not sure if you read my earlier response because I accidentally put it in the quote but here:
If you are going to play the realist why complain about some minor lying about a non-scandal for political reasons? And your response is literally “Shut up peasant, the big wigs are talking” that’s just as applicable to say the Iraq War which you correctly condemn.
Yep, I’m going to stop this here, because you’re just debating to debate again. Relying on a 13-year old poll and then attempting to justify it proves that. A couple of final points, though. You do not know nearly enough about my political beliefs to classify me. Sorry if I don’t like baldfaced lying, but extending that to claim some things that I’ve never expressed is just silly. In case you missed it, once again, I’m an independent, not a Democrat. I can decide on individual issues without bearing responsibility for their policies. You don’t get to pin me down with your erroneous perceptions or allegations or whatever it is you think you’re doing. Move along.
Interestingly enough, at this point including the third party candidates hurts Clinton more than Trump.
According to Quinnipiac, it turns a close race into a Trump romp:
Quinnipiac has a 4 point lead for Clinton when Clinton and Trump are the only stated choices, but a 7 point Trump lead when third party candidates can be picked.
This makes sense to me, actually. Stein obviously is going to pull almost entirely from Clinton, but even Johnson is likely taking more Clinton voters at this point. I’m a Clinton voter if Johnson isn’t available, but with the presence of what I regard as a “real” GOP ticket to vote for, I just have no need to resort to voting for Clinton. I suspect I’m not alone.
However, iMO, 3% for Stein is just not going to happen unless the Bernie fans are really, really serious about not supporting Clinton. It would just be hard for me to believe that Stein would outperform Nader given that Gore was just as distasteful to a lot of hard lefties and Nader was a much bigger name. So I’m willing to take 2% off and put it back in Clinton’s column for the general. Johnson at 5% though, that could totally happen.
And from my perspective, it seems you are incapable of ever accepting you are wrong especially if it means admitting truths that go against what passes for “conventional wisdom” in the anemic world of modern bourgeois American liberalism (and yes you absolutely are a liberal whether you are a Democrat, Independent, or even Republican, there’s no question about that). Hence you completely ignoring my point that the poll I cited was more useful because it measured specific policies regarding abortion and that even if the poll was outdated, it’d demonstrated that for roughly 30 of the 40 years since Roe v. Wade there was no gender gap wrt abortion.
Here’s some more recent polling evidence from 2010
The NYT recognizes this as well.
Gotta agree with you there. Democrats try to divide us by gender on abortion, when opinions on abortion tend to have more to do with married vs unmarried than male vs. female. And can we just acknowledge that people have consciences and don’t just embrace their own self-interest?
Project much? You claim that I can’t admit I’m wrong when you use outdated evidence and then defend doing so by saying, well, it’s more representative (false on its face), and then oh, it really doesn’t matter anyway. That would get you laughed out of formal debate.
I’ll give you an example that you clearly didn’t know about my beliefs. It was subtle, but if you were reading carefully you might have picked it up in the subtext. I am strongly pro-military. I am a veteran, and I understand and fully respect those who serve their country. I like having the strongest military in the world. Also, contrary to what you appear to assume from my dislike of Dubyah’s war, I am not afraid of or morally opposed to intervention. However, I require that it be properly justified, and it was not in the case of GW II. I originally supported the war, but I was uncomfortable with the speed at which we were rushing to a conclusion. Then I discovered that the guys in the executive were lying sacks of shit. Not a particularly surprising thing with politicians, but there it is…
Sorry, but I don’t fit into your little ideological boxes, and you are WAY off-base with your judgment based on many months of political experience. Nor do most people fit, which you probably don’t get. Whatever, I’m done. There’s no point in arguing substantive issues without respect for facts.
I am not quite sure that that is a valid claim about the abolitionist movement. As far as I can tell, religion was used as a justification for slavery as well. In that respect, the issue of slavery would be a doctrinal dispute, which does not make abolition religion-driven.
I think you’ve made an error here. The +7 Trump poll is a PPP poll of Georgia.
Question 5 shows Clinton +4 when choices are Clinton or Trump.
Question 7 shows Clinton +2 when choices are Clinton, Trump, Johnson, or Stein.
A small difference that may or may not even be real. Not a Trump romp.
Question 6 shows Trump +9 when choices are Clinton or Trump.
Question 5 shows Trump +7 when choices are Clinton, Trump, Johnson, or Stein.
Here the inclusion of third party candidates moves the needle in the other direction.
Yes, I think I made an error, counted an incorrect poll.
So +2 and -2 are the aggregate so far, which shows no impact on the race by third party candidates. That’s at least an argument for people to note vote for who they find distasteful. It won’t throw the election.
You never actually addressed any of my points that labels are worthless. For example a recent survey shows a majority of Millennial reject capitalism and about a third support socialism. Does that mean one third of young people would be willing to support nationalization of major industries? Or does it mean it’s simply a vague label many young people identify with due to Sanders’s social democratic agenda?
I never made any claims with regards to you being isolationist or anti-war as I’d classify people far more hawkish then you such as Joe Lieberman or Irving Kristol as right-liberals as well.
And again you are the one ignoring the facts that do not conform to “conventional wisdom” of the Thomas Friedmans, David Brooks, and John Olivers of the world.
What else do you call a movement that was led to a very large extent by clergymen or very faithful laymen and constantly used Biblical rhetoric? That doesn’t mean, of course, that the pro-slavery movement couldn’t be religious as well.
Completely immaterial. You cannot take 13-year old public opinion polls and claim that they have any relation to current opinion. And you’re still trying to do it.
Labels are worthless, but you have no problem with trying to label me. Yeahrite.
In our last two debates/discussions/whatever you have tried to paint me as a hypocrite, each time taking two comments on different topics and combining them, defining them with your own POV, so as to attack my credibility. That’s the second nono you’ve committed. You are not a reasonable debater, and I’m not going to engage with you any more. Game over. You can claim victory, or that you beat me on all points so I had to just give up, or whatever. I really don’t care.
Latest poll: 39-35-11
16% in Utah as well. And the numbers in UTah are just nuts:
“Other” is actually tied for the lead with 29%.
William Weld seems to actually be a pretty big fan of Hillary Clinton:
Ultimately, it depends on just how much of an ass Trump makes himself in public – with the collapse of Bill Kristol’s pathetic attempt to float a different protest-vote option, Johnson is really the only option for NeverTrump Republicans who can’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary and consider it a dereliction of duty to not vote at all.