Admirable, but you’re still providing cures and not prevention, because the baby is there and now it must be cared for somehow. But, and I say this in general terms rather than referring to you specifically, sex education is abhorred by quite a few conservatives unless it’s abstinence-only, which is about as useful as telling a kid not to eat a cookie sitting on the counter. Proper education including contraceptive use, as ‘icky’ as it might be, would result in fewer pregnancies where abortion even needs to be considered.
Didn’t say humans were ants and bees. Said they were similar to ants and bees in that they are social animals. Which is to say, mutually interdependent.
Perhaps you might actually address my words rather than twisting them to fit your agenda? That would be nice.
I support abstinence based sex education but not abstinence only sex education.
Oh, give me a break. You think there is a sex education program out there that actually doesn’t include the possibility that the kids could skip having sex? I expect that even in the rare program that doesn’t explain the mechanics of the act, once a child learns that sex = babies, they can infer that !sex = !babies. If they can’t, their education is lacking in more worrying areas than sex ed.
You need a break, since you appear to be unfamiliar with the terms I have used.
Here is an example of an abstinence based education policy.
Here is a discussion of abstinence-only.
Do you now understand the distinction, or do you need some more breaks?
I think almost everyone missed this question. I’ll ask it again.
A better analogy might be, wolves, or bison; or all anthropoid primates – chimps, gorillas, bonobos, all our nearest relatives – all group animals, can’t thrive alone. Humans are not solitary animals like cats or deer.
Revise your username.
To an extent, humans are interdependent. But in my view, what liberals seek is, in fact, more analogous to ants and bees. You want each person to work selflessly for the greater good. You view any achievements as being primarily attributable to society, or luck, and not to individual achievement. You denigrate those who wish to keep the fruits of their labor, placing “Screw you, I got mine,” quotes in their mouths to shame and revile that impulse.
You want to impose on the successful a mandate to share with the unsuccessful. You hear, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and think that’s a pretty reasonable starting point.
I think people’s interdependence should manifest itself by choice. You want to mandate it, to make rules to ensure that no one is too big a winner or too bad a loser.
This attitude permeates the progressive agenda. When Obama told Joe the Plumber we had to be willing to spread the wealth, that’s the attitude I heard.
The funny part of conservative self-reliance is what utter shambles their lives would have been without the work of government.
Bricker, you’re successful because the government gave you a safe, warm place to prosper.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
Bricker, you’re successful because the government gave you a safe, warm place to prosper.
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: How do you account for the fact that many people also given a ‘safe, warm place to prosper’ aren’t successful then, if it’s all the government? Most of the people I grew up with in my old neighborhood are still there (hell, a lot of them STILL don’t speak decent English, or speak it with such a heavy accent that a lot of English speakers would have trouble understanding them).
I prospered because my dad and mom made the choice to come to the US, work their asses off in menial, low paying jobs, give this country their military service (in my dads case, which meant to be shipped off to Vietnam to fight in a war he didn’t have a clue what it was about). THEY are the main reason I prospered…not the government giving us stuff (a ‘safe, warm place to prosper’? 
I’d love to show you our old house in South Tucson so you could bask in the safety and warmth). They instilled in all their kids the drive to succeed. They forced us to learn English, to completely adopt the culture, to lose our accents, to get educations and, most importantly, to leave the fucking barrio and find a better life for ourselves in this country.
And for the ‘gifts’ we were ‘given’ (that mythical ‘safe, warm place to prosper’ that you probably had growing up, no doubt) we have paid…we gave of ourselves in military service to this country. We’ve fucking paid our taxes, to the penny. We’ve donated our time and energy and money to back to the community. We PAID for the privilege (and make no mistake, it is a privilege) to live here and BE fucking Americans. We love this country…seemingly a hell of a lot more than some of the folks who have been here for many generations and who take all this stuff for granted, waiting for the government to give them safety and warmth and success.
Anyway, soapbox speech done. Just needed to vent that after seeing the side discussion in this ridiculous thread.
-XT
I understood the distinction before using your links to make sure. I just think that saying a program is abstinence based is absurd. I don’t know of a program out there that doesn’t start with the premise that not having sex is the surest way to avoid getting pregnant and/or catching STDs. I’m not a sex ed expert, though. So, if you have an example of one that doesn’t, I’d be educated.
BTW, we’re really hijacking this far from the original topic. I apologize if we’re annoying others.
Didn’t the government give that to everyone?
Incan find a dozen links to programs that describe themselves as abstinence based and include discussion of contraception’s proper use,etc. wy do you find it absurd?
Exactly. So no one, rich or poor, is self reliant.
I don’t believe any conservative has ever said that anyone is 100% self-reliant. At best, that seems like a blatant straw man.
I can find links to Sun-Ra describing himself as being from Saturn. Would seeing them make his claim seem less absurd?
I don’t see where it makes the transition from “Sex Ed” to “Abstinence Based Sex Ed”, since any sex education class would include the information that you largely get babies and STDs from sex, and you can avoid them by avoiding sex. ISTM for a program to not qualify as “Abstinence Based”, it would have to either deliberately misinform the kids about the basics of reproduction, or encourage the kids to screw like rabbits. I’m not aware of a program that does either.
You can’t avoid babies by avoiding sex, other people have them, and carry the sticky little crumb-snatchers around wherever they go. Might as well get laid.
Ok, elucidator might be running one that doesn’t qualify as abstinence based. Even though he does present a compelling viewpoint, I wouldn’t recommend hiring him to run your program.
That’s your new, favoritest fallacy, isn’t it? Someone learned a new word.