So, exactly how many adopted children do you have, anyway?
Don’t you see? The BORN children are not anyone’s problem except the mother’s.
Bah.
That being said, I could have sworn it was established that the fetus is NOT actually a “baby”, only a potential one.
It’s obvious that sexual repression is one of the reasons. Birth control made unavailable, abortion illegal. People who believe this nonsense hope to control the lives of others. It’s always been clear to me that it’s about using the law to bully others around and hopefully force them into a lifestyle that might not be desirable to many people.
Except it doesn’t work. People think it does, just as they thought it did in the past, but it didn’t. Never has and never will. At least not in a country that pretends to be free.
None.
And I assume you’ll be withdrawing your support for abortion rights since you have personally never conducted an abortion? You’ll be withdrawing your support for laws against armed robbery because you personally have never stopped an armed robbery in progress?
Do you think you’re advancing some sort of rational argument with that question? Do you believe there is some sort of imperative that one may only favor a law or policy that he has personally furthered in some way?
I donate a great deal of time and resources to an organization that assists needy pregnant women. We buy cribs, diapers, baby clothes, bottles, and the like for free distribution to those in need. No questions asked: show up and you can take what you need.
Even if I didn’t do that, it wouldn’t change the validity of my position. But - relevancy aside - I do.
I can only imagine what the true libertarian Scotsman would do. In any case, I don’t see how refusing to do even a fairly simple risk/benefit analysis is evidence of anything but pointless stubborness. If the “coercion” in this case is taxation, consider the three possibilities:
[list=#][li]Pay some taxes toward distrbuting birth control to teens.[/li][li]Pay no taxes toward distributing birth control to teens, pay higher taxes later on for more police, courts and prisons to deal with criminals (a disproportionate number of whom are born to teenage mothers).[/li][li]Pay no (or minimal) taxes toward police, courts and prisons and have criminals (a disproportionate number of whom are born to teenage mothers) roaming unchecked.[/list][/li]
A true libertarian might be okay with that last outcome, figuring he’ll pay for his own home security and shotguns and body armor and replacing stolen stereos and whatnot. That’s not exactly the kind of freedom I’d see as ideal, though.
So… the libertarian doesn’t mind paying more taxes, when he could have paid less? Perhaps I’ve misunderstood what “coercion” you were referring to.
Bryan, I’m at a loss. If you can’t understand that some people put moral or ethical or legal considerations above economic considerations, I don’t think I can explain that to you.
It’s easy to understand that some people do. What’s harder to understand is why some of those people put their ideological beliefs ahead of everything else when their chosen course is plainly very harmful.
Sure, Libertarians might offer support for these bills because it suits their ideology. No argument that they wouldn’t.
What is harder to understand is how rational creatures can come to hold these views, and not see that the practical application of their philosophy would set back civilization several hundred years. Sure, shut down the schools and eliminate all social spending. That provides an attractive short-term benefit to those of us who are educated and secure – we get to keep more of our earnings. Yay! Except that things will naturally tend towards a small perilously-privileged class, the impoverished class will grow and grow, and the progress of society will be greatly impeded. Bring on the new Dark Ages.
Even that’s not too hard to understand. There will always be short-sighted loons. Luckily, they’re so marginalized as to be politically irrelevant.
What’s hardest to understand is why we’re talking about these bills in terms of Libertarian political philosophy. The bills’ authors are Republican, and their voting records don’t reflect the possibility that they might be crypto-Libertarians.
Even if we are talking about this proposal in Libertarian terms, I don’t see an increase in “Liberty” to be gained by making this bill law, unless one places an entirely disproportionate weight on taxation’s encroachment on personal liberty.
As opposed as I am to a welfare state and to funding every need that people refuse to take care of themselves, I think birth control should always have been, be now, and always be free to anyone who wants it.
Hell of a lot cheaper than feeding and clothing their offspring!
Then I don’t see why you’re arguing with me. I agree with that, there are many potential reasons for why they acted the way they did.
Well, in my perfect world, those young men and women should be going to doctors or local healthcare workers for that discussion and preparation. Other than that, agreement with you here.
Not at all. It’s quite possible that they do hold these views, and i’ve said that, while it’s not an opinon I hold, I can’t prove it wrong. It’s perfectly possible. But there’s no actual evidence for it, just as there’s no evidence against it.
See above.
Did it escape your notice that the post you quoted was in reponse to Bricker? Whom up to that point (And indeed, at the end of that post) I’d been disagreeing with?
And I don’t recall calling you specifically a knee-jerker. In fact, my other suggestion for posters holding these views - that mostly people were saying " I cannot think of any other reason they would hold this position" seems to be the one you hold; that your opinion is based on the premise that they have no other motivation for doing this.
I don’t know. Do you have any information on sex education bills that they’ve tried to stop, or the halting of funding to such programs? Provide to me some evidence, and I may well just agree with you.
I agree, that would be one logical motivation - and i’ve said so before this. Provide me with some evidence beyond just their actions in this situation, and I may just agree with you that it’s the likely motivation.
Wouldn’t the true libertarian leave moral and ethical decisions to the individual? Given that, I can imagine a true libertarian reasoning “Well, if you’re gonna behave like sluts anyway, at least cost me as little as possible in taxes so my own personal freedom (a large part of which is purchasing power) is maximized.”
One way or another you wind up paying for unwanted children. You can pay for them with birth control. You can pay for them with abortion. You can pay for them in increased social programs, or you can pay for them in jails and increased insurance. The farther you get down the list the more expensive it gets.
As I said before, in my high school, roughly 1/4 of our girls are pregnant or have children. For some of them, the ones with remotely functioning families, and who have any academic skills at all, it is a wake up call. Several of these girls are on our honor roll. For most of them, however, it is the end of an education that failed them before they were even born.
Those are our children born of parents who aren’t much older than 30 now. They are our children of crack and addiction. They are our children of absent parents and overwhelmed grandparents. Some of them are bringing children into this world in order to be the center of attention for once in their chaotic lives.
We pay to keep their fathers and boyfriends in jail. We pay in one of the highest murder per capita rates in the country. We pay to keep the police visiting our school every other day. We pay to test them with tests they can’t read every year, and we pay for the jobs they do badly or can’t hold for the rest of their lives.
It seems like the way we are paying right now is the minimum payment on a maxed out credit card. We are falling farther and farther in the hole. Eventualy the violence will not be contained by the inner cities of this country.
Revenant Threshold, my post was an attempt to once again clarify that I did not say, and do not believe, that all people who support the bill are monolithic in their motivation. And I felt I needed to clarify it again, because this whole hijack about why Libertarians might - hypothetically - support the bill was based on a (deliberate?) misreading of my response to furlibusea.
I did not read your post as making it clear that not everyone in my camp was not a knee-jerker. Which I guess was a misreading of your post, but not deliberate. Although fueled by frustration, I admit.
Do I need to have evidence to support every opinion I have? Maybe in GD, but in the Pit? There’s no evidence that the bill supporters are coming from a libertarian POV, yet this thread is going round and round about it.
It did not, and to be honest, I just saw in your post many specious opportunities for Bricker to go off on a tangent. In retrospect, I should have answered **Bricker’s ** objections in advance directly to him.
Wait. Are you saying I seem to believe there’s no other motivation? Because that’s why I was so annoyed in the first place.
I am talking about those types of people who do things like this in general, Revenant Threshold. Not just this group at this time in this situation.
No worries. I’m sorry I didn’t make my post clear enough.
You don’t need evidence to support an opinion, but if you want to convince others of the rightness of your opinion, then you’ll probably get asked for evidence.
And yes, sorry about continuing that hijack with Bricker’s libertarian hypothetical. Like I said to him, I may disagree both that they were coming from a libertarian perspective and that they definetly hold mysoginistic views, but it was only the libertarian part that I could actually argue against.
That’s what I was trying to do myself - but as you saw, it did end up as a pretty big hijack. Apologies to you and others in this thread that weren’t interested in that.
No, I simply meant that seemed to be your opinion. I think I got the wrong end of the stick, there, so sorry again. If you think there are possibly other motivations, i’m in complete agreement with you.
Ah, ok. I took your posts to be talking about these particular senators, and not these “types of people”. It’s understandable to have that view, really, and I do share that position. I just don’t think, in this particular case, that the motivation was mysogynistic views - just an opinion - but if you expect me to change my mind you’d need evidence, which is what I was talking about.