SOTOMAYOR - Page 10

I see this degenerated since I left. The sign of someone who can't argue their case is the ad hominem, i.e., name calling, for example, moron. If you hold a position and state it publicly, you ought to have thought enough about it to defend it without resorting to name calling.

No, sadly Peter Singer believes what he proposes, justcurious. He makes a logical case for his thesis and he's been doing it for years. He isn't the only one; he's just the most famous, albeit fame is apparently relative. The trouble is that if you start with a flawed premise, logic can lead you down some strange paths and to some conclusions you'd rather not come to. Singer is just honest enough to follow the logic, repellent though his conclusions may be.

Actually, Moons, some Christians do reach out to help pregnant girls and women. There aren't enough babies given up for the parents who want children and can't have them for one reason or another. Many unmarried women do keep their babies rather than abort or give the baby up for adoption, even if the baby is the result of rape. I find this an amazing display of compassion and forgiveness.

You are correct when you say Bringing back the concept of family could cure many of our social ills.   There were far fewer abortions, single mother families, and crime when families were more important.  Ironically, these social ills are far more prevalent in minority communities where men don't take responsibility for the children they father. Far too many babies of color (black, hispanic, Indian) have been aborted. It's a tragedy. 

Sueincc, I'm sure you've been told you are pro-killing the innocent and anti-killing the guilty.

Those were not the children I was speaking of Sam.
And I don't think Christians have a monoply on reaching out.
And I disagree with your concept of what is or is not a minority.
And using inflamatory remarks like pro-killing the innocent is not productive.
You guys just don't get it.

sam, you have been quite selective in your admonishment of ad hominem, - again, totally predictable -  LOL!

luvdemdogs,

It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That's because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.

Going to war is mean, so we shouldn't do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. Somebody wants to have an abortion, have a gay marriage, or wants to come into the U.S. illegally and it would be mean to say, "no," so we should let them. I am nice because I care about global warming! Those people want to kill us? But, don't they know we're nice? If they did, they would like us! Bill has more toys, money than Harry, so take half of Bill's money and give it to Harry.

The only exception to this rule is for people who aren't liberals. They're racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists, etc., etc., etc. They might as well just say that conservatives have "cooties" for disagreeing with them, because there really isn't any more thought or reasoning that goes into it than that.

Now, that's not to say that conservatives never make emotion based arguments or that emotion based arguments are always wrong. But, when you try to deal with complex, real world issues, using little more than simplistic emotionalism that's primarily designed to make the people advocating it feel good rather than to deal with problems, it can, and often has had disastrous consequences. Liberals like yourself never seem to learn from this.


Think about it,


RPK

I guess I won't know what you meant unless you talk about it, Moons. We seem to disagree and probably won't agree on abortion.

Sorry to hear you are feeling picked on, luvdemdogs. I saw that word "moron", so I used it in the example.

RPK, we are now dealing in society with the fruit of the poisonous flowers that bloomed among the self-anointed elite in academia a generation or two ago. By this I mean the concepts of self-esteem as all important, moral values as relative, factual knowledge as subjective, the importance of equality of outcome over and above equality of opportunity... Liberals haven't been taught to think for themselves from a basis of facts, reason and morals. It takes a conscious effort of will to do so.

I used to enjoy debating, but I seldom enjoy it anymore.

Yes it has degenerated, Sam and I am sure you will agree responsibility for that degeneration is not owned soley by either side.

I am "pro choice".  In my eyes this means I believe  the person who needs to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is the pregnant woman.  Not you, not me, not your religion or mine,  not the government and not even the father if that is what she wants  - hers and hers alone.  

I agree that family, immediate and extended,  plays an important role in this discussion.  I also think community support  is essential. 

I'm sorry to say I see by your last post, you too are falling in the trap of labeling  people that you do not know.  "all liberals are this or that".  What am I supposed to do now, come back with an equally rude and equally ridiculous statement about conservatives?   You know, I actually thought you were better than that.  Guess you had me fooled, eh?   

 

sam my curiosity got the best of me so i skimmed a bit of Peter Singer's position and i did not read him the way you presented him here. the bits i read is a well thought out well reasoned position that doesn't say it's ok to kill 3 mo or 3 yrs. i kept looking around and found a question & answer from his website's faq's page that addresses the points you referred to.

www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html

Q. What about a normal baby? Doesn’t your theory of personhood imply that parents can kill a healthy, normal baby that they do not want, because it has no sense of the future?

A. Most parents, fortunately, love their children and would be horrified by the idea of killing it. And that’s a good thing, of course. We want to encourage parents to care for their children, and help them to do so. Moreover, although a normal newborn baby has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person, that does not mean that it is all right to kill such a baby. It only means that the wrong done to the infant is not as great as the wrong that would be done to a person who was killed. But in our society there are many couples who would be very happy to love and care for that child. Hence even if the parents do not want their own child, it would be wrong to kill it.

these are his words and it's clear his position is different from what you suggested he was saying. 

- susan

Liberals haven't been taught to think for themselves from a basis of facts, reason and morals. It takes a conscious effort of will to do so. - sam1427

sam all i can say is - wow

Responsibility on both sides, Sue.  Abortion is a difficult subject to discuss without getting emotional since it involves the taking of human life, or not. Very few people are neutral on this topic.

I've had this discussion with many, many liberals and I've heard much the same arguments from all of them. I know that  conservatives use many similar arguments to mine. I use political labels because by and large they fit, whether the left side of the debate is called liberal, progressive, moderate, postmodern, leftist, iconoclastic or some other term. The right side is seldom called conservative except by those who are; usually we get called neo-cons, fascists, right wing nuts, racist rednecks, idiots, sometimes even Republicans.  So I thank you for at least saying the word conservative.