Quote :

"I disagree that abortion and gay marriage are trivial and I'm surprised that a card carrying Libertarian would say that personal freedom is trivial. But I guess I'm just brainwashed by the government to be distracted for some nefarious purpo"

It's not that they are trivial, it's that for the amount of attention they get you would think people are talking about the Jim Crow laws. They are blown way out of proportion.

[Edited on September 16, 2011 at 5:16 PM. Reason : df]

9/16/2011 5:15:38 PM

It's not trivial, just trivial in comparison. Look at all the lives that have been destroyed over the past 10 years - thousands of servicemen, Afghanis, and Iraqis have been killed. Your inability to have a marriage recognized by the government is a relatively minor inconvenience.

And yet, there are people who only care about a politician's stated position on abortion or same sex marriage when it comes to voting. That, to me, is disturbing.

9/16/2011 5:17:12 PM

Quote :

"It boggles me that you can admit that slavery predates Jim Crow laws and still maintain that Jim Crow laws are the cause of racial discrimination."

of course it boggles you. because I said no such thing. I was speaking of the specific instances of discrimination that existed in the early 20th century. if your claim is instead that "a lack of government control" is what causes racism, I'd say that's equally stupid.

Quote :

"citation needed. Or is it OK to drop a load on the thread and declare it as fact?"

I can't cite history that never happened. But I can cite the industrial revolution and how it radically changed how crops were harvested.

9/16/2011 6:20:41 PM

As long as you admit it is conjecture.

Quote :

"discrimination against blacks was directly a cause from government, in a number of ways, not the least of which was actual laws that put it in place."

Which you then supported by the existence of Jim Crow laws. So tell me, which came first, racial discrimination or Jim Crow laws? In my opinion racial discrimination existed and continues to exist regardless of the laws in place. The laws only help mitigate the damage it does to our society.

Respect to everyone's responses regarding triviality.

9/18/2011 2:26:45 PM

Quote :

"The laws only help mitigate the damage it does to our society."

and yet, no one can really show any instances of "whites only" bathrooms from before the civil war, despite the clear existence of free blacks... Point being that, yes, racial bias exists, but the full-blown discrimination that we saw post civil war was a direct result of government actions. It specifically took tension brought on by government action to push that bias towards actual action in the form of discrimination.

9/18/2011 3:01:07 PM

I know facts don't mean shit to you, but here:
http://jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm

Asshole racists and discriminatory behavior existed long before Jim Crow laws. The laws were a reflection of the will of the people, not the other way around.

Quote :

"The year 1890, when Mississippi wrote a disfranchisement provision into its state constitution, is often considered the beginning of legalized Jim Crow. But legal attempts to establish a system of racial segregation and disfranchisement actually began much earlier. In the first days after the Civil War, most southern states adopted so-called Black Codes aimed at limiting the economic and physical freedom of the formerly enslaved. These early attempts at legally binding southern blacks to an inferior status were short-lived, however, due to the presence of federal troops in the former Confederate states during Congressional Reconstruction (1866-1876) and the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, and the three Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871. (The 1871 Act is usually referred to a the Ku Klux Klan Act.) It would be mistaken, however, to think that these federal efforts effectively protected the civil rights of African Americans. Waves of violence and vigilante terrorism swept over the South in the 1860s and 1870s (the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camellia), as organized bands of white vigilantes terrorized black voters who supported Republican candidates as well as many African Americans who defied (consciously or unconsciously) the "color line" inherited from the slave era. Such actions often accomplished in reality what could not be done in law. Depending upon the state (and the region within states--such as the gerrymandered Second Congressional District in North Carolina where blacks continued to hold power until after 1900), blacks found themselves exercising limited suffrage in the 1870s, principally because their votes were manipulated by white landlords and merchant suppliers, eliminated by vigilantism, stolen by fraud at the ballot boxes, and compromised at every turn. "

9/18/2011 10:42:07 PM

Quote :

"people should be able to choose, but i personally think they should choose life..."

I've always thought this is a bullshit cop-out.

If it is not yet a human life, it shouldn't make any difference to you or me what choice they make. If it is a human life, they should not be granted the latitude to choose whether it lives or dies based simply on their desires and what's convenient to them.

If that was permitted, I would be killing motherfuckers all over the place.

(Same goes for the argument of "yeah, it's killing a human life, but it's for the greater good.")

[Edited on September 19, 2011 at 12:54 AM. Reason : i think that very early term abortions are OK, based on the knowledge that I/we have now.]

9/19/2011 12:51:22 AM

Quote :

"If that was permitted, I would be killing motherfuckers all over the place. "

Shit like this startles me lol

9/19/2011 7:44:01 AM

Quote :

"If it is not yet a human life, it shouldn't make any difference to you or me what choice they make. If it is a human life, they should not be granted the latitude to choose whether it lives or dies based simply on their desires and what's convenient to them."

To me, the description, "a human life" is a little broad. I'd say a "human person". Simply having living tissue doesn't mean a right to life, to me (and to the law). You must have personhood and the faculty for having a mind.

Though you may have meant that. Perhaps you find a life contingent on personhood.

9/19/2011 9:05:07 AM

Even if it is a human life, why should someone (a mother) have to be legally required to support a human life that cannot live without her? Can some libertarians please chime in to explain the difference between negative liberty and positive liberty?

9/19/2011 10:26:34 AM

If we're talking about the morality of abortion in terms of viability that's a constantly changing age. As technology continues to improve age of viability gets younger and younger. Eventually we will reach the point when mom isn't really needed at all. Does that mean that upon conception abortion should no longer be allowed?

Hell, a newborn can't survive without mom, human babies are the opposite of self-sufficient. Really up until they start being able to walk, talk, and for the ability to reason you could argue that they aren't really viable if you wanted to push the definition to its limit.

At some point you have to define where life begins, at which point it becomes a moral imperative that it is protected beyond even the importance of the mother's freedom and liberty. Outside of simply being pregnant, what damage is suffered by saying that after say... brainwave activity beyond simple brain stem activity is detectable abortion is no longer an issue. You must weigh the right of the fetus (at this point a life) to not be killed vs. the right of the mother to simply not be pregnant (what other actual right is being denied her). I think it's a pretty simple decision to make.

Yes, prior to life abortion should be legal, after life begins there can be little moral defense for abortion.

9/19/2011 11:31:39 AM

Quote :

"At some point you have to define where life begins, at which point it becomes a moral imperative that it is protected beyond even the importance of the mother's freedom and liberty."

Preservation of life being more important than freedom and liberty? That sounds an awful lot like an argument for universal healthcare.

[Edited on September 19, 2011 at 1:16 PM. Reason : .]

9/19/2011 1:15:25 PM

It's a pretty huge leap from "people shouldn't be allowed to kill other people because their continued existence is inconvenient" to universal healthcare.

9/19/2011 1:37:41 PM

I think that depends on whether you think leaving a person to die of starvation, when you can more than easily afford to feed them, is that different from killing them. From the perspective of the starving man, there is no difference whatsoever.

9/19/2011 2:28:25 PM

oh jesus christ

the ridiculousness

it hurts.

9/19/2011 3:55:17 PM

Quote :

"Asshole racists and discriminatory behavior existed long before Jim Crow laws."

and notice that those laws are still after the Civil War, which was part of my claim. I'd argue that Reconstruction and the war, itself, had as much to do with the later codifying of segregation and discrimination. Again, you didn't see "whites only bathrooms" before the Civil War, at least not as far as I know. bias existed, sure. But the full blown discrimination took some prodding to actually bring it out

9/21/2011 10:33:01 PM