Why have I changed my mind about politics?

[KarateCowboy]

Wrong. The incarceration rate went up in the 70s and the crime rate went down. Does punishment deter?

How to make abortion rarer.
Bans and restrictions do not work. Superior birth control does
International comparisons show that bans and restrictions do little to cut the number of abortions. Most women will do what it takes to end an unwanted pregnancy, even to the point of risking their lives. According to the Lancet study, abortion is as common in countries where it is illegal or allowed only to save a woman’s life as it is in those where it is provided on demand.

Then you should have no problem giving equality to the unborn.

Id like to know why you think it's ok to treat the unborn as subhuman and undeserving if Justice. Are there any other groups you regard in the same manner? Jews, Blacks, maybe Slavs? I'm curious to know your reasoning

 

[Eryk]

Then you should have no problem giving equality to the unborn.

Id like to know why you think it's ok to treat the unborn as subhuman and undeserving if Justice. Are there any other groups you regard in the same manner? Jews, Blacks, maybe Slavs? I'm curious to know your reasoning

Two kinds of legislation, two outcomes: more abortions, less abortions. The proven way to get to fewer abortions is to focus on birth control and the other things. This is as good as it gets with this issue. The punitive way results in more abortions in the real world. That is not the agenda I vote for because I am against abortion.

 

[Albion]

The state religion normally just establishes that there is an official church. That doesn't mean that everyone must belong to it and do everything it says.

 

[morningstar2651]

Pre-natal infanticide is murder.

Technically, an egg is alive. Therefore, by your reasoning, every woman who has had at least one menstrual cycle has committed involuntary manslaughter, as well as any woman who has suffered through having a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy.

It's easy to pass absolute judgement on others and it lets us feel morally superior to them. However, the New Testament did have quite a lot to say about judging others.

Bringing this topic back to the argument the OP made about freedom of conscience - our laws don't exist to enforce moral behavior. Adultery isn't illegal, but you'll have a hard time finding someone who doesn't think it's immoral.

Republican politicians in particular have used promises about abortion to manipulate voters for decades. Roe v. Wade was 44 years ago. In those 44 years, we've been given a plethora of promises, but they never follow through on any of those promises because keeping that promises means losing a way to manipulate voters and stay in power. The next time a politician promises you they're going to do something about abortion - consider the possibility that they are leading you on to make sure you vote for them.

 

[morningstar2651]

Thank you for the discussion so far. I am carefully considering every comment (though I admit to giving less weight to the comments that seem to contain more anger and insult than actual content.) I could not cover every reason in my first comment, and in fact cannot give every support for every reason in anything short of a book. But let me add something here about the idea of welfare fraud, which became a thing when the Welfare Queen was introduced to the discussion back in the '80s.

Welfare Queens. Do I support the maintenance of lazy bums? No. The Bible, especially in the book of Proverbs, is clear that prosperity comes from diligence to whatever task God puts in front of you, while laziness leads to poverty. “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat.” This is one of those arguments that made me pro-Republican until I started noticing some things I had missed.

The first is the reality that a lot of white people think that most welfare goes to black people, and racial bias does exist. Is it exaggerated by some? Absolutely! But is it all imaginary? Not by a long shot. There are a great many people who are opposed to welfare because they see it as a “black” thing. Now, I do not believe that “all white people are racist.” I’m certainly not. But an awful lot of whites do have biases. Some are minor, and some are major. But racial bias does exist in this country.

The second is that there turns out to be some major misconceptions about how much of welfare goes to lazy bums and con artists. Studies have shown that most welfare is in fact received by people whom we would call “deserving.” Fraud and waste exist, but they exist everywhere where there is money available for sinful human beings to steal. Fraud exists in the free market economy. Fraud exists in churches. And probably the worst concentration of fraud and waste is found at the Department of Defense. The DoD has always been criticized for being wasteful. But are there any conservatives who are anti-DoD because of it? Not as far as I can see, and I think it’s at least partly because the armed forces are considered “good guys,” so they get some slack. By the way, I agree with that. My father was career navy, one son-in-law is an army chaplain, and I personally am pro-military. I just don’t agree that the Department of Defense should get a pass on waste while the Department of Health and Human Services constantly gets raked over the coals.

The third goes to that “level playing field” idea. The idea that people without jobs just aren’t trying, and that anybody who truly wants to work can find work, just isn’t so. My own brother, for example. He’s looking for work as an IT specialist but hasn’t found anything in over a year. Oh, prior to losing his job because of corporate cutbacks, he had worked in the same office for the same company for nearly 30 years, surviving several previous RIFs. There was nothing wrong with the quality of his work. But now he’s out, and nobody seems to be hiring 55-year-old men. Don’t tell him that anybody that wants a job can find one. Some can, but a whole lot can’t So he’s on unemployment, and he is thankful for it. I am thankful that he has it. And he continues to look for work, including work that is way below what he used to do. Hasn’t found anything yet.

The fourth thing goes back to the general anti-welfare bias. We hear of one outrageous case of welfare fraud, and we want to scale back the whole system because it’s broken. But one day this thought happened to cross my mind: If it’s better for ten guilty people to go free rather than one innocent person be condemned, isn’t it better for one con artist to get fraudulent welfare benefits than for one deserving person to be denied them? The system is never going to be perfect. So should we make the rules so tight that many deserving people go without, or should we try to help every needy person, and accept the fact that some undeserving ones will also benefit. You can guess where I come down on this question.

I've found that this is one of the harder topics for conservatives to wrestle with because it challenges a fundamental belief within their belief system - the belief that hard work leads to success. It's a belief that drives us to work harder in hopes of greater success.

In a nutshell - the belief also implies that the wealthy work hard for their wealth, and the poor are lazy. This belief is used to justify the existence of the Pareto Principle. Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and a conservative would justify that fact by believing that those 20% were the hardest working Italians.

This belief breaks down under close scrutiny. The poor work multiple jobs but never seem to get ahead. Meanwhile, someone like Paris Hilton currently has a net worth greater than most people on this forum will ever see in their entire life.

The idea that the poor shouldn't be rewarded for their lack of success and that the wealthy should be rewarded for their success results in an archetypal systemic problem commonly referred to as "Success to the successful". It's a system that keeps the poor from succeeding and keeps the wealthy growing their wealth with less effort.

 

[Albion]

Technically, an egg is alive. Therefore, by your reasoning, every woman who has had at least one menstrual cycle has committed involuntary manslaughter, as well as any woman who has suffered through having a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy..

Why don't you just go straight to an analogy about cutting her fingernails? That would be no more accurate than the egg thing but more visual.

 

[morningstar2651]

Why don't you just go straight to an analogy about cutting her fingernails? That would be no more accurate than the egg thing but more visual.

What is the difference between an egg and an egg and sperm that makes one more murderous than the other?

 

[Evan Jellicoe]

Regarding the special case of abortion, in which freedom of choice by one party seems to involve doing harm to another, some of you justifiably ask how I can ignore that. Here also I can support freedom of conscience because I do not believe that murder is actually happening, and here is why. (And please either read this to the end, or skip to the last paragraph, to see an extremely important closing argument.)

Remember the simple Christian belief that the body is not the same thing as the person? A body is only a person when a spirit is dwelling in it. I think all Christians can agree that when a person dies, death comes when the spirit departs from the body. We still may show the body reverential respect, as during a funeral, but a father might also say to a child, “That’s not really Grandpa up there. That’s only Grandpa’s body. Grandpa himself is in heaven with Jesus now.” The spirit has gone, and what is left is not a person, but only a reminder of a person.

However, in this case “Grandpa” is dead, so the illustration serves no purpose, right? Well, follow along with me, and now consider the case of a person in a hospital bed who has suffered what doctors call “brain death.” The heart is beating. The lungs are breathing. The internal organs are all working. The body is alive. But the person is no longer there because the spirit is not there. A fully-functional body is not the only thing needed for personhood. So a fully-functioning body inside a womb might not yet be a person. Is it?

It is true that some religious authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, have declared that life begins at the moment of conception. But I am free to search the Scriptures for myself to see whether this is true. And I find that the Bible does not anywhere state the exact moment that life begins. It does say in Psalm 139 that God knows us even from our mother’s womb, but remember that it also says God knew us from before the foundations of the world. God knew in advance about every thing and every person from the moment that He created the universe. He knew each of us, and chose each of us, before the world was ever created, not just from our mother’s womb. In fact, Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” If I came to be at the moment of conception, these verses say that God knew me before I was conceived. So I don’t see Psalm 139 as defining that personhood begins at conception. Many people believe that before birth a body is being prepared for a person, but that person’s spirit does not enter that body until birth. Let’s consider a common “child’s explanation” which goes something like this:

Somewhere in heaven right now there is an angel waiting to be born as a human. (I know that this is wrong theology; angels and humans are different. But let it go for a moment and just look at the point of the myth.) When that baby is born, the angel slides down from heaven and enters into the baby, and now the baby becomes a person.

As I said, that is incorrect theology. Jesus said that when people die, they become like the angels in heaven. He never said that they turn into angels. Still, the fable does contain one useful element: the fable explains that a baby becomes a person at birth. Before birth, it is a body being prepared to become a person. But as far as the Bible itself is concerned, it simply does not clearly say either way. On the one hand you have the hint in Psalm 139 that an unborn baby might be a person. On the other hand, Numbers chapter 3 hints that even babies don’t count until they are at least a month old, since the Israelites are told to number the Levites by counting every male who was one month old or above. Newborns were not to be counted. Of course, neither were females, but even the males were counted only if they were at least a month old. Why? I don’t know. Oh, I can guess, and I can even make my guess sound persuasive. But it would still be only a guess without any absolute proof from the Bible. And that means that I should follow my own conscience as far as I and my wife are concerned, while letting other people follow their conscience, even if they believe differently than I do.

Now, before you get too angry at that argument, consider the fact that even a writer for The Baptist Press had this to say about the Roe v. Wade ruling, in an editorial published in January of 1973: “. . . if the state laws are now made to conform to the Supreme Court ruling, the decision to obtain an abortion or to bring pregnancy to full term can now be a matter of conscience and deliberate choice rather than one compelled by law. Religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” [Emphasis added. ] Southern Baptists may have changed their official position since then, but I am free to think that they got it right the first time, which I do.

 

[morningstar2651]

Regarding the special case of abortion, in which freedom of choice by one party seems to involve doing harm to another, some of you justifiably ask how I can ignore that. Here also I can support freedom of conscience because I do not believe that murder is actually happening, and here is why. (And please either read this to the end, or skip to the last paragraph, to see an extremely important closing argument.)

Remember the simple Christian belief that the body is not the same thing as the person? A body is only a person when a spirit is dwelling in it. I think all Christians can agree that when a person dies, death comes when the spirit departs from the body. We still may show the body reverential respect, as during a funeral, but a father might also say to a child, “That’s not really Grandpa up there. That’s only Grandpa’s body. Grandpa himself is in heaven with Jesus now.” The spirit has gone, and what is left is not a person, but only a reminder of a person.

However, in this case “Grandpa” is dead, so the illustration serves no purpose, right? Well, follow along with me, and now consider the case of a person in a hospital bed who has suffered what doctors call “brain death.” The heart is beating. The lungs are breathing. The internal organs are all working. The body is alive. But the person is no longer there because the spirit is not there. A fully-functional body is not the only thing needed for personhood. So a fully-functioning body inside a womb might not yet be a person. Is it?

It is true that some religious authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, have declared that life begins at the moment of conception. But I am free to search the Scriptures for myself to see whether this is true. And I find that the Bible does not anywhere state the exact moment that life begins. It does say in Psalm 139 that God knows us even from our mother’s womb, but remember that it also says God knew us from before the foundations of the world. God knew in advance about every thing and every person from the moment that He created the universe. He knew each of us, and chose each of us, before the world was ever created, not just from our mother’s womb. In fact, Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” If I came to be at the moment of conception, these verses say that God knew me before I was conceived. So I don’t see Psalm 139 as defining that personhood begins at conception. Many people believe that before birth a body is being prepared for a person, but that person’s spirit does not enter that body until birth. Let’s consider a common “child’s explanation” which goes something like this:

Somewhere in heaven right now there is an angel waiting to be born as a human. (I know that this is wrong theology; angels and humans are different. But let it go for a moment and just look at the point of the myth.) When that baby is born, the angel slides down from heaven and enters into the baby, and now the baby becomes a person.

As I said, that is incorrect theology. Jesus said that when people die, they become like the angels in heaven. He never said that they turn into angels. Still, the fable does contain one useful element: the fable explains that a baby becomes a person at birth. Before birth, it is a body being prepared to become a person. But as far as the Bible itself is concerned, it simply does not clearly say either way. On the one hand you have the hint in Psalm 139 that an unborn baby might be a person. On the other hand, Numbers chapter 3 hints that even babies don’t count until they are at least a month old, since the Israelites are told to number the Levites by counting every male who was one month old or above. Newborns were not to be counted. Of course, neither were females, but even the males were counted only if they were at least a month old. Why? I don’t know. Oh, I can guess, and I can even make my guess sound persuasive. But it would still be only a guess without any absolute proof from the Bible. And that means that I should follow my own conscience as far as I and my wife are concerned, while letting other people follow their conscience, even if they believe differently than I do.

Now, before you get too angry at that argument, consider the fact that even a writer for The Baptist Press had this to say about the Roe v. Wade ruling, in an editorial published in January of 1973: “. . . if the state laws are now made to conform to the Supreme Court ruling, the decision to obtain an abortion or to bring pregnancy to full term can now be a matter of conscience and deliberate choice rather than one compelled by law. Religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” [Emphasis added. ] Southern Baptists may have changed their official position since then, but I am free to think that they got it right the first time, which I do.

I am reminded of a pro-choice billboard I saw in Iowa.

It had a picture of a baby and two words: "Choose life".

As I mentioned before, adultery isn't illegal but it certainly is considered a sin within Christianity. Just because you can cheat on your spouse doesn't mean that you should cheat on your spouse. You're free to make that choice without being arrested. However, Christians believe they also answer to a higher authority, thus they have rules they choose to follow in addition to the laws of the nation they live in.

 

[KarateCowboy]

Technically, an egg is alive. Therefore, by your reasoning, every woman who has had at least one menstrual cycle has committed involuntary manslaughter, as well as any woman who has suffered through having a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy.

It's easy to pass absolute judgement on others and it lets us feel morally superior to them. However, the New Testament did have quite a lot to say about judging others.

Bringing this topic back to the argument the OP made about freedom of conscience - our laws don't exist to enforce moral behavior. Adultery isn't illegal, but you'll have a hard time finding someone who doesn't think it's immoral.

Republican politicians in particular have used promises about abortion to manipulate voters for decades. Roe v. Wade was 44 years ago. In those 44 years, we've been given a plethora of promises, but they never follow through on any of those promises because keeping that promises means losing a way to manipulate voters and stay in power. The next time a politician promises you they're going to do something about abortion - consider the possibility that they are leading you on to make sure you vote for them.

I'm not talking about an egg, which is haploid and not an individual of the species. Upon fertilization a new individual exists. That is a matter of biological science. A miscarriage is not murder or manslaughter any more than a heart attack

The unborn deserve equality because they are humans and have human rights. They are created equal and so when a woman murders her unborn child then that child deserves Justice every bit as much as a born child.

Do you support unborn equality? If not, why? In that case are you against equality for Jews, Slavs, or Blacks?

 

[KarateCowboy]

Regarding the special case of abortion, in which freedom of choice by one party seems to involve doing harm to another, some of you justifiably ask how I can ignore that. Here also I can support freedom of conscience because I do not believe that murder is actually happening, and here is why. (And please either read this to the end, or skip to the last paragraph, to see an extremely important closing argument.)

Remember the simple Christian belief that the body is not the same thing as the person? A body is only a person when a spirit is dwelling in it. I think all Christians can agree that when a person dies, death comes when the spirit departs from the body. We still may show the body reverential respect, as during a funeral, but a father might also say to a child, “That’s not really Grandpa up there. That’s only Grandpa’s body. Grandpa himself is in heaven with Jesus now.” The spirit has gone, and what is left is not a person, but only a reminder of a person.

However, in this case “Grandpa” is dead, so the illustration serves no purpose, right? Well, follow along with me, and now consider the case of a person in a hospital bed who has suffered what doctors call “brain death.” The heart is beating. The lungs are breathing. The internal organs are all working. The body is alive. But the person is no longer there because the spirit is not there. A fully-functional body is not the only thing needed for personhood. So a fully-functioning body inside a womb might not yet be a person. Is it?

It is true that some religious authorities, both Catholic and Protestant, have declared that life begins at the moment of conception. But I am free to search the Scriptures for myself to see whether this is true. And I find that the Bible does not anywhere state the exact moment that life begins. It does say in Psalm 139 that God knows us even from our mother’s womb, but remember that it also says God knew us from before the foundations of the world. God knew in advance about every thing and every person from the moment that He created the universe. He knew each of us, and chose each of us, before the world was ever created, not just from our mother’s womb. In fact, Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” If I came to be at the moment of conception, these verses say that God knew me before I was conceived. So I don’t see Psalm 139 as defining that personhood begins at conception. Many people believe that before birth a body is being prepared for a person, but that person’s spirit does not enter that body until birth. Let’s consider a common “child’s explanation” which goes something like this:

Somewhere in heaven right now there is an angel waiting to be born as a human. (I know that this is wrong theology; angels and humans are different. But let it go for a moment and just look at the point of the myth.) When that baby is born, the angel slides down from heaven and enters into the baby, and now the baby becomes a person.

As I said, that is incorrect theology. Jesus said that when people die, they become like the angels in heaven. He never said that they turn into angels. Still, the fable does contain one useful element: the fable explains that a baby becomes a person at birth. Before birth, it is a body being prepared to become a person. But as far as the Bible itself is concerned, it simply does not clearly say either way. On the one hand you have the hint in Psalm 139 that an unborn baby might be a person. On the other hand, Numbers chapter 3 hints that even babies don’t count until they are at least a month old, since the Israelites are told to number the Levites by counting every male who was one month old or above. Newborns were not to be counted. Of course, neither were females, but even the males were counted only if they were at least a month old. Why? I don’t know. Oh, I can guess, and I can even make my guess sound persuasive. But it would still be only a guess without any absolute proof from the Bible. And that means that I should follow my own conscience as far as I and my wife are concerned, while letting other people follow their conscience, even if they believe differently than I do.

Now, before you get too angry at that argument, consider the fact that even a writer for The Baptist Press had this to say about the Roe v. Wade ruling, in an editorial published in January of 1973: “. . . if the state laws are now made to conform to the Supreme Court ruling, the decision to obtain an abortion or to bring pregnancy to full term can now be a matter of conscience and deliberate choice rather than one compelled by law. Religious liberty, human equality, and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.” [Emphasis added. ] Southern Baptists may have changed their official position since then, but I am free to think that they got it right the first time, which I do.

OK so you've worked it a theology that let's you deny 2000 years of Christan teaching and deny hard science so you can deny unborn equality and basic human rights. It's very similar to how people used "curse of Ham" theology to deny equality for blacks.

 

[TLK Valentine]

On the other hand, it would be quite a task to correct all that I read in that post. So I'll just say that it's a good thing to concentrate on what YOU can do in this world without giving in to the urge to always expect the government to do it for you.

Suffice to say, however, one of the things you can do is vote for representatives who feel as you do, and can accomplish more than you can.

 

[Evan Jellicoe]

OK so you've worked out a theology that lets you deny 2000 years of Christan teaching and deny hard science so you can deny unborn equality and basic human rights. It's very similar to how people used "curse of Ham" theology to deny equality for blacks.

No, I just read the Bible to see what it actually says, and then discovered that my position was exactly the same as the Southern Baptist position just after Roe v. Wade was announced.
I would approach the curse of Ham (actually, Canaan, Ham's son, Genesis 9:25-27) exactly the same way I looked at the abortion question. Does the Bible actually say what the Southern theologians claimed that it says? No. Their interpretation was based upon starting with a settled positioin, and then going into the Bible to prove that they were right. My interpretation is based on starting with a belief, and then going into the Bible to see whether or not that belief is right. There are four possible outcomes to such a search:
a) The belief is clearly stated as a fact in the Bible
b) The belief is clearly ruled out by plain understanding of the words in the Bible
c) The belief is not a valid inference from the Bible; using the passage in question to "prove" the belief is a misuse of the Bible.
d) The belief makes sense as a possible understanding of the Bible, though alternate interpretations are also possible.
Using this approach, I conclude that (c) is the best interpretation regarding the curse of Canaan, while (d) is the best conclusion regarding abortion. The Bible does not clearly state one way or the other. Either side could turn out to be right without changing a single word that is written. Therefore I am free to accept that you believe the way you do and the Bible doesn't prove that you are wrong, but the Bible also does not prove wrong those who believe that a fetus becomes a person at birth. It is therefore a matter of individual conscience. Personally, I wish the Bible spoke more definitely on the subject, but it doesn't.

 

[Hank77]

Technically, an egg is alive. Therefore, by your reasoning, every woman who has had at least one menstrual cycle has committed involuntary manslaughter, as well as any woman who has suffered through having a miscarriage or an ectopic pregnancy.

Two things about this statement.
One, an egg is alive but is not is not the same as the fertilized egg that is a biological organism. Correct?

Two, involuntary homicide implies that there was an involuntary death caused by some reckless, negligent, or illegal act.

 

[bhsmte]

Two things about this statement.
One, an egg is alive but is not is not the same as the fertilized egg that is a biological organism. Correct?

Two, involuntary homicide implies that there was an involuntary death caused by some reckless, negligent, or illegal act.

The death of what though? To be considered a homicide, we have to have an established person involved, that meets the legal definition of a person.

 

[Hank77]

The death of what though? To be considered a homicide, we have to have an established person involved, that meets the legal definition of a person.

Thanks for pointing that out.
The unborn have not been given that legal definition.

 

[Halbhh]

All this world and its sufferings are but a brief moment.

Democrat or Republican -- doesn't matter in the end. Neither can do Right.

All nations, governments, merely temporal. We all should progress past identifying with the world in the end.

Suddenly I thought of the provocative book in the old testament, Ecclesiastes.

Democrats if they had their way would have maintained the New Orleans levees and gates and pumps better.....

But all will still die. These bodies are all temporary.

 

[tstor]

I fail to see the great distinction between forcing me to follow the dictates of your religion versus establishing a state religion who's dictates I am required to follow.

Then which moral principles and philosophies would you suggest that we build laws around?

 

[Belk]

Then which moral principles and philosophies would you suggest that we build laws around?

I would not make such a suggestion. I simply am questioning your assertion of a distinction in creating a state religion versus codifying your religious tenets into law.

 

[Evan Jellicoe]

Then which moral principles and philosophies would you suggest that we build laws around?

This is actually a very good question. I say we should do what we can to build our secular policies around Christian principles, but we also have to accept the fact that not everybody else shares that belief. Therefore we have to make our best case by appealing to their standard in order to reach a consensus.

Sometimes this works, so we have laws against theft, murder, fraud, and so on. Guidelines for such laws are definitely Christian, but other faiths also agree with them. On the other hand, laws which can only be supported by Biblical principles are rapidly falling out of favor. So the old Sunday “blue laws” are no longer with us, nor the various laws against adultery and other extra-marital sex activities. Now the definition of marriage as “one man and one woman” has gone by the wayside, and I predict that the ban on polygamy will soon follow, since the Christian faith is the only reason for banning it. As a Christian, I definitely would rather see laws that are based on plain Biblical principles, but I can accept different laws if they don’t hurt me personally.