Tell that to the Disney corporation. That company has made billions of dollars out of creating derivative works of existing public domain works - and boy does it cling to it's ownership of those derivatives. More-over the company that profited more than any other from the public domain - has spent the past 5 decades repeatedly buying extensions to copyright law in a desperate bid to avoid ever having to contribute anything back to that public domain.
Your public domain code is open to same trap. If somebody uses it do build something else - that derivative work can be locked up and sealed more watertight than a dolphin's asshole. They don't even have to actually change a single line of it, just bundle it with code that closely interacts with it in a new program.
What you think you're doing is not what you're actually doing- what you want to do means using a BSD or MIT license at the very least, or maybe even a copyleft license like the GPL.
How is it an overreach of his powers- when congress specifically authorized him to do it ?
Oh ? You didn't know they did that ?
The immigration laws as they stand were written by a republican congress in the Reagan era -who wrote it to give the president almost unlimited power to set policy on who does, or does not, get deported. It treats that entire thing as a pure executive-branch decision and was deliberately written to exclude the legislative branch from the decision.
This is exactly why the republican states that sued Obama over DACA lost in the Supreme court - because the Judges can READ and the immigration laws o America does specifically grant the president the power to do something like DACA.
Now, to be fair, it ALSO grants Trump the power to revoke it. But that may very well be unconstitutional for a different reason. There is a principle in law, enshrined in the US constitution but much older, that you cannot punish retro-actively. If you do something, and they then pass a law against it, you can't be punish for doing it before it was against the law. One consequence of that, also explicitely spelled out in the constitution, is that when the government creates an easement, and people take advantage of that easement, they cannot subsequently be punished for it. DACA allowed dreamers to pursue futures, make life decisions based on it, and - because it required applications - reveal their status.
Even if it is repealed now it is almost certainly unconstitutional to deport anybody who registered under DACA - probably forever. When government encourages you to do something, if it subsequently changes it's mind, it CANNOT punish you for having done so - it's unconstitutional in the extreme, and prohibited by common law and every principle of justice. Simply put - if they try to deport anybody on the DACA list -they WILL get trouble in the supreme court and if the court give even the slightest of fucks about justice and the constitution they WILL lose. At the very least -the very fact that DACA has existed, and had a registration component, pretty much creates lifelong immunity from deportation for it's recipients - and I promise you that case is coming.
(By the way - this is the same argument being made in the supreme court challenge to the transgender military rule repeal. Trans soldiers who had been in hiding had come out under the protection of Obama's rule, revealed themselves because it invited them to do so. To kick them out now - would be punishing them for doing something the government had encouraged them do when it was encouraging them to do so. It's fundamentally unjust and unconstitutional).
For starters - the negative immigration predates Obama taking office, it's been a nett-negative for around 15 years now.
Now just in case they don't teach it in conservative school - effects can only come AFTER causes. So something that was already happening in 2002 cannot be because of anything Obama did. That includes a minor clarification of a legal definition.
Well rest assured Trump is trying very hard (though I now doubt he is competent enough to succeed) - to give you the smallest goverment of all. A government of one. There's a name for those things, what was it again... oh right a dictatorship.
Now how about we stop assuming things and look at facts ? The most successful and wealthiest countries on earth have teh biggest governments -because their economy and systems and infrastructure are big and complex and that means you need rather more people to manage it all. The most corrupt and poor and suffering nations tend to have the smallest governments - and usually those governments really don't do much at all.
The freeest countries on earth... have the LARGEST governments on average- because they tend to be countries where people get a say in their own governances - and just listening to all of them alone requires making government rather bigger. They tend to use that say to pressure government into providing the specific services they need which the private sector has failed to supply, or failed to supply at a price accessible to enough of them, and this makes government, again, bigger. A bigger government is not an impediment to freedom (if restrained by adequate checks and balances like a good constitution and judicial system) - in fact it's an inevitable CONSEQUENCE of freedom. That's why the more oppressive governments are - the smaller they tend to be. Why would the dictator waste money hiring anybody to do any government service ? That's less money he can pocket for himself ! He does operate government like a business - and like any business owner he is trying to maximise his personal income -by keeping government as lean as possible and only doing things he can personally make money out of.
The libertarian credo may sound nice -but it doesn't fit either empirical fact or simple logic. It's simply illogical to imagine that a free people would ALLOW government to be small, or that an oppressive government would WANT to be big. It doesn't fit the obvious incentives.
The republican party's whole "small government" schpiel has never been true anyway, it's nothing but an excuse to do giveaways to their corporate buddies. "Oh it costs you money to dump the cyanide safely ? That's fine, we'll let you dump it in people's drinking water instead" is a pretty terrible giveaway and easily sold as "making government smaller and getting rid of cumbersome regulations that hurt business". But, if they ever actually DID it, the only possible outcome would be turn the USA into a banana republic. That's the only kind of government that you can EVER have if you have a "small" one.
Turns out that with government, much like a penis, it really IS much more desirable to have a big one.
No, we're not talking about nominations that aren't getting through. We're talking about nominations that haven't been MADE. Democrats can neither approve nor deny a nomination that hasn't been made. Democrats fought against some of Trump's nominees - and lost every battle. But the vast majority of posts he has never nominated anybody for at all. Because Don the Con has zero interest in doing the president's actual job. He occupies the job for one purpose only: to take a lot of taxpayer money for himself. Already the secret service is bankrupt from bills they have to pay to properties owned by Trump on his constant vacations. The man they are protecting is actually billing them for the privilege of protecting him - to the extent that they are now broke.
Yes, I have actually, I have a three year old and I'm one of those wishy-washy liberals who think 50% of ALL parenting must be done by the dad.
And sorry, but legally - nothing you do in caring for a baby counts as "sacrificing your bodily autonomy".
By your bizarre definition we should outlaw all employment because you seem to think doing something with your body counts as 'sacrificing bodily autonomy' - no it doesn't, it requires SOMEBODY ELSE to use your body WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
If either is missing - then the right in question does not apply. In caring for a baby - BOTH are missing.
You chose not to have an abortion before it was a baby - that means your consented to the responsibility of caring for it. The baby isn't using your body - YOU are using it for the baby,.
No, you're being an idiot. Feeding and clothing a baby does not involve sacrificing control over your body. Hell in this day and age you don't even need to let it near your boobs to fullfill your responsibilities. You don't even have to feed and clothe a baby to avoid abandoning it - we do have adoption services.
It takes seriously unimaginable levels of stupid to think that "caring for children" involves sacrificing bodily autonomy. There is NOTHING that can EVER justify sacrificing bodily autonomy without consent - but bodily autonomy doesn't go nearly as far as you imagine. It involves who can use your body and for what. And the limits it sets are very simple: nobody for anything without your consent - anybody for anything WITH your consent.
Nothing else.
Caring for a child does not involve the child "using your body". The only part that could come close (breastfeeding) is optional.
There is no dividing line. Dividing lines are human abstractions - they don't exist in reality. The real world is one of processes where things gradually become other things - at one end of the process it's clearly thing A and at the other end of the process it's clearly thing B. But there is no specific point in between where it switches from one to the other at every point it is just slightly less A and slightly more B.
A baby is definitely a human being with rights. A freshly conceived ovum is clearly not. If you seriously want to argue it is - then you have a problem because every sexually active woman (not on the pill -which prevents this), on average, has about 3 fertilised eggs every month that get flushed out naturally. All natural abortions 3 times a month. If you seriously want to argue that fertilized eggs are people then you are morally compelled to demand the government provides every woman between puberty and menopause with the pill to ensure they all get it and stop those natural abortions which outnumber medically induced ones by about a million times over, clearly that's the bigger priority and conveniently if you try to fix it no liberal would try to stop you - we've been trying to get that done (for different reasons) for years !
Simply put - there is no dividing line whatsoever. But there is also definitely a difference between one end of the process and the other. So the smart thing is to set the limit in law fairly early in the process - where you're still very, very much "thing A" and no semblence of thing B is discernible yet. Which, by the way, is exactly where the law has been set.
And you still haven't addressed the issue of body ownership which frankly makes all this academic because it means whether a fetus is a person or not you CANNOT force a mother to carry one to term because nobody can be obligated to sacrifice control of their own bodies to save the life of another. You cannot argue that abortion should be illegal without ALSO arguing that organ donation must be mandatory ! Unless you seriously think living women should have less rights than even DEAD men!
Being more than a clump of cells - something sentient.
But it's interesting that the 'moment of conception' thing is much more a religious position than scientific one - specifically it's a Christian position. Jews on the other hand read in Genesis that God "breathed the breath of life into Adam" - to them the soul enters the body with the first breath and a baby isn't a person until that first breath - so Jews have never had a problem with abortion.
Ironically though - it doesn't much matter to me which end of the scale you choose or if, like most scientists, you believe this is a process happening gradually over time with no specific, recognizable point where X switches to Y - yet clearly one side is X and the other side is Y. Because it doesn't change the ultimate conclusion. This is because of that second problem. The state cannot violate one person's body ownership to save the life of another person - no such legal obligation is remotely tenable. If we can't use a dead guy's heart to save a life without the dead guy's consent, why do you think we can forcibly use a live woman's womb to save a life without HER consent ? Especially when you will subsequently demand that, still without her consent, she must feed, clothe, school and shelter that life.
You're not just taking away her right to own her own body - you're also subsequently enslaving her.
And as you may have noticed - that law has to this day never been successfully enforced.
More critically - that one falls squarely in the "things that can't harm anybody else" category - where the people had no right to intrude in the first place.
But when we 'burden small business' by telling them they *must* have enough fire escapes and fire extinguishers we're not just being callous. Sure they don't expect to burn down - but if a fire happens, wishful thinking won't save the lives of their employees - but following those regulations will. We make those rules because when they aren't there (or aren't enforced) you get the great garmet factory fire of New York - and hundreds of people die for no good reason.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the entire free world has come up with that same idea. In fact the only exception is France which, just last year, decided that dead people don't have rights - not even body ownership rights, and everybody's organs can be used to save lives.
There is difference between affecting people who consented to the activity and affecting everybody without asking for consent. We never allow the latter. It would make you personally a king. Consent is needed and when given it comes with conditions. Those conditions are known as regulations. Sometimes it's withheld. That happens when we the people, through our government, makes the activity illegal.
We live in the free world. Government is not some malicious force you need to fear. Government is our employee. Government works FOR us. The president is not a king. We are His bosses not him ours.
You cannot harm a somebody through abortion because abortion is not done to people. A fetus is not a person. Even if it was though there is another principle at stake: that of body ownership.
This is such a fundamental right we even respect it after you are dead. It's literally the only right so important that we let dead people have it. We will not use your organs to save a life if you didn't consent before you died. You can never be expected to give up body ownership for the sake of somebody else's life. Not even when you are dead.
Does the thing you're doing right now affect other people ? If so, does it have the potential to harm them ? Then this thing needs 100% and absolute goverment control to ensure that harm is kept to the minimum or, if possible, completely eradicated.
Does any of those conditions NOT hold ? Then government involvement should be zero.
So why the fuck is it that your rightwingers always get that shit backwards ? A gay couple or a woman having an abortion has literally ZERO impact on the rest of the population, none whatsofuckingever so government should stay the complete and absolute fuck out of those things. Zero government involvement allowed and anything that EVERYBODY deals with (permits and licenses and such) there is zero reason to treat them any differently.
How much fucking poison you put in the air DOES however affect everybody else, and harms people, so we have the fucking right through our government to regulate that shit as much as we want to. Because it affects other people - in harmful ways- government involvement should be absolute. Government should set an upper maximum level of toxins your car can spew and prosecute the living fuck out of anybody who goes above it.
That's the EPA's standard figure based on the average total contribution a person makes to the economy over the course of an entire lifetime. It's not just how much you pay him to drive the bus - it's all the money every business loses if he doesn't show up to drive the bus because their workers can't get to the factory.
And if there's a problem with that figure, it's that it's way out of date and hasn't been inflation adjusted since the study that produced it was done in the 1990s - the real figure from the same study would be a LOT higher now. But it remains the best studied, and most comprehensively an accurately calculated average financial value of a human life that exists in all of science.
There's another problem with it though - it doesn't calculate the emotional loss to family members when you die, the lost productivity to the economy for your funeral and the reduced productivity as they deal with the many difficulties of grieving, the bad impacts when a primary breadwinner dies and a formerly self-sufficient family is forced to use welfare to make ends meet or any of those things.
If you were to put a number on those losses, then even without inflation adjustment the number is probably low-balling it by at least 30%.
Yes. Indeed it does. Stalin was not a communist. He may have started as one (the jury on that is still out) but he wasn't one for very long after taking power. That's exactly why he killed Trotsky - because Trotsky was calling out his bullshit and telling him that his policies were not communist.
Now it's debateable what would happen in an ACTUAL communist country with ACTUAL communist policies, but since no such country has ever existed it's hard to be sure. I would argue that Andalusia in the 1920s were about the closest there ever was - and this was because they used a form of communism that didn't involve any government at all, so there was no risk of an authoritarian dictatorship using the terminology of communism while merely enriching itself (as happend in, for example, Stalin's Russia).
Its not about what it means "to me" it's about what it means. It's the name of an ideology, primarily invented by Benito Musolini with 14 fundamental components. You need at least 10/13 to call something legitimately fascist. Fascists usually use the Fasces symbol to identify themselves but this is not a requirement.
These are the elements that make up fascism as an ideology: 1) A cult of tradition Fascists are obsessed with tradition and the past, and fear the future and change. Look back at the pictures from Charlottesville - see how many of them have Roman and Medieval symbols on their flags and shields ? Look at all the talk about "traditional American values" - this is a classic fascist marker. Interestingly their obsession with tradition has no requirement on accuracy, it's their fantasy about what tradition was that matters not the reality of it. So several of the fascists this weekend were waving the black-eagle crest. That is an ancient roman symbol and they are correct in that. But what they don't know is that it was SPECIFICALLY the symbol of Saint Martin - who was black. When historians pointed this out to them on twitter they freaked the fuck out. Refusing to believe it even after being shown portraits of Saint Martin waving the Black-Eagle crest.
2) Rejection of modernism This is an extension of the former - but it's present in all fascist movements Fascists reject current social mores and values. They reject modern ideas such as diversity and tolerance.
3) Irrationalism There is no shortage of this in the new wave of American fascists. Their ostensible leader contradicts himself - sometimes within the same sentence (that's irrational). Their usage of traditional symbols without knowing what they really mean and rejecting the reality that those symbols actually disprove their own beliefs (like that Roman or Medieval Europe was mostly white) - is irrational. They idea that America can be primarily dominated by a particular race or culture is itself irrational.
4) Hatred of criticism And boy do they hate to be criticized. Look at how the president responds to every criticism, look how he declares the media fake news to avoid people actually knowing when he screws up. And look how these white supremacists respond to anybody who criticises them - declaring them violent and even trying to project the title of "fascism" on to people who do not share a single element of the ideology.
5) Rejection of diversity Well I don't think there is any doubt that this lot is opposed to diversity - even just in terms of living in the same country as other cultures - never mind systems to more closely integrate that diverse society.
6) Derived from individual or social frustration. No doubt the Trump movement, and these extreme elements of it, was built upon frustration with the system - they announced it at every turn.
7) Nationalism This is a fundamental component of all fascist movements. Since the people involved rarely have much else in common - they ideology teaches them to value, above all else, the one thing they DO have in common: their country and culture of origin.
8) Humiliated by the success of their enemies I don't think this needs much explanantion - but all that ranting about the "system" and the "elites" is pretty much textbook examples of this. So is complaining about things like affirmative action - for giving advantages to perceived enemies whom they feel already have an unfair edge.
9) Rejection of peaceful coexistence In fascism - violence is not just the first resort but the only acceptable one. Any attempt at peacemaking is perceived as cooperating with the enemy. Trump's rhetoric is textbook fascism in this regard. Not once has he ever suggested a diplomatic solution to any problem - it's ALWAYS a show of force. And the extremists we saw on saturday came ready for a fight, and when they killed somebody their only real regret is that the person didn't succeed in killing more. Also keep in mind that white supremacists h
I actually agree with you. For everybody EXCEPT Nazis. NAZIs have two things that make them exceptional. Firstly - they previously came pretty fucking close to destroying the world, we know what happens when you try to appease them. I won't make Chamberlain's mistake. Secondly - they very core of their credo is denying the liberty and rights of others. To my mind, if you adopt such a belief, then you no longer have those rights yourself. Nobody deserves a right they would deny to another.
I take my guidance here from the philosopher Karl Popper in his groundbreaking treatise "The Paradox of Tolerance" written at the height of the power of the original NAZIs. The key argument is this - most of the time, we should let nazis be nazis. Try to reason with them. But when they gain power, they become a threat to the very existence of tolerance - because the heart of their credo is that tolerance shouldn't exist. They represent a very real threat of the eradication of the tolerant and tolerance with them. When they gain any power at all, they should be beaten back - by force if nothing else is available because of the existential threat they represent to all liberty.
I'd say having a fellow travelor in the white house is a pretty significant gain of power.
That's a valid consideration. But it's a consideration of tactics and efficacy, I was discussing morality. If you bring in those considerations it's quite likely that a very different conclusion would emerge. Most historians would side with you on the basis that fash-bashing was not, historically, a very effective tactic and often backfired by allowing fascists to claim they were the oppressed ones. But that is a different subject to the morality of the issue. I still think it's morally justified to punch nazis in the face. That's not the same thing as saying I think it's a good IDEA to do that.
However, when they punch first, punching back is no longer academic - then at least, there is no doubt in my mind what should happen. It's fairly clear they were the first aggressors this weekend, and the more severe ones. Lots of witnesses reported the counter-protesters tending to those who got injured and the nazis showing no such concerns. And, of course, when push comes to shove the 19 most severe injuries and the only murder at the event was committed by a nazi - who was definitely trying to kill more than one.
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Tell that to the Disney corporation. That company has made billions of dollars out of creating derivative works of existing public domain works - and boy does it cling to it's ownership of those derivatives. More-over the company that profited more than any other from the public domain - has spent the past 5 decades repeatedly buying extensions to copyright law in a desperate bid to avoid ever having to contribute anything back to that public domain.
Your public domain code is open to same trap. If somebody uses it do build something else - that derivative work can be locked up and sealed more watertight than a dolphin's asshole. They don't even have to actually change a single line of it, just bundle it with code that closely interacts with it in a new program.
What you think you're doing is not what you're actually doing- what you want to do means using a BSD or MIT license at the very least, or maybe even a copyleft license like the GPL.
How is it an overreach of his powers- when congress specifically authorized him to do it ?
Oh ? You didn't know they did that ?
The immigration laws as they stand were written by a republican congress in the Reagan era -who wrote it to give the president almost unlimited power to set policy on who does, or does not, get deported. It treats that entire thing as a pure executive-branch decision and was deliberately written to exclude the legislative branch from the decision.
This is exactly why the republican states that sued Obama over DACA lost in the Supreme court - because the Judges can READ and the immigration laws o America does specifically grant the president the power to do something like DACA.
Now, to be fair, it ALSO grants Trump the power to revoke it. But that may very well be unconstitutional for a different reason. There is a principle in law, enshrined in the US constitution but much older, that you cannot punish retro-actively. If you do something, and they then pass a law against it, you can't be punish for doing it before it was against the law. One consequence of that, also explicitely spelled out in the constitution, is that when the government creates an easement, and people take advantage of that easement, they cannot subsequently be punished for it.
DACA allowed dreamers to pursue futures, make life decisions based on it, and - because it required applications - reveal their status.
Even if it is repealed now it is almost certainly unconstitutional to deport anybody who registered under DACA - probably forever. When government encourages you to do something, if it subsequently changes it's mind, it CANNOT punish you for having done so - it's unconstitutional in the extreme, and prohibited by common law and every principle of justice.
Simply put - if they try to deport anybody on the DACA list -they WILL get trouble in the supreme court and if the court give even the slightest of fucks about justice and the constitution they WILL lose. At the very least -the very fact that DACA has existed, and had a registration component, pretty much creates lifelong immunity from deportation for it's recipients - and I promise you that case is coming.
(By the way - this is the same argument being made in the supreme court challenge to the transgender military rule repeal. Trans soldiers who had been in hiding had come out under the protection of Obama's rule, revealed themselves because it invited them to do so. To kick them out now - would be punishing them for doing something the government had encouraged them do when it was encouraging them to do so. It's fundamentally unjust and unconstitutional).
For starters - the negative immigration predates Obama taking office, it's been a nett-negative for around 15 years now.
Now just in case they don't teach it in conservative school - effects can only come AFTER causes. So something that was already happening in 2002 cannot be because of anything Obama did. That includes a minor clarification of a legal definition.
Well rest assured Trump is trying very hard (though I now doubt he is competent enough to succeed) - to give you the smallest goverment of all. A government of one.
There's a name for those things, what was it again... oh right a dictatorship.
Now how about we stop assuming things and look at facts ? The most successful and wealthiest countries on earth have teh biggest governments -because their economy and systems and infrastructure are big and complex and that means you need rather more people to manage it all.
The most corrupt and poor and suffering nations tend to have the smallest governments - and usually those governments really don't do much at all.
The freeest countries on earth ... have the LARGEST governments on average- because they tend to be countries where people get a say in their own governances - and just listening to all of them alone requires making government rather bigger. They tend to use that say to pressure government into providing the specific services they need which the private sector has failed to supply, or failed to supply at a price accessible to enough of them, and this makes government, again, bigger. A bigger government is not an impediment to freedom (if restrained by adequate checks and balances like a good constitution and judicial system) - in fact it's an inevitable CONSEQUENCE of freedom. That's why the more oppressive governments are - the smaller they tend to be. Why would the dictator waste money hiring anybody to do any government service ? That's less money he can pocket for himself ! He does operate government like a business - and like any business owner he is trying to maximise his personal income -by keeping government as lean as possible and only doing things he can personally make money out of.
The libertarian credo may sound nice -but it doesn't fit either empirical fact or simple logic. It's simply illogical to imagine that a free people would ALLOW government to be small, or that an oppressive government would WANT to be big. It doesn't fit the obvious incentives.
The republican party's whole "small government" schpiel has never been true anyway, it's nothing but an excuse to do giveaways to their corporate buddies. "Oh it costs you money to dump the cyanide safely ? That's fine, we'll let you dump it in people's drinking water instead" is a pretty terrible giveaway and easily sold as "making government smaller and getting rid of cumbersome regulations that hurt business".
But, if they ever actually DID it, the only possible outcome would be turn the USA into a banana republic. That's the only kind of government that you can EVER have if you have a "small" one.
Turns out that with government, much like a penis, it really IS much more desirable to have a big one.
Not just brandished - at least one was fired.
No, we're not talking about nominations that aren't getting through. We're talking about nominations that haven't been MADE. Democrats can neither approve nor deny a nomination that hasn't been made. Democrats fought against some of Trump's nominees - and lost every battle. But the vast majority of posts he has never nominated anybody for at all. Because Don the Con has zero interest in doing the president's actual job. He occupies the job for one purpose only: to take a lot of taxpayer money for himself.
Already the secret service is bankrupt from bills they have to pay to properties owned by Trump on his constant vacations. The man they are protecting is actually billing them for the privilege of protecting him - to the extent that they are now broke.
You don't get to make up new definitions for things and then insist I am arguing for whatever your definition has added.
That is a strawman fallacy and a particularly stupid one at that.
I argued for bodily autonomy as the well defined concept it is. Not whatever bullshit you decide it should be.
Yes, I have actually, I have a three year old and I'm one of those wishy-washy liberals who think 50% of ALL parenting must be done by the dad.
And sorry, but legally - nothing you do in caring for a baby counts as "sacrificing your bodily autonomy".
By your bizarre definition we should outlaw all employment because you seem to think doing something with your body counts as 'sacrificing bodily autonomy' - no it doesn't, it requires SOMEBODY ELSE to use your body WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
If either is missing - then the right in question does not apply.
In caring for a baby - BOTH are missing.
You chose not to have an abortion before it was a baby - that means your consented to the responsibility of caring for it.
The baby isn't using your body - YOU are using it for the baby,.
No, you're being an idiot. Feeding and clothing a baby does not involve sacrificing control over your body. Hell in this day and age you don't even need to let it near your boobs to fullfill your responsibilities. You don't even have to feed and clothe a baby to avoid abandoning it - we do have adoption services.
It takes seriously unimaginable levels of stupid to think that "caring for children" involves sacrificing bodily autonomy. There is NOTHING that can EVER justify sacrificing bodily autonomy without consent - but bodily autonomy doesn't go nearly as far as you imagine. It involves who can use your body and for what. And the limits it sets are very simple: nobody for anything without your consent - anybody for anything WITH your consent.
Nothing else.
Caring for a child does not involve the child "using your body". The only part that could come close (breastfeeding) is optional.
There is no dividing line. Dividing lines are human abstractions - they don't exist in reality. The real world is one of processes where things gradually become other things - at one end of the process it's clearly thing A and at the other end of the process it's clearly thing B. But there is no specific point in between where it switches from one to the other at every point it is just slightly less A and slightly more B.
A baby is definitely a human being with rights. A freshly conceived ovum is clearly not. If you seriously want to argue it is - then you have a problem because every sexually active woman (not on the pill -which prevents this), on average, has about 3 fertilised eggs every month that get flushed out naturally. All natural abortions 3 times a month. If you seriously want to argue that fertilized eggs are people then you are morally compelled to demand the government provides every woman between puberty and menopause with the pill to ensure they all get it and stop those natural abortions which outnumber medically induced ones by about a million times over, clearly that's the bigger priority and conveniently if you try to fix it no liberal would try to stop you - we've been trying to get that done (for different reasons) for years !
Simply put - there is no dividing line whatsoever. But there is also definitely a difference between one end of the process and the other. So the smart thing is to set the limit in law fairly early in the process - where you're still very, very much "thing A" and no semblence of thing B is discernible yet. Which, by the way, is exactly where the law has been set.
And you still haven't addressed the issue of body ownership which frankly makes all this academic because it means whether a fetus is a person or not you CANNOT force a mother to carry one to term because nobody can be obligated to sacrifice control of their own bodies to save the life of another. You cannot argue that abortion should be illegal without ALSO arguing that organ donation must be mandatory ! Unless you seriously think living women should have less rights than even DEAD men!
Being more than a clump of cells - something sentient.
But it's interesting that the 'moment of conception' thing is much more a religious position than scientific one - specifically it's a Christian position. Jews on the other hand read in Genesis that God "breathed the breath of life into Adam" - to them the soul enters the body with the first breath and a baby isn't a person until that first breath - so Jews have never had a problem with abortion.
Ironically though - it doesn't much matter to me which end of the scale you choose or if, like most scientists, you believe this is a process happening gradually over time with no specific, recognizable point where X switches to Y - yet clearly one side is X and the other side is Y. Because it doesn't change the ultimate conclusion. This is because of that second problem.
The state cannot violate one person's body ownership to save the life of another person - no such legal obligation is remotely tenable. If we can't use a dead guy's heart to save a life without the dead guy's consent, why do you think we can forcibly use a live woman's womb to save a life without HER consent ?
Especially when you will subsequently demand that, still without her consent, she must feed, clothe, school and shelter that life.
You're not just taking away her right to own her own body - you're also subsequently enslaving her.
And as you may have noticed - that law has to this day never been successfully enforced.
More critically - that one falls squarely in the "things that can't harm anybody else" category - where the people had no right to intrude in the first place.
But when we 'burden small business' by telling them they *must* have enough fire escapes and fire extinguishers we're not just being callous. Sure they don't expect to burn down - but if a fire happens, wishful thinking won't save the lives of their employees - but following those regulations will. We make those rules because when they aren't there (or aren't enforced) you get the great garmet factory fire of New York - and hundreds of people die for no good reason.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the entire free world has come up with that same idea.
In fact the only exception is France which, just last year, decided that dead people don't have rights - not even body ownership rights, and everybody's organs can be used to save lives.
There is difference between affecting people who consented to the activity and affecting everybody without asking for consent.
We never allow the latter. It would make you personally a king. Consent is needed and when given it comes with conditions. Those conditions are known as regulations. Sometimes it's withheld. That happens when we the people, through our government, makes the activity illegal.
We live in the free world. Government is not some malicious force you need to fear. Government is our employee. Government works FOR us. The president is not a king. We are His bosses not him ours.
You cannot harm a somebody through abortion because abortion is not done to people. A fetus is not a person.
Even if it was though there is another principle at stake: that of body ownership.
This is such a fundamental right we even respect it after you are dead. It's literally the only right so important that we let dead people have it. We will not use your organs to save a life if you didn't consent before you died. You can never be expected to give up body ownership for the sake of somebody else's life. Not even when you are dead.
That's easy.
Does the thing you're doing right now affect other people ? If so, does it have the potential to harm them ?
Then this thing needs 100% and absolute goverment control to ensure that harm is kept to the minimum or, if possible, completely eradicated.
Does any of those conditions NOT hold ?
Then government involvement should be zero.
So why the fuck is it that your rightwingers always get that shit backwards ? A gay couple or a woman having an abortion has literally ZERO impact on the rest of the population, none whatsofuckingever so government should stay the complete and absolute fuck out of those things. Zero government involvement allowed and anything that EVERYBODY deals with (permits and licenses and such) there is zero reason to treat them any differently.
How much fucking poison you put in the air DOES however affect everybody else, and harms people, so we have the fucking right through our government to regulate that shit as much as we want to. Because it affects other people - in harmful ways- government involvement should be absolute. Government should set an upper maximum level of toxins your car can spew and prosecute the living fuck out of anybody who goes above it.
That's the EPA's standard figure based on the average total contribution a person makes to the economy over the course of an entire lifetime. It's not just how much you pay him to drive the bus - it's all the money every business loses if he doesn't show up to drive the bus because their workers can't get to the factory.
And if there's a problem with that figure, it's that it's way out of date and hasn't been inflation adjusted since the study that produced it was done in the 1990s - the real figure from the same study would be a LOT higher now. But it remains the best studied, and most comprehensively an accurately calculated average financial value of a human life that exists in all of science.
There's another problem with it though - it doesn't calculate the emotional loss to family members when you die, the lost productivity to the economy for your funeral and the reduced productivity as they deal with the many difficulties of grieving, the bad impacts when a primary breadwinner dies and a formerly self-sufficient family is forced to use welfare to make ends meet or any of those things.
If you were to put a number on those losses, then even without inflation adjustment the number is probably low-balling it by at least 30%.
Yes. Indeed it does. Stalin was not a communist. He may have started as one (the jury on that is still out) but he wasn't one for very long after taking power. That's exactly why he killed Trotsky - because Trotsky was calling out his bullshit and telling him that his policies were not communist.
Now it's debateable what would happen in an ACTUAL communist country with ACTUAL communist policies, but since no such country has ever existed it's hard to be sure. I would argue that Andalusia in the 1920s were about the closest there ever was - and this was because they used a form of communism that didn't involve any government at all, so there was no risk of an authoritarian dictatorship using the terminology of communism while merely enriching itself (as happend in, for example, Stalin's Russia).
That AC WAS silentcoder - I was just posting a reply from a place where I couldn't log in.
Its not about what it means "to me" it's about what it means. It's the name of an ideology, primarily invented by Benito Musolini with 14 fundamental components. You need at least 10/13 to call something legitimately fascist. Fascists usually use the Fasces symbol to identify themselves but this is not a requirement.
These are the elements that make up fascism as an ideology:
1) A cult of tradition
Fascists are obsessed with tradition and the past, and fear the future and change. Look back at the pictures from Charlottesville - see how many of them have Roman and Medieval symbols on their flags and shields ? Look at all the talk about "traditional American values" - this is a classic fascist marker. Interestingly their obsession with tradition has no requirement on accuracy, it's their fantasy about what tradition was that matters not the reality of it. So several of the fascists this weekend were waving the black-eagle crest. That is an ancient roman symbol and they are correct in that. But what they don't know is that it was SPECIFICALLY the symbol of Saint Martin - who was black. When historians pointed this out to them on twitter they freaked the fuck out. Refusing to believe it even after being shown portraits of Saint Martin waving the Black-Eagle crest.
2) Rejection of modernism
This is an extension of the former - but it's present in all fascist movements Fascists reject current social mores and values. They reject modern ideas such as diversity and tolerance.
3) Irrationalism
There is no shortage of this in the new wave of American fascists. Their ostensible leader contradicts himself - sometimes within the same sentence (that's irrational). Their usage of traditional symbols without knowing what they really mean and rejecting the reality that those symbols actually disprove their own beliefs (like that Roman or Medieval Europe was mostly white) - is irrational. They idea that America can be primarily dominated by a particular race or culture is itself irrational.
4) Hatred of criticism
And boy do they hate to be criticized. Look at how the president responds to every criticism, look how he declares the media fake news to avoid people actually knowing when he screws up. And look how these white supremacists respond to anybody who criticises them - declaring them violent and even trying to project the title of "fascism" on to people who do not share a single element of the ideology.
5) Rejection of diversity
Well I don't think there is any doubt that this lot is opposed to diversity - even just in terms of living in the same country as other cultures - never mind systems to more closely integrate that diverse society.
6) Derived from individual or social frustration.
No doubt the Trump movement, and these extreme elements of it, was built upon frustration with the system - they announced it at every turn.
7) Nationalism
This is a fundamental component of all fascist movements. Since the people involved rarely have much else in common - they ideology teaches them to value, above all else, the one thing they DO have in common: their country and culture of origin.
8) Humiliated by the success of their enemies
I don't think this needs much explanantion - but all that ranting about the "system" and the "elites" is pretty much textbook examples of this. So is complaining about things like affirmative action - for giving advantages to perceived enemies whom they feel already have an unfair edge.
9) Rejection of peaceful coexistence
In fascism - violence is not just the first resort but the only acceptable one. Any attempt at peacemaking is perceived as cooperating with the enemy. Trump's rhetoric is textbook fascism in this regard. Not once has he ever suggested a diplomatic solution to any problem - it's ALWAYS a show of force. And the extremists we saw on saturday came ready for a fight, and when they killed somebody their only real regret is that the person didn't succeed in killing more. Also keep in mind that white supremacists h
Maybe, but it's still important to use correct terminology so that what you say is useful to draw conclusions from.
I actually agree with you. For everybody EXCEPT Nazis.
NAZIs have two things that make them exceptional.
Firstly - they previously came pretty fucking close to destroying the world, we know what happens when you try to appease them. I won't make Chamberlain's mistake.
Secondly - they very core of their credo is denying the liberty and rights of others. To my mind, if you adopt such a belief, then you no longer have those rights yourself. Nobody deserves a right they would deny to another.
I take my guidance here from the philosopher Karl Popper in his groundbreaking treatise "The Paradox of Tolerance" written at the height of the power of the original NAZIs. The key argument is this - most of the time, we should let nazis be nazis. Try to reason with them. But when they gain power, they become a threat to the very existence of tolerance - because the heart of their credo is that tolerance shouldn't exist. They represent a very real threat of the eradication of the tolerant and tolerance with them.
When they gain any power at all, they should be beaten back - by force if nothing else is available because of the existential threat they represent to all liberty.
I'd say having a fellow travelor in the white house is a pretty significant gain of power.
That's a valid consideration. But it's a consideration of tactics and efficacy, I was discussing morality. If you bring in those considerations it's quite likely that a very different conclusion would emerge. Most historians would side with you on the basis that fash-bashing was not, historically, a very effective tactic and often backfired by allowing fascists to claim they were the oppressed ones.
But that is a different subject to the morality of the issue. I still think it's morally justified to punch nazis in the face. That's not the same thing as saying I think it's a good IDEA to do that.
However, when they punch first, punching back is no longer academic - then at least, there is no doubt in my mind what should happen. It's fairly clear they were the first aggressors this weekend, and the more severe ones. Lots of witnesses reported the counter-protesters tending to those who got injured and the nazis showing no such concerns. And, of course, when push comes to shove the 19 most severe injuries and the only murder at the event was committed by a nazi - who was definitely trying to kill more than one.
No. I defended punching them. Not killing them.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...