What's the difference between someone who is mentally ill and commits crimes, versus someone whose heroin addiction causes them to commit crimes? You could regard curing a heroin addiction as morally the same thing as curing a mental illness. At least in the case of convicted criminals -- just as the state doesn't necessarily force any treatment on peaceful "naturally" psychotic people.
I gave the qualifier "if it is safe", so I think I'm in pretty good shape. Under that qualifier, it is far less of a "violation of human rights" to vaccine against heroin than to lock a human being in a cage for several years, wouldn't you say? Isn't that exactly what prison is, which is the normal "treatment" for the criminal class? What would you propose doing with criminals that doesn't involve "violating their human rights"? Inviting them to tea parties and giving them crumpets?
I truly appreciate the way you have distorted an opposition to brainwashing kids into obedience to the corporate state and police state, and turned it into a one-sided rant about feces through several posts. No obsession there at all!
lol!
Parents need to guide their children to respect others, and to think and get along. That's expected as a duty of parenthood.
Agreed.
Conditioning children to obey all authority blindly however, is not.
Sure. But for a child to obey parental authority and the parent-delegated authority of teachers and school administrators is not "obeying all authority blindly".
I'm sure ardent Republicans who worship authority and the corporation think otherwise, but so what?
Huh?
"you are probably just being a jerk," A lovely choice of words, noted.
OK, as long as you also note that I was very careful to clarify in my post that "you" doesn't mean "you" literally, but is just a dialectic device for working through a topic of discussion. No offense, dude.
So enlighten me. Do you make a 1 or 2-year-old stop smearing feces on the wall because you successfully reason with him and convince him it's not a beneficial activity, or do you both reason with him as much as he can, and also require him to submit to the authority of his parents?
As far as the whole "good corporate workers" thing, I'm still not sure I see your point. I'd like to raise my kids so that they can aim high in life and maybe work for themselves some day (as I do), but doing a job well (yes, obeying your boss) can be a very effective step toward achieving that goal. Being an anti-authoritarian troublemaker in an employment situation is not generally a recipe for success of any type. It comes down to self discipline, which includes choosing your battles. If you refuse to take down the girlie poster in your cubicle or refuse to follow speed limits, you are probably just being a jerk, and aren't necessarily developing the self discipline it will take to stand on principle when it counts (opposing unethical boss, standing up to police state brutality).
(I'm using the pronoun "you", but not talking about you literally, no offense intended.)
This may sound harsh to you, but I'd rather all publicly employed teachers be fired and rehired every year, than the current system where they can't be fired at all and are sent to "rubber rooms" whenever they can't be trusted around the kids. It's my money, and they are my kids. If a teacher can't compete, he/she chose the wrong career.
Maybe you just phrased your post poorly, but it comes across as a really ignorant rant. Anybody who deals with kids understands that they need to respect authority and follow the rules. Some parents/educators are more permissive than others, and some are better at finding a balance than others. But nobody allows a kid to smear feces around all the walls of their home just to avoid conditioning them to obey authority. They darn well better obey authority on the issue of feces-smearing, or there will be consequences. That's not destroying the spirit of the child, that's just teaching self-control and self-discipline, which will serve the child well in the future. Maybe you don't like the charter school's rule about sharpie pens, but it is ignorant and unproductive to response across the board with an anti-authority perspective.
Certainly to the teacher's unions, any movement toward charter schools, homeschooling, vouchers, etc. is an "attack on public education". Fortunately, many people (read: parents) have the best interests of the students at heart and recognize when either public institutions or individuals within public institutions are failing to serve that prime objective. The cries of "racism" are typical of the left whenever the money isn't flowing their way, whether or not it has anything to do with race intrinsically.
All our most abundand energy comes from the stars, a good mirror can focus more power than a BIG ass laser.
The problem you will run into there is the inverse square rule that makes your light intensity sharply drop off. Unless you're pretty near the sun, you won't even be cooking an ant, much less burning through a spaceship hull.
I foresee colony ships, probes, long range sensor ships, and mirror ships to 'cook' the enemy.
No, once again, anywhere other than right next to a star all your mirror ships will do is project a nice child's bedroom starlight display at your enemy.
I'm glad you're aware that Savage will view Santorum's belief as offensive no matter how he might try to say them "unoffensively".
Sure, we're agreed on that. But just because something is offensive doesn't mean it is wrong. The KKK is certainly offended that the president of the USA has roots of black African ethnicity. But they can just go ahead and be offended, because most Americans aren't willing to accomodate them. So while your example (making a guy mad in a bar) has emotional appeal, it's not really a valid argument against Santorum's belief. To make a valid argument against Santorum's belief would require things like proving that homosexual households can provide identically healthy environments for child-raising, etc. to normal households where children are raised by their birth parents. Asking the question of whether it's important for children to have both a male and a female adult influence on them in their family during their formative years. And other sticky questions like that. I haven't seen anybody argue that stuff on this thread, and I can't totally blame them, because they are difficult. Some people are happy to pretend these questions don't exist or dismiss them out of hand.
That man has his priorities straight. You do not.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm arguing with "somebody who's wrong on the internet", am I not? What could be more important?:)
Ignoring the question of children for the moment -- if two animals of different species copulate, is that morally wrong? If not, then why the strict dividing line between humans and all other species? On a side note, I reject outright your assertion that you can't receive an animal's consent. I'm sure that in some situations, an animal would initiate the encounter, because animals tend to be highly sexual creatures, each in their own way. (Not saying that from personal experience, just gleanings from observation and science reading, so don't even go there!) As far as "understanding the consequences", that sounds really vague, but for the sake of the ethics thought experiment I would suggest assuming that any such consequences were safely mitigated (or else clearly enumerated if you assert that such is impossible).
I don't know what your answer would be, but as a social conservative, my own answer has less to do with protecting the animal (though that's important) than maintaining appropriate bounds within human activity. The human social structure is more important than many will admit, and the role sex plays in that is really important. I would strongly dissuade people from adopting a promiscuous lifestyle, because that is ultimately a negative influence on human society, whether they will admit it or not -- and independently of whether people get VDs or not. And similarly, when we start to talk about gay marriage or polygamous marriage and particularly the idea of unconventional parental unions adopting a child, you are changing something fundamental about the human family. Those with a vested interest will insist that there's no difference between a homosexual marriage or a polygamous marriage or a monogamous heterosexual marriage, but many others are skeptical. It's not something our society should blindly rush into. Once again, it comes back to protecting whatever we can determine to be healthy patterns of human social structure. I suspect that when Rick Santorum classified homosexual relationships in the same category as bestiality and pedophilia, he had some of the same thoughts on his mind. (For example of a vested interest, see Dan Savage and his hateful spewing of dirty, childish insults at people who disagree with him on this subject.)
That doesn't even make sense as a rebuttal. Your waaaaay out on a limb logically.
1) can you prove the animal liked it? If not, best not to decide for it.
Are you a pet owner? Can you tell when your pet likes or dislikes something? Shockingly, it turns out that if you spend enough time around an animal, you can figure out what it likes and doesn't like. (Recall that we are animals, too.) Of course I'm playing the devil's advocate here, and will freely admit I'm coming at this from the social conservative side of the spectrum. But it is kind of fun to point out logical inconsistencies in the other side. Yes, Belial is a social conservative just like me on the issue of bestiality.
2) he has made no statement one way or the other about beastiality - but YOU seem preoccupied.
No, you obviously haven't read the thread. Belial got really bent out of shape that Santorum compared bestiality and homosexuality (presumably as both being "crimes against nature" in his value system). He demanded to know how it could possibly be OK for Santorum to call homosexual's "sub-human" by comparing them to practitioners of bestiality. Therefore, Belial called practitioners of bestiality "sub-human". So I was (gleefully) searching to see on precisely what moral basis Belial came to that socially conservative judgment.
OK, then if you like, I'll cite the same URL that GiH posted. Observe that every Gallup poll prior to their May 5-8 2011 poll indicated a majory not favorable to legalized gay marriage. The most recent among those polls are likely to be just about as trustworthy as the May poll. Note also the strong qualifiers in the article that it remains a divisive issue.
1. Should bestiality be legally prohibited, if the (adult) animal both enjoys it and initiates the encounter? Why should we legislate against bestiality?
2. Are you being a bigot in calling people who have sex with animals "sub-human" just because of their unusual choice of partners?
The reason I ask, obviously, is that I doubt you have any better reason for arguing against it other than social and legal tradition, i.e. you are a social conservative on this issue. That is what makes you refer to practitioners of animal love as "sub-human". So don't your comments about bestiality have the same effect as Rick Santorum's comments about homosexuality? I'm not trying to troll, really curious what your explanation would be. Remember: "legal precedent" won't cut it as an argument here, since you won't allow that in regard to homosexuality.
It's close enough -- you're effectively saying that Obama was a bigot in 2008. That's sufficient for me to place your view on the fringe of public opinion.
It is possible to conduct "rational discourse" while being wrong, at least the way I'm using the term. It depends a lot on your presuppositions and frames of reference. What I'm getting at is that Santorum didn't intend his comparison between H and P/B as a gratuitous insult, but rather as an explanation of his actual belief. His actual belief appears to be that they are similar "crimes against nature". Savage, on the other hand, was giving a gratuitous insult.
Do you see the distinction? I get that Savage finds Santorum's beliefs offensive, but I'm also aware that Santorum's actual beliefs will still remain offensive to Savage no matter how hard Santorum might try to state them unoffensively.
- Santorum didn't get personal with Savage.
- Savage attacked Santorum by name.
- Santorum actually expressed himself reasonably civilly. It's his actual opinion that's offensive to Savage, not so much how he said it. Santorum actually (presumably) believes that homosexuality and bestiality are some kind of "crimes against nature".
- Savage did not express himself reasonably civilly by any stretch. He is publicly calling Santorum a piece of filth. With this website he has been spewing a vile and gratuitously offensive insult.
- When a bullying victim fights back, it is self defense. I have no problem with that.
- When Savage publicly calls Santorum a piece of filth because Santorum accepts the tenets of Catholicism (which I don't, just FYI), that is not self defense, that's just being rude. Savage could find better ways to express himself.
So you are defending laws against pedophilia and bestiality based on the "status quo" and existing legal tradition. That's exactly why I tried to preempt that shallow argument by asking you for a substantive, underlying basis for such proscriptions. Oh well.
Don't we expect the people of this country to be able to exercise power over their politicians? This is one way to do so. Your argument is fundamentally anti-democratic.
No, you are confusing two different concepts. I am objecting to Savage's behavior by saying that it is *rude and inappropriate*. I never said Savage's internet campaign should be *illegal*.
But you gave a huge sob story about how people calling you fat messed you up for life, and that's such a terrible thing and we should never countenance people calling others nasty names and don't you know how it fee-e-e-e-els! *sob*.
And then... somehow... you're perfectly OK with Savage (effectively) calling Santorum a vile piece of excrement? You are really funny.
Did you ever hear the joke about why fat people are always so funny? Well, they can't fight, and they can't run, so they might as well be jolly. I think a president said that or something.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the difference between someone who is mentally ill and commits crimes, versus someone whose heroin addiction causes them to commit crimes? You could regard curing a heroin addiction as morally the same thing as curing a mental illness. At least in the case of convicted criminals -- just as the state doesn't necessarily force any treatment on peaceful "naturally" psychotic people.
forcing a person to permanently destroy a conduit of pleasure sounds too Clockwork Orange-y for my taste.
Treating heroin as a "conduit of pleasure" worthy of respect sounds too hippie for my taste, so we're about even. :)
I gave the qualifier "if it is safe", so I think I'm in pretty good shape. Under that qualifier, it is far less of a "violation of human rights" to vaccine against heroin than to lock a human being in a cage for several years, wouldn't you say? Isn't that exactly what prison is, which is the normal "treatment" for the criminal class? What would you propose doing with criminals that doesn't involve "violating their human rights"? Inviting them to tea parties and giving them crumpets?
How about (assuming it's safe) we forcibly administer it to anyone caught committing a crime while addicted to heroin?
I truly appreciate the way you have distorted an opposition to brainwashing kids into obedience to the corporate state and police state, and turned it into a one-sided rant about feces through several posts. No obsession there at all!
lol!
Parents need to guide their children to respect others, and to think and get along. That's expected as a duty of parenthood.
Agreed.
Conditioning children to obey all authority blindly however, is not.
Sure. But for a child to obey parental authority and the parent-delegated authority of teachers and school administrators is not "obeying all authority blindly".
I'm sure ardent Republicans who worship authority and the corporation think otherwise, but so what?
Huh?
"you are probably just being a jerk," A lovely choice of words, noted.
OK, as long as you also note that I was very careful to clarify in my post that "you" doesn't mean "you" literally, but is just a dialectic device for working through a topic of discussion. No offense, dude.
So enlighten me. Do you make a 1 or 2-year-old stop smearing feces on the wall because you successfully reason with him and convince him it's not a beneficial activity, or do you both reason with him as much as he can, and also require him to submit to the authority of his parents?
As far as the whole "good corporate workers" thing, I'm still not sure I see your point. I'd like to raise my kids so that they can aim high in life and maybe work for themselves some day (as I do), but doing a job well (yes, obeying your boss) can be a very effective step toward achieving that goal. Being an anti-authoritarian troublemaker in an employment situation is not generally a recipe for success of any type. It comes down to self discipline, which includes choosing your battles. If you refuse to take down the girlie poster in your cubicle or refuse to follow speed limits, you are probably just being a jerk, and aren't necessarily developing the self discipline it will take to stand on principle when it counts (opposing unethical boss, standing up to police state brutality).
(I'm using the pronoun "you", but not talking about you literally, no offense intended.)
You can't remove the human element, i.e. the need for intelligence and reasonable human oversight -- I certainly agree about that.
'E's just resting, you know.
This may sound harsh to you, but I'd rather all publicly employed teachers be fired and rehired every year, than the current system where they can't be fired at all and are sent to "rubber rooms" whenever they can't be trusted around the kids. It's my money, and they are my kids. If a teacher can't compete, he/she chose the wrong career.
This is conditioning to obey authority.
Maybe you just phrased your post poorly, but it comes across as a really ignorant rant. Anybody who deals with kids understands that they need to respect authority and follow the rules. Some parents/educators are more permissive than others, and some are better at finding a balance than others. But nobody allows a kid to smear feces around all the walls of their home just to avoid conditioning them to obey authority. They darn well better obey authority on the issue of feces-smearing, or there will be consequences. That's not destroying the spirit of the child, that's just teaching self-control and self-discipline, which will serve the child well in the future. Maybe you don't like the charter school's rule about sharpie pens, but it is ignorant and unproductive to response across the board with an anti-authority perspective.
Certainly to the teacher's unions, any movement toward charter schools, homeschooling, vouchers, etc. is an "attack on public education". Fortunately, many people (read: parents) have the best interests of the students at heart and recognize when either public institutions or individuals within public institutions are failing to serve that prime objective. The cries of "racism" are typical of the left whenever the money isn't flowing their way, whether or not it has anything to do with race intrinsically.
Sure, but you still need to be near a star to have something to work with. (For what it's worth, we are reasonably near a star.)
All our most abundand energy comes from the stars, a good mirror can focus more power than a BIG ass laser.
The problem you will run into there is the inverse square rule that makes your light intensity sharply drop off. Unless you're pretty near the sun, you won't even be cooking an ant, much less burning through a spaceship hull.
I foresee colony ships, probes, long range sensor ships, and mirror ships to 'cook' the enemy.
No, once again, anywhere other than right next to a star all your mirror ships will do is project a nice child's bedroom starlight display at your enemy.
I'm glad you're aware that Savage will view Santorum's belief as offensive no matter how he might try to say them "unoffensively".
Sure, we're agreed on that. But just because something is offensive doesn't mean it is wrong. The KKK is certainly offended that the president of the USA has roots of black African ethnicity. But they can just go ahead and be offended, because most Americans aren't willing to accomodate them. So while your example (making a guy mad in a bar) has emotional appeal, it's not really a valid argument against Santorum's belief. To make a valid argument against Santorum's belief would require things like proving that homosexual households can provide identically healthy environments for child-raising, etc. to normal households where children are raised by their birth parents. Asking the question of whether it's important for children to have both a male and a female adult influence on them in their family during their formative years. And other sticky questions like that. I haven't seen anybody argue that stuff on this thread, and I can't totally blame them, because they are difficult. Some people are happy to pretend these questions don't exist or dismiss them out of hand.
That man has his priorities straight. You do not.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I'm arguing with "somebody who's wrong on the internet", am I not? What could be more important? :)
Ignoring the question of children for the moment -- if two animals of different species copulate, is that morally wrong? If not, then why the strict dividing line between humans and all other species? On a side note, I reject outright your assertion that you can't receive an animal's consent. I'm sure that in some situations, an animal would initiate the encounter, because animals tend to be highly sexual creatures, each in their own way. (Not saying that from personal experience, just gleanings from observation and science reading, so don't even go there!) As far as "understanding the consequences", that sounds really vague, but for the sake of the ethics thought experiment I would suggest assuming that any such consequences were safely mitigated (or else clearly enumerated if you assert that such is impossible).
I don't know what your answer would be, but as a social conservative, my own answer has less to do with protecting the animal (though that's important) than maintaining appropriate bounds within human activity. The human social structure is more important than many will admit, and the role sex plays in that is really important. I would strongly dissuade people from adopting a promiscuous lifestyle, because that is ultimately a negative influence on human society, whether they will admit it or not -- and independently of whether people get VDs or not. And similarly, when we start to talk about gay marriage or polygamous marriage and particularly the idea of unconventional parental unions adopting a child, you are changing something fundamental about the human family. Those with a vested interest will insist that there's no difference between a homosexual marriage or a polygamous marriage or a monogamous heterosexual marriage, but many others are skeptical. It's not something our society should blindly rush into. Once again, it comes back to protecting whatever we can determine to be healthy patterns of human social structure. I suspect that when Rick Santorum classified homosexual relationships in the same category as bestiality and pedophilia, he had some of the same thoughts on his mind. (For example of a vested interest, see Dan Savage and his hateful spewing of dirty, childish insults at people who disagree with him on this subject.)
lol :) OK, I'll certainly grant that the tide in public opinion has significantly moved that way, looking at the graph.
That doesn't even make sense as a rebuttal. Your waaaaay out on a limb logically.
1) can you prove the animal liked it? If not, best not to decide for it.
Are you a pet owner? Can you tell when your pet likes or dislikes something? Shockingly, it turns out that if you spend enough time around an animal, you can figure out what it likes and doesn't like. (Recall that we are animals, too.) Of course I'm playing the devil's advocate here, and will freely admit I'm coming at this from the social conservative side of the spectrum. But it is kind of fun to point out logical inconsistencies in the other side. Yes, Belial is a social conservative just like me on the issue of bestiality.
2) he has made no statement one way or the other about beastiality - but YOU seem preoccupied.
No, you obviously haven't read the thread. Belial got really bent out of shape that Santorum compared bestiality and homosexuality (presumably as both being "crimes against nature" in his value system). He demanded to know how it could possibly be OK for Santorum to call homosexual's "sub-human" by comparing them to practitioners of bestiality. Therefore, Belial called practitioners of bestiality "sub-human". So I was (gleefully) searching to see on precisely what moral basis Belial came to that socially conservative judgment.
OK, then if you like, I'll cite the same URL that GiH posted. Observe that every Gallup poll prior to their May 5-8 2011 poll indicated a majory not favorable to legalized gay marriage. The most recent among those polls are likely to be just about as trustworthy as the May poll. Note also the strong qualifiers in the article that it remains a divisive issue.
:)
That was easy.
A couple of questions for you, Belial.
1. Should bestiality be legally prohibited, if the (adult) animal both enjoys it and initiates the encounter? Why should we legislate against bestiality?
2. Are you being a bigot in calling people who have sex with animals "sub-human" just because of their unusual choice of partners?
The reason I ask, obviously, is that I doubt you have any better reason for arguing against it other than social and legal tradition, i.e. you are a social conservative on this issue. That is what makes you refer to practitioners of animal love as "sub-human". So don't your comments about bestiality have the same effect as Rick Santorum's comments about homosexuality? I'm not trying to troll, really curious what your explanation would be. Remember: "legal precedent" won't cut it as an argument here, since you won't allow that in regard to homosexuality.
It's close enough -- you're effectively saying that Obama was a bigot in 2008. That's sufficient for me to place your view on the fringe of public opinion.
It is possible to conduct "rational discourse" while being wrong, at least the way I'm using the term. It depends a lot on your presuppositions and frames of reference. What I'm getting at is that Santorum didn't intend his comparison between H and P/B as a gratuitous insult, but rather as an explanation of his actual belief. His actual belief appears to be that they are similar "crimes against nature". Savage, on the other hand, was giving a gratuitous insult.
Do you see the distinction? I get that Savage finds Santorum's beliefs offensive, but I'm also aware that Santorum's actual beliefs will still remain offensive to Savage no matter how hard Santorum might try to state them unoffensively.
Some differences:
- Santorum didn't get personal with Savage.
- Savage attacked Santorum by name.
- Santorum actually expressed himself reasonably civilly. It's his actual opinion that's offensive to Savage, not so much how he said it. Santorum actually (presumably) believes that homosexuality and bestiality are some kind of "crimes against nature".
- Savage did not express himself reasonably civilly by any stretch. He is publicly calling Santorum a piece of filth. With this website he has been spewing a vile and gratuitously offensive insult.
- When a bullying victim fights back, it is self defense. I have no problem with that.
- When Savage publicly calls Santorum a piece of filth because Santorum accepts the tenets of Catholicism (which I don't, just FYI), that is not self defense, that's just being rude. Savage could find better ways to express himself.
So you are defending laws against pedophilia and bestiality based on the "status quo" and existing legal tradition. That's exactly why I tried to preempt that shallow argument by asking you for a substantive, underlying basis for such proscriptions. Oh well.
Don't we expect the people of this country to be able to exercise power over their politicians? This is one way to do so. Your argument is fundamentally anti-democratic.
No, you are confusing two different concepts. I am objecting to Savage's behavior by saying that it is *rude and inappropriate*. I never said Savage's internet campaign should be *illegal*.
But you gave a huge sob story about how people calling you fat messed you up for life, and that's such a terrible thing and we should never countenance people calling others nasty names and don't you know how it fee-e-e-e-els! *sob*.
And then... somehow... you're perfectly OK with Savage (effectively) calling Santorum a vile piece of excrement? You are really funny.
Did you ever hear the joke about why fat people are always so funny? Well, they can't fight, and they can't run, so they might as well be jolly. I think a president said that or something.