I'm not dense - I know certain people have had tattoos practically forever. But they do go in and out of fashion, and in different circles of people. There have been times when, if you had a tattoo, you were assumed to be the unsavory sort by certain circles of people.
First off, let me be clear that I'm not judging you in any way... I've seen nice tattoos that actually make me want one and I've seen truly awful tattoos. I'm glad that you are happy with yours.
people have been tattooing themselves for centuries so I doubt it's going anywhere soon.
This is absolutely true, but the associations with those that have had tattoos have changed over time. Right now you can go to a trendy, expensive restaurant and think nothing of your waiter dripping with tattoos. There was a time (like 5 years ago, depending where you live) when that same waiter wouldn't be able to get a job... and I suspect the fashion will change again.
I think by "superficial", he means that they are purely decorative - even if of some sentimental value to the wearer.
And this is true, but I wouldn't tell someone not to wear their wedding ring just because it is superficial.
I'd be much more concerned about the expense of laser removal once the tattoo fad passes.
And if you don't think that this is a fashion fad, may I interest you in some vintage mid-90s facial piercings? You'll never need cosmetic earlobe repair surgery, because giant, comical rings embedded in your earlobes will be cool forever.
As for racism and EOE, see my reply to somebody else here.
I think that Equal Opportunity Employment is fine. It is not a quota system, just a way to collect data and compare yourself to the available labor pool. Of course, anyone signing up for it is probably not going to discriminate anyway, so...
Now "minority-owned business" rules and quotas are another matter entirely.
But I wasn't even talking about EOE when I said that something had to be done to help minorities (and specifically, American blacks). Anti-discrimination laws had to be passed and forced segregation ended, because it was taking too long for these things to end due to social forces alone... and it was a really, really bad situation.
As for second-hand smoke, during the debate in NYC a study was pointed to showing that people who work in a smoky environment are adversely affected health-wise. I'm sorry that I don't have the energy to track down this study, though I'm sure it would show up in a search at nytimes.com. Again, as a practical matter, there were essentially no smoke-free establishments for a restaurant worker to get a job at. If the government can mandate that coal miners get clean air, why not bartenders?
In principle, I agree with you. However, I feel that one must favor pragmatism over ideology sometimes, and this is one instance. Racism in the US was so, so bad that something simply had to be done to overcome society's reluctance to remedy the situation. If change for the better needs to occasionally come from the political elite, then so be it. Democracy can be a real bitch if you are a member of a minority group. For this reason, I tend to be a supporter of preference-based voting.
Smoking I'm torn on, because like you I think that people don't NEED to go to a certain restaurant/bar. But there was one persuasive argument in New York City when I was there... if you are a bartender/bar back/waiter, the employment opportunities at non-smoking facilities are really scarce. As a result, many people were, as a practical matter, forced to work in a smoky environment. It's hard to justify making people in relatively low-paying positions sick because you have a personal preference/addiction to smoking.
That said, I think a blanket ban is a bit harsh... they could have simply set an indoor air quality standard and let the businesses come up with creative ways to achieve it.
Fine. Is it the employer's prerogative to not hire blacks or Mexicans either?
Well, that's a totally different question, since signing a petition demonstrates an attitude and a willingness to act upon it. On the other hand, being black or Mexican is a rather arbitrary thing that in no way indicates one's attitudes or actions.
But since you asked, I won't dodge the question... I'd say nominally, yes, an employer should be able to discriminate based on just about anything that they want to... BUT... racism is a significant problem in the US, and some action needed to be taken.
that employer should be sued out of existence.
I wouldn't stand in the way of a good lawsuit. The burden of proof is rather high, but I think people should be able to settle their differences peacefully in court.
but are you seriously advocating that employers should be able to fire people if they disagree with their political position?
Like I said, I think an employer should be able to do what they want. I wouldn't want to force a Catholic diocese to hire homosexuals. For that matter, the thought of making the Klan hire a Jewish man is kind of funny, too. Until it becomes a widespread issue or has a significant effect on society, I'm a hands-off kind of guy.
I have issues with gay marriage, ranging from tax benefits to the adoption of children.
There should be no tax benefit for any kind of marriage, gay or straight. The government should be out of the endorsing/encouraging marriage business. Leave that to the churches, etc. But until then, why in the heck should marriage benefits be denied to people who are in fact married?
As for adoption, I know gay couples who have adopted, and in all cases the kid is far better off than they were in the care of the government. Most of the f'd up people in this world are the direct result of a HETEROSEXUAL union. I'd love to see a study following kids who go through foster homes vs. kids in homosexual adoptions.
Any two people of legal age ought to be able to sign a simple contract that covers things like patients rights, community property, etc.
Do you have an objection to calling this contract a marriage certificate? Because you've pretty much described the government's recognition of marriage. I propose that we call a dissolution of this contract a "divorce" and any changes to the standard contract a "prenuptial agreement":)
What if there's a petition calling for a reduction in prison time for non-violent offenders? It doesn't pass, but now the cops have a list of people to "check up on" to see if they're drug users or visit prostitutes?
There are leaks in government all the time. If the cops REALLY wanted that list, they possibly could get it and act in secret. So then you have a situation where the petition is only secret to the general public... only some portion of government and the powerful have access.
When even our nation's most top-secret reports leak out with surprising regularity, I think it naive to assume that a copy of a controversial petition would not leak. To use the Prop 8 example, what if there is a gay clerk in the election board who, in his rage, photocopies and distributes the thing?
Whats disgusting is the way some people who signed the Prop 8 petition in CA were treated afterward - loosing jobs, having their homes and cars vandalized, death threats even.
Obviously I don't support vandalism, physical threats, or violence, but what's wrong with losing their jobs? Who wants bigotry in the workplace? Seems to me that should be the employer's prerogative.
I didn't know eating dog or horse was illegal, I just though people weren't doing it because they wouldn't like to.
Yeah, isn't that weird? The French eat horse, so there are French recipes for it... but you can't buy it in the US. It's taboo. Dog meat isn't as illegal in the US, but many states ban it... Here is the California statute, for example.
Bans on polygamy and gay marriage are some pretty hard things to defend without invoking "yuck" as well.
That's probably a good point, but I'd point out that you have quite an uphill battle. You cannot eat horse or dog in the US. Why? Yuck. You cannot dog fight in the US. Why, do dogs have human-style rights? Maybe... but I think it's "yuck". You cannot walk around naked. Why? Yuck. Bestiality? Yuck. Polygamy? Yuck. Prostitution? Yuck. Incest? Yuck.
I'd argue that most of our collective morality is based around "yuck"... we just call it our conscience.
That is not really an answer since the scenario can be updated to say that the mother is not able to have someone else take care of the child, so the only options are to let it die or take care of it. That makes it slightly more contrived, and that's OK:)
In that case, the mother has a duty to hand the kid over to someone else who can take care of it. She can't simply neglect it. Transplanting a fetus is not currently feasible AFAIK. Once born, the child has a right to life which does not infringe on the mother's rights in any way.
While we are putting together purely contrived scenarios, lets allow her to travel back in time to rectify the situation:)
The wonderful thing about ideology is it need only be internally consistent:)
All I'm saying is it makes me a bit nervous to claim that someone's rights can be overridden by the actions of a third party.
Judith Jarvis addressed this... in an incredibly contrived way, but nonetheless:
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him."
Her broader point is that a right to life does not mean a "right to use another's body". So even if you grant a fetus a right to life, it does not necessarily follow that it has a right to use a woman's body.
She does a far better job than I of explaining this "middle" position. Her position can be adjusted here and there to easily accommodate the various lines that people seem to draw in the sand as to the acceptability of abortion.
It's kind of funny that I'm having this discussion, because abortion is not something that I have a strong opinion on... and I tend toward finding it personally distasteful, but not the sort of thing where I would feel the need to force anyone into my belief system. As such, please don't read too much into my arguments... I'm not necessarily arguing for this position so much as I am trying to demonstrate the existence of a "gray area" that doesn't exist on the talk show circuit.
If she has a "right NOT to bear a child that is the result of rape," does she now have the right kill the five-year-old child if she wishes?
LOL, if this incredibly contrived scenario is the biggest weakness of my philosophy, then I am pretty comfortable:)
But seriously, the obvious answer is that the 5-year-old child is no longer a fetus, so the rights of the child no longer contrast with that of the mother. The child can live without the mother - it is no longer a body part. She can put the child up for adoption if she is so inclined.
A right to life or liberty is pretty much meaningless without a society and a government to protect such rights.
Classical liberalism would still work as a moral code, even if the government wasn't there to enforce it. Even in total anarchy, it would be technically feasible to protect "your" life and property... and you certainly wouldn't have any problems with liberty.
Of course, total anarchy is short lived, if it is possible at all. Warlords quickly spring up, and then there goes your liberty:)
So yeah, in that sense classical liberalism depends on government. But such ideologies rarely consider reality...
Something like putting a big button beside editor actions on your work saying, "We know our editors get it wrong sometimes. Click here if you feel your contributions are being mis-handled."
This might be a good idea... sort of like Craigslist. However, this would create another load of manual work, or if automated it could create yet another path to censor... a single person with access to proxy computers or an organized group could easily have an editor flagged.
Forgive me if this has changed... I don't contribute much... but IIRC, there is an automated "revert limit". If someone reverts an article 3 times, reverts are suspended and things get hashed out on the talk pages. Isn't that kind of an automatic abuse filter, provided you are willing to check on your contribution 3 times?
But I take exception to the argument that an unwanted fetus somehow violates a woman's rights more because of who its father is or what he did.
You have my argument exactly backwards. The fetus's rights did not change. I'm asserting that a woman has a right as well - the right NOT to bear a child that is the result of rape. This right can be considered stronger than the right-to-life of the fetus.
Even if you say it should, at what point do we draw the line?
Indeed, that is the issue. Everyone will draw the line differently. Some would probably say that adoption, pregnancy, or even the loss of choice can be too hard on the mother. Others would say the mother needs to suck it up if she's raped. Most will probably draw the line somewhere between those two extremes. It's a fuzzy issue with more than the two extreme ideologies that get all the airtime.
I don't see how being pro-life with a rape exception can possibly be considered a consistent position.
I would probably agree with you if I knew this to be a common position. Most people seem to have a much more nuanced view of "rights" than classical libertarians. Rather than casting rights as absolute, I think that most people assign a pecking order to rights. One right can be deemed more important and trump another, in other words. The concept of "rights" might not even really be appropriate.
To get off of the poisonous abortion debate for a moment, I'll provide another example. Many people say that health care should be a "right", but clearly they can't mean an inalienable right like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After all, universal healthcare would be provided by the government, and surely rights must exist inherently?
Sorry to drone on, but it occurs to me that two people can be talking about rights, and yet be talking about two completely different concepts. Classical libertarians would be referring to an inherent facet of the human condition whereas most people are probably referring to an obligation of some kind.
Just because someone constructs a philosophy that completely excludes any other possibility does not mean that I have to fall into the same trap. I can find the concept that a fetus has absolutely no rights whatsoever just as hilarious as the concept that every sperm is sacred, if I so choose. The issue is far more nuanced than either of these completely bogus philosophies would have you believe, and calling them out on their BS is not cowardice - cowardice is believing in something because it is simple and comforting.
Is it more interesting to compare the competing views of Keynes, Marx and Friedman or to just scrawl down the nice ineffectual "Democratic" opinions of Kevin Rudd ?
It's more interesting to compare Keynes, Marx, and Friedman. Just like it's a lot of fun to throw Al Franken on Fox News with Rush Limbaugh. The problem is that it is rarely helpful if your goal is to actually resolve a problem or find some consensus.
An aside, why did you throw Friedman in with Keynes and Marx? His work was less philosophical and more empirical in nature. Maybe you meant Smith? I'm out of my range here, but I thought Friedman was thought to be fairly modern.
either the foetus has rights, and consequentially the right to live, or it doesn't
That's simply not true. We make judgments about prioritization of rights all the time. A person could easily see a fetus as a human being with a right to life AND see a woman as having a right to do with her own body as she pleases. This creates a conflict for the 9 months that the fetus is both a developing human being and a body part, incapable of surviving on its own.
Forcing a woman to bring a rapist's baby to full-term could be argued to be a violation of her rights, which could be prioritized over those of the fetus. Similarly, when a woman's life is in danger due to a pregnancy complication, most people would prioritize the woman's right to life over that of the fetus's.
Most issues are full of "weasel words", and I'm sorry if they frustrate you, but people's opinions are rarely black-and-white and simple ideology hardly ever meshes perfectly with practice. Whatever you think of GW Bush, he had a priceless quote with: "you are either with us or with the terrorists." He couldn't have shown less of a grasp of the state of the world.
The "clique" here is the largest vat of collaboration the world has ever seen. If you expect this to run perfectly smoothly, your expectations are way out of line with reality... no one has ever done anything like this before!
Humans are cliquey. Humans are dishonest. Humans are delusional. Wikipedia is constantly struggling with these issues, and IMHO it is fascinating to watch them change and tweak their tech and procedures in an attempt to reign in basic human nature. I cut them a whole lot of slack... what they have accomplished is pretty amazing, and focusing on a few pages with controversial content misses out on the value of the site.
Of course it is not neutral - it is created by humans... and many of them have agendas. However, it is the stated policy of the site to maintain a neutral POV, and there are a lot of people trying to make that happen. The sheer volume of malicious and/or delusional people makes this a very tall order, and so you see them constantly changing their technology and procedures.
Slashdot Mirror
What is this "real" football? Are you Canadian? Or Australian?
Yeah, to my knowledge they have never made it to a Super Bowl.
Is Swype like ShapeWriter?
I'm not dense - I know certain people have had tattoos practically forever. But they do go in and out of fashion, and in different circles of people. There have been times when, if you had a tattoo, you were assumed to be the unsavory sort by certain circles of people.
First off, let me be clear that I'm not judging you in any way... I've seen nice tattoos that actually make me want one and I've seen truly awful tattoos. I'm glad that you are happy with yours.
people have been tattooing themselves for centuries so I doubt it's going anywhere soon.
This is absolutely true, but the associations with those that have had tattoos have changed over time. Right now you can go to a trendy, expensive restaurant and think nothing of your waiter dripping with tattoos. There was a time (like 5 years ago, depending where you live) when that same waiter wouldn't be able to get a job... and I suspect the fashion will change again.
I think by "superficial", he means that they are purely decorative - even if of some sentimental value to the wearer.
And this is true, but I wouldn't tell someone not to wear their wedding ring just because it is superficial.
I'd be much more concerned about the expense of laser removal once the tattoo fad passes.
And if you don't think that this is a fashion fad, may I interest you in some vintage mid-90s facial piercings? You'll never need cosmetic earlobe repair surgery, because giant, comical rings embedded in your earlobes will be cool forever.
Yeah, it sucks when educated people move in.
As for racism and EOE, see my reply to somebody else here.
I think that Equal Opportunity Employment is fine. It is not a quota system, just a way to collect data and compare yourself to the available labor pool. Of course, anyone signing up for it is probably not going to discriminate anyway, so...
Now "minority-owned business" rules and quotas are another matter entirely.
But I wasn't even talking about EOE when I said that something had to be done to help minorities (and specifically, American blacks). Anti-discrimination laws had to be passed and forced segregation ended, because it was taking too long for these things to end due to social forces alone... and it was a really, really bad situation.
As for second-hand smoke, during the debate in NYC a study was pointed to showing that people who work in a smoky environment are adversely affected health-wise. I'm sorry that I don't have the energy to track down this study, though I'm sure it would show up in a search at nytimes.com. Again, as a practical matter, there were essentially no smoke-free establishments for a restaurant worker to get a job at. If the government can mandate that coal miners get clean air, why not bartenders?
regardless of any PC nonsense about diversity
In principle, I agree with you. However, I feel that one must favor pragmatism over ideology sometimes, and this is one instance. Racism in the US was so, so bad that something simply had to be done to overcome society's reluctance to remedy the situation. If change for the better needs to occasionally come from the political elite, then so be it. Democracy can be a real bitch if you are a member of a minority group. For this reason, I tend to be a supporter of preference-based voting.
Smoking I'm torn on, because like you I think that people don't NEED to go to a certain restaurant/bar. But there was one persuasive argument in New York City when I was there... if you are a bartender/bar back/waiter, the employment opportunities at non-smoking facilities are really scarce. As a result, many people were, as a practical matter, forced to work in a smoky environment. It's hard to justify making people in relatively low-paying positions sick because you have a personal preference/addiction to smoking.
That said, I think a blanket ban is a bit harsh... they could have simply set an indoor air quality standard and let the businesses come up with creative ways to achieve it.
Fine. Is it the employer's prerogative to not hire blacks or Mexicans either?
Well, that's a totally different question, since signing a petition demonstrates an attitude and a willingness to act upon it. On the other hand, being black or Mexican is a rather arbitrary thing that in no way indicates one's attitudes or actions.
But since you asked, I won't dodge the question... I'd say nominally, yes, an employer should be able to discriminate based on just about anything that they want to... BUT... racism is a significant problem in the US, and some action needed to be taken.
that employer should be sued out of existence.
I wouldn't stand in the way of a good lawsuit. The burden of proof is rather high, but I think people should be able to settle their differences peacefully in court.
but are you seriously advocating that employers should be able to fire people if they disagree with their political position?
Like I said, I think an employer should be able to do what they want. I wouldn't want to force a Catholic diocese to hire homosexuals. For that matter, the thought of making the Klan hire a Jewish man is kind of funny, too. Until it becomes a widespread issue or has a significant effect on society, I'm a hands-off kind of guy.
I have issues with gay marriage, ranging from tax benefits to the adoption of children.
There should be no tax benefit for any kind of marriage, gay or straight. The government should be out of the endorsing/encouraging marriage business. Leave that to the churches, etc. But until then, why in the heck should marriage benefits be denied to people who are in fact married?
As for adoption, I know gay couples who have adopted, and in all cases the kid is far better off than they were in the care of the government. Most of the f'd up people in this world are the direct result of a HETEROSEXUAL union. I'd love to see a study following kids who go through foster homes vs. kids in homosexual adoptions.
Any two people of legal age ought to be able to sign a simple contract that covers things like patients rights, community property, etc.
Do you have an objection to calling this contract a marriage certificate? Because you've pretty much described the government's recognition of marriage. I propose that we call a dissolution of this contract a "divorce" and any changes to the standard contract a "prenuptial agreement" :)
What if there's a petition calling for a reduction in prison time for non-violent offenders? It doesn't pass, but now the cops have a list of people to "check up on" to see if they're drug users or visit prostitutes?
There are leaks in government all the time. If the cops REALLY wanted that list, they possibly could get it and act in secret. So then you have a situation where the petition is only secret to the general public... only some portion of government and the powerful have access.
When even our nation's most top-secret reports leak out with surprising regularity, I think it naive to assume that a copy of a controversial petition would not leak. To use the Prop 8 example, what if there is a gay clerk in the election board who, in his rage, photocopies and distributes the thing?
Whats disgusting is the way some people who signed the Prop 8 petition in CA were treated afterward - loosing jobs, having their homes and cars vandalized, death threats even.
Obviously I don't support vandalism, physical threats, or violence, but what's wrong with losing their jobs? Who wants bigotry in the workplace? Seems to me that should be the employer's prerogative.
I didn't know eating dog or horse was illegal, I just though people weren't doing it because they wouldn't like to.
Yeah, isn't that weird? The French eat horse, so there are French recipes for it... but you can't buy it in the US. It's taboo. Dog meat isn't as illegal in the US, but many states ban it... Here is the California statute, for example.
Bans on polygamy and gay marriage are some pretty hard things to defend without invoking "yuck" as well.
Water still boils in Alabama though, right?
It boils into the heated air directly above the stove and then quickly condenses, making something nearby wet.
That's probably a good point, but I'd point out that you have quite an uphill battle. You cannot eat horse or dog in the US. Why? Yuck. You cannot dog fight in the US. Why, do dogs have human-style rights? Maybe... but I think it's "yuck". You cannot walk around naked. Why? Yuck. Bestiality? Yuck. Polygamy? Yuck. Prostitution? Yuck. Incest? Yuck.
I'd argue that most of our collective morality is based around "yuck"... we just call it our conscience.
That is not really an answer since the scenario can be updated to say that the mother is not able to have someone else take care of the child, so the only options are to let it die or take care of it. That makes it slightly more contrived, and that's OK :)
In that case, the mother has a duty to hand the kid over to someone else who can take care of it. She can't simply neglect it. Transplanting a fetus is not currently feasible AFAIK. Once born, the child has a right to life which does not infringe on the mother's rights in any way.
While we are putting together purely contrived scenarios, lets allow her to travel back in time to rectify the situation :)
The wonderful thing about ideology is it need only be internally consistent :)
All I'm saying is it makes me a bit nervous to claim that someone's rights can be overridden by the actions of a third party.
Judith Jarvis addressed this... in an incredibly contrived way, but nonetheless:
Her broader point is that a right to life does not mean a "right to use another's body". So even if you grant a fetus a right to life, it does not necessarily follow that it has a right to use a woman's body.
She does a far better job than I of explaining this "middle" position. Her position can be adjusted here and there to easily accommodate the various lines that people seem to draw in the sand as to the acceptability of abortion.
It's kind of funny that I'm having this discussion, because abortion is not something that I have a strong opinion on... and I tend toward finding it personally distasteful, but not the sort of thing where I would feel the need to force anyone into my belief system. As such, please don't read too much into my arguments... I'm not necessarily arguing for this position so much as I am trying to demonstrate the existence of a "gray area" that doesn't exist on the talk show circuit.
If she has a "right NOT to bear a child that is the result of rape," does she now have the right kill the five-year-old child if she wishes?
LOL, if this incredibly contrived scenario is the biggest weakness of my philosophy, then I am pretty comfortable :)
But seriously, the obvious answer is that the 5-year-old child is no longer a fetus, so the rights of the child no longer contrast with that of the mother. The child can live without the mother - it is no longer a body part. She can put the child up for adoption if she is so inclined.
A right to life or liberty is pretty much meaningless without a society and a government to protect such rights.
Classical liberalism would still work as a moral code, even if the government wasn't there to enforce it. Even in total anarchy, it would be technically feasible to protect "your" life and property... and you certainly wouldn't have any problems with liberty.
Of course, total anarchy is short lived, if it is possible at all. Warlords quickly spring up, and then there goes your liberty :)
So yeah, in that sense classical liberalism depends on government. But such ideologies rarely consider reality...
SPLASHDOWN IS NOT A VERB.
It begs the question: whose the one that put these guy's in charge?
Something like putting a big button beside editor actions on your work saying, "We know our editors get it wrong sometimes. Click here if you feel your contributions are being mis-handled."
This might be a good idea... sort of like Craigslist. However, this would create another load of manual work, or if automated it could create yet another path to censor... a single person with access to proxy computers or an organized group could easily have an editor flagged.
Forgive me if this has changed... I don't contribute much... but IIRC, there is an automated "revert limit". If someone reverts an article 3 times, reverts are suspended and things get hashed out on the talk pages. Isn't that kind of an automatic abuse filter, provided you are willing to check on your contribution 3 times?
But I take exception to the argument that an unwanted fetus somehow violates a woman's rights more because of who its father is or what he did.
You have my argument exactly backwards. The fetus's rights did not change. I'm asserting that a woman has a right as well - the right NOT to bear a child that is the result of rape. This right can be considered stronger than the right-to-life of the fetus.
Even if you say it should, at what point do we draw the line?
Indeed, that is the issue. Everyone will draw the line differently. Some would probably say that adoption, pregnancy, or even the loss of choice can be too hard on the mother. Others would say the mother needs to suck it up if she's raped. Most will probably draw the line somewhere between those two extremes. It's a fuzzy issue with more than the two extreme ideologies that get all the airtime.
I don't see how being pro-life with a rape exception can possibly be considered a consistent position.
I would probably agree with you if I knew this to be a common position. Most people seem to have a much more nuanced view of "rights" than classical libertarians. Rather than casting rights as absolute, I think that most people assign a pecking order to rights. One right can be deemed more important and trump another, in other words. The concept of "rights" might not even really be appropriate.
To get off of the poisonous abortion debate for a moment, I'll provide another example. Many people say that health care should be a "right", but clearly they can't mean an inalienable right like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After all, universal healthcare would be provided by the government, and surely rights must exist inherently?
Sorry to drone on, but it occurs to me that two people can be talking about rights, and yet be talking about two completely different concepts. Classical libertarians would be referring to an inherent facet of the human condition whereas most people are probably referring to an obligation of some kind.
two contradictory philosophically conclusions.
Just because someone constructs a philosophy that completely excludes any other possibility does not mean that I have to fall into the same trap. I can find the concept that a fetus has absolutely no rights whatsoever just as hilarious as the concept that every sperm is sacred, if I so choose. The issue is far more nuanced than either of these completely bogus philosophies would have you believe, and calling them out on their BS is not cowardice - cowardice is believing in something because it is simple and comforting.
Is it more interesting to compare the competing views of Keynes, Marx and Friedman or to just scrawl down the nice ineffectual "Democratic" opinions of Kevin Rudd ?
It's more interesting to compare Keynes, Marx, and Friedman. Just like it's a lot of fun to throw Al Franken on Fox News with Rush Limbaugh. The problem is that it is rarely helpful if your goal is to actually resolve a problem or find some consensus.
An aside, why did you throw Friedman in with Keynes and Marx? His work was less philosophical and more empirical in nature. Maybe you meant Smith? I'm out of my range here, but I thought Friedman was thought to be fairly modern.
either the foetus has rights, and consequentially the right to live, or it doesn't
That's simply not true. We make judgments about prioritization of rights all the time. A person could easily see a fetus as a human being with a right to life AND see a woman as having a right to do with her own body as she pleases. This creates a conflict for the 9 months that the fetus is both a developing human being and a body part, incapable of surviving on its own.
Forcing a woman to bring a rapist's baby to full-term could be argued to be a violation of her rights, which could be prioritized over those of the fetus. Similarly, when a woman's life is in danger due to a pregnancy complication, most people would prioritize the woman's right to life over that of the fetus's.
Most issues are full of "weasel words", and I'm sorry if they frustrate you, but people's opinions are rarely black-and-white and simple ideology hardly ever meshes perfectly with practice. Whatever you think of GW Bush, he had a priceless quote with: "you are either with us or with the terrorists." He couldn't have shown less of a grasp of the state of the world.
The "clique" here is the largest vat of collaboration the world has ever seen. If you expect this to run perfectly smoothly, your expectations are way out of line with reality... no one has ever done anything like this before!
Humans are cliquey. Humans are dishonest. Humans are delusional. Wikipedia is constantly struggling with these issues, and IMHO it is fascinating to watch them change and tweak their tech and procedures in an attempt to reign in basic human nature. I cut them a whole lot of slack... what they have accomplished is pretty amazing, and focusing on a few pages with controversial content misses out on the value of the site.
Of course it is not neutral - it is created by humans... and many of them have agendas. However, it is the stated policy of the site to maintain a neutral POV, and there are a lot of people trying to make that happen. The sheer volume of malicious and/or delusional people makes this a very tall order, and so you see them constantly changing their technology and procedures.