Your abortion example is a bad one. Even pro-choice people have to admit, as science clearly shows us, that abortion ends the life of a living human being. Now, I suppose they could quibble with the definition of "human being", which of course, from my point of view takes us down the road employed by those who seek to dehumanize others (such as Nazis etc). The point being, the actual act of killing the human isn't what is debated. What is debated is whether its wrong to kill the human. Of course the pro-choice side does alot of rationalizing and attempt to dehumanize the "bundle of cells" or whatever they want to call the human, and they get away with it to the extent that until far enough into gestation the human does not look like you and me, but genetically, and "scientifically" it is human.
Anyway, not trying to steer your thread off topic, I just hate to see you use that example.
Shihar, I don't see your email address in your profile, so I thought I would ask you here, can I repost your post on my blog with a link to here? I thought it was very well said and want others to see it.
Its not a question of how I am presenting it, as I am simply trying to solicit feedback. Of which, in the many comments I have gotten on this topic, the only two reasons people could come up with for being generally opposed personally to abortion, but thinking it should be legal, were that perhaps someone viewed it as destruction of property, where the poster I originally replied to might not want ot destroy his own property but found it fine for others to destroy their own property, which I highly doubt is how that original poster thinks. The other explanation centered on the old argument that abortion will happen anyway, so you might as well make it as safe for the mother (acknolwedging the existence of a "child", otherwise one would not call the woman a mother, interesting choice of words by that poster). I still am unmoved with regards to the original poster's position. If you oppose abortion, then you are opposing it for a reason. To say you oppose it, but its ok for other people is disingenuous at best.
I see that, but what I am trying to get at is, why does he disagree with it. If he disagrees with it, it is because he views the clump-of-cells/human, whatever you want to call it, as being something/someone that should not be killed/terminated. This suggests he views the clump as a person, or someone worth protecting, hence the murder anaology. If we take that just a touch further, assuming he believes abortion to me murder, which he clearly doesn't, since he thinks it ought to be legal, then he would believe abortion is already illegal as a form of murder, or that it should be legally declared a method of murder or some such thing.
All of this is to say that, clearly, he does not believe abortion is murder, hence the original question I posed, which is, why is he opposed to the idea of it?
You are not convincing. If someone believes that the "clump of cells" is human enough to be repelled by abortion, than a person's convenience, and any other reason you give is outweighed by said clump's right to life.
I am not sure when you say "That said, it can be emotionally tramatic experiance and definately should not be used as a drop in replacement for protection. I feel that it is a bad thing to have to go through from what I've seen (both emotionally and physically) but *far* better than the alternative (an unwanted/unsupportable child).", that you are saying others may feel that way or you do. If, after all, its a clump of cells, than there should be no emotional issues, and there is no reason to shy away from it as a means of birth control, other than cost of course.
Unfortunately, it really is fairly black and white, either you believe the clump is a clump and of no consequence, or you believe the clump is a human and therefore worth protecting. There is simply no explanation I have ever heard as to why one would be uncomfortable with it but think it should be legal, other than the person expressing that view is being dishonest or for whatever reason, trying to please both sides in the argument. Either way, its not a logical position.
The "reasons" you gave all reasons to be in favor of legal abortion, none of which trump murder, if that is in fact how the parent views it. I am not putting words in his mouth, I am simply asking him or anyone else to explain how you can be against it but for it at the same time.
One last thing on your post "Abortions are something to be against because they place women in control of their own lives. No longer will they need to sacrifice their career over one mistake. No longer will they be locked into a pregnancy they don't want." made me think you were saying the parent was a sexist, until I figured you just typed it wrong, you actually meant "Abortions are soemthing to be fore because..." right?
I wasn't intending to dive into such a large argument. Indeed, nothing I said in the previous reponses should have given any indication to where I stand. I was simply asking for the first guy to be consistent. We could argue about every point you want to make, but that gets us no close to the original point. That point is, how can someone be against something like abortion, but think it should be legal. Thats all I asked. If you can tell me how, I would love to hear it.
And I did ask. Hence my original reply to him. Thanks for contributing nothing though. I know exactly who to go to if I need someone to tell me I am being illogical, but can't prove it by offering any other beliefs, veiwpoints, or opinions.
Ok then, why do you dislike it? I am not understanding. Why do you care? If its wrong you should oppose it. If you don't oppose it then you don't really care. Why pretend you care? Do you think it makes you seem more tolerant?
How are you against "the idea" of abortion but you think it should be legal? I mean, what does that mean? What about it are you against...? If you are against it, presumably you are against it because you believe its wrong, and the only way you can believe its wrong is if ou think its killing a human being, aka, murder. So, if you think its murder, how can you think it should be legal? Are you supposed to be some sort of ultra logical example of how Republicans aren't all neanderthals? Cause, if so, I am not seeing it, at least with you as the poster boy for logic or reason.
Its awesome that you know more about the subjects your brother studied than he does. I am so glad people like you exist to tell everyone else when they are idiots. I mean, that whole terminology surrounding the word "theory" is dumb, because clearly YOU know when things are fact and when they aren't. Anyway, since you know everything, hows about you slip me some lucky numbers for the lottery? Surely, if your science can tell you everything there is to know about the creation of life, its evolution, where we came from, where we are going, how we work etc etc, than you can work some of your statistical magic and tell me what numbers are coming up tomorrow...
I recognize you are all worked up about this, but lets consider for a moment.. Who are we supposed to shoot? What are we supposed to blow up? America is way beyond being fixed by a simple revolution. Fixing the mess we are in is complex, not easy. This is an incredibly diverse country, which is sometimes a strenght, and sometimes causes problems, that makes it much harder than you might think to effect real change. The public is so divided on so many different issues, a revolution is more likely to produce a worse mess as it is to produce a better situation. And please, non-Americans, give me a break, Europe is still less free than the US. Yes we have problems, and yes we need to fix them. Yes, this NSA stuff looks bad, perhaps going back to a "gridlocked" government, where one branch is one party and the other branch is a different party would help a lot. We'll have to see what happens in the next elections.
This may not be any help, I used to work for a law firm and we installed iManage, which was a big competitor with PC Docs. iManage was, at the time, in the process of building a java-platform independent client that one could use on non-windows. I don't know if they ever finished it, this was back in 2002-2003-ish. We were a Novell shop, and I was the zenworks guys, among other hats. I built the Zen apps to push out Office XP, and also built the Windows XP images for our windows upgrade from 2000 to XP. We were moving from WordPerfect to Office XP, and while WordPerfect used ODMA, you are correct in noting that MSOffice doesn't. I am not sure what OpenOffice uses, but I will bet you $5 that they have some way of integrating with the leading document management systems.
I am a Lycoris user. I love their product. I had used Red Hat quite a bit, but settled on Lycoris. (They compete with Lindows btw, they are not the same company). I find Lycoris to be more stable, and certainly something I would recommend for a Linux newbie over something like Red Hat. You don't have as many pre-rolled apps with Lycoris (RPM's and such) as you do fo rsome of the bigger distro's, but what is there works a lot easier than on some other distros. Frankly, I, as a consumer, am willing to pay a company like Lycoris for doing all the hard work of configuring the software to make it easy for me to use. It saves me a lot of time and headaches.
I work with Novell stuff ALOT, and I find that Linux zealots (of which I am one) often have no idea what it is Novell brings to the "enterprise". Regarding your points, NetWare 5.x came with a JAVA tool called ConsoleOne which can be used to administer the "Tree". Novell has continued to push everything in that direction, and rely less on NWadmin. BTW, NetWare 5 was out in '98 or '99. Last year I loaded up ConsoleOne on a Redhat box at work and was able to admin my Tree. That was huge. I then went to google and sourceforge and started scanning the web for a NetWare client, that could use IP and not IPX (since with NetWare 5 Novell went to a native IP stack, no longer needed IPX). Saddly I found nothing good at all. I haven't looked since, I hope there is something out now so that I can log into an NDS tree from a Linux workstation. Further, I tried setting up a NetWare volume on that Linux box, that was not even close to working. So, if they have solved the Linux as a workstation, and Linux as a server in the NDS Tree issues, I will bounce off the wall with joy. One last point, Novell is still HUGE in some areas, law firms, some government agencies, etc. Embracing Linux gives Novell a continued upgrade path and future, which was becoming harder and harder to justify as Novell lost more and more mindshare. So this is a huge move for Novell's survival.
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Your abortion example is a bad one. Even pro-choice people have to admit, as science clearly shows us, that abortion ends the life of a living human being. Now, I suppose they could quibble with the definition of "human being", which of course, from my point of view takes us down the road employed by those who seek to dehumanize others (such as Nazis etc). The point being, the actual act of killing the human isn't what is debated. What is debated is whether its wrong to kill the human. Of course the pro-choice side does alot of rationalizing and attempt to dehumanize the "bundle of cells" or whatever they want to call the human, and they get away with it to the extent that until far enough into gestation the human does not look like you and me, but genetically, and "scientifically" it is human. Anyway, not trying to steer your thread off topic, I just hate to see you use that example.
Shihar, I don't see your email address in your profile, so I thought I would ask you here, can I repost your post on my blog with a link to here? I thought it was very well said and want others to see it.
Its not a question of how I am presenting it, as I am simply trying to solicit feedback. Of which, in the many comments I have gotten on this topic, the only two reasons people could come up with for being generally opposed personally to abortion, but thinking it should be legal, were that perhaps someone viewed it as destruction of property, where the poster I originally replied to might not want ot destroy his own property but found it fine for others to destroy their own property, which I highly doubt is how that original poster thinks. The other explanation centered on the old argument that abortion will happen anyway, so you might as well make it as safe for the mother (acknolwedging the existence of a "child", otherwise one would not call the woman a mother, interesting choice of words by that poster). I still am unmoved with regards to the original poster's position. If you oppose abortion, then you are opposing it for a reason. To say you oppose it, but its ok for other people is disingenuous at best.
And it is a bad thing because ?
I see that, but what I am trying to get at is, why does he disagree with it. If he disagrees with it, it is because he views the clump-of-cells/human, whatever you want to call it, as being something/someone that should not be killed/terminated. This suggests he views the clump as a person, or someone worth protecting, hence the murder anaology. If we take that just a touch further, assuming he believes abortion to me murder, which he clearly doesn't, since he thinks it ought to be legal, then he would believe abortion is already illegal as a form of murder, or that it should be legally declared a method of murder or some such thing. All of this is to say that, clearly, he does not believe abortion is murder, hence the original question I posed, which is, why is he opposed to the idea of it?
You are not convincing. If someone believes that the "clump of cells" is human enough to be repelled by abortion, than a person's convenience, and any other reason you give is outweighed by said clump's right to life. I am not sure when you say "That said, it can be emotionally tramatic experiance and definately should not be used as a drop in replacement for protection. I feel that it is a bad thing to have to go through from what I've seen (both emotionally and physically) but *far* better than the alternative (an unwanted/unsupportable child).", that you are saying others may feel that way or you do. If, after all, its a clump of cells, than there should be no emotional issues, and there is no reason to shy away from it as a means of birth control, other than cost of course. Unfortunately, it really is fairly black and white, either you believe the clump is a clump and of no consequence, or you believe the clump is a human and therefore worth protecting. There is simply no explanation I have ever heard as to why one would be uncomfortable with it but think it should be legal, other than the person expressing that view is being dishonest or for whatever reason, trying to please both sides in the argument. Either way, its not a logical position.
The "reasons" you gave all reasons to be in favor of legal abortion, none of which trump murder, if that is in fact how the parent views it. I am not putting words in his mouth, I am simply asking him or anyone else to explain how you can be against it but for it at the same time. One last thing on your post "Abortions are something to be against because they place women in control of their own lives. No longer will they need to sacrifice their career over one mistake. No longer will they be locked into a pregnancy they don't want." made me think you were saying the parent was a sexist, until I figured you just typed it wrong, you actually meant "Abortions are soemthing to be fore because..." right?
I wasn't intending to dive into such a large argument. Indeed, nothing I said in the previous reponses should have given any indication to where I stand. I was simply asking for the first guy to be consistent. We could argue about every point you want to make, but that gets us no close to the original point. That point is, how can someone be against something like abortion, but think it should be legal. Thats all I asked. If you can tell me how, I would love to hear it.
Why? You won't say why you couldn't support it in your family. Be consistent. Is it wrong or isn't it?
And I did ask. Hence my original reply to him. Thanks for contributing nothing though. I know exactly who to go to if I need someone to tell me I am being illogical, but can't prove it by offering any other beliefs, veiwpoints, or opinions.
OK, why don't you help me then. What other possible reason is there to be against it?
Ok then, why do you dislike it? I am not understanding. Why do you care? If its wrong you should oppose it. If you don't oppose it then you don't really care. Why pretend you care? Do you think it makes you seem more tolerant?
How are you against "the idea" of abortion but you think it should be legal? I mean, what does that mean? What about it are you against...? If you are against it, presumably you are against it because you believe its wrong, and the only way you can believe its wrong is if ou think its killing a human being, aka, murder. So, if you think its murder, how can you think it should be legal? Are you supposed to be some sort of ultra logical example of how Republicans aren't all neanderthals? Cause, if so, I am not seeing it, at least with you as the poster boy for logic or reason.
Its awesome that you know more about the subjects your brother studied than he does. I am so glad people like you exist to tell everyone else when they are idiots. I mean, that whole terminology surrounding the word "theory" is dumb, because clearly YOU know when things are fact and when they aren't. Anyway, since you know everything, hows about you slip me some lucky numbers for the lottery? Surely, if your science can tell you everything there is to know about the creation of life, its evolution, where we came from, where we are going, how we work etc etc, than you can work some of your statistical magic and tell me what numbers are coming up tomorrow...
I recognize you are all worked up about this, but lets consider for a moment.. Who are we supposed to shoot? What are we supposed to blow up? America is way beyond being fixed by a simple revolution. Fixing the mess we are in is complex, not easy. This is an incredibly diverse country, which is sometimes a strenght, and sometimes causes problems, that makes it much harder than you might think to effect real change. The public is so divided on so many different issues, a revolution is more likely to produce a worse mess as it is to produce a better situation. And please, non-Americans, give me a break, Europe is still less free than the US. Yes we have problems, and yes we need to fix them. Yes, this NSA stuff looks bad, perhaps going back to a "gridlocked" government, where one branch is one party and the other branch is a different party would help a lot. We'll have to see what happens in the next elections.
This may not be any help, I used to work for a law firm and we installed iManage, which was a big competitor with PC Docs. iManage was, at the time, in the process of building a java-platform independent client that one could use on non-windows. I don't know if they ever finished it, this was back in 2002-2003-ish. We were a Novell shop, and I was the zenworks guys, among other hats. I built the Zen apps to push out Office XP, and also built the Windows XP images for our windows upgrade from 2000 to XP. We were moving from WordPerfect to Office XP, and while WordPerfect used ODMA, you are correct in noting that MSOffice doesn't. I am not sure what OpenOffice uses, but I will bet you $5 that they have some way of integrating with the leading document management systems.
I am a Lycoris user. I love their product. I had used Red Hat quite a bit, but settled on Lycoris. (They compete with Lindows btw, they are not the same company). I find Lycoris to be more stable, and certainly something I would recommend for a Linux newbie over something like Red Hat. You don't have as many pre-rolled apps with Lycoris (RPM's and such) as you do fo rsome of the bigger distro's, but what is there works a lot easier than on some other distros. Frankly, I, as a consumer, am willing to pay a company like Lycoris for doing all the hard work of configuring the software to make it easy for me to use. It saves me a lot of time and headaches.
I work with Novell stuff ALOT, and I find that Linux zealots (of which I am one) often have no idea what it is Novell brings to the "enterprise". Regarding your points, NetWare 5.x came with a JAVA tool called ConsoleOne which can be used to administer the "Tree". Novell has continued to push everything in that direction, and rely less on NWadmin. BTW, NetWare 5 was out in '98 or '99. Last year I loaded up ConsoleOne on a Redhat box at work and was able to admin my Tree. That was huge. I then went to google and sourceforge and started scanning the web for a NetWare client, that could use IP and not IPX (since with NetWare 5 Novell went to a native IP stack, no longer needed IPX). Saddly I found nothing good at all. I haven't looked since, I hope there is something out now so that I can log into an NDS tree from a Linux workstation. Further, I tried setting up a NetWare volume on that Linux box, that was not even close to working. So, if they have solved the Linux as a workstation, and Linux as a server in the NDS Tree issues, I will bounce off the wall with joy. One last point, Novell is still HUGE in some areas, law firms, some government agencies, etc. Embracing Linux gives Novell a continued upgrade path and future, which was becoming harder and harder to justify as Novell lost more and more mindshare. So this is a huge move for Novell's survival.