Barbarians Inside the Gate

_{Barry Arrington

August 17, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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Everyone who believes the barbarians among us have declared total war on Western Civilization raise your hand.

The differences between this and Auschwitz:

1. The victims are more defenseless.

2. The victims are more innocent.

3. The victims are smaller.

4. The execution chambers are more sanitary.

Ideas have consequences.

Comments

A few thoughts on the topic addressed to those reading/posting here who see in the brutalized child in the womb the least of the brethren of Christ, Who was once a child in the womb as well. I assume that you take seriously the admonition of Christ that whatever we failed to do for the least of His brethren, we failed to do for Him. And I further assume you also take seriously what He promised He would say on the last day to those who neglected Him in His dire need in His least brethren: "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels ... Truly, I say to you, as you did it not for one of the least of these, you did it not for me." (It seems that whenever Christ speaks of the damned, He makes clear they are damned not for the evil they did, but for the good they didn't do. See Mt 25:31-46, Luke 16:19-31) Here are the few thoughts I wanted to present to those who, for the love of Christ, are going to do something about the ongoing holocaust of innocent human life that long ago reached unprecedented proportions: Consider the thought of Horatio R. Storer (1830-1922), who led the physicians’ crusade against abortion, the successful lobbying efforts of which resulted in state and territorial legislatures enacting stringent laws against abortion, most of which remained in effect with little or no change for more than a hundred years. In his book, Criminal Abortion: Its Nature, Its Evidence, and Its Law, Storer argues for the enactment of laws that reflect the intrinsic criminality of abortion:
In the first place the laws do not recognize that … abortion, intrinsically considered, is a crime.
In other words, although everyone already knew that it was criminal to take the life of an innocent human being, state law didn't yet acknowledge this criminality regarding the child in the womb, even though it most certainly was criminal according to “The Laws of Nature and Nature's God,” upon which the Founders based the very legitimacy of their new government, the foundational document of which declares that humans have been “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” the first of which, according to that founding document, is the right to life itself. Storer succeeded in getting state legislators to update/add statutes such that they reflected the inherent criminality of taking the life of the child in the womb. He reminded legislators of what they already knew: that taking the life of the child in the womb was intrinsically illegal and that state law needed to reflect that. Storer succeeded. We haven't. So we should look very carefully at his approach and his assumptions. As Storer points out, taking the life of the child in the womb was, in spite of the law not reflecting it yet, already an offense “of the deepest guilt, a crime SECOND TO NONE.” (Storer's emphasis) He further points out that human life begins at conception and that taking innocent human life is murder:
... if the foetus be already, and from the very outset, a human being alive, however early its stage of development, and existing independently of its mother, though drawing its sustenance from her, the offence becomes, in every stage of pregnancy, MURDER. … Common sense … would lead us to the conclusion that the foetus is from the very outset a living and distinct being. (Storer's emphasis)
The Supreme Court simply had no authority to, in effect, create a new constitutional right to abortion. What is truly a “constitutional right” was defined by “we the people,” whose will was expressed in the text of the ratified Constitution. There is simply no legitimate way to create a new constitutional right other than with a constitutional amendment proposed and ratified according to Article 5. For constitutional government to remain, new constitutional rights must be created the way the Constitution specifies that should be done, not by Supreme Court justices declaring they have discovered them in invisible emanations from constitutional penumbras. Doing this is especially treasonous when based on their alleged discovery they strike down laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people that had been in place for over a hundred years. But that is not all. They also claimed for themselves the authority to withdraw the protection of law from a vast segment of humanity. This is in stark contrast to the plain meaning of our founding document: It is humanity that bestows and withdraws the state's right to exist, not the reverse. (Those who don't understand that the Declaration of Independence is our foundational and primary legal document need to read John Quincy Adams' Jubilee of the Constitution address, and his arguments in the Amistad case.) Illegitimately amending the Constitution the way Roe did was hammering the last nail in the coffin of constitutional government. We – especially the clergy, who are citizens, too – need to state these truths loudly and unrelentingly. Abortion is intrinsically illegal. Roe is illegitimate and unconstitutional. As abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison put it, "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard." I will close by pointing out again that Storer begins with the assumption that taking the life of the child in the womb IS illegal, not that it should be outlawed. The law needs to reflect that taking the life of the child in the womb was, is and will always be illegal. The state simply has no authority to sanction the killing of innocent humanity -- to pretend it does is to turn the government established by the Founders on its head. We need to knock Caesar off his high horse and put him back in his place, reminding him that it is his only to protect the inalienable rights of humanity, not to bestow or withdraw them. It is humanity that bestows and withdraws the state's right to exist.harry_{August 18, 2015
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@Axel,
‘Eigenstate treats us with an extended treatise that we will file away under “the banality of evil.”’ – Barry Indeed, ‘the banality of evil’ says it all. A strange, weird, creepy truth, and strangely depressing. At the same time, both overwhelming and underwhelming. We were taught by one of our English teachers that, in fiction, the bad characters tended to be have the most interesting personalities, though I have never found that to be the case. Except perhaps as butts of satire.
So, if you are interested in the history of that phrase and the history of Eichmann as arch-demon, you may be familiar with Barbara Stangneth's Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. As often happens with history analyses, Stangneth has the unfair advantage over Hannah Arendt in writing and analyzing much later, and with many more probative sources in view (see the recorded interviews with Dutch Nazi Sassen after the war, which Arendt did not have full access to at Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, for example). Eichmann was an evil genius, and unfortunately ran circles around Arendt and many of those listening to him during his trial. They bought the propaganda -- that Eichmann's evil was a banal evil, that he was a just a "cog in the wheel" of a much bigger evil enterprise. Arendt's "embodiment of the banality of evil" it turns out, was Eichmann's own propaganda operation. Stangneth compiles a large body of evidence that puts the lie to that bit of deception on Eichmann's part. He was executed, hanged as he ought to have been much earlier than happened, but even to the very end, was clever and cunning enough to pull of some level of rehabilition in the public psyche even as his trial sent him to the gallows. He worked a last con on Arendt and many others. The power and scope of that kind of cunning is evident in a post like Barry's. The "powerful lesson" is a fabrication, Eichmann's last propaganda campaign, and a successful one. This one works because it plays on psychology weak points -- that we are susceptible to lies and distortions that fit what we want to hear or that comfort us. And this is a good example: if fits an anodyne narrative for Barry -- and perhaps for you -- so the con works on him, easy peasy, not one to wield a skeptical or critical eye. It's even better. The power this kind of evil cunning has, truly frightening skill in the service of evil we can examine on the part of Eichmann, is that even if you clear things up for Barry and fellow travelers, even if they read Stangneth's book, Barry will still cling to the meme. It has been lodged in his brain, and he likes it so it stays, defeaters and counter evidence are powerless to dislodge it. He's got what he wants to hear, and that's that. I think Arendt did happen on a social dynamic that is problematic for us, and there is a problem to face in institutions that have people who are all to willing to be a simple "cog in the gears" for an evil machine, but Eichmann is anything but an example of this. It's instructive on how sophisticated duping works, and how hard it or impossible it is to fix even after it has been pointed out as an error. Eichmann as successful in pulling off a last "big lie", as the antithesis of Arendt's imagination-capturing thesis doesn't fit the simplistic, romantic, juvenile narratives and meta-narratives many of us love dearly. So we choose the lie, because it fits what we want the story to be. Another neat little example of the ironies Barry unwittingly bakes into his rants. At any rate, if you want a better perspective into history of Eichmann, I recommend Stangneth's book. It's been out in a pretty good English translation since last year some time.eigenstate_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate is the epitome of execrable! Comparing a cadaver, with all of its potential expended, to an unborn, with none of its potential fulfilled, is so wrong-headed and desperate it makes my head spin. Laws, and the rationalizations that spawn them, have nothing to do with what is just, righteous, before man or God. Execrable, indeed!SteRusJon_{August 18, 2015
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@Eugen,
eigenstate, you can drop the “law” excuse
If you read what I wrote upthread, I'm saying the law is the evidence of the reasoning and principled judgment underneath it, valuable because it doesn't brook religious superstitions in its development:
I’m not saying it’s reasonable and grounded because it’s the law, but the reverse: the law is evidence of the reason and grounding of these judgments. The doesn’t accommodate religious superstitions (at least overtly!), so it’s good lens to see what you are not seeing through “dogma glasses”.
The law is the law for the reasoning that gave rise to it, not the other way around.eigenstate_{August 18, 2015
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"..Being “alive” does not make it a person — read the law,..." eigenstate, you can drop the "law" excuse Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it. -- Henry David ThoreauEugen_{August 18, 2015
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Perhaps eigenstate can tell us when it is during the development of the baby in the womb that the mind first emerges from the brain.Mung_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate
Do you suppose we are committing atrocities when we cremate a cadaver?
You don't seem to understand the difference between a developing living human at the beginning of her life cycle and a dead human at the end of her life cycle. I take comfort that my opponents feel the need to draw batshit crazy comparisons like this one to support their case.
You are busting real human persons, and their tragic loss, down to the level of losing sperm,
When you feel compelled to make idiotic statements like this, it really should make you pause. I doubt that it will.
A zygote is both fully human and full alive.
And therefore we should not kill that fully human living being. Everything else you say after that admission is simply Nazi-style rationalization for why you believe you should be able to kill some beings that are fully alive and human and not others. You really are an evil bastard e. Will you listen to yourself? "She is fully human and alive; let's kill her anyway." If you don't understand why that is evil, I can't help you.
it demolishes one’s integrity, one’s empathy and respect for real human persons
Look at the picture at the start of the OP. You are the one who says the process that led to that picture is good. Now tell me again whose empathy has been demolished.
if they are denied autonomy over their bodies
No one proposes to deny a woman autonomy over her own body. We are just saying she does not have the autonomy to kill another human. This is obvious. That pro-abortion activists such as yourself feel the need to pretend there is not another body at stake should give you pause. I doubt that it will.Barry Arrington_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate has resorted to saying a tiny live person is the same as a dead person; therefore we can kill the tiny live person.
It's not a person in terms of legal protections and rights, Barry, you've missed the whole thrust of the argument. Do you suppose we are committing atrocities when we cremate a cadaver? Or bury it in the ground, or harvest its organs while body is still fresh based on the express wishes on the driver's license of the deceased. No, you know, understand and abide by the distinction just as Stephen does. It's just inconvenient for your religious dogma, and convenient for you to conflate terms and gloss over fundamental differences. So you do it. Over and over and over.
Here’s the difference Eigy old bean: The tiny live person is . . . wait for it . . . alive. If the tiny live person were like the dead person there would be no need to kill it.
A zygote is both fully human and full alive. Being "alive" does not make it a person -- read the law, understand the philosophy and reasoning that ground the jurisprudence there. That's not practical test for personhood. If it was, we could not stop the machines keeping a brain-dead patient's bodily functions going, for it too is -- wait for it, wise guy -- alive. It's also fully human. And yet, even the Catholic Church at the forefront of the crazy on this issue, accepts brain-death as the END OF A PERSON as legal matter, and a moral matter. How can this be, for this living human??? Well it can be because your juvenile approach to the subject has missed the essential discriminating factors regarding personhood. I'm not saying it's reasonable and grounded because it's the law, but the reverse: the law is evidence of the reason and grounding of these judgments. The doesn't accommodate religious superstitions (at least overtly!), so it's good lens to see what you are not seeing through "dogma glasses".
StephenB is correct. ANY attempt to separate humans into “those we do not value and therefore can kill” and “those we value and therefore cannot kill” is indistinguishable from what the Nazis did with the Jews.
Like I said, this is just a contemptible cheapening of the real murders of actual thinking, feeling, sensing, hoping emoting persons. It quite thoroughly debases any moral outrage we can and should have over the Holocaust, and any illicit killing of persons, to the extent this is endorsed and adopted. Ideas have consequences, and this kind of equivalence-making just makes the Holocaust a non-issue, if it's no different than killing zygotes or an 8 week old fetus. If that's all a human person person is, then we've the moral case against murder has been eviscerated. We should be outraged because those Jews had essential personhood qualities that a zygote or a sperm (just as human in terms of DNA, and also living, and therefore, in need of your protections based on your juvenile criteria!). You are busting real human persons, and their tragic loss, down to the level of losing sperm, a zygote or a fetus with ZERO brain activity. That's a bad place to be.
That is a sobering thought that should cause you to reflect on whether you should continue your frenetic efforts to justify just such a division. I doubt that it will. Your conscience is seared.
I used to imbibe the same kool aid you do currently. I've heard all the sermons, I know the verses, I was a child reared in those superstitions. I am fully trained and aware in the methods of emotional manipulation as the propaganda tools used in service to your God. I understand the goal, but it demolishes one's integrity, one's empathy and respect for real human persons to have to take on this position. And that's just focusing on the personhood issue. Behind all that is the gender subjugation imperative, the leverage a "life begins at conception" dogma exerts over females who can be controlled, threatened, shamed, exploited, kept in their submissive and dominated places if they are denied autonomy over their bodies and their choices about their reproduction. That's a travesty, too, yet another black stain on Christian culture. But the Holocaust appeal is damning enough for the OP on personhood. It would be overkill on this thread to even bother with that.eigenstate_{August 18, 2015
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29 eigenstate August 17, 2015 at 10:20 pm I was talking about 18 weeks from CONCEPTION, not from BIRTH. Yikes.
Sorry. I had just finished reading an article by Steven Pinker, and your lack of revulsion concerning the PP videos made me interpret your post in that light (or should I say darkness). .cantor_{August 18, 2015
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'Eigenstate treats us with an extended treatise that we will file away under “the banality of evil.”' - Barry Indeed, 'the banality of evil' says it all. A strange, weird, creepy truth, and strangely depressing. At the same time, both overwhelming and underwhelming. We were taught by one of our English teachers that, in fiction, the bad characters tended to be have the most interesting personalities, though I have never found that to be the case. Except perhaps as butts of satire.Axel_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate
It’s more a person than a zygote, in that it least has a body, arms, legs, etc. If a zygote qualifies in your view, a cadaver qualifies all the more — it’s much more a person than a dozen cells.
??????In case you hadn't noticed, the right to live is irrelevant to someone who is already dead.
That thing is no “different” than the previously living, thinking, respirating person, after all, yeah?
You are not thinking clearly. I didn't say that a zygote is "no different" from a child or a cadaver. All humans are different in some way, but a zygote is similar to all other humans insofar as it is human, which is the moral standard for deciding on who deserves to live.
It’s more a person than a zygote, in that it least has a body, arms, legs, etc. If a zygote qualifies in your view, a cadaver qualifies all the more — it’s much more a person than a dozen cells.
More bad logic. One person cannot be more of a human than any other. One is either a human or is not a human. A child is no less of a human than an adolescent, even thought the adolescent is more fully developed. Similarly, a fetus is not more of a human than a zygote, even though the fetus is more fully developed. What a thing is has nothing to do with how far it has progressed in the developmental process.
Not is not consistent with its usage, if you look at how and why the terms have been used and since when. I might as well say Barry’s usage is purposed to subjugate women and impose irrational limitations on liberty on the basis of religious superstitions. It’s not even a stalemate, though, as the usage of the terms remains clearly segregated as I pointed out, for medical and biological reasons (which, unsurprisingly, are also the reasons for the jurisprudence).
The history of child murder is replete with progressively morphing language. First, the murder of babies was justified on the grounds that the fetus was not alive. After science refuted that claim, abortionists changed their strategy and insisted that the fetus was not human. After science refuted that claim, they raised the stakes by allowing only "quality" humans to live, at which time they injected the subjective term "person," as if the human's ability to contribute to society has any bearing on it's right to live. It's all about perverting the language in order to justify the murder of babies. SB: This is the Nazi mentality: A Jew is subhuman, therefore, I may kill if it gets in my way; a baby is subhuman, therefore I may kill it if it gets in my way. No difference.
Could not be more different. A zygote is fully human — it’s got human DNA. It’s not a person, which is the principle that underwrites protections and rights.
No, "personhood" is not a moral standard for anything. In the context of abortion, it is an arbitrary legal term calculated to isolate unwanted babies by doing the same thing you just did--to claim that a fetus is not a "person," which is a totally subjective standard. Baby killers cannot refute the scientific fact that a zygote or fetus is human, but they can claim that both are not persons, even thought the term is totally arbitrary and subjective. The moral right to live is based on the baby's humanity, not the baby killer's arbitrary definition of a person.
A cadaver is just as human, its DNA is just as human as the zygote. But it doesn’t have the minimum faculties we identify with personhood.
There you go again with that word "person." Babies deserve to live because they really are humans, not because you are someone else decides to call them a "person."
It’s as clear a distinction as there can be, and conflating them, as I said, is an execrable cheapening and watering-down of the horror visited upon them, actual murders of actual persons, equated with the abortion of a fetus, or, to read you, even a zygote.
On the contrary, I support everyone's right to live, both babies and Jews. For you, only those whom you would prefer to live should live, and your justification for killing everyone else is to say that they are not really "persons." The idea is to downgrade their value by characterizing them as inferior humans. Question: Why do you support the murder of unborn children?StephenB_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate has resorted to saying a tiny live person is the same as a dead person; therefore we can kill the tiny live person. Here's the difference Eigy old bean: The tiny live person is . . . wait for it . . . alive. If the tiny live person were like the dead person there would be no need to kill it. StephenB is correct. ANY attempt to separate humans into "those we do not value and therefore can kill" and "those we value and therefore cannot kill" is indistinguishable from what the Nazis did with the Jews. That is a sobering thought that should cause you to reflect on whether you should continue your frenetic efforts to justify just such a division. I doubt that it will. Your conscience is seared. Barry Arrington_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate, As one former blastocyst to another, I wish to thank you for your thoughtful statements. I tend to disagree with you for one important reason. Your personal experience contradicts most of what you are saying. I ask that you consider yourself today and then go back day by day and tell us when whatever you were (adult, adolescent, child, monster [age 2], infant, fetus, blastocyst, fertilized egg) was not you. You were always you, just at different stages of development. The defining point of all your life was when one egg from one woman was fertilized by one sperm from one man. How that fertilization occurred does not matter, what was produced was you. All of your potential existed at that point. The rest of your life is a series of challenges, difficulties and opportunities, which determined how much of your potential became actual. If you are you from the moment of fertilization, then any rights you have as a person exist from that moment. Please be generous enough to give to others the opportunity that you had to live. God BlessGCS_{August 18, 2015
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@StephenB
Bad logic. A baby after birth is not a “different” thing than a fetus, or for that matter, a zygote. All are humans in different stages of development.
But the stages are the essential aspect, here. This is eaily shown by looking at the other end of the timeline, at brain death. By your standards a human body that is brain-dead is no "different" than the living person with a fully functional brain. It's the same person, just in a different stage of life. To make the fail in your claim even more clear, we could say the same thing above the cadaver after respiration and heart function stop to, not just brain death. That thing is no "different" than the previously living, thinking, respirating person, after all, yeah? It's more a person than a zygote, in that it least has a body, arms, legs, etc. If a zygote qualifies in your view, a cadaver qualifies all the more -- it's much more a person than a dozen cells.
As Barry points out, the purpose for trying to make a hard distinction between a “fetus” and a “baby” is to rationalize murder.
Not is not consistent with its usage, if you look at how and why the terms have been used and since when. I might as well say Barry's usage is purposed to subjugate women and impose irrational limitations on liberty on the basis of religious superstitions. It's not even a stalemate, though, as the usage of the terms remains clearly segregated as I pointed out, for medical and biological reasons (which, unsurprisingly, are also the reasons for the jurisprudence).
This is the Nazi mentality: A Jew is subhuman, therefore, I may kill if it gets in my way; a baby is subhuman, therefore I may kill it if it gets in my way. No difference.
Could not be more different. A zygote is fully human -- it's got human DNA. It's not a person, which is the principle that underwrites protections and rights. A cadaver is just as human, its DNA is just as human as the zygote. But it doesn't have the minimum faculties we identify with personhood. Jews had all those faculties, and were classed as subhuman even though they lacked no faculties or developed capacities whatsoever. It's as clear a distinction as there can be, and conflating them, as I said, is an execrable cheapening and watering-down of the horror visited upon them, actual murders of actual persons, equated with the abortion of a fetus, or, to read you, even a zygote. Execrable. ETA: blockquotes, "different"eigenstate_{August 18, 2015
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"Recognising unalienable, God given rights" People mired in sin, especially a gravely evil one, surrender their sight for such things. Thus things plainly ugly and abhorrent, like abortions, these people become devoted defenders of. The abortion defenders here need prayer on their behalf, since they refuse to pray themselves. So, you guys are going on my prayer list. Andrewasauber_{August 18, 2015
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seversky
Tell that to the Canaanites, Amalekites, Midianites, etc, etc….
It's not the same thing. In order to save humanity, God may decide to destroy a culture that has become so corrupt and depraved that its influence causes everything else around it to rot. Under those circumstances, the Creator must pull it out from the roots in much the same way that a surgeon must destroy bad tissue in order to save the patient. Humans, on the other hand, do not have God's wisdom and are not, therefore, entitled to play God, either by "purifying the race, or "contolling" the population. It is immoral for them to kill other humans unless they are defending their own lives, individually or collectively.StephenB_{August 18, 2015
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eigenstate to Barry
not prescriptive so the point here was that the reason the terms are different is because the biology is different, the development is different, the situation in versus of the woman’s body is different. It isn’t the word or the spelling that matters, it’s concepts behind that betray your motive.
Bad logic. A baby after birth is not a "different" thing than a fetus, or for that matter, a zygote. All are humans in different stages of development. As Barry points out, the purpose for trying to make a hard distinction between a "fetus" and a "baby" is to rationalize murder. This is the Nazi mentality: A Jew is subhuman, therefore, I may kill if it gets in my way; a baby is subhuman, therefore I may kill it if it gets in my way. No difference.StephenB_{August 18, 2015
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Read: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-9-sins-of-christendom.html#u9_introkairosfocus_{August 18, 2015
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Seversky,
Are you serious? Don’t you believe in democracy?
No, I don't, and neither did the founders. They established a constitutional republic. Read a book.Barry Arrington_{August 18, 2015
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Barry Arrington @ 24
And Seversky’s take is that matters of life and death are up for grabs depending on what “enough people” think.
Are you serious? Don’t you believe in democracy? Why shouldn’t people have a say in these matters?
If enough Germans think Jews are lebensunwertes leben, then according to Seversky we should crank up the ovens.
In the highly unlikely event that the Nazis had actually explained exactly what was meant by their “Final Solution” - not just to the German people but also to the Jews, gypsies, disabled, mentally ill etc who were to be fed into those ovens - do you really believe that a majority would have voted for it? If you do, you have a much lower opinion of people than I do.
Materialists, they are a bloody lot.
Tell that to the Canaanites, Amalekites, Midianites, etc, etc.... People can be a bloodthirsty lot under the wrong circumstances, especially so when they believe they are justified in spilling that blood by some political ideology or religious belief. For all that, for all our faults, I still seem to have a greater faith in the ultimate decency of ordinary people than you have.Seversky_{August 18, 2015
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Robert Byers: I;m very pro-life and agree these pictures should be shown to provoke peoples instincts that abortion kills a kid even if they at first intellectually don’t think it does. Robert Byers: Abortion is a intellectual contention and not a moral one. First, you say you want to provoke instincts, then you say it is intellectual. Most women are quite aware of fetal tissue, as that is something women deal with all the time, such as with miscarriages. Traditionally, abortion would be done until quickening, so the process of development was not a secret to women even in ancient times, but they still had abortions. The Big Secret of Abortion: Women Already Know How It Works: Sixty-one percent of women who seek abortions already have at least one child. More than a third already have at least two children. Women know what pregnancy is and what abortion does. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thecut/the-big-secret-of-abortion_b_7967878.htmlZachriel_{August 18, 2015
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BA:
let’s not put another person’s status as human or non-human up for vote
US DoI, 1776:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, [ --> As in, true, readily seen to be true by reasonably experienced people, and so seen to be necessarily true on pain of instant patent absurdity on attempted denial or evasion . . . as we can see in this case at awful cost (but bloodguilt, personal, collective or by compromise and enabling increasingly corrupts our ability to think straight) ], that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Our civilisation's problem in a paragraph. Recognising unalienable, God given rights and the duty of bearing the sword of justice in their defence is the premise of legitimate government. Democracy that ignores that foundation becomes oppressive mob rule. KFkairosfocus_{August 18, 2015
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The cerebral cortex has ZERO electrical activity??? STFW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your knife is not giving the cebral cortex the time required to achieve electrical activity which without doubt happens every time the knife is put away. It is not optional for a developing feotus to start or stop electrical activity in the brain or to become anything other than a human being. Eigenstates' of this world require an arbitrary demarcation between life and non-life in order to accomodate the mother's desire for an out to a bad decision. Well, there are plenty of social support mechanisms to help mothers with those bad decisions. The knife if what is thoroughly wicked and denigrates, diminishes the real loss of real, sentient, conscious humans persons (to be). The knife represents the artificial demaracation line between sentience and non-sentient. It is only non-sentience in mature, fully formed organisms that allows us the possibility to consider termination of that life form. The supposed non-sentience of foetuses is a temporary phase of a 9 month process. It is not an inherent characteristic of the mature, fully formed human person that is the ultimate and undisputed outcome of that said 9 month process. Eigenstate's objections are simply an exercise in sophisticated barbarism. That all it amounts to.
Eigenstate blurts:This kind of comparison is thoroughly wicked, and denigrates and diminishes the real loss of real, sentient, conscious human persons under the Nazis. To equate them with a fetus that is 10 weeks along and has ZERO electrical activity in its cerebral cortex is execrable
Steve_{August 17, 2015
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I;m very pro-life and agree these pictures should be shown to provoke peoples instincts that abortion kills a kid even if they at first intellectually don't think it does. Abortion is a intellectual contention and not a moral one. Pro-choicvers don't believe abortion kills a child. sincerely. Indeed many famous or common pro-lifers were persuaded to the pro-life side by being persuaded the fetus was a child. Not by a moral regeneration. Just a intellectual opinion. They would see early term fetus as not children and so even pictures would fail to convince them. However they should look at the pictures for WHAT THEY CONSENT TO. Test themselves in their conscience. Holocaust comparison is factually true but pro-choicers would see it as not fair play. they , of coarse, hate the holocaust but not abortion. We can't insust acceptance of abortion is acceptance of the holocaust. Yet they shold reflect on these things. also lets remember our people/allies deaths in WW11 was more important then foreigners in the death camps. Unless there is no difference based on identity but no one thinks that way.Robert Byers_{August 17, 2015
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@Barry,
eigenstate says someone wrote in a dictionary that you can call an unborn human a “fetus,” and therefore they are not babies and that means you can cut them into little pieces and sell the pieces like meat.
No one here by that name ever said anything like that, Barry. So now, when our common definitions and connotations don't suit you, well, you sing a totally different tune, eh? Color me surprised. The dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive so the point here was that the reason the terms are different is because the biology is different, the development is different, the situation in versus of the woman's body is different. It isn't the word or the spelling that matters, it's concepts behind that betray your motive.
Wow, there’s some penetrating moral philosophy for you, based on eigenstate’s “solid principles and semantics for good and evil.”
Well, yes, the kind of thinking that distinguish between a fetus and a baby, and, say, understand the physiological differences for the woman involved as well, that is what I'm talking about. The words point at concepts with important legal and moral implications.eigenstate_{August 17, 2015
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Cantor, Puzzling. 1) Once the child is born, why does the child have to be killed to preserve the “freedom and self-determination” of the mother? Why not just allow the mother to quitclaim the child to the state? I was talking about 18 weeks from CONCEPTION, not from BIRTH. Yikes.
2) Do you actually see no post-birth paternal rights whatsoever here, or was that simply an oversight?
See above. You misunderstood my recommendations for protection of a fetus from the point where its cerebral cortex becomes active.eigenstate_{August 17, 2015
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Mike asks if there is a practical alternative. Yes, Mike, let's not put another person's status as human or non-human up for vote.Barry Arrington_{August 17, 2015
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Atheists are inviting us to their macabre party. No, we are not coming!Eugen_{August 17, 2015
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BA @ 25: And Seversky’s take is that matters of life and death are up for grabs depending on what “enough people” think. Materialists; they are a bloody lot. Is there a practical alternative in the real world? I mean, unless the Deity shows up and tells us exactly what he expects, how are we to know what the transcendent morality is? Take abortion. I would hazard a guess that most people would be reviled at late term abortions if they knew the details of what occurs. I sure am. However, I have no problem with abortion up until the time brain waves kick in for the foetus. It seems patently reasonable that prior to brainwaves, the brain is not functional, and therefore no supernatural consciousness could possibly be attached to it. I'm sure you have your objections. You and I may reasonably disagree on this issue, but how do we settle the disagreement unless the Deity Himself, if one exists, shows up and settles it? Calling people names sure doesn't seem like a way to settle it. At any rate, regardless of who is right or wrong with respect to any given specific of morality, power and/or consensus is the only practical governor of it at this point in earth's history.mike1962_{August 17, 2015
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And Seversky's take is that matters of life and death are up for grabs depending on what "enough people" think. If enough Germans think Jews are lebensunwertes leben, then according to Seversky we should crank up the ovens. Materialists, they are a bloody lot.Barry Arrington_{August 17, 2015
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