First, I want to make sure that you know that, just because we don't agree on everything, doesn't mean that I want this conversation to discontinue. I have a PM in my inbox (I'm going to answer today!) that expresses wonder as to why I spend the time that I do on the political threads sparring with liberals. The answer is simple, I don't do it to change their minds, I do it to refine my positions and arguments. Conservatives need to have these discussions amongst themselves too. We need to refine our positions and arguments so that, if we don't necessarily agree with each other on every detail, at least we know why our compadres have the positions that they do.
If we can help each other refine our message, everyone wins.
If you look simply at the pro-life movement, the flaw in their message that allows the left to dismiss pro-lifers as crackpots, is that much of the argument is an appeal to a religious authority. The pro-life movement needs to have responses to the pithy pro-choice memes like "keep your hands off of my body" and the pro-life movement needs to appeal to the rule of law, not the rule of God.
1. If leftist women want conservatives to keep their hands off of their bodies, then they need to take responsibility for their decisions and pay for their own birth control and abortions. When pro-choicers force others to fund their abortions through taxes, they are making their bodies the business of every tax payer. We have a right to voice our opinion about how our tax dollars are spent. I'm not really a pro-lifer, but I certainly object to paying for the results of another man and woman's tryst.
2. Abortion is a constitutional issue. The federal government has an obligation to protect the natural civil rights of all individuals in the country. There are extreme positions on both sides of the issue. On the pro-life side, there are those who believe that life begins at conception. When the pro-choicers use this to dismiss the pro-life movement, we need to counter with the pro-choicers who not only believe that a woman has the right to choose to abort a baby up until birth, there are people...influential people, on the left who believe that a woman's right to choose to abort extends to some time after birth. Not kidding And I was shocked when some on the left didn't find that insane.
The point is that we need to have an answer to their attempts to dismiss conservative views by discrediting us by exaggerating our positions. And most people are not at the extremes on this issue, even at the extreme ends of the political spectrum. Most people know that a baby who has been gestating for 8 months and 3 weeks is essentially the same as a 9 month old birthed baby, except for the fact that it hasn't made the trip down the superslide to the big bright world. Most people understand that most babies are viable as individual entities outside of the mother's womb after only six months of gestation. In fact, there are several cases of babies being born after 5 months of gestation and surviving. It is clear that there is a period of time pre-birth that a baby has attained personhood and therefore has natural rights that the federal government is obligated to protect. And most people will agree that a mass of cells that has little structure or any resemblance to a human baby and also doesn't have brain wave patterns that show thinking and response to stimuli and that also can't survive outside of the womb, is probably not an individual that has reached personhood and the woman's right to autonomy over her body probably outweighs the potential future rights of the fetus.
But then there is the gray area between the 12th and 20th week where a legal definition has to be made as to what constitutes a individual that has reached personhood. In this country, a person cannot be legally deprived of life, liberty or property without due process. That means that a woman who wants an abortion would be obligated to prove that her fetus is still a fetus and that a human individual is not being deprived of its life without due process. And that's where you get into the need for an EEG to chart brain wave patterns.
I chose the abortion example because I am not a strong pro-life advocate. My views are pretty much what you see above. But I still think that, as someone who sees a grey area on the abortion issue, I can still present a rational argument that shows that even the most ardent pro-lifers are not crackpots. If they truly believe that a fetus at one month has full individual personhood, how could they not be passionate in wanting to save it's life? Even my rational argument isn't likely to change policy in a meaningful way. But what it does is change the argument from the emotionally defensive "My body, My choice" with pro-lifers cast in the role of wanting to enslave her to the puppy mill for life, to a thoughtful discussion of what defines an individual and whether or not there is a constitutional obligation to protect the rights of an individual who has not been born yet.
I think I just wrote a bunch of paragraphs on abortion....the absolute last topic that anybody should talk about and still expect anyone to think he is rational.....all to arrive at what you are saying. That our message needs to be honed such that the leftist cannot redefine us as radicals who are out of touch with reality.
What happened in 2001 was a catastrophe - way more than I thought it would be. We're living through an engineered depression.
Al Qaeda won that war within months of the 9/11 attack. I don't know if you remember, but Lost1 made the case that when we started to willingly give up our constitutionally protected rights in order to get a sense of security, that is when we lost. The patriot act basically tossed the fourth amendment out the window. With the scandal about the NSA spying on pretty much everyone, it would be crazy for individuals to not filter what they say online and over the voice networks (Cellular and PSTN). The threat of unauthorized searches has the effect of curbing our freedom of speech. In my opinion, the patriot act was and is a mistake. We would have been better off closing our borders to ALL immigrants. And we could even have a stricter visitor policy. And it would be perfectly legit to toss everyone out of the country who isn't here legally. These steps would provide more security and wouldn't violate the rights of the US Citizens. But most of us accepted the solution that gave the illusion of security while expanding the powers the government has over us as individuals. And then let's not even talk about the politically correct decisions that we made to prove how enlightened we are. So enlightened that sharia law actually has influence in Dearborn MI. So enlightened that we have muslim TSA agents.
And we could kill another 100,000 taliban and al qaeda members and it wouldn't cause one muslim to change the fundamental things that make them muslims.......we definitely lost that one. They just got the ball rolling and we did the rest ourselves. |
