As promised, my rant on republicans. (Disclaimer: I am a libertarian)
1. The middle-eastern terrorists hate us because of what we do, not because of who we are.
It seems that a majority of republicans believe that the terrorists hate us because we are a wealthy, (relatively) free society, and that our existence is offensive to fundamentalist Islamists, who therefore want to destroy us. This is nonsense. Certainly, Islamic fundamentalists have pointed to our liberalism and used it to fan the flames of rage against us, but the root cause of that rage is the fact that the US has been meddling in the politics middle east for decades.
We have overthrown governments, installed and supported brutal dictators, sold weapons, financed rebellions, and installed military bases since the 1950s. In the process, we have managed to piss off nearly every country, tribe, and leader in the region. If they were doing it to us, we would be outraged, and we would fight back. Why shouldn’t they?
Ron Paul is the only Republican presidential candidate who gets this. Even the leading democrats don’t come out and say it very clearly.
2. We will never stop terrorism with aggression and force.
Aggression and military occupation of Islamic countries will only provoke more terrorist actions.
The only way to stop terrorism is to withdraw completely from the middle east. Close the military bases, stop all military aid and weapons sales, and stop supporting Israel. Leave them all alone, and they will leave us alone.
3. Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither, and shall lose both.
Ben Franklin said that, or something like it. By giving up our civil liberties in the war on terrorism, we are giving up who we are, and we are losing the war.
The democrats have a problem with this one as well, but in their case they wish to trade economic liberty for economic security. The result is often just as bad.
4. Keep your religious views out of government
Abortion, the right to die, stem cell research… all of these issues hinge on your view of what life is and what life means. Many people’s understanding of these issues comes from their religious background and teachings. Therefore, government should stay out of these issues and let people decide for themselves what life means to them. To do otherwise is to impose your religious beliefs on others, which is wrong.
Personally, I do no think that an unconscious lump of cells is deserving of any rights. The greater consciousness/sentience/awareness a being has, the more rights and respect it deserves. I think it hypocritical to eat cows and then condemn people for aborting one month old fetuses.
Additionally, each individual must have complete autonomy over his own life. If someone makes a carefully considered, informed and deliberate decision to end his life, nobody else has a right to object or to prevent him from ending it.
5. The war on drugs is a disaster and should be stopped immediately.
The drug war does more harm than good. It costs a fortune, and fills up our prisons. People have the right to make informed decisions about what to put into their own bodies.
We should legalize marijuana completely, legalize possession of all substances, and legalize sale of substances with some sort of regulation, perhaps a prescription system to ensure that users are making careful, informed decisions and are not becoming addicted and suffering adverse consequences.
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8 comments:
To strenghten your "unconscious lump of cells" position, ask yourself the following questions. Which of the following unconscious lumps of cells, if any, deserve rights: a sleeping adult, an adult under general anesthetic for the next 5 hours, an adult in a coma for an indeterminate amount of time, a comatose adult who doctors predict will never recover, a fetus. Does a comatose human deserve more rights than a comatose cow? Does a comatose cow deserve more rights than a comatose goldfish?
Plopperella: great question.
I think that someone who is temporarily unconscious for any reason and can reasonably be expected to become conscious again deserves essentially the same rights as a fully conscious person. Someone who is comatose and is likely to never recover deserves fewer rights. If they are certain to never recover, they deserve no rights.
The fetus, though it may become conscious one day, has never been conscious and therefore deserves no rights. Potential to become something does not confer rights; if potential were relevant, then wouldn't we have an obligation to fertilize every egg and ensure that as many humans as possible are born?
The temporarily comatose human deserves more rights than the temporarily comatose cow, which deserves more than the temporarily comatose goldfish. But a permanently comatose animal deserves none.
Ok, I appreciate the consistency in your belief that a permanently comatose anything deserves no rights.
But you argue that a fetus deserves fewer rights than a person who will be comatose for 3 years even though the fetus will attain consciousness sooner. Although the fetus has never been conscious, I don't agree that it is the mere "potential" to become something. You of all people should appreciate the role that genes play in determining consciousness (i.e., personality, preferred methods of cognitive processing). Because the fetus' genetic code is already determined, I believe it's more like a "destiny" than a "potential." Is the termination of an already formed combination of genes more reprehensible than the failure to actively produce every combination of genes? I believe so.
By interpreting what a fetus "is" the way I do above, it's temporally symmetrical to an adult that you know will remain in a coma for 9 months. Again, you of all people should be willing to accept a fluid definition of time such that either both of these entities have rights or none of them do.
Finally, even if you don't buy my "destiny" v. "potential" distinction, what if the temporarily comatose adult has a minor brain lesion such that we know his consciousness will be altered somehow (i.e., lost memories, changed personality). I'm under the impression that you would give this individual rights even though, like the fetus, the consciousness that will emerge has never existed before.
It's for these reasons why I'm opposed to letting women choose to have abortions in most circumstances even though I consider myself a libertarian. Unfortunately, when I mention this, people are generally too incredulous and upset to give me a rational critique of my reasoning.
Please disregard the 3rd paragraph in my above post.
Interesting arguments… I can almost buy your destiny theory, but I don’t think that genes are relevant at all. Genes are like the blueprints to a machine, but they are not the machine, and they are not the data that the machine will eventually contain. I think that the data is what’s most important. Your memories, your personality, etc. are all patterns of information that have been built up in your brain throughout your life. They do not exist in a fetus.
If the uniqueness of a combination of genes were a relevant factor here, would a clone of you have no rights? I think it would have as many rights as anyone else. And every cell in your body has the potential to become another person.
Another factor I believe is important is that in order for an entity to have rights, it must be able to claim them. I haven’t thought this one out completely and there may be exceptions, but it seems to me that unless a being can express its desire to live in some way, whether by speech or crying or fighting back or running away, then such right should not be assumed. I don’t think a fetus has enough consciousness to express its desire for any rights. A comatose person has presumably expressed his desire to live before becoming comatose in some way, or it can be reasonably inferred from his actions prior to becoming comatose. But a fetus has never been conscious enough to do so.
I agree that reasonable people can disagree about this, which is why I think that people be allowed to decide for themselves what is right, and not have the government impose either side’s views on the other.
Interesting idea about claiming rights. Let's say you developped an Artificial Intelligence and programmed it in such a way that it was fully conscious but incapable of cultivating a desire to live. Does that consciousness have rights? What about humans who lose their desire to live? Do systems that seek to preserve themselves through homeostasis, and thus "express" a desire to persist, have some right not to be broken?
Re the "destiny" idea. I agree that a gene combination is a blueprint and not an entity. I made the gene reference to explain how aborting a fetus puts an end to what will eventually become a specific consciousness. In property law, there's the idea of waste. Say I impregnate a hooker, and to celebrate, I deed you my house with the provision that title will transfer automatically to my bastard child once s/he is born. If you blow up the house during the pregnancy, I can sue you for waste on the fetus' behalf because the fetus has a future interest in that house. I bet I could also get restraining order preventing you from blowing up the house if I knew you were about to. I can also force you to pay property taxes, because failing to do so will infringe on the fetus' future interest. The house scenario, to me, is analogous to aborting a fetus. In both instances, you are taking away what will eventually become the "property" of a specific consciousness.
I agree with you 100% that reasonable people can disagree about this, and I'm always tempted to use that as the reason why the government should butt out. But I'm also OK with the government prohibing actions that violate the rights of entities that deserve them, which is why I keep exploring the problem.
I see rights as an ability or entitlement to express or enforce one's will. If there is no will, it does not make sense to talk about rights.
So it would not be wrong to kill an AI that had no desire to live, any more than it is wrong to turn off your PC. But if it says "please dont turn me off" (and means it... it can't just be programmed to say that) then you might be violating its right to live.
In the case of a human who lost the desire to live, I suppose you should decide if this is likely to be a permenant condition, in which case feel free to kill him, or a temporary one, in which case you should probably not kill him.
I think a system that seeks to maintain some sort of state of being deserves some minimal level of rights. However, an entity with more rights might trump it. For example, a plant should not be molested unnecessarily, but if you need to eat, then go ahead and eat it.
I like the waste argument. But in the case of abortion, the fetus never grows up to claim its body, so there is no actual plaintiff, only the hypothetical one that might have existed.
they hate us because we let the women run the country. The last thing those male dominated societies want is for their women to get all mouthy and pushy like american women. Let's stand up to american women and stop being dipper changing drones. we could then slash homeland security spending and give each man enough money to shut his fat wife up and keep her the kitchen.
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