In case there was any doubt, Sarah Palin is bat shit crazy.

[purpleoscar]

Womanizer Pokoyo

If you're trying to say I'm a womanizer well I can't keep up with this guy:

 

[AliEnvy]

I just felt this outrageous thread would not be complete without a little cartoonish Britney. Layer upon layer of metaphor there.

Also it makes me laugh in a wish-I-was-stoned-watching-this kind of way.

Parents familiar with Pocoyo know what I'm talking about lol.

 

[VintagePunk]

If black people and women can reason as well as a (white) man (because it can be witnessed) then they should not be treated less than (white) men. The arguments of racists and sexists would be to look at them as inferior intellectually which there is no evidence of.

The whole premise of this argument is flawed, because men who are intellectually superior do not have more rights than men who are intellectually inferior, in the first place. When have you heard of a man with an IQ of 95 having fewer rights than a man with an IQ of 130? Therefore, the argument that women and minorities were discriminated by against by racists and sexists because of their presumed lack of intellectual prowess, and that they slowly gained equal rights because racists and sexists discovered over time that they were wrong is inaccurate.

 

[BVS]

I'm certainly not saying you have to be silent. The left is right on somethings and they can compete in the realm of ideas just like anyone else. When they screw up the right can be overly judgmental and the left can be utopian.

Give me one social issue they are correct about or have been correct about...

It's not nonsense. Dreaming may not be the best term, but mental projections about what makes a better world doesn't always conform to reality.

I don't mentally project that all humans are created equal I just know it. I'm sorry that you don't.

Right so we agree except you don't like my use of the word science. Is induction, or reason better? Philosophical ideas can build on themselves as well.

You're correct in that I don't like your term, but it's not only that, each issue occurs by different means and I think that is something you are simplifying too much.

Since we've been using the examples of African Americans and women, let's stick with that.

Both were long and slow processeses, both still going. But the process was completely different for both, one got much bloodier than the other and in some ways I think the woman issue is still much further behind than the black white issue.

But the whole point I've been trying to make is that they both didn't come about by presenting "evidence" and seeing what happened. And the whole time you were trying to give legitimacy to the opposing sides for which they should never get. You wouldn't give legitimacy to the Nazis, so why try and give legitimacy to those that opposed these issues.

 

[purpleoscar]

I don't agree with your premise as to how we arrived at equal rights for women and blacks, but I'll go along with it for a second: are you okay with it having taken hundreds of years to arrive at those conclusions? Should gays be okay with potentially waiting another hundred years until the rest of us can gather sufficient "evidence" to convince us they deserve equal treatment, too?

Well I live in a country that has already done that under conservatives who pretty much gave up fighting it because it was a losing battle. This happened because the population moved on so politicians had to move on. If you can convince the public in the U.S. to tolerate gay marriage Republicans will want to get elected and move in that direction to get votes.

I don't know of a better system than democracy so I prefer 100 years (I don't think it will take that long) than removing democracy by overturning conservative votes. What's the alternative to slow moves? There's lots of bills that people would like to pass (look at all the special interest groups) and they are frustrated too. There are pro-life people who hate abortion and look at abortion at the same level of eugenics and want Roe v. Wade overturned. They think liberals are hypocritical in giving rights to everyone except fetuses.

The reality is that there is no meaning to life that we can see beyond what we attribute ourselves. So when people don't agree on their beliefs democracy seems to have been the best choice to arbitrate.

 

[purpleoscar]

The whole premise of this argument is flawed, because men who are intellectually superior do not have more rights than men who are intellectually inferior, in the first place. When have you heard of a man with an IQ of 95 having fewer rights than a man with an IQ of 130? Therefore, the argument that women and minorities were discriminated by against by racists and sexists because of their presumed lack of intellectual prowess, and that they slowly gained equal rights because racists and sexists discovered over time that they were wrong is inaccurate.

I'm meaning in general. You don't need a high IQ to be a citizen with inalienable rights. Some arguments in the past tried to make it like women were property of men and blacks were not even of a similar species. To them it would be like giving rights to an inanimate object or to a dog. Also I do agree that there were self-serving elements involved because upper classes (with special rights) of any social group benefit at the expense of slaves. With observation (induction) we can see that their assertions were wrong.

Boy this Palin thread has morphed.

 

[anitram]

I don't know of a better system than democracy so I prefer 100 years

Presumably then you think that it is undemocratic for the courts to uphold constitutional principles.

You are forgetting how the changes in Canada came about with respect to gay rights, and that the fight took some 20 years, and that it basically all happened in the courts.

 

[martha]

I prefer 100 years

You wouldn't be singing this bullshit song if any of this directly affected you.

 

[purpleoscar]

Give me one social issue they are correct about or have been correct about...

I mentioned one before in another post. The government can't replace the family unit successfully.

I don't mentally project that all humans are created equal I just know it. I'm sorry that you don't.

You know it because it's easy to induce. So I'm using "induce" instead of "science" if that helps. I gave other examples of mental projections that went horribly wrong. Another example of far-fetched projects:

Great Leap Forward - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's okay to have mental projections but they need to be compared with past history of human nature and tested in someway. If one country does a new social policy then others can see it and compare if it's a successful idea or not.

You're correct in that I don't like your term, but it's not only that, each issue occurs by different means and I think that is something you are simplifying too much.

Yeah but without past successes there wouldn't be the building blocks up to now. That's my main point oversimplified or no.

But the whole point I've been trying to make is that they both didn't come about by presenting "evidence" and seeing what happened. And the whole time you were trying to give legitimacy to the opposing sides for which they should never get. You wouldn't give legitimacy to the Nazis, so why try and give legitimacy to those that opposed these issues.

I wasn't legitimizing their point of view. It's that they exist and we have to engage with them and their ideas and refute them whether it's pleasant or not. I've argued with Christians (especially Mormons constantly knocking on the door) and they have their own agenda based on their mental projection of "God" so I leave it up to the voting booth. Civil war to me would come up if there wasn't enough tolerance that you could live your own life without being physically or financially attacked in some way. There are people who believe in creationism but they can't stop me from going to science class and reading science books so I try not to fret about them. To me they lost.

 

[anitram]

Well I live in a country that has already done that under conservatives who pretty much gave up fighting it because it was a losing battle. This happened because the population moved on so politicians had to move on.

I don't know of a better system than democracy so I prefer 100 years (I don't think it will take that long) than removing democracy by overturning conservative votes. What's the alternative to slow moves?

OK I just can't let this stand, because it's completely inaccurate and doesn't reflect reality or history at all.

First of all, the population didn't "move on" - at the time when Paul Martin submitted the reference to the Supreme Court, if you looked at the polls, they were really very close to 50-50 and were quite divided. If this had been an election issue, or could be put to a ballot a la referendum, you might have had a different outcome.

The conservative votes WERE essentially overturned by the courts. Discrimination against gays was eroded slowly by targeting individual rights like benefits, and so on, over a period of two decades. Most of this work was done by a Toronto-area corporate lawyer actually, who did it on a pro bono basis (very interesting woman, I've met her a couple of times).

It was the provincial courts which started overturning the opposite-sex requirement. The turning point was when the Ontario Court of Appeal (seen as the most influential appellate-level court in the nation after the SCC) overturned this requirement in Halpern. At that point, the Liberal government at the time basically decided not to fight it in the courts any longer and submitted the reference to the Supreme Court, which basically cemented the opposite-sex requirement as unconstitutional.

Stephen Harper's conservatives still tried to have a lame vote on it once they got into power and were defeated anyway.

But to somehow intimate that Canada is different and that the scientific process lead us to democratically install gay marriage is wrong and silly on top of it.

 

[purpleoscar]

You wouldn't be singing this bullshit song if any of this directly affected you.

I already asked this question. Is there something faster than democracy? I'm pretty skeptical of alternatives.

I also addressed that there are others who hate abortion and want it stopped NOW but they have to tolerate a democracy and court rulings. Abortion doctor killers are the example of people who want to make their own law instead of trying to convince people. There are people frustrated on both the left and right.

I tell you if I could answer these questions without dictatorship as a solution I would be a genius and write a book.

 

[anitram]

I already asked this question. Is there something faster than democracy?

Yeah, there is.

You people like to call it judicial activism and you're not fond of it.

 

[BVS]

I mentioned one before in another post. The government can't replace the family unit successfully.

Well that is not a right nor left issue, so try again and tell me just one, I dare you...

It's okay to have mental projections but they need to be compared with past history of human nature and tested in someway. If one country does a new social policy then others can see it and compare if it's a successful idea or not.

No, they don't. They don't need to be compared. Do you honestly think we needed to say well have other cultures worked without slaves?

Yeah but without past successes there wouldn't be the building blocks up to now. That's my main point oversimplified or no.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay oversimplified. We're taught to hate, don't fool yourself.

I wasn't legitimizing their point of view. It's that they exist and we have to engage with them and their ideas and refute them whether it's pleasant or not.

Yes, this I agee, but I do think you give them subtle legitamicies , but that's neither here nor there...

I think Martha summarized it best... If it affected you, you would approach this entirely differently. We've talked about this before, you come off as someone who almost completely lacks empathy. I don't know you well enough to really say you do, but that's how you come off in 99% of the time. And I think because of that you approach social issues almost robotically. It might just be the nature of forum communication, I don't know, but that's how it is...

 

[purpleoscar]

But to somehow intimate that Canada is different and that the scientific process lead us to democratically install gay marriage is wrong and silly on top of it.

They did a vote of representatives and lost yes. The conservatives are in power now and they've abandoned the subject.

Same-sex marriage in Canada - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Conservative Party, led by Stephen Harper, won a minority government in the 2006 federal election. Harper had campaigned on the promise of holding a free vote on a motion regarding restoring the traditional definition of marriage. If the motion were to pass, the government would draft a bill to restore the "traditional" definition of marriage. This bill would then have to be passed by the House of Commons and the then Liberal-dominated Senate. The Senate traditionally does not vote against bills that have been approved by the House of Commons.

A news report from CTV on May 31, 2006, showed that a growing number of Conservatives were wary about re-opening the debate over same-sex marriage. One cabinet minister stated he just wanted the issue "to go away", while others including Chuck Strahl and Bill Casey were undecided, instead of directly opposed. Peter MacKay noted that not a single constituent had approached him on the issue, and Tory Cabinet Minister Conservative MP Loyola Hearn was against re-opening the debate. On June 2, 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked by a reporter about the issue while he was in Montreal. He responded that the vote on whether or not to open up debate over same-sex marriage would take place sometime in the fall.

On December 6, 2006, the government brought in a motion asking if the issue of same-sex marriage should be re-opened to support the traditional definition of marriage. This motion was defeated the next day in a vote of 175 (nays) to 123 (yeas). Prime Minister Stephen Harper afterwards told reporters that he "[didn't] see reopening this question in the future".

Conservatives aren't by and large pro gay marriage. It's just not politically worth it for them. I think the landscape has changed for conservatives on the social end in the past few years. It's not like it used to be.

 

[anitram]

That has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

By 2006, three years had elapsed since Halpern and the sky hadn't fallen just because we had gays and lesbians marry with dignity like the rest of us could. Therefore, the public sentiment had shifted from the divisiveness that was there previously.

But you insist that democracy is the fastest way and I have shown you more than once now that there was nothing inherently democratic about this. It was the most blatant sort of "judicial activism" which you presumably abhor since we have unelected members of the court basically running public policy. You haven't addressed this nor do I expect you to.

 

[purpleoscar]

Well that is not a right nor left issue, so try again and tell me just one, I dare you...

I think it was a right and left issue but I'll concede that's the main one and that I can't think of any other ones.

No, they don't. They don't need to be compared. Do you honestly think we needed to say well have other cultures worked without slaves?

There are different kinds of comparisons. You also can compare those who are considered slaves to those who aren't and when you don't see any reason why slaves should be slaves you've inducted enough to disagree with slavery, just like in my prior slavery post. The reality is that some countries will do experiments first and it's very helpful in convincing people that things can be different in the straggling countries.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay oversimplified. We're taught to hate, don't fool yourself.

Yes but being taught didn't stop me from learning and looking at other sources beyond tradition which requires enough freedom in our society so I can make a different choice. Nobody is putting me in prison for supporting gay marriage and this is because of the laws that have been built upon in the past. Whether it's called "progress" or not I don't care which term.

I think Martha summarized it best... If it affected you, you would approach this entirely differently. We've talked about this before, you come off as someone who almost completely lacks empathy. I don't know you well enough to really say you do, but that's how you come off in 99% of the time. And I think because of that you approach social issues almost robotically. It might just be the nature of forum communication, I don't know, but that's how it is...

It is the nature of forum communication just like emails. In my office my boss doesn't like emails precisely because emotional content is stripped. Opinions look cold without facial expressions. People also tend to feel more offended when someone is critiquing what you did as opposed talking to someone face to face. I make the same point about people who bump into each other on the street:

"Oh excuse me, sorry."

versus someone cutting you off in traffic:

"Screw you, you bastard!! Blah, blah, blah." Flipping the bird.

Now back to what Martha said. I already posted before that Conservatives feel frustrated about abortion. If liberals don't give a crap then I'm sure conservatives could look at that as a lack of empathy. It's not just liberals who get in a funk over social issues.

Maybe people look like they have a lack of empathy precisely because they are focussed on their own agendas or just plainly disagree on issues.

 

[purpleoscar]

That has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

By 2006, three years had elapsed since Halpern and the sky hadn't fallen just because we had gays and lesbians marry with dignity like the rest of us could. Therefore, the public sentiment had shifted from the divisiveness that was there previously.

But you insist that democracy is the fastest way and I have shown you more than once now that there was nothing inherently democratic about this. It was the most blatant sort of "judicial activism" which you presumably abhor since we have unelected members of the court basically running public policy. You haven't addressed this nor do I expect you to.

I just don't feel Canadians want to fight the decision and many frankly agree with it. Conservatives for the most part probably don't like it and especially activist judges, but it's a low priority. Even the environment got pushed back behind economics in the public eye. It's not an activist decision that prevents heterosexuals from marrying so many people don't care. Churches are protected for now so it seems all quiet. If the conservatives get a majority and there is a push to fight gay marriage then I'll admit that Canada hasn't moved beyond the U.S. I just don't see any governments doing a notwithstanding clause without some political flack. It seems like a dead issue to me. Can any government do a notwithstanding clause after so much time has passed?

I think if there was judicial activism in a way that would affect a larger section of the population there would be more uproar. I think the public has moved on.

Personally I'm more interested in a Conservative majority for reforming the senate so they can be elected instead of appointed.

 

[BVS]

I think it was a right and left issue but I'll concede that's the main one and that I can't think of any other ones.

Then you proved my point... thank you for being honest.

Now back to what Martha said. I already posted before that Conservatives feel frustrated about abortion. If liberals don't give a crap then I'm sure conservatives could look at that as a lack of empathy. It's not just liberals who get in a funk over social issues.

Maybe people look like they have a lack of empathy precisely because they are focussed on their own agendas or just plainly disagree on issues.

That's not it. It goes beyond that, we've talked about it before and honestly it just doesn't belong in this thread.

We agree on certain principles but your logic on how to get there scares me. You have a revisionist sense of history which has been pointed out to you, you don't seem to understand certain definitions, and if it doesn't effect you then it's not a priority...

 

[yolland]

Yes but you are aware that Republic heavily influenced Karl Marx and that North Americans didn't practice this with their own children.

Hmmmmm no, the strongest classical Greek influence on Marx, by far, was Epicureanism (his doctoral dissertation topic, in fact), which isn't at all a 'Platonic' school of thought. You might perhaps describe Hegel, one of Marx's strongest contemporary influences, as heavily influenced by Plato in his anti-empiricism (though Marx's other great contemporary philosophical influence, Feuerbach, was decidedly not anti-empiricist), but only in a far more general way than you're describing here.

And what you really mean is "North Americans didn't practice this with their white, Christian, English-speaking children." I was citing that instance as an illustration of the broader point that when you see such practices occuring in human history, almost always the context is one of forcibly imposing a new system--political, cultural, social, whatever--on a group whose allegiance to it might be in doubt were the biological parents allowed control over their children. And that's also what Plato's advocating--the guardians as a social entity have yet to be created; they aren't some random group of Greeks who are already out there, any more than red-skinned 'good Christian citizens' were already out there as far as the US and Canadian governments were concerned. The whole idea is to make them 'your own children'--good Christian children, good guardian children; their actual genetic ancestry is beside the point, otherwise there'd be no use in bothering to indoctrinate them bring them up within your preferred system in this way.

I wasn't trying to assert that there was a laboratory based education campaign. I'm saying that you don't need a laboratory to witness Martin Luther King speak eloquently and have an understanding that he's a person like anyone else. So if 'scientific' is the wrong word then maybe inductive reasoning would be better...

I think I'm not getting my point across very well here, so let me take one more stab at it, in an anecdotal way this time.

When you talk with elderly white Americans who went from supporting (or simply not caring about) racial segregation to firmly opposing it during the course of the Civil Rights era--and I often do, because my parents were both actively involved in the Movement and I'm always curious to hear how it looked from 'the other side' of their generation--you will seldom, if ever, hear stories to the effect of "You know, I'd always supported segregation because I thought black people were too stupid to participate in mainstream society, but then I saw MLK Jr. speak and realized they could be just as smart as anyone else." Instead, what you'll hear over and over are stories like, "I remember seeing on TV what they were doing at Selma to these peaceful marchers kneeling in prayer--clubbing and gassing and and setting dogs on them, breaking bottles over their heads and jeering at them while they lay there bleeding--and I saw that all these men and women and children were people just like me, and I was sickened that human beings could treat other people this way." (I'm referring to Northerners here, of course--Southern whites of that generation accepted desegregation only once forced to, save for the tiny handful who'd supported it all along, so you won't find many 'conversion stories' to speak of.)

This isn't scientific thinking or inductive reasoning; it's a moral response, a moment or process of recognizing oneself in the other and therefore having your eyes opened to the cruelty of the system--in this case, that it isn't really about what the benign-sounding term 'separation' suggests, but rather the active persecution, suppression and exclusion of 'people just like me' from the dignity of free participation in public life, backed up not by nature but by brutality. And all the prejudicial notions about 'what black people are like'--which, in fact, many continued to hold to varying degrees long after changing their views on segregation itself--are then seen for what they really are: unworthy and unjust excuses for some horridly costly privileges, masquerading as rational imperatives needed to prevent society from going down in flames.

I'm not saying that more academic forms of challenge to such views, or court-ordered measures as anitram pointed out, aren't important; far from it. And in some cases, they're all that is needed. But the type of thinking I'm talking about isn't based on studying evidence and drawing logical conclusions--and neither are the particular kinds of "delusions" it shatters, which is why it's so necessary.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

This thread wins for Most Off Topic of the year...

 

[financeguy]

You wouldn't be singing this bullshit song if any of this directly affected you.

This might be valid if you didn't think about aborted human babies as the equivalent of bacteria and pond life. Frankly, no abortion-on-demand advocate is in a position to lecture anyone about human rights or empathy.

Now back to what Martha said. I already posted before that Conservatives feel frustrated about abortion. If liberals don't give a crap then I'm sure conservatives could look at that as a lack of empathy. It's not just liberals who get in a funk over social issues.

Maybe people look like they have a lack of empathy precisely because they are focussed on their own agendas or just plainly disagree on issues.

Indeed

I get the sense that a lot of people here think of themselves as liberals and reject conservative ideas because they have had a few bad personal experiences with 'Christian' Dominionists types, which, as I and others have tried to explain - including, to be fair, some of the liberal leaning posters on FYM - is really a form of theocracy, and not real conservatism.

I'm sorry if some left wing Americans think that they can automatically dismiss all and every conservative thought process or idea just because some right wing American waved a bible in their face, or said something homophobic, but ultimately dismissing arguments on the basis of purely personal experience is short term emotionalism triumphing over rationality.

 

[BVS]

but ultimately dismissing arguments on the basis of purely personal experience is short term emotionalism triumphing over rationality.

The next time you see this occur why don't you point it out to us...

 

[Irvine511]

Frankly, no abortion-on-demand advocate is in a position to lecture anyone about human rights or empathy.

thusly, women are neither human, nor have rights, nor deserve empathy?

 

[purpleoscar]

thusly, women are neither human, nor have rights, nor deserve empathy?

If they kill people for convenience sake then no. It has to be a case by case basis in which the mother has an increased chance of dying or there is incest or rape. It has to be something out of a person's choice. If a woman makes a choice because sex is fun then there's no sympathy from me because as women are adults then they must have RESPONSIBILITY. The greens on the left talk about responsibility for life and the planet even to the point of ignoring obvious economic consequences but what about humans? Or are they just more people who wish an end of times for humans and abortion becomes indifferent at this point?

 

[corianderstem]

Oh, so this thread is about abortion now?

 

[martha]

If they kill people for convenience sake then no.

 

[martha]

Oh, so this thread is about abortion now?

The guys like to discuss it.

 

[corianderstem]

Hey, you know what? Sex is totally fun. I'm going to go get myself knocked up just so I can have an abortion.

Check y'all later.

 

[purpleoscar]

Hey, you know what? Sex is totally fun. I'm going to go get myself knocked up just so I can have an abortion.

Check y'all later.

Scary thing is that there are some who do that. My brother knew a co-worker who had five. Did she get raped 5 times? BTW she boasted about it. Now that's pretty cold to me.

For that 9 yr old girl who was excommunicated for having an abortion I'm with her because each situation may be different because of undue influence and the risk of dying in giving birth. Adoption should be looked at in every opportunity it can apply to. I have an uncle that was adopted and I'm glad he lived.

 

[martha]

each situation may be different because of undue influence.

ya think??