Posted on 12/10/2004 9:37:54 AM PST by rogerv
Hi, gang,
I was a regular contributor to the Kerry Online Forum and am now a regular contributor to the Common Ground Common Sense forum. I am a liberal, but I'll be the first to admit, I don't have all the answers. In fact, many of hte questions that matter to me probably matter to you too. I'm concerned with questions about how to tame power, whether governmental or corporate. I'm concern with the rule of law and how we can get the powerful to take it seriously. I'm concerned with the erosion of civil liberties. And yes, I am concerned about some things you may associate with liberalism--social safety nets and taking care of those who fall through the institutional cracks.
I'm here because I think agreement is overrated and that critics can be your best friends: they keep you from getting sloppy or careless. At any rate, I think there are things I can learn from you. I don't expect you are all agreed on anything--I expect there is a lot of diversity of opinion here. If you are interested in what I have said over at Common Ground Common Sense, I'm using the same handle both places, and you should feel free to come over and look around.
Anyway, I'm new here. Anybody care to give me a tour?
Personally, I think the majority of kitten posters care less about the ZOT than they do posting pictures of cats.
Liberals have to deal with the abortion issue first. You can't attract people to your point of view without first swallowing one of the biggest rationalizations ever.
It's your slavery issue. Nobody will believe liberals when they say they care about kids, or about saving the environments, or caring about people who fall through the cracks, or about family values, or about the elderly, or about human rights until they lead the charge to eradicate abortion.
Nobody's civil rights have been so eroded than the white male's civil rights. Men don't have a say in the birth of their own children any more. Women have the power of life and death over all children. What's more is that somehow we read that as a fundamental constitutional right.
If you guys can get past the abortion issue, you can focus on the socialism issue and the effects of eradicating God from our society has had on the quality of life in the US, especially for children.
It's killing your party, quite literally. Republicans are outbreeding Democrats 2 to 1 right now.
And your question(s) are?
Welcome to FR, as a recovering liberal myself just ignore the negative comments (we get a lot of trolls here so many are jumpy).
Specifically tell us any questions you have on the limits of social safety nets and government power?
Some don't understand it, particularly its tie to the individual morality of the people. Given the public education system of the last 40 years, its not surprising that so many don't undertsand it. I'm grateful for good parents who worked with me through my education to ensure that the attempted indoctrination was countered.
This individsual seems sincere and has responded rationally on this thread. I believe he will be a good addition to the forum as long as that remains the case.
Odd, liberals use government power to control everyone. They complain about Christians trying to foist their beliefs on the rest through government but they themselves are the worst offenders of this injustice. Free speech is only allowed if it is liberal speech. Diversity is only wanted if it doesn't include conservatives.
He IS talking though.
Interesting.
( And he's probably having to type REALLY fast! LOL! )
I think I'll stand down for now.
Gee. I only sing.
You weren't supposed to figure that out :-). We really like to look at cat pictures and explosions, that's all.
Powder..Patch..Ball FIRE!
Good first post rogerv. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. What issues do you want to take on first?
BallandPowder
Suggestions....
Walk carefully...if you are going to argue a point have evidence to back the point up....Don't argue emotion...keep your head on a swivel things can move fast at times....and finally my best suggestion is... do not... i repeat do not... start lecturing about how this sites is not about free speech etc.... that is one of the quickest way to get yourself banned.
Maybe some of you want to come and add your comments.
Gee, I'm only wrong on 95% of what I believe? I'm doing better than I thought!
But the upshot of our discussion has been about reason and power, and the antidemocratic dynamics at work in our society that threatens to derail reasonable discussion of the issues, tolerance and debate about different values systems, and the advancement of scientific inquiry. Nobody should mistaken our views as definitive answers on these vexing issues. It may be more important to raise the right questions than to rsuh in to answer them prematurely.
We easily cast the debate as one between scientitifc inquiry and religious fundamentalism. But is that right? Do we really get to the heart of the matters so quickly? I have been thinking that a better strategy would be to look at who is in power (really) and how do they control the agenda, prevent certain topics from being raised much less debated.
Bush is claiming he has a mandate. From whom? The half of the electorate that elected him? Correction--the half of the voting electorate that elected him. Still, even here, the election was quite close. Why on earth should he interpret this as a madate for anything except peacemaking with the other half?
But that is the problem. He has successfully ignored half the american people for four years, and paid no penalty for doing so. In fact, he has been rewarded with a bigger majority in the house and senate, and most ceratinly will have opportunity to select between one to three supreme court judges, and who knows how many lower court judges. He says he has built up political capital, and now lans to tackle social security. It is good that he is going to address social security. But since he does not debate (he now has a 'one question only' rule for the press! the voters gave him that power, he claims!), I think we are going to get, once again, Bush's no negotiation style of governing kick into overdrive. I expect he will pursue it with the same tenacity and relentlessness he pursued the war in Iraq. he got his war. He will no doubt get his 'reform'--but judging by his medicare 'reform' that is not necessarily good news
Tolerance is not, and cannot mean anything goes. That is not tolerance, but something else--relativism or nihilism. To go that far is to give up the moral game.
I am of the view that tolerance has a moral basis, respect for persons, respect for autonomy. The point of tolerance is precisely to let people have the liberty to pursue happiness as they see fit. We are a liberal society, a society given to defense of personal liberty. It is in the declaration of independence; it is in the constitution. For me, those are the benchmarks.
The problem for a liberal society, as you are aware, is to work out the terms of our cooperation. No man is an island. While individual liberty is valued, it is not absolute. We need reasonable restraints on individual choice so that we do not suffer from the problems lack of coordination creates. Life together provides many benefits. Even Hobbes argued as much. But those benefits come with a price tag--we have to give some things up in order to get other things we want.
Self-restraint is preferred. But when self-restraint fails, there needs to be effective enforcement. Otherwise, there is anarchy and we all suffer.
Now where does gay marriage show up in this frawmework. You no doubt have moral reasons for your view. Furthermore, your morality is shaped by your religon. How do I know this. I don't. But having attended a fundamentalist seminary, and having been a conservative Christian for 20 of my 50 years, I am at least familar with versions of your view held by people I still consider freinds, even though I am now quite liberal.
By the way, I'll mention it but not dwell on it. There are Christians who are not convinced those against homosexuality are interpreting the Bible right. Letha Scanzoni has a book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? that you ought to read over if you are interested in the arguments.
But what is the status of your firmly held views against homosexual marriage? What is the status of your religous based views? Should they become law because you can muster a majority of people who feel like you do? That is the issue here. Let's keep our focus there.
We are a pluralstic culture, and always have been. It is easy to miss that if one fails to notice that our history is primarily the history of one group of British subjects who wound up dominant. But the Spanish and French were here first among the Europeans, and Native Americans were here before that. Dutch, Germans and Swedes were all early settlers. Italians like Columbus and Cabot came in service of Spain and Britain. And through the nineteenth and twentieth century we have waves of immigration from western, northern, eastern europe, asia, africa (the slaves). The religions were various. Catholics came first, then protestants and jews. And for sheer inventiveness, we have probably invented more religions than any other people on earth. The Mormons, Seventh day Adventists, and jehovah's witnesses and pentecostalists--new religons, denominations or cults (depending on how you define these) have worldwide reach and are among the fastest growing religons on earth.
What is my point? Talk about this being a Christian nation is just plain sloppy and unhelpful. We have a great variety of Christianities here: many of which did not get along in Europe and killed each other there. We have a variety of cultural identities--mostly in large cities where many of the immigrants wound up. We are not a cultural monolith here. And since morality is pretty closely ties to culture, we have a variety of moralities here as well. The differences may not be big. But they may be big enough to affect the question at hand--gay marriage.
The issue is whether one person's moral views should determine the law for those who do not share that moral conviction. And it won't do to say the views of others should not be taken seriously because they are immoral. That is just begging the question: can people disagree on moral principles without one being morally wrong? I believe they can. I beleve a reasonable position here is the agnostic one: we may not know, as people in legislative office, whihc of two views is right (if either) and therefore may not make such differences the basis of law.
Is that a terrible position to hold? No. It is forced on us by our moral disagreements. Morality is the basis of law. Of course it is. But law is not, and cannot be simply morality given the force of law. Instead, law give the boundary of unacceptable behavior, and give the individual wide berth to work out the details of morality for themselves, or for their group (i.e., church, family, maybe community).
So tolerance is the respect we pay to those we believe are sincere, rational, well-intentioned and wrong. It is possible to respectfully agree to disagree. We cannot resolve all our differences. The point is not to use the law to force conformity of opinion. You may try to persuade others of your views. But the law must stay neutral. Separation of church and state is based on exprience of what happens when the state is not neutral: repression, persecution and civil war. We have largely avoided that here. But with the Bush bunch in control, the contract is being violated. If Bush shreds the social contract of imposed religious neutrality by the state, he may unleash a good deal more violence than he bargained for. I hope he has sense enoug to step back from that. We'll see.
So, you have the right to hold and express your views that strike some of us, including me, as intolerant. But you may not have the right to impose your views on others by force of law. I, for one, do not believe dire consequences will folow from allowing gay marriage. Many gay couples have been faithful to each other for decades. Many hereosexual couples have grave problems with fidelity. I don't believe aws should be on the books unless there are demonstrable harms. Speculative ones don't count. That something is dirty or disgusting doesn't count, for the most part. It may be a good reason to keep something, like pornography and excrement, in private places where others need not view them unwillingly. Some offensivess does support regulation short of outright ban ( for bodily functions, it should be obvious why!). Victimless crimes, harmless wrong doing, in general should not be a matter of law, but of education. People will gamble or use drugs whether there are laws against it or not. Enforcement of such laws is expensive and generally ineffective. The behavior is not smart. I don't think it wise to mess up your brain chemistry with illegal drugs, or to gamble away paychecks. But I think the people are for the most part harming only themselves (drinking and driving in another matter, andcomes under the harm principle), and we get more effective leverage with education than laws. I'm proof of that. In the sixties, many of my freidns were using drugs. But I saw the movies they showed in health class, and they scared the hell out of me! I was never even tempted to experiment with drugs after learning about some of the nasty sideeffects of some drugs. I think sex education has the same impact on prevention of the spread of stds and reducing teen pregnancy. I guess my overall point is that there are any number of things that are immoral (on one viewpoint) that should not be made a matter of law. One can say this without saying morality is unimportant. In fact, I just have argued that one can have good moral grounds for not making particular moral convictions a matter of law.
Liberals have to deal with the abortion issue first. You can't attract people to your point of view without first swallowing one of the biggest rationalizations ever.
Like why they're for abortion of children but against the death penalty for adults, whats the difference?
Fire away with the questions. You'll find there are a number of very intelligent folks here willing to discuss/debate. Though I'm still pretty new here myself, I have found that we're actually quite tolerant (even encouraging?) of disagreement, as long as it doesn't descend into baseless progressive blather.
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