Posted on 05/17/2003 9:55:20 PM PDT by MHGinTN
Don’t you just love it when someone with whom you're arguing says, “Well, we will just have to agree to disagree”, as a spin of the phrase ‘Reasonable people can agree to disagree’, or as the shortened version, ‘Reasonable people can disagree’? Can reasonable people disagree over cannibalism in order to permit cannibalism, without doing violence to civilization?
As a pro-life advocate who gets into lots of discussions, I hear this ‘agree to disagree’ more and more. It tells me my points are getting to the irrational heart of defense for the abortion slaughter. When an advocate for abortion of alive little ones trapped in a womb tries to discuss the topic from a reasoned position, irrational underpinnings are eventually exposed and the ‘reasoning’ stops, in favor of either ending the discussion or deflecting the ‘reasoning’ into areas better defined as emotional landmines.
A whole new field of argument is arising in defense of exploiting individual human lives. There is a common foundation for these arguments, a dehumanization theme running through the lines of reasoning from the ‘pro-choice’ camp, but the origins of that commonality are not to be found in choice to abort; it has a more subtle beginning than that.
You can answer "whatever." Just the word. It apparently cuts to the bone. Tried it once this week for the first time. A bunch of people fell over in shock. It's like Queen's pawn gambit accepted in chess. Of course, since I just started using the phrase, it has probably been replaced already a couple linguistic generations ago. So it ought to work okay on pro-choicers if used at the correct moment.
No it's not. It's just a way of saying you are not going to change each other's minds, so there is no point wasting time debating it. It doesn't mean you have to accept it, or preclude you from working within the political system to get your way.
The alternative to refusing to agreeing to disagree is to attempt to impose your views by force. Radical muslims refuse to agree to disagree about religion, so they fly planes into buildings. Communists refuse to agree to disagree and set up gulags. Agreeing to disagree is the cornerstone of a civil society.
Right. Which is different, IMO, from a bunch of cells in a test tube or petri dish. We will disagree here, whether we agree to do so or not.
In objectivism, which society must adhere to or face anarchy, there is a right answer which reason dictates. Anyone who chooses the converse is, therefore, unreasonable. While a person is free to be unreasonable, they cannot legitimately act upon that lack of reason where it affects the life, liberty, or property of another human being.
Can you give a clear demarcation for the beginning of human being status? Hank Kerchief has chosen to cite birth. Peter Singer cites somewhere around one year after birth. Another poster at FR would cite the evidence of brain waves. Still another poster would cite 'the time of quickening'. What is your arbitrary point? Yes, arbitrary, because science has already established the advent of every individual human lifetime as the conception of the organism, and science has even established tests and measurements to discern if certain diseases or genetic maladies are present with the earliest age of the individual alive along their individual continuum of lifetime, even as embryo individuals. What is your chosen point to confer human being status?
If homosexuals can arrange for those opposed to homosexual behaviors --chosen by homosexuals-- be tolerant by agreeing to disagree but do nothing about the deviant behaviors, the 'agree to disagree' stealth tacit acceptance is accomplished.
The issue of this essay is cannibalization of individual human life. To agree to disagree but do nothing out of deference to agree to disagree leads to the cannibalism becoming a part of the society through tacit agreement to disagree ... 'disagree with but do nothing' allows the disagreeable behavior to continue unobstructed.
The issue raised with this essay is whether the LIFE of an individual is infringed by acceding/acquiescing to the privacy or private medical treatment for another. Some will argue that the embryo is not a human being in earliest age along the continuum of a lifetime begun at conception (whether in a human host or a petri dish), thus the full exploitation of this non-human being's life can proceed unabated.
I will argue that the individual lifetime begun at conception confers human being status upon the embryo and thus precludes 'conceiving, life supporting, then killing the individual human being at embryo or early fetal age just to get their body parts for treating another', older individual human being. If I agree to disagree so that the exploitation can continue, the 'agree to disagree' stealth PC has done the job the exploiters wanted it to do.
Let's look at an analogy:
---A prominent woman has a friend bring an illegal alien to her home and set the alien up as a housekeeper, cooking, cleaning, doing chores, all for food and shelter, and perhaps a small cash stipend.
---The prominent woman decides to run for public office. She is told that the presence of the illegal alien will keep the woman from being a legitimate office holder, so the prominent woman hires someone to come into her home and inject a deadly poison into the illegal alien, then dismember the dead alien and remove her from the home for disposal.
---The presence of the illegal alien, though arriving by invitation, is an inconvenience to the privacy of the prominent woman. Does the woman have a right of privacy so paramount to put her privacy as trump of the right to Life of the illegal alien? The alien is not a citizen of the country and certainly not a member of the prominent woman's family --by choice of the prominent woman-- so can the one inviting the presence of the illegal alien then turn around and order the killing and disposal of the illegal alien ... in the name of right to privacy trumping right to life?
---Argument might follow lines regarding the citizenship of the illegal alien, but one factor would dominate the entire discussion: none of the reasonable parties arguing the case will appeal to the specious notion that the illegal alien was not alive, because the behaviors of the illegal alien while in the prominent woman's home proved the illegal alien was alive, was an individual human being.
Can you imagine, people try to argue that the alive, growing, self-expressing, unique individual human life in the petri dish or womb is not a human being? It is astonishing!
It seems to me the issue of this essay was "agreeing to disagree". That's the general issue which is seperate from canabaliztion of human life, which is the specific circumstance the issue is being related to.
That's an incongruent statement. By saying "reasonable minds can disagree", you're giving tacit acceptance to the opposing point of view since that would, by extension, be a reasonable belief.
The alternative to refusing to agreeing to disagree is to attempt to impose your views by force.
All laws, which we try to enact or change by political discourse, require the imposition of a belief by force. Removing that force would release anarchy from which a totalitarian government would assuredly arise.
Agreeing to disagree is the cornerstone of a civil society.
No, it is the cornerstone of a philosophy that when put into practice would leave nothing to protect your rights but you and your own sword.
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