Posted on 06/21/2008 5:42:33 PM PDT by Noumenon
I never said otherwise. The problem is that your post is incomprehensible. That’s why I said I have no idea what you’re talking about. Be explicit about what you’re agreeing with him about, and disagreeing with me.
Again, the fallacy propagated regularly by the Left. A child's body is its own, not someone else's, to destroy.
Why do you consider it to be such a burden for people to be told that it is not legal or right to butcher little children? This is beyond reason.
“Why do you consider it to be such a burden for people to be told that it is not legal or right to butcher little children?”
I have no objection to people being told that abortion is wrong. My objection is to giving an agency of force (government) the power to make people have or not have abortions against their will. When you give government the power to make such decisions it will almost surely make the one you do not like.
Hank
Well, "Hank", you're no better than Obama or Clinton, then.
And I think you have also helped to prove my initial assertion on this thread. Thanks.
The good thing is that Your Creator gave you a mind. Use your mind in conjunction with the writings of wiser men without resorting to Him in this argument. You still may turn to Him privately for the faith that you will need. That seems fair and I think -- at least from what I been told from many like yourself -- it will work wonders if you have the faith you claim you do.
2. Re: Before this immoral modern age this wasn’t even questionable.
Down to hard tacks. Had you written more simply "Before this age this wasn’t even questionable." and had not added the additional adjective immoral (loaded, subjective) and modern (incorrect philosophy) I'd say your statement started correctly. Abortions simply were not performed primarily because, for good or ill, the societal moral code -- and thus its influence upon government -- was indeed theological. You could from there argue about what has been gained and lost since the shift in from the basic theological influences from which this country emerged and upon indeed it was founded into what it has become now that so much of that is being deliberately eroded or discarded.
However, had you not made this error, I may not have stepped in because it hadn't really occurred to me that you didn't know how philosophically regressive the world has become until you used the word "modern."
3. Here's why I call it an error for you to have called this a modern age. The time frame and the philosophical meanings of modern are ambiguous in this instance. Had you used the word "contemporary" to refer to our age you would not be in error even though you'd be less specific. But this is a philosophical discussion, and the second meaning is quite precise. The killing of innocents is decidedly NOT modern.
Modernity has made human lives longer and more prosperous and made freedom much more attainable for every human soul.
Our contemporary world and country has turned predominantly postmodern in its goals. I assert that you'll find our institutions peopled by those who philosophically are more postmodernist than modernist.
4. And that is why I called it an error, misguided at best, to call the current age an immoral one. Your ethos is no longer dominant even though most everybody outwardly gives lip-service to it. The evidence for my assessment here is rampant. You can see it in the growing influence of the "science" of postmodernism: Post-Normal Science. That means that scientific and technical advances will be hampered quite a bit more than you, a traditional moralist, would like. And that, in turn, makes your use of the word "moral" a joke among many of the people who are fighting you. Whether you like it or not, their influence is currently much much greater than yours. They have been turning your view of morality around and against you.
Another way of putting it is what is moral to a modernist is generally crazy talk to a postmodernist. "Who is this so-called God of theirs who would be so foolish as to tell them to be fruitful and multiply without consideration of limits, of sustainability!"
One who has been influenced by postmodernist's preaching of limits to human growth and the consequences of not checking that growth beliefs that it is YOU who is the immoral one, setting up the world to be destroyed by man's marauding in search of food and materials to sustain his God-commanded growth. The very meaning of protecting human life simply because that human hasn't committed a crime against persons or property is not looking at the limits the postmodernists considers a much more moral guideline. The existence of babies simply because they are babies and not because of what they may contribute versus what they will use up is simply IMMORAL to the postmodernist.
This was not easy for me to write. There's probably typos in there. There's many other points that I left out. You may disagree with me all you want. If so, then make me defend this thesis. Break your complaints up into multiple posts as needed. If there is something you don't understand, ask it.
This is your personal copy of a thesis I've been struggling with, and still struggling with, for longer than you've known me.
Even if you don't believe me yet, you have enough knowledge here to reevaluate the forces that are fighting you. Their thinking and beliefs and anti-optimism is not the same as yours seems to be. God serves you. They seek to stand in His stead because they cannot or will not believe He exists. And in some instances, your opponents believe your God exists, but they hate Him. Getting any of them to admit what I have laid out here is not all that likely until they no longer fear you. Keep going in the manner you have been, ignore all that I have written here, and you will wind up serving your enemies all too well.
1. So, because many have forsaken the knowledge of the Creator, and therefore choose to ignore what the Founders called self-evident truth, I should refrain from pointing to the foundations of our liberty? Sorry, my friend. That just doesn’t make sense. Just because they’re godless, in the literal sense, doesn’t mean I’m going to be.
2. Big deal.
3. Again, much ado about nothing. “Immoral” and “modern” fit just dandy in this conversation, since no generation before this in America slaughtered thousands of innocents every day. Or, for that matter, tried to “marry” sodomites.
4. You contradict yourself. You obviously agree with my assertion that this is an immoral time we live in. But then you go into a long dissertation on why I should pay more heed to what those who are destroying our civilization and our republic think. You err in thinking that I have any illusions about changing their minds about anything. I don’t care what they think. I don’t care about convincing them. They’re invincibly ignorant about what is important. And so, I only care about exposing and defeating them.
On this very thread, they admit they are as pro-abort as any Democrat.
I’m flying in the morning and haven’t started packing nor even finished laundry. I’ve little time now to point out where and how what I see as your blindness makes you determined to blow it and go on serving your enemies.
Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. Maybe I should have taken the suggestion of others.
The fact that you will dismiss glibly that there is an important distinction in that these are contemporary and not modern times does not say much for your commitment to truth, That lack of commitment is not in keeping with any sound theological stance that I know of.
I too do not give a damn about what those people you specified as your enemies think. But I do give a damn about those they MISLEAD.
And here you are. Easily dismissing what you foolishly think is only semantics, what you call these “much ados.” These are little acorns that your enemies have planted. You haven’t a care in the world that our institutions are rotting from the inside out, from the top down. They couldn’t pay you enough to keep on doing things precisely as you’re doing them. But with you they really don’t have to pay you a dime.
Eternal vigilance should have enough flexibility to try different tactics as your enemies have adapted their tactics. Is it vigilant to have you stranded at a lone rampart tower whilst they go on decimating all that you originally stood against? That’s neither vigilant nor loyal to your commission. It is stubbornly sticking to what you’ve learned once, but having failed to adapt yourself as the battlefield changed, are recast (betraying your enviable pertinaciousness) into a scarecrow by the marauders you hate. They use you to keep the next group of victims from seeking from you the protection you’d love to bestow upon them. But the marauders know you hate them more than you’ll love their victims. They laugh at you. God will deal with them, but He’ll also reprove those who hated the nasties so much that they forgot who to love.
Have a safe trip.
1. You are not behaving godless by not invoking God in your arguments. I would presume your using Him as your guide. Continue. It is rarely pointed out that God asked Abraham to offer Isaac so that He could refuse the offer, and PRECISELY to break the pattern of sacrificing children to lesser gods. You do realize that abortion is a form of giving up one’s child so that one may be able to live life doing other things (serving lesser gods) than the continuation of life creation? Where Pagan societies FORCED this on the parents, our postmodern, anti-natal Western societies have figured out ways to get the parents to VOLUNTEER. Mostly by demonizing religion as a facade for authoritarians.
Work with me on this aspect EV. The volunteers CAN be persuaded in your direction. The pro-abortion crowd claims that abortions are declining. It may be true, and that would be goog, but I don’t trust them or their stats. That they want to lessen the pressure on them is all the motive they need to lie.
2., 3. & 4. I responded to in post 126. I await your thoughts.
On-topic bump. Suggest you two start your own discussion thread on the subject of abortion. It’s one of THE issues of our time, and it’s a no-compromise, no sit-on-the-fence issue. Along with the original subject of this essay.
Like i said, it’s time for Atlas to shrug - and pick up a gun.
But my thread wouldn't be on the topic of abortion directly. My thread would attempt to make clear how postmodernism has been the antithesis of modernism since its inception. IMO, here is as astute a marking of that inception as it gets: "The Fourth [of July] is the birthday of the modern world."-- Michael Ledeen
As I tried to make clear earlier, postmodern (contemporary) morality has turned classical morality on its head without firing a shot. MSM subtlely redefined its meaning and hardly anybody makes an issue of the switch. The dictionary still holds the old meaning, but culturely it has so clearly changed that even South Park made a gag around it almost 10 years ago.
Those like EV who are vehemently against abortions use the word morality in its ancient sense (in its JudeoChristian sense) while failing to fight the theft of the very word morality. It is clear from his usage that he doesn't even acknowledge it has been stolen and even refuses to discuss it.
I personally think that preserving innocent human life is still the primary moral goal and purpose of the social contract under which government is granted its moral authority. Postmodernists are horrified by that "old" meaning of morality. They have redefined "innocent" in utilitarian terms (not a squanderer of scarce resources -- i.e., almost any peon in an elitist world) rather than classically innocent (not guilty of crime to person or property).
-- i.e., almost any peon in an elitist world is guilty.
One cannot be innocent when one exists without permission.
Believe it or not I'd never read it before.
L
On topic notes.
The metaphor “Fifth Columnist” was about 5 years old according to the date you’ve provided this letter. The metaphor had already been extended to refer to any figures who hid their intentions so it would be nearly impossible for “we who believe in freedom will fight you openly.”
Rand presumed it was unnatural that sane people would aid their own destruction. So she segmented innocents from other fifth columnists to represent those who presumably didn’t understand how what they gave aid to their own enemies. Thus, from her arguments, her term “innocent” Fifth Columnists is effectively equivalent to the term “useful idiots.”
From the time Lenin exploited useful idiots, through the times Rand bemoaned here, right up to the present, what do we see that has not changed?
We see that power seekers have exploited each new generation that has been filled with foolish notions. The power hungry exploit them faster than either liberty lovers or experience can disabuse enough of them of their error. Those who refuse to acknowledge even what hard experience has punished them with we call rightly call idiots. Each time they continue to behave usefully for the exploiters at some point we sane ones have to shake our heads and wonder “How innocent can they really be? Does their imperturbable aid to the enemy prove their guilt?”
EV versus tacticalogic?
Per your request, The Westerner. I found that I had indeed posted this a while back. You will enjoy the commentary. Good exchange of ideas as we used to do here on FR. So it’s time for a bump to the top - for great justice.
Submit - with all that it implies
Or fight. Fight for the Freedom God gave us and to preserve the last best place on Earth.
I have made my choice. You cannot evade yours.
It’s time for Atlas to Shrug - and to pick up a gun.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.