Christianity could be a higher order way of organizing lives

[BananaStand]

I do appreciate that you ended with an acknowledgement of how absurd your reading of the law is

I don't think that's what he was doing. I interpreted his last sentence to mean that programs like medicaid should also not cover abortion.

Now I know what you're thinking.....if it doesn't cover abortions, then medicaid shouldn't cover birth control pills either. Stop thinking that.

It is simply erroneous to start drawing parallels between abortion, and anything else. For whatever reason, abortion is "the big one". It's completely appropriate to treat it as something radioactive that needs to be quarantined from every other issue.

The rest of your post seems to basically claim that maintaining a road where a clinic resides effectively equals government funding of abortion. Nonsense. You're discussing abortion as if there is a slippery slope that leads to all kinds of other shit. There isn't. There is no slope, slippery or otherwise, that connects abortion to other issues.

it stands alone. This isn't my opinion either. It's the consensus of decades of public discourse on the topic. Abortion is an issue that gets special treatment. You'll find it's a lot easier to find common ground with the other side (no matter which side you're on) if you just accept this reality.

[wufwugy]

I don't think that's what he was doing. I interpreted his last sentence to mean that programs like medicaid should also not cover abortion.

I was getting at the fact that if a person is on welfare and pays for an abortion, then iterating this scenario over time, across the population, and on average, means that a portion of taxes have probably gone to abortion because some abortions were likely had only on the margin that the person can fund her budget with welfare.

This point is true before going a step above like boost did, the infinite regression of causality, which is worth thinking about.

[boost]

I was getting at the fact that if a person is on welfare and pays for an abortion, then iterating this scenario over time, across the population, and on average, means that a portion of taxes have probably gone to abortion because some abortions were likely had only on the margin that the person can fund her budget with welfare.

This point is true before going a step above like boost did, the infinite regression of causality, which is worth thinking about.

Yeah man, I think this is where your ideology gets in the way of you discussing practical matters. It's fine that you think the government ultimately does not have a right to tax (if this is even your position.. it's hard to keep track of), but that's not what you were arguing. It wouldn't even make sense to argue the subsidising of abortions point if government is not subsidizing anything.

Let's shift your logic elsewhere for illustrative purposes. The second amendment is law, but it is very controversial. Therefore the government should not be subsidizing gun purchases. People who purchase guns should be barred from receiving any government assistance.

It's an absurd argument. You cannot find the thresholds of reason outside of a pragmatic argument, which results in "the government should not directly subsidize X"

Ideology has a way of blinding us to pragmatism.

[wufwugy]

Yeah man, I think this is where your ideology gets in the way of you discussing practical matters. It's fine that you think the government ultimately does not have a right to tax (if this is even your position.. it's hard to keep track of), but that's not what you were arguing. It wouldn't even make sense to argue the subsidising of abortions point if government is not subsidizing anything.

My ideology is what it is due to what is practical. I'm into what works.

I don't believe the government doesn't have the right to tax. I don't even know what a right is. Though I do know how the Constitution defines rights, as things that exist because of prohibition of government intervention.

Let's shift your logic elsewhere for illustrative purposes. The second amendment is law, but it is very controversial. Therefore the government should not be subsidizing gun purchases. People who purchase guns should be barred from receiving any government assistance.

It's an absurd argument.

What makes that absurd? That's what the people who wrote the 2nd Amendment intended in the first place. The concept of government assistance is new and was not something the United States Constitution included. That whole thing was about prohibition of government power. Welfarism came later and its origins are mostly outside of the US.

And yeah, gun owners shouldn't be allowed to receive welfare for the reason you described. And the same logic should be applied to everybody, which illustrates a reason why welfarism is a contradiction to constitutional principles. Though it isn't a contradiction to the socialist idea of rights. Which raises the question, which one of those actually successfully provides rights?

[boost]

My ideology is what it is due to what is practical. I'm into what works.

I don't believe the government doesn't have the right to tax. I don't even know what a right is. Though I do know how the Constitution defines rights, as things that exist because of prohibition of government intervention.



What makes that absurd? That's what the people who wrote the 2nd Amendment intended in the first place. The concept of government assistance is new and was not something the United States Constitution included. That whole thing was about prohibition of government power. Welfarism came later and its origins are mostly outside of the US.

And yeah, gun owners shouldn't be allowed to receive welfare for the reason you described. And the same logic should be applied to everybody, which illustrates a reason why welfarism is a contradiction to constitutional principles. Though it isn't a contradiction to the socialist idea of rights. Which raises the question, which one of those actually successfully provides rights?

It's absurd because it's not the discussion we're having. We are talking about reality, and then suddenly you start talking about libertopia without informing your fellow participants in the conversation. Making the point about abortion in isolation is misleading and impossible to map onto reality as it stands.

WRT Originalism. It's nonsense. The signer's intended a framework that would be a robust starting place. The fact that they included paths to amendment are testament to the fact that they not only suspected it would be changed but in many cases likely hoped it would be.

Which one provides rights? Individual rights? I don't really care, that's your ideological axiom, not mine.

[wufwugy]

It's absurd because it's not the discussion we're having. We are talking about reality, and then suddenly you start talking about libertopia without informing your fellow participants in the conversation. Making the point about abortion in isolation is misleading and impossible to map onto reality as it stands.

I was discussing a budget constraint model that includes the concept that if somebody is not legally allowed to spend on a part of the budget from a certain revenue source, the person gets past this by reorganizing which revenue sources they spend on which portions of their budget. This makes the type of law that MMM referred to toothless. This applies to both producers and consumers. That was the entirety of my point.

You expanded beyond this with the infinite regression of causality point. It's a good point. I responded to that in kind.

WRT Originalism. It's nonsense. The signer's intended a framework that would be a robust starting place. The fact that they included paths to amendment are testament to the fact that they not only suspected it would be changed but in many cases likely hoped it would be.

I'm not one to say I know what was intended. I know what it says and what they said. It can be the case that the framers intended government to not do welfare and also that that could be changed by others in the future.

Which one provides rights? Individual rights? I don't really care, that's your ideological axiom, not mine.

You said you think I might have a particular belief about rights. I clarified that is not my belief. I went on to describe the concept of rights within the framework of the Constitution, and I added what is as far as I can tell the concept of rights from the majority counter perspective. I finished with a question regarding which concept is more successful at doing what it claims.