:doh ---> A graphic representation of what I literally did upon reading that last sentence.
You basically just argued that all killing should be legal (at least among those "some people"), since making only immoral killing illegal would be regulating morality.
In fact, most people who argue against "regulating morality" are not anarchists, but rather libertarians/miniarchists. These people believe those regulations which should exist should only be those which defend people's rights - right to life (murder is thus illegal), right to property (theft is thus illegal), etc.
In any case, murder is far more objective than "immoral killing". It's basically all killing except for certain specific exceptions, such as self-defense and war. Abortion does not fit any of these exceptions.
I didn't argue that at all. What you have called the last sentence, was actually the third to last sentence, Dav. The
actual last sentence directly contradicts everything you said above. Allow me to restate it:
BTW, IMO, murder is not always immoral, but that's another discussion entirely.
I think that one can commit murder (the illegal killing of a human) while still acting in a morally correct fashion. The fact that the murder is in fact moral does
not mean I feel it should be legal to commit said act of murder.
For example, a child molester is convicted and serves out his sentence and is released form person. At this point the father of the molested child hunts down the child molester, tortures him in an excruciating fashion and the murders the child molester.
The father of that child, in my eyes, acted in a morally correct fashion. There is
nothing about that father's actions I would personally call immoral.
But I also believe should be illegal for that father to do so. I believe that some moral actions are worth the consequences.
The exceptions most people make that decides when a killing should be illegal is typically related to
I guess I'm sort of with you there. Though it gets progressively harder to enforce these laws as they apply to an increasingly smaller area, since people have more chances then to just go to another town to get their abortions. But I do think that governments get more efficient and are better at representing their people as they cover a smaller area.
It gets
easier to enforce the
laws as they apply to smaller areas. What gets increasingly difficult is forcing people who may live in an area to abide by those laws while they are physically in
other areas.
A woman
can go to another town and get an abortion. I have no problems with that. The people of the anti-abortion region have achieved their goal of living in an abortion-free region. If they want to try and extend their goal to other, my stance is "tough ****".
The same is true in reverse. If people in pro-abortion regions want to extend their goal of having abortion available within their region
outside of their region, my stance remains "tough ****".
Not so big on this one. The majority shouldn't be able to vote rights away from the minority - and yes, such laws would be at the cost of the minority, since you can't "outlaw free speech", only certain expressions of speech, which in this case the majority wouldn't like. The Bill of Rights was put there for a reason.
The part in bold is what I find interesting. I would argue that
every law infringes upon another person's rights to
some degree.
This is because I have a different view of "rights" than most people do.
I believe it is a natural born
right to do whatever the hell you want, even to take rights away from others. Laws exist for the
sole purpose of adding
consequences to the exercise of certain innate rights.
For me, there exist two types of rights: Freely exercisable rights and
unfreely exercisable rights.
The standard used by many people to distinguish between these types of rights is that when the exercise of one right
ncessarily infringes upon another person's
ability to exercise their rights which
don't infringe upon other people's rights, it will, more often than not, fall into the unfreely exercisable rights category and will thus be infringed. Examples include the right to kill (which, when exercised, necessarily infringes upon another person's right to life), the right to steal (which, when exercised, necessarily infringes upon another person's right to property), etc.
These rights are, by their very nature, rights that cannot be exercised without infringing upon another's rights and are therefor highly regulated rights. But they are not
always universally infringed by the laws. There are cases when exercising these rights are construed as justifiable by the law (example: killing in self-defense is a time when exercising the natural right to kill someone is deemed as justifiable, and is therefore not infringed by law in most places).
So in essence, I am of the belief that
all laws infringe upon rights. I also believe that this is unavoidable in a structured society (which I feel is better than an unstructured anarchistic society).
But in order to allow people the highest degree of freedom possible, and the ability to exercise their rights as much as possible, localizing these regulations and allowing all areas
For the most part I agree. But consider this: what if, in a free election, the majority in a town decided that nobody was allowed to leave the town? By your standards, there wouldn't be anything wrong with that.
In my worldview, yes, such authoritarianism would have it's place. But I also believe that taking such action would be suicidal for any local region that is not
entirely self-sustaining.
I think that any such law would, by it;s nature, end the ability for people to enter the town with goods and/or services as these people would be trapped. It's only possible to achieve under the condition that the town becomes gated with border guards and by preventing anyone who enteres form leaving again to tell of the situation.
Eventually, an embargo would occur caused by surrounding regions deciding not to aid such a town. The town would starve or be thrust back to the middle ages.
Their choices would be the cause of their demise. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes."
Also not so big on this one, though I can't really articulate exactly why.
I wouldn't really expect you to be big on that one, to be honest. Hell, I'm not big on that one myself. But if it existed in a region other than my own, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
My guess is that it would have a similar final effect to the above scenario regarding the vote to force people to stay in the town and would eventually lead to the town's ultimate destruction.
Except that there are universal morals. Killing, for example, with certain exceptions (which, granted, vary place to place), is pretty much universally condemned everywhere. Same with theft. It is also universally agreed that selflessness and altruism are virtues. It's generally agreed that these morals have some evolutionary value in preserving the species, so it makes sense that they are embedded into our psychology.
The part in bold essentially proves that there
is no universal morality. If there was, the holocaust simply could not have happened. As long as non-universal exceptions can exist, they will be manipulated to include what other people would consider immoral.
That is not to say that there is no such thing as an action that is always immoral or moral. There may exist a higher power that does in fact dictate what is and is not moral, and is taking account of times when we do things that we believe are moral that it feels are immoral and will eventually punish us for.
But it is my belief that is such a divine being exists and has a set-in-stone moral code of it's own, it has not made such a code universally
adhered to by humans (as evidenced by the sheer variety of morality that exists in the world). Essentially, all humans can do is try to achieve their own "best approximations" of this divine moral code.
Since a person's immortal soul may very well be riding on their adherence to this divine moral code, and nobody can claim that their approximation is, without a shadow of a doubt, an exact duplication of the divine moral code, it is best to allow as much variation as possible in extant moral codes in order to give everyone a chance to appease said divinity in the way that they think is best.
Which is what I think you essentially agreed with regarding the following quote:
That's not to say all morality is universal, though. Or to say that even universal morality should be enforced at the Federal level; even though we all agree on them, it should be up to the state and local level to decide what punishments they deserve.
I think we are agreed that such regulations should be localized, although I'm even somewhat aversive to extending this power to the state level, but that would still be preferable to the federal level for me.
I agree... sort of. They are enforcing their view that abortion is not (or, rather, should not be) murder onto the population; usually, this means enforcing their view that the fetus is not a person. But I'm not sure whether to categorize that as a moral view. It's more of a... semantic view. I think the same thing of gay marriage: it is a semantic, not moral, issue.
My contention would be the impetus for the smantical argument is based in their own morality.
That's an interesting perspective. There are parts of it I agree with, others not, but mostly I'm not exactly sure what to make of it.
The parts in bold remind me of what my wife said the first time I pulled down my pants in front of her. :lol:
Joking aside, I understand your reaction. If there is one thing I'm pretty certain of regarding my way of viewing the world, it's that it falls pretty far outside the norm. Because of that, I think my "ideal" is pretty impossible to achieve, even impractical.
But I'm not daunted by the fact that it can never happen in reality. My views are what they are. This is what
I think is the right way to do things. The fact that it couldn't happen in reality doesn't change my mind that it would be the best approach.
Instead, I focus my attention on trying to get as close to that goal as possible.
But what I think the poll was asking was this: if your locality (town or whatever) was voting on whether or not abortion should be legal, how would you vote?
I read the poll as being about views hanging to be in favor or against abortions. Nothing about legality and illegality. Essentially, I'm closer to ambivalent regarding abortion than I am to being in favor nor against abortion.
In my locality, I'd try to argue that any vote on the matter should be limited to the women in the area. Whatever they decide would be fine with me, regardless of what that decision was.
