Delaware politicsFollow

That's because you're being very selective, and looking at it through a liberal lens.



No. But that's the assumption you've been taught. Some conservatives do. Probably around 25%. And it's not because they are conservatives, but because they are religious and believe it's a violation of their moral beliefs.

Conservatives, as a group, want the decisions about abortion laws to be made at the state level instead of imposed on high from the Federal Government. Do you see how the liberal position is more authoritarian?



No, they don't. First off, DADT was a liberal idea, praised by liberals and gay rights groups when it was passed. Conservatives don't really care one way or the other, but do want a consistent set of rules for all members of the military, not exceptions created based on what group you belong to.

Liberals create groups of people based on identity factors and then pit them against each other. And it's all about control, not freedom.



The liberal point of view is that they should be in charge of deciding how we should live our lives, what we should believe, what we should eat, what we should smoke, what kinds of recreations are acceptable, what sorts of religious beliefs we can hold, what kinds of products we should be allowed to buy, and how much money we should be allowed to keep from our jobs. They believe that they know better than everyone else how a perfect society should be and they fight to move us in that direction, whether we want to or not. The arrogance of the left simply knows no bounds.


They disguise those goals by pretending to care about specific causes. They frame each of those as "helping" some downtrodden group. They don't say "we don't want people to smoke". They instead start a cause about the damage of second hand smoke. They don't say "we want to make people buy our light bulbs". They instead start a crusade about global warming and the need to use "green products". They don't say "we're going to get rid of those silly religious folks". They instead continually expand public schools, so as to make it harder for parents to choose religious alternatives and then make sure that religion is constantly viewed as anti-intellectual in every media outlet they can find. They don't say "We're against people having their own money". They instead demonize people for having "too much" money, and create causes to "help the poor", making people feel like it's an obligation to take money from those who have it in order to provide it to those who don't.


I could list off actions the left does all day long, every single one of which directly infringes the liberties of the citizens of this nation. It's absolutely clear that the core ideological principles of the left involve imposing social order on a public who would naturally choose otherwise. That's authoritarian. No matter how much you've been indoctrinated to agree with the causes they've created, it's still authoritarian. Using government to force a social outcome you agree with is authoritarian. You've just been taught that the ends justify the means and so you don't view it that way.

I don't wonder.

I mean, judging by your last couple posts it's because you're obviously paranoid and delusional.

They believe the issue should be resolved at the state level Joph. Which is precisely what the bit you just quoted says.

My point is that the specific positions aren't as important as the methods being used to apply them. What differentiates conservatives from liberals is not a position on abortion, or poverty, or homosexuality, or education, but the degree to which the highest levels of government should intervene in those things.


As I said, most conservatives are not anti-abortion. But unlike liberals we respect the opinions of those who are and don't act to universally dismiss them. If a state can muster enough votes to pass a strong anti-abortion law, then that's what that state's people want. If another state has very loose abortion laws, then that's what that state wants. I'll repeat the point I made earlier: If the left was anti-abortion, we'd have abortion bans placed at the federal level mandating no abortions in any state of the union. They would take the "right to life" and argue that abortion is a violation of the constitution, and thus it would be imposed on the entire country.

Conservatives don't do things that way. We let the people decide at the level of government at which the people have the most say. You keep failing to grasp that it's the method, not the specific goals. Swap positions and the left would still be using authoritarian means to obtain them. It doesn't matter. Heck. One can argue that the positions of the left are somewhat arbitrary. They could just as easily have chosen to be pro-religion, anti-abortion, and anti-gay. And guess what? If they had, the same people who today argue one side of the issue, would instead be arguing passionately that the bans on abortion, and the imposition of religious instruction in schools, and the prohibition against homosexuality were just as important to the "rights and freedoms of America". And they'd be just as sure that their positions were the rights ones and that everyone who didn't agree with them were horrible people who wanted to infringe the rights of everyone else.


That's because the left uses government power to impose their ideals. Conservatives don't. Conservatives fight to *not* impose ideals.

Because they appeal to me. I know you think that every liberal in the world is an automaton who only does what we are told, but it is possible for us to have individual thoughts and feelings. Abortion matters to me because I am a woman. Same sex marriage and other homosexual rights matters to me because I have friends who are homosexual.



People shouldn't have any say in it, though. I know, that's horrible, right?

Men who made the "State Rights" argument for letting each state decide wither abortion should be legal or not make me steaming mad. I remember the push in the 60's to make abortions legal across the nation and the reasons for Roe v. Wade. It plus slavery and voter rights all are among things that should not be decided at state level for many reasons

So here gbaji is some historical background, that explains why though I would not have had an abortion when I found out I was pregnant with my 3th child though I knew it would be a high risk pregnancy. I used an pro-choice to check facts, as it was the first one that actually gave me a time line and facts that are public record on when abortions were made illegal and overview of how the laws were change in 1/3 of the states before Roe v. Wade. I only gave opinion on why I feel this is an important issue to fight for.

Back between 1967 and 1973 one third of the States had liberalize or repealed their laws which made abortion illegal, which had been written in the mid to late 1800's, the last one being passed in 1910.

So those who could afford the cost of travel to one of the sates were it was now legal during this time, one had a choice wither to safely end the pregnancy or give birth to a child that either they could raise or give up for adoption. Those women who lived in the other 2/3's of the nation and couldn't afford the cost of traveling only had a choice of having an illegal abortion, usually done by an back alley abortionist, hide their pregnancy by living in another community and give the baby up for adoption or raise it themselves. Any woman who wasn't married face public shaming and the prospect of their family abandoning them and a small hope that the father would own up and marry them quickly so they don't have to pretend that the baby was born early.

The biggest problem with letting each state decide either to make abortion legal or illegal was due to location and distance to a state that did allow legal abortions. This was specially a problem for women out west and in the south east, were one may have to travel several 100 of miles to another state, increasing the cost of receiving a medical abortion from a license doctor.

Rode v. Wade gave greater access to having a abortion without the high risk of death due to improper procedures and use of unsterilized equipment. Still there are large sections of the country were women who don't have easy access to transportation, still have no real choice when it comes to wither to end their pregnancy or not. When you add lack of birth control education, the high rate of failure of abstinence-only programs and condoms use, specially in low income areas, far too many children are born to poor teenage mothers. Baltimore did see a decline in underage pregnancies after the City started to promote free birth control in high school clinics, but then we also have very liberal laws that allow girls under the age of 18 to receive birth control without having to have their parents permission.

There are still in my opinion too many laws across the country and at the federal level keeping women from receiving proper education and preproduction health care, so I know there is still work to be done to protect women and the few rights we won since 1920 and getting the right to vote.

first edit to clear up some elnese mistakes.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 10:36pm by ElneClare

Yes. Which means that there was no need for the Supreme Court to massively stretch the bounds of the constitution in order to force the rest of the states to go along. The case robbed us of the public debate and imposed one solution on the entire country. And it was unnecessary.




You are aware that the guy who testified before the court in Roe v. Wade about this has since stated that they simply made up exaggerated numbers to scare people into thinking that the danger from not having legal abortions available was significant. In actual fact, most examinations of real deaths and health problems from pregnancy and/or abortion conclude that legalizing abortion actually increased the total number of fatalities and serious medical complications suffered by pregnant women.

The whole "back alley abortion" thing was a lie and a scare tactic. And it worked really well. Even today, people (like you) continue to insist that there was some epidemic of women dying in their own fluids from botched abortions because abortion wasn't legal in all 50 states. It's simply not true. There was no significant need for the court to rule the way they did. They were lied to in order to make them think there was though.



Except say in California, where it was legal. Look. If you couldn't afford to travel a couple hundred miles to get an abortion, how were you going to be able to afford it anyway? See. The problem is that your argument assumes that we should also fund abortions for people who can't afford them, which is a whole additional can of worms beyond just the issue of legalization.



False. It used incredibly questionable arguments to justify imposing one view of the issue on the entire country. It did so even though there was no actual "need" for a ruling at the time and the fact that a healthy national debate was ongoing, with many states considering legal changes anyway. The process should have gone through local legislatures instead of being commanded from on high by the court.


I guess I just find it incredibly strange that so many people view allowing the citizens of a given city or state to determine their own laws to be authoritarian, but imposing a single set of laws from on high (in this case via court ruling) somehow isn't. I suspect that many of you are confusing the effect of the law itself with the process by which the law is imposed. I'm not talking about what the law says. I'm talking about how you go about getting it passed. Those are two different things.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2010 7:42pm by gbaji

Great! I was responding to people who were contending that this *wasn't* fair because apparently, that 60% wasn't paying enough or something.



Yes. So they'd be hurt far far more by a fair tax than the wealthy would, right? That's all I was saying.




So we can conclude that the top 1% of income earners pay more than their share of taxes, don't they? Yet, they are constantly demonized as though they ought to pay even more. I was responding to suggestions that the system we have *today* is somehow unfairly benefiting the rich. Clearly, it's not. They pay a higher percentage of the total tax than the percentage of the total wealth they possess. Someone's making out on the deal, and it's not them.




Only very selfish people complain about taxes only when they affect them directly. Selfish and short sighted people. If you can't grasp that how much taxes your employer or potential employer pays affects your job prospects, then you aren't thinking the whole thing through. Young/poor people often adopt a mistaken assumption that by being on the positive end of the tax/benefits equation, that this actually benefits them. It doesn't. They're just paying for it in other ways.




I disagree. A whole lot of people complain about taxes long before they reach anywhere near this income range. I suspect it has to do with whether you've figured out that taxes affect you negatively even if you're not the one paying it.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2010 7:04pm by gbaji

But... if we're taking $6,000 off of everyone's income, then wouldn't the percentages really stay the same?

wrong thread.

Edited, Sep 24th 2010 12:35am by Allegory

Thank you. I knew I was missing something.