What is Liberal?

The way people here talk you'd think the borderline atheists Jefferson and Franklin were the authors of America and the hundred or so other founders of deeper Christian views were negligible.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-22-2005 06:49 AM

All that emotional bluster doesn't help at all. There are reasons why people have the views they do. It might be illuminating to understand the different frames of reference involved. I was interested to see both this thread and yours get proposed, but unfortunately the idea is a big bust as far as clarifying the premises of the different viewpoints in a rational way. Just the familiar emotion-based denunciations as usual.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-22-2005 08:11 AM

Your logic is spurious. A child has the potential to be an adult and IT WILL BECOME AN ADULT UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES. We regard it as a human being in both phases. I will grant that a fetus has a somewhat lesser standing than a living person, and this is reflected in the Biblical laws by the way, but nevertheless it is more than a "potential" human being, it is simply a human being in an early phase of development. It does not change its basic makeup from one phase to the next, it simply grows as all organisms do, unfolding their own character. A sperm cannot grow up to be a child, so its "potential" is not inevitable as the fetus' is, neither can an unfertilized ovum, but a fertilized one can and will under normal conditions. And yes, modern science makes for all kinds of ethical headaches.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-22-2005 08:15 AM

All those things WERE true of the nation for all its prior existence up until the last few decades. Are you saying America was a theocracy until the sixties? The mentality of the country is no longer Christian despite this supposed majority of Christians. We never used to have legal abortion, support for gay marriage, objections to Christian displays etc., and yet we were not a theocracy as you seem to be claiming we must be in such a case. If the majority are Christian, it's interesting that the majority have no say in anything any more as all these emblems of our Christian character are being pulled out from under us.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-22-2005 07:22 AM

My genome doesn't talk.

I reaad 1984 in high school. It is a pretty good book -- I highly recommend it. What I found especially fascinating is the idea of the control of ideas through the control of language. Reading 1984 ended up giving me a new way of listening to the political speeches during the political campaigns, as well as reading the "conventional wisdom" that is presented in the news media.

An excellent description of exactly what the Left is doing these days.

Oh give it a rest Faith, the far right loonies currently in power are every bit as adept, if not more, at doing the same thing.

quote:

---

Well, presumably the Constitution MEANT something which means it had lasting value as written.

---

Well, the Constitution didn't have lasting value as it was written. And this isn't my opinion, this is the opinion of the framers themselves. Read what they said about the Constitution.The Constitution was not some sacred document put onto paper by a group of prophets, nor was it a set of "timeless principles" produced by a set of brilliant political theorists, whatever the current myth says -- the Constitution was a set of political compromises by various political factions that were trying to reach a consensus. This is not disparaging -- compromises made in good faith can be brilliant solutions for the problems at that particular time, but compromises do not have "lasting value".And the framers understood this. They didn't feel that the Constitution they produced was all that fantastic. They felt it was an acceptable starting point, but that it would need to be rewritten when all the bugs became apparent. And they were quite vocal that they felt that each generation will have its own set of circumstances, and that each generation will have its own problems, and so each generation will have to write its own constitution.And the framers were right. The political history of the early republic was one constitutional crisis after another, culminating in the Civil War. The original Constitution of 1786 did not have "lasting value" -- it was insufficient to adequately provide for the governing of the nation as it developed. It needed to be amended and rewritten.And it was rewritten and amended. Unfortunately, not in the way the framers intended. It was be amended and rewritten through interpretation, sometimes by the Supreme Court, and sometimes by consensus of the political actors. I don't like this any more than you do -- I don't like living under a Talmudic government, where we have this sacred document that is interpreted by nine rabbis in black robes. I would much prefer if the citizens took responsibility for their government and amended the Contitution, and even periodically called for a constitutional convention, in order to keep the Constitution up-to-date. But unfortunately, the method of keeping it up-to-date accepted by the majority of this nation seems to be leaving it in the hands of the politicians.

Your comment in this post doesn't seem to help much in this regard.Why don't you make an attempt at clarifying your viewpoint in a rational way? Why is abortion wrong? More to the point, how is it that you determine that a fetus is a human being, having the same rights as you or I?

The point is the framers established rules for changing the Constitution and they are not being followed, they are being circumvented, as you seem to realize. I didn't mean to imply it was set in concrete, only that it supplied the reasonable means for its alteration over time, respecting the principles of MAJORITY rule and the WILL OF THE PEOPLE. That is not what is happening now.

Actually, the constitution and the government created to enforce it, was structured AGAINST majority rule. This is one of the reason this country works so well.The framers were well aware that a country governed by majority rule would see the minority trampled on. It would also lead to mob mentality. Think if majority rule were implemented in the civil rights days, blacks would still be opressed today.The reason we have a REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY is to protect us from majority rule.

I've made my case extremely clearly over and over in the last few hours, and far more rationally than the sorry excuses for reason and logic that are applied in favor of abortion here; shot them down one by one, and the puzzle is why it escapes you, but there's no point in being puzzled by this strange incapacity after a while; I've done the job sufficiently whether anyone gets it or not. It's frustrating, it's insulting but there's no point in making further efforts.My statement about how Orwell's 1984 describes today's leftist misuse of language wasn't "helpful"? If it isn't obvious, simply spend some time observing the way the left uses language. Think about how the terms "rights" and "freedom" are used by the American founders vs. the New Left and Political Correctness. You have to have some intellectual distance to do that though. "Pro-choice" is a language twister, legitimizing murder. I've already made many of these points. "Hate speech" is a prime example of co-optation of the language to an ideology. "Bigot" is a powerful weapon and obfuscator at the same time, another case of co-optation. "Diversity" is a fun one to unpack; it utterly reverses the old meaning of the term. "Multiculturalism" contains a wealth of revisionist doctrine. "Imperialist" was the term of choice in the 60s and it still has its uses for bringing down the West. It may help to know something about the sixties New Left in understanding the context. I haven't seen Michael Moore's film but from all I've heard it's a classic example of tendentious language in the service of Marxist revisionism, which is exactly what Orwell was targeting.

We have both. Majority is always the primary principle. A representative government should reflect the will of the majority if it's truly representative.

It reflects the will of the majority with respect to the minority. The SCOTUS is one body who oversees the descisions made by our elected representatives. As I said, during civil rights, the majority was racist. The SCOTUS protected the minority from the will of the majority.The framers were smart enugh to engeneer this self-correcting mechanisim into the structure of our govt.