Are We Nearing Civil War?

[Keith and stuff]

Are We Nearing Civil War?
By Patrick J. Buchanan | June 13, 2017 | 4:48 AM EDT
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/patrick-j-buchanan/are-we-nearing-civil-war

The first half of the article is below. Click on the link to read the second half.


President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down.

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration.

Thus far, it is a nonviolent struggle, though street clashes between pro- and anti-Trump forces are increasingly marked by fistfights and brawls. Police are having difficulty keeping people apart. A few have been arrested carrying concealed weapons.

That the objective of this city is to bring Trump down via a deep state-media coup is no secret. Few deny it.

Last week, fired Director of the FBI James Comey, a successor to J. Edgar Hoover, admitted under oath that he used a cutout to leak to The New York Times an Oval Office conversation with the president.

Goal: have the Times story trigger the appointment of a special prosecutor to bring down the president.

Comey wanted a special prosecutor to target Trump, despite his knowledge, from his own FBI investigation, that Trump was innocent of the pervasive charge that he colluded with the Kremlin in the hacking of the DNC.

Comey's deceit was designed to enlist the police powers of the state to bring down his president. And it worked. For the special counsel named, with broad powers to pursue Trump, is Comey's friend and predecessor at the FBI, Robert Mueller.

As Newt Gingrich said Sunday: "Look at who Mueller's starting to hire. ... (T)hese are people that ... look to me like they're ... setting up to go after Trump ... including people, by the way, who have been reprimanded for hiding from the defense information into major cases. ...

"This is going to be a witch hunt."

Another example. According to Daily Kos, Trump planned a swift lifting of sanctions on Russia after inauguration and a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to prevent a second Cold War.

The State Department was tasked with working out the details.

Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received "panicky" calls of "Please, my God, can you stop this?"

Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.

"It would have been a win-win for Moscow," said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own.

Not in memory have there been so many leaks to injure a president from within his own government, and not just political leaks, but leaks of confidential, classified and secret documents. The leaks are coming out of the supposedly secure investigative and intelligence agencies of the U.S. government.

The media, the beneficiaries of these leaks, are giving cover to those breaking the law. The real criminal "collusion" in Washington is between Big Media and the deep state, colluding to destroy a president they detest and to sink the policies they oppose.

[DamianTV]

We are already in a Civil War.

What is happening right now is that we are quickly approaching the Violence phase of Civil War, as we have many groups of Officials at odds with each other as well as the people at odds with both themselves and their govt.

[jllundqu]

One can only hope. The future of humanity will be decentralization, secession, and people with different ideas going their separate ways. Brexit, California Independence, Texas Secession, Catalonia/Spain, there are many more....

[Pericles]

We are already in a Civil War.

What is happening right now is that we are quickly approaching the Violence phase of Civil War, as we have many groups of Officials at odds with each other as well as the people at odds with both themselves and their govt.

We are just one mag dump away at the needed time and place from getting it on.

[Zippyjuan]

The "civil war" he describes is White House infighting.

[showpan]

Civil war...lol...the battle for Trump was over long before it even started and the neolibs won without even firing a shot. Didn't any of you ever actually read his books or listen to what he was actually saying...lol...Now they are merely purging the white house of anyone who won't declare their "loyalty". Trumpateers still think he's going to make America great again just as Democrats hold onto a party that won't get rid of the Clintons.....lol....it's all a big lie anyway because there is only one party with 2 different colored heads. The illusion of choice is a hoax just as elections are. The proof is in the money that all leads to the same sources. This country will remain divided because Racism, religion, drugs and abortions are more important than a fast talking billionaire who simply handed the country back to the neolibs. The more violence that plays out backed by hidden money sources, the more military style police will be deployed as the sheep demand it while they continue to flood the streets with cheap heroin. They didn't even care how a fake war on terrorism took away their privacy and tax dollars, what makes anyone think they aren't willing to give up whatever freedoms are left too. We are only one or two more attacks away from that and Trump will make sure it happens. Civil war....only in your dreams....while people continue to falsely point fingers at each other, they took this country without firing a shot. We are an occupied nation. Trump and the Neolibs took the whitehouse and sheep roam the streets.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

The "civil war" he describes is White House infighting.


No, he also talks about the media, so-called "deep state," street protestors, etc. I always remember Buchanan talking about a "cultural war."

The article is right there. Nice try with your blurb contrarian posting. Is that a new technique?

[timosman]

No, he also talks about the media, so-called "deep state," street protestors, etc. I always remember Buchanan talking about a "cultural war."

The article is right there. Nice try with your blurb contrarian posting. Is that a new technique?

I think Zippy attended some training during his recent absence. It is also possible this is his final assignment.:D

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

I think Zippy attended some training during his recent absence. It is also possible this is his final assignment.:D

Have you noticed that Zip seems to have adopted CPUd's technique of posting without commenting. Bot?

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

This cultural war talk has been going on for a long while. Difference now, I think, is that social media has heightened it.

[anaconda]

Lucky for the citizens that the government let them keep their muskets and flintlocks. Should match well against the government rocketry, explosives, chemical weapons, attack helicopters, satellite reconnaissance, fighter aircraft, tanks, mobile missile launchers, and ammo stocks.

[Peace&Freedom]

Civil war...lol...the battle for Trump was over long before it even started and the neolibs won without even firing a shot. Didn't any of you ever actually read his books or listen to what he was actually saying...lol...Now they are merely purging the white house of anyone who won't declare their "loyalty". Trumpateers still think he's going to make America great again just as Democrats hold onto a party that won't get rid of the Clintons.....lol....it's all a big lie anyway because there is only one party with 2 different colored heads. The illusion of choice is a hoax just as elections are.

The cultural war is already ending, and the traditionalists have basically won it. Trump was the trailing end of it (as Democrats had lost 1,000 seats at all levels before his campaign started). That's why the entire Deep State establishment has been shrieking and freaking out. Trump's victory stopped the barbarians just as they were at the precipice of turning the Supreme Court into the 9th circuit for generations, canceling the protection of individual gun rights, and permanently locking the US into globalist bureaucracies (from TPP to the Paris Climate accords) that would have ended our sovereign control over those matters, with no ability to reverse it.

With one election we went from the end of pro-lifers ever being able to overturn Roe, to the probability of having 6 or more pro-life Justices in a few years. The gears were already set in motion to sue or prosecute the alternative media into oblivion by criminalizing it as "fake news" or Russian propaganda---but because the "wrong" person won, all those plans were stalled. And there would have been an aggressive full expansion of military intervention to perform regime change in Syria and beyond by this point in an HRC administration, instead of merely limited military strikes or rhetoric. There has been net progress made, in other words, the past few months have been the opposite of a "same as the old boss" scenario.

[CPUd]

http://i.imgur.com/2ft70Zy.jpg

[Zippyjuan]

http://i.imgur.com/2ft70Zy.jpg

Didn't he say during the campaign he would be too busy to play golf- not like that Obama guy?

[CPUd]

373743492151136256
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/373743492151136256

[dannno]

The cultural war is already ending, and the traditionalists have basically won it. Trump was the trailing end of it (as Democrats had lost 1,000 seats at all levels before his campaign started). That why the entire Deep State establishment has been shrieking and freaking out. Trump's victory stopped the barbarians just as they were at the precipice of turning the Supreme Court into the 9th circuit for generations, canceling the protection of individual gun rights, and permanently locking the US into globalist bureaucracies (from TPP to the Paris Climate accords) that would have ended our sovereign control over those matters, with no ability to reverse it.

With one election we went from the end of pro-lifers ever being able to overturn Roe, to the probability of having 6 or more pro-life Justices in a few years. The gears were already set in motion to sue or prosecute the alternative media into oblivion by criminalizing it as "fake news" or Russian propaganda---but because the "wrong" person won, all those plans were stalled. And there would have been an aggressive full expansion of military intervention to perform regime change in Syria and beyond by this point in an HRC administration, instead of merely limited military strikes or rhetoric. There has been net progress made, in other words, the past few months have been the opposite of a "same as the old boss" scenario.

Yep, you can see the deep state scrambling in this very thread.

[jllundqu]

Lucky for the citizens that the government let them keep their muskets and flintlocks. Should match well against the government rocketry, explosives, chemical weapons, attack helicopters, satellite reconnaissance, fighter aircraft, tanks, mobile missile launchers, and ammo stocks.

You're assuming that the vast majority of police and military would be against you. Indeed the opposite it true. Were such a conflict to befall us, the coastal progressives would not prevail. The RINOS would not prevail. The rank and file of the military would not support what you fear.

[Anti Federalist]

Lucky for the citizens that the government let them keep their muskets and flintlocks. Should match well against the government rocketry, explosives, chemical weapons, attack helicopters, satellite reconnaissance, fighter aircraft, tanks, mobile missile launchers, and ammo stocks.

Ummm, yeah.

10,000 guys in sandals with IEDs and AK-47s have had us hemmed up in the ME for over 15 years now.

None of that shit works without fuel.

[showpan]

The cultural war is already ending, and the traditionalists have basically won it. Trump was the trailing end of it (as Democrats had lost 1,000 seats at all levels before his campaign started). That why the entire Deep State establishment has been shrieking and freaking out. Trump's victory stopped the barbarians just as they were at the precipice of turning the Supreme Court into the 9th circuit for generations, canceling the protection of individual gun rights, and permanently locking the US into globalist bureaucracies (from TPP to the Paris Climate accords) that would have ended our sovereign control over those matters, with no ability to reverse it.

Those barbarians are the same people....lol....if you think Trump has stopped anything, you are in denial. TPP and PCA are smoke and mirrors. The only reason the neolibs weren't on board was because they didn't stand to profit like they wanted. They will come up with a more profitable agreement just as they come up with a more profitable replacement for the ACA behind super secret closed doors. At some point, they will go after the guns too. What they say and what they do are 2 different things. Our sovereignty...lol...as we trample on everyone else.



one election we went from the end of pro-lifers ever being able to overturn Roe, to the probability of having 6 or more pro-life Justices in a few years.

Abortion should not even be an issue. You say that is if it's a good thing completely contrary to a Libertarian stance of "it's none of your fucking business"


The gears were already set in motion to sue or prosecute the alternative media into oblivion by criminalizing it as "fake news" or Russian propaganda---but because the "wrong" person won, all those plans were stalled.

No, what has really happened is that now anytime Trumpateers don't agree with anything ANY media reports...they get to label it "fake news" as if to completely debunk it all so the dumbing down of America can continue as business as usual.


And there would have been an aggressive full expansion of military intervention to perform regime change in Syria and beyond by this point in an HRC administration, instead of merely limited military strikes or rhetoric. There has been net progress made, in other words, the past few months have been the opposite of a "same as the old boss" scenario.

We have dropped more ordinance in the last few months than ALL of last year killing significantly more woman and children and ultimately creating more teroorists. BLOWBACK!!! We are now attacking Syrian forces who have ISIS on the run because we fund them through our new bestest greatests allies ever...the fucking Saudi's. We sent ISIS to the Philippines because surely another regime change will happen if we do not get to open our bases back up. We have helped the Saudi's in their quest to silence the only opposition voice of Al Jazeera by denouncing Qutar. We have sent ISIS to Iran...lol.... We have alienated long time allies. Insulted other world leaders. Brought fear of Russia, NK and China back so we can spend over half this nations wealth on another cold war so the "deep state" neolibs can profit even more. The same ol boss is exactly what you have and guess what...the progress that has been made was for the NWO and the complete takeover by neolib warhawks for a military complex that will continue to flood our streets with cheap heroin until the people cry out.....more police please.

[timosman]

Have you noticed that Zip seems to have adopted CPUd's technique of posting without commenting. Bot?

Yup. Zippy in order to stay on the payroll must have allowed the AI to post at least 50% of his comments. CPUd is already at 90%. Let's see how it goes.:cool:

[Peace&Freedom]

Abortion should not even be an issue. You say that is if it's a good thing completely contrary to a Libertarian stance of "it's none of your $#@!ing business"

No, what has really happened is that now anytime Trumpateers don't agree with anything ANY media reports...they get to label it "fake news" as if to completely debunk it all so the dumbing down of America can continue as business as usual.

We have dropped more ordinance in the last few months than ALL of last year killing significantly more woman and children and ultimately creating more teroorists. BLOWBACK!!! We are now attacking Syrian forces who have ISIS on the run because we fund them through our new bestest greatests allies ever...the $#@!ing Saudi's.

Classic libertarian doctrine is to protect individual rights to LIFE, liberty and property. If you let the State get away with legalized child killing, they will likely get away with everything else, so yes, abortion remains a central issue. It is incoherent to assert that it's not other people's business, while having no problem with the federal government making it their business to enforce the same notions on the issue on 50 different states.

The MSM and PC side created the "fake news" meme, not the Trumpsters, so you must mean they were the ones out to dumb the public down. To repeat, a Hillary DOJ was going to be fanatical in joining in suits or prosecutions of the "fake news" alternative media, aka any media the establishment doesn't control.

The approach taken by Trump in Syria is interventionist, yes, but geared towards ending the conflict with ISIS in months, not to carry on open-ended, no exit wars for decades, as Hillary was clearly prepared to do. There is a difference.

[CPUd]

Classic libertarian doctrine is to protect individual rights to LIFE, liberty and property. If you let the State get away with legalized child killing, they will likely get away with everything else, so yes, abortion remains a central issue. It is incoherent to assert that it's not other people's business, while having no problem with the federal government making it their business to enforce the same notions on the issue on 50 different states.

The MSM and PC side created the "fake news" meme, not the Trumpsters, so you must mean they were the ones out to dumb the public down. To repeat, a Hillary DOJ was going to be fanatical in joining in suits or prosecutions of the "fake news" alternative media, aka any media the establishment doesn't control.

The approach taken by Trump in Syria is interventionist, yes, but geared towards ending the conflict with ISIS in months, not to carry on open-ended, no exit wars for decades, as Hillary was clearly prepared to do. There is a difference.

Yeah, he only bombed for 15 minutes, so not really a boondoggle.

http://i.imgur.com/HOAg9Fd.gif

[Zippyjuan]

If a war is civil, does that mean people fight nicely?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SSOWORzw4

[showpan]

Classic libertarian doctrine is to protect individual rights to LIFE, liberty and property. If you let the State get away with legalized child killing, they will likely get away with everything else, so yes, abortion remains a central issue. It is incoherent to assert that it's not other people's business, while having no problem with the federal government making it their business to enforce the same notions on the issue on 50 different states.

The MSM and PC side created the "fake news" meme, not the Trumpsters, so you must mean they were the ones out to dumb the public down. To repeat, a Hillary DOJ was going to be fanatical in joining in suits or prosecutions of the "fake news" alternative media, aka any media the establishment doesn't control.

The approach taken by Trump in Syria is interventionist, yes, but geared towards ending the conflict with ISIS in months, not to carry on open-ended, no exit wars for decades, as Hillary was clearly prepared to do. There is a difference.

No, a fetus that has not been born is not entitled to your interpretation of life, liberty and property. As a matter of fact, a fetus is the property of that woman, not yours. Again, it's none of your damn business and to deny the option places you right along side fascists and dictators. I have no doubt your true intentions are religious in nature. You deny the woman her choice while hypocritically defending the illegal "limited" intervention of another sovereign nation that is killing scores of children. Regime change is the primary goal and your "Hillary" defense is quite simply...very neoliberal of you. Fake news memes are in fact being created by large P&R firms hired by alt right supporters (Trumpsters) in order to "debunk" any negative reporting of the Trump administration. Trump used "fake news" over and over again in his campaign. How typical a neoliberal would try to blame that on MSM themselves....lol...much like blaming the Iranian ISIS attacks on the victims.

[showpan]

Government should be kept out of the matter of abortion

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Libertarian_Party_Abortion.htm


So, why are we attacking forces that are fighting against ISIS.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-idUSKBN18X2JP

We are backing ISIS indirectly through the Saudi's and Qatar.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-a7362071.html

We are in a proxy war with Russia and Iran for regime change in Syria and it's not going to end anytime soon

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/asad-abukhalil/syria-proxy-wars_b_5874488.html


Kock Bros launch new P&R propaganda factory...

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/koch-network-launches-new-pr-firm-n693176

[CPUd]

Hopefully this will bring about world peace.

[lilymc]

No, a fetus that has not been born is not entitled to your interpretation of life, liberty and property. As a matter of fact, a fetus is the property of that woman, not yours. Again, it's none of your damn business and to deny the option places you right along side fascists and dictators. I have no doubt your true intentions are religious in nature. You deny the woman her choice while hypocritically defending the illegal "limited" intervention of another sovereign nation that is killing scores of children. Regime change is the primary goal and your "Hillary" defense is quite simply...very neoliberal of you. Fake news memes are in fact being created by large P&R firms hired by alt right supporters (Trumpsters) in order to "debunk" any negative reporting of the Trump administration. Trump used "fake news" over and over again in his campaign. How typical a neoliberal would try to blame that on MSM themselves....lol...much like blaming the Iranian ISIS attacks on the victims.

Too bad you don't agree with the man who this site is named after.



“I am strongly pro-life. I think one of the most disastrous rulings of this century was Roe versus Wade. I do believe in the slippery slope theory. I believe that if people are careless and casual about life at the beginning of life, we will be careless and casual about life at the end. Abortion leads to euthanasia. I believe that.”

“As an O.B. doctor of thirty years, and having delivered 4,000 babies, I can assure you life begins at conception. I am legally responsible for the unborn, no matter what I do, so there’s a legal life there. The unborn has inheritance rights, and if there’s an injury or a killing, there is a legal entity. There is no doubt about it.”

“Pro-life libertarians have a vital task to perform: to persuade the many abortion-supporting libertarians of the contradiction between abortion and individual liberty; and, to sever the mistaken connection in many minds between individual freedom and the 'right' to extinguish individual life.” (Being Pro-Life Is Necessary to Defend Liberty (http://www.l4l.org/library/bepro-rp.html))

“The right of an innocent, unborn child to life is at the heart of the American ideal of liberty.”

- Ron Paul

The unborn baby is just as much a human being as you and I, simply in a different stage of life. Therefore, abortion is not just a personal choice that involves one person, it involves at least two lives.

[showpan]

"Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a 'right to life.' A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable."
- Ayn Rand .


"no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body" and that therefore the woman is entitled to eject the fetus from her body at any time"
- Murray Rothbard

"The ninth and tenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution do not grant the federal government any authority to legalize or ban abortion."
- Ron Paul


LIBERTARIAN PRINCIPLES VERSUS ABORTION PROHIBITION

1. Individual liberty is the most basic libertarian principle, including as applied to reproduction and abortion. Personhood, and thus individual rights to liberty, exist only after birth when a child becomes self-conscious, capable of cognition and able to engage in purposeful action to affect their environment. The sperm and egg and fetus may be alive, but that does not mean they are persons with rights.
2. A living person’s first responsibility is to themselves. A woman should not be forced to sacrifice her liberty – and even her life – for the biological survival of a fetus which has no equivalent right to liberty. Childbearing risks women’s health and lives and is far more dangerous than legal abortion. Over 300,000 women a year worldwide die during pregnancy or delivery and over 600 in the United States. Some describe this as a conflict of rights; we believe the woman’s rights are far stronger.
3. Every person should be free to defend themselves from something acting forcefully against their liberty. This includes a woman’s right to defend herself against a fetus never wanted, or no longer wanted, within her body. Consent must be ongoing and is revocable. Libertarians recognize women are responsible and rarely exercise their right to late term abortion except under extra-ordinary circumstances. In fact, government restrictions make it harder and more expensive to arrange abortions, resulting in far more later term abortions.
4. The freedom to abort must be contrasted with prohibition of abortion which leads to compulsory childbearing; this is use of a woman’s body as a natural resource and herself as a chattel slave. Some call it “forced birthism.” Forcing women to continue unwanted pregnancies sets the precedent for government forcing any person – male or female – to provide bodily tissue and fluids to help others survive.
5. Only voluntary means of convincing a woman to give birth to child are libertarian. Thus only personal counseling and provisions of private economic aid and/or adoption services are libertarian ways to discourage abortion.

SELF-OWNERSHIP

1. Libertarians believe individuals should be sovereign over their own lives and that no one should be forced to sacrifice for the benefit of others. They believe men and women own their bodies and have rights over that “private property” which other individuals, groups, and governments may not violate.
2. Principles of self-ownership mean one’s reproductive choices are strictly personal. A woman has a right to right to control the pregnancy taking place within her body until the point of birth. We believe women acting voluntarily, without imposed social or legal restrictions, will use good sense in using contraception and, when that fails, in having abortions early in pregnancy.
3. Many libertarians use the analogy of the fetus as a trespasser, a “stowaway” or even a parasite. The woman has a right to eject the unwanted intruder from her property, i.e., her body, in order to preserve her own life and liberty. This is true even if the fetus initially was “invited” but then becomes an “unwelcome guest.”
4. If the state can force a pregnant woman to allow her body, i.e. her property, to be used to service a fetus, it can force any one to do with his or her body or property anything government considers to be of service to others or to the state itself.

SELF-DETERMINATION

1. The principle of self-determination makes individuals free moral agents to determine their reproductive status. Since the woman is a free moral agent with sole dominion over her life, her claim to life is stronger than that of a fetus which has minimal self-consciousness and cognition and cannot engage in purposeful action. The woman’s right to self-determination means the choice to carry the child to term is hers alone.
2. Self-determination means individuals cannot be forced to abide by an onerous contract that makes them a defacto “slave”. Libertarians reject “slavery” contracts. That includes any alleged “contract” with a fetus, a being incapable of making a contract.
3. Women may agree to abortion restrictions in a marriage contract or in order to enter a contractual community. However, their right to self-determination means they are not a slave to that contract and may leave a relationship or a community to seek an abortion.
4. If a woman has not made a child support contract with the father, the ensuing responsibility for the child is hers alone. If there is a support contract and either spouse finds that circumstances make it impossible to fulfill without it becoming a slave contract, the parents should seek mediation or arbitration to change the contract terms.
5. Many libertarians believe it is wrong to carry to term a fetus so deformed that it can never care for itself or live as a truly self-conscious, self-determining person.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT

1. In this issue, as in so many, libertarians believe in the principle that “government is the problem, not the solution”. Overwhelmingly, government laws and regulations have negative unintended consequences, especially when government is prohibiting something that people demand.
2. We reject “states rights” views regarding abortion and support only those “constitutionalist” arguments that comply with libertarian principles. Therefore we agree with Supreme Court arguments in Roe v. Wade which held that a right to “privacy” in abortion could be deduced from: First Amendment freedom of speech, assembly, and religion; Third Amendment freedom from forced quartering of troops; Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; Fifth Amendment freedom from forced self-incrimination; Ninth Amendment protection of “rights retained by the people”; and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Libertarians might add Tenth Amendment protection of “powers retained by the people” and Thirteenth Amendment prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude, of which forced pregnancy is an obvious example.
3. We oppose abortion prohibitionists’ religious or philosophical arguments that support use of the state to force others to adhere to those views. We find particularly offensive any arguments against contraception. Those who consider abortion to be “intentional and pre-meditated murder” even may believe women’s pregnancies should be monitored and all miscarriages investigated by police. As many as 20 percent of pregnancies naturally miscarry, most in the first twelve weeks. Such prosecutions endanger women of child bearing age. And most prohibitionists do call for prosecution, conviction, prison, fines and even execution of women and abortion service providers.
4. Abortion laws and regulations, like most other laws and regulations, only multiply and expand their scope. Through most of history community standards and common law permitted abortion, which typically was done using abortifacient herbs or physical techniques in the first weeks of pregnancy. After medicine became more professionalized, physician lobbies demanded abortion and midwifery be outlawed. The Catholic Church also became active in the issue. After the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision the largely protestant Republican Party decided to use abortion as a wedge issue for political advantage. Between just 2010-2015 the Republican Party convinced seventeen states to pass laws banning abortion after 18 or 20 weeks. Since 2011 restrictive state regulations shut down more than 160 clinics. In 2016 nineteen states passed 60 new abortion restrictions. In the two months after the election of Donald Trump nearly 50 anti-abortion laws were introduced on the state and federal level. Dozens followed in the following months.
5. It is obvious that efforts to outlaw abortion since the 1970s only have encouraged fanatics to bomb and burn abortion facilities and threaten and kill clinic staffers. This has driven many qualified physicians away from providing services.
6. The consequences, intended and unintended, of laws restricting or outlawing abortion are well known because women suffered them during the hundred and fifty years abortion was illegal in the United States. Abortion restrictions greatly increase the number of “late term” abortions as women are forced to raise money to pay for more expensive abortions and go long distances, and even to other states, for the medical procedure. Abortion prohibition creates a black market in abortions, leading to unprofessional abortions and even infection, mutilation, infertility and death. Girls and women who have suffered incest or rape are forced to suffer the trauma of giving birth to an unwanted child. Unwanted children often are psychologically damaged by their mother’s distressed pregnancy. Women prosecuted for abortion-related “crimes” and sent to prison often leave existing children behind to be neglected or abused by relatives or the governmental foster care system. Given the consequences, prohibiting abortion hardly can be called a “pro-life” position.

CONCLUSION

Prohibiting abortion is clearly against libertarian principles of individual liberty, self-ownership, self-determination and limited government. The consequences of restricting and outlawing abortion can be catastrophic for individual women.

Libertarians who want libertarians or the Libertarian Party to remain silent about, or take no position on, issues of reproductive rights and abortion, may not understand the negative consequences of unwanted pregnancies for women. However, they should understand that enforcing these laws, and dealing with the consequences of these laws, only increase the power of government. Government uses abortion as yet one more excuse to intrude on every aspect of our lives.

http://pro-choicelibertarians.net/principles/

[Dr.3D]

How in the world does a woman get an unwanted baby in her womb? Seems she made her decision to have a baby when she allowed someone to inseminate her.

[timosman]

How in the world does a woman get an unwanted baby in her womb? Seems she made her decision to have a baby when she allowed someone to inseminate her.

You can get pregnant this way?:eek:

[Dr.3D]

You can get pregnant this way?:eek:
Shoot, I remember in Sex Ed class back in 6th and 7th grade they told us that.

Must be somebody wasn't listening.

[nikcers]

How in the world does a woman get an unwanted baby in her womb? Seems she made her decision to have a baby when she allowed someone to inseminate her. If people are going to use needles then the government might as well provide them with dirty needles to use and share. I mean you can't legislate morality, so we should just give them dirty needles to use so they can remove themselves from the gene pool.

[Dr.3D]

If people are going to use needles then the government might as well provide them with dirty needles to use and share. I mean you can't legislate morality, so we should just give them dirty needles to use so they can remove themselves from the gene pool.
What does morality have to do with this?

A woman should know how she can get pregnant and make up her own mind as to when that will happen.

There would be no need for abortions if people just used sex for what it was intended.

If they want to play games with the life of a baby, seems like somebody should be defending the baby in all of this. The baby can't defend himself.

[Republicanguy]

No war, just silly behaviour.

[nikcers]

There would be no need for abortions if people just used sex for what it was intended.
So what you are saying is, sex wasn't intended to fun?

[Dr.3D]

So what you are saying is, sex wasn't intended to fun?
I didn't say that, but just remember and be prepared to accept the consequences if you are poking fun and she takes you seriously.

[oyarde]

No war, just silly behaviour.

I am making more arrows just in case .

[nikcers]

I didn't say that, but just remember and be prepared to accept the consequences if you are poking fun and she takes you seriously.
Agreed, although I think intention is always in the eye of the beholder. Take for instance Kalief Browder, he purposely got himself put into solitary confinement. Do you think he intended to get his ass beat by the guards?

[Dr.3D]

Agreed, although I think intention is always in the eye of the beholder. Take for instance Kalief Browder, he purposely got himself put into solitary confinement. Do you think he intended to get his ass beat by the guards?
He probably knew that was a possibility.

[nikcers]

He probably knew that was a possibility.
I don't think its impossible, but I am young enough to remember how crazy my mind was when I was young, I don't know if it was like this for other people but before my brain was grown I didn't perceive my future self as the same person as myself, and I didn't give a fuck about any consequences that the other person had to deal with.

[Dr.3D]

I don't think its impossible, but I am young enough to remember how crazy my mind was when I was young, I don't know if it was like this for other people but before my brain was grown I didn't perceive my future self as the same person as myself, and I didn't give a fuck about any consequences that the other person had to deal with.
Yeah, it's tough being a kid.

Made some bad decisions myself and had to live with them.

[showpan]

There are lots of reasons for unwanted pregnancies including alcohol which is probably the biggest one of all...lol..One of the pills was recalled just this month because the first 4 pills were placebos. Personally I don't view sex as an act of reproduction first. Most people don't and that is the evolution of our species. I also do not condone abortions but will stand by the rights of others to chose. I want the government out of my business period. Through education, the amount of abortions have been steadily decreasing and I think that's a good thing. For those who think of it as a moral issue....such morality is relative to each individual, it is not universal.

[nikcers]

For those who think of it as a moral issue....such morality is relative to each individual, it is not universal. Just thinking what they are doing isn't wrong doesn't make them any more in the right. It just means that you cannot judge them the same way as one who knows right from wrong.

[lilymc]

"Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a 'right to life.' A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable."
- Ayn Rand .

Ignorant statement. A preborn baby is not a “potential" human being, it already is a human being, simply in a different stage of life. That is a scientific fact.

Some quotes from medical textbooks and doctors:


“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.”

Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)

____

“It is the penetration of the ovum by a sperm and the resulting mingling of nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the initiation of the life of a new individual.”

Clark Edward and Corliss Patten’s Human Embryology, McGraw – Hill Inc., 30

____

“….it is scientifically correct to say that human life begins at conception.”

Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard Medical School: Quoted by Public Affairs Council

____

Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., P.h.D. was the first scientist to succeed at in vitro fertilization:

“The zygote is human life….there is one fact that no one can deny; Human beings begin at conception.”

From Landrum B. Shettles “Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence for Life Before Birth” Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983 p 40
____

National Institutes of Health

The government’s own definition attests to the fact that life begins at fertilization. According to the National Institutes of Health, “fertilization” is the process of union of two gametes (i.e., ovum and sperm) “whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the development of a new individual is initiated.”

Steven Ertelt “Undisputed Scientific Fact: Human Life Begins at Conception, or Fertilization”

____

“The first cell of a new and unique human life begins existence at the moment of conception (fertilization) when one living sperm from the father joins with one living ovum from the mother. It is in this manner that human life passes from one generation to another. Given the appropriate environment and genetic composition, the single cell subsequently gives rise to trillions of specialized and integrated cells that compose the structures and functions of each individual human body. Every human being alive today and, as far as is known scientifically, every human being that ever existed, began his or her unique existence in this manner, i.e., as one cell. If this first cell or any subsequent configuration of cells perishes, the individual dies, ceasing to exist in matter as a living being. There are no known exceptions to this rule in the field of human biology.”

James Bopp, ed., Human Life and Health Care Ethics, vol. 2 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1985)

____

“[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being.”

Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2008. p. 2.

____

“Human life begins when the ovum is fertilized and the new combined cell mass begins to divide.”

Dr. Jasper Williams, Former President of the National Medical Association (p 74)

____

“The formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union into a combined cell, or zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual. The penetration of the ovum by the spermatozoon, and the coming together and pooling of their respective nuclei, constitutes the process of fertilization.”

Leslie Brainerd Arey, “Developmental Anatomy” seventh edition space (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1974), 55

____

“Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)… The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual.”

Carlson, Bruce M. Patten’s Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3

____

“Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism…. At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.”

Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943

____

“but the whole story does not begin with delivery. The baby has existed for months before – at first signaling its presence only with small outer signs, later on as a somewhat foreign little being which has been growing and gradually affecting the lives of those close by…”

Lennart Nilsson A Child is Born: Completely Revised Edition (Dell Publishing Co.: New York) 1986

____

“In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, [at conception] the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.”

Kaluger, G., and Kaluger, M., Human Development: The Span of Life, page 28-29, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1974

____

“The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”

Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3

____

“[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed. Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), 2-18:




"no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body" and that therefore the woman is entitled to eject the fetus from her body at any time"
- Murray Rothbard

Even more ignorant. http://i67.tinypic.com/2ikf955.png He acts as if the baby just magically appeared or even worse, was the aggressor against the mother. I'm sorry but the baby did not bring himself into this world. In 99% of all cases, it was the actions of the mother and father that brought the baby into the world in the first place. Sorry Murray, but the child is 100% innocent. Period.

Mr. Rothbard should read this article, from libertarians for life:


Why a Human Embryo or Fetus is Not a Parasite - by Prof. Thomas L. Johnson

a) A parasite is defined as an organism of one species living in or on an organism of another species (a heterospecific relationship) and deriving its nourishment from the host (is metabolically dependent on the host).

b) A human embryo or fetus is an organism of one species (**** sapiens) living in the uterine cavity of an organism of the same species (**** sapiens) and deriving its nourishment from the mother (is metabolically dependent on the mother). This homospecific relationship is an obligatory dependent relationship, but not a parasitic relationship.

a) A parasite is an invading organism -- coming to parasitize the host from an outside source.

b) A human embryo or fetus is formed from a fertilized egg -- the egg coming from an inside source, being formed in the ovary of the mother from where it moves into the oviduct where it may be fertilized to form the zygote -- the first cell of the new human being.

a) A parasite is generally harmful to some degree to the host that is harboring the parasite.

b) A human embryo or fetus developing in the uterine cavity does not usually cause harm to the mother, although it may if proper nutrition and care is not maintained by the mother.

a) A parasite makes direct contact with the host's tissues, often holding on by either mouth parts, hooks or suckers to the tissues involved (intestinal lining, lungs, connective tissue, etc.).

b) A human embryo or fetus makes direct contact with the uterine lining of the mother for only a short period of time. It soon becomes isolated inside its own amniotic sac, and from that point on makes indirect contact with the mother only by way of the umbilical cord and placenta.

a) When a parasite invades host tissue, the host tissue will sometimes respond by forming a capsule (of connective tissue) to surround the parasite and cut it off from other surrounding tissue (examples would be Paragonimus westermani, lung fluke, or Oncocerca volvulus, a nematode worm causing cutaneous filariasis in the human).

b) When the human embryo or fetus attaches to and invades the lining tissue of the mother's uterus, the lining tissue responds by surrounding the human embryo and does not cut it off from the mother, but rather establishes a means of close contact (the placenta) between the mother and the new human being.

a) When a parasite invades a host, the host will usually respond by forming antibodies in response to the somatic antigens (molecules comprising the body of the parasite) or metabolic antigens (molecules secreted or excreted by the parasite) of the parasite. Parasitism usually involves an immunological response on the part of the host. (See Cheng, T.C., General Parasitology, p. 8.)

b) New evidence, presented by Beer and Billingham in their article, "The Embryo as a Transplant", indicates that the mother does react to the presence of the embryo by producing humoral antibodies, but they suggest that the trophoblast -- the jacket of cells surrounding the embryo -- blocks the action of these antibodies and therefore the embryo or fetus is not rejected. This reaction is unique to the embryo-mother relationship.

a) A parasite is generally detrimental to the reproductive capacity of the invaded host. The host may be weakened, diseased or killed by the parasite, thus reducing or eliminating the host's capacity to reproduce.

b) A human embryo or fetus is absolutely essential to the reproductive capacity of the involved mother (and species). The mother is usually not weakened, diseased or killed by the presence of the embryo or fetus, but rather is fully tolerant of this offspring which mustbegin his or her life in this intimate and highly specialized relationship with the mother.

a) A parasite is an organism that, once it invades the definitive host, will usually remain with host for life (as long as it or the host survives).
b) A human embryo or fetus has a temporary association with the mother, remaining only a number of months in the uterus.

A parasite is an organism that associates with the host in a negative, unhealthy and nonessential (nonessential to the host) manner which will often damage the host and detrimentally affect the procreative capacity of the host (and species).

A human embryo or fetus is a human being that associates with the mother in a positive, healthful essential manner necessary for the procreation of the species.

[nikcers]

Yeah, it's tough being a kid.

Made some bad decisions myself and had to live with them.
Ideologies are weird man, we subscribe to these false ideologies all the time. It's okay if the cop murdered someone, he was just doing his job he made a mistake. It's okay if the government takes your hard earned money that's how the government gets funded. The mass delusion isn't that everyone isn't crazy, its the way we split hairs when we call some people more sane then others. At a certain point everybody checks off some boxes on the psychopath checklist.

[lilymc]

"The ninth and tenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution do not grant the federal government any authority to legalize or ban abortion."
- Ron Paul/

This does not negate what I said earlier, so I'm not sure why you're posting it.



LIBERTARIAN PRINCIPLES VERSUS ABORTION PROHIBITION

(Yada yada yada)

http://pro-choicelibertarians.net/principles/


Sounded more like a leftist than a libertarian. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/images/icons/icon13.png Here's something for you to read. (I cut out some parts because it was too many characters to post here.)



I. RIGHTS AND OBLIGATION: A LIBERTARIAN FRAMEWORK

Abortion proponents equate unwanted pregnancy with involuntary servitude and slavery, often framing their arguments with "pro-choice" and other libertarian-sounding rights talk. After all, libertarians support the right to control one's own body, and since 1974 the Libertarian Party's platform has unconditionally supported abortion choice until birth.

Many libertarians, however, find abortion to be contrary to libertarian principles and goals. According to Ron Paul, "Today, we are seeing a piecemeal destruction of individual freedom. And in abortion, the statists have found a most effective method of obliterating freedom: obliterating the individual." 1 Dr. Paul, an obstetrician and a member of Congress (R-TX), was the Libertarian Party's candidate for President in 1988.

The Libertarian Party's "Statement of Principles" itself defends "the right to life." In the past, the platform has said, "Children are human beings and, as such, have all the rights of human beings."2 Are children human beings prenatally? Despite the fact that this is the pivotal question in the abortion debate, the platform is silent.

In response to such shortcomings, Libertarians for Life (LFL) was formed in 1976. As is standard in libertarian discussion, LFL brings a philosophical, rather than a religious or merely pragmatic, perspective to the abortion debate.3 Being libertarian, LFL opposes the use of state power to enforce policies or principles that cannot be supported on the grounds of defense against aggressors. The state should not side with any aggressor at the expense of the victim. If abortion is an evil that violates rights, then libertarians, of all people, should not want the state to defend and protect the evil-doing.

Two tiers of human offspring?

The unalienable right not to be unjustly killed applies equally to all human beings. Day One in a human being's life occurs at fertilization — that is high school biology. If pregnant women are human beings, why not when they themselves were zygotes? A two-tiered legal policy on human offspring that defines a superior class with rights, and an inferior class without rights, is not libertarian.

In her 1963 article, "Man's Rights," Ayn Rand held a single-tier position. "There are no 'rights' of special groups," she said, "there are no 'rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.' There are only the Rights of Man — rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals."4

Rand, whose philosophy of Objectivism helped found today's libertarian movement, was, however, an impassioned abortion choicer. She called "the unborn...the nonliving," and in the same breath said, "One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months."5 Elsewhere, she said "that a human being's life begins at birth."6

Inequality under rights goes against the idea of having rights. This inconsistency leads many to conclude that unwanted pregnancy must be an insoluble clash between the unalienable rights of two people: the child's right not to be killed and the woman's right to liberty. Some libertarian abortion choicers claim there is a solution. They argue that no one has a right to impose unchosen obligations upon others; therefore, even given prenatal humanity, abortion is a permissible escape from slavery. They think Rand supports their view. "No man can have a right," she said, "to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as 'the right to enslave'." 7

Still, Objectivism denies that child support is slavery. In discussing born children, Nathaniel Branden, when he was Rand's closest associate, wrote, "The key to understanding the nature of parental obligation lies in the moral principle that human beings must assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions." He did not explain exactly why we must. Yet he was correct to insist that "the basic necessities of food, clothing, etc.," are the child's "by right."8

Given this right of children, then the "insoluble" clash is solved, and unwanted pregnancy is neither slavery nor involuntary servitude. There may be a clash of needs between parent and child — but not a clash of rights.9 Given personhood, a human fetus has the same right as every innocent person not to be attacked and killed. What is more, since her parents owe her support and protection from harm, she has the right to reside in her mother's womb and take nourishment there.

The non-aggression principle

The unalienable right to life, liberty, and property is, essentially, only one: the right to be free from aggression. This right stems from the obligation not to aggress against anyone; this right and this obligation are opposite sides of the same coin.

Libertarianism does not address morality in general. It addresses only one category of good versus evil: justice versus injustice, non-aggression versus aggression. To violate another's rights is to be unjust. Libertarianism's basic principle is the obligation not to violate rights. This non-aggression principle is the foundation, the sine qua non, of a moral society. We owe others non-aggression. People who commit murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, or fraud, or fail to pay their just debts, are aggressors.

No matter the circumstances, no individual or government may use the sword, except in fair responses to rights violations. Implicit in the non-aggression principle is the right of defense. We have no obligation to allow others to succeed in attacking us before we react. There is a related principle: no one has a right to negligently or intentionally endanger the innocent and then allow the harm to happen. If we endanger others without their consent, we incur a positive obligation to prevent the harm. This might be called the non-endangerment principle: you endanger them — you protect them from the harm.

Non-aggression is an ongoing obligation: it is never optional for anyone, even pregnant women. If the non-aggression obligation did not apply, then earning money versus stealing it and consensual sex versus rape would be morally indifferent behaviors.

The obligation not to aggress is pre-political and pre-legal. It does not arise out of contract, agreement, or the law; rather, such devices presuppose this obligation. The obligation would exist even in a state of nature. This is because the obligation comes with our human nature, and we acquire this nature at conception.

Each of us has this obligation regardless of contrary personal opinions, consensus, or laws. We have it whether we wish to obey it or not. We have it even when others are not able to defend themselves. This obligation can neither be created nor destroyed. It is logically necessary to the concepts of liberty and property.

Nor should we confuse unalienable rights with "legal rights." In an ideal world, legal rights would be concrete applications of the unalienable right to be free from aggression. Unfortunately, legal rights frequently are, instead, grants of special powers and privileges to some at the expense of others.

The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." This assertion means that for government to derive a just power, the power must first reside in the individual. If I consent, my lawyers can derive from me a just power to handle my bank account. But they cannot derive from me a just power to handle my neighbor's bank account, whether I consent or not.

If one does not have a just power, one cannot give it to one's lawyer or to the government. The governed have no just power to aggress, so they cannot give politicians a just power to aggress. Even if 10 billion individuals told their politicians to aggress, the sum of their consents would still be zero. Making an action legal does not make it a right under justice if it is inherently unjust. Legalized aggression is still aggression.

.............

Begging the basic question

Abortion choicers often talk as if abortion is something a pregnant woman does only to herself, as if abortion were a victimless-crime debate. But the charge against abortion is that abortion is homicide, the killing of one human being, or person, by another. Prenatal humanity is the pivotal question in abortion. If abortion were a victimless crime, it should be legal. If it is homicide, then what about the victim? The law must not treat any homicide as if no one were killed.

The most notable evasion of the homicide charge was made by the United States Supreme Court on January 22, 1973. In two cases, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, seven of the nine justices on the Court legalized abortion on demand until birth. To rationalize their decision, they inappropriately invoked the right of privacy — while sidestepping both the moral nature and the rights of the prenatal child.

Writing for the seven, Justice Harry A. Blackmun proclaimed, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins." His explanation for why not was unsatisfactory. He went on to explain: "When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary at this point in the development of man's knowledge is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."10 This admission of intellectual inadequacy on the main objection to abortion — homicide — merely serves to prove that the judiciary had no good reason to legalize abortion.

Even some respected constitutional legal scholars who support abortion choice, such as John Hart Ely, were appalled by Roe. In a 1973 article, he called Roe "frightening"11 and explained why he thought "it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."12

How should courts act when undecided on pivotal questions affecting two parties and when they cannot avoid making a decision? Tossing a coin will not do in such cases. Their only reasonable course is to weigh the possible injuries that they would impose by a wrongful decision either way and then choose to avoid the worst possibility. When a human being's life is on the block, a proper legal system gives the benefit of the doubt to life. This is why even advocates of capital punishment call for stringent proof. If individuals accused of felonies get the benefit of such doubt, why not the beings in the womb?

What possible wrongful injuries should the Roe Court have considered? The pregnant woman allegedly faces a partial and temporary loss of liberty; her fetus, however, allegedly faces the total and permanent loss of life and therefore liberty as well. The answer is obvious. The Court should have decided for life. Instead, the Court wrote that "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."

Interestingly, lack of legal personhood is not necessarily a disqualification for legal protection under current law. For example, eagles and their eggs are not considered persons, yet they have legal protection. In Roe, the Court went beyond a two-tiered view of humanity that perceives human fetuses as inferior to human adults, for it saw human fetuses as also inferior to eagle fetuses.

But legal personhood is no protection when the strong want to subjugate the weak. Many years ago, as Sir William Blackstone wrote, "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law, that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband."13 What Roe did was to suspend the very being and legal existence of the child during pregnancy.

Black people of African descent are called "Persons" in Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution, and they were referred to as persons by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in Dred Scott. But they were "not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizen' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary," Taney wrote, "they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them."14

In 1774, two years before he wrote the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The God, who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."15 Jefferson understood that holding slaves was not right, yet he held them. His position on abortion and when personhood begins may not be known, but his words at least appear to affirm that our lives and rights co-exist.

Confronting the inherent contradiction between freedom and slavery is The Law by Frédéric Bastiat, a Frenchman. Published in 1850, it is now basic libertarian reading. Bastiat asked, suppose a principle "sometimes creates slavery and sometimes liberty?" He replied, "This confusion of objective will slowly enfeeble the law and impair the constitution."16 He also wrote, "We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life."17

Treating "personhood" as a legal privilege is wrong. Unalienable rights presume personhood. Since unalienable rights are pre-legal, so is personhood.18 Personhood is a natural metaphysical fact, not an arbitrary legal artifact. In the end, Roe left the door open to further hearing of when personhood begins, but the Court would rather not come to grips with it. Later, it rejected two cases on when one's life begins that were brought by the fathers of aborted children.19

If the Court could have shown that abortion is not homicide, it would have done so. And that would have resolved the debate, at least for libertarians. Libertarians support the right to privacy. But homicide, the killing of one human being by another, is not a private matter. It is not a simple matter of choice. If it were, then "rights" would mean that the weak have no rights, and libertarianism and the very idea of rights would be meaningless.

II. SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL FACTS OF LIFE:
WHY ABORTION IS HOMICIDE

Biologically, when does life begin?

Why do people say, "Children come into the world at birth," sounding as if storks bring them? Obstetricians know that at conception the woman has already reproduced, that they now have not one but two patients to consider: mother and child. Since a pregnant woman is in the world, her womb is in the world, and so is the fetus in her womb; she has been in the world since Day One — conception. The media reported a case where one twin was born October 15, 1994, and his sister, January 18, 1995.20 What their different birthdays will mark is only the dates each exited the womb.

When does the human being begin life — at least in simple biological terms? Unless abortion and related issues are raised, people generally know that their own lives had a neat beginning at conception.

A human being's growth is a continuum: from zygote, to embryo, to fetus, to newborn, to adult. Such terms do not indicate a series of discrete entities; they are merely useful labels for pointing to different stages of the development of the self-same individual. A frog is not the descendant of the tadpole; frog and tadpole are one and the same animal. The infant does not descend from the fetus; infant and fetus are one and the same individual.

There is a sharp distinction between before and after conception. A gamete, a sperm or an ovum, is a radically different kind of thing from the zygote that results when the sperm penetrates the ovum. By itself, no sperm or ovum has the power to mature into an adult. Gametes that do not unite end up as dead gametes. Those that do unite cease to exist; what exists then is a radically different kind of entity.

Fertilized ova, zygotes, have the power to mature into adults. Still, it is difficult to think that the zygote inside one's mother was "me." But by playing one's life in reverse, as if in a movie, getting younger day by day until we reach Day One, we find no way to identify any day when we were essentially different from the day before — until conception. The moment before, there was no "me." If a different sperm of my father had fused with my mother's ovum, it would not have been me but someone else, a boy perhaps.

Dr. Edmund A. Opitz observed: "Nobel laureate and geneticist Francis Crick has estimated that the amount of information contained in the chromosomes of a single fertilized human egg is equivalent to about a thousand printed volumes of books, each as large as a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica." Dr. Opitz added, "What does this mite of human life accomplish during these first 20 weeks? Our little genius, beginning as a fertilized egg, operating in cramped quarters, poor light and with unlikely materials, takes less than five months to manufacture a brain, plus a few minor organs. Not bad for a beginner?"21

Philosophy: When does personhood begin?

Life, personhood, and rights are separate and distinct subjects. In ordinary conversation, "life," "human life," and "human being" can be used interchangeably with "person" without difficulty. However, when abortion is at issue, they are not necessarily synonymous. Sometimes they are meant in a biological sense, at other times philosophically, and still other times, there is a switching back and forth, often without recognizing there has been a change in meaning.

Biology, a life science, does not delve into either personhood or rights. An inquiry regarding when personhood begins — and, therefore, when rights begin — must turn from biology to philosophy. In philosophy, a more precise label for entities with rights is not "human being" but "person." Libertarian principles do not define "person"; they simply take personhood as a given.

How should we define "person"? A definition that is accepted even by many abortion proponents, especially among libertarians, is that a "person" is an animal with the capacity for reason and choice. This capacity, this rational nature, is what establishes us as beings with the obligation not to aggress.

Given this definition, the argument is: 1) animals with the capacity for reason and choice are persons; 2) human zygotes are animals with that capacity; 3) therefore human zygotes are persons.

Many would respond: Nice syllogism, but in reality, it's impossible for human zygotes to have the capacity for reason and choice. Such skeptics apparently are using one meaning of "capacity" and are failing to notice it has two meanings: 1) root capacity for functioning (a thing's already existing nature, which is there from the beginning of its existence), and 2) active capacity, actual functioning (a right-now demonstration of the root capacity). The meaning of "capacity" relevant to the syllogism — and sufficient for human zygotes to be persons — is 1) root capacity.

Another fact about the nature of personhood can help show why root capacity works, so let's digress to consider it.

Personhood: Developmental or a constant?

Since the human body is a thing that develops and grows, many people assume that therefore, so does personhood. The fact is, however, personhood is not developmental; it's a constant.

If personhood were developmental, then the right not to be killed (commonly called the right to life) would have to be developmental, too. But how can this right be developmental? Think of it this way: A human being cannot be partially killed and partially not killed. To be a person is to have the right not to be killed. This right cannot be put on a scale of degrees; it is an either/or, just as alive or dead is an either/or.

A "developmental" approach to personhood makes no sense. If the so-called "potential person" may be killed at whim, it is simply a non-person. If it is a person, we may not choose to kill it on a whim. A potential, partial, or lesser individual right not to be killed that can be set aside is, in effect, a non-right. A being is a person or not; there is no in-between moral, or even logical, class of beings.

In Roe, however, the Court assumed that there is another category of human offspring: "potential life," which lies somewhere between "non-person" and "person." In the Court's view, with the increasing physical development of human beings comes an increasing moral standing and, therefore, an increasing level of rights, until at some point in our development, we acquire "full rights."

Since human beings do not mature until adulthood, why not permit infanticide? Apparently seeking a time to start applying the brakes, Blackmun wrote, "With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the 'compelling' point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb."22 But what is meaningful? By whose standard? In ordinary language, "viable" means "capable of living or developing in normal or favorable situations." To abortionists, "viable" requires survivability under hostile conditions. Either way, what does viability have to do with what an entity is, or with the right not to be killed? The principle the Court advanced here is that if you need help, you can be killed, but if you can manage, you cannot be touched. Under viability, the more a child needs the womb, the less right she has to stay there.

Moreover, viability is not a stable point. Since Roe, the age at which prematurely born children survive in incubators has been lowered. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "The Roe framework, then, is clearly on a collision course with itself."23 Given current medical technology, we can talk of viability at both ends of prenatal development. Zygotes in petri dishes and embryos in cold-storage are clearly living outside the mother's womb. Indeed, if artificial wombs are eventually perfected, many children might not ever reside in a woman's body.

.........


Two meanings of "capacity"

Let us return to "the capacity for reason and choice." Abortion choicers often insist that "capacity" refers only to the second meaning given above — to the ability to demonstrate reason and choice right now. If this were its only meaning, then what about people generally recognized as persons, such as people who are profoundly retarded, people in coma, stroke victims, and the senile? They might not be able to reason or choose at a given moment. In fact, under such a definition, we all have grounds to worry if we sleep too soundly.

Most abortion choicers probably oppose equating fetuses with comatose and retarded humans. "[W]e all agree that they [retarded humans] are persons and we cannot justifiably kill them," the Association of Libertarian Feminists took care to say.26

Everyone begins life "mentally incompetent." But if life-long "mentally incompetent" humans are persons, why not humans whose incompetence is temporary? Immaturity is no libertarian test for rights. The Libertarian Party platform states: "Individual rights should not be denied [or] abridged...on the basis of...age."27 It has also opposed "government discrimination directed at any...artificially defined sub-category of human beings."28

True, in one sense, capacity means a power that can be demonstrated right now. In another sense, however, capacity means a power that needs time to "warm up" or be "repaired." Think of a computer program. It might have to undergo 167 steps before it can perform the task it was designed for. Still, we say this program has the capacity to function right from the beginning.

Capacity can refer to a being's natural, underlying power to actualize reason and choice. When a talent is undeveloped, it is still an actual talent. More strongly, even when one's capacity for reason and choice is undeveloped, one still has an actual capacity, an actual power. Human beings begin life with the capacity to actualize reason and choice; this capacity is in our genes. To kill human beings early in life is to destroy their capacity for reason and choice as well as their lives.

However much we change during life, our rational nature, our personhood, is a constant. Such a position is Aristotelian. Consider what Ayn Rand, an admirer of Aristotle, saw fit to quote approvingly when reviewing John Herman Randall's book on him. Once again, it shows what views Rand held when not addressing abortion:


"Objecting to 'the...[view that] "anything may be followed by anything,'" Professor Randall writes: 'To such a view...Aristotle answers, No! Every process involves the operation of determinate powers. There is nothing that can become anything else whatsoever. A thing can become only what it has the specific power to become, only what it already is, in a sense, potentially. And a thing can be understood only as that kind of thing that has that kind of a specific power; while the process can be understood only as the operation, the actualization, the functioning of the powers of its subject or bearer.' "29

Making judgments and free choices are activities of persons. If only the present capability to do these things counted, then personhood would be, in the words of one abortion choicer, "a state humans grow into, perhaps months or even a few years after birth."30 Most abortion choicers, however, are not willing to admit even the mere possibility that choice on infanticide is a logical consequence of their argument.

No sperm or ovum can grow up and debate abortion; they are not "programmed" to do so. What sets the person aside from the non-person is the root capacity for reason and choice. If this capacity is not in a being's nature, the being cannot develop it. We had this capacity on Day One, because it came with our human nature.

In other words, to be an actual person, human beings need do nothing but be alive. We were all very much alive at conception. One-celled human beings are not "potential persons"; they are persons with potential. When do human beings become persons? The answer is, human beings do not become persons; human beings simply are persons from Day One.31

.........


Who should decide?

Abortion choicers try to get around the intellectual chaos on their side by saying, "Let the woman decide." If one is free to decide whether another is a person, then whoever is strongest will do the deciding, and we all had better be thinking about our own prospects.

Besides, treating personhood as a matter of personal opinion can lead to strange results. Imagine two pregnant women debating prenatal personhood. One says that her fetus was a person at conception. The other says hers will not be a person until birth. Both fetuses were conceived the same day. As the women debate, a drunk driver hits them, killing both fetuses. What wrong has the driver committed? If it is a mother's choice whether her fetus is a person, then to be consistent, we would have to say that the death of one fetus is a homicide but the death of the other is only, say, destruction of property. This is absurd, of course, for the two fetuses were, objectively, the same kind of being when alive.

When unwanted, she is a fetus; if wanted, suddenly she is a baby or child. Ms. magazine, for example, referred to the fetus as a baby at least twenty times in a one and one-half page article.37 A woman who miscarried does not say she lost her fetus. She says, "I lost my child," or "I lost my baby." A libertarian who supports abortion missed a meeting because of what he called "a death in the family." His wife had miscarried at five months.

III. MORE FACTS OF THE SITUATION:
APPLYING LIBERTARIAN PRINCIPLES TO THEM


What about the woman's right to liberty?

To John Hart Ely and Laurence Tribe, "The point of Roe v. Wade was not that the Supreme Court had too little 'scientific' information about when life began or what a fetus was, but rather that the Government...could not override the rights of the pregnant woman." They added, "It was a question of rights, not an issue of biology or a matter of definition that Roe resolved."38

Is prenatal homicide defensible on the level of rights? Only if childhood dependency is a capital offense against innocent parents, or if parents have an unalienable right to abandon their children and let them die.

Before considering why the child has the right to be in her mother's womb, let us examine what one abortion choicer39 asserts is "the best philosophical defense of the pro-choice position." It is philosophy professor Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous article, "A Defense of Abortion," written in 1971, two years before Roe.40 The kind of argument Thomson made is invoked by many abortion choicers, including libertarians.41

Calling an unwanted fetus an "unborn person" (for argument's sake only), Thomson attempts to prove the fetus an aggressor and her mother a victim. In the most famous part of her article, Thomson analogizes unwanted pregnancy to the case of a violinist with a life-endangering kidney problem. To save his life, his friends hook him up to a sleeping stranger, who clearly had not volunteered to be used as a dialysis machine. It is the stranger's right to decline to be a good Samaritan. If the stranger unplugs the violinist, who then dies, Thomson argues, it is not the stranger's fault. Similarly, Thomson argues, so do pregnant women have a right to unplug their children.

Her argument fails for various reasons, the most dramatic being that it is not a defense of abortion as it actually happens.42 As Thomson herself recognizes, there is no right to secure the violinist's death, to slit his throat. The aborted child is not merely "unhooked" and allowed to die.

..........


Another is agreement, which raises such questions as: "Who agreed and who did not, and to what?" Even if the father and the mother agreed to conceive a child and succeeded in doing so, a third party is affected: the child. Where is the child's agreement? In agreements between parents regarding children, the child should be a third party beneficiary, not a victim. An agreement has no standing against someone affected by the results of the agreement but who did not consent to it. The parties to an agreement cannot waive the non-aggression right of non-consenting people. Newly conceived children are not parties to any agreement. They certainly could not have been prior to conception.

Thomson failed to raise, let alone answer, critical questions. For example, what if it were the stranger's fault that the violinist needs life support? Actually, Thomson's violinist analogy serves as a good example of the concept of chutzpah. One illustration of this Yiddish term is a mugger who shouts, "Help! Help!" as he beats up his victim.45 Contrary to Thomson, the zygote is not an attacker.

Defending the child's rights

When a child is conceived, the child is helpless. This can put the needs of parent and child in serious conflict. But it does not put their rights to be free from aggression in conflict. But what about the mother's needs in such difficult circumstances as, for example, when her life is in danger? This issue is a "life-boat" problem. In such situations, everyone's life is at risk, but none of them is at fault. Because nobody has a right to attack the innocent, nobody caught in a dire circumstance has a right to attack any of the others. The mother's right to self-preservation does not turn her child into a mere "thing" that she may destroy at will. The doctor's goal should be to save both patients, mother and child, but they can only do the possible. The goal of premature deliveries is to help both. The goal of an abortion, however, is a dead fetus.

In any event, hard cases should not obscure fundamental issues. If abortion per se were not aggression, then hard cases would not raise the issue of rights. How we deal with others and their rights when we are in grave difficulties is a true test of whether we hold a one- or a two-tiered view of humanity.

What abortion choicers are saying is that in any pregnancy, the woman's liberty is paramount. However, liberty is not paramount. Life and liberty are equal rights; both are merely forms of the same basic right: the right to be free from aggression.

Because most abortion choicers recoil at a "right" to a dead fetus, they prefer to use euphemisms for abortion, such as "pro-choice," "pregnancy termination," and "reproductive rights." Interestingly, some libertarian abortion choicers insist they favor only an "eviction" abortion: the child is removed intact and alive; if she does not survive, that is too bad. Some try to deal with conflicting needs by noting the common understanding of the non-aggression principle: Although we may not aggress against one another, we have no positive obligation under rights to help one another.

The eviction argument, however, overlooks at least two important distinctions: 1) killing versus letting die, and 2) who is causally responsible?

Killing versus letting die

Letting die at least does not shut off the possibility of survival, however theoretical and remote this possibility might be. For example, in hysterotomy abortions (which are similar to Caesarian deliveries), children have emerged alive.

In the real world, however, the evictionist's position gives only lip service to the moral distinction between intentional killing and letting die, and those who give such service are playing let's pretend with somebody else's life. Most abortions are intentionally destructive, not simple "letting die" procedures. Abortions do not merely place children in grave danger of death. In fact, the entire point of abortion is intentional destruction of the fetus.

In theory, we could enact a law that limits abortion to intact removal. On the surface, such a law would seem to reflect the non-aggression principle. When the cord is cut at birth, the parents can passively abandon their child by walking away. Eviction, however, is not passive; it is an active intervention against the child. Both attack and negligence can be forms of aggression.

Nonetheless, the heart of the eviction argument must still be addressed. What if the mother could leave right after conception as easily as the father? With in vitro fertilization, everyone can walk off without anyone attacking the child. If they do walk off, they put the child, of course, in harm's way. Have parents a right to leave children unattended in hazardous situations? If their children die, is that simply regrettable, like famine victims dying because no one gave them assistance? For parents, as regards obligations, is there no difference between their own children and the children of strangers?

To abandon one's child in the petri dish is similar to putting her on board one's airplane and then jumping out, leaving her on the plane to crash, and doing all this without the child's consent. Perhaps a stranger with a suitable womb will happen by who is willing and able to adopt her. However, what if this does not happen?

Interestingly, even most abortion choicers consider gross neglect and outright abandonment to be criminal behavior. When children have medical emergencies in the middle of the night, most parents do not go back to sleep saying, "So what if my child might die? I have the right to control my own body, don't I?"

It is true that the means a woman must use to mother her child before birth are quite different from the means she uses after birth. But what difference does it make, in principle, whether her child is in the crib or in her womb? When she nurses her infant or carries her in her arms, she is using the same body she used to carry that same child to term.

As even most abortion choicers know, parent and good Samaritan are not analogous roles. Parents owe their immature children support and protection from harm. Why are they obligated? Did we have the right before birth to be in our mother's womb?

Causation: Who is mugging whom?

A child's creation and presence in the womb are caused by biological forces independent of and beyond the control of the child; they are brought into play by the acts of the parents. The cause-and-effect relationship between heterosexual intercourse and pregnancy is well-known. The child did not cause the situation. The parents are the causative agents of both the pregnancy and their child's dependence.

Who among us could have chosen not to begin life, or not to inhabit our mother's body when conceived? Inhabiting the mother's body is a direct byproduct of the parents' volitional act, not the child's. What the prenatal child does, she does by necessity. This necessity is also a direct byproduct of the parents' volitional act.

No one survives without certain necessities of life and very immature children cannot obtain them without outside help. Childhood dependency is a fact of nature, like the liquidity of water. Abortion choicers know that the stork does not drop children on our heads. Yet, many insist, parents are not responsible for "accidental" pregnancies. This assertion raises two meanings of "responsible for": 1) being the source or cause of a consequence, and 2) being accountable to others for the consequence, owing them.

One cause of the child's existence, the union of a sperm and ovum, is natural. But it is dependent upon an antecedent cause, the human action that enables the two cells to come together. Nature does not do its part without human action. What parents cause to be is not just a child but a child with needs; it is a package deal. A child would not be in need of sustenance and in need of help if she did not exist.

The stork did not do it. The fact of parental agency refutes any assertion that the child is a trespasser, a parasite, or an aggressor of any sort.

Since a prenatal child is where she is because of her parents' actions, she can be said to be acting as her parents' agent — which places her alleged "guilt" squarely on her parents' heads. We might even say that the mother aggressed against herself, except that, by definition, harming others can be aggression; harming onself is not.

To conceive and then abort one's child — even by mere eviction — is to turn conception into a deadly trap for the child. It is to set her up in a vulnerable position that is virtually certain to lead to her death. Conception followed by eviction from the womb could be compared to capturing someone, placing her on one's airplane, and then shoving her out in mid-flight without a parachute. The child in the womb is like a captive; she is in the situation involuntarily, and she cannot fend for herself. A captive is not trespassing on the captor's property, by definition. (Evicting or abandoning one's child cannot be regarded as releasing her from captivity, because this does not terminate childhood inability.)

When abortion choicers liken the parent to the good Samaritan, they talk as if feeding one's own children is charity. It is a kindness to give charity, because nobody has an obligation under unalienable rights to do so. Giving to charity is a matter of choice, by definition. A good Samaritan is not a causative agent of another's need for support; good Samaritans are chance bystanders. In procreation, parents are not chance bystanders; they are active, cooperative participants, even when children are conceived in vitro. Conception and pregnancy is a common and foreseeable risk of even careful sex.

Under libertarian principles, parents have the same negative obligation towards their children that they have to strangers: non-aggression. The question is whether it follows that even given that parents are responsible for (caused) their child's existence, are the parents also responsible (accountable) for her support? Some abortion choicers claim that when parents let their child starve to death, they have not violated any positive right of the child and committed aggression. They are mistaken.

The non-endangerment principle

Basically, non-aggression is a negative obligation, like do not commit robbery. If we commit robbery, we owe the victim restitution and compensation. But we can also incur positive obligations even if we have not done harm. For example, a contract is not an initiation of force, yet by merely signing the contract, each party to it now owes each other performance. There is no aggression — until and unless a participant fails to perform.

Parental obligation does not arise out of contract, tort, the mere fact of conception, or out of the biological relationship of parent to child. It arises because the parents voluntarily (even if they did not intend it) gave themselves a life-or-death control over their child. To withhold their support is to endanger the child. Parents owe support because they have no right to use their control to cause danger and then let the harm happen.

The two central aspects to conception that are relevant to rights are: 1) It is voluntary on the parents' part, and not on the child's; the situation is imposed on the child. 2) The parents' life-or-death control over the child is total; it is they who have established and control the entire situation. If the child dies due to their withholding or withdrawal of life support, they have not merely let her die; they have killed her.

There is a distinction between risky behavior and threats of harm. Life is a series of risks, and things do happen. We could compare parental obligation to lighting a barbecue in our backyard. Normally, lighting the fire presents only risks inherent in any controlled fire. But if the fire begins to spread to our neighbor's property, it now presents a threat of harm, and we caused the danger. If their property catches fire, we caused the harm as well as danger; we have initiated force. Since we may not initiate force, we may not threaten others with harm and then let the harm befall them.

Therefore, although the non-endangerment principle is essentially negative, it contains a positive obligation proviso: if we endanger innocent people without their consent, we must protect them from the harm because of our obligation not to aggress.

The child's right to be in the mother's womb

Some abortion choicers say that life is a gift to the child by the parents, a gift that does not bind the parents. A "gift," however, implies the option to refuse to take it, and beginning life is not an option for the child. Her life is thrust upon her, as is her need for life support and her inability to fend for herself. Conception does not make a child worse off (or better off) than before, because the child does not pre-exist conception. But she is created vulnerable to harm.

The parent-child relationship is unique as a situation; it is the only relationship that begins when one side causes the other side to exist. But parental obligation is not unique as an obligation — the obligation to act justly towards others is a universal, rather than a special, obligation.

Parental obligation is simply a concrete example of the obligation to not aggress. By taking care of their child in the womb, the parents prevent an aggression that would happen if they were, instead, to tear her away from the life support she gets there.

The nature of childhood and growing maturity indicate a built-in boundary: when the child can fend for herself, the parents have fulfilled their obligation to her. Thereafter, things are in her hands.

Once again, however, in the case of procreation, the parents' power over children begins as being total. Therefore, if through their negligence or intent harm results to the child (because of the child's loss or lack of sustenance), then as a matter of practical fact, the parents have caused the harm. Thus, parental obligation does not stem from harm done; it stems from our obligation to avoid causing the innocent to be harmed.

Furthermore, threats of harm can be considered, in themselves, as forms of aggression. The kind and degree of prevention that is owed, however, depends upon the kind and degree of threat that is imposed. When we drive a car, at the minimum, we must stay alert and drive carefully. When people drive drunk, we have no obligation to wait until they hit someone before we take them off the road. Even before things happen, the obligation to drive responsibility is there. In this case, the essentially negative obligation that drivers have requires them to take positive preventative steps.

Conception is not, in itself, endangerment or a threat of harm; it is a normal, natural fact of life. Pregnancy automatically protects the child against the possible dangers of an unsupportive environment. Yet by conceiving a child, parents give themselves a life-or-death power over her, and they get this control without her consent. Children are "captives" of their parents.

If parents willfully use their powers as "captor" to put their child in harm's way (not feeding her, for example), they caused the danger without her consent. If the child is harmed (starves to death), they also willfully caused the harm without her consent. Even simple eviction from the womb initiates force and violates the child's rights (in most abortions, however, the child is first dismembered, or poisoned, then evicted).

Many men want abortion legal because it enables them to escape their responsibilities to help support their children. Thanks to our human nature, all of us are quick to hold others accountable for their actions, while none of us wants to be held accountable for our own. But "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" does not mean that we may escape our obligations by killing our creditors.

Rather than abortion protecting parents from slavery, it imposes slavery upon children. It forces children to be more than good Samaritans; it requires them to die to serve another's purpose. The right to control one's own body, however, prohibits the choice to kill or abandon one's child. For the prenatal child, the mother's womb is home; this is where she needs to be — and this is where she has the right to be.

http://www.l4l.org/library/abor-rts.html

[anaconda]

You're assuming that the vast majority of police and military would be against you. Indeed the opposite it true. Were such a conflict to befall us, the coastal progressives would not prevail. The RINOS would not prevail. The rank and file of the military would not support what you fear.

The rank and file military has demonstrated decades of allegiance to their order givers. Nor will they sacrifice their pay check and health care. The soldiers NEVER follow the Constitution. They follow the banker controlled bureaucrats in D.C., and the controlled media narrative.
They will be against us until it is way too late in the game.

[anaconda]

Ummm, yeah.

10,000 guys in sandals with IEDs and AK-47s have had us hemmed up in the ME for over 15 years now.

None of that $#@! works without fuel.

Hemming up is part of the globalists' strategy. Like Korea & Vietnam. They have plenty of fuel.

[showpan]

Hemming up is part of the globalists' strategy. Like Korea & Vietnam. They have plenty of fuel.

Keynesians rely on perpetual war for the transfer of wealth and never ending profit. That's why we just let them drive on by.....lol

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-13/video-emerges-us-allowing-isis-fighters-escape-safely-syria

[H. E. Panqui]

No, a fetus that has not been born is not entitled to your interpretation of life, liberty and property. As a matter of fact, a fetus is the property of that woman, not yours. Again, it's none of your damn business and to deny the option places you right along side fascists and dictators. I have no doubt your true intentions are religious in nature. You deny the woman her choice while hypocritically defending the illegal "limited" intervention of another sovereign nation that is killing scores of children. Regime change is the primary goal and your "Hillary" defense is quite simply...very neoliberal of you. Fake news memes are in fact being created by large P&R firms hired by alt right supporters (Trumpsters) in order to "debunk" any negative reporting of the Trump administration. Trump used "fake news" over and over again in his campaign. How typical a neoliberal would try to blame that on MSM themselves....lol...much like blaming the Iranian ISIS attacks on the victims.

...your posts on this thread are some of the best thinking i've seen on any board...republicans and democrats are waaaaaaaay more alike than different as to the most important issues: massive, long-standing monetary fraud, foreign interventionism, etc..

...too bad the miserable republican and democrat peckerheads couldn't eliminate/cripple themselves in this 'civil war' and leave the decent, intelligent people behind...

[AuH20]

875128340192960512

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

The concept of a "cold civil war" is an interesting one and something I've been mulling over for the past year or so. I don't think it'll turn hot unless the massive number of consumerist distractions is limited for some reason or we reach some Malthusian limit on resources. A post-industrial society waging a civil war is something I have to see to believe.

[AuH20]

The concept of a "cold civil war" is an interesting one and something I've been mulling over for the past year or so. I don't think it'll turn hot unless the massive number of consumerist distractions is limited for some reason or we reach some Malthusian limit on resources. A post-industrial society waging a civil war is something I have to see to believe.

Bond market blows up. Country is unable to borrow going forward and in essence, finance it's vast responsibilities. Immediate 30 to 35% cuts across the board are needed, but the politicians return to their favorite form of abuse: taxation. Government is forced to tax in an even more heavy-handed fashion, despite the choking effects of hidden inflation in particular sectors. I speculate the country would be burning in a few months.

[r3volution 3.0]

The concept of a "cold civil war" is an interesting one and something I've been mulling over for the past year or so.

A cold civil war is essentially what democracy is anyway.

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

Bond market blows up. Country is unable to borrow going forward and in essence, finance it's vast responsibilities going forward. Immediate 30 to 35% cuts across the board are needed, but the politicians return to their favorite form of abuse: taxation. Government is forced to tax in an even more heavy-handed fashion, despite the choking effects of hidden inflation in particular sectors. I speculate the country would be burning in a few months.
There might be rioting in that case, but a civil war is something else. The most violent group in the Trump era, by far, is Antifa. They're perfectly happy to "bash the fash" and hit people with bike locks and ancom flags when they live in cities like Berkeley (which is right near my hometown), where the police rarely hold them accountable for their actions and the mayor is on their side. That doesn't make them a paramilitary group. To say that they're unprepared for a civil war is a massive understatement. They're LARPers, academics who like the mystique of playing revolutionary on the weekends and the kudos they get from their fellow collective members, but they aren't warriors. I predict more leftist violence in the future, but this thing has a ceiling unless there's an incoming depression of apocalyptic proportions.

[acptulsa]

Bond market blows up. Country is unable to borrow going forward and in essence, finance it's vast responsibilities going forward. Immediate 30 to 35% cuts across the board are needed, but the politicians return to their favorite form of abuse: taxation. Government is forced to tax in an even more heavy-handed fashion, despite the choking effects of hidden inflation in particular sectors. I speculate the country would be burning in a few months.

Either that, or the people stop using the FRN and find other media of trade. Then the FRN becomes completely worthless overnight, at which point there is no reason for the things not to be printed until they outnumber the leaves on the trees. And the debt is paid off, and the people do not suffer for it because they aren't like Zimbabweans and they don't feel compelled to sink with the currency.

Does that lead to civil war? Only if the Federal Reserve remains in control of the military, which it currently sends about the world in defense of the Petrodollar.

[Krugminator2]

There might be rioting in that case, but a civil war is something else. The most violent group in the Trump era, by far, is Antifa. They're perfectly happy to "bash the fash" and hit people with bike locks and ancom flags when they live in cities like Berkeley (which is right near my hometown), where the police rarely hold them accountable for their actions and the mayor is on their side. That doesn't make them a paramilitary group. To say that they're unprepared for a civil war is a massive understatement. They're LARPers, academics who like the mystique of playing revolutionary on the weekends and the kudos they get from their fellow collective members, but they aren't warriors. I predict more leftist violence in the future, but this thing has a ceiling unless there's an incoming depression of apocalyptic proportions.

They just physically attacked a reporter from a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch in Australia.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anUyzZzz4Q0

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

They just physically attacked a reporter from a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch in Australia.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anUyzZzz4Q0
Yeah, they're a bunch of violent degenerate scum. But they're not a paramilitary. It might devolve into 1970s "Days of Rage" style terrorism (and arguably, already is), but they haven't the resources, the competence or the temperament to wage a revolutoonary campaign.

[AuH20]

Yeah, they're a bunch of violent degenerate scum. But they're not a paramilitary. It might devolve into 1970s "Days of Rage" style terrorism (and arguably, already is), but they haven't the resources, the competence or the temperament to wage a revolutoonary campaign.

Neither did the terrorist organizations in the ME, but their 'benefactors' showered them with training and resources.

[tod evans]

Let the cities burn.

[AuH20]

Let the cities burn.

Let the cities purify themselves. Unnatural living needs to meet an unnatural end. I'm starting to sound like R'as al Ghul, but he is right.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPncg5CBwhc

[showpan]

Let the cities burn.

Yes, let them burn. The sheep need a wake up call.

[AuH20]

Yes, let them burn. The sheep need a wake up call.

A great big heaping of reality that has been denied for most of their lives. Many will drown, but those that fight to the surface will be forever revitalized. These comments may come off as mean spirited and harsh, but this is the typical cycle that defines mankind. Struggle leads to personal growth. Personal growth leads to success. Success leads to complacency. Complacency leads to decadence and eventually the cycle comes full circle.

[CPUd]

Let the cities purify themselves. Unnatural living needs to meet an unnatural end. I'm starting to sound like R'as al Ghul, but he is right.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPncg5CBwhc

What would a "purified" city look like?

[AuH20]

What would a "purified" city look like?

Less populated after it tore itself apart. The envy and delusion that was used to build it in the first place, would be unleashed asymmetrically.

[CPUd]

Less populated after it tore itself apart. The envy and delusion that was used to build it in the first place, would be unleashed asymmetrically.

Which part of the population would remain?

[AuH20]

Which part of the population would remain?

Roving gangs I would assume. Maybe some self-sufficient communities mixed in.

[AuH20]

If you're starving, you don't have time to worry about the patriarchy or 25 different genders. First world problems aren't even problems. They are byproducts of a mental disease created from leisure based aimlessness.

[CPUd]

If you're starving, you don't have time to worry about the patriarchy or 25 different genders. First world problems aren't even problems. They are byproducts of a mental disease created from leisure based aimlessness.

Who is starving in your purified city?

[AuH20]

Who is starving in your purified city?

Anyone living within the city limits who depends on trucking. :)

[CPUd]

Anyone living within the city limits who depends on trucking. :)

Trucking is discouraged in a purified city?

[AuH20]

Trucking is discouraged in a purified city?

There is no money in it. Plus, it's risky.

[showpan]

This is what a purified city looks like

http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/61/70/70/13078039/3/920x920.jpg


https://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.359896.1438016027!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_900/image.jpg

[showpan]

oh wait...those were pics of Syria....sry, here is Chicago.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/40/cc/6f/40cc6f7f19c709db9d32e158c27ab3bb.jpg

New York

https://lebbeuswoods.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/slumsny-1a.jpg

Detroit

http://craigswilson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/onewhat-would-you-do.jpg

[AuH20]

875208205126705152

[H. E. Panqui]

[...hopefully before they damn everything to hell, republicrats will take an honest look at the hellish monetary order under which most of humankind is/has been en$laved, abu$ed...but maybe that's too much to ask of republicrats...at least it always has been...] ;)

[asurfaholic]

There are lots of reasons for unwanted pregnancies including alcohol which is probably the biggest one of all...lol..One of the pills was recalled just this month because the first 4 pills were placebos. Personally I don't view sex as an act of reproduction first. Most people don't and that is the evolution of our species. I also do not condone abortions but will stand by the rights of others to chose. I want the government out of my business period. Through education, the amount of abortions have been steadily decreasing and I think that's a good thing. For those who think of it as a moral issue....such morality is relative to each individual, it is not universal.

I disagree.

Without a common standard of right and wrong, then there is no measure of morality. You can't claim that morality is not universal, because it is. What is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. It is absolutely universal. You can rob a bank and tell yourself that it's right for this reason and that reason, and justify it with this reason and that reason. But at the end of the day, you robbed a bank, and stealing is wrong. You can't rob banks. What is individual is the choices you make in your own life but those come with consequences. Morality is absolutely universal.

[thetruthhurtsthefed]

I think Zippy attended some training during his recent absence. It is also possible this is his final assignment.:D

so glad to see other ripping on zippy. i used to do it way back and was scolded. good to see people finally see through him

[pcosmar]

Are We Nearing Civil War?

There is nothing civil about war.

[jllundqu]

Large portions of America have become hopelessly weak and dependent on government dole. Most people on the coasts wouldn't last 24 hours in nature.

I'm reminded of a couple pearls of wisdom:

From bondage to spiritual faith << America circa 1700+>>
From spiritual faith to great courage, <<America Circa 1776>>
From courage to liberty, <<America Circa 1791+>>
From liberty to abundance,
From abundance to selfishness,
From selfishness to complacency,
From complacency to apathy,
From apathy to dependency,
From dependency back again to bondage << YOU ARE HERE

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cy2XPPUXcAACD43.jpg

[Anti Federalist]

Large portions of America have become hopelessly weak and dependent on government dole. Most people on the coasts wouldn't last 24 hours in nature.

I'm reminded of a couple pearls of wisdom:

From bondage to spiritual faith << America circa 1700+>>
From spiritual faith to great courage, <<America Circa 1776>>
From courage to liberty, <<America Circa 1791+>>
From liberty to abundance,
From abundance to selfishness,
From selfishness to complacency,
From complacency to apathy,
From apathy to dependency,
From dependency back again to bondage << YOU ARE HERE

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cy2XPPUXcAACD43.jpg

And there is really nothing more to it than that.

+rep

ETA - And it wouldn't even be a question of full on immersion into nature most brutal that they would not survive.

They would not survive at a 1917, one hundred years back, level of technology.

[jllundqu]

And there is really nothing more to it than that.

+rep

ETA - And it wouldn't even be a question of full on immersion into nature most brutal that they would not survive.

They would not survive at a 1917, one hundred years back, level of technology.

Agreed. You take the modern metrosexual male out of his urban habitat and instruct him (it?) to fend for itself to survive and most would simply curl up and die.

[CPUd]

What will happen to these folks when their disability checks stop coming?

http://i.imgur.com/TqVLgzU.jpg

[Tywysog Cymru]

http://img07.deviantart.net/c9ad/i/2014/137/e/d/if_modern_anarchists_fought_in_spain__part_1__by_r ednblacksalamander-d7irpe5.jpg

[Anti Federalist]

There Will be More

https://ericpetersautos.com/2017/06/15/there-will-likely-be-more/

By eric - June 15, 2017

Violence is, unfortunately, fungible.

As this society becomes more and more officially violent, it is probable that unofficial violence will also increase. In fact, it is almost a mathematical axiom. It is also one not comprehended by those most responsible for initiating the process.

Police and politicians seem baffled by the growing disenchantment with their class. They seem to expect people to behave toward them with respect and deference no matter what they do – by dint of the fact that what they do is Official and Legal.

Why are politicians – left and right – increasingly despised by reasonable people? Could it have anything to do with the fact that they will not leave people alone? That all they do – at great expense (to us) and with great pomposity – is decree how we will be allowed to live, what we must do and what we may not do? Most of these things being precisely none of their business to so order?

But they believe that it – that everything – is their business, which endows them with an effrontery so great they’ve lost all of the normal restraints that bind ordinary people. We have arrived at a point in our history that absolutely nothing is off the table, beyond the grasping control of these professional grifters – which is what they are. These are not people who earn an honest living by free exchange of value for value, as most of the rest of us do. These are people who take vast sums of money and then dispose of vast sums of money – none of it theirs by right.

They do so with an entitled insolence that is insufferable to those from whom the funds are mulcted. The worst part of it being that the mulcted are rendered legally defenseless against these outrages. A law is passed, an order given – and they must “stand and deliver,” as the old saying goes.

If one had a neighbor who behaved this way, one would bar the neighbor from one’s property and – if there was no alternative – defend oneself against such a violent busybody.

But what defense is there against the political class?

The Vote?

That is like trying to plug a leaky roof with sheets of copy paper. At best, the rivulets will temporarily lessen. The rain won’t let up.

Instead of protecting our rights, politicians spend their time gutting them, turning them into conditional privileges at best – to be further conditioned (or rescinded) at their pleasure. Nothing of ours is safe. Not our money, not our property, not our freedom to act and live as we see fit. There is no line over which these professional disposers of other people’s lives and property and liberties will not step as they are held back neither by ordinary human decency or legal restriction.

They have become a ruling caste, as entitled and arrogant as their feudal analogs.

The glib violence which inheres in their every act and statement has become so much a given that they hardly notice it anymore. When a new “plan” or other such is presented, the fact that what is being suggested involves more compulsion and violence, that people will have no choice, is never even mentioned. The discussion is increasingly centered only on the supposed merits of the “plan” – and alternatives to the “plan.” That is to say, other “plans.”

Resentment grows.

The average honest wage-earner in the productive economy now “owes” his Lord(s) more than a Medieval serf owed his Lord. The typical tax exaction – when one includes the income tax, the Social Security taxes (15 percent off the top for the self-employed), the taxes on their property and so on – approaches half of every dollar they earn. The burden has become so extreme that most people must now earn two incomes to support one family and work until they are too old to continue working. The oasis of financial security recedes ever farther into the distance, never to be reached.

The productive class would like to be left alone – would like for the mulcting to cease.

Meanwhile, the client class (their ranks swelling with Millennial Marxists) demands ever-more-mulcting for their unearned benefit, which the politicians are happy to oblige as they receive payment for their services in the form of ever-increasing power.

(And it is from here that the most heated rhetoric is coming from. The shooter in VA didn't do this to preserve freedom or beat back tyranny. He did it because he was angry there was not enough tyranny, he demanded more government, more taxes, more intrusion into our lives by government and more confiscation of people's wealth. And there are millions more just like him in this country and billions more around the world. If we, we meaning the loosely defined "liberty movement" do not seriously address this, through secession and separation, we will be overwhelmed and sunk by sheer numbers alone. - AF)

Social resentment swells.

As it does, more overt violence becomes necessary to keep the pressure cooker’s lid clamped in place.

Enter the Praetorians. Or what is styled law enforcement.

It is no accident that this term – which is brutally honest – has become the preferred one. Nor that these enforcers of the law wax brutal. Behave toward the citizenry as occupying soldiers, barking orders and expecting – demanding – immediate submission.

Resentment of this bullying is also increasing.

Which has the effect of justifying a kind of doubling-down by the enforcers – whose mental state is becoming exactly like that of an occupying army dealing with threatening partisans. A soldier of the Werhmacht and veteran of the drang nach Osten would understand completely the fearful bleat of “officer safety” eructed by the enforcers of the law.

More distrust. Dislike morphing into hatred, barely suppressed. On both sides.

It is none of it good.

And it is going to get worse.

Because violence is fungible.

[Origanalist]

http://img07.deviantart.net/c9ad/i/2014/137/e/d/if_modern_anarchists_fought_in_spain__part_1__by_r ednblacksalamander-d7irpe5.jpg

That's not an a anarchist. It's a social justice warrior..

[Tywysog Cymru]

That's not an a anarchist. It's a social justice warrior..

That's one of the Antifa-style left-wing "Anarchists."

This comic was actually made by an Ancom criticizing his own movement.

[r3volution 3.0]

I'm starting to sound like R'as al Ghul

Or any number of demented communist revolutionaries:


The Hussite movement, led by Jan Hus, was a pre-Protestant revolutionary formation that blended struggles of religion (Hussite vs. Catholic), nationality (popular Czech vs. upper-class and upper-clergy German), and class (artisans cartelized in urban guilds trying to take political power from patricians). Building on the previous communist KGE movements, and especially on the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the ultra-Taborites added, with considerable enthusiasm, one extra ingredient: the duty to exterminate. For the Last Days are coming, and the Elect must go forth and stamp out sin by exterminating all sinners, which means, at the very least, all non-ultra-Taborites. For all sinners are enemies of Christ, and "accursed be the man who withholds his sword from shedding the blood of the enemies of Christ. Every believer must wash his hands in that blood." This destruction was of course not to stop short of intellectual eradication. When sacking churches and monasteries, the Taborites took particular delight in destroying libraries and burning books. For "all belongings must be taken away from God's enemies and burned or otherwise destroyed." Besides, the Elect have no need of books. When the Kingdom of God on Earth arrived, there would no longer be "need for anyone to teach another. There would be no need for books or scriptures, and all worldly wisdom will perish." And all people too, one suspects. The ultra-Taborites also wove into the reabsorption theme a return to the alleged early condition of Czech communism: a society lacking the sin of private property. In order to return to this classless society, determined the Taborites, the cities, those notorious centers of luxury and avarice, must be exterminated.


The ultimate ideal of Babeuf and his conspiracy was absolute equality. Nature, they claimed, calls for perfect equality; all inequality is injustice; therefore community of property is to be established. As the Conspiracy proclaimed emphatically in its Manifesto of Equals — by one of Babeuf's top aides, Sylvain Marechal — "We demand real equality, or Death; that is what we must have." "For its sake," the Manifesto went on, "we are ready for anything; we are willing to sweep everything away. Let all the arts vanish, if necessary, as long as genuine equality remains for us." ...Above all, the French Revolution must be "completed" and redone; there must be total upheaval (bouleversement total), a total destruction of existing institutions so that a new and perfect world can be built from the rubble. As Babeuf called out, at the conclusion of his own Plebeian Manifesto, "May everything return to chaos, and out of chaos may there emerge a new and regenerated world." ...As Gray comments, "what is desired is the annihilation of all things, trusting that out of the dust of destruction a fair city may arise. And buoyed by such a hope, how blithely would Babeuf ride the storm."


...But if this communism is admittedly so monstrous, a regime of "infinite degradation," why should anyone favor it, much less dedicate one's life and fight a bloody revolution to establish it? Here, as so often in Marx's thought and writings, he falls back on the mystique of the "dialectic" — that wondrous magic wand by which one social system inevitably gives rise to its victorious transcendence and negation; and, in this case, by which total evil — which turns out, interestingly enough, to be the postrevolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and not previous capitalism — becomes transformed into total good, a never-never land absent the division of labor and all other forms of alienation. "Stein forecast that communism would attempt to enforce egalitarianism by wildly and ferociously expropriating and destroying property, confiscating it, and coercively communizing women as well as material wealth. Indeed, Marx's evaluation of raw communism was even more negative than Stein's." The curious point is that while Marx attempts to explain the dialectic movement from feudalism to capitalism and from capitalism to the first stage of communism in terms of class struggle and the material productive forces, both of these drop out once raw communism is achieved. The allegedly inevitable transformation from the hell of raw communism to the alleged heaven of higher communism is left totally unexplained; to rely on that crucial transformation, we must fall back on pure faith in the mystique of the dialectic.

https://mises.org/library/karl-marx-religious-eschatologist


Citizens who were living in Cambodia cities were imagining their happy, peaceful and prosperous lives under the new ruler until the Khmer Rouge soldiers entered Phnom Penh and started firing into the air as signal to leave the town. The soldiers forced around two million Phnom Penh residents, including over one million wartime refugees, into the countryside. There was no exception for the sudden evacuation. The young, old and sick, even pregnant were compelled to join the evacuation. Many pregnant women died while giving birth and many children became separated from their parents. Furthermore, Thousands of the evacuees died on the road because the condition was very inadequate. There were no proper medical services, medicine and food. . Within a week, the people of Phnom Penh and other cities that had been controlled by Khmer Republic government were moved to rural areas to do agricultural work. During the evacuation, The Khmer Rouge told people that American was going to bomb Phnom Penh, so they have to leave. But, this wasn't true. In October 1977, Pol Pot said that the evacuation was to break up an "enemy spy organization". Khmer Rouge activated the Evacuation of cities system in order to turn the country into a nation of peasants and workers in which corruption, feudalism, and capitalism could be completely uprooted. The Khmer Republic government felt that cities were evil and that only peasants in the country side were pure enough for their revolution

http://historyjyhb.weebly.com/evacuation-of-the-cities.html

And others

As Rothbard observed, the destruction proposed by these people was fairly straightforward.

The method by which utopia was supposed to arise from the rubble...

...rather less clear.

[AuH20]

Or any number of demented communist revolutionaries:







https://mises.org/library/karl-marx-religious-eschatologist



http://historyjyhb.weebly.com/evacuation-of-the-cities.html

And others

As Rothbard observed, the destruction proposed by these people was fairly straightforward.

The method by which utopia was supposed to arise from the rubble...

...rather less clear.

Jefferson spoke very clearly about the entrenched corruption that was synonymous with city life. Cities epitomize the beating heart of the state from which mob tyranny generates:


"The mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body," Jefferson wrote. Though Jefferson partied in Paris and had a hand in shaping Washington D.C., he thought cities were dens of corruption and inequity that would spoil the young American republic.

He told James Madison: "I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get plied upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."


As far as the Khmer Rouge was concerned, their destruction of the city denizens was focused on eliminating intellectuals. But from what I gather, there isn't much intelligence to be found inside the city limits of many metropolises. :)

[r3volution 3.0]

Jefferson spoke very clearly about the entrenched corruption that was synonymous with city life.

Jefferson was, in that respect, a child of the enlightenment, of Rousseau, who bought into the romantic myth of the noble savage: i.e. wrong.

His contempt for the mob is perfectly sensible, but it ought to have expressed itself as hostility to democracy, not civilization.

[lilymc]

I disagree.

Without a common standard of right and wrong, then there is no measure of morality. You can't claim that morality is not universal, because it is. What is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. It is absolutely universal. You can rob a bank and tell yourself that it's right for this reason and that reason, and justify it with this reason and that reason. But at the end of the day, you robbed a bank, and stealing is wrong. You can't rob banks. What is individual is the choices you make in your own life but those come with consequences. Morality is absolutely universal.

I completely agree. +rep

[tod evans]

Or any number of demented communist revolutionaries

So 'Da-Commies' and 'Da-Rednecks' agree that cities should go..

Who's that leave but the leeches?

[AuH20]

875531615027331072

[Origanalist]

That's one of the Antifa-style left-wing "Anarchists."

This comic was actually made by an Ancom criticizing his own movement.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCcYw6EXkAEeoG7.jpg

[showpan]

I disagree.

Without a common standard of right and wrong, then there is no measure of morality. You can't claim that morality is not universal, because it is. What is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. It is absolutely universal. You can rob a bank and tell yourself that it's right for this reason and that reason, and justify it with this reason and that reason. But at the end of the day, you robbed a bank, and stealing is wrong. You can't rob banks. What is individual is the choices you make in your own life but those come with consequences. Morality is absolutely universal.

A cat chases down a mouse and violently rips it's head off. The cat says..."oh yeah baby, gonna get me some"
To the cat, this is perfectly normal behavior and morally accepted not only in kitty land, but also humans who welcome this act.

A mouse, minding it's own business stops to take a shit in a back yard when suddenly a cat mercilessly pounces on it and rips it's head off out even though the cat is fed premium canned food by it's owner.
To the mouse, this is completely immoral, cannibalistic, cruel, murderous and just plain evil. Cats are evil.

Morality is relative to either the cat or the mouse.

EXODUS 21

7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

This once was morally acceptable to most of the world now although is still probably practiced somewhere. It is obviously not universal since by today's standards, this is morally unacceptable. It us relative to the time periods

You can rob a bank and tell yourself that it's right for this reason and that reason, and justify it with this reason and that reason. But at the end of the day, you robbed a bank, and stealing is wrong

We invaded a sovereign nation killing scores of civilians and in by doing so, we destroyed their banking system and replaced it with a Rothschild bank all over lies. To more than half of the people of this nation, we did not rob this bank or steal the peoples money that was in there, we "liberated" them and installed a democratic government even though we are a republic....lol....So for more than half of the people of this nation, this was morally acceptable. Obviously it was not morally acceptable to the many rebels (terrorists) we have now created who would love to set off a dirty bomb in one of our cities accepting it as completely moral in their revenge for killing so many of their woman and children. Kill or be killed. It is a question of relevance depending on who's side you are on.

Not only do people disagree about moral issues, but that terms such as "good", "bad", "right" and "wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth conditions at all; rather, they are relative to the traditions, convictions, or practices of an individual or a group of people and the era in which they live.