Our morality comes from our feelings and our beliefs. Without feelings and beliefs, nothing is wrong. We may add reason on top of that, but you can't ground morality in pure reason. This is why philosophers who reject tradition, and moral intuitions, keep coming back to defending paedophilia. "Yes, but why is it wrong"... is a great line of questioning, but ultimately the answer is "because I feel that it is". Very few people actually want to live in a society where feelings and beliefs aren't imposed on other people with criminal penalties. Such a society would be a chaotic, amoral, nihilistic mess. The only question is which feelings and which beliefs.
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The Repubs use the word as an epithet and a scare tactic. If you ask Americans whether they support (or would if they had the chance) Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, universal health care, free public education, affordable college, a strong social safety net, etc., etc., the number for "yes" would be overwhelming. But call it "socialism" and they shudder ("mah freedumbs!"). What the Repubs are calling socialism is what used to be the mainstream Hubert Humphrey Democrat platform. Newt Gingrich has famously said he would like to "restore" America to the pre-FDR era, and that's the direction we're headed.
Segnosaur
Penultimate Amazing
No, what it means is that the Republicans want to use scary words who's meaning they are distorting in order to convince their voters to vote for them, because if voters actually looked at their policies the republicans would never gain power.
So they want to avoid the Democrats possibly maybe in theory hypothetically wanting to establish some of utopia run by experts/bureaucrats causing oppression, so they vote for the republican party, which DEFINITELY wants oppression (witness their abortion policy which takes away women's rights, or their militarization of the police)...
Given a choice between a hypothetical abuse of power by the Democrats, and a very real abuse of power by the Republicans, I think I'd take the hypothetical.
Those are certainly definitions, there is no Academie Francaise imposing a single correct meaning though. After 200 years, the meaning is how the word is used.
Are a relatively small group of self described socialists on the fringes of the Democrat party the arbiters of what is and isn't socialism?
Is there some group of people that has a right to give words meanings, and some who do not?
American society never became an "amoral nihilistic mess" in the 50 years that abortion was legal and regulated. What it is has become now is a nation where a woman's legal rights, criminal exposure and risks to life and health change when she crosses a state border.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
But that's not what is happening here. We're granting rights to not-yet-beings because of a particular religious belief over other religious and secular beliefs. The Constitution says that's a no-no, but the current Supreme Court is letting it happen anyway.
Just a side note that I feel this argument is garbage, and I see it a lot on here. It is a liberal fantasy that only Christians are not enthusiastic about relaxed abortion law.
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Sure, "do you want free ****" always has overwhelming approval when you ask the question in the absence of some kind of discussion of the costs and consequences incurred by giving the free **** away. In many ways this is one of the fundamental issues with democracy in that it creates incentives for groups in power to find client groups that they can offer free **** to that they have appropriated from other groups and society turns into a game of competing to be one of the client groups.
I don't think there is any possibility of things heading to pre-FDR. Government is too big, and too many people have become dependent on it. You can't unwind these things.
Anyway, it is no more inappropriate to use "socialism" in the way Republicans do than it is to use "fascist" in the way Democrats do.
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lobosrul5
Philosopher
Seems that SOME Jews and Muslims are pro-choice.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...on-law-mission-help-religious-group-rcna35812
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/26/us-muslim-advocates-weigh-in-on-abortion-rights-battle
Religious teachings are well-established, and most religions, and even most Christians, would not prohibit abortion. And even evangelicals supported the right to choose as recently as the '70s. The evangelical opposition to abortion is part of a larger right-wing, anti-democracy, anti-social freedom movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_abortionhttps://
www.huffpost.com/entry/how-evangelicals-decided-that-life-begins-at-conception_b_2072716
The point remains that one religious sect should not be able to impose its views on the whole of a secular, egalitarian society.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Arguments from incredulity are actual garbage. Facts don't care about your feelings, as they say.
I didn't say "only". That's a strawman, which is also a garbage argument.
What I'm saying is based on history and statistics.
And yet other Western nations have no trouble funding the protection of their citizens' basic needs.
No, the constitution doesn't say "no no". People have moral intuitions. Those intuitions are necessarily informed by the cultural traditions they are raised in. You have an intuition that these are "not-yet-beings", other people's intuitions say different.
The meaning was clearly implied, as it always is around here. Perhaps you should rephrase your allegation if you are not pinning it on Christians, or contending that it is just a matter of religious belief.
The meaning was clearly implied, as it always is around here. Perhaps you should rephrase your allegation if you are not pinning it on Christians, or contending that it is just a matter of religious belief.
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
Which is why it is best left up to the choice of the individual. Those who don't like abortions are not required to have them.
Suddenly
No Punting
Calling it "free" is begging the question, really. I guess well poisoning as well.
We are talking about distributing the benefits of participating within the bounds of a society. Framing returning some of those benefits to people to whom they do not actively flow as giving them "free ****" is just a way to stack the deck and ignore their contributions while implying their demands are frivolous.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
And a tiger is a cat, but you'd still be a fool to fear the family puss will eat you.
Sure, but then unless you are very radical indeed, you are going to want other moral intuitions enforced. There is nothing wrong with enforcing moral intuitions on others, the debate is about which ones.
The basic issue is that if you ask people these questions in isolation, you get nonsense. You find people want high public spending, low taxations, a reduction in the debt and low inflation. The public are incoherent about what they want.
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