Can you feel the love?

[Dissident Heart]

I find it interesting that the editors of the page introduce the vitriol in a sickly neutral phrase "voices a strong opinion". Would someone who advocates ethnic cleansing, forced migrations, or relocation camps for social undesirables be identified as conveying a "strong opinion" about their victims?

I include these extremes of political and social violence because I think the author of this dark missive would very easily support and endorse such action against their hated atheist communities. Given power beyond a keyboard, the author would find a way to eliminate such a heinous threat as atheists, and would more than likely find the most holy, moral, legal, and rational justification for such behavior.

[Mr. P]

I find it interesting that the editors of the page introduce the vitriol in a sickly neutral phrase "voices a strong opinion". Would someone who advocates ethnic cleansing, forced migrations, or relocation camps for social undesirables be identified as conveying a "strong opinion" about their victims?

I include these extremes of political and social violence because I think the author of this dark missive would very easily support and endorse such action against their hated atheist communities. Given power beyond a keyboard, the author would find a way to eliminate such a heinous threat as atheists, and would more than likely find the most holy, moral, legal, and rational justification for such behavior.

Thumbs up Dissident!

Mr. P.

[Niall001]

Is pro-choice also a naughty word/concept when you go to the library and want to choose what to read?

Mr. P.

Many members of this site oppose the legalisation of heroin. Are they anti-choice? Do you have to advocate one's right to buy automatic weapons or child pornography? Which positions do you have to advocate before you're consider pro-choice? What do you have to oppose to be pro-choice?

Terms like pro-choice and pro-life are designed to make those who oppose them look bad. It's semantic slander. Nobody would ever describe themselves as being anti-choice or anti-life. Using these terms is counterproductive when you're trying to examine any issue.

So-called pro-choice politicians like John Kerry make laughable arguments where they try to wiggle their way around their support of legalised abortion by suggesting that even though they think it is morally wrong, it is up to the individual to decide for themselves. If only the adopted similar positions on matters like the availability of drugs, taxes, prostitution, firearms, pornography and property rights! Want to run a child porn website? I think that's wrong, but go ahead buddy! Such arguments are fig leaves and nothing more. They only make sense if you first assume that humans in the earliest stages of development have no rights.

People who describe themselves as pro-choice are no more likely to advocate choice as a solution to most controversial and emotional issues than those who think of themselves as being pro-life. The root of the problem is that some people think of humans in terms of classes and essences while others measure humanity by the degree to which it corresponds to an internalised prototype.

[Mr. P]

Is pro-choice also a naughty word/concept when you go to the library and want to choose what to read?

Mr. P.

Many members of this site oppose the legalisation of heroin. Are they anti-choice? Do you have to advocate one's right to buy automatic weapons or child pornography? Which positions do you have to advocate before you're consider pro-choice? What do you have to oppose to be pro-choice?

Are you saying that illiegal things are the same as legal things? Bad choice of argument there Niall. The thing is, all the items you mentioned above can have a bad and deadly impact on many people in a society. The only person involved in an abortion is the 'potential' mother (and by extension, the 'potential' father).

Mr. P.

[Mr. P]

Let me ask Mad and Niall something:

What is the abortion issue all about if not about people who are 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice'. How would you two couch the matter to make it all warm and fuzzy and settle the debate?


Mr. P.

[indie]

The very terms "Pro-choice" and "Pro-life" are used by groups who only have one political/social issue on their agenda, or at least only one that those terms were ever meant to describe.

Trying to obfuscate the issue by applying "Pro-choice" to any type of choice on any issue is a poor argument indeed. No one arguing for heroin use identifies themself as being "Pro-Choice", and the same applies to the other examples you provide.

Oh, and Mr. P., no offense intended or taken, but let me get that for you:

The only people involved in an abortion are the 'potential' mother and father and by extension, their doctor.

There, all fixed.

[MadArchitect]

I disagree that pro-choice is "an equally polemical term" as pro-life.

If you want to contend that "pro-life" is a more inflammatory term, then I'd glady agree. But both labels are ways of describing their respective sides in ways that make them seem inherently reasonable. And that, it seems to me, is the heart of polemics.

The term pro-life does not illustrate or inform the debate. There is no group of people who are anti-life that the pro-lifers can engage in discussion. However, the term pro-choice represents that group's ideals that the abortion question should be left to the privacy of a woman.

Does "pro-life" not represent that group's contention that the more compelling issue is the life of the child? To that degree, I think it does inform the debate. What's problematic isn't that either of the terms fail to describe, in some way, the positions to which they're attached. The problem is how they do it. To put it into context, what would it change if the sides involved designated themselves "woman-centric" and "child-centric"? Both of those terms in some way illustrate the issues that each side holds to be more morally significant, but I think it's also clear that they bring a different set of connotations to the debate.

(Incidentally, I'm not suggesting that anyone adopt the "-centric" labels. I coined them only to illustrate a point.)

So should they go with pro-privacy? Pro-9th and 14th Amendments. Pro-doctor/patient confidentiality and freedom to perform medical procedures based on independent choices.

They don't have to use the prefix "pro" at all. "Pro" almost invariably suggests a "con". To that end, it lends itself all too easily to polemic.

Pro-choice resists the anti-choice movement, the desire to remove from the woman the ability to make her own medical decisions.

Ah, but there it is: where is this "anti-choice" movement? How can I contact them to lodge my revulsion? An "anti-choice" movement only exists by virtue of the implication established by the label "pro-choice." It's no less ephemeral than the "anti-life" movement pro-lifers are presumable fending off. The pro-life movement is no more opposed to choice, per se, than the pro-choice movement is opposed to life.

The fact that you are responded to my post and accuse me of using 'polarizing' language about the topic of abortion, does that mean you are also using polarizing language by responding? That you condone polarizing language?

Not polarizing -- polemic. When I use the term polemic, I mean something crucial different than simply polar opposites. I mean the use of a rhetorical form to make an opposing view seem inherently unreasonable.

Does anyone responding to Bush when he starts talking nonsense thus fall into his childish manner of thinking and speaking?

Actually, I'd say that the Bush administation has succeeded in pushing an agenda most people oppose largely by setting the terms of discussion. So while it's an exagerration to suppose that anyone responding to Bush would automatically start pronouncing it "nukuler", the fact that we all fell into the trap of behaving as though, say, WMDs were obviously the central issue in addressing Iraq should demonstrate that, whether or not we buy their nonsense, the fact that we're willing to address it renders us vulnerable.

And where is your documentation?

Documentation for what? I'm not claiming any particular origin for either term. I'm just talking about how they tend to function in debate.

Mad, sometimes a topic IS polemical and there is no way to bridge a gap.

Nothing is inherently polemical. Polemics is a rhetorical form -- it's all about the way that we set the terms of discussion.

It is either the choice of the parents or it is not.

Why? Why can't both life and choice be issues that pertain to the issue of abortion?

Is pro-choice also a naughty word/concept when you go to the library and want to choose what to read? Dont cast this off as trivial...

Trivial? I'm just not sure how it's pertinent. Tell me how see the issue of censorship fitting in here and I'll try to address this comment.

[Niall001]

Are you saying that illiegal things are the same as legal things? Bad choice of argument there Niall. The thing is, all the items you mentioned above can have a bad and deadly impact on many people in a society

Well obviously pro-lifers tend to think that killing people is a bad thing and since they believe that the developing human organism is a person, they regard that as having a bad and deadly impact on society. And abortion is - more or less - illegal here.

The only person involved in an abortion is the 'potential' mother (and by extension, the 'potential' father).

Nick! That is exactly the issue. That is the point at which pro-life and pro-choice disagree! Pro-lifers are not running around claiming that people should not have an abortion because they don't like it, or they think its immoral, they're saying that it is a violation of the right to life of the human person.

How would you two couch the matter to make it all warm and fuzzy and settle the debate?

Well personally I tended to use the terms pro-abortion and anti-abortion simply because pro-legalised abortion and anti-legalised-abortion don't exactly slip off the tongue, however I've given up on that because you end upsetting pro-choice types who insist that the term doesn't adequately reflect that they aren't pro-abortion but pro-having-the-option-of-having-abortions. Now I just use pro-choice when describing pro-abortion positions and pro-life when describing all things anti-abortion.

[Mr. P]

The very terms "Pro-choice" and "Pro-life" are used by groups who only have one political/social issue on their agenda, or at least only one that those terms were ever meant to describe.

Trying to obfuscate the issue by applying "Pro-choice" to any type of choice on any issue is a poor argument indeed. No one arguing for heroin use identifies themself as being "Pro-Choice", and the same applies to the other examples you provide.

Oh, and Mr. P., no offense intended or taken, but let me get that for you:

The only people involved in an abortion are the 'potential' mother and father and by extension, their doctor.

There, all fixed.

The doctor? Come now.

Mr. P.

[indie]

Pro-Choice != Pro-Abortion!!!!!



EDIT leaving this thread (which i posted because one morning before my first coffee I felt mildly persecuted by a newspaper editor for publishing something as tasteless and hateful as the scan in the first post).

Amazing progression to me.

Hate v. Atheists >> Polemics >> Abortion