What the hell happened to Texas?Follow

What if you didn't pay for them and the government didn't provide them? Wouldn't that result in greater liberty?

I'll tell you what. You give me $500/week, and I'll spend that $500/week on things that I think you need. Wouldn't liberty be you choosing what to spend your money on? The fact that I give you your money back in the form of benefits doesn't remove the fact that I get to decide what those benefits are. You don't have freedom in that situation. I control you. Just like your government controls you.




So you support elective abortion right up to the moment of birth? I just want you to be very clear on this, so all the US liberals on this board (like Joph), who insist that no one wants this or thinks this is where abortion law should ever be will take note and perhaps pause a bit when crying "slippery slope" in the future.



Where did you get the impression that I support a blanket ban on abortion? You're assuming someone must be 100% for you or 100% against you. I know it's hard to believe, but I take a middle of the road position on abortion. What's funny is that you see anything that limits abortion at all as being a complete ban on abortion.

For the record, I don't think taxpayer dollars should pay for abortions. Not because *I* care that much about the issue, but because I respect the fact that many taxpayers do see it as murder. I know it's hard for some people to conceive of anyone considering other people's positions when looking at social policy, but there you have it. I also think we should handle abortion law at the state level instead of the federal (for a whole host of reasons). Um... But if I were asked about what the abortion laws should be in my state, I'd recommend something that's pretty similar to the guidelines outlined in Roe v. Wade.

I also respect that if the citizens of another state (like MS) want to pass different laws, they ought to be able to. I know... Crazy concept! Letting other people in other states decide what rules they want to live by. Shocking!



Getting angry doesn't help things. I believe that rights are the most important thing to make sure the people have. Money comes and goes. But once you lose your rights, you don't tend to get them back. I know you want to convince yourself that being bought out for a handful of trinkets was a good deal, but I happen to not agree.




Stop with the all or nothing BS! You live in a country where the people are less free. There's a whole middle range between "fully free" and "oppressive dictatorship". You just happen to live in a country that's farther towards the latter than the country I live in. The fact that you seem to get so upset about what I'm saying, suggests that at some level you're aware of this.

All actions by governments infringe freedoms. Period. But we must accept some of those things in order to have any sort of society at all. Thus, those infringements necessary to prevent infringements are not only allowable, but are arguably necessary. But protecting you from he natural outcomes of your own life choices is *not* necessary. In those cases, the government is infringing your liberty to protect you from something which isn't an infringement. When it does that, the net effect is negative liberty.

Every action the government takes which does not have the objective to prevent infringement of liberty on its citizens is itself a violation of the principles of classical liberalism. That's not to say we don't do them any way. But we should be aware of this and avoid them as much as possible. But how can you do this, when your citizens appear to not even know anymore what is an infringement and what things government should do and shouldn't do?

Your government takes your freedom away from you, and not only do you not realize it, but you cheer it on thinking that it's doing you a favor. It's not. It's taking your choices away from you, and giving you outcomes which it decides you should have. That's not freedom. No matter how benevolent it may be (currently), it's still not freedom.



The catch-22 is that if you weren't paying those taxes, you would be less likely to need the government's help. And btw, that's the difference between you and me. If I had that choice, I'd make the opposite one. I'm perfectly willing to die because I can't afford an operation because I didn't earn the money to pay for it (or for the insurance to cover it). Why? Because I have no freaking right to push my problems on other people.

How greedy and selfish must you be to think that everyone else *must* care for you? It's nice if they do, but you want to force the issue. I think that's morally wrong. I also happen to believe that when you adopt policies which provide those things, it decreases the rate at which people work to achieve them themselves. Why should I work hard to earn a good living, a nice house, good health care, college education for my children, etc, if the government will give me all that for free?


So your not only reducing people's freedoms, but you're also hurting their long term future outcomes as well. So immoral *and* stupid. Who thought up this social liberalism idea anyway? Cause it's pretty much a bust from where I'm sitting.

Edited, Nov 3rd 2011 7:23pm by gbaji

Getting angry gets **** done! It's how you get rights in the first place. You seem to be under the impression, like I said before, that if I let my government set up a health service I am now bound to use that health service? Do you think I had to go to a comprehensive school because my taxes pay for one? Universities in my country are also subsidised by taxes, fortunately they're still some of the best in the world. I don't have to go to one of them if I don't want to. You have the illusion of choice, gbaji, it's kind of sad you don't realise it's just an illusion. Unless you can think of some magical liberty you have, as a US citizen, that I don't as a British one.

I did respond to the rest of your post, but I was just drawn to my last sentence or two there. Can you answer that for me?


Also, no I was being sarcastic when I said I support elective abortions all the way up to full term. My personal opinion is that elective abortion should no longer be available after 26 weeks, when the nervous system is connected to the brain stem in the foetus. Call it arbitrary if you want, I don't care. Before this date I believe a woman has the right to decide what lives in her body.

That's the polite way of saying "Yeah, my position is indefensible but... ummm... I wasn't serious! Yeah, that's it!"

Yeah and they started putting out curriculum that didn't mention abstinence at all -- except for the many times per lesson it did mention it. A giant liberal conspiracy!


I've never claimed no one wants this but keep rockin' those strawmen.

I'm sure some people want it. I believe the potential for it being legislated is about zero and that, should it come up, the solution is to make the call then about whether or not it's what we want. The solution certainly isn't banning all/most abortion which is as retarded a solution as saying homosexuals can't get married because what if one day someone wants to marry their ten cats -- oh, wait. You've made that argument as well.

Man, do you ever stop to listen to yourself? I wish I could experience the sort of blissful delusion where I'd hold opinions like yours and then convince myself it's everyone else's fault that I'm not taken seriously.

Edited, Nov 4th 2011 8:30am by Jophiel

We have the right to not have teatime?

But we still drink gallons and gallons of tea.

No. But you are bound to pay for it, whether you use it or not, which will tend to influence your choices. It's like a restaurant automatically charging you for the most expensive meal on the menu, but then saying you have a choice of which meal you actually eat. Great deal right?



More people will make that choice if it's already paid for than if it isn't. You really can't noodle this out?



Again though, that's kinda missing the point. Let's pretend you are a parent of a child just entering university age. If you hadn't been paying taxes for those subsidies all your life, you might have the money to send your child to any school you want, and you might have chosen any of a number of other schools. But because you did, and the result is cheaper costs at the state universities, where are you more likely to send your child? You can't honestly be arguing that this sort of monetary manipulation doesn't affect the choices people make, can you?



It's far less illusory than the choices you have though.



Sure. Lots of direct legally defined ones. But that's really only half the picture. The other half is all of the things that your government changes you for, but gives you little or no choice about what you get. When the government takes money from the people and provides services in return, what it's doing is making their purchasing choices for them. Now, in some cases (like building roads, maintaining military forces, etc), it's necessary. But when you extend that into the schools kids attend, and the health care they receive, the energy they buy, the forms of transportation available to them, the types of foods they can eat, the housing they can receive, and pretty much everything and anything they interact with, you are absolutely using their money to control them.


People should be allowed to earn their own living and then choose what to spend the fruits of their labors on. But governments have a tendency to want to take those fruits from them and spend them on things that the government thinks is better for the people to buy. That's taking the choice from the people. And that's a reduction of liberty. And this absolutely happens more in the UK than in the US.

Not to say it's not also happening in the US, but we're not as far along as you are.



Good. It was unclear from your earlier posts. It's just that you were making arguments which seemed to be saying that any infringement of the right of a woman to abort was wrong. So you do believe that limits on the right of a woman to abort are allowable? Cause that's all I've been arguing all along.

It's essentially the billing practices of any all-you-can-eat joint.

You mean like a buffet? Sure, I love buffets! It's like, if I just want a plate of chips (fries), I still pay the same price even if I want a lobster thermadore! To put that analogy in real terms, I pay exactly the same thing every year if I want to get say, two check ups at my local GP, or if I get major surgery 10 times a year. Seems like a bargain to me, seeing as you'd be charged an extortionate amount if you need any kind of major surgery. A lot more for one operation than I would have to pay in my whole life of paying tax towards the NHS. (Okay, that might be slight hyperbole, but only slight).


You clearly don't know how many people in my country pay for private schooling.

That's not really true at all, is it? Because of paying a small percentage of my taxes towards all universities, going to Oxford now costs essentially exactly the same as going to the local Brick built. You're really not seeing how this is better than your system at all, are you?



Not really, to quote George Carlin, the only real choice you have is "Coke or Pepsi", and half the time you can't even buy those in the same place!



An example, sil vous plait.

So basically, where I've asked you to be specific, you've been extremely vague, as usual. You've also gone a lot further into hyperbole than you usually do. Government picks what foods we eat? I could ask why you think public transport is a bad thing. I suppose you think the fact that we pay a television license which pays for the BBC is a bad thing, too? You prefer your 3 minutes of advertisements per ten minutes of programming I expect?



Really? Because it seems to me that whenever abortion comes up you're up for a lot more interference from government than you allow for any other field of healthcare. You do know there is more than adequate regulation on abortion already, don't you?

Again, you're going to have to give specific examples of something that's available in the USA that isn't available medically in Europe.


It's been working for the past 80 years You seem to fail to realise that healthcare in the UK isn't a business, it's a public service.


The same goes for education, it's not a business here, it's a public service. The best thing is, people in my country are better educated on average than in yours, so y'know, it clearly works right?


But the devil is in the details man!


Yeah but the coke works out cheaper this way than if I buy it directly!


Sure, but that's not important, because I know that people who are dying of thirst get free coke. That's much more important.



Wat? I wasn't using a metaphor, I was asking do you really think the government has a hand in what food I eat?



Because it's a public service, not a business?



You really are a corporate puppet, aren't you?


This is the biggest strawman ever. Seriously. You know how abortions work, right?



Amazing how you completely ignored what I said in what, my last post? The post before.

I already answered your first question (I said that once the brain and nervous system are sufficiently developed there should be a cutoff, which there currently is at that point, yet you continue to suggest it is arbitrary when it is anything but), and posed one of my own: You do realise there is adequate regulation already?

It amazes me how you don't see how your mindset on this issue is so hypocritical. You're against government regulated healthcare, unless it is to do with a healthcare decision that you would never have to make.

I should point out it's only true of BBC programming. However this covers four television channels and six (I think) radio stations, all with no advertising. It also covers all of the BBCs budget for the year, afaik.

All the other channels have advertisements, however it's nowhere near as bad as in the US. It works out to something like 12 minutes of programming and perhaps 3 of advertisements.

That seems, inconvenient. How do you manage to watch TV at all?

I understand that watching sporting events is even worse, right?

For football at least they show adds during timeouts etc. They don't just interrupt the game. Ads for football have never really bothered me, simply because they don't actually interrupt anything.

I take it you've never seen Pam Oliver then.

Seriously, I hope goblins exist, and they decide to show themselves by swarming her on some sideline.