Just speaking from a purely economic point of view actually making abortion illegal, presuming that all the fetus who might've been aborted were brought to term, would actually not be cheaper. Consider that many of those children will probably be born into poverty they will need many social services, such as health care, education and so on. It will be years before they can actually contribute back to the economy through work and there is no guarentee that as adults they will end up contributing to society. For as likely as any possibly aborted fetus might be born and grow up to be Tim Tebow its just as likely that they are disabled, especially if there is a possibility of a difficult birth, or even worse end up being a drug dealing murderer. I strongly doubt that the overall economic costs to the government and society from outlawing abortion is going to be less than practically any health care program, its possibly more. Again just to emphasize I am speaking from a purely economic viewpoint. I don't know when life begins and while I believe this should be a matter of choice I wouldn't encourage women to get abortions.
So you agree that Bush(a Republican) who you are not a fan of started the Iraq war which you opposed. But those kinds of policies aren't as bad as abortion. As to health care, we can't afford not to enact it. Enacting it is far more cost effective not to mention humane than not doing it. Other nations that have universal health care spend a less percentage on health care than we do in this country. Providing health care for our citizens is the moral choice. And I think you should do a little more research about the health care proposal. The Dems got rid of single payer coverage, a public option, and all kinds of crap in order to try and make it bi-partisan. GOP members that were thought to possibly swing the other way got EVERYTHING they asked for in the bill, and still voted against it. Furthermore this bill isn't even universal coverage. It also doesn't sound like you love your neighbor as yourself in regards to health care. I'm sure if you needed health care to take help with your own cancer treatments or diabetes care, or something that meant life or death for you, you wouldn't decide you couldn't afford it, and just choose to die. 45,000 Americans die each year because of lack of health care. That's insane, and I certainly believe that we need to address it. Some of the provisions in health care do go into effect this year, not years down the road. Others are phased in. Killing terrorists is one thing, but Bush and Cheney the Republicans changed the order of when to fire on suspected terrorists. Before there had to be a 90% certainty, and Bush changed it to as little as 50% certainty. That means he was OK with killing an innocent 1 out of every 2 times. You will decide whatever way you feel is best, but it just doesn't add up for me, the way you see things.
Abortion as a political issue has determined the status of abortion as a religious issue. Nowhere in the Bible are there pronouncements on this issue as absolute and rigid as those that come from the political right. The Republican party and the religious right empower each other by respectively owning the pro-life agenda and posing it as an electoral trump card. Party politics and denominational religion employ many of the same strategies for exercising social control.
I have a question for those who are against abortion. Let's assume abortion is considered murder. What if there was a case where... If you have the abortion, one "life" is lost. If you don't have the abortion, two "lives" are lost. In that case, is abortion ok? I suppose some will actually argue that "well, that's what God wanted, so you let it happen." For those people, I have the additional question of why they think they have not engaged in the action of murder because... Although you may think "letting it happen" means you have no hand in it, that is not true. Yo ucould have saved a life and the intent in your heart of INaction led to the death of two people rather than one. Jesus PBUH apparently is concerned with the heart and not simply the physical actions. Are you comfortable with the course of action generated from the intent in your heart allowing two people to die rather than one? Do you think that God's system of justice is so simple and humanistic that you could get out of this on a technicality?
I think the Iraq war was not necessary. There are a lot of things that aggravated me about Bush but what were the alternatives, Al Gore and John Kerry. I can't stand either one of them. Bush did some good things and some bad. He could have done a better job. You say the Senate bill was designed to give the Rep. everything they wanted. This is not even close. There were actually two different Senate healthcare bills to come out of committees. One of them had zero Rep. input and a Dem. partyline vote. The other had a little Rep. input and had one Rep. vote. These two bills were then reconciled by the Dem. leadership and the small amount of Rep. contributions were stripped out of the final bill which is why there were zero Rep. votes on the final bill. The Dems. would not allow any kind of tort reform in the bill which would help lower healthcare cost. This doesn't even cover all of the crazy backroom deals that were made to get the 60 Democrat votes. If this bill was so great it should have been easy to pass with a 60 vote majority yet they needed to buy votes in their own party. The final result is a flawed bill with zero Republican input or support. Real reform has to be done in a bi-partisan way. Some elections swing to the left and some to the right but in general things are fairly equal. Completely shutting out one party from the table is not right when this country is fairly close to equally divided. The Dems. had control and would have gotten things mostly there way if they would have included the Rep. more with say tort reform they could have come up with a bi-partisan bill with a left lean that would have garnered at least some Rep. support. Instead they shut the Rep. out and had to buy votes in their own arty to pass this. While I agree something needs to be done there are Medicaide programs already in place. The price of this bill is too great when we are already running TRILLION + dollar deficits. I don't believe our military is running around trying to kill civilians. It is very unfortunate when one of them is accidentally killed. If the terrorist were not cowards by using human shields then it would not be an issue. Thank you for your insight. I generally tend to fall in the center of the political spectrum with a slight lean to the right. My faith does affect my political decisions. There are generally two sides to everything and the best place to meet is in the middle. Peace and may God bless you.
BetterthanI, you act is if I am some kind of right wing hack. You could not be farther from the truth. I am much closer to the center of the political spectrum with a slight lean to the right. Our country runs much better when things are kept near the center. This is why our country prospered so much under Clinton and a Republican congress. The had to meet in the middle to make things work. When things shift to far to one side it alienates too many people because our country is pretty much equally divided. As far as Beck goes, I have watched the guy about maybe 20 times. Almost everything I have heard him talk about is the country spending itself into oblivion to which I happen to agree is a problem. He complains about Dems. and Rep. alike. I have issues with both parties myself. Beck may have a lot more radical right views but I have not personally witnessed them and more than likely would not support them. I do not need him or anyone else to think for me. Again, I call for peace. Let's agree to meet in the middle. There are two sides to everything and peace comes from finding common ground. As I stated before we are both Rockets fans and Christians so we definitely have common ground.
BetterthanI, I will also add that I was wrong to start this thread with the tone that I did. I was angry about some of the things said in the other thread and let it get the better of me. As a Christian, I should not let that happen and I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong. Peace brother.
I've listed some of the Republican points that were included in the bill, and Democratic points that were stripped out. The Dems bent over backwards to get bi-partisan support. When they gave some of the Republicans everything they wanted, those Republicans still bailed out on the bill. As for Bush attacking with only 50% certainty about a target, that is different than the military trying to kill civilians. That means if there is a place that has some there who may or may not be a valid target, the standard used to be that it was necessary to have 90% verifiable intel. Now that's only 50% thanks to Bush. That means half the time Bush is OK with killing an innocent. Again I don't really see the love your neighbor thing coming through so much there. But the real issue is in the health care. My point is that if you faced a life threatening illness, you wouldn't decide to not seek treatment because you were worried you couldn't afford it. Yet that is what you are proposing be done to millions of Americans by scrapping this healthcare bill.
Of course. Thus the OP's misleading implication that support for a woman's right to choose is equivalent to "supporting" abortion. If cml and his ilk really desired a change in abortion rates instead of just disgusting partisan manipulation, they would approach the issue sans political rhetoric and with a great deal more compassion. Instead (hypocrtically) the idea is to use such an issue as a methodology to reinforce collectivist religious ideology, regardless of actual validity, to influence governmental machinations contrary to the intent of the constitution. Let's take ourselves back in time to another LSD post that merited attention. And the response, was, in my opinion, epic. As far as I'm concerned, /thread.
It seriously made my morning to read a MadMax post that epic. (wipes tear.) I can leave the interwebz for the day now. Just wow, all so true.
I have to admit I hit the "search" button like an excited little kid at christmas looking for new max posts... then I realized what rhad meant, and then...
I'd tell you, but it seems like the public wants to talk about the actual subject of the thread again. Okay, I'll tell you anyway. I've got two answers: my atheist one, and my Calvinist one (since I spend more of my life thinking in a Christian paradigm than a I do an atheist one). The atheist answer is that there is argument or evidence that I have yet heard that would compel me. The idea that there is an omnipotent God who created us and allowed us to fall into sin so that he could save us with the sacrifice of himself for his own glory (and told us all about it in a book) has an alluring poetic appeal, but strikes me as far-fetched. Add on to that all the mental gymnastics one has to go through to reconcile free will with an omnipotent God, Justice with Mercy, and so on -- something this complicated looks like a rationalization. I'm going to need something more than truthiness on something this important. The Calvinist answer (which protects me from too many questions at church) is that God didn't choose me. Not my fault. It doesn't get too far with Baptists, but works great on Calvinists.
I'm Pro-Life and if possible I'd like to see no need for abortion. All that said, being Pro-Life goes from infancy to old age receiving a quality of life that is suitable for every human being. This is not a reality though. I think its so short sighted that to many, being Pro-Life just means the baby isn't aborted. It's not. It means a healthy lifestyle that includes but is not limited to a safe and habitable place to live, quality food and clothing, quality education and quality healthcare.
So this post was supposed to be centrist? http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=5181102&postcount=9 See, this is the problem I have with you, cml750: you're disingenuous. If you'd come right out and said that you're a conservative right-winger, I would have let it die. But you don't. You say you believe one thing and then immediately espouse the opposite. I would agree that more centrism is needed and would be beneficial for this country. Unfortunately, the only people I see willing to make any compromises to move the center are those on the left (witness the massive compromises offered on health care legislation that the Reps. voted down anyway). Oh, come on. You know this just isn't true. I've watched his show: for every one critique he has against the Reps., he makes thousands against the Dems. He's about as centrist as Karl Rove. And if you're so lukewarm on Beck, why did you assert that we should all watch him more? Would those more radical views include calling those who work within the church for social justice communists and Nazis? Are you finally willing to say you do not support this view? Because you haven't yet. Not very centrist. Assuming that what he portrays in TV and the radio is his genuine persona and not an act, he is radical. He's borderline crazy. Witness this paranoid rant about hidden communist plots within New York architecture: <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VkcvrV4UhTM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VkcvrV4UhTM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object> What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee! J/k. I'll play nice if you will. :grin:
