kelley:
> i would still like to know how it is that failing to recognize a
> distinction b/t license and liberty is totalitarian.
That was your translation. I said that Marta probably distinguished between the freedom to do something, and the value of doing it. People who believe that their evaluations, or the evaluations of whatever they submit themselves to, override the freedom of other people to make their own evaluations (or do anything else) clearly do not believe in any sort of freedom, even an internal freedom of thought. I think "totalitarian" is a good name for their politics. Unfortunately this sort of thing is rather common -- anti- abortionism being one instance. On the other hand a lot of people think that, while abortion is very bad, it would be worse still to interfere with anyone's ability to get one. "Blah blah blah but I will defend to the death your right to blah blah" sort of thing.
> >However
> >I do want to say that I pass no judgement on my poor fertile
> >neighbor. Unlike the pure, naked destructiveness of the higher
> >orders, his humble propensity for reproduction is ambiguous;
> >it may (theoretically) cost me taxes or help pay my Social
> >Security. Allah is all-knowing.
> what i thought i read: your example was in response to a question about
> what a trivial reason for abortion might be. you replied with the example
> of your neighbor. you apparently judge it a trivial exercise of the right
> to an abortion, correct? so you pass judgment, yes?
You're assuming I regard light or trivial exercise of the freedom to get an abortion as evil. But in fact I think many abortions are trivial -- for instance, use of a morning-after pill, which prevents implantation. Except for religious fanatics who believe that the zygote is infused at the moment of conception with a soul and, I guess, human consciousness and the full assembly of liberal rights, I think that's pretty much the common opinion. And since Thomas Seay seemed to think all abortions were taken very seriously by all concerned, I thought I would post a sort of counterexample from my daily life. I have others. In my wayward youth, I met a woman who had had three abortions before her 19th birthday, and was working hard on a fourth. That was back in D&C days, too. _Most_ upper-middle-class, father a fashionable specialist, she led a rather zippy life. Design jewelery, go to cafés in the Village, stay up all night driving around loaded to gills, flung roses roses riotously with the throng and so forth.
Of course, in the end she paid the price -- she became a psychiatrist. But I digress.