Yes, though you may not understand you're doing it. That is precisely what the left (generalizing, again) is doing by being outraged at the Citizens United ruling, which did one, simple, thing: it said the government is restricting the speech of citizens by enacting speech-based restrictions on how those citizens spend their money ... and that this is obviously unconstitutional.
I think the outrage here was due to the media doing a piss poor job on reporting the case more than anything else. Then again, 99% of public outrage (on both sides of the political spectrum) is caused by B.S. media fear mongering.
I saw a single good quote that changed a lot of my views on special interest groups.
"Everyone is part of a some special interest group. What is an evil special interest group to one person, is someone's livelihood."
Not sure where I saw it at, but always something I try to keep in mind.
Likewise, corporations are groupings of people. Issues come up though that multinational corporations do not necessarily have the best interest of America at heart, and as such may support candidates that will enact policies which are good for them but bad for America as a whole. That situation is more problematic and is one where there might be reason to limit corporate free speech. Letting a corporation which has, say for instance, a majority of their shares owned by Chinese investors, run political adverts becomes a bit worrisome.
Then we're calling the left the wrong thing, because that is not the ideology of the left. On the contrary, the dominant principle of the left is that our liberties take a backseat to their plans for society, whether they be environmental, economic, social, etc.
I think we are both inappropriately mixing and matching left/right liberal/conservative.
I do not agree with a lot of what democrat politicians do. I do happen to like what the elected politicians from my state do, but I'll note that a democrat from WA is very different than a democrat from CA. (We'd freak the hell out if our politicians tried to do 1/2 the crap the cali politicians get away with)
One thing that (some) conservatives and liberals disagree over though is exactly what constitutes a liberty. Liberals such as myself believe in ideas such as that everyone has the right to breath air that does not make them sick. From an economists perspective this is a Tragedy of the Commons scenario, where allowing unrestricted pollution by treating the atmosphere as a public commons ends up trashing the commons and infringing on others' liberties.
This can be extended to the ban on bottled water. Now IMHO bottled water is stupid, (at least where I live it is, we have some of the best tap water in the nation), but there is a proper economic solution here.
The generalized problem is that of goods of which the usage of places an extra economic burden on society. The (liberal + leftist) solution is separate tax on that good and have 100% of the revenue from that tax go to relieving the imposed economic burden.
Indeed Washington state recently imposed a sales tax on bottled water sold in a sealed container.
Those who refill containers are not subject to this tax. Although I doubt the money is going specifically to clean up efforts in regards to the extra burden placed upon waste management systems due to bottled water, the idea is still a sound one. In this case the idea is to treat bottled water as a luxury item (of which it is) the usage of which places an economic burden on society (which is does) and to impose a tax to try to discourage its use (which I doubt paying an extra 1 cent on a 75 cent bottle really does :P ).
Indeed there is an empty bottled water container sitting next to be right now. I regularly refill it from the tap when I head out. :)
Outlawing bottled water is just stupid, and I hope such laws are challenged and court and overturned (though I am not familiar with any reason as to why they would be, they should be!)
(Another solution is to punching anyone in the face who is too lazy to recycle their plastic bottles...)
Right. But no one forced it on the school. The school chose it.
Pressure from religious fundamentalist groups doesn't count? Protesters, barrages of letters, harassment campaigns, is there much choice left after that?
... which is OBVIOUSLY the fault of the PARENTS, period, full stop, end of story.
{snip} ... has NEVER HAPPENED in a school. Ever. This is provably true because schools are not the only, or primary, method of teaching children about how life works. Schools cannot "deny" information about sex anymore than they can "deny" information about World of Warcraft.
Hey guess what! I agree! Parents at fault, definitely!
But there is an underlying social force which created the social dynamics in which the parents felt too "ashamed" or "embarrassed" to talk to their daughter about sex. That social force is religion.
While many mainstream churches do not go out of their way to say that sex is shameful, there is still an underlying assumption or feeling that sex is somehow wrong or embarrassing. Liberals talk about sex as if it is another part of life, in comparison in churches sex is either not brought up at all, or limited to "tell your teenagers not to do this."
The end effect of this is to create a prevailing attitude of shame, embarrassment, or even fear, of sex in society.
And then on top of all of this you have the fact that most parents are not reliable sources of medical information. Failure rates for IUDs vs. BC pills, transmission rates for STDs, and so on, are not exactly bits of information most people are knowledgeable about.
At this point it makes sense so centralize the distribution of knowledge about human sexuality.
The most telling piece of proof that churches are part of spreading a prevailing sense of fear and shame about sex is that they get so upset about what amounts to just one more biology lesson.
Shrug. I waited until marriage. And no, I wasn't told, "just don't have sex," I was told -- with explanation -- that waiting was better than not waiting. And it was true.
You are also not the majority of people. (Indeed no one person is the majority of people! :) )
I actually agree that sex outside of a long term meaningful relationship is shallow, pointless, and likely devolves into being a sin.
I also believe that educating people with KNOWLEDGE as to what their options are is important.
I also think your entire argument that increasing the chance of preventing implantation is equivalent to murder is full of logical holes the size of grape fruits.
Then again I also completely disagree that human life starts from conception. Until there is an actively working brain, no go.
They are not saying it, but it is an implied undertone in a lot of religious messages.
There ARE conservative religious groups with healthy views on sexuality, I am not denying that. I am saying that such groups are in the minority of conservative Christian organizations.
Marriage is two things: a social/religious union, and a government contract. But since we call them the same thing, it is necessarily the case that people will get upset when you change the latter, because it implies changes to the former.
No one is forcing YOUR church to allow gays to marry inside of its walls, and indeed I would oppose any attempts to do so.
In regards to marriage, religion has had a history of ignoring any types of marriages it doesn't like (inter-faith marriages, inter-cultural marriages, etc), and hey, no problem, they can keep on ignoring marriages that they do not want to acknowledge!
No one is saying YOU have to accept homosexual marriages, just that the IRS does.
And? This is irrelevant, of course. There's a huge difference between us taking a specific action that results in implantation failing, and that failure happening naturally. Infants can die "naturally," and we can drop them on their heads resulting in their death. We try to avoid the latter, even if we know we cannot avoid the former. Is this not obvious?
For fucks sake this damn nearly gets into meta-physics.
Lets say an IUD is in place. In such instances there is a nearly 100% chance of implantation not happening. Therefore there was no chance of intercourse resulting in baby 9 months from now.
Without an IUD, there is an 80% chance of implantation failing.
Let us construct a hypothetical scenario where in the couple having sex has 100% pre-knowledge if their sex act will result in fertilization and implantation occurring.
If the couple only has sex at such times as that implantation will NOT occur, they will have in effect duplicated the results of an IUD.
Will they have committed murder by not having sex at such a time as they know that doing so would produce a fetus?
The logical answer would be of course not.
Now lets say that instead of some sort of psychic pre-knowledge the couple has a machine next to their bed which tells them if copulation at any given time will result in a viable fetus.
Again, the couple chooses to only have sex at such times as the act will not result in offspring.
The end result here is the same as that of an IUD. 100% failure rate of implantation. The only difference is in the means.
{snip}
Spent too long on this reply already, browser window needs closing :P
