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Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with?
- h2odragon 4y ago
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoI’m confused by your first paragraph. Are you saying a parent should be able to kill a 12 year old?
- denial 4y agoI read it as only children should be able to receive abortions (e.g. when they are 14).
- h2odragon 4y agoNot what i meant, but interesting thought: the parent of a pregnant child should be able to force the child to have an abortion? Seems about as justifiable as circumcision by parental choice, doesn't it?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- h2odragon 4y ago> Are you saying a parent should be able to kill a 12 year old? Yes, that is the correct reading. Note: This is an extreme statement to prompt discussion, not a deeply held belief that everyone must share. It's not that I don't feel this way; but i feel more strongly that this is a question that shows the limits of what the state can do.
- maximus-decimus 4y agoJust to be clear, you're advocating for this onion video to become real? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGXSPf9b-xI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGXSPf9b-xI
- hutzlibu 4y ago" but i feel more strongly that this is a question that shows the limits of what the state can do" No, it just shows how extreme your property thinking is. A child is the property of their parents and they should be able to do with it, what they want? Even kill them, as it is their property? Nope. Those times have passed. And even in savage times, where this might have been more common, there was certainly social backslash, too.
- h2odragon 4y agoFor the record; i do not advocate "people as property". However, where the state holds us responsible for the actions of those living creatures in our care, the state does treat them (and us) as property.
- hutzlibu 4y agoOnly if you define property in a different way. Property can be sold for example. Children not, even though this happens underground.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoNot all property is legal to be sold (see: drug possession vs distribution). Thus, it being illegal to sell children does not imply they are not property.
- maximus-decimus 4y agoUp to 17 years and 364 days old it seems.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- whatshisface 4y ago>The Constitution doesn’t mention abortion. But what about privacy? Well, it doesn’t mention privacy either. That's not true - the 4th amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. The search part prevents the police from reading your mail or wiretapping your phones without a warrant (which declares the search reasonable), except illegally.
- mpalczewski 4y agoYou failed at understanding the author.
- whatshisface 4y agoI don't think factual inaccuracies should get a free pass under the principle of assuming good faith, because the principle of assuming good faith only applies to how ambiguous claims should be construed. There is no way to construe "the constitution does not mention privacy" as a correct statement.
- SilasX 4y agoYes, as "the constitution does not explicitly mention privacy" or "... does not mention privacy by that term."
- whatshisface 4y ago"The constitution does not use the word privacy, although it does directly protect it," is not a reasonable interpretation in context.
- SilasX 4y ago“The constitution does not explicitly use the term privacy but does refer to related concepts from which one can infer some logic about what kinds of privacy are protected vs not” is a reasonable interpretation in context … and coincidentally, exactly what the author is arguing, once you get beyond the quoted part. I think this whole subthread is being too hard on a snippet.
- mikece 4y ago"Seek first to understand, then to be understood." -- habit #5 of the 7 habits of highly successful people
- ramesh31 4y ago
- jaywalk 4y ago"It's hard to understand the most extreme position I can think up, which is held by such a small number of people that it's not even really worth discussing."
- lkxijlewlf 4y agoThat's not fair. Those extremists are succeeding in pushing their agenda.
- jaywalk 4y agoShow me a law on the books in any state that would outlaw abortion in the case of rape. Obviously it would be a "trigger law" since states can't actually have such a law right now, but no such law exists as far as I'm aware. Unless you can do that, it's not fair to claim that those extremists are succeeding in pushing anything. Edit: I'm not going to individually address all of the dishonest rhetoric from the articles in the replies. The states have laws allowing abortion up to a certain number of weeks, and then after that don't make exceptions. I was referring to outright bans.
- lostcolony 4y agoLMGTFY - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-roe-v-wade-no-rape-incest-exceptions/629747/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/supreme... 'In the past few years, though, the anti-abortion movement has moved in a different direction. In 2019, Alabama legislators passed an abortion ban that lacked rape and incest exceptions. Nine other states—Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas—have passed similar laws. Courts blocked all the laws but Texas’s; if Roe is overturned, it will be a felony for any Texas doctor to perform an abortion for a woman who was raped or impregnated by a family member. In March, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an early-abortion ban without rape or incest exemptions.'
- blueberrychpstx 4y agoTitles like this irk me. It clearly isn’t It should be something more like: “how has general discourse become so polluted and toxified in its perceptions for it to appear that the following statement yields any factuality” … I guess that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it though.
- guerrilla 4y agoBecome? I think one could argue it's less so than ever. Remember blasphemy and the inquisition? Do you think people were more tolerant prior to the 20th century, what about in the 1950s? I think until recently responses were pretty violent in some cases and could lead to quite some consequences. I don't really know, but I think it's worth considering.
- h2odragon 4y agoBlasphemy is alive and well! Try saying you doubt the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines. The reaction is the same.
- guerrilla 4y agoNo doubt, but the consequences (most places) aren't death by stoning or whatever.
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoInstead they are death by starvation. Many that want to close all discussion of COVID also wanted people to lose jobs. No job, no food.
- ethanbond 4y agoShould read up a bit more on what the "reaction" to blasphemy was back in the day (at least some of the days, some of the places anyway). Tell you what, it wasn't people calling you an idiot on the internet.
- mikece 4y agoThis blog post touches on a topic with far-reaching consequences that I think a lot of people are missing because they are focusing only on the question of abortion, and that is PRIVACY. In a nutshell, Roe makes abortion legal by guaranteeing the privacy of a woman to make that decision with her doctor. If Roe is overturned then it's this assumption of privacy which will have been vacated... and once it is I suspect there will be policy and legislation to exploit the court's striking down of privacy in a way that will be more Orwellian than we can currently imagine.
- unyttigfjelltol 4y agoThe timing is notable, coming on the heels of an emphatic conservative critique of compelled vaccination. For the first time in memory the right side of the aisle has been arguing for bodily autonomy and the left for the state's right to compel people to accept medical treatment over objection (or even an extended form of home-confinement). It's the first time in memory I have some hope the different sides of the debate might see common ground.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoWhere in the U.S. (other than in the military, where different structures apply) has anyone been compelled to be vaccinated?
- unyttigfjelltol 4y agoEven in the military the compulsion was the prospect of dishonorable discharge. Where I live both government employees and private employees have been fired for not complying with vaccination mandates, and again the issue is political alignment not whether people are being jabbed without consent.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoNo; the issue is the entirely false equivalence between vaccine mandates and abortion access when the underlying concern is bodily autonomy.
- MockObject 4y agoIt is frustrating. I am on one side of the abortion debate, but I understand the other side, yet I have no success in even explaining it to my side.
- corrral 4y agoI'm pro-choice, but from what I can tell, the pro-choicers who are eager to post about it on the Internet have no clue whatsoever about the actual positions of the people they're arguing against. They're also weirdly-big fans of very weak pro-choice arguments. It's really frustrating. Attempts to explain the other side, or to knock down bad arguments from "my" side so better ones can replace them, are indeed often met with unpleasantness.
- MockObject 4y agoThis has been my experience as well. I found myself arguing against the awful logic of my own side, more than the other side at all.
- aendruk 4y agoI’m interested to know if there’s a term for this phenomenon. I too find myself frequently engaging “against” my own side, out of a sincere desire to strengthen it and a sensitivity to how its weaker arguments reflect poorly on me.
- sjostrom7 4y agoI (100% pro-choice) think they just get bored with hammering on the bodily autonomy aspect, so they start making posts about what the bible "really" says about abortion and other weak, as you say, arguments. I really think they get tired of saying the same thing over and over, even though it's important. I know I do.
- adastra22 4y agoBodily autonomy is still ignoring the pro-lifer position though, who would argue “what about the baby’s rights?”
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anovikov 4y agoI'd love the same approach to be tried on Russians who support invasion of Ukraine.
- xg15 4y ago> There’s a certain phenomenon I often wonder about, one that only seems to occur with culture war topics. I mean, the term "culture war" itself is part of the "conservative" vocabulary in that issue. So I can see why the whole thing is not easy.
- colordrops 4y agoThat's your own characterization, and not universal. I've personally seen the term more often in non-conservative forums and circles. Not that it matters to your point, which I get and agree with.
- r2_pilot 4y agoRegarding this phenomenon, it may be that you don't see that term in conservative forums because they don't want to use it, whether because it telegraphs their intent or they don't want to use the same words as liberals (this increasingly drastic polarization of language is a key point of Lingua Tertii Imperii... A book I started reading before 2015 and had to quit reading because frankly it bothered me how much it started to resemble current times in the US). So its absence isn't altogether surprising.
- dgb23 4y agoThey probably meant historically. If I remember correctly it was coined as a part of a wider strategy decades ago. Of course, it is a catchy term and is being used widely now. Similarly the term political correctness was initially a term used in jest by the left I think.
- DocTomoe 4y agoThe term originated in the German "Kulturkampf", which was between the Imperial German state of the 1870s and the Catholic Church. In the US, it was introduced twice, neither time by conservatives.
- MockObject 4y agoThe culture war is so profound, we can't even agree on whether it's a culture war or not.
- dqpb 4y ago> Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with? It’s not. > Somehow, it feels like a huge social blunder to even demonstrate that I understand their positions. The author then constructs six models to explain his emotions to himself.
- dvt 4y agoAlmost every serious non-partisan legal scholar agrees that Roe v. Wade is on tenuous legal footing. It's purely a logical argument, and it doesn't follow very well from the Constitution. We have a very simple mechanism to rectify this: amend the Constitution. But that ship has long sailed, and the problem now is stare decisis†, which complicates things further. So there's a very real justification for keeping Roe in spite of its shortcomings. But that's neither here nor there. The issue isn't that people don't understand arguments, it's that they misrepresent them. A rational, reasoned, mature, back-and-forth debate on abortion won't get you views and clicks, so of course no one does it. Panem et circenses. † And of course Casey, which reaffirmed Roe.
- corrral 4y agoThe fundamental problem, which isn't going to get addressed short of the country falling apart, most likely, is that our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it. Its very shittiness is why we can't realistically fix it. We've been relying on courts really stretching reasoning on the constitution to its breaking point, just to be able to have a mostly-modern state & economy, in terms of function and outcomes, and it's been like that for most of a century. Maybe it would've been better if the courts hadn't done that and had instead forced us to a crisis point much sooner, so we'd have to actually fix our governmental system, but who knows what suffering that might have caused. Concerted attempts to change the course of the courts might finally bring us that crisis, though. We'll see. If they're maximally successful, I think it'll have to, because the US is gonna go downhill fast if kinda-shaky 20th century rulings supporting broadened federal power are wiped out en masse.
- dvt 4y ago> our particular system of government is a bit shit, and keeps getting worse the better everyone gets at gaming it. I agree that a "Union of States," being profoundly anti-federalist, is a pretty shit way of running a homogeneous world power with a shared language, shared culture, and (for the most part) shared ideals. The US fundamentally changed after the Civil War (which was probably the breaking point of anti-federalism) but unfortunately the Constitution didn't change along with it.
- jdlyga 4y agoIt's easy to rationalize bad things if you spend too much effort trying to understand them. After all, even Hitler thought he was doing good for the world. Yes we all need to understand each other, to a point. Beyond that point, you need to fight for what's right.
- imbnwa 4y agoWould rephrase that as "Hitler thought he was doing good for the 'Aryan race'"
- vippy 4y ago
- ouid 4y agoMorality and law both work like mathematics. This means that my beliefs are constructed, and once I have a construction, the only in bounds way to convince me to change my mind about them is to show me that my beliefs are inconsistent. Moreover, understanding someone who has already demonstrated an inconsistent belief system is easy. They believe X because they believe something and its negation, and at least one of those implies X. Trying to unravel exactly how they have managed to go from an inconsistency to whatever thing they want to believe isn't really that interesting or important. The point is that their entire moral philosophy is broken and is exclusively used to justify whatever they want. This is why you have things like the prosperity doctrine.
- guerrilla 4y ago> the only in bounds way to convince me to change my mind about them is to show me that my beliefs are inconsistent No, you can also refute the premises/axioms and there other ways to do that than needing to demonstrate inconsistency.
- ouid 4y agoOh really? Would you like to provide an example of this?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ironmagma 4y agoA simple example is the axiom "private property exists and should be enforced with the law". There are societies without private property, and they are very different from the ones that do have it.
- ouid 4y agoI tshould have been clearer about what I mean by the law. I'm treating the laws themselves as immutable, and referring to the process of their interpretation. Ie, the judgment that happens in a courtroom. Which laws should exist depends on moral arguments though. So the point does essentially stand. The fact that people act out of mostly inscrutable, heuristic biological interest as a form of moral empiricism, does in fact count as out of bounds. I'm allowed to have a moral system that compels me not to reproduce, for instance. It's just not terribly likely (although not impossible) to be an effective reproductive strategy. If you want to have a completely unrelated discussion about this, I'm more than willing, but I think you should probably refine the proposition "Private property exists".
- dj_mc_merlin 4y agoI do not know what I expected when I clicked on the comments section. I think the author makes some really good points about human psychology & game theory, and the fact that people are immediately riled up by his statements only serves to prove him right. You can only understand people when you're clear-headed, i.e. your "rational you" is the one in control. With these issues, people have either natural or nurtured emotional ties. To such an extent that the topic itself shuts of their rationality, and they revert back to blanket statements ("I can't argue with you because you believe X", or just plain profanities). Mix this in with tribality, and you've got a good recipe for no ability to reconcile two different opinions. There's also the fact that people generally don't want to reconcile. When it comes to charged topics, it is a bare-faced lie to want reconciliation. What each side wants is the other side to relent. I think the term "culture war" is actually pretty accurate, there's no interchange of ideas. It's just seeing who can shout the other into submission.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- robonerd 4y agoThe author has nobody but himself to blame, since he sabotaged the reception of his own article with an inflammatory headline that assumes a false (or at least contentious) premise.
- happytoexplain 4y agoAre people "riled up", or merely disagreeing with him (in full or in part)?
- native_samples 4y agoYeah it's disappointing that the comments are so dominated by his example rather than his greater point. Especially so for people outside the USA for whom Roe v Wade is irrelevant but tribalism isn't. It's worth considering that this problem isn't necessarily symmetrical around the centre of the political axis. There have been experiments done on this that show conservatives understand the left far better than the other way around. They come up with a large set of "How much do you agree with on a scale of 1-10" type questions on political topics. Then they recruit people from across the political spectrum (self rated) and split them into four groups. Two groups are asked to fill out the survey in the usual way, directly about their own opinions. The other two are asked to answer the survey as they imagine someone from the other side would answer. Then the answers are lined up to see how good each group was at predicting the answers of the other. The results are always the same: conservatives can play 'pretend leftie' much better than the other way around. I'm always quite suspicious of social science these days but the methodology in this type of experiment seems simple enough that there can't be much hiding in it, except maybe, the exact nature of the questions used. This experiment has been replicated however. This provides empirical support for what has probably been the real world experience of many of us, that people on the right are much more willing to interact with and be exposed to left wing views than the reverse. Example: I've encountered people in the past who threw tantrums at work because they discovered that someone else was reading right wing news websites (in their own time). The idea of a conservative person going to HR and filing complaints about other employees because they read the Guardian is laughable, and it's not because the Guardian is somehow better or more moral than other newspapers (very much not so). People on the left are just drastically more afraid than normal people of exposure to non-left wing thought, and this problem gets worse the further left you go. This is also why communist countries always rely heavily on censorship and speech control. Unfortunately the experiments can't illuminate why this effect exists, only proving that it does. The rest is in the realm of speculation. They do leave one clue though: the left wing participants usually fail to predict right wing responses because they're picking answers much more extreme than those people actually hold.
- jazzythom 4y ago
- mikewarot 4y agoWedge issues tend to elicit emotional replies. The algorithms that are used to maximize profit tend toward showing the most emotional replies first. This positive feedback loop rapidly leads to a bifurcation of the audience into opposing camps, while drowning out more rational discourse. That's why.
- danschumann 4y agoWhy does no one listen to the person who rejects the false/artificial dichotomy?
- timoth3y 4y agoThe answer to the question in the title is contained in the title. For a number of reasons, we seem to have reached the point where hyperbolic, emotional statements get attention and calm, rational discussion is ignored. A world where everyone is trying to position themselves as the persecuted, besieged voice of reason defending simple truth against irrational attractors, does not leave much room for common ground. It's interesting to note that the author does seem to have had anyone accuse him of being "traitorous" for trying to understand. He just asserts this strawman to paint those who might disagree as unreasonable and then bemoans his asserted lack of common ground. I wish I could say this is an online phenomenon, and it's obviously much worse online, but it clearly has leaked into the offline world.
- daenz 4y ago>It's interesting to note that the author does seem to have had anyone accuse him of being "traitorous" for trying to understand. He just asserts this strawman to paint those who might disagree as unreasonable and then bemoans his asserted lack of common ground. Are you saying the author lacks credibility because they themselves do not show evidence of it happening to them? I'm confused, because the first and second sentences in your reply appears to acknowledge/agree with the author's conclusion. If you believe the author's complaint is legitimate, why claim they're making a strawman?
- 411111111111111 4y agoI'm not the person you're replying to but i believe that their point was that it is happening and this headline is an example of such behavior. We seem to often portrait ourself to be in a completely irrational victims position (like the headline) which usually doesn't exist. this makes finding the common ground for a discussion challenging.
- timoth3y 4y agoMy apologies. That sentence should have read "does not seem to have had anyone accuse him of being..."
- RobertRoberts 4y ago
- daenz 4y agoThere's another tactic that you could list under the "strategic model" so that it becomes like the "outlier model": misrepresent how many people actually hold the opposing view. For example, with abortion, by the way it's presented on social media, you would think it's a men vs women topic. But as recently as 2019[0], of pro-lifers, women were the majority. And pro-lifers are nearly half of the population. But if you were to gauge the sizes of the groups based on MSM and social media, you would think pro-lifers were much smaller of a group, and dominated by men. This is a strategy to convert the other side into the "outlier model" so that it is justified to not make any attempt to hear them. This strategy appears to be super effective... of amplifying some causes and downplaying other causes, so much so, that it should have its own category in the models section. 0. https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018...
- MockObject 4y ago> For example, with abortion, by the way it's presented on social media, you would think it's a men vs women topic. Because one of the most common talking points is that "they just want to control women's bodies".
- robonerd 4y agoControlling content through lies and censorship are crude methods of population control. By selectively amplifying some truths and suppressing others, you can create context.
- ranger207 4y agoThere's a bunch of people saying that it isn't traitorous to understand your opponent, but boy do people make you feel like it is. People like their strawmen because it reinforces the collective groupthink of their tribe, and anything that possibly humanizes the opponent also weakens the argument that your side is objectively correct. If you're interested in finding the truth then understanding your opponent is a critical step in finding the truth, but if you're interested in belonging to your tribe then understanding your opponent is anathema. Don't forget, you are not immune to propaganda, and you are not immune to tribalism, even if you know that you are not immune to either. My solution to fostering cooperation is to switch to a voting system other than first past the post, so that political parties can be elected that are too small to have a majority on their own and must cooperate to govern, but that's just my opinion and I'm not sure it'll work at this point
- EddieDante 4y agoIf you understand the people you disagree with, you might find yourself changing your mind and agreeing with them, if only on one or two points. This is how I went from being a half-assed Randroid to a half-assed libertarian socialist. I wasn't willing to take Ayn Rand's word about socialism and anarchism as gospel -- or that of her anointed prophet Leonard Peikoff. As for Roe v. Wade, I think the problem with reading the 14th Amendment as protecting a right to privacy is that the 14th isn't enough. We should be invoking the 9th Amendment as well, which explicitly covers unenumerated rights. > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. This amendment exists specifically to counter the sort of mindset that thinks that rights come from God or the government, and that the Constitution wasn't written to enumerate and thus limit the powers of the Federal government.
- everyone 4y agoInstinctual human behaviour. We're programmed to divide into groups of us or them. Being part of a group leads to benefits from that group, but, freeloaders could just profess loyalty, get the benefits and move on. So we have an instinct to fight freeloaders by having genuine members of the group make a difficult to fake concession or sacrifice of some kind. Which could be something like genital mutilation, or, maintaining a clearly irrational belief at all times for your entire life, or, at all times treating the others like inhuman scum and having 0 tolerance for any of their ideas, or usually, a combination of such things.
- koboll 4y ago> So, here’s a timeline: The 14th amendment was passed in 1868. For 135 years, it was perfectly consistent with that amendment for states to put people in jail for having the wrong kind of sex. Then, one day, it wasn’t anymore. This is wrong. When precedent is overturned, it's because the law struck down was never consistent with the amendment(s) at issue. Segregation was not perfectly consistent with the 14th Amendment prior to Brown v. Board, it was never consistent with it, from the time of its passage. The court upheld it in Plessy v. Ferguson not because it was okay then and the 'living document' subsequently changed and it became not-okay, but because the court made a glaringly wrong decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
- throwaway894345 4y ago> Segregation was not perfectly consistent with the 14th Amendment prior to Brown v. Board, it was never consistent with it, from the time of its passage. So if a future court overturns Brown v. Board, then it means that segregation is consistent again (and always has been)? How is this not exactly the kind of capriciousness that TFA is illustrating?
- throwaway894345 4y ago> Is this a ridiculous opinion? I don’t think so. But I can see why someone might disagree with it. For one, what’s the “privacy” thing? Maybe I misunderstand the court's rationale, but it seems really flimsy to hang abortion on "privacy" in this way. > We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. Whatever your thoughts on abortion, this seems poorly reasoned. Legalizing abortion implies asserting that life begins after some date. If first trimester abortions are legal, then it seems to imply that the law views human life (and thus human rights) as beginning sometime after the first trimester.
- riskable 4y ago> Legalizing abortion implies asserting that life begins after some date. I think you mean, "human life" not just "life". Because as far as we know life began about 4.2 billion years ago. With that out of the way we must now talk about, "what makes human life special?" and "at what point does it become special?"
- throwaway894345 4y agoYes, that's implied because we're talking about abortion in humans. > With that out of the way we must now talk about, "what makes human life special?" and "at what point does it become special?" Ugh, I'd rather not. There's no good reason to dive into this, and it always ends in ugly eugenics territory. E.g., "Just hear me out, what if the mentally disabled aren't really people?". I'd prefer to keep a wide berth around that--the great thing about human rights is that (apart from the abortion issue) every human gets them.
- hans1729 4y agoSomething can't be traitorous with respect to the intellectual discourse of a given topic, but to a group. Group consensus is not about intellectual correctness, obviously. Groups are about evolution, as is belonging to them and seeking just that. We collectively subscribe to them because that's the emerged mechanism by which we modulate decision making where the direct representation of individual takes is not feasible. Individual takes matter not when the subject at hand isn't actually about the subject, but about winning at life.
- endisneigh 4y agoAll these problems because people can’t be explicit and exhaustive. Amend the constitution for example if that’s what you mean, clarify, etc.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago> Given this disagreement, it’s not entirely obvious to me that we should resolve it through the Supreme Court rather than having people debate with each other and vote for legislators who will pass laws that reflect their views. This misunderstands the role of a Constitution. One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy. People cannot debate with each other and vote for legislators who will pass laws that are forbidden by the constitution. It doesn't matter how many of them want to, or how solid the argument is. The Constitution says "nope, don't care, you cannot do that". Even if every single voter in a state wanted to prevent anyone from ever saying "Turtles Suck!", the state cannot pass such a law. Even if there is vigorous disagreement over whether or not people should be allowed to say "Turtles Suck!", the Constitution says "don't care. You cannot pass a law prohibiting this." So in the case discussed at the top of the article, the core question is whether the Constitution allows states to pass laws that ban abortion. Roe said that the Constitution does not allow them to do so, because <reasons> (not meant sarcastically, just not worth enumerating them here). As long as the Constitution is understood in that way, it makes no difference how much debate and disagreement there is about such laws: the Constitution says "you cannot pass laws that function in this way." Now, of course, currently SCOTUS appears to be ready to present a different understanding of the Constitution in which it does not prevent states from passing laws that ban abortion (or otherwise restrict it). That makes no difference to the central point: if the Constitution is understood to prevent legislation that restricts behavior, the level of disagreement in society about that behavior is of no legal consequence.
- njharman 4y ago> One of the central points of a Constitution is to mark certain things off-limits to democracy. This only applied to federal portion of "democracy" until the 14th amendment which added restricting the states re Bill of Rights. 14th wasn't adopted until 1868. I don't think it's that central. > The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without a fair procedure. The Supreme Court has ruled this clause makes most of the Bill of Rights as applicable to the states as it is to the federal government, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... The Constitution is primarily about limiting the powers of the Federal government vis a vis State government, and then both vs people. As outlined by the 10th amendment. > The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. The government can't pass laws against "Turtles Suck!" because that power is not granted them. It is reserved to The People. This is why "people" like youtube and twitter and cancel culture are free to censor and ban.
- AdamH12113 4y ago(Context: The article uses abortion as its central -- and only -- example.) >Why is it traitorous to understand the people you disagree with? It's not. Many people[1] spend a great deal of time studying the rhetoric and activities of people who oppose abortion. They have studied them far more than you. >For better or for worse, the vast majority of people I know favor Roe v. Wade. Still, I think I understand the view of people on the other side. You give two possible reasons for opposing Roe v. Wade, one of which rejects the legal argument as fundamentally arbitrary, and one of which is based on the idea that a human life, with all the rights and dignities that it is entitled to, begins at conception. This falls into a common trap, which is treating "culture war" disputes as being fundamentally about abstract philosophical debates. This ignores the important parts of the dispute, which concern women's sexuality and the role of (conservative, patriarchal) religion in public affairs. It also ignores the mountains of bad faith and hypocrisy in the anti-abortion movement, including but not limited to a lack of interest in "saving" IVF embryos, bizarre ignorance of the female reproductive system, a refusal to acknowledge the circumstances under which people have late-term abortions, active opposition to medically-accurate sex education and easier access to contraceptives, and a lack of concern for what happens to babies after they're born. >As far as I can tell, my object-level views on “when abortion should be legal” are close to the median in my (leftist-dominated) corner of the universe. Yet, except with close friends, I’d be scared to say what I think above. Scared of what, exactly? When you publicly make bad arguments, you should expect public criticism. The only reason I can see that someone would get mad at you is that you are treating abortion rights as a bloodless, impersonal affair. This is a very practical issue with very real, very serious consequences for the women involved. Most women do not want to engage in an abstract debate about whether they should be forced to carry a dead fetus to term[2]. If you want to discuss how all this relates to jurisprudence and philosophy, you can certainly do that. It's not wrong, and you're not wrong for wanting to ask questions and start discussions on those subjects. But it's important to be clear that such discussions are (almost) totally separate from the practical questions of how overturning Roe v. Wade will actually affect American women. Conflating the two buries the practical questions, and only benefits people who would prefer that the practical questions are ignored. [1] The Slacktivist blog is a good place to start. Search for articles about abortion. Those articles will have many links to other people examining anti-abortion views. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/ [2] Not hyperbole.
- gotoeleven 4y ago
- rat87 4y ago> The question before the court in Roe v. Wade was not “Would the world be better if abortion were legal?” The question was, “Does the US Constitution prohibit states from making abortion illegal?” This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem that gives way to much credit to the court. The question isn't about legality or the constitution it's about politics and power. The conservative legal movement has spent decades working to take away the right of women to choose. They've been explicit about this. McConnell stacked the court by refusing to even hear from Garland then jamming in Barrett at the last moment. The reason Roe vs Wade is being overturned isn't because it is flawed but because they finally got not just a conservative majority but an extremely conservative supreme court majority A lot of people claimed they didn't really mean it when they said they wanted to ban abortion and that they were just taking advantage of socially conservatives for the votes but when the politicians/judge politicans are themselves socially conservative why would you think they don't believe in it? And now we have the unsurprising result. I wish we wouldn't dress it up in irrelevant theoretical conversations about what the constitution says
- mattwilsonn888 4y agoIt would only be traitorous to understand the people you disagree with if your current mental framework is so fragile and irrational as to be consistently dismantled by your opposition's arguments.
- pazimzadeh 4y agoSomething something it was Ender Wiggin's empathy/love/understanding of the buggers which enabled him to defeat them
- asdffdsa 4y agoThe logical construction of this piece is poorly formulated. The title is “why does x happen”. The content is: I believe foo. Evidence behind why author believes foo. Here is an arbitrary list of 6 behavioral responses to foo: [a b c d e x]. X happens which is a bad thing. There is no critical analysis or evidence substantiating the 6 responses, nor how/why response x happens. In other words, there’s no intellectual rigor behind the title’s claim, nor do I have any inclination to believe the author’s claim as true after reading it.
- hintymad 4y agoI was curious if people will get even madder if the US passes a law to enforce maximum number of weeks post-fertilization. There are only fewer than 10(?) countries, after all, that do not have such time limit. Most of the European countries do.
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoYes. Pro-choice people have testified to Congress that there is a qualitative difference between 3” of vaginal depth. Stick a pair of scissors through the brain after the head is out of those 3”, then it’s murder. Stick them up to those 3” inches, then it’s an abortion.
- andrewclunn 4y agoPeople don't want to understand. Earnestly listening means you might change your mind. There is nothing to be gained "strategically" by listening. Claiming to want open discourse and free discussion is a tactic promoted by those who would lose any popular poll or vote. Further, most people don't hold their opinions because they've thought things through. They are told "good people believe A," and they want to be seen as (and think of them self as) a good person, so they espouse A. It's one thing to wish people were more rational and less tribal. But to really not understand human nature after the last decade? The author is either naive beyond absurdity or feigning ignorance as a different form of virtue signaling.
- LordDragonfang 4y agoThis question and questions adjacent to it get explored a lot more thoroughly in many of Scott Alexander's essays/blog posts, particularly in the (from 2014, but still mostly relevant) "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoIs it the understanding or the bringing it up at inappropriate times that gets the pushback? If it's the latter then it's probably just some missing social skills. At least that's my take speaking from personal experience.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- onetothree 4y agoA little testimony to how the society is doing is the fact that, I actually genuinely expected the article to try to make the case for the title, before I continued reading. :D
- mcguire 4y agoI'm afraid I find this argument to be specious. Sure, Roe v. Wade might or might not be a great legal decision. However, if it is not, why are conservative state governments racing to introduce new laws to ban abortion, punish anyone who helps someone have an abortion, and ban forms of contraception. Further, why is no one discussing other, similar decisions? Sure, Griswold is part and parcel the argument over Roe v. Wade, and Loving is verboten while Clarence Thomas is on the court, but there have been many other decisions based on the "specious" right to privacy. Why are none of them being picked apart with the same sharp instruments as Roe? The answer is that "it's a poor constitutional decision" is a red herring. "When does life begin" is even irrelevant. If you want to understand the people you disagree with (and, yes, I think that is a very good idea), and you disagree with American conservatives, you need to understand that they do not like the way society has changed since 1960---some much further back than that---and many are willing to do or say anything in order to roll back those changes. (And yes, I mean that. The American left has a lot of idiocy, but the vast majority of bad faith arguments, including that Christianity and conservatism are oppressed minorities, come from the right. (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-07/Good_Faith-vs-Bad_Faith-Arguments_or_Discussions.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-07/Good_Faith...)) While you're discussing the legal niceties of Roe v. Wade, keep in mind that it, abortion, and sexuality in general are just the edge of the wedge; there are many other policies on the list that even you might be attached to.
- mro_name 4y agobecause humans are herd animals and mere repetition makes acceptance. If you understand, you don't oppose as fierce as you are obliged to as a good herd member. You may vent the wrong tunes.
- burlesona 4y ago> When we get so excited about culture war, maybe policy is irrelevant and we’re really just talking about what team we’re on. When you and I talk about how stupid and evil and bad the other side is, we’re demonstrating that we’ve burned our bridges and we’re totally committed to our current tribe. As a person with close friends and family members on opposite sides of the culture war, this is the explanation that resonates most to me.
- lamontcg 4y agoThe title article and all of the responses here don't capture the argument that if abortion is illegal that means that it still happens, but young women will die (and the poor young women who can't be quietly flown to another jurisdiction where it is legal). And I think the bigger problem is that we allow people to have nonsense opinions in polite society. The idea that human life begins at conception and that undifferentiated cells are human life worth more than the life of the mother is just garbage. That isn't really defensible. And that isn't my problem and I'm not going to be particularly apologetic about it and I don't need to see eye to eye with anyone else. They constructed this ridiculous argument that I can never in a million years agree with and so I won't. I literally can't compromise with that position, and it is a position that I would argue is crafted deliberately to avoid compromise. Ain't my problem. And if you're going to argue that it should be my problem and that I don't get how we need civility and tolerance I think you're the bigger problem. Keep punching the wrong direction though. And where's the outrage over the anti-abortion activists painting their opposition as supporting abortion uncritically into the third trimester? There's nobody reasonable out there who believes that. Yet you'll find people who find abortion troubling and want it done quickly and can't agree with it being in the third trimester except to save the life of the mother who consider themselves to be against abortion. They're actually pro-abortion/pro-choice because that's the way everyone thinks. Make it quick and easy and get it done in the first trimester ASAP (and use contraception so ideally it never gets there and stop using the rhythm method or pulling out because that's how you wind up needing abortions, and use the morning after pill in the case of contraceptive failure or rape). Most pro-abortion/choice people already ARE at the compromise point between the two extreme endpoints of the possible debate.