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“live and let live” has traditionally described the more tolerant end of the spectrum of possible “social enforcement”, not the absence of such enforcement - th

“live and let live” has traditionally described the more tolerant end of the spectrum of possible “social enforcement”, not the absence of such enforcement - the problem is that the group that wants religious rights for society doesn’t want marriage rights for others in society, and the group that wants abortion rights in society doesn’t want gun rights for others in society. And so on. So the question is whether to have a society where we generally allow people to do things we don’t like, as the price of being allowed to do the things we do like, or a society that prevents us doing what we want as the price of preventing others doing things we don’t like. Or, you know, each side trying to get freedom for the things they care about but trying to ban the things they dislike? There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum, maybe as a society we might want to see if the same principles might work more broadly?

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends. Gun control advocates object tto avoidable gun massacres in schools, malls, and other public places. They're not remotely comparable. The obvious difference is that if a woman has an abortion it's fundamentally a private matter. The outcome affects a single person. Or two people at most. The outcome is not a line of ambulances and coffins and a traumatised community of teachers, parents, and neighbours. Of course they're framed as if they're equivalent freedoms, because in the US "freedom" is a master-frame that can be used to justify almost anything. And that's the real problem. One group consistently uses deceptive single-issue appeals to emotion to gain and hold political power. If there are no real issues to appeal to, they'll quite happily invent some. They fundamentally don't care what the issue is as long as it's politically useful. The other group actually cares about outcomes - not just in a negative sense of wanting certain things not to happen, but in the positive sense of expanding political access to everyone in the community for the benefit of the entire community. What's missing - in the US particularly - is a political system which makes this fundamental distinction clear and explicit. Democracies have few defences against deceptive framing used for political grift. And that's not a good way to build a better future.
- efitz 4y ago
  Wow, you just provided a positive data point for the article. You completely dismissed the idea that anyone pro-life or pro-2A might have any good faith reason for their beliefs. Thanks for validating the premise of the original article.
  - halkony 4y ago
    Someone else in the thread pointed out this happens when political abstractions fall apart and this is a pretty good example of that haha
- User23 4y ago
  > That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends. No, we think killing innocent human beings is gross and wrong in principle. There’s nothing emotional or religious about it. If you accept the premises that a fetus is an innocent human being and that intentionally killing innocent human beings is wrong, then if you have any respect for logic you must conclude that abortion is wrong. Biology tells us that at the moment of conception that single diploid cell is a human being. Therefore, in that model, in order to justify killing a fetus it must either be unintentional or the fetus must not be innocent. The intentional case can apply to procedures that are intended to help the mother that unfortunately harm the fetus. For the other case I can’t see how a fetus could be guilty of anything deserving death. However, as an counter-example, I’m given to understand that’s the case in Jewish law at least some of the time. Anyhow as you can see there is no deception, in framing or otherwise. It’s just simple premises and sound logic from them. On the other hand I rarely see logical moral reasoning with generally acceptable premises from the pro-Choice side, so you're correct that the subject is, for some people, primarily an emotional one. Anyhow I've kept this to just a simple explanation of why we're pro-Life, because I don't think HN is the right place to debate political issues, but it is the right place to correct erroneous statements.
  - svnt 4y ago
    > Biology tells us that at the moment of conception that single diploid cell is a human being. Ah yes the deification. When was the last time you spoke with Biology? Because when I speak to it it says no such thing.
User23 4y ago
> There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum While the post civil war amendments were ruled to have changed it, at the time of ratification the establishment clause did not apply to the individual states. And many of the first thirteen had some official religion or other. So while it was live and let live at the federal level, at the local level it wasn’t so much.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Yes, the original design of the U.S. is something more like live and let live at the community level rather than the individual level. The idea was that you could have different groups of religious nuts living alongside each other, not to eviscerate the ability of each group to enforce rules within their own communities.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends. Gun control advocates object tto avoidable gun massacres in schools, malls, and other public places. They're not remotely comparable. The obvious difference is that if a woman has an abortion it's fundamentally a private matter. The outcome affects a single person. Or two people at most. The outcome is not a line of ambulances and coffins and a traumatised community of teachers, parents, and neighbours. Of course they're framed as if they're equivalent freedoms, because in the US "freedom" is a master-frame that can be used to justify almost anything. And that's the real problem. One group consistently uses deceptive single-issue appeals to emotion to gain and hold political power. If there are no real issues to appeal to, they'll quite happily invent some. They fundamentally don't care what the issue is as long as it's politically useful. The other group actually cares about outcomes - not just in a negative sense of wanting certain things not to happen, but in the positive sense of expanding political access to everyone in the community for the benefit of the entire community. What's missing - in the US particularly - is a political system which makes this fundamental distinction clear and explicit. Democracies have few defences against deceptive framing used for political grift. And that's not a good way to build a better future.

efitz 4y ago
Wow, you just provided a positive data point for the article. You completely dismissed the idea that anyone pro-life or pro-2A might have any good faith reason for their beliefs. Thanks for validating the premise of the original article.
- halkony 4y ago
  Someone else in the thread pointed out this happens when political abstractions fall apart and this is a pretty good example of that haha
User23 4y ago
> That's a false equivalence. "Pro-life" advocates use a topic that some people find emotive purely for political ends. No, we think killing innocent human beings is gross and wrong in principle. There’s nothing emotional or religious about it. If you accept the premises that a fetus is an innocent human being and that intentionally killing innocent human beings is wrong, then if you have any respect for logic you must conclude that abortion is wrong. Biology tells us that at the moment of conception that single diploid cell is a human being. Therefore, in that model, in order to justify killing a fetus it must either be unintentional or the fetus must not be innocent. The intentional case can apply to procedures that are intended to help the mother that unfortunately harm the fetus. For the other case I can’t see how a fetus could be guilty of anything deserving death. However, as an counter-example, I’m given to understand that’s the case in Jewish law at least some of the time. Anyhow as you can see there is no deception, in framing or otherwise. It’s just simple premises and sound logic from them. On the other hand I rarely see logical moral reasoning with generally acceptable premises from the pro-Choice side, so you're correct that the subject is, for some people, primarily an emotional one. Anyhow I've kept this to just a simple explanation of why we're pro-Life, because I don't think HN is the right place to debate political issues, but it is the right place to correct erroneous statements.
- svnt 4y ago
  > Biology tells us that at the moment of conception that single diploid cell is a human being. Ah yes the deification. When was the last time you spoke with Biology? Because when I speak to it it says no such thing.

User23 4y ago

> There is an obvious analogy with religion and religious freedom that I think the US constitution and bill of rights handled very effectively (compared to most other countries) at the “live and let live” end of the spectrum While the post civil war amendments were ruled to have changed it, at the time of ratification the establishment clause did not apply to the individual states. And many of the first thirteen had some official religion or other. So while it was live and let live at the federal level, at the local level it wasn’t so much.

rayiner 4y ago
Yes, the original design of the U.S. is something more like live and let live at the community level rather than the individual level. The idea was that you could have different groups of religious nuts living alongside each other, not to eviscerate the ability of each group to enforce rules within their own communities.