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November 21, 2004

Why is it so wrong to legislate moral actions?

Something that presidential candidate John Kerry (thank God it stopped at just candidate!) said sometime in the weeks leading up to the election was that while he held the belief that certain things were right or wrong (I forget whether the context was abortion or gay marriage), that he did not feel that he could legislate his beliefs on others.

This is a very scary statement to me. When did it become wrong for our laws to have some basis in morality? Is it merely because the belief is question came from his religious beliefs, rather than from beliefs that he arrived at through other influences? Why is it OK to legislate enforcement of some things that are right/wrong, like murder or stealing, but not other things, like abortion or gay marriage?

To narrow the focus, take abortion (no, I mean it, take it please - I don't want it in my country!) Very few people would argue that it is not OK to force others not to commit murder, or at least to punish them for doing so after the fact. (Some will argue rehabilitate, but that is a whole other discussion that I am not going to take on here.) But when it comes to abortion, we are not supposed to say that it is wrong, because it is the woman's right to choose. Right to choose what? To take another's life because in doing so it will make one's own better, or not as bad? What about the right of the baby to life?

I used to think that the argument must be that about when life begins, because that was the only thing that made sense to me. I mean, sure, if you feel that life does not begin until birth, then I can understand how you would feel that abortion was OK. I could not agree, but at least I could understand and have a place to start a discussion from. But the more people that I have talked to, the more I have realized that this is not the right argument, because most people that I have talked to don't believe that life begins at birth, that it begins earlier.

But this leaves me out in the cold, because this seems to be very inconsistent. I mean, how can you say that the baby is a human, that it is alive, but purely and solely because it lives inside another person, that person somehow has the right to take away the life of the baby. But somehow, at the magical instant that the cord is cut between mother and child, the child achieves the right to life? What am I missing here? So many people that I have talked with hold strongly to this set of beliefs, but are unable to verbalize why this is a consistent viewpoint.

When I am involved in a discussion about political/moral issues like this, I am usually able to take into account the other beliefs and feelings and starting points, and be able to understand why the person feels the way that they do. Then at least I have a starting point from which to discuss. Two people just throwing their viewpoints at each other is a waste of time and never going to change anyone's mind unless you can somehow understand each other. At least for me, because I do not enjoy an argument just for the sake of the argument. But I can just cannot understand the thought process that allows you to come up with contradictory beliefs, and somehow be OK with this.

Can anyone explain how this set of beliefs (murder is wrong, murder is taking the life of a human for personal reasons, an unborn child is a human, abortion is OK) is consistent?

Posted by Scott at 7:03 PM | Comments (0)

A (the?) difference between liberals and conservatives...

Seems to me that when you boil it down, that one of the main differences between the conservative viewpoint and the liberal viewpoint has to do with how they view the social strata. A caste system in America? Say it isn't so!

The typical liberal view seems to be that there are the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor, the evil and the good (not all are willing to cop to this last one, and it does not work really well with the whole relativism BS, but...) But the way that your bleeding heart liberal sees of fixing this situation, is that the poor and downtrodden must be given a hand (not a hand up) in struggling from paycheck to paycheck. Not to better one's situation, but merely to live more comfortably within it.

Contrast this with the conservative feeling that the poor and downtrodden just need the right opportunity, and the right amount of grit and determination, and they too can better their situation, live the American dream. To put it bluntly, get up off the couch and make something of yourself, go find your dream, don't expect it to come find you.

It is sad that the American dream, which used to be the opportunity to make something of ones self, to create one's own destiny, to be able to make gobs of money if that was what one decided was his dream, has somewhere along the way changed into just making gobs of money. It used to be that we all had the right to the "pursuit of happiness," but now too many people seem to think that the right is to "happiness" itself. No work. No effort. I am owed it just because I exist.

I think that the conservative perspective is gaining (at least I hope the recent election points in this direction) popularity with the common man in large part to the fact that the Democratic party is becoming more and more run by the rich elite of the party who think that their task is to make the lives of the lower class easier, but they truly think that their is no way that the lower class could ever become one of them, because, well, that just never could happen because they are so much better than those scum, ah, less fortunate persons.

Posted by Scott at 6:28 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2004

OTP (One Time Pad)

There seems to be a huge misconception about what a one time pad really is and how/why it works. Bruce Schneier wrote a very easy to understand article on the subject, for those that would like to know.

Posted by Scott at 6:32 PM | Comments (0)