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Rex Little

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  1. Rex Little

    On Abortion

    Speaking just for myself, I consider that a gray area, at least the sixth month or so. A post with my full line of reasoning on this got moved to this thread; it's #675.
  2. Rex Little

    On Abortion

    Usually true, but not always. I've heard of women who actually delivered babies before they realized they'd been pregnant. (Generally they were so morbidly obese that the extra weight and bulge of the pregnancy was a trifle by comparison. This begs the question of just who they found to get them pregnant in the first place. . . but I'm veering perilously close to a threadjack. ). I haven't either, personally, but the rabid anti-abortionists claim it does happen, and I've never seen the rabid pro-choicers deny it. I'm inclined to believe that in a nation of 300 million people, anything that can be done, will be done at some point. But this is a trivial side question. Those of us in this discussion who claim that a (healthy, non-dangerous) third-trimester fetus has the right not to be aborted aren't extending that to the first trimester, which is where nearly all the action is.
  3. Rex Little

    On Abortion

    Then you haven't been paying attention. Here's a case of an eighth-month abortion. They're rare, but they do happen.
  4. Rex Little

    Abortion

    I think fletch hit this one square. My chain of reasoning is as follows: 1. If an infant has the right to life at birth (which we all agree it does), it has the same right 10 minutes before birth. Nothing in its nature is essentially different. 2. Following the timeline back, at some point in its development it acquired the essential characteristics which confer rights. We can disagree about when that is (and can't know exactly when it happens for any particular fetus). But for the purposes of first-term abortions, it's irrelevant (as I will show). 3. The right to life does not include the right to live inside another person's body without her consent. Therefore the mother has the right to have the being inside of her removed whenever she wants. However, if the being has the right to life, and it's possible to remove it without killing it, then she has the obligation to do so. It's analogous to the case of an univited visitor in your house who's not threatening you but just won't leave. You have the right to physically drag him out, or have the police do it, but you don't have the right to shoot him dead and drag out the body. However, if he has somehow attached himself to the wall in such a way that removing him will kill him, you can still remove him; his death is no longer avoidable without violating your rights. So as I see it, there are three categories of abortions: Before the fetus is viable outside the womb, abortions should clearly be allowed, whether or not it has rights. There is no way to remove it without killing it. The vast majority of abortions are in this category. After the fetus has acquired the characteristics which give it rights and is viable outside the womb, abortions of convenience should be forbidden; as fletch said, if she wants the kid out, induce labor. (However, there are plenty of cases where something goes wrong with the pregnancy and the only way to protect the life and physical health of the mother is to abort, so a blanket ban like the recently-passed law isn't the answer either.) Ninth-month pregnancies are in this category; probably eighth-month as well. Between these is a gray area where either viability or possession of rights, or both, can be debated. As medical science gets better at keeping premature babies alive, the point of viability moves earlier; at some point, it might predate full brain function. (For all I know about the subject, maybe it already does.) In this area, I'd be comfortable letting a doctor certify that in his expert opinion either the fetus isn't viable or doesn't have a working brain, and allow an abortion based on that. In any case, not many abortions are done at this stage.
  5. I've had several Mormon friends and neighbors over the years. I never thought to ask them if they considered themselves Christian, but it seems to me the answer must be yes. After all, the full name of their church is "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." And when they advertise on TV offering to send you a free book, it's the Bible. As to the second question: I have a brother who's a fundamentalist Christian, and he considers Mormons not to be Christian. I'm not real clear on what his reasons are; something about them "denying the divinity of Christ." What he means by that, and whether a Mormon would agree, I have no idea. I don't know enough about various religions for this to be more than an opinion, but it seems to me that if the term "Christian" is defined so as to include all the other denominations mentioned in Diana's post, it has to include Mormons as well. (As she noted, not all members of those denominations would use that inclusive a definition.) They believe that Jesus Christ exists, that he is the begotten son of God, and that he was resurrected after being killed. By me, that's Christian.
  6. The way I read this, it doesn't prohibit a check for less than $5, because there's no intent that a check will be circulated as currency. Basically it's saying you can't spend Monopoly money or something like that. (Still seems like a useless law; common sense should prevent the problem from arising in the first place.) What's weird is that this is section 22 of the chapter of the General Laws. Section 21 says the exact same thing but without the five-dollar proviso. The fine is the same, fifty dollars. So what was the point of section 22?
  7. If they have something to object to, that would be a step in the right direction. I was never exposed to her books when I was in school. I had to find them on my own (on the advice of my parents, actually, even though they were welfare statists), and that didn't happen until after college.
  8. Well, yeah, for a couple of years. After that, if the Repugnants don't get Congress back, you've got the Democraps in full control. (You don't seriously think they won't get the White House in '08, do you?) I'm old enough to remember the Lyndon Johnson era, and not fondly.
  9. In that Q&A, I recommend taking some of Rand's answers with a grain of salt. In particular, the following: ". . . most of them [Libertarians] are my enemies: they spend their time denouncing me, while plagiarizing my ideas." At the time she made that statement (1974), the LP had run one presidential campaign (1972). Its campaign literature consisted primarily of a largish book (about 500 pages IIRC) called Libertarianism, written by presidential candidate John Hospers. It was hard to find a page in that book which didn't have a quote from Rand's writings, complete with footnotes. I remind you that "plagiarism" consists of claiming someone else's ideas as your own, without crediting the source. As for "denouncing" her. . . quoting someone hundreds of times in a book seems a strange way of doing that. And most of the party members at that time had come to their political beliefs by reading Rand; their feelings for her ranged from admiration to reverence. I know this from personal acquaintance with a large sample of them, as I was quite active in the LP and other individualist organizations at the time. The denunciations between Rand and the LP went in the opposite direction from what Rand claimed in this quote.
  10. That's fine as long as the Repugnants can take back Congress when Hilary moves back to 1600 Pennsylvania. Otherwise we'd have a Democrap congress' spending being waved through (hell, whipped along like a racehorse down the stretch) by a Democrap president. Ask anyone who was around during the Lyndon Johnson years what that's like.
  11. Strange but not unique. Same thing happened to my youngest brother when he was 16. And not only were we raised atheist, but it even goes back to my grandparents, at least on my mother's side. Within the family we get some interesting three-corner debates between myself (atheist with mostly Objectivist political beliefs) my Christian brother (political beliefs similar to mine) and another brother who's atheist and politically leftist.
  12. Hell, even anarchist libertarians don't say that. David (son of Milton) Friedman, a self-proclaimed anarchist libertarian, wrote the following in his book The Machinery of Freedom: "I'd rather pay taxes to Washington than Moscow; the rates are lower." (I may not have the quote exactly right, but that was the essence.)
  13. There's computer game called Capitalism which basically has you building a large company from scratch. It's been updated twice since its original release, the latest version being Capitalism 2. There are also several board games which involve building up a real estate or business empire of some sort, whose luck element is far less than Monopoly if not quite absent altogether. Two that I have played and can recommend are Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico.
  14. It's been many years since I had much personal contact with the Libertarian Party, but in its early days, the vast majority of its members considered Rand to be an inspiration and the source of their political beliefs. We were saddened that she denounced the party, but very few of us felt any hostility towards her.
  15. It occurs to me that we're overlooking a perfect publicity gimmick. If they cast a complete unknown as Galt, and keep his identity secret while shooting, the pre-release buzz will be all about. . . who is John Galt?
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