32 minutes ago, Boydstun said:
Trump declares that having this right decided at the State level is right. I do not.
Yes, but you did also note that Trump’s position is the best that can be hoped for, regardless of who wins the presidential race.
33 minutes ago, Boydstun said:
Citizens, and theologians and philosophers, and perhaps you and I too, have simply disagreed on where the individual rights lie on the issue of abortion.
Oh, probably not. The way I see it, even if we accepted that a fetus is a person (which is certainly not a safe assumption) it’d still be a person who will die if separated from its mother - who has every right to demand that separation, if she wishes. Nobody has the right to anyone else’s body. We probably disagree on the issue of the “born alive” infants (those who somehow manage to survive the abortion procedure) but there aren’t many of those; it’s really a side issue.
I’m just curious as to how this issue can be a deal-breaker for you when it’s virtually decided already, regardless of who wins the election.
Although the Moral Majority is still a part of the Republican party, they have lost a lot of their old relevance. Trump is a pragmatist trying to win votes, not a moralizing preacher seeking to impose God’s commandments.
Some Democrats keep trying to make Republicans out to be hypocrites for supporting Trump, because he’s immoral by religious standards, but in fact most Republicans are not hypocrites because they don’t want to be as religious as that. Most of them don’t take religious ideas seriously enough for that. A righteous theocrat wouldn’t enjoy the broad support from Republicans that Trump does.
The Moral “Majority” isn’t a majority any more. This is the main reason why Trump had to change the Republican party platform to go state-by-state instead of banning abortion nationwide. It was a compromise. The support for banning abortion just isn’t there, and not even all Republicans support a ban on abortion.
13 hours ago, necrovore said:
Although the Moral Majority is still a part of the Republican party, they have lost a lot of their old relevance. Trump is a pragmatist trying to win votes, not a moralizing preacher seeking to impose God’s commandments.
. . .
The “Moral Majority” which is now just called “evangelicals” still has power with Mr. Trump by their influence on votes. He has a Trump-adorned Bible for sale to them. I don’t mean those voters simply vote the way their pastor recommends. I mean they know what to vote for or against according to their religious beliefs which are constantly sounded from the pulpits they have chosen to audience. It is not just evangelicals who are dependable concerning votes on abortion-law issues; it is still the Roman Catholic dependable anti-abortionist quarter as well (these are the philosophical and theological brains, of course, from which the low-churched anti-abortionists get their words for the issue, but for not-RC idiotic exceptions in details such as that it is OK to kill the fetus if it came from a rape). I’ve had Roman Catholic friends who support the legality of elective abortions, as in Roe, even though they would never have an abortion themselves. But they were Democrats and Libertarians.
Trump had to bow recently to the evangelicals when he had come out in favor of the Florida referendum freeing women and physicians from the fetal-“heatbeat” limitation. The next day the religious faction of his supporters set him straight, and he retracted his favor for the measure.
I don’t care what his personal views on the issue are. All that matters is what acts he takes when holding power of the office of President. He appointed the Justices necessary to give a clear majority to the anti-abortionists on the Supreme Court. He should be punished for that by defeat in this election. And he will do it again if a vacancy comes up in his second term. The Republican Senate is not going to approve a nominee for Justice who is not anti-abortionist in law. Additionally, Mr. Trump will sign a national ban on abortions at some point of gestation before viability should the bill arrive on the President’s desk. It will take a two-thirds Republican majority in the Senate to get such a bill passed. It is now a high likelihood that control of the Senate will go back to the Republicans in this election. I don’t expect that to yield two-thirds, but engineering with extra fortifications (pen not in hand of Trump) of safety is best policy.
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34 minutes ago, Boydstun said:
All that matters is what acts he takes when holding power of the office of President.
Since he’s already had one term as President he’s a guaranteed one-termer if he gets elected. So once he’s in office he won’t need to curry the evangelicals’ favor anymore and he’ll be able to act according to his own conscience.
The move to favor that amendment was the correct one and so that’s indicative of what he’ll really do.
37 minutes ago, Boydstun said:
Additionally, Mr. Trump will sign a national ban on abortions at some point of gestation before viability should the bill arrive on the President’s desk.
I think Trump has specifically said he will not do this.
p.s. As for the Supreme Court nominees, I think the problem goes all the way back to John Locke and Spinoza and Aquinas and the way their philosophies mix freedom and Christianity. This leads to Constitutionalists and Originalists giving too much support to religion, but the alternative is usually to have jurists who support neither freedom nor (theistic) religion; what they support resembles Communism and is a “secular religion.”
Freedom very nearly killed religion in the 18th century and it can possibly do so again. But the other side removes freedom from the picture almost entirely, so what idea will remain to kill Communism? Could a pro-abortion argument be generalized to support other freedoms, in the face of Communism? It seems impossible.
9 hours ago, necrovore said:
Freedom very nearly killed religion in the 18th century and it can possibly do so again. But the other side removes freedom from the picture almost entirely, so what idea will remain to kill Communism? Could a pro-abortion argument be generalized to support other freedoms, in the face of Communism? It seems impossible.
It’s not possible, and he doesn’t care. The MSM told him “Trump bad” and I really don’t think much else is going on, here.
8 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
It’s not possible, and he doesn’t care. The MSM told him “Trump bad” and I really don’t think much else is going on, here.
I think he (and a lot of people) have been personally aggrieved by the evangelicals, which is understandable, given they way the evangelicals can become really medieval when they think they’re wielding “God’s Judgment.”
But it’s a mistake to focus on the evangelicals to the exclusion of everything else.
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Do you only get to establish an Office of the President Elect if you get more than 80 million popular votes ?
1 minute ago, tadmjones said:
Do you only get to establish an Office of the President Elect if you get more than 80 million popular votes ?
No, no, Trump can have one, too.
I think we may find that the precedents set by our current leader (and that created no noise among the suddenly pearl-clutchingly tyranny-concerned) will carry-over often to Trump.
But he should call it Office of Impending MAGA
39 minutes ago, tadmjones said:
Do you only get to establish an Office of the President Elect if you get more than 80 million popular votes ?
Well, there is no such thing, so it would take an act of Congress and the usual presidential filter to create it. There have been various laws establishing some kind of transition mechanism. Mostly this has been a matter of “courtesy” though with the repeal of courtesy in presidential politics, we just have statutory law. In 2010, there was a law providing for certain privileges and emoluments for the future POTUS, stuck in as an uncodified note to 3 USC 102 which was repealed in 2016. At any rate, the administrator of the GSA is the guy who was empowered to make that determination, via an “ascertainment letter”. In the immediately previous election, the sitting GSA Administrator engaged in a bit of political fuckery by denying that Biden beat Trump, but eventually she admitted that she was wrong and released the funds. Now this only provides for office space and money, not any “power” such as access to heads of state via the State Department, which enabled Trump to tell Biden to screw himself until the last minute. There is and has been nothing in any law that states the criteria for opening the coffers to a president-elect. If he wants, there’s nothing to prevent him from hanging any arbitrary sign he wants on the door.
6 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:
At any rate, the administrator of the GSA is the guy who was empowered to make that determination, via an “ascertainment letter”.
I think the law around that was changed in 2022: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/77-days-transition-new-law-aims-streamline-presidential-power-transfer-process
13 minutes ago, DavidOdden said:
Well, there is no such thing, so it would take an act of Congress and the usual presidential filter to create it. There have been various laws establishing some kind of transition mechanism. Mostly this has been a matter of “courtesy” though with the repeal of courtesy in presidential politics, we just have statutory law. In 2010, there was a law providing for certain privileges and emoluments for the future POTUS, stuck in as an uncodified note to 3 USC 102 which was repealed in 2016. At any rate, the administrator of the GSA is the guy who was empowered to make that determination, via an “ascertainment letter”. In the immediately previous election, the sitting GSA Administrator engaged in a bit of political fuckery by denying that Biden beat Trump, but eventually she admitted that she was wrong and released the funds. Now this only provides for office space and money, not any “power” such as access to heads of state via the State Department, which enabled Trump to tell Biden to screw himself until the last minute. There is and has been nothing in any law that states the criteria for opening the coffers to a president-elect. If he wants, there’s nothing to prevent him from hanging any arbitrary sign he wants on the door.
So it’s your everyday ole performative projection of pseudo-quasi? power that all legitimate leaders do ?
On 11/5/2024 at 12:50 AM, Harrison Danneskjold said:
It’s not possible, and he doesn’t care. The MSM told him “Trump bad” and I really don’t think much else is going on, here.
I’d like to revise this, actually. That’s not fair.
The MSM told him “Trump anti-abortion” and he correctly evaluated that as bad, and that seems to be all that’s going on here.
1 hour ago, tadmjones said:
So it’s your everyday ole performative projection of pseudo-quasi? power that all legitimate leaders do ?
It really can’t be much more. Congress cannot order the president around, it can only pass laws and spend money, and the laws cannot command the executive branch. So if Biden wants to be uncooperative in the way that Trump was uncooperative, them’s the breaks for Trump. Congress can pass a law making office space available and paying for staff, that’s it. The current GSA Admin gets to “deem” satisfaction of the electoral college results prior to the official reading in January “if it is substantially certain the candidate will receive a majority of the pledged votes of electors”, via a series of “substantially certain” conjectures. It is substantially certain that no GSA administrator has anything resembling the qualifications to predict the outcome of a court challenge, so really the Admin can do whatever he wants, or is ordered to do by his boss. Cutting through the legislative cruft in the current law, it means that Harris can be a pain in the ass for as long as she wants, but the money and office space are still there for Trump, per act of Congress.
There are aspects of the current law that are dubious, since they limit the constitutional powers of the VP (therefore the law is unconstitutional, if someone objects and SCOTUS does its job).
Did you read the article or the comments on the thread of the post?
It’s standing law in the US since 1906, to take citizenship away from those who gained it illegally.
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On 11/3/2024 at 8:03 PM, Harrison Danneskjold said:
Oh, probably not. The way I see it, even if we accepted that a fetus is a person (which is certainly not a safe assumption) it’d still be a person who will die if separated from its mother - who has every right to demand that separation, if she wishes. Nobody has the right to anyone else’s body.
Melania appears to be the only member of the Donald’s party who gets the distinction between inherent individual rights and government’s obligation to secure them: “What does my body my choice really mean?” Abortions and suicides, tragic as they are, are not murder and therefore not legitimate for the government intervention of an individual’s inherent liberty to dispose of their property (including a fetus) as they will.
A person, in the context of an individual, does not exist by definition until capable of exercising its own inherent rights separately from the bearer of its life. In the context of this forum, an actual right bearer (the mother) has autonomy over a potential right bearer (her fetus).
Glad to see you’re still here, Harrison!
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On 11/3/2024 at 7:15 PM, Boydstun said:
The issue is that complex.
Unnecessarily so, I think. Presuming Rights of the unborn follows the Biology over the definition of the Right, which requires the autonomous actions of an Individual to apply. In the context of Natural Individual Rights, I consider the separation from ones Natural Custodian (Mother) to be prerequisite, and not some biological development prior to that event.
Abortion is the disposal of Property that only exists by the actions of the Individual who created it. Attempts to force an Individual Right prematurely upon the Mother’s Property in order to separate her from it is lowest form of theft in the form of slavery.
What principle allows for others to participate in the individual’s actions?
If a woman decides to terminate a pregnancy , depending on the stage in gestation the termination occurred , her health will be in jeopardy if the tissue is not removed. ( I see abortion as justifiable homicide, but I can’t find or get comfortable with the idea that another can assist one in homicide justifiably)
A terminally ill patient may not be capable of the physical acts required to attempt suicide, is someone who actually performs the actions required to terminate the patient’s life processes acting justifiably? ( I tend to think they are re DNR and such prepared and recognized ante hoc by individuals).
By what principles do we determine the extent to which others are ‘allowed’ to participate?
Are suicide and abortion in the same principled category ?
2 hours ago, tadmjones said:
What principle allows for others to participate in the individual’s actions?
By what principles do we determine the extent to which others are ‘allowed’ to participate?
Are suicide and abortion in the same principled category ?
The principle of life being the 1st property of the bearer presumes the liberty to contract with others. Otherwise, as Melania asks, “What does my body my choice really mean?”
The disposal of one individual’s property allows for custodial agreements with others to participate in decision making according to the terms of the life bearer. More importantly, it prohibits others from coercion to determine the use of the life bearer’s property.
Suicides and abortions are disposals of personal property, presuming the owner of that property is an autonomous individual or that individual’s custodian.
Biological markers prior to birth (separation) and matryoshkas do not an Individual make.