Any conservative tropers?

Anyone's "reprodutive rights" should never supersede the human being's natural right to life. If that is progress, I'll gladly choose to stand in its way.

edited 15th Jan '18 11:51:56 AM by Grafite

It doesn't help that these days there are some pro-choicers, who think being against abortion is on the same level of viewing women as chattel.

The fact that they enshrined it as a right in Canada really has made a lot of things problematic for those who are against abortion views.

I'm still somewhat bemused as how "reproductive rights" - as, in the right to produce offspring, which I would indeed consider a right of every person in a free country - have somehow come to cover the ability to destroy offspring in utero, never mind insisting on federal funding for it. I mean, I'm perfectly fine with emergency pills (which ideally prevent conception from occurring in the first place, given the process takes about a day even during ovulation). I'm also somewhat permissive when it comes to first bimester termination, before any brain activity can be detected. It's ethically iffy, but right now I find it a practical limit to work with (and I'm flexible if new information further shortens the period). I still wouldn't consider it a "right", though, nor would I force anyone ethically opposed to it to pay for it.

I agree. It also perplexes me that the side that is for laxer abortion rights is called "pro-choice", as if "not using contraceptives" and "not taking an emergency pill after having unprotected sex" aren't choices.

Speaking of not being forced to pay for things one opposes, I actually find it an interesting set of ethical/practical conundrums in its own right. For instance, healthcare is considered a universal right, yet a lot of medicinal products and procedures are derived and/or tested on animals, so people ethically opposed to such uses would find it wrong to be forced to pay for their federal funding. Things like road infrastructure and waste disposal are also usually government-backed, yet inevitably have some environmental consequences such as pollution or wildlife habitat disturbance, meaning that, as much as I'm not a fan of overzealous tree-hugging, it's still a stance that becomes financially penalized by even commonly accepted taxation practices. Though unlike abortion, even tree-huggers and animal rights activists usually benefit from the resulting infrastructure, which further complicates matters.

At any rate, it might be interesting to consider, even as a thought experiment, exactly how many common government practices can be given opt-out alternatives for people who neither agree with the practice, nor benefit from the result. Even the anti-vaccination movement wouldn't be so controversial if not for concerns of herd-immunity and disease propagation. And it is something of a conservative/libertarian dream to truly live off-the-grid; self-sufficiency with a white picket fence, so to speak.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/rachael-harder-status-women-1.4320404

Interesting enough a Muslim woman had this opinion about Trudeau's strong abortion views. It looks like people are actually applauding these kinds of extreme measures saying that they are standing up to human rights. As said before, when it comes abortion it's inherently a gray topic due to the morality behind it.

I myself am definitely on the right. Very much so. I don't know if I'd say conservative anymore because those who carry that label have failed so consistently that I'm not sure I want to identify with them any longer.

Everyone says they are on the right.

Per the classical definition, conservative and liberal simply mean small government and big government, fiscally speaking. At least on the western side of the wall. It's rather interesting to compare it to my neck of the woods, where the socially conservative side is also fiscally liberal, while the incumbent right-centrist government is at least ostensibly progressive on matters of sexuality, marriage, environmentalism etc. I mean, in practice it's actually too hopelessly corrupt to bother with, but it's an interesting theoretical proposal. Same goes for a socially conservative set of moral values that's explicitly atheistic... in public. Few things are more impressively ridiculous than having a Communist functionary praise the icon he saw in your house, because his mother had the same at her place.

At the very least, though, there's nothing like having personal experience with the conservative truism - that the greatest argument against big government is for your country to endure a couple of decades under one.

edited 13th Feb '18 1:18:12 AM by indiana404

Ah, government.

Hmm...I have little trust in government. But, I have EVEN LESS trust in corporations.

What stance would that make mine?

I'd say a libertarian mindset, perhaps?

I would go with that.

Well, it's not that I don't want no control. It's more of between the interference of government or corporations, I'd rather trust in government because I view it as slightly lesser evil, if that makes sense.

What do you guys think of the word "SJW"? Is it descriptive or pejorative?

Overused, I'd say. Basically everything wrong with the attitude it's meant to describe is already covered by "slacktivist"... though I also have a preference for "offendatron". It's kinda like with "special snowflake" - the term has become genericized to mean anyone complaining about anything, when the original idea was about having an overly inflated opinion of oneself despite the lack of any actual evidence. Still, conservatives using such words does tend to get people amusingly riled up... though conservatives doing just about anything tends to do that nowadays.

I'm personally more interested in opinions regarding the attitude itself. In particular, doesn't it do more harm than good? Has anyone you know ever really reconsidered their worldview solely due to guilt-tripping, moralizing and name-calling? For me, it's actually been the reverse - the more fervent and rabid the critiques, the more interested I became in hearing the other side of the story, thus finding a lot of said critiques to be uninformed at best, and willfully misinterpreting matters much more often. And so, here I am today.

Okay. Elaborate?

For instance, I became interested and supportive of green conservatism after noticing a trend of melodramatic posturing and blame-throwing rather than any actual consideration of practical solutions by the opposition. Green aesops are all but ubiquitous in fiction, but next to none are constructive, and if Avatar is any indication, the executuion tends to be counter-productive. Problem is, that sort of attitude is no longer ubiquitous just in fiction. Consequently, seeing that people can, in fact, still be concerned about environmental habitats while utilizing natural resources, is so far removed from the otherwise cartoonish strawmen typically presented as counterpoints to bleeding-heart environmentalism, that it basically bursts the latter like a bubble. In general, even when I don't agree on certain points with a group of people, yet someone else presents them as devils incarnate, I'm more likely to question the views of that someone far more.

I prefer SJH Social Justice Hack.

@ indiana404

That's the one thing that still gets me about Avatar is how cookie cutter and cliche it's story is. It could have been more complex, and cut the character of Jake Sully and and made Grace and Quaritch the main characters. Also worst of all is that they made Pandora such a Mary Suetopia, that it actually defeats it's message due to the fact that nature literally provides everything the Navi needs while humans can't do that.

Quite. The perfect societies thus presented require resources explicitly unavailable to actual people, being built on all but magic. The same can be said about the Federation in Star Trek, another society built on vaguely defined post-scarcity pipe-dreams. Thing is, eventually such attitudes tend to leave the screen, disparaging any economic framework that unfortunately has to obey the laws of physics and require considerable effort in order to obtain resources for even basic survival. There's a reason most rural societies tend to lean conservative in real life, and it's decidedly not because they consist of uneducated hicks. Rather, such people are only too well informed of just how demanding and unforgiving nature can be, their livelihoods literally depending on it.

Conversely, the problem with large governments is precisely that grand economic strategies tend to ignore or misinterpret what happens outside the ivory tower, resulting in decisions that are, well, less than fruitful. I don't think there needs to be another Great Leap Forward to see what ill-informed good intentions can lead to. And that's before corruption and general incompetence are accounted for. All in all, regulations are only as good as the people enforcing them.

Which thread?

Thanks, man.

I think it has to do with fear of the far fight. They keep saying that banning hate speech will help quell the far right, but I keep pointing out in Europe they have hate speech laws and the far right is just as violent there.