Why do conservatives love Sharia and Saudi Arabia so much?

[DC Al Fine]

Now as for the abortion/democracy question, I would turn the issue around. How murderous does a democratic government need to be before continued refusal to consider anti-democratic options amounts to throwing the right to life under the bus? Is it not 'despicably consequentialist', to solemnly nod along out of fear of undermining democracy when two wolves and a sheep vote on what to eat for lunch?

One of the fundamental duties of the state is to protect people from violence. Thankfully, that rarely conflicts with democracy, but when they do conflict, one must weigh competing priorities. Like many progressives and/or pro-choicers you seem very well versed with the problems with opposing abortion in spite of X, but it doesn't seem like you are giving much consideration to the reverse.

For someone who whines so much about how pro-choicers don't understand you, you don't seem to take very seriously the fact that not everyone actually agrees with your definition of personhood, and that other people might have legitimate moral intuitions that lead them to have different beliefs from yours, which in turn lead them to advocate different policies. If you took seriously the fact that what you see as murder, someone else might honestly not see as such, you might have the humility of recognizing them the same right as you have to try to influence public policy based on their own moral beliefs. To say that you're ready to throw away democracy in order to get your abortion ban in place doesn't just mean you view abortion as murder, it means you view abortion as murder and believe your view to be inherently superior to anyone else's. So yes, I have absolutely zero sympathy for people like you and, if all pro-lifers were actually like you (which, thankfully, they are not), I wouldn't be nearly as interested in constructive dialog with them as I in fact am.

I'm well aware of the bolded point. I'm sure you're also aware that in various times and places, people have had different moral intuitions that have led them to believe that blacks, Jews, Native Americans, Aborigines etc etc are non-persons. How would you respond in a situation where those people had the majority?

I have a rather hard time imagining you saying what you just said me to John Brown in 1859.

[Antonio the Sixth]

See, it's a bit hard to believe that you're interested in constructive dialogue with pro-choicers when you keep comparing them to advocates of genocide or slavery. Anyway, your comparison doesn't work because the antebellum South was not a democracy to begin with, and it's self-evident that no country that tolerates slavery could ever be.

[DC Al Fine]

See, it's a bit hard to believe that you're interested in constructive dialogue with pro-choicers when you keep comparing them to advocates of genocide or slavery. Anyway, your comparison doesn't work because the antebellum South was not a democracy to begin with, and it's self-evident that no country that tolerates slavery could ever be.

We're discussing personhood. Other cases of people being treated as non-persons are extremely relevant to the discussion.

You talk about how you have no sympathy for my view, yet it's readily apparent that you have the same opinions when it comes to racists and other wicked groups who would treat blacks, Jews etc as non-persons. Indeed you believe that slavery is inherently undemocratic, even if agreed upon by the majority. That's fine, but if a fetus is a person, how does the same logic not apply?

It seems to me that your standard changes depending on whether one's definition of personhood matches yours.

[Torie]

Without reading this thread, but answering just the OP question, whether one is conservative or not ("conservatives" like Sharia law - who knew?), experience suggests that in this part of the world, going about replacing the bad, just ends up giving us the terrible (e.g. Iran, Egypt, Libya).

Here is a lesson for life, whether it be as to employees or regimes or whatever. Before you fire or replace, you had better have a good understanding and confidence about what comes next as to the replacement.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You talk about how you have no sympathy for my view, yet it's readily apparent that you have the same opinions when it comes to racists and other wicked groups who would treat blacks, Jews etc as non-persons.

Because not all rationales for excluding categories of beings from personhood are created equal. Even if you are strongly pro-life, if you are serious about engaging with pro-choice people, you must be willing to admit that the moral perspective they come from is categorically different from those that dehumanize people on the basis of their race, religion or ethnicity. Otherwise, what is there even to discuss? I know I wouldn't engage with openly racist viewpoints (I might still try to empathize on a personal level with the people who hold these views, but that's an entirely different thing from treating them as valid political interlocutors). Conversely, how would you if an animal rights activist compared you to a Nazi for denying the equal moral worth of animals, and then chides you for failing to understand his perspective?

Again, you continue to demand understanding while making it clear you're not minimally interested in viewing pro-choicers as legitimate interlocutors.

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...uh, because slaves, unlike the unborn, were in fact able and willing to participate in the political process? Even if you consider the unborn to be children for all intents and purposes, the common understanding of children in democratic theory is that they are not able to meaningfully take part in the taking of collective decision, and therefore must be represented vicariously by the community of adults. Now, I'm not actually fond of this view, and I'd say to the extent that it's inevitable it should be taken a lot literally than it is now (which means that even a 10-year old should be able to vote, given that they are physically and mentally capable to do so, whether they would vote wisely or not being irrelevant). But even then, I'm not sure how you'd be able to extend that to the unborn.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/09/03/573114/Spain-saudi-arms-deal

Yes Pedro Sanchez!