It's morally hypocritical to make it a crime to commit murder but not to consider abortion to be murder at some point in the unborn's development. The sticky bit is deciding where to draw the line between a lump of unspecialized cells and an underdeveloped human being.
I don't believe that life begins at the moment of fertilization. To me that's as nonsensical as saying that a baby is not a life one minute before it's born. Where it gets really complicated is trying to decide which of the landmark developmental stages is the appropriate dividing line. Is it when cellular differentiation begins? When the heart begins to beat? When the fetus is viable?
It's a complex and troubling decision and my only consolation is that the two factions in control of the argument will never budge from their polar opposite positions so absolutely nothing rests on my personal opinion.
What I do know is that giving a woman the right to kill an unborn child without legal consequence based on her "right to medical privacy" is patently absurd, as twisted and tortured a legal rationalization I have ever heard tell of, and it has led to consequences that are absolutely barbaric.
I happen to agree with most of the Libertarian platform, except for the isolationist foreign policy. It's suicidally stupid and would lead to the certain collapse of the nation.
First of all, the international economy is real and inescapable. There are strategic minerals that are essential to remaining economically
and technologically viable in the 21st Century and most of them are only available in significant quantities from Africa and Asia. Everything from turbine engines for jet airplanes to smart phones to atomic reactors to MRI machines depend heavily on minerals that America has far too little of to meet its own needs. Which means maintaining international trade is part and parcel to remaining a "great nation."
Secondly, great nations always will be targets of the international hyenas, even if they have absolutely no foreign involvements because there always be someone who is jealous of what they have or resentful of what they are.
And thanks to the technological offspring of Wernher von Braun, Billy Mitchell and Kenneth Whiting, there is no such thing as a secure border. Strategic bombers and long range ballistic missiles make a mockery of claims of "borders" and the only way to force other countries to respect what you wish to call "a border" is by means of a credible threat of a retaliation.
You can't have an effective defense policy unless you know your enemy's capabilities and tendencies. You need spies (
HUMINT) to keep track of what your foe is up to. And you need subterfuge and small scale clandestine foreign operations to try to affect minor "steering corrections" in your foe's courses of action.
Thirdly, you can't be isolationist and also have allies. To have allies necessarily means you have foreign entanglements, which works at crossed purposes to isolationism. But having allies improves your opportunities for international trade and reduces the risk of a foreign attack.
The only benefit to isolationism is there's likely to be less worldwide collateral damage because you won't have any allies to be destroyed along with you. In other words, when you go down, there won't be as many pulled down with you.
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Originally Posted by Obs
