• Doc Avid Mornington
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    911 months ago

    The thing is, I don’t really care what people “deserve”, or what they “don’t deserve”. How should I know? I’ll be a dork and quote Tolkien: “Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.”

    But I do care about who’s in the pact. We have an agreement, between us, we decent people. We watch out for each other. We protect each other. Or if we can’t, when something terrible is done to somebody, at the very least, we speak out, in protest, in sympathy, in sorrow. And the people covered by this pact, as far as I’m concerned, are the people who follow it - that’s it, the sole criteria for membership, about the lowest bar possible.

    I’m not going to force somebody to carry a dead fetus because they forced other people to do so, but when the cruel laws they always thought would only apply to other people suddenly apply to them, I don’t owe them my sympathy either. They aren’t in the pact.

    • Flying Squid
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      011 months ago

      Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition… There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

      Which is why you and others here are disturbing me quite a bit right now.

      • Doc Avid Mornington
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        111 months ago

        Hmm, a quote I quite like myself. Let’s see. I have defined two groups. I have not suggested that either group should not be bound by the law, nor that either group should by better protected by the law than the other. In fact, this entire part of the discussion is predicated on the law, which one group has imposed on the other, applying equally.

        • Flying Squid
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          111 months ago

          Then shouldn’t the call be “let’s change the law so none of these women suffer” rather than “it’s good if the women who voted for the people who changed the law suffer for it?”