Cologne New Year gang assaults: Victim, 18, says up to 30 men groped and robbed her and her 11 friends

 marko86 wrote: 
I think that is not entirely true. Go to YouTube and you will find a video of Sean Hannity, of all people, being pretty nasty to a Catholic priest on the show for being against birth control. 

Did you ever think you and Hannity would agree about birth control?  

 miamizsun wrote: 
One of many reasons I a have an extreme dislike to Republicans, because they are, by all accounts, fundamentally against birth control. They have been pretty much all opposed to health coverage for birth control. Plan B availability (which prevents coverage, and most importantly Planned Parenthood, which primarily provide health services to women and especially birth control to poor women. Isn't it way cheaper to provide birth control then pay for children on welfare? 

 oldviolin wrote:
But of course.

 meower wrote: 
a few random thoughts...

i'm exposed through my job and my other half (a pre-k, k and first grade teacher) to the inner city school system

it's pretty brutal

i do support a woman's right to choose

and i'm not a big fan of abortion, however i think using birth control to prevent both (unwanted children and pregnancy) would be much wiser

a question that should be posed to parents: what am i responsible for?

having/raising children is a huge responsibility

what would be the goal/incentive of having a child?

people thinking about having children should understand what is involved and what conditions need to be in place for a child to flourish

i think if we look at the successful cases we'll see some clues

has anyone looked the data or provided that data to your agency?

just curious

peace

 RichardPrins wrote:
Since we've apparently come to the tit for tat portion of our exchange I'll just leave it there. One of us is twisting what the other is saying into the usual regression. I'll only say that one need only look at the state of the world today to make their own judgements as to knowledge juxtaposed with doubt. Thanks for the clarification.
 

 oldviolin wrote:
Repeated talk of judgement and "reaping what you sow" suggests the opposite. Assured knowledge and a lack of doubt doesn't strike me as particularly humble either, but that's how it's usually presented.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. ~ Bertrand Russell.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Au contraire, Richard. I appeal not to fear, but to reason. I know beyond the shadow of my own doubts that virtue is in fact spiritually evolved, and that humanistic and prideful man left to his own devices stands no chance without humility and the universality of LOVE.

 oldviolin wrote: 
No small or easy thing at all. It takes a lot of work to question the received wisdom, but that quest in itself will reveal and beat the repeated appeals to fear.

From pop culture: There's nothing to fear, but fear itself. Don't fear the reaper.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
No small thing, then? The proverbial proof of the pudding is in the eating? You can easily and cleverly attempt to belittle a worldview quite in contrast with your own. I take no umbrage beyond a virtual wince for the attempt at bruising the pretension of my delicate but assured self knowledge. And as to the rest? Well, let us thank the convolution of statistics for the exquisite wisdom they enlighten us with.

 oldviolin wrote: 
The responsibility to choose wisely and rationally includes seeing through the illusions that so many hold on to as a (subjective) truth. Only then is it a personal choice. Others will happily, and with pride, wear their ancient chains.

Evolution marches on in any case, providing some (i.e. in the US) with as many miscarriages as there are abortions. However, added together they're still a much smaller minority than those that get to procreate successfully...

 RichardPrins wrote: 
And who is the purveyor but the agency? If the politic is skewed then logically so must be the truth as subject matter in the political paradigm.
So then, one's personal choice is chosen for them as they are adorned by the chains of illusion in and of their own construction. This is not mere responsibility, nor is it mere consequence.. Sewing and reaping as it were.

 oldviolin wrote: 
The consequences are merely part of one's own responsibility. Every action (or even inaction) has consequences. Who's to judge but the agent?

 RichardPrins wrote:
You seem to be arguing a legalistic notion against someone in full support of the right to choose in all cases, hence your idea of consequence is shadowed by a parse and, dare we say, a prayer for judgement; where as I contend that choice is the only path to take when in the throes of evolution.

 

 oldviolin wrote:
What people do (legally) in the comfort of their own vacuum is their business, and their business alone.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
True, but doubt that rhetoric clashes with sensibility where the coarsening of human priority is concerned. I suppose it's just a matter of time before it will be possible to perform one in the comfort of one's own vacuum.

 oldviolin wrote: 
A woman's agency to remove / terminate / kill an unwanted pregnancy / embryo / foetus should suffice.

No additional misleading rhetoric is really required, unless of course there is some subjective moral compulsion that suggests otherwise.

Regardless of said compulsion, no one is forcing you or anybody else to utilize such a legal option.

 meower wrote: 
Then let them choose. Let us all look in the mirror and choose. Then let us farm out the future to some sub-contractors and wash our hands...

 RichardPrins wrote:
 
 Indeed. And how shall we categorize it accordingly? An inconvenient truth, perhaps?...An escape hatch? A forborn negation?

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Whatever you want to call it or link to, the subjective
notion accorded perception, the reality is part of a whole and the whole is what drives objective
standards for the ultimately benevolent
existence of mankind...
   I think that there are certain primitive notions in us which are like originals. There are very few such notions. For apart from the most general notions of being, number, duration, etc which apply to everything that we can conceive, we have only the notion of extension that is specifically for the body, and from that flow the notions of shape and movement; and for the soul on its own we have only the concept of thought, which includes perceptions of the understanding and inclinations of the will. Finally, for the body and soul together, we have only the concept of their union, on which depends the notion of the soul's power to move the body and the body's power to act on the soul by causing its sensations and passions.
//
Thus, all Philosophy is like a tree, of which Metaphysics is the root, Physics the trunk, and all the other sciences the branches that grow out of this trunk, which are reduced to three principals, namely, Medicine, Mechanics, and Ethics. By the science of Morals, I understand the highest and most perfect which, presupposing an entire knowledge of the other sciences, is the last degree of wisdom.

René Descartes