Frankly, this might bug me more than the transgender issue. "They" is a plural subjective pronoun. Unless this student is identifying as more than one person, "they" is inappropriate. And does its plural nature impact other words? Where does the line get drawn, if at all? For example, suppose the teacher wants to know the student's whereabouts and asks the other students. Does she use the factually incorrect but grammatically correct "Where are they?" Or does she use the factually correct (or arguably correct) but grammatically incorrect "Where is they?" If she decides to be grammatically correct but factually incorrect, how are the students she is asking supposed to know if she is talking about the transgender student or some other group of students? Sounds like a petty concern, and of course, she could just use the student's name (or claimed name), but pronouns serve a purpose. There's a reason why we use them, and if you do this sort of thing enough, it corrupts the language. We create ambiguities where they need not be and make it more difficult to communicate with precision and accuracy.
Freaking out over Trump's Kwanzaa greeting. Link. This is nothing more than PC nonsense. It's a holiday made up by a convicted felon designed to sound African (It's not.) and celebrated by very few. Far more white people virtue signal about it than black people celebrate it. Frankly, I'm offended that Trump acknowledged it but not Festivus. It's no more real and shouldn't be taken any more seriously.
Ok, I like the Festivus comment. I think the Happy Holiday's thing is over-blown. If you watch old movies such as Holiday Inn and possibly White Christmas, you will hear them using the phrases, Happy Holiday's. I also think that Season's Greetings has been with us a long long time.
I've never had a problem with Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings. There's nothing wrong with broadening a greeting to extend goodwill to people who may celebrate Hanukkah or something else. To me, insisting on "Merry Christmas" is bit like saying, "I want you Christians to have a happy time, but as for you Jews who may be lighting menorahs, I don't give a crap." And you're right. It isn't new. More common now? Perhaps, but new? No. Besides, I celebrate more than one holiday - Christmas and New Year's Eve/Day. Nothing wrong with taking the greeting beyond the singular. If someone knows me to be a Christian, should he or she say, "Merry Christmas?" I suppose so, but if someone doesn't know me, I don't expect him or her to assume. I have dark hair, brown eyes, and am part Italian. I wouldn't say I "look Jewish." People aren't walking up to me and asking me to recommend a good mohel. However, would I expect a stranger to look at me and know for certain that I'm not Jewish? No. My issue is with people getting nitpicky over a friggin' Kwanzaa greeting. It's not like Christmas or Hanukkah with a long tradition. It's much more like Festivus - just something a dude pulled out of his *** and started calling a holiday.
Just another pile of horse apples from folks that make a living on such falsehoods and tall tales. Other things made up by blacks and whites with the support of liberals: -blacks have a self esteem problem, as proven by the doll experiment, so let’s integrate schools via forced busing -blacks aren’t as intelligent as whites -the BLM movement (based on a lie) -war against women -tax cuts should affect everyone equally even if folks pay different amounts of tax -income disparity is a problem that can be solved via social engineering -diversity is a good thing despite the evidence -the government can fix all problems and liberals know the answers to the problems -we need to “pay for” tax cuts in a manner that doesn’t cut spending -grown men with a mental disease causing them to believe they are women should be allowed in girl’s/women’s restrooms -socialism is good Etc etc etc Happy Kwanzaa bra!
I agree 100%. And to clarify, I don't feel that way about people who say "Merry Christmas", even if they say it to non-Christians. There's nothing wrong with that in a society that is majority Christian. But I do have a problem with people who get mad about "Happy Holidays". The only explanation for this is a concerted effort to make sure non-Christians aren't included. If I know or strongly suspect that someone is Christian, I typically say Merry Christmas. If I know or strongly suspect that someone is Jewish, I typically say Happy Hanukkah or the Hebrew equivalent, "Chag Hanukkah Sameach". If I have no idea, I say Happy Holidays.
Lol. Most lawyers are pretty conventional looking guys. If you fit that stereotype, then you may not be the first person people think to ask. If I was looking for a mohel, I'd look for someone who was Hasidic. I'd assume they'd have the credibility to know who's an ace and who's not so good.
I say Merry Christmas because that is what I celebrate. If somebody Jewish replied to me with Happy Hanukah, I wouldn't have the least little problem with it nor with the other greetings mentioned. The point is, people are well-wishing in their own way. If you're the type of person who looks to be offended by the specifics of the words instead of taking joy in giving and receiving the underlying sentiment, it reflects very poorly on your character.
At least the Slate article is real but the headline is click-bait. The article actually makes a case against an idea proposed by 2 academics.
I'm not interested enough in the topic to read their logic or even this authors rebuttal. I merely skimmed it to see that he was rebutting them.
The Slate article is from many years ago. It rebutted an article written by a pair of Australian philosophers who made the point that there is no logical/ethical difference between late-term abortion and early-life infanticide. The philosophers didn’t say whether late term / early life abortions are right or wrong, nor whether they should or shouldn't be legal — they just equated the two procedures on philosophical grounds. It wasn’t. The philosophers did not propose any particular policy in their article, and later denied any intention to support legalizing infanticide. They weren’t politicians or activists — they were just philosophy professors making a point (one that pro-lifers generally agree with, btw). On a broader note, it sure would be nice if people would save their outrage for things that actually happen instead of trumped-up bu!!****.
Their logic is pretty clear, and frankly it makes perfect sense. If you're going to make the argument as abortionists do that a child is not viable in the womb because it cannot survive on its own (and that clearly has to include the idea that if the child is removed form the womb and placed on some sort of support system), then that logic can easily be applied to an infant, which is clearly incapable of taking care of himself and would soon die without aid. It's a pretty simple logical connection to say that whether a child is on life support or he's simply lying on a table, it cannot survive without someone taking care of him. It obviously isn't the same as the "it's my body and I can do what I want with it" but that argument has been losing traction for a while. No one that's impartial can argue that an unborn child is simply a vestigial organ or growth of a woman's body (which is how many feminists will portray it.) So the litmus test for abortions ends up being "is the baby viable outside the womb?" Who gets to decide what "viable" means? That's a pretty loaded question, and some countries have even argued that a child who is going to be mentally disabled is not "viable." I don't think anyone believes that these guys' argument represents any significant opinion in our culture. But it starts somewhere. No one thought that transgender being legitimized would be part of the national discussion 10 or 15 years ago. No one thought that anyone would step up and argue that pedophilia is a disease and not something that should be treated as criminal activity. No one would thought that we'd be debating whether pre-teen kids should be getting instruction on mature sexual topics like technique or gender fluidity. And yet to one degree or another, those are all becoming much more mainstream now. And you can say that Slate presents a "debunking" argument, but they do it in a way that attacks the only people who have an argument which actually refutes the logic of the people he's proportedly trying to debunk. In fact, he doesn't really debunk anything. He just says "I can't argue with their logic, but I BELIEVE...." I don’t buy this argument, in part because I agree with Furedi that something profound changes at birth: The woman’s bodily autonomy is no longer at stake. But I also think that the value of the unborn human increases throughout its development. Furedi rejects that view, and her rejection doesn’t stop at birth. As she explained in our debate last fall, “There is nothing magical about passing through the birth canal that transforms it from a fetus into a person.” His very dispute in this article points out very clearly that the pro-abortion progressive has no leg to stand on in terms of offering limits. That's why I have no sympathy or patience for people who are OK with abortions up until the last trimester, when all of a sudden it gets "icky." Basically the idea is that abortion is OK until such time as I don't like it anymore. The guys who made the original argument are right. All of this argument about when personhood begins, when life begins, when it's ok to abort a child... every bit of it is completely arbitrary when pro-choice advocates lay it out. If the pro-abortion logic ever becomes the solid majority in this country, then what these guys are arguing for will eventually be accepted.
I'm with you up to this point (other than the loaded phrase "abort a child"). This is where you lose me. It's completely arbitrary, no matter who lays it out. All of the atoms in what ultimately becomes a human start separate. These atoms merge to form chemical compounds, which merge to form stem cells, which merge to form gametes, both sperm and egg. Two of the gametes merge to form a zygote, which gets implanted in the uterus. The zygote morphs into an embryo then a fetus, all the while growing larger, developing organs, and becoming able to perform various functions at various times. The fetus ultimately gets passed through the birth canal and is physically severed from the mother. In gradual steps across a long period of time, the baby becomes independent. To say that life begins at any one of these steps is inherently, unavoidably arbitrary. I think we can all agree that putting the limit at either extreme would be unreasonable. But I see valid arguments in support of (and against) any point in time between the formation of stem cells and the moment of birth.
The idea of the sanctity of human life is that atoms do not just separate, compounds form, etc., into a randomly highly-fit evolutionary survivor, but that we are endowed by a creator with an enduring soul that is importantly more than that. If you do believe that, then when does the person or object we are discussing become something sacred? If you wanted to argue that our physical make-up cannot recieve or hold that sense of sanctity until there is some brain activity of some sort, I could see that, just as I believe that turning off machines that support the "life" of a brain-dead person is not immoral. Maybe beyond brain activity into thoughts. (The idea of "exceptions" for preserving the life of the mother is a different question: there are times when a choice has to be made--demanded by circumstances--to save one person or group or another. E.g., we can only send the critical food or medicine to one group, or there is only one helicopter or one rescue boat or whatever. In that situation, we accept that we have suffered through a "Sophie's Choice" and done the best we can, but we are not actually agreeing that the man left in the snowstorm to die had no moral content or that we would be okay to do the same thing even if there had been another seat in the helicopter. So we don't really call this an "exception" to the idea that we should save a person from death if possible. Would anyone accept that the helicopter pilot did not go back to save someone because he had an important interview coming up, or he would miss a school test, or that the cold weather might make him look fat in the holiday pictures he was planning?) If you actually do believe that human life is merely the accidental survival in evolution through random accidents of genetic variations and exterminations of competitors, then there really is no concept of right or wrong or sanctity, anyway, right? (If so, where does such a concept come from?) Is the continuum then just political, that we really see no moral content to abortion in the first place, but we realize that others do, so we'll try to push the line back to somewhere that gains enough backing to carry the day politically?
I say life begins at conception and that no abortions should be allowed, period. Please tell me where that is arbitrary.
Very thoughtful and interesting post, @VYFan. I believe that there is some sort of deity who created us, and who wants us to be moral -- but I don't pretend to know for certain that I'm right about that. I respect the fact that some people are certain that god exists, and that other people are certain that god doesn't exist. I have never experienced anything that would give me such certainty, and if I did experience something like that I'm not sure I'd believe my own senses in terms of whether the experience was genuine. Regarding religious morality, I'm equally uncertain. Various people over the ages have put forward texts or traditions interpreting what is god-commanded. I don't understand how anyone can soooo certain that the interpretation they believe in is the right one, especially when the text is something that was passed down to them across dozens of generations. The mere fact that Judeo-Christian thought is so hopelessly fractured should make all of us skeptical about whether any of us have all of the answers. In terms of constructing my personal religious creed, I start from the assumption that the deity is good. Anyone who is good, including any deity, would not be so vain as to need praise, much less demand it. I can't fathom that there is a god in heaven who would think less of a person who doesn't deliver sufficient worship and praise. (In other words, I don't envision god to be anything like Donald Trump. Sorry, couldn't resist.) Instead, I look at prayer (and other rituals) as an opportunity to self-reflect and to make yourself better. I don't fast on Yom Kippur because I think god commanded me to -- I do it because my ancestors came up with a good way to spend a day each year thinking about how they can be better people. Same for all other rituals -- I follow them if I think they improve me. If I don't, I ignore them. Of course, all of this begs the original question -- what does it mean for something to be good, or moral? I don't think we can know for certain, but I think god planted a general conception of morality into each of us. I think people who sin know they are sinning, whether they are religious or not. I don't think we each have this moral compass to the exact same degree, but I think we all have it. In the back of my mind, I accept the possibility that there is no deity, and that we are just a clump of cells. But to me, even if that were true, the concept of morals would not go away. Instead, morals would be a set of evolutionary impulses that help us all live together more pleasantly. In essence, morals are a DNA-derived heuristic that helps us all survive as a species, and thus an innate sense of morality is baked into us.
See, I don't view that as arbitrary because that is what The Bible says. I thought you meant it was arbitrary to pick some point in the gestation period and say it's OK to abort before that point.
