From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon May 13 2002 - 02:26:00 MDT
Emlyn writes
> I guess it's all about where you draw the line. Where do you
> draw the line, Lee? First trimester? First birthday? First
> semester of high school?
When most societies would find it advantageous to award
citizenship is a very, very difficult question that could only
be solved by societal evolution. Were I living in a small
community where my vote meant something, I'd second Reason's
proposal to evolve Turing tests to settle the question. In
other words, I favor motions in my community that eliminated
the current laws. (No, we would not suddenly have a rash of
children dying as a result.)
But if not that, then I'd want to see the line drawn at a point
where the child becomes a recognizable member of the community.
The first day of kindergarten, around age 5, might be good.
> I go fairly far the other way. I'd say we should give children full
> citizenship rights as early as possible; for instance, voting age should
> come way down. Let's face it, many kids know at least as much about politics
> as their elders (i.e.: squat), and many know plenty more, because they learn
> it at school. If Homer Simpson is allowed to vote, why exclude Lisa?
Well, I can ask hard questions too ;-) How low would you like to see
it go? After all, you write
> there do tend to be some messy issues about mother & child rights
> conflicting, about who does the interpreting of that, and so on.
>
> Earlier still, there is a period, from conception to somewhere (dunno where,
> personally), during which the growing glob of cells is not a person enough
> that we really should get hung up about aborting them.
Legally, I agree. But don't you think it a terrible waste that
a person is not allowed to develop? (Unfair questions: How would
you like it if you had been aborted? Or, aren't you glad that
you weren't?)
> I think that Lee leans toward "total freedom" (of those who can step up and
> take it) and away from rights because it removes all the messy issues of
> interpretation and subsequently power, i.e.: who gets to arbitrate. I do think
> it's a bad position, however. It's bad because it is a defacto
> might-makes-right argument.
Not at all. "Might makes right" characterizes a society in which
criminals rule, no citizen is safe, and no one has any legal rights.
The "total freedom" that I advocate would apply to the sick, the
elderly, and the weak, just as much as to the strong. So, see, freedom
is not, as you state, just for "those who can step up and take it".
> Hands up everyone who would have been happy to have been
> legally regarded as the personal property of his/her parents?
Count me in. My parents wouldn't have treated me any differently.
It wouldn't make any difference except in a tiny number of instances.
> To my mind it is the single most important function of a
> society of sentients that the reasonable interests of the
> powerless are met.
I agree. But may I ask *why* you hold that?
> I think an extropian solution to the abortion dilemma would be to find a way
> to permanently set people's reproductive systems to off, with a pill to turn
> them on, rather than the stupid reverse situation that we have now.
I think that in this case, the extropian solution is the libertarian
solution: it's no one's business except the mother, perhaps the
father, and perhaps a consenting doctor. Everyone else should summon
the humility to butt out.
Lee
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