our dna is from hunter-gatherer days

culture and technology outpace evolution by orders of magnitude

lol is birdman actually complaining about lack of "good faith"

why does anyone respond to this troll?

Because:
1. He single handedly keeps this thread alive
2. He is decently entertaining
3. He makes me think

wow mark k is gonna turn commie

When I say "liberal" I mean one who believes in liberalism, which is the philosophy of capitalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

It encompasses the full gamut of capitalism: fascists, libertarians, neoliberals, social democrats, "centrists", anyone who supports the Democrats or the GOP, basically every government in Europe that people inaccurately refer to as "socialist", almost every developed country in "the west", etc.

I understand what you are saying, but that is not what I meant by "idealist". Liberalism is idealist in the sense that it starts with ideas and tries to construct a society around those ideas. To give an example:

This is an example of a statement explaining certain ideas of liberalism. Notice that they are describing their ideas of rights people should have rather than describing the the material world works/functions. They then took these ideas (and others) and tried to create what they saw in their head in the real world. How can we allow people to have life and liberty? How can we create equality of men? These are ostensibly the guiding principles that we try to attain in our society as a liberal society. Liberals envision the ideals of society and strive to create them.

It is often not fully clear why certain ideas that make up liberalism are good. Why should we have freedom of speech? Why is individual liberty a good thing? I am not an expert, but from what I have read of Locke, Hobbes, Spinoza, etc, the ideas mostly seems to originate from an imagined "state of nature" and then are extrapolated to the real world.

The point of this discussion is not to say "idealism" is wrong, or bad. Just to illustrate how liberalism is idealist. You start with ideas and use those ideas to shape material reality.

On the other hand, materialism, holds that all ideas originate from material reality and that it is through analysis of this reality that the world can be understood. While ideas do work back on the material world (as WN pointed out earlier), ultimately it is the changing of the material world that will change ideas.

Marxism is materialist (specifically dialecticaly materialist) which differentiates it from liberalism (see previous explanation of what I mean by liberalism) which is idealist.

Yeah, this. If you want a lengthy discussion of the topic, this is a decent place to start:

https://www.marxists.org/history/aus...hilosophy2.htm

Telling people they cannot have an abortion is exercising control over the means of reproduction. I am not sure how to break it down in simpler terms than that because I feel this notion is quite self-evident.

fascist are liberals, too. There is only a minor, if any, break with the traditional liberal ideas of a free market economy. The idea of a capitalist system is not mutually exclusive with nationalism and intensified class warfare.

This is propaganda. Communists care about providing people with real freedom rather than paying lip service to bull**** like "equality of opportunity". Providing every person with the means to exist makes communism the most concerned with providing opportunities to those within their society.

The "liberal"/"conservative" paradigm strikes me as a uniquely American destruction of the political landscape.

Dustin, please.

I'm not sure what your dispute is. Mão killed like how many people? 20 million? 45 million?? I was just correcting Ianaww.

No, that is a lie.

kinda feel like this misses the point somewhat

you defined a liberal as:
you've assumed that everyone in the thread to the right of yourself fully buys in to the same idealistic position, when most have explicitly stated ITT that it's a case of 'best credible option we can see right now'. For a start, I explicitly don't believe in the concept of intrinsic human rights from an idealistic viewpoint, but do believe that it's a useful mechanism to achieve positive utilitarian results.

somewhat ironically, you appear to be mistaking conservatism (a belief that the existing institutional structure should not be discarded lightly) for liberalism

This is legit the dumbest thing you've ever said

tangential, but an interesting article on denialism in the Guardian today

That’s definitely the case.

I knew you were going to respond to that post. True Story. I'm right though. Think about it. It isn't that hard.

And its not exactly a Nietzschean prophecy to expect that I, a woman of fertile age who has likely experienced at least one instance of pregnancy, would respond to a post about reproductive rights. Idiot.

Ok so is the one child policy controlling reproduction or not controlling it?

Assuming that planned parenthood was created for the purpose of limiting the black population (as per Margaret Sanger's writings), would that be controlling it or not controlling it?

I'm asking you to think about the meanings of the words reproduction and control.

You speaking down to me about this topic in particular is truly the height of male egotism

I mean that last sentence is super rich, thanks for the morning lols

Ok if I have a goldfish pond and I let them breed freely have I controlled their reproduction or not?

Now let's suppose I put some chemicals in the water that limit their fertility. What have I done?

In the real world part of the analogy, which part exactly is equivalent to putting chemicals in the water?