License to breed- Do you think yes or no?

Which test? Why, I would imagine the appropriate Wechsler, though I suppose you could do them all and average out the results if it suited you. It's strange, for your blind hatred of bureaucracy, you sure seem thrilled at the prospect of demanding I assemble one on the spot. Tell me, are you from the school of 'Just keep saying why until they get bored and leave' debate? I did a spell there about 22 years ago.

The whole lark about income is silly. It doesn't matter how they get the money; What matters is THEY HAVE THE MONEY TO CARE FOR A CHILD. Also, lol at meth. You're REALLY prone to hyperbole, you know that, girl? You should take it back a step and think before you type. You might get taken seriously. For the sake of your endless whys, we'll say taxable income. Which excludes meth. And while I appreciate the bleeding-heart substanceless "BUT THAT MEANS BAD PEOPLE WILL STILL WIN" whining, it really, really doesn't matter if you really, really want a child - If you can't afford to have one, you SHOULDN'T HAVE ONE, and anyone who does is making a bad decision in the grip of biology and emotion.

The why at parental relationship is equally idiotic. Are you seriously telling me you can't find a correlation between a long-term relationship prior to children and a more stable home for children?

One note on the bureaucracy thing - You don't even know what one is, or you wouldn't say such goddamn fool things like that. Go look it up, then come back and tell me how you expect a nation to run without millions of moving parts working together. Idiot.

Like it or not, this is eugenics. It's controlling the breeders of a population based on a standard of suitability. It has many many many other positive effects besides this, but at it's core what I propose is a eugenics program. And if you'd take off your horse blinders for one fucking second and actually listen to what I'm saying instead of posting 'NAZIS AND WHY' every-fucking-time, perhaps I could even ENLIGHTEN you a bit.

G'luck, eh?

Trygon said:

Which test? Why, I would imagine the appropriate Wechsler, though I suppose you could do them all and average out the results if it suited you. It's strange, for your blind hatred of bureaucracy, you sure seem thrilled at the prospect of demanding I assemble one on the spot. Tell me, are you from the school of 'Just keep saying why until they get bored and leave' debate? I did a spell there about 22 years ago.

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You mean, you'd rather not have to think about the nuts and bolts of how you're going to pull this off, and you resent me for making you go there. Sorry, it's only the truth. It's your proposal. Up to you to defend it.

The whole lark about income is silly. It doesn't matter how they get the money; What matters is THEY HAVE THE MONEY TO CARE FOR A CHILD. Also, lol at meth. You're REALLY prone to hyperbole, you know that, girl? You should take it back a step and think before you type. You might get taken seriously.

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I was pointing out that income does not imply moral fitness to do anything.

For the sake of your endless whys, we'll say taxable income. Which excludes meth. And while I appreciate the bleeding-heart substanceless "BUT THAT MEANS BAD PEOPLE WILL STILL WIN" whining, it really, really doesn't matter if you really, really want a child - If you can't afford to have one, you SHOULDN'T HAVE ONE, and anyone who does is making a bad decision in the grip of biology and emotion.

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Says you. If, hypothetically speaking, we had applied that standard retroactively, a lot of the world's greatest people would never have been born. Most of humanity's great doers weren't born to people with silver spoons stuck up their asses. Some people had to actually struggle growing up...and it made them better, stronger people.

The why at parental relationship is equally idiotic. Are you seriously telling me you can't find a correlation between a long-term relationship prior to children and a more stable home for children?

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Can you? You're begging the question. Do you have sources to back that up?

One note on the bureaucracy thing - You don't even know what one is, or you wouldn't say such goddamn fool things like that. Go look it up, then come back and tell me how you expect a nation to run without millions of moving parts working together. Idiot.

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Ad hominem attacks do nothing to advance your point. And as a matter of fact, I do know bureaucracy. Very well, in fact. I've been employed writing policies and procedures for Fortune 500 companies as well as federal alphabet soup agencies. And I can tell you, when you're talking policy like this, every "t" must be crossed and every "i" must be dotted. If they aren't, the lawyers will make damn sure you do...at great expense. So yes, I do know about bureaucracy...and I'm telling you, the bureaucracy required to implement this concept of yours would be nothing less than Byzantine. It would make the IRS look like child's play.

Like it or not, this is eugenics. It's controlling the breeders of a population based on a standard of suitability. It has many many many other positive effects besides this, but at it's core what I propose is a eugenics program. And if you'd take off your horse blinders for one fucking second and actually listen to what I'm saying instead of posting 'NAZIS AND WHY' every-fucking-time, perhaps I could even ENLIGHTEN you a bit.

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I'll pass. I don't think the government has any business telling me what I can or cannot do reproductively. The U.S. Constitution supports me on this point--there's not one syllable in it about the federal government having any say-so whatsoever. If you even attempted to implement this, you'd have a revolution on your hands--and I would join it. As I said a few posts back, Utopias have never worked out worth a damn, because one man's Utopia is another's dystopia.

KarenNelson said:

Point taken. But I never argued that Nazism was the sole source of mass killings. And two of the examples you provided (the Ottomans and Rwanda) also involved the killing of people based on their ethnicity. Genocide. Eugenics in action. The elimination of those deemed unfit to live because of their genetics. The implementation of eugenics there was crude rather than refined, granted, but it did occur.

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KarenNelson said:

And let me reiterate: I'm not saying anyone in this thread is a Nazi, or even a Nazi sympathizer. I'm pointing out that Nazism was an outcome of state-enforced eugenics.

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I understand this, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people just 'Oh the Nazis did it!' And I never pointed out you saying anyone was a Nazi or a sympathizer, because you didn't; I was providing examples because frankly, there were worse than the Nazis. FAR worse.

And to compare other eugenics/population control to any totalitarian regime is a bit....well, blind and deaf of you, if you'll excuse the crude language. Yes, it will make some people unhappy, but guess what? So did the Revolutionary War, even for the people that were on the side of the revolutionaries. Life sucked, but they realized it would be for the better good.

My point is, that for a problem that's only going to get worse, the point of no return for an extreme solution is growing closer and closer, and pretty soon we're going to have to take action. One way or another.

KarenNelson said:

Which people? By what objective, empirical standard? This is the question I've posed that thus far no one on the affirmative side of this debate has answered.

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Fair enough; I could have elaborated that point a little more. While yes, I agree that this is a huge grey area, at some point a group of a chosen few will have to draw the standard by which people will have to pass in order to be deemed worthy of having kids. Who these people are, I cannot say for certain because people will always have different ideals. *shrug* It's human nature. But one thing I can say for certain is that anyone who knowingly takes advantage of their fellow man should not have the right to reproduce.

If you want MY views, these people should DEFINITELY be excluded from the right to breed:
1) Repeat offenders for the following crimes:
- Rape
- Murder
- Child abuse/neglect (I personally would make this a 'One Strike and you're out' offense, as in the first time it happens, you get sterilized. End of story)
2) Minors who are still dependent on their families
3) Those with a history of violence/psychological issues/gang activity should be forcibly sterilized. Permanently.

And for 2), this would obviously warrant more criteria by which to evaluate them when they do become independent. While I don't think I can list them all (again, this plays into the whole 'different people, different ideals theme), here are a few I can offer:

1) Soundness of mind - Having enough sense to put the child's well-being above your own. That includes being able to support it financially with minimal to no assistance from taxpayers, and without simply passing it off to your family and just saying "I can't take care of it, it's your problem now" (getting advice is OK, because getting help in that way is just proof of trying to do what's right for the child). And one of my previous posts actually gives a fairly strict set of guidelines about how much assistance they WOULD receive should they qualify. Also, knowing when to close your goddamn legs helps too.

2) Financial resources/Stable employment/proper dedication of funds - Not saying they have to be filthy rich (hell, my parents sure aren't), but at least being able to provide for the child in question in its bare essentials (food, clothing, love, etc)

3) Common freaking sense - This is something I see lacking horribly. It combines 1 and 2 into one simple thing: If you can't take care of one kid, MAYBE two, it's time to stop. And Imma take a leaf from Muffin's book: Anyone in an open case with CPS should be temporarily sterilized.

KarenNelson said:

So is this about numerical population control, or eugenics? Because those are two very different ideas (as I said in my previous post).

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Fundamentally, yes they're different, but their endgoal is the same: Cut down on the number of people. Eugenics is admittedly more discriminatory than straight population control, but any species worth its salt will want to have the best genes it can possibly possess be passed onto future generations. And frankly, we've let a lot of bad apples muck up the collective gene pool.

Razgriz said:

Fair enough; I could have elaborated that point a little more. While yes, I agree that this is a huge grey area, at some point a group of a chosen few will have to draw the standard by which people will have to pass in order to be deemed worthy of having kids. Who these people are, I cannot say for certain *shrug*

If you want MY views, these people should DEFINITELY be excluded:
1) Repeat offenders for the following crimes:
- Rape
- Murder
- Child abuse/neglect (I personally would make this a 'One Strike and you're out' offense, as in the first time it happens, you get sterilized. End of story)
2) Minors who are still dependent on their families
3) Those with a history of violence/psychological issues/gang activity should be forcibly sterilized. Permanently.

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This does make more sense than Trygon's approach. It also doesn't have quite the ethical issues, since you're proposing excluding people from reproducing based on what they do rather than who/what they are...at least for the most part.

The first two parts of 1 I could get behind. The third I think should be limited to egregious cases, or ongoing lesser incidences. Some people can be rehabilitated, others do things so heinous that yes, I could see sterilizing them.

Point 2 I could get behind in principle, though executing on it in the real world might be a challenge for medical/technical reasons. Such a program would need to begin near or even before menarche to be effective. Hormones can do a number on even the adult human body; calibrating birth control for, say, a 12 year old in such a manner so as not to interfere with normal sexual development could pose a major challenge. I have a friend of mine who did a stint in the psych ward because of birth control--it set off an extreme hormonal response and she became suicidal--this in her early 20s. The next woman on the list could have gotten the shot without incident.

Point 3 is a little more murky. "Psychological issues" covers a lot of turf. Gang activity...well, depends on what that activity is. There are quite a few people who ran with gangs as children/teenagers (I know some, grew up around a few) who turned out to be decent folk--even good fathers. And there are some who didn't. At the time, I don't think you could have predicted who would fall into what category.

As a corollary to this, one reason I oppose this sort of thing is because I think it would risk robbing us of our humanity. Part of being human is tragedy that strengthens us. If you try and engineer all trials, all flaws, all disadvantageous beginnings out of the human experience...do we become less human?

I'm actually quite done 'advancing my point', as you call it, since I'm advancing it into your face repeatedly in the boldest language possible to no effect.

Parting thought.

You've worked in bureaucracy for years, have you? Fortune 500 AND federal institutions. My, I'd say you're rather an expert!

Surely an expert would know that such structures are built to make ideas feasible, wouldn't you say? Even the deepest pit of bureaucratic hell, the DMV, was established to make the motor vehicle feasible all across the nation.

So we've established that the concept you eschew, the concept you're an expert on, the concept you know nothing about, exists solely to fill the gaps between my idea and reality. You must know this.

Right, expert?

So surely you know, Miss Expert, that building the laws, paperwork, and procedures of such an institution takes time and people, en masse. Hell, just my minor contributions to the founding of Washington State's marijuana market taught me that.

So why do you keep chasing down that I need to build one here? You know it's not possible, Miss Expert. I'm but one man, and one who's growing rather tired of your lack of contribution. Yet you seem curiously unwilling to let go of this #1 source of child abuse worldwide, repeated 'Whyyyyy?'

My turn. Why is that? Your most annoying, least credible possible tack to take in this discussion, and you lean on it ENTIRELY, except when you were trading duty with your Nazi support (Which Raz broke out from underneath you far more cleanly then I could have, thank you), and on four occasions now when instead you've leaned on ''MURRICA WOULD NEVUR.'

A more cynical man would say it looks like you don't have a leg to stand on. But I'm not cynical. I see that you actually believe your own argument, even when you're patching in the details with little lies, here and there, just where you think we wouldn't notice or couldn't verify.

http://bluemoonroleplaying.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=9726&pid=1059309#pid1059309 I wrote this a while back - About another idiot female who couldn't actually have a discussion. I think it applies well here.

Trygon said:

This belief, this... 'I can't defend my point of view, but you're still wrong, because My Gut.', is silly.

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You haven't defended anything. You've called us nazis, you've said Americans will revolt, you've said it would never work, and you asked 'Why?' a lot, but you haven't actually contributed a goddamn thing other then your damnfool opinions, which you continue restating as if they help you.

Do you... Think you're fooling anyone? Do you think anyone in this thread considers you an intellectual equal? What were you thinking when you clicked on the forum marked 'Academy', anyway? You don't actually think you belong here, do ya?

Nah, I think you'd better stay in the fantasy world where unemployed 'Freelance' writers write goddamn legal documents FOR THE FEDERAL FUCKING GOVERNMENT.

Trygon said:

Do you... Think you're fooling anyone? Do you think anyone in this thread considers you an intellectual equal? What were you thinking when you clicked on the forum marked 'Academy', anyway? You don't actually think you belong here, do ya?

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I'm not exactly sure what crawled up your ass and died, but I've better things to do than correspond with angry, hostile people online.

I'm not your fucking therapist.

Welcome to Ignore.

Oy... this is getting a bit over the top now. Consider this debate derailed. Welcome to closed.