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bkwrrm_tx:
Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
For certain values of "answer and re-post," sure.
Would you do meth if it was legalized?
Nope. My stimulants of choice are sucrose and caffeine. (Also, I'd like to snark the loss of the subjunctive, there, but I realize that that battle is lost.)
Abortion: for or againstit?
I liked the Clintonian formulation that abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare." I look forward to the time when we, as a species, look back in horror at the idea that pregnancy occurred when it wasn't wanted, in much the same way that we think about medicinal bleeding today. Until we get there, though, a woman should have the right to determine what happens to/with/in her own body. (I also think that if we apply the reasoning we use about the end of life to its beginning - in particular, if we genuinely think "brain death" is a meaningful measure of the end of life and if we value consistency at all - then it is downright crazy to try to assign a fetus personhood and rights that impinge upon the mother's before it has a functioning forebrain, before we even get to the mother's right to her own body.)
Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
Female president of what? There's no such thing as the president of the world, which is what is implied by the question. And there are lots of female presidents of school boards, corporations, non-profit organizations, etc.
I'm also not completely sure what "fail" means here. Fail to do what?
Assuming that this was a clumsy reference to the President of the United States, then the world has weathered plenty of other female heads of state, both reasonable and horrific. I see no reason why we should be otherwise.
Do you believe in the death penalty?
Well, obviously it exists! What a silly question.
I will instead answer the question of whether I approve of it. I don't, at least as a legal institution. The state does not have any business killing citizens deliberately out of vengeance, no matter how good a reason it thinks it has. The only reason to kill a prisoner is self-defense or defense of another's life; prison guards using lethal force against convicted felons who repeatedly demonstrate that even the harshest confinement does not prevent them from being a threat to the lives of others is as close as I would come, and even that has disturbing potential for abuse.
Do you wish marijuana would be legalized[,] already?
I think outlawing a naturally occurring plant is silly unless it poses serious potential ecological damage to its environment. Hemp does not. If people want to grow variants with big leaves and little useful fiber, and then smoke them, I think this is pretty silly too, but probably less harmful overall than growing some of the petrochemical-dependent varieties of cotton while smoking two packs of cigarettes, and that's legal (if annoying).
Are you for or against premarital sex?
I am for pretty much all safe, sane, informed, and mutually consensual sex, whether marital, premarital, post-marital, extramarital, meta-marital, solo, or otherwise.
Do you believe in God?
Depends on what you mean by "believe" and "God." I have no evidence at all for the existence of the Monotheos - the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, eternal lone deity postulated by most monotheistic theologians - and I think he/it is a logical impossibility for a number of reasons. I have reasonably strong subjective personal evidence that the deity formerly known as Yahveh and occasionally called Jehovah, Adonai, etc. does exist, but I think he's the same tribal deity of volcanoes, mountains, fire, and thunder that he always was, just swollen out of all proportion by his cult and a couple of millennia of swallowing his own propaganda. (I'm not sure if al-Lah is the same deity or not, having no personal experience of him.) I have some subjective personal evidence that there is a monistic Ground of All Being, and a great deal of hearsay evidence, but I don't find it very interesting and see no point in worshipping it; contemplation seems like a better response to it anyhow. I have a great deal of subjective personal evidence for a myriad of deities and spirits who are not omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, or eternal.
Do you think same[-]sex marriage should be legalized?
I'm not in favor of the government having any truck with marriage at all. The government may need to know about householding-in-common and co-parenting for purposes of taxation, but I don't think it has any business inquiring as to whether the people living in the same house or raising the same children are fucking or not. Marriages should be between the participants, their families, their gods, and their communities, in that order of importance.
Having said that, I think it's absolutely immoral for the government, having wrongfully stepped into this business to begin with, to deny someone the legal benefits of marriage based on the gender of their chosen partner (or the number of their partners, but that's another matter entirely).
Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
As opposed to the numbers of Asians, Canadians, Africans, and Eastern Europeans who illegally move to the US? No, Hispanics are a significant proportion of the world's population, and they're close to here to begin with; the numbers seem pretty well balanced to me, overall.
Oh, wait, you meant . . . well, now, unless we want to take down Lady Liberty and her promise to take in the homeless and tempest-tossed, and in the bargain stop taking up more than our share of the world's resources, it seems to me that we have a responsibility to take in those who want to come.
A twelve year old girl has a baby,[;] should she keep it?
Depends on the twelve-year-old.
Should thealcohol[legal drinking] age be lowered to eighteen?
Given that one can vote, join the armed forces, and in most states get married without parental permission, at age 18, and that all of these things may well drive a person to drink on occasion, yes.
Should the war in Iraq be called off?
But when would you reschedule it?
Oh, wait, you mean "ended," but your head is full of sports metaphors. Yes, by all means; they don't want us there, we went in under blatantly trumped-up pretenses, and this is damned expensive in blood and treasure both on all sides.
Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
Well, I seem to recall it's legal under limited circumstances in Oregon, but otherwise, yes, that's correct.
Now, if you meant to ask whether I thought it should be illegal, then no, I don't. If we recognize a planned and anesthetized death as a mercy for our pets in certain circumstances, why should we treat each other less well if one of us asks for it?
Do you believe in spanking your children?
Mu; I don't have any children of my own.
As a general rule, I think it's a bad idea. I can see individual circumstances in which it might be the best of a group of bad solutions for a functionally preverbal child, but that's about it.
Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
No, but given that it's how the flag code requires that one dispose of a worn-out or damaged flag, I might well do it for free. (So I saw this bumper sticker that said "Do us a favor: if you must burn a flag, wrap yourself in it first." I remain confused why someone would incite someone to a violation of the flag code like that.)
Who do you think would make a better president?, McCain or Obama?
Obama. I've looked at both their voting records, and while Obama certainly has made choices that I disagree with, he rarely makes ones that I think are stupid. McCain's legislative agenda is completely incompatible with the values I think are important in the executive branch right now, he is entirely too susceptible to flattery (see also the Keating Five scandal), and he seems to be getting personally more irascible, angrier, and more prone to rash action by the day. I am also genuinely worried that McCain's health is failing under the pressure of the campaign; even if he is elected, he may not be President for long.
Are you afraid others will judge youfrom[after] reading some of your answers?
No.
(edited for HTML fail on iJournal's part)
bkwrrm_tx:Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
For certain values of "answer and re-post," sure.
Would you do meth if it was legalized?
Nope. My stimulants of choice are sucrose and caffeine. (Also, I'd like to snark the loss of the subjunctive, there, but I realize that that battle is lost.)
Abortion: for or against
I liked the Clintonian formulation that abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare." I look forward to the time when we, as a species, look back in horror at the idea that pregnancy occurred when it wasn't wanted, in much the same way that we think about medicinal bleeding today. Until we get there, though, a woman should have the right to determine what happens to/with/in her own body. (I also think that if we apply the reasoning we use about the end of life to its beginning - in particular, if we genuinely think "brain death" is a meaningful measure of the end of life and if we value consistency at all - then it is downright crazy to try to assign a fetus personhood and rights that impinge upon the mother's before it has a functioning forebrain, before we even get to the mother's right to her own body.)
Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
Female president of what? There's no such thing as the president of the world, which is what is implied by the question. And there are lots of female presidents of school boards, corporations, non-profit organizations, etc.
I'm also not completely sure what "fail" means here. Fail to do what?
Assuming that this was a clumsy reference to the President of the United States, then the world has weathered plenty of other female heads of state, both reasonable and horrific. I see no reason why we should be otherwise.
Do you believe in the death penalty?
Well, obviously it exists! What a silly question.
I will instead answer the question of whether I approve of it. I don't, at least as a legal institution. The state does not have any business killing citizens deliberately out of vengeance, no matter how good a reason it thinks it has. The only reason to kill a prisoner is self-defense or defense of another's life; prison guards using lethal force against convicted felons who repeatedly demonstrate that even the harshest confinement does not prevent them from being a threat to the lives of others is as close as I would come, and even that has disturbing potential for abuse.
Do you wish marijuana would be legalized[,] already?
I think outlawing a naturally occurring plant is silly unless it poses serious potential ecological damage to its environment. Hemp does not. If people want to grow variants with big leaves and little useful fiber, and then smoke them, I think this is pretty silly too, but probably less harmful overall than growing some of the petrochemical-dependent varieties of cotton while smoking two packs of cigarettes, and that's legal (if annoying).
Are you for or against premarital sex?
I am for pretty much all safe, sane, informed, and mutually consensual sex, whether marital, premarital, post-marital, extramarital, meta-marital, solo, or otherwise.
Do you believe in God?
Depends on what you mean by "believe" and "God." I have no evidence at all for the existence of the Monotheos - the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, eternal lone deity postulated by most monotheistic theologians - and I think he/it is a logical impossibility for a number of reasons. I have reasonably strong subjective personal evidence that the deity formerly known as Yahveh and occasionally called Jehovah, Adonai, etc. does exist, but I think he's the same tribal deity of volcanoes, mountains, fire, and thunder that he always was, just swollen out of all proportion by his cult and a couple of millennia of swallowing his own propaganda. (I'm not sure if al-Lah is the same deity or not, having no personal experience of him.) I have some subjective personal evidence that there is a monistic Ground of All Being, and a great deal of hearsay evidence, but I don't find it very interesting and see no point in worshipping it; contemplation seems like a better response to it anyhow. I have a great deal of subjective personal evidence for a myriad of deities and spirits who are not omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, or eternal.
Do you think same[-]sex marriage should be legalized?
I'm not in favor of the government having any truck with marriage at all. The government may need to know about householding-in-common and co-parenting for purposes of taxation, but I don't think it has any business inquiring as to whether the people living in the same house or raising the same children are fucking or not. Marriages should be between the participants, their families, their gods, and their communities, in that order of importance.
Having said that, I think it's absolutely immoral for the government, having wrongfully stepped into this business to begin with, to deny someone the legal benefits of marriage based on the gender of their chosen partner (or the number of their partners, but that's another matter entirely).
Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
As opposed to the numbers of Asians, Canadians, Africans, and Eastern Europeans who illegally move to the US? No, Hispanics are a significant proportion of the world's population, and they're close to here to begin with; the numbers seem pretty well balanced to me, overall.
Oh, wait, you meant . . . well, now, unless we want to take down Lady Liberty and her promise to take in the homeless and tempest-tossed, and in the bargain stop taking up more than our share of the world's resources, it seems to me that we have a responsibility to take in those who want to come.
A twelve year old girl has a baby
Depends on the twelve-year-old.
Should the
Given that one can vote, join the armed forces, and in most states get married without parental permission, at age 18, and that all of these things may well drive a person to drink on occasion, yes.
Should the war in Iraq be called off?
But when would you reschedule it?
Oh, wait, you mean "ended," but your head is full of sports metaphors. Yes, by all means; they don't want us there, we went in under blatantly trumped-up pretenses, and this is damned expensive in blood and treasure both on all sides.
Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
Well, I seem to recall it's legal under limited circumstances in Oregon, but otherwise, yes, that's correct.
Now, if you meant to ask whether I thought it should be illegal, then no, I don't. If we recognize a planned and anesthetized death as a mercy for our pets in certain circumstances, why should we treat each other less well if one of us asks for it?
Do you believe in spanking your children?
Mu; I don't have any children of my own.
As a general rule, I think it's a bad idea. I can see individual circumstances in which it might be the best of a group of bad solutions for a functionally preverbal child, but that's about it.
Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
No, but given that it's how the flag code requires that one dispose of a worn-out or damaged flag, I might well do it for free. (So I saw this bumper sticker that said "Do us a favor: if you must burn a flag, wrap yourself in it first." I remain confused why someone would incite someone to a violation of the flag code like that.)
Who do you think would make a better president
Obama. I've looked at both their voting records, and while Obama certainly has made choices that I disagree with, he rarely makes ones that I think are stupid. McCain's legislative agenda is completely incompatible with the values I think are important in the executive branch right now, he is entirely too susceptible to flattery (see also the Keating Five scandal), and he seems to be getting personally more irascible, angrier, and more prone to rash action by the day. I am also genuinely worried that McCain's health is failing under the pressure of the campaign; even if he is elected, he may not be President for long.
Are you afraid others will judge you
No.
(edited for HTML fail on iJournal's part)
