>Immigration is a huge issue, and I really thought the GOP was turning the corner on it, but it's all fallen apart since the GOP decided it would rather pander to an angry white base.

Amnesty for current illegal immigrants + improved border security and visa enforcement, so that it never happens again, is the obvious answer to the immigration problem. What many people don't know is that the American people were sold on just that in 1986. It was a great compromise, a great humanitarian action, worthy of a great nation.

Too bad it was a total lie. Amnesty was granted, but the improved enforcement never came. The Democrats were happy to keep importing voters and keep a hot-button issue alive. The Republicans were happy to keep importing cheap labor. The people, who wanted an end to uncontrolled immigration, were the suckers. Sanctuary cities that refuse to hand over dangerous criminals for deportation, and a federal government that usually declines deportation anyway, have only added fuel to the fire.

The people are totally right to refuse to be fooled again.

>But I believe that climate change is real.

The funny thing is that the people beating the drums of climate panic tend to be the same ones that are opposed to nuclear power, which is the easiest and most obvious solution that doesn't require crippling our economy.

>I believe that religion has no place in government or political discourse.

I disagree completely. The government should certainly not favor one religion over another, but the religions are the source of our moral values, even for most of the non-believers among us. We take for granted just how much Christianity has shaped our secular culture and morality. If you believe in your heart that abortion is the taking of a human life, then you have a duty to fight to end it.

>I believe that marijuana has medicinal benefits and that the War on Drugs has been a colossal waste.

I agree for the most part, but I've lately had doubts about my previous position that we should just legalize all drugs. Drugs like heroin and meth and cocaine rob people of their agency, of the will to direct their own lives. They should not be available for purchase.

> The people are totally right to refuse to be fooled again.

So are you saying we should just give up on the issue? We tried something and it didn't work. We should try again. The solution isn't "build a wall".

> The funny thing is that the people beating the drums of climate panic tend to be the same ones that are opposed to nuclear power, which is the easiest and most obvious solution that doesn't require crippling our economy.

I agree, I think it's idiotic to vilify nuclear power. Catastrophes have happened, we learned from them.

> The government should certainly not favor one religion over another, but the religions are the source of our moral values, even for most of the non-believers among us.

We agree to disagree then. I believe religion is a highly personal issue that has no place in public discourse. I do not see Christianity's influence on our culture and morality as a positive thing.

> Drugs like heroin and meth and cocaine rob people of their agency, of the will to direct their own lives. They should not be available for purchase.

I agree. When I rail against the War on Drugs, I specifically refer to the stance of incarceration rather than rehabilitation as a solution to the drug problem.

>So are you saying we should just give up on the issue? We tried something and it didn't work. We should try again. The solution isn't "build a wall".

Part of the solution is certainly to build a barrier. Mind you, this was once uncontroversial when it was just a flimsy "border fence", which is already authorized by law with bipartisan support. Now it seems that some are scared that a proper barrier, combined with real internal enforcement, might actually work.

Now that the trust is gone, the government must prove itself on border security and immigration enforcement. Amnesty should only be considered when the people are convinced that this crisis will never happen again, that we will never again have millions of people enter the country against the democratic will of citizens.

>I agree, I think it's idiotic to vilify nuclear power. Catastrophes have happened, we learned from them.

I suggest then that you base your vote on this issue not so much on who "believes" in climate change or not, but who supports the actual policies that can actually solve it.

>When I rail against the War on Drugs, I specifically refer to the stance of incarceration rather than rehabilitation as a solution to the drug problem.

Yes, I agree that we should stop imprisoning people for possession. But I do think that trafficking should remain a serious crime. I think you'll find that the prison population won't change much under this arrangement.

And even if you did stop imprisoning for trafficking, it wouldn't necessarily change much either. Most people in prison for "non-violent drug offenses" don't have that as their most serious charge.

> I suggest then that you base your vote on this issue not so much on who "believes" in climate change or not, but who supports the actual policies that can actually solve it.

How is the GOP going to put out an actual policy to solve climate change if they don't believe it's even a problem in the first place?

Nuclear power. What we were talking about.

>the religions are the source of our moral values, even for most of the non-believers among us.

I disagree in absolute. In my view religions do far more harm than good, and to claim religious thought is the basis of morality even for non believers is somewhere between condescending and insulting.

I say this as a non-believer myself. I don't mean that modern western atheists are picking up their moral code directly from religions, I'm saying that the secular western moral code largely grew from Christianity.

Anyhow, my broader point is that religions are a source of moral conviction for people. And moral conviction is totally legitimate basis for political conviction.

> but the religions are the source of our moral values

The US government is not founded on enforcing morals, but guaranteeing rights. For example, the 10 Commandments and the Bill of Rights are at distinct odds with each other.

> The Democrats were happy to keep importing voters

I think it's important not to discount the difficulty of securing the border because of the size of it. And as you mention, American companies (like Smithfield) are happy to create incentives for border hopping because they can use the threat of calling INS to keep wages low and prevent unions from forming.

The problem with the idea of widespread voting fraud is the data doesn't support it, at all. Bush's DOJ came up with an estimate of %0.00000132 of fraudulent votes in federal elections, for instance. Note that by then it was explicitly illegal for aliens to vote in federal elections.

> We take for granted just how much Christianity has shaped our secular culture and morality.

I'd argue that across peoples and times you see more variation in theological doctrine than moral teachings in the various religions. Hinduism, for instance, is practiced by different people differently and encompasses polytheistic, monotheistic, and even atheistic traditions. But morality remains a feature, specifically the concept of karma. Sweden is by some counts 85% atheist, but I'm not aware of anyone calling it a den of iniquity. Certainly my Muslim-American friends are moral.

In other words, people tend to be recognizably moral regardless of their very divergent beliefs about other things. That points to a general human capacity for morality, rather than one specific to any one religion (that the others, even those predating it, were presumably lucky enough to develop independently).

Certainly moral codes differ. But they also differ within the same religion across time -- for instance, the modern Christian view of divorce vs. the ancient one.

Christian orthodoxy varies. Ancestor worship is common in African Christian sects. Protestant and Orthodox churches abhor the Roman Catholic practice of praying to statues. Unitarians discount the trinity. Sure, there's a common thread of Christian morals there, but I'd argue that it's the same thread you find everywhere, modulo views on homosexuality and a couple of other things.

I don't mean to be cruel but I find the assertion that America gets its morals from Christianity to be somewhat narrow in that it presupposes that Christians got theirs from on high, and ignores the similar moral teachings you find throughout the world and throughout history.

It also runs contrary to the founders' explicit intentions for the role of religion in government, and I would argue that it does a large disservice to your fellow Americans who aren't Christian.

I'm not talking about fraudulent voting by illegal immigrants, I'm talking about the fact that they eventually become citizens when amnesty rolls around, and their kids become citizens automatically by birthright.

But the children who are citizens automatically by birth, you don't think they're more predisposed to want to stay here and to improve their communities if they end up staying? Are you suggesting that their allegiances ultimately lie elsewhere? Does that extend to children of immigrants born here legally?

If so, this is the same rhetoric used to discriminate or marginalize the early generations of immigrants in NY last century; my grandparents went through it. Not a lot of fun.

And if this is a ploy to gain sympathy to a particular party, I think that party deserves that continued support. Trust extended to the outsider begets trust as that outsider lays downs roots, and those children and their children would be likely to vote the same way by gratitude or tradition. Even if it distorts the way they would vote without that influence, I think the country overall benefits when immigrant communities feel supported, looking forward, participating in society, not isolated from it. It's how our country changes, grows, adapts.

How is the pro-life position discriminatory against women? The question is one of line drawing of when life begins that needs to be protected. The pro-life position believes that life should be protected earlier than the pro-choice position. That is not discriminatory against women.

We are obviously setting side abortion in cases of rape. So the pro-life position is equal in it's belief about women's autonomy over their bodies. It's only that the pro-life position believe the fetus should be proetect earlier the women's autonomy over her body is equally protected.

> How is the pro-life position discriminatory against women?

In that you don't already comprehend, I doubt I'll be able to aid in your understanding, but here goes nothing.

The state allows men to exercise control over their own reproductive systems more completely than women.

It really is that simple.

Men have all options available e.g. vasectomy, wearing condoms, etc. Women on the other hand see the "party of small government" lead the charge into their hospital rooms, dictating to them what rights they have insofar as control of their own reproductive systems goes.

If men also could get pregnant, it wouldn't be discriminatory. That the only reproductive control technique to be denied women is a technique only available to women, any laws to restrict such techniques are inherently discriminatory toward women.

The attempts to restrict abortion effect women's rights directly, far more so than men, many of whom vanish before a child is even carried to term.

Does that help clear it up?

>If men also could get pregnant, it wouldn't be discriminatory. That the only reproductive control technique to be denied women is a technique only available to women, any laws to restrict such techniques are inherently discriminatory toward women.

This is preposterous logic. Women have the same access to birth control than men do. In fact, as it stands now, the options available to women are vastly superior, i.e. the pill.

The fact that only women can bear children does not make the regulation of abortion "discrimination". Discrimination would be if both sexes could bear children, but only abortion by females was banned.

Do you think that abortion on the day before birth should be legal?

> Women have the same access to birth control than men do ...

As it stands the opinions of people who have zero involvement in a woman's reproductive cycle easily exert legislative and legal control over the options available to women.

Can you provide even a single instance of male reproductive regulation subjected to similar legislative control?

> In fact, as it stands now, the options available to women are vastly superior

You think of abortion as a form of birth control because your involvement in the process is essentially binary. Either you want a child or you don't. Either you wear a condom or you don't. For women exercising control over their reproductive rights isn't restricted to the timespan of a sexual encounter. An association between birth control and abortion in the greater context of reproductive rights seems to me indicative of a singular and fairly rigid perspective.

> The fact that only women can bear children does not make the regulation of abortion "discrimination".

Perhaps you should study the definition of discrimination. My OED lists two definitions to include: "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex" and "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another". In its most neutral definition, that is in the sense of differentiating two things, discrimination is rendered necessary by laws regulating abortion specifically as a direct result of the fact that women are the only ones who can become pregnant. The definition with more negative connotations makes reference to prejudice. The Wizards of Ox define prejudice as "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience", or alternatively "harm or injury that results or may result from some action or judgment". Give that anti-abortion laws are passed, in part, by men whom by definition have no actual experience with the subject of legislation, it doesn't seem much of a leap to interpret such behavior as being prejudicial and thus discriminatory.

> Do you think that abortion on the day before birth should be legal?

In some cases, absolutely. Consider a premature baby born five months before it should be with no hope to survive, or the case of last minute complications that threaten a woman's life, or last minute discovery of terminal congenital defects.

>Are you for real?

Quite.

> I don't think access to contraceptives for adult men and women has been a real political controversy for at least 40 or 50 years.

Contraceptives? I was talking about abortion, not about contraceptives.

contraceptive |ˌkäntrəˈseptiv| adjective (of a method or device) serving to prevent pregnancy: the contraceptive pill.

Abortions don't prevent pregnancies from occurring, they terminate pregnancies that have already occurred. Clearly not the same thing. This would by why abortion isn't listed under Oxford's definition for contraception.

To wit: "contraception |ˌkäntrəˈsepSH(ə)n|noun the deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse. The major forms of artificial contraception are barrier methods, of which the most common is the condom; the contraceptive pill, which contains synthetic sex hormones that prevent ovulation in the female; intrauterine devices, such as the coil, which prevent the fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus; and male or female sterilization."

To say that women have access to "contraceptives" as if such is a viable response to my comments about abortion illustrates your own ignorance of the facts.

Still if you consider abortion to be a form of contraceptive, I'll happily refer you to Roe v. Wade, countless bombings and arsons of abortion clinics, assault and murder of personnel at abortion clinics, etc.

Once again you're looking at things through a male perspective and seeing abortion as a contraceptive as that's the only aspect of reproductive control that you understand.

What you think carries little weight compared to what I know for fact. I've actually volunteered for non-profits that have distributed contraceptives and I know exactly what kind of challenges such organizations face.

The fact of the matter is, as I said before: "As it stands the opinions of people who have zero involvement in a woman's reproductive cycle easily exert legislative and legal control over the options available to women."

You respond to comments about abortions (termination of pregnancy) with talk about contraceptives (used to prevent pregnancies).

Such a retort is little more than a straw-man.

> By your definition of discrimination

I'm pretty sure I used Oxford's definitions and I'm pretty sure that was made clear. I'm also pretty sure I'm not an editor at Oxford ergo those aren't my definitions, but rather a standard on which the world for the most part agrees.

I saw what you tried to do there, and I didn't like it.

> regulation of any industry is discrimination

Not at all. People aren't corporations. They don't have gender or ethnicity. I can't say that I'm surprised that you equate women with corporations given the need of corporations for external entities i.e. executives, staff, etc, to direct their function. It says a lot about how you think of women, i.e. that they need somebody to control them and make decisions for them.

> Property tax is also discriminatory.

Once again the negative definition of discriminate is to "make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, sex, or age".

Discrimination in the first sense, that is of differentiation, does apply to property tax as the law must differentiate between those that own property and those that do not.

Discrimination in the second sense, with its associated negative connotations, is a bit more difficult to argue for in the case of property tax as the courts have found the laws as regards such taxation to be just, that is to say, not prejudicial.

You're ignoring a crucial aspect of the negative definition of discriminate, that referring to which is unjust or prejudicial, just for the sake of the argument that you want to make.

Once again there are two definitions to include one that is neutral from the perspective of morals and values and another which is not. You're using one definition where it is convenient for your argument, and ignoring another, again where it is convenient for your argument.

Adding to that, you respond to statements about abortion with off-topic comments about contraception?

And you dare call my logic puerile?

> The pro-life position believes that life should be protected earlier than the pro-choice position. That is not discriminatory against women.

I disagree. I think it's absolutely insulting to say that an unborn, memoryless fetus/embryo/cell cluster has more of a right to life than the living, breathing, self-aware woman its inside.

> We are obviously setting side abortion in cases of rape.

This isn't obvious. Many conservatives believe abortion should be universally disallowed, including pregnancies resulting from rape.

>I disagree. I think it's absolutely insulting to say that an unborn, memoryless fetus/embryo/cell cluster has more of a right to life than the living, breathing, self-aware woman its inside.

I think it's telling that instead of defending the core of your position, that abortion should always be allowed, you're falling back to periphery issues, such as what to do when the life of the pregnant woman is threatened by the pregnancy. Many (most?) pro-life people would agree with allowing abortion in such cases, and it's really a sideshow to the main question.

What I'm saying is that no matter what, a woman gets the final say over what happens to the undeveloped fetus that's inside of her. At the extreme end of that position, if one of them has to die, the woman gets to make the choice who, not the fetus, not the state. But even if the woman's life isn't at risk, the choice should still be her's.

> Many (most?) pro-life people would agree with allowing abortion in such cases

It doesn't matter, because they are many more who want to ban it entirely. Many religions, such as the Catholic Church, teach that there are no circumstances in which abortion is acceptable. Women have died in Catholic hospitals because of this doctrine. If we say some abortions are allowed, and some aren't, then we're politicizing what should be a medical decision between a woman and her doctor.