Renegade

I don't. Damage to the environment is a form of assault which affects each of us individally. It is consistent with a libertarian philosophy that government prevent such an assault. "conservatives" is a blunt and inaccurate term. Political parties and the general public itself placed very little value on environmental policies until recently. I don't see the similarity you refer to.

I agree that we need to be clear in what we mean. It is clear (to me, anyway) that if we crimminalize abortion, criminal penalties will apply, including jail time if deemed appropriate. Personally, I don't think that mothers should be force to explain anything. They should free to abort within the allowed period for any reason whatsoever. The only explaining they would have to do is if they aborted after the allowed period, and were criminally charged. Then as any criminal does, they have the opportunity to explain their situaiton so that their situation can be taken into account during sentencing.

It is fine to be conservative morally, however libertarian principles would not impose one's conservative morality on others. I believe Riverwind to be correct. You cannot be consistent in libertarian philosophy if you favour economic choice but not choice on other more personal fronts.

The question at hand is how long the woman has to exercise her decision on whether to carry the child to term or not. At one extreme, Mr. Canada believes that a woman's consent to engage in sex is an irrevokable commitment to carry a pregnancy to term and the government should enforce that decision. At the other extreme, a woman can exercise that decision up to the moment of birth. There is no current abortion law so the woman can abort right up until birth legally. In my view either position is extreme and not consistent with respecting individual rights. A woman should have a period of time to determine if she is willing to host the pregnancy, after that period elapses, the decision on whether to abort or not should be irrevokable and subject to criminal penalties if attempted. IMV, both. Not only the doctor but the woman who willingly participates should face criminal penalties.

Sure, let's test everyone but since issues change constantly shouldn't people need to retake testing to proove that they are current? Also, why bother then with a 3-year residency requrement, as soon as anyone pass the test they can become a citizen. Would you strip someone from citizenship because they fail the test? The problem with equating a citizenship test with a voting test is that citizenship involves a lot more obligations than just voting.

*duplicate

Priceless quote! BTW, who's "God" are you referring to, yours or mine? Or are you maintaining that only killing in the name of your God is permitted but no others.

The answer is not as clear as you make out. Please define how you determine if something is "life"? For example is a virus "life"? Is a person who is brain-dead "life"? Is blood which flows from a cut "lfe"? Perhaps if you can answer these we can address when life begins. (Ironiclly, I feel compelled to ask Mr Canada for "the meaning of life" The second point, is what makes something "human"? Is a whole person required to make someone human or is a single cell composed of dna sufficient to be considred "human"?

I agree that people should pay for their own procedures, but that's not really the issue being proposed is it? The question is the crimminality of abortion, not the funding. So would you be ok with abortion if a women payed for it herself? Even if it were true, what does that have to do with the position you have taken (ie that abortion is murder)? -------------------- I see you avoided answering the straightforward questions I put to you. Perhaps you didn't answer because you can't.

Yes, it is true, you position has always been logically inconsistent thoughout your postings at MLW. Perhaps you can convince us otherwise by addressing the questions I asked:

Mr Canada. Your position is logically inconsistent with your previous statemetns and position.

Then you presumably have no objection if I'm the one who decides on your punishiment if you speed. It can vary from a fine to capital punshiment depening upon my moral guidelines.

Mr. Canada when you say you are "willing to compromise" do you mean that you are "willing to compromise" your beliefs or your compromise is restricted to what you would let others do? If we assume it is the latter, why should your faith dictate what other can or cannot do? You should be free to follow restrictions based upon your own conscience as others are restricted to theirs.

It only makes sense to have a policy if we can find one which has broad consensus of agreement. Past experience has been that it is been very difficult to get consensus. In this case it may be that a bad policy is worse than no policy as it may restrict the indiviudal's rights. Now we are making progress. You seem to agree that there are cases where the fetus "right to life" doesn't supercede other conditions. You have already agreed that one individual right to life doesn't supercede another individual's right to determine the use of their own body. The only area we are divergent on is that you maintain that by a woman's choice to have sex, she gives irrevocable consent to pregnancy. Perhaps you can explain why such consent is irrevokable when it is likely not an intended consequence?

It is ONE potential consequence it is not the only consequence and is probably not the intended consequence. As an analogy, one potential consequence of going sking is that you fall and injure yourself. Having chosen to go sking, does that deny that individual further control of his body once he gets injured simply because he choose to go sking? Simply put, the skier chose to go sking. He did not choose to get injured. The same principle applies. BTW, what is your position if the woman did not "choose to have sex" (ie she was raped)? Good! Then we have established that you agree that the right to another's life doesn't supercede an individual's right to choice of one's own body.

Mr. Canada, you are not asking the relevant question. I agree with you that fetus is life before birth, maybe even at conception. The question is why the woman should be forced to have her body used in a way she doesn't consent to regardless of whether the being is considered life or not. Mr Canada, would you forcibly exract blood from a donor if the receipent needed the blood to live? How about a kidney donor where the receipent needed the kidney to live? Since you have asked some questions perhaps you can answer some.

YOUR SCORE Your scored -1.5 on Moral Order and -5 on Moral Rules. The following categories best match your score (multiple responses are possible): System: Liberalism Ideology: Capital Democratism, Progressive NeoLiberalism Party: Democratic Party, Libertarian Party Presidents: Bill Clinton 04' Election: Michael Badnarik 08' Election: Ron Paul Of the 511,373 respondents (7,391 on Facebook): 5% are close to you. 10% are more conservative. 5% are more liberal. 44% are more socialist. 36% are more authoritarian.

This is a ridiculous poll. The choices vary between two extremes. The public sector shouldn't take a unilateral paycut without negotiation any more than private sector should. It woudl be deemed a constructive dismissal.

Privitazing implys a change in ownership to private interest. They could go public as CN and Air Canada have done and the dirving force for their managment will be to contain cost and show a profit. As a government institution, what motivation do they have to do so? A private institution is motivated to constantly become more efficient. Not sure where you got this. The most opportune time to privatize a business is when it is showing a consistent profit. Not many people want to buy into an pernnial money loser. The government sold off Air Canada years ago. Now it looks like a stroke of genius. Of course. Cost to maintain rural service is much higher. If rural users didn't want to pay the true cost for the service, they shouldn't get the service or the same level of service. What I suspect is that rural users would get reduced or higher cost service. For example, they may get weekly delivery of mail, or it may be delivered to a central location for pick-up. Also, rural users wouldn't get junk mail because it wouldn't be cost effective to send it to them. In addition any mail to/from rural locations will likely cost more. If you see courier rates, it varies by source/destination. They do so because it has a bearing on the cost and efficiency. It makes sense to do so for mail as well. There was once a day where mail was the only form of communication and so it made sense to subsidze it in the name of "national interests". It is no longer true and we should shed these artifacts of our legacy.

You should distinguish between them being privatized and them losing their monoploy status. They could be privitized but still retain their monopoly status. That would permit them to continue to maintain the same rate structure. I for one think that subsiding rural service by overcharging urban user is not either sensible nor fair. The rural user should pay the true cost of postal service, and that would encourage the use of alternatives (such as e-billing). If Canada Post wern't forced to overcharge urban users, no doubt the price would drop. At one time if you had a lot of mail to send, it made sense to drive to the border and send it via USPS. Not sure if it is still true today, but it seems insane that due to postal policies we encourage nonsensical behaviour.

Why? Perhaps you misunderstand my position. I do NOT think arbitration is a particularly great process.

There is nothing wrong with an enterprise squeezing labour costs, what is an issue is that Canada Post generates profits primarily because it is a monopoly.

Public employees enjoy a significant advantage over private. They enjoy about a 25% premium in total compensatoin over private. They also have many intangible benefits such as job security which does not exist in the private sector. Why should we as taxpayers have to pay the price. Even if public sectors were delcared essential, they would have the ability to resort to arbitration to set wages. The wage increases set by arbitration do nothing to address the disparity. IMV, public sector should not have the right to strike. They have the right to quit. Their wages should be set by comparison to private sector equivalent salaries.

So what if they are taxpayers too? Being a taxpayer entitles one to a set of services provided by the government, not a govenment handout. If the governement handed out money before, it shouldn't repeat the same mistake again to yet another unsustainable industry. To follow your logic, you would have the government handing bailouts to makers of horse buggies when their industry was eclipsed by more modern technology. Perhaps they would even be making buggies today at taxpayer expense. Perhaps it shouldn't be the taxpayers who bail out the auto companies, but instead it should be the employees since clearly they are the ones with the most to lose in a failure. Perhaps they should mortgage their homes and take a pay cut and provide working capital in return for an ownership stake. If the employees aren't interested in mortgaging their future, I don't see why taxpayers would want to.

Of course. Experience over the last 25 years shows that the govenment cannot be trusted to save a "rainy day fund". It is clear that government is swayed by political pressure. That is why government should not be allowed to bail out this industry or any other until they have been proved capable mony managers.