As if the pro-choicers have not made many compromises, including most of us agreeing to adhere to the laws, and to work within the system to change them.

I'm certainly glad you are mostly agreeing to adhere to the laws. I'm not sure what working outside the system would be, unless it's civil disobedience or guerrilla warfare. I suspect you would agree as a matter of practicality that without a base of sympathy those would be worse than useless.

I fully agree with you on that. And in fact, I have strongly opposed a few pro-choicers in the past who did suggest the "anything goes in war" attitude. I won't work with any MAP of any ideology who would ever resort to unlawful and/or outright unethical means to "improve" our situation.

Compromise has to be judged by your power relations. We pedophiles have very close to zero power. None. Nada.

We have our principles. Giving the "other side" everything they want is an example of being compromised, not compromise. It's conceding defeat or full acquiesence. And pro-choicers do not believe that absolutely every Non-MAP out there is so against us that they will demand an "all or nothing" compromise, which is actually no compromise at all. We agree to follow the laws and work within the system to make any changes we believe have to be made. I don't think any reasonable person, whether MAP or Non-MAP, could ask for much more than that.

But I didn't really want to get into the sexual contact question here -- I'm speaking of the broader liberal agenda, where of course people do have some power.

That's fine, but as I have noted many times before, the think the broader liberal agenda as it's situated today - post-1970s - is and has been heavily compromised. This position of compromise has existed in an era filled with moral panics that the liberals have milked for their own benefit rather than opposed, and accomplished nothing like the many important and some would say radical changes that occurred during the late 1960s and '70s... all of which were the rapid but logical culmination of incremental progress of the past. This is why I will not support the modern liberal agenda as sufficient for much beyond lip service. Plain and simply, the current liberal agenda is too accepting of the status quo and its various institutions as they are now structured.

there is exactly what mainstream (read: "respectable") liberals have done since they become cowed shadows of their 1960s-'70s counterparts that helped establish such rapid beneficial change during that era.

Do you recall the Reagan landslides? A rightward shift in public opinion? Democrats had to tack right to stay a relevant political party.

Mmm-hmmm. Exactly what I meant, Ethan. Thank you for making my point. Which is exactly what they didn't do prior to the Reagan/Thatcher era, when they stuck to their principles rather than swinging towards the policies of the opposition to stay "relevant," and when some of the greatest and sweeping progressive civil rights victories were one. Since then, the liberals have been so concerned with capitulating rather than opposing die hard conservative principles just to maintain a plate of scraps at the table that they had to rename themselves "centrists" rather than using an even more accurate name: moderate conservatives. Or, as Clinton succinctly referred to himself as: a "conservative liberal."

Without popular support you can do nothing.

Translation: When the opposition gains some ground, the best thing to do is to back down and become more like them and abandon your principles so that you are simply allowed to survive in the new environment. Especially since this has proven to be a failure as a policy, and is the exact antitheses of the courageous policies used by liberals of a previous era when they beat back the opposition and gained much popular support by fighting rather than cowing. I'm sorry, Ethan, but too many of us have clearly looked at what took place on many fronts as a result of the liberals giving more ground to the conservative mindset between the 1980s and the present, and we frankly do not like this "new" type of liberal. Clinton and Obama in office have been disasters of capitulation to the conservatives, who hate both of them so much because they have ceased becoming opponents and are now rivals for agendas that are at mostly cross purposes rather than opposed. We just can't respect people who compromised their own principles so much to gain... well, nothing, really.

There is a role for a few strong liberal voices keeping to the old principles, but most have to follow the people.

They didn't have to. They chose to in exchange for charitable tolerance and a few bones here and there. And to the credit of the conservatives, they have never backed down from the principles they stand behind no matter how wacky or how much opposition they faced; yet most of the liberals couldn't do the same for the pro-democratic principles they stood for. They now find most of the same things to be non-sensible and unrealistic as the conservatives do, including the uber-cynical attitude towards humanity that the Right has always used to rationalize its most inhumane and discompassionate policies. Most of the modern liberals are more concerned about adopting the conservative mindset and getting what they can out of it for their own selfish purposes rather than they are in advocating the principles that are very much against the policies that now dominate America and elsewhere in the West.

Try to lead, sure, but if they're not following, you've got to find a better message.

And that message is, "If you can't beat the opposition, join them"? Sorry, Ethan, but that defeatist message left the world a wreck over the past few decades, and spawned the very moral panic and unscrupulous industries that caused the pedo panic and strict protectionist policies to replace the fledgling liberationist ideas that were being spoken of by many mainstream voices in Ann Arbor and elsewhere during the 1970s. Which was, btw, the same era that 18-20-year-olds gained a whole constitutional amendment to allow them suffrage, and the greatest civil rights legislation ever passed was enacted.

Since then, the capitulation policies of the post-1970s liberals occurred in the same era that brought us the victimology craze; trash talk shows; a resurgence in hatred of the poor; the Satanic ritual abuse insanity; the repressed memory syndrome nonsense; and some of the worst civil rights drawbacks in the form of the USA Patriot Act and the "terrorism" panic, all of which are thriving in a state of perpetual warefare that the Democrats and Labour in office are pushing with the same degree of zealotry that any Republican or Tory in office.

The youth lib movement found a resurgence in the mid-1990s after getting derailed by the onset of the '80s, only this time most liberals are either dismissing it or denouncing it. Something many of the liberals during the '70s certainly weren't doing.

So I'm sorry, but I will not agree with or respect the policies of what passes for the liberals today. They are not different enough from the opposition, but are simply another wing off of the same bird of prey rather than a whole other avian species.

That is what democracy is about, ultimately.

Not any form of democracy that recognizes a Constitution that describes many forms of civil rights as being inalienable, and not subject to the will of either the majority of citizens or an oligarchy sitting in a star chamber.

However exasperated we might be with voters, they get to decide who runs the country.

No, they don't decide that, and you know it, Ethan. A few powerful monied interests carefully vet and decide which two stooges of the ruling class we get to choose to vote for, and oftentimes it's ultimately the Electoral College, or during one election of the past decade, a Supreme Court decision. The majority of liberals are so tame and accepting of things as they are that they continue to put their support behind the Democratic Party rather than starting a third party, which they now denounce as "too radical" and "unreasonable." So they continue to promise "incremental change" when lately the only type of change we get is whether or not a Democrat or a Republican sits in office.

"Perhaps you'll stay with the Dissy plan because it's something of a GC consensus."
And going by consensus is nothing you ever do, right, Ethan? I guess any portion of any minority group who doesn't agree with the status quo opinion must all be giving into groupthink, eh?

You misunderstand me. I am not deriding that view. I am saying it is a reasonable thing to do within my framework of how to make decisions about such questions. Having laid out a suggestion for how to make decisions on complicated topics, I raise points that do not support my preferred view on the immediate question at hand.

I'm sorry, Ethan, but your posting history suggests otherwise, Ethan.

And note how you deny in other places attributing the idea of fundamental change being possible to me alone, yet here you call it the "Dissy plan"?

Your name labels it because you are the one who expresses a view at length and in detail.

Actually, the only one who expresses a view at length that is not also currently spouted loudly by anyone else. You can't say the same for the libertarians and anarchists on the board, so you do not yet single any of them out in this manner.

It doesn't speak to how many people subscribe to it and to what extent -- something I don't know. If someone else like Dante expressed a coherent view of that kind and I disagreed with it and no one ELSE critiqued it, I'd probably post a critique of it too.

Dante and several others here are libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, who are often at odds with liberals. In the former case, because the libertarians do not cower on civil rights issues and legislation like the new breed of liberals have consistently done. The four libertarians in Congress during the ridiculous vote to denounce the Rind Report actually abstained from that vote. Not a single one of the liberal congressmen did, however. "Go with the flow," huh? It's better to show your opposition that you're a sucker rather than a threat.

Because living full time within the virtual walls of GC, they never thought about any of the mainstream rhetoric before, right?

Communities on the web have a tendency for epistemic closure, where people of like mind reinforce each other's beliefs and shut out competing views.

Something the anti-choicers never do, huh? Tell you what then, Ethan. How about you let a bunch of us migrate over to VirPed and speak our piece on these issues there? How about e-mailing the numerous open political and sociology boards who routinely delete any pro-choice views spoken when this issue is broached, while allowing the nastiest things from the other side to be said, and complain about the unfairness of that situation?

Until you do that, and then do the same with the mainstream print, television, and radio media to allow our side of the issue to be spoken without being censored, then you can walk onto one of the few places online where the pro-choice view is allowed to be spoken without hindrance and suggest that maybe the posters at these few places are subject to epistemic closure and really need to hear and consider the already ubiquitous anti-choice view that they cannot help but hear or read unchallenged practically everywhere else. Then it won't sound as strange or silly, at any rate. And keep in mind that at least you're allowed to come to these few places and challenge the pro-choice view. But calling us unfair and guilty of epistemic closure is the height of hypocrisy.

So I don't assume that people are continually being exposed to more mainstream views and taking them seriously.

Again, because it's safe to assume the opposite: That none of us have lives outside of this board, that none of us are members of other boards that routinely spout the anti-choice view with no allowance for challenging it, and none of us watch or read the mainstream media outlets as often as you and the average person in society does. Hence, it's safe to assume that anyone on this board have actually never or rarely heard the anti-choice view, and have never actually considered it. So you need to make up for that and act like some sort of lone wolf in a storm. Seriously, do you read the stuff you say before you type it, Ethan?

Thank you for reminding what you seem to perceive as "Dissy's mindless followers" that they can [retain a pro-contact opinion], Ethan. I'm sure they agree that they totally deserved your condescending, paternalistic tone in this post.

No one has to read my posts who doesn't want to. I hope people will realize that my post was advice offered in a respectful spirit.

If you don't hear it from Ethan, you probably never heard it before or anywhere else is not exactly the soundest of advice when it comes to this subject. Nor does "perhaps you shouldn't listen to Dissy because he has so many non-mainstream opinions." Especially when mainstream thinking has been very unkind to both MAPs and the group of people whom we love the most.

Those who are confident in their beliefs and capabilities may decide it doesn't apply to them but understand that others might benefit by it.

Or at least benefit in the sense that you give them opportunities to hone their debate skills, which I must admit to relishing. Congrats, Ethan :-)

I don't think you know as much about the posters here as you think, especially those who do not express political views.

But you do, right? I know you hope you do. I don't know all the posters here well, but I do know many of them, several from way back, and I do believe I have seen more than enough evidence that they have adroit, reasonable minds that have long considered and mentally digested status quo rhetoric, and are fully capable of coming to conclusions outside the dominant position without ever meeting me, Dante, qtns2di4, or any other pro-choicer; which is something a majority of modern liberals like yourself think it's a bad idea to do.

I'm certain you don't know about the views of the lurkers.

Nor do you. But at least here, the lurkers can get to see, think about, and consider a point of view that they will not get from lurking at VirPed or most other places, and certainly not on any mainstream liberal board. You have every right to state your own views here, but lurkers won't read a single thing from you that they haven't heard numerous times elsewhere in numerous different places. At least not those who weren't living in a cave somewhere for the past 30 years.