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my vision for bettering kids' lives

Posted by EthanEdwards on Friday, August 17 2018 at 9:13:00PM
In reply to I do not want to see him gone, but... posted by Dissident on Friday, August 17 2018 at 6:43:45PM

I also do not see Ethan's views as representing a heart in the right place

You think that because you have one particular idea about what makes children's lives bad and what would improve them. I think you are incorrect about what would improve their lives. That's very different from my not caring about children.

But let me talk about the bigger picture.

One thing nobody here mentions very often at all is climate change. The potential for misery to many millions of poor children in low-lying coastal areas is phenomenal. An effective climate change solution would save far more misery for children than any details of sexual choice that affect a tiny few.

You mention the nuclear family. A great deal of abuse and neglect stems from poverty and stress. I would propose generous government childcare subsidies. I would propose a vastly expanded version of the earned income credit, combined with a modest guaranteed minimum income. That would help parents to be better parents. It would also provide children with a more hopeful path in life. If government subsidy can turn a minimum-wage job into a living-wage job, then life returns closer to its intended shape where people feel useful and are useful and contribute to society. I would also propose single-payer guaranteed health insurance. Does that sound like slavish kowtowing to the consensus view in society? That is a rather extreme liberal program.

Caring for children can well mean lifting their condition in absolute terms. It doesn't require special interventions to improve their status as a class in relation to the class of adults.

we simply can't do any better than this, because we're human beings and therefore we suck! So, this is never gonna change!

I don't see that criticism as flying in light of what I've laid out above. That is also not my idea of the limit of what we can accomplish. If we got to that point, it would set the stage for thinking about the next rounds of improvement to the human condition.

And after all that is said, I do favor some of the changes you suggest, such as allowing kids to vote and greater sympathy to teens who want to be emancipated.

This is a problem that increases my ire doubly when Ethan and other anti-choicers have the temerity to complain that we have evidently have too much of a voice in the MAP community, that we "dominate" any MAP board we are allowed on, and that there are so many who are "sick and tired" of having to listen to us. As if they do not have a huge advantage, and as if we do not have to listen to their rhetoric far more often than they have to hear ours

If you look at society at large, indeed you have to listen to a great deal of anti-legalization rhetoric. Within the MAP community, the louder voices are the pro-legalization ones. Take for example our friend Billi, who blithely says that pedophiles want to legalize sex with children. Even after I point out that the VP position exists and has a lot of support, she goes right back to talking about how pedophiles want to legalize adult-child sex. It's the anti-legalization position as a view held by pedophiles themselves that is not widely heard in society.

Ethan mentioned in another recent thread that he feels the pro-choicers make the anti-choicers look bad in front of the mainstream, and that is the gist of his problem with us

It is the main obstacle to making progress politically, as I see it. But of course I would also like to convince GCers of my position because I am convinced I am right.

Do you see Ethan and other anti-choicers arguing that our camp provides them good food for thought despite their disagreements with it

My thinking on these issues has sharpened over the five-odd years I have been participating at GC and the arguments I have heard here.






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