Only the philosophical, not biological, implications of life and man's nature are relevant for the problem of abortion. From the philosophical standpoint, the creation of a zygote is no more significant than having one's hair cut. The concept of murder is only relevant within the context of individual rights. Such rights are possessed only by rational beings because they are the basic requirement for the survival of those who have reason. Rational beings need to be left alone in order to survive and, therefore, to think. On the other hand, the concept of rights cannot be applied to non-rational animals or inanimate objects because freedom can be neither exercised nor understood by those devoid of reason.

That is why the crucial watershed that defines man qua man is the moment when he becomes rational, i.e. an adult. As you can see, there is nothing arbitrary about this watershed because rationality is the essence of man's nature.

Meanwhile, children are potentially rational beings but not actually so. The concept of rights is applied to them only by extension and in a very limited form. Their rights are severely restricted because a lack of rational capacity would not allow them to enjoy individual rights. They cannot be murdered, of course, because they still enjoy a limited freedom required by their potentially rational nature. Moreover, children become "partially rational," as it were, from a very early age, and a child is a constant state of transition to rationality. It would be arbitrary to pinpoint any moment from birth onward and until adulthood and authorize their killing on account of their "irrationality."

Embryos are even farther removed from the realm of rationality. Unlike children, they have no rational features at all. They are potentially children but their potentiality as rational beings is too remote and insignificant to be even taken into account. To argue that this dubious potentiality entitles them to individual rights, including a right to life, is absurd because, based on that logic, sperm cells and egg cells are also potentially human, though their potentiality is even more remote. Moreover, since cloning technology allows egg cells to be fertilized even by ordinary cells, any cell in a human body is potentially a rational being. Come to think about it, a certain combination of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, sulfur and other elements in a particular proportion is potentially a rational being - the only thing one needs to do is to link the atoms into molecules and molecules into an entire organism. Does that mean that these atoms should have individual rights? Thus, this ludicrous chain of potentiality can be stretched ad infinitum, ad nauseam and ad absurdum.

The absurd claim that a bundle of cells inside your body possesses a right to life not only does little to promote liberty (which is applicable only to rational beings) but also provides boundless opportunities for invading and totally destroying the rights of the "host". Stretching the concept of rights so far into the realm of absurdity deprives this concept of its very meaning. It is indeed by creating bogus and non-existent rights - the rights of various non-rational beings and entities - that the enemies of liberty succeed in obliterating real rights. Consider "positive rights", "economic rights", "animal rights", the rights of nature, "ethnic rights", "national rights" and rights to a free lunch of all sorts and varieties.

The logic of some anti-abortionists is indeed akin to that of Marxists. Promoting hatred for a supposed "oppressor" - in this case the mother - and victimizing a certain group - in this case the "oppressed" pseudo-class of embryos - are key tools for ensuring that people blame others for their failures and engage in lynching, fear-mongering and enemy-bashing instead of living a prosperous and productive life.

Entrenching "embryo rights" would potentially give a "pro-life" dictator virtually totalitarian control of the "oppressor". If an embryo has "rights", it would be legitimate for the government to protect it by not only banning abortion but also by prescribing a certain diet for the mother if necessary and by controlling the "host" in every possible way to avoid hurting the "parasite." A triumph of anti-abortionists would turn all women into nothing more than breeding sows doing their selfless service for the sake of the Fuehrer, Nation, Class or God.

Another interesting aspect is that, if abortion is indeed murder, it should be subject to a capital punishment or a life sentence at least in some cases. But few, except the looniest fanatics, would actually advocate such cruelty. I suspect that this contradiction has to do something with the fact that pro-lifers subconsciously feel that their views clash with reality.

It is not a coincidence that abortion bans have been imposed by the most totalitarian and irrational tyrannies. Though abortion was initially legalized by the Bolsheviks as part of pre-communist period's liberal (in the good sense) inertia, it was eventually banned by Stalin, not exactly a champion of human rights. In Nazi Germany, abortion was punished with death. Most Muslim countries ban abortions, excluding early ones, while some of them prohibit all abortions without exception. An abortion ban was the first thing Ayatollah Khomeini did when he succeeded in establishing a theocratic dictatorship in Iran.

It would be preposterous to argue that anti-abortion gangs promote their ideas out of "love" for embryos. Love is an extremely complex conceptual phenomenon that can only be applied to a rational (fully or partially) being. Love is inapplicable to irrational or inanimate beings. The actual motive driving "pro-lifers" is not love but hatred - hatred for the mothers who choose their "selfish" life instead of being selfless breeding swine. It is only when a baby is desired that maternal love can be truly felt. Consider what exactly pro-lifers condemn unwilling mothers and unwanted children to. It is a life of misery for both of them - procreation out of selfless duty. In the less prosperous societies it even means pushing society farther to the brink of starvation, with the burden of unwanted infants pushing it into the abyss (consider Africa).

To sum up, in so far as abortion bans are a violation of individual rights and thus an impediment to human survival, the pro-life movement is, ironically, anti-life. On the most fundamental level, it is certainly pro-death.

Tags: Политическая философия, Этика

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ar_mediocrity

Now observe another influence of philosophy’s power. Observe that the mostly liberal opposition to the anti-abortion gangs is extremely weak. For many years it is the liberals who were aggressive and eloquent. (…) It is the conservatives who had no arguments. Today, on the abortion issue, their positions are reversed. The conservatives are militantly self-righteous, the liberals are arguing in terms of uninspiring non-essentials. The reason? The liberals have lost their moral base, the only defense against the abortionists is a woman’s individual rights but this clashes with the liberals’ political philosophy. As to the conservatives, their pseudo-moral fervor is derived from their religious tenets, which they are now flaunting in public.

It's a very relevant point. Liberals and socialists, who were strong and militant until the 1970s, have since then become impotent pragmatists and now present a much smaller threat. What does present a threat, however, is the militant religious movement, which wants America to return to medieval barbarism and despotic theocracy. On the fundamental level, the Christian right and the socialist left agree - they both want to usher in a tyranny.

Tags: judeo-christian fascism

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ar_mediocrity

The reason for my distaste for Reagan in the role of president is the philosophy he hasn’t got. I do not mean that I disagree with his philosophy. I mean that he hasn’t any. (…) He is a pragmatist who leans to the right, which is more contradictory a position than a pragmatist who leans to the left. (…) He seems to believe that the awful, populist hodge-podge of stale patriotism and folksy sentimentality which he utters is sufficient to set this country on fire and turn it back to its original principles. Speaking of fuel shortages, no one has told him that this country is perishing from a shortage of intellectual energy, although there are no Arabs to help us out in this crisis. (…) The kind of Halloween-like creatures who are trying to take over today’s intellectual arena are not created by the Reagan administration. They exist in any period in the dark, unventillated corners of history. But in the periods of philosophical default they come crawling out into the full, open moonlight. Today they are organized under many pretentious names and slogans. The most presumptuous of the names is the Moral Majority, and the falsest of the slogans is the claim that they are pro-life. What they all have in common is that they are militant mystics who have learned to be arrogant by encountering no opposition. Their common, though unacknowledged, ideal, the embodiment of their philosophical goals is the man who has succeeded in uniting religion with politics and establishing a religious dictatorship (…) – Ayatolla Khomeini. No, the Reagan administration did not create those militant creeps but it sponsors and supports them to an embarrasing extent. (…) It is embarrasing to hear a president of the United States endorse the plain, crude, illiterate supersitions of the populists of the Middle Ages.

Tags: judeo-christian fascism

http://reaganx.livejournal.com/301680.html?thread=788336#t788336

- Да не согласен я.
- С кем? С Платоном или Аристотелем?
- С обоими.
- Это замечательно, клянусь богом. А что бы вы со своей стороны могли предложить?
- Да что тут предлагать?.. А то пишут, пишут... Аристотель, греки
какие-то... Голова пухнет. Взять все, да и поделить...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jediism

According to recent censuses in some English-speaking countries, over 500,000 people declared their religion as Jedi, in addition, a few Jedi churches/temples exist around the world. (...)
In March 2009, it was revealed that eight officers of the Strathclyde Police force in Scotland, in addition to two of its civilian staff, have their religion officially recorded in the force's records as "Jedi". (....)
In 2005, a draft of the "racial and religious hatred bill" in the UK specifically excluded Jedi Knights from any protection, alongside Satanists, Scientologists, sexists, racists, and believers in animal or human sacrifice

Tags: homo homini idiotus est

http://reaganx.livejournal.com/298462.html?thread=778206

Разумеется, вседозволенность - это когда вокруг вас не ошиваются всяческие бандиты, некоторые из которых именуют себя государствами. А вот когда лошка крышуют реальные пацаны, когда лошок под кем-то ходит, а не беспредельничает, нах - это порядок.

Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind.

Anarchy is two wolves and a lamb fighting over what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the fight.

http://reaganx.livejournal.com/298462.html?thread=776926#t776926

Боюсь, что карикатуры на свободное общество имеют не очень большую когнитивную ценность. Они основаны на непонимании человеческой природы. Разумеется, в большинстве случаев владелец квартиры сможет выйти, либо если заплатит владельцу улицы, либо если владелец улицы позволяет бесплатный доступ (зарабатывая деньги от рекламы или отчислений от посещений магазинов на его улице), либо если весь муниципалитет является акционерным обществом, где все жильцы-акционеры имеют право на бесплатный доступ на все улицы. Мне лично кажется, что второй вариант будет очень распространенным (по аналогии с многими ПРИНОСЯЩИМИ ПРИБЫЛЬ Интернет-ресурсами, которыми можно пользоваться бесплатно)

http://super-art.livejournal.com/270848.html?thread=6037760#t6037760

Более фундаментальным обоснованием является тот факт, что целью этики является выживание. Поскольку выживание невозможно без использования объектов окружающего мира, человек имеет естественное право на собственность. Как физические, так и информационные объекты используются им для выживания. Именно поэтому необходима собственность и на те, и на другие. Возвращаясь к вопросу о научных открытиях - концепция собственности предполагает использование ИНСТРУМЕНТОВ ВЫЖИВАНИЯ - т.е. природных объектов и концептов, нужных для их использования. Законы природы, открываемые учеными - это не инструменты выживания, а просто метафизические факты. Нельзя обладать собственностью на факты - сама идея абсурдна. Еще один момент заключается в том, что в некотором смысле (разумеется, в переносном) любая собственность является "интеллектуальной" - она предполагает использование человеческого интеллекта для решения проблемы выживания.