From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 12:54 PM
To: 'marketliberal@yahoogroups.com'
Subject: Re: FW: making the LP Platform safe for minarchism
[I'll delay posting this to the Minarchist group for a few more days in order to slow the pace of my debates with Ireland, whose efforts are too feeble and uninteresting to merit a quicker tempo of rebuttal.]
 
Paul Ireland wrote:
BH> Can you give us a list of all the different kinds of ownership, or do you just invent new ones when you're losing an argument? <BH
PI> The highest and most personal ownership of anything is that of our own body (including the organisms within that body). <PI
This is an assertion, not an argument.  Can you cite any libertarian theorists who agree with your assertion that ownership of one's body is fundamentally different than ownership of one's property?  And again: are these the only two forms of ownership you recognize, or do you have some others you're not telling us about?
PI> Nothing inside the body of a person has any rights.  Not even if it were a fully sentient being capable of communication begging to be allowed to live. <PI
Having successfully maneuvered you into this corner, I'm perfectly content to rest my case on this particular matter.
PI> Your bullshit claims that a fetus and its host share a symbiotic relationship is another in your never-ending stream of complete fabrications.  A fetus does absolutely nothing to contribute to the health of the host body.  In fact detracts from the health of the host. <PI
Your ignorance of freshman biology is on display yet again.  The metric by which a biologist decides whether symbiosis is parasitic, mutualist, commensalist, or amensalist is not "health", but inclusive reproductive fitness.  To correct your ignorance, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_fitness.
PI> I won't dignify your appallingly thickheaded and nonsensical questions about putting a baby (once it's born it's a baby instead of a fetus and it has rights) back into the womb and killing  it. <PI
You call the question names because it exposes the obvious flaws in your ethical precepts. Be sure to also put your fingers in your ear and sing loudly when hearing such questions.
PI> Nor will anyone who has been born ever be living inside the body of another person again. <PI
Are you claiming it is anatomically impossible during a C-section for the infant to be placed temporarily back inside the incision?  If so, that would be consistent with the record of biological ignorance you've established here with your untutored claims about the fetus being a "parasite".
PI> Once someone is removed from a body, they don't go back in. <PI
Fertilized embryos are regularly inserted into women's bodies. If you claim that seven days after fertilization the entity has no rights when not inside a womb, but that at seven months it does have rights when no longer in a womb, then you already agree with me that there is some developmental threshold for personhood.  Or do you think that the womb has magical rights-creating powers, just as you apparently think that the epidermis has rights-nullifying powers?
PI> Likewise your equally stupid person involuntarily on a plane situation has no merits.  If you can't deal with real life and actual plausible situations, you're not worth discussing anything with. <PI
If your ethical precepts can't handle a simple concept like a person involuntarily finding himself on or inside someone else's property, that's hardly my fault.  Rather than getting upset, you should consider trading in your precepts for a non-defective set (like mine) that can handle any question thrown at them.
PI> You're just an insane jackass who lacks social skills and who thinks repeating the same tired bullshit over and over makes him the winner as if being the last person saying something means you've won a debate. Every single point you've pathetically tried to make has blown up in your face when destroyed by me.<PI
I'll repeat the challenge that you ignored the last time you whined like this. I challenge you to set up with me a pair of opposing documents of fixed size composed only of excerpts from our debate so far, and to refrain from further debate on this topic between us outside these documents. I'm perfectly happy to stand on my record in this debate. Can you say the same thing? And if you don't accept it, then stop whining that I'm more disciplined than you are about systematically and inexorably rebutting all criticism sent my way.
PI> You have literally nothing relevant, realistic, or remotely factual or  interesting to say on this topic <PI
LOL. I challenge you to find a single person who's willing to say publicly that he's read our entire abortion debate here and still agrees with your ridiculous statement above.
 
Brian Holtz
Libertarian candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley) http://marketliberal.org
blog: http://knowinghumans.net