Kashluk wrote:Ok, so I might just as well back up the reason why I disagree with the sterilization of the handicapped.
Yay.
Not all things, at least in current human society, are measured in pure, cold cash and efficiency. There are things like love, compassion and mercy. You might consider them useless and weak, but many people appriciate them and personally, I think life would really suck without them
They're not useless and weak. If they were useless, we wouldn't have them. However, they were far more useful when we first evolved them and didn't have the requisite cognition to make any valuable decisions on our own. Love is obsolete.
We show compassion and love in form of taking care of handicapped people as in way of helping them to take care of their children, if they can not parent independently.
But that's money that need not be spent on such things. You mention compassion and love. Would it not be more compassionate and loving to allocate those resources to normal people, who are the majority?
The "only meaning of life", as one could phrase it, to have children of your own is something so special that it's too cruel (IMHO) to take the ability of that away from somene by force.
Why is it cruel? If anything, and I personally couldn't care less about the feelings of the individual involved, sterilization is more humane than not, because many of the significantly disabled people can still feel emotions. And it's rather traumatizing to have one's offspring removed from oneself.
Human civilization in general might be at it's economic and wealthiness/healthiness peak right now, and I have little doubt we couldn't support a few more handicapped people, being a burden or not.
Again, money better spent improving the quality of life for the poor, or spent on education, or space programs, or something useful.
They experience and create love and caring around them, just like all "normal" people. They are always someone's children and at least their parents will always hold this feeling.
Which doesn't have much to do with the issue of sterilization. It's not as if I advocate the murder of the disabled or anything, although I do think that tax money should not be spent on their care.
But there is more to life than numbers and calculations - so what if someone can't add to the society? He might be a loving individual and share warmth around him & vice versa.
If his family can cough up the dough to keep the cripple alive, then this isn't really an issue.
And you can't blame people for calling you fascist, be it ad hominem for this debate or not, because one of the most well-known example of racial purity and ethnical cleansing was the Nazi-Germany's order to sterilize all people with "diseases that could proove harmful to Nation's health", which included the handicapped.
The fact that I share an opinion with a fascist group does not mean I am, in fact, a fascist. I may share opinions with the Republican party, but that doesn't make me a full-fledged Bush lackey. Same for the Democratic party. Same for any organization or ideology.
Many people disagree with this kind of thinking
I really have no problem with people disagreeing. I have a problem with the way some participants in this thread have expressed their disagreement, for reasons mentioned in previous posts of mine.
and on top of that, they always relate people supporting it to that prime example I mentioned earlier.
That's really not my problem. Associating my point of view with the Nazi party is only natural, but it fails as the basis of an argument.
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