The Confederate Flag

An honest account of history is the subject of the video linked above.

Regarding that video above, and sympathetic with video dislike or avoidance, a couple of index hints:

Some comments about the Confederate flag show up beginning around minute 56, and hit their stride around the one hour mark - here's a money quote off the screen at 1.00.45:

That quote is from a guy named William T Thompson. He created the flag we are talking about, and the quote is his contemporary explanation of what he intended that flag to inspire, symbolize, and represent.
1.16.10 How the flag came back from its post Civil War obscurity: as the flag of the Dixiecrats, racial segregationists represented by Strom Thurmond. Heritage pride! Racial segregation now and forever!

Around 1.02.+ : a map of the locations of 1500 or so of the Confederate monuments in the US and similar memorials. It's not complete - people are still counting more - but it's informative. A graph showing when these monuments were built appears around 1.04. They were not, typically, built near the time of the Civil War. Instead, they were built during times of racial conflict later - during the rollback of Reconstruction, rise of the Klan, and peak of racial terrorism, in the early 1900s; during the civil rights movement in the late 50s early 60s; and so forth. The Confederate monuments to the Civil War heroes are triggered by racial conflict.

There is a project going on, for a couple of years now and right now, to remove all the State sponsored Confederate monuments from public land.
Racial oppression, always, the central issue. Not free speech - only people have that, not governments, and free speech issues do not trigger Civil War monument building. Not taxes and tariffs - they cause much conflict, but do not remind anyone of the Civil War. Racial conflict and threats of undisciplined black people - that's what reminds Confederate flagwavers and monument builders of the Civil War.

 

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Why the Choctaw flag?

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The Choctaw...

From here

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ok
how about

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which is illegal in some states

 

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I think that people who consider aborting undeveloped fetuses to be murdering children are the ones suffering from mental illness, specifically the inability to distinguish between demonstrable objective scientific reality vs. subjective white trash opinions. If you hold a funeral for every sperm cell that ends up in a condom, you will bankrupt the whole planet in seconds. People who casually throw around accusations of mental illness, on the basis of others not sharing their own superstition-based morality, shouldn't be allowed licenses to practise medicine.

When psychologists and psychiatrists can't produce a single physical scan to back virtually any of their claims but instead rely on purely subjective assessments of patient behaviour, and they require mass fraud just to demonstrate marginal effectiveness against placebos that can easily be identified by the patients due to their lack of side effects, one should question who it is that's really cognitively impaired.

 

curiously
Rhode Island
prohibits flags in a parade unless accompanied by U.S. flag,

would the flag on the shirt of the guy in post #1 be adequate/legal for rhode island's prohibition?

 

... or the toilet.

 

Or in Spiderman blankets.

 

No, it's still you misusing science. Sperm cells aren't significantly different from skin cells, that we slough all the time and have no independent right to life. They are our own genetic code, and thus actually part of our own bodies. But a fetus is a living organism with it's own unique DNA. Any argument about that applies equally to any other human life, according to the scientific definition.

 

No. They do not have the same genetic code as the rest of our cells. They carry 23 chromosomes (i.e. are haploid) instead of the 46 chromosomes that the rest of our cells carry. Further, each one carries a _unique_ set of 23, created out of the random shuffling process that happens during meiosis. They each have unique DNA, each with a unique potential.

Then, by your definition, any argument about an embryo or a fetus applies equally to sperm.

 

Take your amoral and ignorant "scientific" assessment there seriously, grant it the respect and presumption of honesty it does not deserve, and you will get this:

"Any other human life" that does to a woman what a fetus does, without her consent, can be killed immediately by anyone in defense of that woman.

You have just "scientifically" argued for allowing infanticide until the moment of completely successful birth - and maybe beyond. Good thing no doctors or courts or legislatures take any of this prolife blather seriously, eh?

 

I didn't say they had all the same chromosomes. That's a straw man. "They are our own genetic code", and a random sampling of 23 chromosomes is no less our own genetic code. Just not our full genetic code. Nor are those 23 chromosomes a full diploid set of unique DNA, capable of life on their own. Unique "potential" for life is not, itself, a unique life. So you're just equivocating and still misusing science.

That's just an ignorant extension of your first straw men.

 

Uh - yes, it is. It is a new code. They no longer contain the same genetic sequences. During homologous recombination, there are physical exchanges between the homologs, and that means there are new genetic sequences that were not present in the original DNA. That's why two parents can produce children each very different from each other (and even from their parents.)

Again, this isn't my opinion, it's science.

Correct! Just like an embryo. It is also has a unique set of DNA - and is also incapable of independent life.

 

One would expect a fanatical religious gun toting red neck to argue this point, as ironic as it sounds.
Of course the most sensible view of when an abortion is murder, is based on whether the fetus could survive outside the womb. That from memory is at 25 weeks? or around 6 months?
I had this argument elsewhere, and that was the most accepted decision.
And of course it goes without saying that the life of the Mother is also an important issue that needs to be factored in.

 

And? Our individual genome varies from cell to cell. And a haploid set of chromosomes is not a complete DNA sequence, itself capable of producing life.
Your pedantic equivocating doesn't change that. It doesn't matter if it's unique, if it's not capable of independently producing a living organism.

Now you're equivocating what "independent life" means, when science doesn't make that distinction of living organisms. If you go down that path, you're also talking about people on life support or even young children.

 

Right. No one unique genome - just a core genome that is relatively similar. (Unlike haploid gametes, which contain a genome that is NOT similar, since it has been rearranged.)

And wow. From

to

in only two posts! Kudos on moving those goalposts so fast.

Nope. A baby is an independent life. So is an old person. (At least one that is not on invasive permanent life support.) An embryo is not. It needs a very specific host to survive. And indeed most human embryos do not survive, because they don't implant. Those are not deaths of human beings; those are simply how our bodies work.

 

So when a scientist mixes some sperm and egg cells in a beaker and gets a whole bunch of zygotes, if they do anything other than implant each and every one of those zygotes into a living human womb, it's murder? OMG zygote Holocaust! Your attachment to non-sentient unicellular organisms is a subjective opinion, and by your own definition that makes you a fascist for seeking to forcefully impose it on others.

 

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1/2 the battalion deserted after 1 year

 

A sperm cell is a living being.
In basic, elementary, high school level, introductory biology class one learns about fundamentals, such as the "alternation of generations" that characterizes sexual reproduction. It's interesting stuff. Check it out some time.

Eggs are not chickens. Acorns are not trees. Caterpillars are not moths. Seeds are not watermelons.
For that matter, cells are usually not the multicellular organisms that comprise them* Claims or assumptions otherwise are category errors.
If you disagree, I have a very good deal for you on a bucket of twenty year old bur oak trees (oak trees grow in value with age) - I will deliver, and plant.
*Fungi can cause a lot of problems here.

Vociferous is carefully ignoring the issue of self defense against assault.
- - - -

Your argument justifies anyone killing zygotes in defense of the woman they are assaulting.
It's not a long step from that to a similar justification for killing young children and those on life support - some previous employers of your argument labeled them "useless eaters", and cashed in on your argument's self-defense loophole.

That's one of problems with a slipshod "scientific" morality bereft of liberal humanist reasoning - its carelessly created repercussions don't cut any slack for the shortsighted. Societies that ban abortion often engage in war, mass murder, capital punishment, etc, and their confused adoption of mistaken "scientific" morality, without equipping themselves with the liberal humanist reasoning that is the foundation and context of its subcategory "scientific", seems to be at least partly responsible for that.

 

It's funny how some people will drop everything in their lives to care about an undeveloped baby fetus, until someone names it Pedro and suddenly it's on to the next outrage du jour.