The one right idea

I was having lunch with a friend of mine today, and he was talking about how his brother references the second amendment in relation to whatever question is at hand.

I don't get the logic in this - I think X is right, and therefore it applies unconditionally to every possible discussion. OK, so I'm exaggerating. The logical falsehood that I'm getting at is this: I believe in THIS so I can use it to justify ANYTHING I WANT.

One common example of this kind of thinking is the abortion debate. Pro lifers claim: it is a beating heart, therefore it is a soul, and therefore it is equivalent to an adult human being. So, there is a huge leap from 'a fetus is alive' to 'a fetus should have all of the rights accorded to a live human being' I see these as two very different things.

A fully developed human being has hopes/dreams/fears and many other things that an unborn fetus does not. Further, the investment in bringing a human being to adulthood is significant.

Therefore I tend to compare the value of the adult or near-adult human that doesn't want to have a baby, for whatever reason, to the value of an unborn fetus. I cannot in any way see that they are equivalent, and that the (near) adult human being needs to compromise their life for the sake of an unborn fetus.

It is all well and good (and right) to believe that a human life is a valuable thing, but that gives you no power to decide what anyone else believes about their life.

One of the biggest challenges that we have today is to all get along in a world of more and more different ideas. I read an article in the Sacramento Bee that said that more and more people mingle socially only with peoplle that agree with them. Even to the point of moving to neighborhoods where most of the people all have the same political party.

I try to seek out opinions from friends with different views. Often it seems that they are getting their news from different sources from me, and that both of us tend to collect news that re-inforces our pre-existing views.

To get back to the original idea, what I am saying is that most issues in the real world are WAY too complicated to justify using one thought or statement as your primary filter to look through the world at.

I am concerned about our second amendment rights, but there is a lot more too it than just saying 'I believe in the second amendment, therefore I will argue in it's behalf every chance i get...

Steve