Voting age, atheism, abortion, language education, and more
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked readers, “What is a belief or position you hold that you feel to be misunderstood or misrepresented by many people who disagree with you?”
Replies have been edited for length and clarity.
R. writes:
I believe in fiscal responsibility and that the government has a responsibility to do its work at the lowest possible cost. Many who disagree with me believe that I therefore do not believe in a need to offer support to those who are physically, mentally, or financially needy.
M. believes that no person should be allowed to serve in elected office if they are over 80, and that just as citizens age into voting at 18, they should age out of voting at age 80. The misunderstanding:
People’s reaction to this is that it is ageism and I’m just kicking the elderly to the side of the road. They will point out those people in our lives who are well over 80 and still “sharp as a tack.”
And sure, we all know those sharp people, but my primary thought here isn’t “old people are senile”––it is that the span of impact of most things our representatives vote on will make virtually zero impact on the lives of today’s elderly. We can—and should!—honor our elderly as storehouses of wisdom and try to elevate their voices in our polity. But birth-rate declines and an aging population are putting too much political control in the hands of those who won’t feel any impact—good or bad—from the new high school in their town, or the expanded child-care program in their state, or a funding decision for the U.S. Navy. I’m almost 60 and people will tell me, “You won’t believe this when you’re 80.”
I think I will.
J. is a Democrat and an old-school liberal. And he thinks some on the right are mistaken about what that means:
You know what I’m not? “The enemy of our country.” I’m not an animal. I’m not intellectually deficient. The demonization of liberals and Democrats by a certain leader and his followers in our country is completely unacceptable. I will grant nearly any ideological opposite the same grace. I don’t understand how I can be demonized and dismissed on the basis of who I voted for. In fact, I’m a patriot who serves his country honorably and studies the issues and arguments carefully. Also, I happen to know that the Democratic Party is not a monolithic party; there are many diverse points of view. You can be a Christian or atheist, for example, and you can find a home in the Democratic Party. We should be able to disagree without resorting to ad hominem attacks.
C.S. believes that atheists and agnostics are misunderstood in America:
This shocked me from the first day I came to this country over 45 years ago and this has never improved. The idea is that atheists must not be trustworthy and cannot be compassionate. As a physician, now retired, I mostly kept “in the closet” as it was very clear to me that I would lose the trust of my patients and their families, at a time they needed to trust someone the most, if they knew I was agnostic. Contrary to popular belief, human qualities of decency, compassion, and thoughtfulness have nothing to do with faith in any deity. I have known so many heartless, egotistic people of faith, along with great human beings of faith. Conversely, I know fantastic human beings who have no faith and despicable ones. Yet, no politician with any national ambition would ever acknowledge or defend being atheist or agnostic; it is a kiss of death for wide-scale acceptance. Sexual orientation has rightfully reached a mainstream acceptance that atheism has not. Why are people of faith so afraid of acknowledging the decency of atheists?
Leo believes that “speaking a standard form of American English, and teaching that standard to all students regardless of their racial or ethnic background, can have a positive impact on our society.”
He writes:
My support for a standard American English is misunderstood as promoting “anti-Black linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy.” Certain intellectuals who seem to wield a disproportionate influence insist that “teachers stop using academic language and standard English as the accepted communicative norm, which reflects White Mainstream English!”
To be clear, there is no reason to in any way denigrate a given dialect. The linguistic exploration of America’s many dialects, in fact, can be a fascinating and rewarding study. But the fact that many of our country’s various demographic groups speak their own version of English does not mean that we should sacrifice a national standard. There is a time and place for language standards: They can facilitate easier communication in a diverse society, promote unity among people from different backgrounds, and empower individuals with valuable tools for success. It is these positive outcomes I seek in the promotion of a standard American English, not any sort of discrimination.
Errol argues that there is a difference between being anti-COVID-vaccine and anti-mandate:
A lot of critics lump those positions together––if I say the vaccines are overwhelmingly safe, helpful, saved millions of lives, and will continue to save many more, but that I still believe people should be allowed to make their own decisions on whether or not to take them, I’m conflated with the group that thinks vaccines have microchips in them or cause autism. But bodily autonomy is important! And in the same way we thought it was disingenuous to compare COVID to the flu, it’s even more disingenuous to compare it to smallpox or polio, as the lethality is just different. This in many other people’s eyes makes me out to be some sort of anti-Western-medicine or do-your-own-research kind of person, but I argue that being anti-mandate is a perfectly sensible position to have.
R. reports that many people he knows “think that small-o orthodox Christian believers are bigots who instrumentalize faith to justify a hatred or callousness towards LBGBTQ people” and that they have arrived at their socially conservative beliefs “through incuriosity and small-mindedness.”
He writes:
This is wrong. The Christians I know have reached their beliefs about human sexuality by close, attentive, and thoughtful Bible reading, and they are part of a full-scale view that humans flourish when following God’s design. This may be “bigotry” in the sense that it’s not purely rationalistic, but it’s not small-minded or unintellectual. Many of the believers I know would be relieved if the Bible said something other than what it does on the topic, and are quite conflicted personally and emotionally about LGBTQ friends and family.
Jaleelah is pro-choice, and believes that many people make incorrect assumptions about why that is so:
Many people, secular and religious, pro-life and pro-choice, feel that the question of whether abortion should be legal under any given condition depends on whether the fetus can be considered a “human life” at that point in time. But I simply do not think it matters whether or not a fetus counts as a “life” when it comes to the morality of abortion.
In my mind, abortion can always be justified as a matter of self-defense.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with the existence of a right to self-defense. American legal doctrine recognizes that individuals have the right to use force to defend their bodies and property. It doesn’t matter if an attacker was initially invited into your home; as soon as they overstay their welcome and start attacking you or stealing your stuff, you have a right to physically stop them. This is true regardless of whether they are intellectually disabled (thus incapable of understanding the morality of their actions), hemophiliac (thus at risk of dying from any cut you inflict on them), or genetically related to you.
It follows that abortion is moral. It doesn’t matter if fetuses were initially invited into a womb (the “sex equals responsibility” argument); as soon as they start overstaying their welcome and physically inflicting fatigue or stealing too much of their mothers’ blood and nutrients, those mothers have the right to physically stop them. This is true regardless of the fact that they are incapable of understanding the morality of their actions, likely to die as a result of their removal, and genetically related to their mothers.
Self-defense must be conducted in the manner that causes the least possible harm. It is moral to advocate for the state to fund incubators so that post-viability abortions can be replaced with early C-sections. It is not moral for the state to impose a targeted and hypocritical limit on self-defense intended specifically to prevent mothers from defending their bodies.
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