I embroiled my self in three arguments over the time span of
as many days. The conflicts were abortion,
wildlife conservation, and the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. They have
one thing in common. The propensity is for debaters to adapt one extreme or the
other leaving absolutely no room in the middle. The first step toward any settlement
is to find common ground; that is what we call diplomacy. The point here is that all these debates fall to the
level of being ridiculous by adoption of an extreme position, which closes off
dialogue. I did not win or lose my three debates; the dialogue was cut off.
The pro-life verse pro-choice extremes are that any thing from a fertilized egg to a term fetus is alive,
life is sacred therefore cannot be destroyed under any circumstance. Everyone knows there are circumstances where
abortion is justified. The argument should be at what level and not a simple yes
or no. The wildlife conservation argument is that birds, fish, horned owls,
deer, wolves, or elephants are animals to
be preserved at all cost verses if human needs require utilization of
habitat for building something, for their products such as ivory, or leather, or
for entertainment by hunting then it is OK to utilize them. The answer should
be that we have to live together on this littler blue planet, therefore, how we
preserve habit and species, even in zoos, with the least encumbrance on either humans
or the wildlife. We should be able to teach conservations management in such a
way to avoid destroying massive numbers of birds or animal. The last example,
Israel has the right to subjugate Palestinians
verses Palestinians have the right to be free. The answer to this question should be the simplest
of all. All people have the right to self-determination.
Keep in mind it was President Woodrow Wilson’s 14-point program based on this principle
as advanced in 1919 that produced the current Middle East dilemma. The debate
should be about how we define “groups of people” to achieve this level of self-governance.
No comments:
Post a Comment