in Life's name and for Life's sake

I feel compelled to put my philosophy degree to the only use it has other than breaking my heart and making me annoying at parties. i.e., to point out rhetorical problems, especially with regard to ethical arguments. Saying that something is a bad idea does not make it so. I realise it's a freewriting exercise, but it's still a bad idea. Things like the prison system and the justice system and the role of economic conditions on behavior are so vast that it's hard to speak about them with much certainty. On the economic note, I don't suppose you would support the use of AAVE in the public schools? At some point, education and welfare become brainwashing. (None of which is to say that I don't think a better public education wouldn't be immensely helpful to everyone. I mean instead that it's not easy to implement because of huge social differences. Such is the burden of being white and middle class.) Whether you think prisons are for rehabilitation or punishment matters very much to (1) what you mean by justice and how you want the courts to conceive of sentencing, (2) how to clean up the problems with the prison system, which go far beyond overcrowding (solitary confinement is a big one). I think you've put aside the key ethical issue here. We can begin by assuming that all Americans think prison ought to be a deterrent to illegal behaviors. How someone answers the rehabilitation/punishment question says everything about how they believe that function ought to be carried out. I'll assume from your statements about family planning and welfare that you support rehabilitation. The question is, why? For my own part I will volunteer that the dignity (or, say, potential dignity) of an individual life ought to outweigh a single action and that a person can change with the desire and help-- most of the time. The help is missing most of the time. The other side (desire) is complicated by the fact that at least 15-25% of the prison population are sociopaths. What do you suggest you do with them? What about sex offenders who have a diagnosable psychological condition? Child abusers? I suppose you could turn the entire prison system into a psychiatric hospital system. What then of the mentally healthy people who screwed up?

On another note, have you ever heard Dan Savage go on about heterosexual couples who fail to use birth control and having or mistreating kids they don't want being the results of the great social experiment regarding straight vs gay couples' effectiveness as parents?