How on earth did you imagine that your stupid, snotty little statement about Jefferson being a serial rapist had one tiny, microscopic bit to do with the satirical point I was making?

Are you one of those pompous retards who thinks that no one can find any worthwhile innovations in history which were not wrought by angels?

If I complained that G. W. Bush Jr. had disregarded the principle that a leader must comply with the laws of the nation (however regularly broken), and that this went back to the Magna Charta, would your response be that King John was no saint and I must be stupid?

In fact, I'll go one step farther: I could 100% accept your characterization of Jefferson as a serial rapist -- and the point I made would still apply!

Or must I wait for the next embodiment of the perfectly untainted soul of the anarchosocialist revolutionary to come down from perfect revolutionary heaven and touch me on the shoulder before I ever think about whether or not anyone in history valued the principle of fair trials and honorable actions from their governments? (However honored in the breach? Good god, even Fidel Castro appreciated these principles in "La historia me absolvera"!)

The point I made was a simple one, though your consciousness-free response about Jefferson's personal wrongs were not relevant.

In public, today, no one seems to defend the notion that governments should avoid torture and carry out fair trials simply because that's what governments should do.

Instead, they resort in cowardly utilitarian fashion that governments should act honorably because it is more efficient, or that torture has negative effects abroad, or that there is a chance that a torture victim could be innocent.

Trust me -- I could instantaneoulsy morph into Mr. Super Cynical and Snotty Leftist and dismiss ever point ever made about the US by pointing out the inherent evils in its policies and leaders. But unfortunately, I also have enough of a brain to determine when that's relevant to a particular discussion, and when it isn't.

There is a difference between a biological definition identifying biologically active versus biologically inactive matter, and identifying a living organism.

(That's why viruses are kind of a thorny question.)

Skin cells are considered to be alive, unless they are dead. So are bone marrow cells. So are blood cells.

They do not reproduce, and are not considered independent organisms, but the living cells and tissue which comprise a human body are not considered dead, nor are they considered non-life.

Thus, an egg before fertilization is a living cell. A sperm before fertilization is a living cell. The zygote produced by their union is also a living cell, though it begins to have many of the properties of a separately living organism.

These facts are irrelevant to intelligent people in the abortion debate (the debate over whether or not the government possesses the authority to forcibly stop women from receiving or doctors from performing a medical procedure on living cells in a woman's body which are legally not defined as a person).

That's because the moral debate centers not on whether or not the fertilized egg or embryo is of human origin -- it would be quite surprising if a fertilized egg inside a woman's uterus would be found not to be of human origin.

The moral debate has to do with definitions of human relating to consciousness, which is also another significant property of human life, but which is far more difficult to tie down biologically.

Neither biologists nor any other scientist on the planet appears to have come up with a satisfactory definition of human consciousness nor a quick and easy checklist of when it exists and when it does not.

Thus a central definition of humanity, of personhood, is still largely a moral and philosophical debate, albeit informed by science.

Hence most people appear to both appreciate that there is something profoundly human and special about a human embryo, and yet most people do not agree that it instantly achieves the status of personhood. (And this, of course, is the law of the land: whatever laws or regulations have been passed regarding abortion, none have defined it as murder.)

And given most peoples' grasp of the existence of this hazy and largely moralistic and philosophical debate, they oppose granting the government the strange authority to prevent women and their doctors from making it themselves.

It is not surprising that almost no one views the abortion of an embryo at certain points in its development as "murder" -- the brayings of anti-abortion activists aside. However, many people do recognize it as potentially a great loss, both to the new organism and to the woman in whom it grows, so they do recognize it as a sensitive and moral issue.