When in conflict, moral arguments should be valued over practical arguments.

"You said that morality is timeless. It is not. Your contention was established as false, and then conceded by you in this statement." Morality does sometimes change, I can't argue with that. Unless of course objective morality exists, though I do not personally think it does. Maybe "timeless" was the wrong word, but I happen to like that word. Society has many aspects to it, and changes very rapidly. Morals change over long periods of time. It was immoral for a woman to show her heels, but how long did it take for that to change? For the sake of analogy, I am going to use the example of women being forbidden from showing their ankles, since I can't think of a good analogy with heels. A practical argument for why women should be able to show her ankles might be this: There is a type of dress that is very popular. But if it is too long, women trip over it rather frequently. If it is too short, women's ankles may be revealed. But it is okay, because it has the practical benefit of reducing trippage. The counter-argument is that even in medieval ages, fashion was changing very quickly. The dress would have gone out of style in around twenty years, and would not longer be relevant. But the idea that ankles should not be shown lasted for hundreds of years. In this sense, moral arguments are much more long-term than practical ones. "Death is very impractical... Doom, death, and destruction are all very impractical. It is very difficult to get a job when nobody is alive to employ you. It is very practical to advance society. The choice is obvious." If ten million people die, that's a relatively small percentage of the population. But what if over a billion people are given the opportunity to fly in aircraft, and travel over long distances very rapidly? Aircraft also allow the rapid transportation of food and other goods across the globe. This benefits billions of people on a daily basis. But if those ten million people had not died, society would not be very different. Aircraft is a practical benefit. Ten million deaths is not. * * * * * Thank you for adding a contention. "Universal healthcare is generally considered "morally correct" because it gives people better healthcare for less cost and increases supply and all the other stuff Obama blabbed on about. It would also be extremely impractical. Because it is mostly for the people who do less work and do less to improve society, it costs more than we can practically deal with, and it would lead to less initiative to make money. It would lead to less work, less pay, and less overall money and happiness. This is not beneficial." I have a problem with "[Universal healthcare] is mostly for the people who do less work and do less to improve society". Meaning lower-income people? Income is not based on how much one contributes to society. Income is based on the education level required for the job and on the demand for the job. There are many jobs which are very important to the functionality of society, but which do not pay well. A job not paying well does not imply that the person with the job is lazy. For example, janitors must work very hard, and are very important, but are not paid well. It's time for some factual evidence. Let's look at what countries have universal healthcare, and compare them to the quality of life. Below I have a list of the countries with the highest quality of life (based on several factors including freedom, health, economy, and others). Ones with universal healthcare are marked with a 1, and ones without are marked with a 0. Highest quality of life (descending): France 1 Switzerland 1 United States 0 Luxembourg 1 Germany 1 Australia 1 Italy 1 New Zealand 1 Spain 1 Netherlands 1 9 of the top 10 countries with the highest quality of living have free healthcare. So we can conclude that universal healthcare probably is, in fact, beneficial. Quality of living is subjective, of course, but we can still get a sense of the quality of living in different countries. If my opponent refutes the above argument to the satisfaction of the judge, my opponent's contention is not necessarily proven. Both my argument about income and my argument about quality of living must be refuted for the contention to stand. Conclusion In my point directly above, I evidenced that the morality of healthcare did not lead to doom, and even improved the quality of life. Before that, I explained how morality is a more long-term standard than practicality. I also elaborated upon why death, in the end, is not very impractical. Vote for morality. Vote PRO. Quality of life: http://www.il-ireland.com... Universal healthcare: http://en.wikipedia.org...