Subject:
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Re: level of debate
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:33:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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465 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal writes:
> You should see what the *other* side is doing! The Anti-war crowd for the
> most part are radical fruitcakes. I mean, feminists protesting *naked*????
> <shudder> Wearing *pink* to protest? It's all entertainment to the Left.
Be careful of using a non-representative sample to ridicule the whole, or
as a basis for undermining the soundness of the argument. If certain, shall
we say, unusual forms of protest have occurred, that hardly discredits the
thinking of the entire opposition. Besides, if a news medium has to choose
between reporting on 100 naked women or on the very thoughtful, very
articulate, fully clothed Arianna Huffington, which do you think they'll
identify as more sale-able? The vast majority of those who object to this
unjust distraction (ie, invasion of Iraq) are thoughtful people who have
weighed the so-called evidence and find in it no justification for war. I
could as easily sum up all those who are in favor of the war as bigoted,
xenophobic, phallo-centric zealots; would I be correct to do so?
I'd also caution against (perhaps) unintentionally careless phrasing;
here's how your paragraph comes across: You are ridiculing Feminists
apparently for being Feminists (with no justification for doing so), and you
are declaring their nudity to be horrifying, and you seem to be saying that
wearing pink is somehow less morally justified than high-altitude bombing of
innocent Iraqi citizens. It is NOT all entertainment to the Left. Once the
invastion begins, I expect that a great number of Right Wingers will be
glued to their Fox News every night to watch the day's carefully
orchestrated media glut of sanitized military propaganda, just like the last
time a Bush invaded Iraq.
> > Limbaugh is hardly an icon of thoughtful debate.
>
> Easy there. It's so easy to slip into ad hominem attacks against Limbaugh
> because of his "schtick"-- his politics are pretty sound.
A few years ago, when I listened to him more often than I do now, he was
very short on politics and very, very long on unsubstantiated Clinton
bashing. Limbaugh was a caricature who was too often mistaken as a serious
journalist by his fans. But even now, when I do listen to him occasionally,
it's so hard to get to the meat of his discourse because of his obsessive
blaming of Democrats (whom he seems universally to identify with the most
whacked-out, far-left extremist) for everything from The Dubya Deficit to
The Dubya Foreign Policy Disaster to the forthcoming Dubya Environmental
Catastrophe.
I don't think anyone could truly see Limbaugh's politics as sound unless one
shared his politics at the outset.
> (His zinger is the
> best one quoted, BTW:-)
It's clever, even though it's inaccurate. Is the quote legitimate (ie, did
Limbaugh really say it (ie, did his writers write it and hand it to him?)?)?
> > That leaves Roy Blount and
> > Rumsfeld. Nuff said...
>
> And I'll say another thing-- Rummy is *exactly* the kind of "no BS" guy I want
> as my Def Sec!
He's a little too unilateral and gung-ho, with a somewhat shady past re:
Iraq, to be credible in my view. And the quote appears not to be his, anyway.
Here's a more philosophical question while we're on the brink of
"pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq:
Russia is on record criticizing the recent 2nd Proposition for being
impossible to fulfill, and therefore for being the equivalent of a direct
authorization to war. Short of Saddam's abdication of power, what "proof"
would satisfy Bush that Iraq has no banned weapons?
Also, for purposes of rhetorical clarity, can we all agree that biological
weapons and chemical weapons are not, in practice, the same "rank" of WMD as
thermonuclear warheads or massive FAE devices? The grouping of these
disparate weapons forms under a single umbrella term always makes me uneasy,
much like calling both a Dennis-the-menace-slingshot a BAR "firearms."
Dave!
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: level of debate
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| (...) To Scott: That's *nuthin'!* You should see what the *other* side is doing! The Anti-war crowd for the most part are radical fruitcakes. I mean, feminists protesting *naked*???? <shudder> Wearing *pink* to protest? It's all entertainment to the (...) (22 years ago, 13-Mar-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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