Well, yes and no. For instance, in the fairly ridiculously trainwrecky voter ID thread, this was his first contribution:
Granted, there’s no profanity there, but it’s also not really a post likely to lead to a respectful and mutually enhancing exchange of viewpoints. It’s entirely possible to be condescending, smug, insulting, weaselly and a lot of other Bad Things while debating without ever descending to snark or outright insults, and Bricker fairly often does those things. Not always, and in fact I’ve had some number of actually quite interesting debates with; but to hold him up as some imperturbable paragon is pretty silly.
I’m sure that happens some. And sometimes there’s some validity to it, and sometimes not. Has there been a pattern among the far right in recent years of being anti-scientific? I’d argue there has been. That doesn’t mean I can point at a single case where the Tennessee school board bans teaching evolution (or something) and say “ha! this proves that ever Republican everywhere is stupid and hates science”. But neither can you just say “isolated incident! isolated incident!” forever.
Furthermore, if I point out such a thing and say “I believe this is part of a pattern” and you say “but, hey, some liberals don’t respect science either, because they oppose vaccinations” (or whatever), that doesn’t either prove that I’m a hypocrite, or prove that there isn’t a pattern. It’s entirely possible for there to be some Bad Trait which there’s a pattern of on one side, but which still exists on the other side.
True, but I don’t really see the relevance. And note that it’s entirely possible for there to be lots of smart and honest people on what is later clearly shown to be the wrong side of an issue. I’m sure there were lots of smart and honest people arguing for slavery in 1840, and for segregation in the 1950s.
The filibuster is a good example, let’s look at it for a bit. So, as a general timeline (and I hope I’m not getting things hopelessly jumbled up here), a few years back (maybe 2005ish?) Bush was the president and the Republicans had a majority in the senate, and the democrats did some amount of filibustering. There was some discussion then of the Republicans exercising the “nuclear option”, and getting rid of the filibuster entirely. There was a lot of whining from the left about how terrible and unfair and awful this would be. Fast foward to Obama’s presidency, with a Democratic president and senate majority, and the Republicans are doing some amount of filibustering, and liberals are whining about how much filibustering the pubs are doing. And in fact there’s now some discussion from Harry Reid about changing the filibuster rules, with a fair bit of liberal support for that idea.
So… is that proof of liberal hypocrisy? Well, it’s certainly compatible with a model of the universe in which liberals are hypocrites. But that’s far from the only possible explanation.
To be precise, my personal view (which I suspect is somewhat similar to that of many liberals, but again I don’t want to claim I can speak for them) is that having the filibuster in place as a way to keep the minority from being totally steamrolled by the majority has a long tradition and should not be put aside lightly. But the way it’s been used has changed radically recently, from a last ditch sort of civil disobedience that can be occasionally pulled out to stop really important things; to an absolutely routine every-possible-vote-on-every-issue-now-requires-60-votes piece of pure obstructionism. Given that, it’s entirely reasonable to reconsider the filibuster and the rules governing it, and in fact it would be irresponsible not to do so.
So… am I a hypocrite? Well, there are several possibilities:
(a) My analysis is basically accurate, and I’m not a hypocrite
(a1) My analysis is basically accurate, and I’m not much of a hypocrite, at least not more than the vast majority of people
(b) My analysis is basically accurate, but that’s only a fortunate coincidence, as I’m a rabid partisan hypocrite and would have come to the same conclusion even if there were no evidence for it
(c) My analysis is honestly believed by me, but not actually supported by facts, and I’ve non-hypocritically come to a flawed conclusion
(d) My analysis is honestly believed by me, but only because my support for my side has caused me to cherrypick what data and evidence I believe, so while I have come to a conclusion that appears non-hypocritical, it’s based on unconscious hypocrisy
(e) The whole things is just utter lies and smokescreens which I deliberately came up with because I’m a Hannity-level partisan hack
Now, obviously I’d like to think that the truth is (a), or more likely (a1), and you might think it’s somewhere between some of the other possibilities. And that’s a topic we might debate. But here’s where we get back to the main point (finally), which is twofold:
(1) If we are entering a debate about the filibuster, and you bring up the fact that my opinion now appears to be different from my opinion in 2005, you can do so by saying, “hey, Max, I respect what you’re saying, but here’s a quote from 2005 which appears to be saying something different… can you explain that discrepancy?”, or you can do that by saying “but look at this quote from 2005! That proves that you’re just a partisan hypocrite! lol!”. Which is more likely to lead to a meaningful debate?
(2) There’s an interesting debate to be had right now about the state of the filibuster as it exists at present, and whether we should modify the rules. That’s a debate that might actually be worth having, as (unlike abortion, or gay marriage, or gun rights) it’s not something that has been gone over so many zillion times on the SDMB that nothing new will ever be said. But if that debate starts, and then suddenly it veers off into debating whether or not MaxTheVool specifically, or SDMB liberals in general, are hypocrites; then the odds of interesting ideas being exchanged about the original debate topic drops drastically.
I don’t think I’m quite as down on things as you are in that context… I’m not sure if I’ve actually REVERSED my opinion on any big hot button issue based on SDMB debate, but I’ve certainly come out of debates with a somewhat different mindset due to the ideas I’ve been exposed to. But that pretty much requires that there be an actual debate, not just yet another who’s-more-of-a-hypocrite fest.
People react differently to Bricker than they do to other people because he’s Bricker, and there’s a history built up there. Part of that is due to his ideology, and part isn’t. A random stranger who comes in and starts a conservative OP will be treated differently than a random stranger who comes in and starts a liberal OP.
Not sure what your point is…
The “some (possibly unknowable)” part of that sentence makes it almost certainly true, but also pretty meaningless. I’ve kind of lost track of what we’re really addressing here, but while it’s almost certainly true that Bricker is more generally disliked than a poster who had a totally identical posting style but who was liberal instead of conservative; it’s also not possible to truthfully make claims like “oh, you people just get mad at Bricker because he’s a conservative”, or anything of that sort.