There are others. You’re just ignoring us.
Re: 5197
Yes, but the devil is in the details.
You’re completely correct: it is possible to say something’s a bad idea without reference to its legality, and it’s possible to claim something is a bad idea without being able to suggest a solution.
But in this thread, and others in its family tree, those clear statements of position don’t ever happen. Instead, the posters, presumably fueled with the righteous indignation of which you spoke earlier, make broad sweeping statements that leave open all sorts of possible interpretations. They use this equivocation as a rhetor’s device.
“Before you pass a law like that, you have to demonstrate that a problem actually exists!” Sure, a phrase like that could mean, as you soberly suggest, the rhetor is merely speaking of his preference, and making neither a legal argument nor proposing a solution. But his language also supports the claim that he’s advancing some sort of legal or judicial barrier. And by failing to add disclaimers, he gains the rhetorical advantage: the strength of the definitive pronouncement and the shelter of the claim that his was merely aspirational discussion.
In shorter terms: it’s a cheap trick, but an effective one.
So I am going to derail it. If, as you say, these statements are aspirational, it benefits my side of the argument to force that admission.
I entered that debate content to extend all civil protections to same-sex unions as “civil unions.” I believed that extending the word “marriage” was unjustified. The debate convinced me that ‘civil unions’ did not effectively accomplish that goal, and that the word ‘marriage’ was correctly used in secular context to describe a same-sex union.
I did not, during that discussion, adopt the principle that the constitution compelled recognition of same-sex marriage. I did walk away believing that state legislatures should permit it, however.
Subsequent to that debate, the US Supreme Court decided Windsor, which created a new constitutional rule, and that rule mandated state recognition of same-sex marriage…although I don’t know if the justices meant to do that. But it’s no coincidence that every single federal court, post-Windsor, has found a constitutional requirement for SSM.
More in the next post.
Except that Bricker is correct and you aren’t. Nobody is trying to make it harder for poor people to vote. That is a bullshit argument; it always has been, it always will be.
When you have Clothahump, adaher, and **magellan01 **on your side, you don’t need anybody else.
Indeed so, kinda like Mr. Rogers. A bitter, sarcastic Mr. Rogers.
“Can you say ‘valid neutral justification’? No, or course you can’t, you stupid little shit! So why don’t you just shut up and listen?”.
You’re delusional. Go yell at a cloud.
Lurkers that agree with Bricker are like phony voters. He needs them to exist to support his views.
So Clothy is King Friday and the conservative bubble is the Neighborhood of Make Believe?
Don’t be silly. There’s no magic trolley since conservatives hate mass transit.
Two points:
(a) this pit thread was started by someone who was very angry about an issue. So the pit thread already existed, and was already full of anger. Jumping into that pit thread is pretty much a guarantee that you’re going to face anger. Jumping into that pit thread and doing the thing that Bricker does (which we really need a word for) in which he goes out of his way to stress the places where he disagrees, etc., just makes it worse. I’m not either excusing or apologizing for that level of anger and that type of behavior (within limits), but I think it’s pretty inevitable. I like the sports analogy I made a bit ago… if you’re a Yankees fan and your team just won the World Series vs the Red Sox in a weird situation involving what at least appeared to be a comically blown call by the umpires, and there’s a “fuck the umps” thread on a message board known to be overwhelmingly populated by Red Sox fans, and your position is “while it’s true that the umpires probably violated the spirit of the rules, and it’s unfortunate that the series ended that way, there is a technical reading of the official rules of baseball by which they acted correctly, here, let me spell it out for you”, and you go into that “fuck the umps” thread and start trying to argue the precise minute details, but do so in a way that kind of implies that you agree with every bit of the umpiring decisions, plus you’re a known (infamous?) Yankees fan… well, what do you think is going to happen? How much of a dialog about that precise detail of that precise umpiring decision do you really think you’re going to get? If you DO want to have that discussion, go start a thread in the “Great Baseball Rules Debates” thread, and be VERY careful to spell out your position as a whole before diving into the areas of disagreement, and your results are likely to be very different.
(b) There’s no reason to think that there’s an equivalence of “justified anger” on both sides of each issue. The voter ID laws are a good example. From the Republican perspective, there were some laws that were passed for basically benevolent reasons to make future election results more trustworthy… and Democrats disagree with those laws for a variety of reasons that we think are invalid. From the Democratic perspective, Republicans are trying to steal elections by disenfranchising poor people. Which of those perspectives is one that more justifies an angry response?
This reminds me of something Bricker said back during the Bush presidency, when he commented that he always had referred to Bill Clinton politely as “Mr. Clinton”, and thought that it reflected poorly on SDMB liberals that so many referred to Bush by various pejoratives. And while there’s some logic to that claim, it ignores the fact that what Bush did wrong, from the left wing perspective, is not comparable to what Clinton did wrong, from the right wing perspective. So while arguably we would have been better off with everyone always being polite about the president, the motivation to mock the president present for Bricker in 1998 was not automatically the same as the motivation to mock the president present for SDMB liberals in 2006.
Thing is, Bricker would hang that out as “look how civilized and mature I am”. Anyone else who did the same regarding presidential references wouldn’t be recognized as having a similar claim if Bricker thought they were an icky liberal. He’d take them to task for not policing all the OTHER icky liberals.
N ot to be dismissive, but what this really boils down to is one group believing their anger/passion is more justified. I don’t buy it. While the seed that spawned a thread might be something one side cares more about, as soon as that discussion starts other topics pop up. Topics that may inflame one’s passions more than the original topic. I know its sometimes that way for me. Unless one is merely venting, and willing to admit that is what he is doing, one’s arguments—even very passionate ones about voter Id or shitty umps—should be able to withstand scrutiny. If you disagree with that, well, we’ll just be disagreeing then.
Along those lines, you know damn well that this place leans left. And very often a strong majority makes a discussion an echo chamber where any manner of dumb, stupid shit passes for a position. I say that the more people are called on that the better. Otherwise, you can just go to Media Matters or The Daily Kos.
Look at this thread about voter Id. Look at the dumbs behavior by the usual dumbs suspects. Bricker has been arguing civilly. But it just burns people up that he exposes the flaws in their thinking. By himself he’s made the monkeys jump, flip, and shit on themselves and then eat it.
I still, really, find it quite astounding that you, given what I know of your posting style, have a problem with his behavior in this thread. I really think you might want to rethink your criticism and who it should be directed to. If not, add it to the list of things we disagree about.
I love how magellan talks about dumb positions in the general without actually describing any specifics about this thread.
It burns people up that he advocates making it harder for thousands of poor people to vote, to cure maybe five in-person fraudulent ballots.
He then asserts that if a voodoo priestess put a hex on anyone that votes, and as a result some people didn’t vote, that’s the same thing as actually making it harder to vote. That’s not a logical argument, it’s drivel.
He asserts nonsense, and fixates on tangents.
And you, you don’t have any idea what he’s done, because you aren’t following along, you’re just really sure Bricker must be right, because he’s conservative and he’s smarter than you. Look at your post, you don’t highlight any of his arguments, you just state that they’re better.
In other words, you’re a dog licking at Bricker’s ass. And while you’re fighting Clothy for a nugget or two, just remember, he couldn’t care less if you live or die.
Why isn’t the Republican perspective, “There were some laws that were passed for basically benevolent reasons to make future election results more trustworthy, and we are being accused of attempting to steal elections?”
This suffers from the same blindness, Max. This paragraph basically says, “Yes, but since we’re CORRECT, we have much more reason to be upset.” Your side’s correctness is exactly what’s being debated. You cannot simultaneously plead passion for the correct cause and then deny that I should have any passion – because I don’t agree that you’re on the correct side in the first place.
Yes, true enough: from the left wing perspective, what Bush did wrong is worse than what Clinton did wrong. But from the right wing perspective, that’s not so. So what allows you to assume that only the left wing perspective should guide our discussion?
I agree. It must be obvious to almost everyone reading this that from a strict debate perspective, yours are the only posts that are responding to actual arguments made and scoring legitimate points against me. I agree that Lobohan et al have passion, but they lack the ability to read, understand, and respond.
Yet this doesn’t garner much of a mention from you.
I know, I know – you’ve explained before that your participation is fun when you don’t have to do that, and you don’t really pretend to have any duty to police arguments across the board. But if it’s really just you and me talking, let’s take the conversation to e-mail.
It isn’t, though – is it?
No. It is a fact that the course of action you advocate makes many, many more people have a harder time voting than in-person fraudulent votes would be stopped by an ID requirement.
That’s simply a fact and you can’t deny it. Your position is predicated on not caring about that fact. You try to dress it up, you try to confuse the issue by jumping on every tangent you find find like a dog in heat, but nothing can change the fact that you are advocating a cure that is orders of magnitude worse than the problem.
Oh, and it just so happens to target people you’d rather not vote.
If you were just some lockstep drone like Clothy or Magellan, it would be sad, but understandable. But you know that you’re being shitty, you’re just heavily invested in making it *look *less so.
Boy, that’s a toughy! Because of Bush, somewhere north of one hundred thousand innocent men, women and children are dead. Clinton is a horndog. Truly, that is a complex and nuanced moral issue.
Yes.
After many posts that miscast my position, this one, although phrased less than generously, is truthful.
The reasons I don’t care are, of course, not mentioned. But you’re right.
It is.
How many are dead because of Franklin D. Roosevelt?
More.
But Roosevelt is revered. So clearly it’s not sufficient to say what you said, that “Because of [president_name], x innocent men, women and children are dead,” and have some sufficiently high value for x.