“Non sequiter,” means “does not follow in sequence,” and refers to a offered conclusion unsupported by evidence or argument.
In this case, the sequence was quite evident:
That’s an argument. I sought to show that his proposed standard was unworkable by bringing up FDR, about whom it can be truthfully said that “Because of him, more than a mere hundred thousand innocent men, women and children are dead.”
That’s not a non sequiter. It’s a showing that the proposed standard of the number of innocent men, women and children dead is not a valid measure.
Do you now understand the relevance of my mention of FDR?
I don’t agree that these practices are disproportionately harmful. Many people have speculated they are, but despite the fact that many elections have been conducted with Voter ID in many states, no one is able to show actual, as opposed to future speculative, depressed turnout.
Again I mention Georgia.
What is your counterexample? In what state have these claimed disproportionate harms actually materialized?
So, despite your claim now that you simply were arguing for voter ID in general, and your admonition of Sam that there is validity to concerns regarding broader issue of vote suppression through other means, you in fact acknowledged previously that the implementation of voter ID was being pushed for partisan political advantage.
And now you bat your eyes and wonder why people are angry with you for advocating for something that is morally suspect and which you acknowledged previously was being pushed for partisan purpose. “I do declayah that these liberals are so mean and hordey!”
Here, by the way, is Bricker’s response to the observation that the facility in Sauk City, Wisconsin, at which residents could get an ID, was open ONLY ON THE FIFTH Wednesday of the month.
His position is that people suggesting this is some kind of problem are misrepresenting things, because those potential voters in Sauk City could just take a 20 minute trip to the facility in Madison.
A facility which is 20 miles away. When it is observed to him that it might be difficult for people who need a voter ID to get to another city at a speed of one mile per minute, he responded:
So, it was just that simple. I mean, which people who don’t already have a suitable form of ID (e.g. a driver’s license) would not be able to just drive up to Madison. Can’t drive? Get a taxi!
By the way, in each of 2012 and 2013, do you know how many fifth Wednesdays there were? Four.
But hey, as long as he can dream up something he’s able to tell himself is a “valid neutral justification”, then you can all go suck it. It’s unfortunate indeed that the motives are so impure and the effects so disparate, but, if he can claim it’s technically legal, then he’s forced to go along with it and even defend it. He really has no choice in the matter, and it’s inappropriate for us lesser intellectual lights (i.e. everybody) to criticize him for it.
The key difference being that WW2 was pretty much a war of defense and necessity that prevented a ruthless dictator from taking over much of Europe, while the Iraq war was entirely elective to no real purpose. So either a non sequiter, or a total failure to grasp elucidator’s point, or a complete misunderstanding of history. Your choice.
A “cheap trick?” An “effective one”? Effective at what? This isn’t a debate competition where at the end of the day we’re going to be scored on how many points we’ve struck or something. And I’m also very skeptical that this is meant as a “trick” or a “rhetorical device” at anything other than the most subconscious of levels.
True, it is sometimes ambiguous, but why are people not allowed to rant with ambiguity in pit threads when they’re angry about something?
In any case, I’m quite certain that a reasonable and productive response to a statement of that sort is “hey, your statement is ambiguous, I’m not sure whether you’re saying that this is the way you think things SHOULD be or the way they ARE” or something of that sort, rather than assuming the worst and then busting out “but you’re not the King”.
“I did not, during that discussion, adopt the principle that the constitution forbids restrictive voter ID laws. I did walk away believing that state legislatures should strike them down, however”. Isn’t that exactly the same kind of conclusion that someone would come to if they found non-legalistic liberal arguments in this thread persuasive?
Side note: you wonder why I spend less time criticizing other liberal posters in this and similar threads… well, part of it is that I’m still like 3 BIG posts behind just responding to you and magellan. One only has so much energy for SDMBing…
Max, you’ve made a very good case that your failure to respond to poor logic from others is unremarkable (in the sense that no inferences can be drawn from it).
Can I ask you if you are reading those other posts, or skimming them, or just skipping them?
Specifically, did you follow the string of dialogue that began with Trinopus declaring that these measures violated the equal protection clause?
I ask because that string was, in fact, characterized with precisely the type of question you rge above: are you saying this as a matter of personal belief, or as a statement of law?
elucidator never mentioned any distinctions like a war of defense. What you call a total failure to understand his point, I call a refusal on my part to construct his argument for him.
Now, you may protest that in this case it’s obvious. But in the past, I have been burned by elucidator’s technique of not explicitly mentioning “obvious” points and then disclaiming he ever meant them, pointing out (correctly) that he never said them.
So now my approach is to address what he says - no more, no less. If he is unwilling to fully develop his argument, he cannot look to me for assistance.
I might just simplify this: the Japanese did, in fact, attack us at Pearl Harbor. We were at war with Japan whether we liked it, or not. FDR did not lead is into war, we were at war, period, full stop.
As it currently stands, this is the dumbest thing he ever said. We can only hope that this record stands the test of time, and remains so. I am optimistic in that regard, if only because the challenge is so daunting.
I’m not a slippery lawyer but even I was able to follow that trivial way to change the subject. … And to realize you seized on an irrelevancy to avoid a question. … As you’ve just done again.
So won’t you please answer the question since you brought it up: What did Clinton do comparable to GWB in evil and incompetence? Was it just the Semen-Stained Dress, or did he also start a War against Gog and Magog, but kept it secret?
This question poisons the well, and assumes facts not in evidence. (I realize, of course, that this is the SDMB, where Bush’s evil is an accepted postulate, but that’s the point: you don’t get to simply announce the truth of your conclusion by assuming its truth at the beginning of the argument.)
I don’t agree that Bush was evil. And I don’t believe Clinton was evil either. Therefore, I believe it’s not fair to say either exceeds the other in evil.
There are areas in which Bush was less than competent, and areas in which Clinton was less than competent.
But from a purely objective measure, I should point out that only two Presidents in the history of the United States have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Not George Bush.
So that’s my notional measurement: Bush was never impeached; Clinton was. 15-Love, Bush.
Yes, that’s true. But FDR asked Congress to approve the Lend-Lease program in 1941, an act that brought us officially into the fight in Europe. And even before that, he lied to the American people and violated the Neutrality Acts in order to supply material assistance to the nations fighting Germany. Indeed, Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag explaining his declaration of war against the United States rested specifically on the Lend-Lease as a provocation – and it was.
So well before December 7, 1941, FDR took actions that violated the law and led to more than a mere “…hundred thousand innocent men, women and children” being killed.
So what’s your revised standard by which to judge a president? Can you articulate it?
I think you’re still misrepresenting what I’m saying. I’m not saying “well, side A is angrier than side B, therefore side A’s arguments gets a pass”. What I’m saying is that when a particular side of an argument is angry (I’m waffling between saying “angry” and “justifiably angry”), if you want to engage them in reasoned debate about their position, you should be aware that they are angry, and that angry human beings aren’t at their most rational. So if what you want to do is get a bunch of insults hurled at you and engage in some invective, by all means, jump right into the angry pile. If you actually want reasoned debate on the root issue, then another approach is called for.
Clearly. I have both acknowledged and bemoaned that fact many times.
There is some truth to what you’re saying… but if the SDMB liberals as a group have settled on a consensus opinion, and that consensus opinion is based on incorrect information or faulty logic, and you really honestly want to attempt to change their minds, as opposed to just entertaining yourself by bludgeoning them, then it’s very important to pick the right context and approach.
Bullshit. Of all the people who have gotten angry at Bricker in this thread, nearly none of them have gotten angry because they can’t deal with the fact that their logical arguments were outargued by the superior logical arguments of Bricker. You’re presenting it as if there was a debate, and Bricker won the debate, and then the liberals got mad and started calling him names or something. There wasn’t a debate! There was some ranting about perceived injustice, and then Bricker came in and started disagreeing with the ranting, but doing so in a (deliberately?) combative and obfuscatory way, and that pissed people off. The anger was always far more about the dynamics of the thread than about any possible superiority of Bricker’s logic.
And that’s something you’re applauding? That’s like saying “Hey, look how angry Sarah Palin makes all the liberals. Why, that MUST mean she’s doing something right, and is clearly a fantastic choice.”
Actually it appears that it was Sinaptics in post 279 who first suggested it and that has nothing to do with the fact that the lack of serious protest over these measures is indicative that, unlike your suggestion, it is not voter ID itself which your opponents are against but instead a voter ID implemented in such a way as to possibly cause voters to be unable to vote.
It’s true there’s a certain ambiguity in continuing to say, “Voter ID,” when the phrase means so many different things.
However, when I say it, I mean that I favor Voter ID, specifically. Now,if someone has an objection to a particular implementation, doesn’t it make more sense to identify the specific implementation, rather than using “Voter ID” as a proxy for the problematic process in question?