This is very true. And it has a side effect. I’ve frequently seen discussions go like this:
Joe: I support position A, comprising sub-parts A1 through A4, all of which are supported by liberals and opposed by conservatives
Bricker: What? that’s ridiculous. That’s a terribly flawed position
(10 pages of argument between Bricker and all the board’s liberals, in which he claims they want all of their positions to be laws by fiat, and they call him a racist)
Frank: Bricker, how can you possibly opposed A3? A3 is so clearly obviously reasonable
Bricker: Oh, well, obviously I support A1, A3 and A4, as any decent person would. I’m just talking about A2. What, was that not clear?
But then, after 10 pages of argument that everyone else thought was about all of position A, “Bricker opposes A” is stuck in everyone’s heads, and continues to be the basic assumption that people argue from. Perhaps in some theoretical world every single participant in the thread would have read and processed and believed Bricker’s clarification, and immediately forgotten the 10 pages of heated arguments in which everyone thought Bricker was opposing all of A, but that’s just not how the human brain works.
Bricker’s major argument has been that the legislature couldn’t have deliberately targeted minorities by restricting early voting because they tried to restrict early voting before receiving the racial preferences data.
He further claimed that the appeals court made a major error by not considering the timeline showing that the legislature tried to restrict early voting prior to receiving the racial preferences data.
Now, if he knew that even without the racial preferences data the legislature would have known that eliminating/reducing early voting would primarily impact minority voters, then his arguments would have been in bad faith, right?
Why is it necessary to know what I am “for,” in order to be able to accurately summarize and debate what I’ve clearly laid out as being against?
Yes, that’s correct.
But again, why is that important to know?
The problem I have with debates about propositions like that is that they rest on postulates we may not share, and indeed cannot prove. Why is it impossible to discuss the problems inherent in a one-way rachet without first assuring all participants of some grander unifying philosophy?
These are all good points for civil discussion, but they go far beyond the scope of this issue and appear in the wrong forum for civil discussion.
Not quite. I would likely say, as I have above just now, “Why is my feeling about A2 relevant to my feeling about A3?”
That’s not my experience in most interactions with smart people, actually. Most people are able to read English and comprehend it well enough to distinguish A2 and A3, and in any event upon learning that A2 and A3 are not both in contention, accept the new information and continue the discussion about A2.
Here, however, I find many people who are unable to do this, but I don’t agree it’s “how the human brain works.”
I said that the appeals courts’ reliance on the evidence of a request for racial data was not probative of a racial animus on the part of the legislature.
Yes.
Not at all.
What is the relevance of the request for racial data, if, as you agree, the legislature made the exact same decision without it?
But in the earlier action by the NC legislators, they didn’t target the exact specific provisions that they did in the latter instance in question, right? So the research might have been involved in the specific amendment they made to the bill after receiving the research, which was different than the broader provisions from 2003 (I think that’s the year), right?
Because I think the onus is on you to be clear from the beginning that you are disagreeing only with A2. Which, in my experience interacting with you over the years, you don’t always do. Not that I’m saying you’re necessarily being deceptive about it, or that if we went back in the cold light of day and said “ok, here are the first 10 posts Bricker made in this thread, did he ever explicitly disagree with A1 or A3 or A4?”, we would find that you had. Rather, that when there’s an emotionally charged issue that people are (legitimately) upset about, and you hop in and start disagreeing with one and only one part of what people are upset about, people aren’t reading your posts at their most rational, and if your objective as an SDMB poster is to actually communicate, rather than just to win debate points, it behooves you to be aware of that.
Question: who actually proposed doing the research, and what were their declared motivations?
Could have been Dems, in the forlorn hope that actual facts might change some minds. That the Pubbies would look at the facts and say “Well, those are the facts, so we can’t do this wretched thing because its against our principles!”
Could maybe have been Pubbies, figuring that the facts would show that these things did not enhance the voting prospects of black people, had no effect at all, even. Or hoping to assign the work to reliable investigators, who would produce the desired results regardless of any pesky facts.
Can’t see how it matters all that much, outside of the curiosity itch. They did something they should not have done, and the Court spanked them for it. About the only thing the research proves is that they did not act in ignorance, they don’t have that excuse, feeble and flimsy as it would be.
What with Il Douche’s latest foray into conspiracy theory, I am thinking more and more that Republicans actually believe in “voter fraud”, even a massive CASA/ACORN in-person voter fraud juggernaut. Got the Silent Majority and Jesus on their side, so how come they sometimes lose? Could it be…Obama!? (Satan, Obama, tomato, tomato…)
Such a belief would fly right in the face of fact and reason, of course. So? When was the last time that slowed them down?
Well, clearly A2 is the heart and soul of the entire A concept. Anyone who fails to view A2 with sufficient esteem is inviting… I dunno… something bad, I’m sure.
Mainly because your “clearly laid out” positions are neither clearly laid out nor relevant.
You’ll rant and rave against A7 (is that hypothetical clause number still unassigned?), only much later to concede you were for A7 all along, you were just objecting to misplaced commas or a poor choice of adjective.
In the Voight-Kampff test used against a replicant, the tortoise was irrelevant — the goal was to see if the subject had humane values. That’s why we try to probe beyond your flippant dismissals of A7.
As a concrete example, when you were asked which was the bigger crime: the Monica semen stain or the Iraq blunder that cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, your reply was, in effect “The semen stain because it led to impeachment. Democrats lacked the gumption to impeach Cheney! Nanner, nanner, nanner.” Dopers are left confused about you — Are you really too ignorant to grasp, even in hindsight, the malice and incompetence of Cheney’s War? Or are you just playing the role of a mass murderer’s defense counsel, insisting that your opponent prove every little point?
Serious question: Did being a lawyer turn you into a pretentious hypocrite with inhumane values? Or did you become a lawyer because you already were a pretentious hypocrite with inhumane values?
Because that’s how humans work. In order to have an honest and productive discussion, it must be understood where the other parties are coming from. If you do not ever say what you are for, then it is up to your interlocutor to assign a motivation. Many, when forced to do the work of interpreting the reasoning behind someone else’s argument will not be too charitable.
For instance, if someone pitted slave owners in the 1800’s, and you came in to defend the technical details of the Dredd Scott decision, it would not be an unreasonable assumption that you were defending slavery. It may not be a correct one, but you have to understand that it would be a very common one.
It is not necessary for all to be participating in and agree with the same philosophy, but it does facilitate communication if everyone understands that you do indeed have a philosophy from which you are arguing, and at least some of the tenets of same.
In this case, the pitting was against ID demanding GOP vote suppressors, and an uncharitable reading of your posts may incline one to believe that you are defending the practice of voter suppression against an already marginalized and maligned population.
As most in this thread are of the philosophy that a more inclusive democracy is inherently a better thing, then explaining that you are coming in with a different set of assumptions and axioms about the relationship between governed and government, (and explaining those starting points) would lead to a much better understanding. Otherwise, like I said earlier, one side of the ratchet is freedom and equality, and the other is oppression and inequality. It is up to you to justify why you feel that “ratcheting down” would not lead to unjust outcomes.
True, true, and I do find philosophies of governance to be fascinating, though I don’t know that I could write an engaging enough OP to start such.
In this thread, there’s been another reaction. Bricker seeks to lecture us on the plenary powers of the legislature; we recognize such and still point out that despite the technical validity, the legislation is unethical/immoral; Bricker repeats his lecture and accuses us of wanting to abolish the legislature entirely.
It’s a little game we play.
But it seems to me that being upset about an “emotionally charged” position does not excuse anyone from the obligation to read and understand the language.
There’s a UNIVERSE of difference between “The his latter made the decision to remove early voting without the racial data” and “they AGAIN passed a bill to remove early voting”. Get your head in the game!
If you can’t keep up with the his latter decisions, what kind of person are you?! A person who’s always rung, that’s who!