[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
He is consistently wrong in his predictions for the economy and foreign policy (How’s that rosey Iraq prediction working out for you Sam?), and he is always mining dubious “facts” from sketchy right-wing bloggers to support the conclusions he has already cast in stone. And no, I am not going to go through hundreds of his posts to prove my observation, because he is impervious to any kind of evidence that contradicts his ideology, and just hand waves everything that is presented to him.
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So, in your own words, you aren’t going to back up your assertions with any sort of facts, and your OBSERVATIONS are duly noted. My own OBSERVATIONS are that Sam, by and large, does NOT use ’ sketchy right-wing bloggers’ to support his arguments, and to me assertions that he does would need some sort of substantiation to take them out of the realm of partisan bias. You have chosen not to take your assertions out of the realm of observation, so that’s your lookout.
Sam has made thousands of posts. Going through many hundreds of posts (because not every post has cites) is too much work to discredit a wackjob.
If you follow Sam in Great Debates, it’s obvious that he constantly uses misleading cites. Much the way Shodan does, by the way. Sam’s first purpose in GD is to evangelize his view of economics.
This isn’t to say he’s not interesting in non-economic threads. But on his one trick, he is a very fine pony.
By the way, you call yourself a moderate. What are your liberal views? I have you mentally tagged as a moderate conservative. Or as I like to call them, one of the good ones.
I can live with that. Apparently Sam cannot, because he sees it as an attack on his character. Why criticism of his cites impugns his character, I will never know, but he demanded a retraction, if I didn’t scurry around hunting through hundreds of posts, just to have him hand wave it away. Screw that.
If you don’t like my unsupported observations, it is no skin off my nuts. But that will not prevent me from making them in the future.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
By the way, you call yourself a moderate. What are your liberal views? I have you mentally tagged as a moderate conservative. Or as I like to call them, one of the good ones.
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Just about every social issue you could name I’d probably come down as a ‘liberal’. Gay marriage? For it. Abortion? Should continue to be allowed, as should birth control. About the only vaguely social issue I would be ‘conservative’ over would be gun ownership (assuming you think that’s social), which I’m for…though, even there I’m good with regulation, waiting lists and having to register.
Most real conservatives would consider me a moderate liberal, or maybe a moderate moderate (my dad considers me a TOTAL liberal with a few wild libertarian leanings…and considering his views on libertarians, that’s no compliment).
Yeah, I wouldn’t do it. But my own impression of him varies wildly with that being portrayed by some in this and other threads. I don’t recall him using whack-a-do right wing sites to bolster his arguments, by and large. Which isn’t to say that he hasn’t used fiscally conservative cites from time to time. Considering he IS a fiscal conservative, that’s fairly unsurprising. To me anyway.
I have followed him, as he’s one of the posters I enjoy reading on this board, and, again, that hasn’t been my impression. Certainly he’s a fiscal conservative, with a fiscal conservative outlook. And, since my views on that are more akin to his, I have a certain sympathy with his views, which could be coloring my own thinking. That said, I just haven’t gotten the impression that some of you guys have of his posts or his style.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
If you don’t like my unsupported observations, it is no skin off my nuts. But that will not prevent me from making them in the future.
[/QUOTE]
No, I’d be shocked if you DID stop making them simply because of me. The thing is, I don’t like or dislike them…I DISAGREE with them. Like the saying goes, MMV and all that.
Point taken. Unfortunately, Sam can never agree to disagree; he has to be right, and prove the other guy wrong, by any means necessary, including dubious cites.
I don’t quite agree. I think you may be misinterpreting the ire and vexation he displays. I think he is not so interested in insisting on agreement, as such is beyond his reach. What he mostly seems to crave is a general acceptance that his economic theses are valid, and worthy of defense and debate. He would have us believe that his economic theories are widely supported in the academic world, and offers evidence to that end. He craves equivalence, acceptance.
But this is the foundation. The structure he builds upon it is that conservative political and economic theory is more realistic, more rational, more scientific than the warm fuzzy thinking of moonbats like me. Conservatives like nothing better than posturing as hard-headed realists. Its why you hear them say so often “You don’t understand how the real world works!”
Well, actually, we do. That’s why we are so intent on changing it.
But when that acceptance is withheld, he takes personal umbrage, using phrases like “smeared my character”, as if questioning his sources implied he was a bad person. I think Sam is too thin skinned to play in this sand box.
In the context of a message board, the quality of your posts ARE your ‘character’. For all I know, you could be a wonderful parent, a generous community-minded citizen, a hard worker, and a general asset to mankind. But here, you are judged by the content of what you say. A reputation for being an honest debater is hard to achieve, and worth a lot. It’s very annoying to try hard to do that, only to have your character attacked on specious grounds by people who couldn’t otherwise debate their way out of a wet paper bag.
I don’t care what you think of me personally. But I detest the kind of user on a message board who, rather than debate the actual points a person brings up, chooses instead to attempt to discredit the poster, so that no one will even listen to what he or she has to say. That’s just poor behavior, and the ‘What, can’t you take it?’ defense is the same one used by bullies and assholes everywhere. Rather than admit to their own boorish behavior, they seek instead to disparage their victims because they aren’t ‘tough enough’ to take the crap dished out at them.
There are many on this board who have the following opinions:
Right-wing people live in a fantasy land, or are selfish and despicable. On this board, the only good conservatives are the ones willing to ‘see the light’ and move to the left. The way to demonstrate your acceptable character here is to admit that your own side is wrong. The more you do that, the more accepted you’ll be. If you don’t bow to the opinions of the majority, you are guilty of being unreasonable and partisan. Of course, the same standard is never applied to those on the left - their positions are correct by default, and defending them to the death is the good and proper way to behave.
Therefore, anyone who comes here and tries to defend ‘the right’ is defending the indefensible, and assumed to be guilty of multiple errors of logic, weaknesses of character, or other negative traits. If their arguments sound logical, why then they must be tricky or deceitful, or their cites are invalid for some undetermined reason.
Therefore, they are fair game to be taken down by any means necessary. And because they are despicable, it’s fun to do it. Hijacking their threads, pitting them for the audacity of holding a ‘conservative’ opinion, mocking them with little drive-by sarcastic witticisms, whatever. Sophistry substitutes for an honest attempt to understand the other person’s point of view.
As for being ‘thin skinned’ - frankly, any of the conservatives or libertarians who have stuck it out on this board for years have had to have a very thick skin. Why don’t you try going over to Free Republic or Reason.com’s comment section and try to defend your ideas there? Do it for a decade or so, while being routinely mocked, laughed at, having your arguments cherry-picked for their weaknesses while your strong points are ignored, etc. Then come back and tell me what it means to be thin-skinned.
And by the way, I have had my opinion changed and challenged on this board, on numerous subjects. Without exception, it’s never been changed by the obnoxious blowhards and drive-by artists. The challenges I get here that make me think come from people like Hellestal, Measure to Measure, Stranger on a Train, and others who accept that I’m debating in good faith and respond in kind.
Hotheads like you, Hentor, Lobohan, and the rest of your ilk make a lot of noise and annoy a lot of people, but you achieve nothing. No one listens to you. Not even people on your own side. You might want to consider that when evaluating your own behavior.
Really? You honestly think people like Lobohan, Der Trihs, Fear Factor et al are changing the hearts and minds of the people?
As a general rule in life as well as on message boards, no one listens to the raging partisans who scream and shout at people and call their opponents idiots and liars. Certainly they don’t change the minds of their opponents, and they’re generally an embarrassment to their more reasonable allies. You can get away with it when you post in an echo chamber of like-minded fellow travelers, but that doesn’t mean you’re achieving anything of value.
What they may achieve is a certain amount of righteous satisfaction and back-patting from their fellow hotheads, but they’re not changing anyone’s minds.
This is, of course, in my opinion. I have no cite to offer, and wouldn’t know how to go about finding one even if it existed. Just my experience in 30 years of active political debate.
Let me ask you: Who is more likely to cause you to re-think your position on a political subject - David Brooks, or Ann Coulter? Who is more likely to change mine - Michael Kinsley, or Keith Olbermann?
FYI - I know you haven’t been around lately, so you must have missed this thread, wherein a former self-described “very religious Christian” credits Der Trihs with helping challenge his thinking, gain critical thinking, and “abandon my religion and idols for reason.”
Who knows how rare or frequent such occurrences are. I would also say that I agree that most often posters who are ferociously debating each in GD won’t be really changing each others mind anytime soon - but their posts are influencing the occasional posters and lurkers, and who knows how many minds they are changing.
I know that personally when I am passionately involved in a debate (IRL, I don’t go to GD much) I don’t often change my position - although repeated debates over time will often refine my position, give it nuance, and occasionally even change my mind completely. More often I will reconsider my opinions or change my mind when I listen to or read other people debating.
That 'luc occasionally has keen insight. Something other than pinpoint accurate characterization, but still…
So you’ve got nothing then. Noted. FTR though, you claimed that Sam usually did thus and so and Sam replied, “Oh yeah: then show me a 10% share”. If your claim was true, evidence for a 10% share could be gleened without breaking a sweat.
Sam operates at a pretty high level, so flinging these bogus claims is just distracting.
I had understood that Free Republic routinely banned non-conservatives. Am I mistaken? Is there a conservative website that doesn’t circle the wagons? I drop by Capital Gains and Games and the Volokh Conspiracy now and then.
Sam, you have to check out that link, but prepare to scoop up your eyeballs off the carpet. The thread was closed before I had a chance to interrogate the OP, unfortunately. I’ve mocked Der on and off for several years on the theory that his rants were wholly useless. Now I’m not sure what to think. That MPSIMS thread was hilariously baffling IMO.
That’s actually a problem. In ATMB, I’ve started to label certain behaviors, “Bad form”, if they impede the fight against ignorance. I don’t think that a good environment here should wholly rely on the mod’s ban or warning policy. Rather we should discuss the sorts of posts that are helpful, independent of mod sanction. Of course it’s a lot more credible to do that when you’re discussing somebody else’s spats.
Well, I’ve summarized my argument, A,B,C,D,E,F. If you can’t say which step you find a problem with, then it’s hard to take you seriously.
You keep spouting crap about the millennium attack that doesn’t in any way relate to any of those steps in my argument. At least, I see no connection, nor have you made any visible effort to explain where one exists.
Like I said, you have no point; what you’re saying makes no sense; you’re just spouting irrelevant garbage.
Didn’t know what to think of you before this thread; now I do.
On occasion. My goal is to illustrate how utterly stupid your positions are. Tone is separate from content.
Your tone is generally very even-handed. But you use overwhelming prose and misdirection to make you point. That, to me, is far worse than any invective I may inject.
On occasion they are, I’m sure.
It must have been much harder for you without the internet. Would you cite random newsletters and magazine articles as evidence 30 years ago?
Sometimes you need to be shocked into understanding. I don’t think anyone is saying that having a combative tone is the only way to underscore a point, but it is a way.
Funny you should mention Mr. Brooks. I often schedule my Fridays so I don’t miss him and Mark Shields on PBS. I’m seldom surprised by either of them, knowing pretty much what they are going to say, but I’m very fond of Mark’s rumpled liberalism. David dresses better, but then again, he is very well paid, and he knows who writes his checks. I won’t say “whore”. Courtesan, perhaps.
The last people to cause a significant shift in my political thinking was the Republican Party, and, by extension, Saul Alinsky. They did it by publicly murdering ACORN, and I had to wonder, why? What are they so afraid of, from these dewey eyed idealists with Goodwill suits and used Volvos? Its because Saul Alinsky was right, that small-ball, local community organizing was more effective than I gave credit, “the taming power of the small”, as the I Ching puts it. They were the mice nibbling, erosion, the patient and persistent undermining of the foundations of power.
Now the Pubbies are in full panic mode, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding by restricting voting access wherever possible. Their fear showed me how wrong I was, how “big thinking” can blind one to truth. I am a radical, I want major changes, but the path to major change is not revolutionary, but erosion. (Well, truth, I’ve been suspicious of sudden change for a long time, it offers too much opportunity for the scoundrel, but I digress…)
How do I know when I’ve scored a hit? When someone says “I totally don’t agree with you, but that was funny…” A crack in the sidewalk, an opening for a green shoot to wriggle into the sunlight. Erosion.
So, what Republican pie hole is likely to affect me? The one who says something funny about what I believe. Can’t remember the last time. Dennis Miller, maybe, before he fell victim to 9/11 Syndrome. Ann Coulter? Please.
Perhaps that seems too trivial, too shallow, perhaps it is. But ever since I found out who Mark Twain really was, I have a lodestone: if there isn’t anything funny about it, it probably isn’t true.
Definitely not on the “Straight to the Wall” list. Still, a couple of months at the Jane Fonda Self-Criticism and Aerobics Camp might not be a bad thing.
