Well after that last one, I’m done.
Starving Artist’s facebook profile: Braindead reactionary, mind uncontaminated by thought since 1967. Makes shit up and believes that if he found it in his brain, it’s evidence. Lies, or self deludes. Deaf, blind, but types good.
Types well. 
I never said anything about whether I agree with the points Der Trihs makes; only that I can usually perceive (and sometimes agree with–at least to some extent) his point even through the occasional and unnecessary noise when he choose to go overboard (and sometimes almost batshit rabid).
I find Starving Artist to be more polite and far less incendiary then Der Trihs so please don’t infer that I’m claiming that SA is overly insulting or difficult to decipher.
I do find, however, that he is a bit of a “broken-record” debater. It seems as though he continues plowing ahead with the same old defunct chestnuts even when it should be clear to anyone that a certain fact or assertion of his has been thoroughly debunked, yet it matters not to him. It does get kinda old.
Not really the point.
If you know that you don’t remember everything, then you should be careful to qualify your statement in the first place. You make every assertion based on your personal experience as if it were the indisputable truth, impervious to the vagaries of time and memory and changing circumstance. This case is just a small example of the way that your hubris trips you up.
On second thought, how about instead of simply parroting what other people have said, you cite the specific things in that post that you’re talking about, and we’ll discuss them? Turns out I have another half hour.
That is because other posters keep posting the same things over and over that triggered what I said in the first place. So, given that they must not have seen it in the threads or posts where I said it before, I gotta say it again, both to educate them and to keep it from looking like the point is must be valid because I don’t refute it.
I am truly bereft in trying to think of any major areas where I’ve been debunked at all (as opposed to having said a word one time six months ago which I forgot about), let alone time and again. Do you have any specific instances in mind?
The thing is, I regard the conversations I have here in pretty much the same way as I do in face-to-face conversations, with a certain give-and-take to be understood in order to facilitate conversation and without concern over whether or not every word is going to be parsed to a ridiculous degree in order to arrive at some conclusion as to my character or powers of recall. The point was that, far from making it a habit to accuse someone of being a troll, it was something I practically never did. The fact that you showed I had only done it one time six months ago bears that out. So my recall of that issue was correct for all intents and purposes, one minor and inconsequential blip notwithstanding.
When you are making a point, it must not be a smudge.
Ask yourself:
Was my point that I rarely call someone a troll or was my point that I never call someone a troll?
Especially in a debate thread, a participant has to be very careful in the words he or she chooses. The use of the words never and always are like red flags to a debator. Your opponent can often find exceptions and score points.
Don’t expect your debating “opponents” to cut you any slack. They are not supposed to. Debate teaches you to be picky. You need to prepare your arguments so that they will stand up to being picked at. That’s why it’s probably better to quote a recent government report or a well-respected Senator than it is to rely on information from someone at Fox News. (There may be an exception or two.) If you want to quote from a conservative news source that is generally considered reputable, the Wall Street Journal would be better.
It also might not hurt if you concede a point now and then.
And you paint all liberals with such a broad brush. It might be interesting to know what you think that liberals actually believe.
Enjoy these autumn days.
But you see, I’m not really interested in “debate.” At least not in a formal sense. What I want is to smash my opponents and cause them to give up the foolishness that is liberalism. I want them to realize that people’s lives are being lost and ruined by the consequences of liberalism. That it’s stupid beyond belief to take the attitude that it hurts kids feelings to fail them and to decide that they should instead by passed from grade to grade whether they learn anything or not. Not only do they not learn the subjects, but they don’t even try because they know they’ll get passed anyway. What the hell kind of life is a person going to have when they get out into the real world and can’t write, spell, punctuate or speak even well enough not to draw attention to themselves for being bad at it? What kind of lives are their husbands, wives and children going to have? How many of these people and their kids are going to turn to crime because they have so little and live in that kind of environment?
I want them to see that it’s stupid beyond belief to favor and promote softness on crime, especially to the point where we have a revolving door penal system like we have now that keeps turning convicts out on the street time and time again. I can’t tell you how many times I watch some crime show on TV or watch or read the news and find out that the latest rapist or murderer had a long rap sheet already and was out and roaming the streets, victimizing people and ruining the lives of their loved ones, while still in their late twenties or early thirties.
I want them to see how ridiculous it is to promote and use drugs. I have never in my life heard anyone say “You know, my life was shit until I started doing drugs. Best thing I ever did. Once I started using drugs it was like the scales fell from my eyes and everything started to fall in place. Now I have a great family and a house and nice car and everything is coming up roses.” Nope. Instead the country is full of examples of drug related murder, robbery and utterly ruined lives and misery all around because of drugs, and yet drug use is promoted or cheered by people on the left because it’s “cool,” and squares and cops and conservative people disdain it.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I’m here to talk about the harm that liberalism has done to this country and the need for social change, and not to get into “debates” where every word I say is parsed to the nines by 20 different people looking for some relatively minor verbal nit to pick.
Also, check your PMs. It appears that I was sending you a message at the same time that you were posting to me here.
I am indeed enjoying these beautiful autumn days. I trust that you are as well. 
And I’m glad to see you’re still talking to me,
SA
When you challenge ideas that many of us have obtained by through reasoned consideration and engagement with the world and suggest wide-scale reactionary social change, how could you not expect a debate? Do you really think that your ideas, based purely on your say-so, will be enough to overturn the direct experience of other people?
That is what I really do not understand about you, SA. You expect the “liberals” to abandon their worldview, largely based on their own actual experience, and replace it with yours. You admit this call to action is not grounded in airtight reasoning or formal logic; rather you appeal to your own personal authority, which apparently flows from your mere presence on this planet for the past 60 years or so. Your personal authority in these matters is much less than you think it is, trust me.
I struggle to think of any position more arrogant than yours.
Since I was indirectly addressed a few pages ago by mhendo, I just wanted to say that while I consider CATO a partisan source - as anyone should regard a think tank with an announced agenda of supporting certain partisan goals - I don’t see that as a reason to ignore their arguments. But it is a reason to not love them as source of background information when trying to learn about a topic on which one has insufficient expertise, which is what I was trying to do in the thread in question. One exception to that rule might be Julian Sanchez, a CATO blogger who is probably the best pundit ever.
Carry on.
[Also, can a mod please change the title of this thread to “SDMB Ultimate Throwdown 36”? How else is the gentle reader to know that this is in an omnibus pitting of all the most trenchant debaters on the board?]
It should be noted that I meant this part somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Probably should have put in a smilie. I’m not quite that arrogant.
No such thing. It’s not so much a debate in my eyes as it is simply an eye opening. Take the issue of education, for example. Is there any debate on what I said about that?
I’d bet that most posters here have never given any thought at all to what liberal philosophy and practices have wrought there. Same with crime, drugs, STDs, teen pregnancy, single-parent homes, etc. I’m trying to direct people’s attention to these things in the hope that when they think about them, they will see that the way they’ve been going about doing things is frought with repercussions, and serious ones at that. That people’s lives literally are being ruined and lost as a consequence of philosophies and practices that they hold so dear.
Thus far there hasn’t been any real debate on these issues anyway. They largely get ignored while people zero in on the politeness and civility issue and try to portray me as an old fogey stuck in the past, or they try to debate irrelevant sideline issues such as mhendo did with regard to my use of the word troll. They make fun of me as a person and tend to ignore the larger issues. And to the degree that they do address the issues it’s largely to simply say nuh-uh. Nobody really tries to claim that drugs are a good thing, that putting criminals back on the streets over and over after ridiculously short terms is a good thing, that passing kids whether they learn anything or not is a good thing, etc.
No, liberals tend to look at immediate problems and come up with reflexive solutions and look no further to see what the consequences might be. They take the position that this or that social issue is so important and urgent that the changes they favor trump all other considerations, or they are so convinced of their own intellectual and moral superiority that they just automatically assume that whatever they favor can’t help but be the right thing to do. And then when serious problems result, they claim it’s just the natural progression of things and never look to see what role their own ideology has played in bringing them about.
So what I’m trying to do is bring home the problems that liberalism has caused in this society in no uncertain terms so that there’s no room for equivocation, so that people either have to defend them or admit, even if just to themselves, that perhaps they’ve been going about things in the wrong way and that perhaps their liberal mindset is the reason for that.
I get a lot of shit around here but it tends to be from relatively few people compared to the number that lurk and I don’t expect to make any real headway with them. I can’t help but think that by bringing up these issues and shining a light on them, reasonable, thoughtful people will give some thought to the things they believe and try to assess whether they are doing more good or more harm by advocating the positions they take.
Absolutely. I agree with all of that. It’s a pity that Sam Stone, after raising the issue in the first place, hasn’t seen fit to address the issue any further, despite the fact that his claim that sources like Cato get rejected out of hand is clearly complete hyperbole, at best.
So much misinformation, so little time! It took you sixty years to get this ignorant, how do I unravel that hairball of crapulous opinion in a mere decade?
Focus. There’s the answer, focus on one special and particular set of nonsense rattling around in your skull like a bb in a boxcar.
The liberals responsibility for the horror of public housing. Good as any.
When northern cities began to run out of white people for miserable, non-unionized jobs, a wonderful thing happened, as miracles often do to rescue rich white men from their own cupidity. Black people began to move from the pure hell of cracker-ridden South to the relative misery of the North. A step up.
But where to put them all? Well, the obvious solution would be to pay them enough so that they could afford to build nice new homes in established nice neighborhoods…well, no, maybe not. Better to simply ignore them and hope. Of course, these crazy ass liberals have an idea, might work, called “public housing”. Gonna cost some money. (groan!) Keep them in restricted neighborhoods. (Well, maybe…)
Liberals of course wanted to squander perfectly good money on these people, spend lavishly on housing, and schools and all that other good stuff that, while generous, tends to give people ideas that are, frankly, above their station. (Stability is a virtue most fervently admired amongst the comfortable.)
Make a long sad story a short sad story…as the situation deteriorated, liberals kept on with the same old “tax and spend” approach, looking to fritter away perfectly good money on useless people. They weren’t useless when the war was on, but now all those white men are back, and they need those jobs. Would you people mind terribly moving back to Hell? That would be nice…
So, public housing became the welfare jungle, for the recently redundant. This was the liberals fault, of course. If they had had their way, floods of money would have swirled down the drain for undeserving layabouts. (They had no jobs! What further evidence of feckless laziness is required?)
Conservatives, of course, reacted with alarm. “These are our people!” they cried aloud! “These are our fellow Americans, we must rush to raise taxes so that we might support them in their hour of need! We cannot turn away from our responsibility to provide decent housing and education for our fellow Americans!”
Yeah, right. Of course they could turn away from it, they did. And when they refused to support a decent public housing program, they got an indecent public housing program. Which was all the liberal’s fault. Hadn’t been for them, these people could have been used and tossed back where they came from, as is the American way!
But they wouldn’t go, the ungrateful wretches! Even the miserable conditions of public housing, what with indoor plumbing and places very much like schools were better than tarpaper shacks on the Delta. How can you reason with people like that, who insist on staying where they are no longer welcome?
So the liberals say “We need 10 million dollars, or The Projects are going to Hell!” The conservatives said “Here’s five, go away, you namby-pamby bleeding heart do-gooders.”
And Starkers reviews the history, and sees clearly and without doubt! this is all the liberals fault. It takes a certain degree of selective blindness, but one should never underestimate a reactionary’s capacity for willful ignorance. It is vast, vibrant, and all-inclusive.
The arrogance asserts itself again. That there is disagreement here does not suggest that people who do not agree with you have not actually considered the issues. Further, the only one you have managed to convince that widespread social disintegration exists and that liberalism is the cause is yourself. You assume what must be proven.
This is why everyone finds you so frustrating to engage with. It is one thing to take an ideological position; this does not preclude critical examination of the facts as understood and reasonably close analysis. But I don’t think even your closest ideological fellow travelers would admit that this is actually what you do.
Then kindly stay the fuck out of the forum called Great Debates. Your personal anecdotes in this forum do not serve to further your goals of “smashing your opponents”; in fact they do quite the opposite.
What is it about some idiots that make them impossible to disengage? I never engage Starving Artist very seriously because he argues his opinion as fact and doesn’t bother backing it up. Other people get to me and I feel the need to argue. I am working very hard to overcome the need to argue with fools. I think part of the impetus to argue with a fool is so that you can feel that much smarter by comparison, but really arguing with people who are smarter or knowledgeable than you is more fruitful because then at least they have something to teach you other than how not to beat your head against a wall.
Oh, well then. That’s not arrogant at all compared to the other thing. Carry on.
Nitpick: this is the Pit. 
I can’t speak for anyone else but myself, but “someone is wrong on the internet” is one of my many neuroses.
I´m older than you, SA, and I remember the 50’s fine, only not as goldenhued as you seem to recall.
Anyway: the reason that dangerous criminals are released from prisons is exactly because CONSERVATIVES have packed the jails with dopers and third-strike shoplifters and so on, and CONSERVATIVES wail loudly at any kind of tax increase to pay for the packed jails, so they have to let some prisoners walk, and CONSERVATIVES have pushed no-parole sentences on the dopers so they can’t be let out, so the real bad guys are the ones set free.
Also, in my high school class of 1958 I only knew two girls who were virgins, and they both wanted to be nuns.
I used to make that claim, but then I realized that there’s a million billion times more wrong in any given Yahoo! Answers post than on the entire SDMB, but I just can’t bring myself to address it.