I generally don’t respond to a lot of your posts because I feel they are mostly trolling but the above makes me think that you actually believe the crap you spew. Maybe it’s just a higher grade of trolling and I’m being taken in by it but I haven’t seen you embarrass anyone lately… well, not counting yourself.
A tip of the hat,
Jain
Right there with you. I absolutely agree it’s fair to call him a “scold.”
I know Bennett’s moral code isn’t consistent with mine. And that makes him wrong. 
But not a hypocrite.
Of course!
And no one is saying you’re not entitled to that opinion. And I, in turn, and entitled to point out what I believe are flaws in your opinion, and thus (hopefully) persuade you to discard it and others not to adopt it.
So we’re all entitled to expres our respective opinions.
The question now becomes: is your opinion a good one? Is it useful in understanding the situation, the world?
My contention is that it’s not, because you too broadly construe one word when you intend a meaning that’s covered by other words.
The beauty of English is that I can call you stubborn, or intransigent, or pigheaded, and each conveys the same general sense but with a richness of nuance for each that the others lack.
And this is, I think, a perfect distillation of the argument. We don’t dispute what bennet did; we disagree on whether the term hypocrite should be applied to his actions. I argue that your use of the word as applied to him weakens it, especially when there are so many other choices that are correct. It is precisely a prescriptivist argument that I make.
Bricker: Perhaps if you were to recognize that Bennett hadn’t been piously preaching about specific actions, but about moral conduct in general, you’d begin to see the problem.
Or even if you didn’t have a gambling issue yourself.
But I think you might agree that others could see it that way, if they believed Bennett’s call for “self-discipline” ought to include “financial self-discipline.”
I don’t personally think gambling is wrong myself, but it would be wrong for me to tell others “gamble responsibly” then drop millions at slot machines, wouldn’t you think? And one would think “if you must gamble, gamble responsibly” would be an underlying tenet of financial self-discipline, right? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to call the above behavior hypocritical.
Well…well damn. What do you even say to that?
Easy. “Trolltrolltrolltrolltroll”.
Well, that’s a lie. The board slants more liberal, so in absolute numbers, sure, there are more liberals who do this than conservatives. As percentages of each group? Comes out pretty much even. We had no lack of conservatives who were pleased as punch to see Ted Kennedy kick the bucket. But since this would undercut your own argument, you will proceed to pretend that these people don’t exist.
And this is a deliberate misrepresentation of what I’ve said. I didn’t draw a distinction between respect and agreement, I drew a distinction between respect and tolerance. Which you know, but because I’m a liberal, you don’t feel any particular compunction against purposefully distorting what I say to make your position appear stronger.
And that’s another lie. He was banned for a long history of inability to follow the rules, culminating in two warnings in short order for insulting mods in ATMB.
Yes, that remains, as always, perfectly clear. Thank you for providing yet another object lesson in what it looks like when someone places partisan politics above honesty and integrity.
Yes, we disagree on the tightness of definitions. That and we like to disagree. If Bennett had never been Addiction Czar and left his preachings to something like supply side economics is good and liberals are bad and let’s go to war, I would not use his gambling as an example of hypocrisy. Nor if he just bet a few hundred bucks on his favorite football team. But here is Bankroll Bill Bennett in a private room in a casino frantically blowing $8 million on slot machines. (Let’s forget he was also Education Secretary who wanted to eliminate the department and obviously did not take to heart any math instruction in probability, which is a bit of a hoot too.) Blowing $8 million on slots shows vice and not virtue if you are the richest man in the world. But being a professional scold makes it more hypocrisy. Pretending it isn’t hypocrisy is even more hypocritical if based on the fact that BBB never scolded about gambling but only vice in general. That makes it intellectually dishonest to boot, which is also a vice when done on one’s own behalf. (It makes you a lawyer when done on a client’s behalf.) That nobody buys it except those as pedantic as the late William Safire is even richer.
Had Bennett simply said, “yeah, well, ya caught me, I’m ashamed. I’ll try to be better. None of this changes the values of being virtuous and putting aside our vices” I would have given him a complete pass as I never expected that he didn’t have any vices. But he does. Gambling and lying to himself and everyone about the value of virtue. The value of virtue to Bill Bennett is that he makes money off of books about virtue. That he personally is a hypocrite, intellectually dishonest, a weasel and doesn’t know himself doesn’t undermine the value of virtue: virtue is still good. But it’s only value to Bennett seems to be making money off of it to blow on his vices. Lucien spotted Bennett two millenia ago.
Bennett is the equivalent of if Socrates had admitted that the only reason he went around Athens showing all the old farts that they were stupid was that young men and boys enjoyed the old starched togaed know-it-alls being shown to be fools and it made it easier to bugger the young boys and if he had known that Plato was going to invent forms from it he would reconsider except that he never said he was against buggering young men.
To BOYO
“he always had a shitty point of viw”
Yeah…Boyo…you are one of those diseased liberal charter members…alright.
No. What they believed has zero relevance. The question is what Bennett himself believed.
If I advise people to lead a responsible sex life, and someone listening takes that to mean no sex except in the missionary position, I am not a hypocrite if it’s discovered my wife and I enjoy more variety than that in bed. What others read into someone’s remarks cannot make that person a hypocrite.
No, because it’s not irresponsible to gamble $8 million in one night if you’re worth $80 billion. If you’re worth $9 million, then it’s irresponsible.
And it’s not irresponsible to gamble $8 million over ten years if you’re worth $80 million.
I feel like Reagan saying to Carter, “There you go again.” Because once again you’ve simply asserted that we should all share your view of what amounts constitute irresponsible gambling, when there’s no particular reason your idea should be an authority.
What if I was supporting myself by advocating safe sex, being famous for it. Telling people to always use protection. Then you find out I often have sex without a condom with women, if they’re on the pill. And what I meant with protection was against pregnancy only, not STD’s.
Would that be hypocritical?
My pet peeve never ever want to hear again SDMB argument as captured by XKCD.
It’s as if people are incapable of learning they’re talking to a brick wall - or maybe they don’t care, as long as they get to post their screed as often as the brick wall does.
Or a Bricker wall, or a Second Stone wall…
We have a perfect example going in this very thread. :smack:
Not at all. I have already posted multiple examples of liberals wishing painful death on Republicans. Please provide the same number of cites of conservatives saying that they were glad Kennedy was dead and that they hoped he suffered.
And be sure to be specific, and to leave the goalposts exactly where they are.
Regards,
Shodan