After reading this whole thread and going back… THIS.
Part of the process of fighting ignorance is dispelling your own ignorance about how to face such challenges to your ideals, your morals and your sanity. One of the really great things you can learn from this board is how to effectively argue against the abhorent rather than just sticking your fingers in your ears and humming.
“But I don’t want to read that shit” has only one effective answer: Then Don’t.
You people take yourselves and this board way too goddamn seriously.
The SDMB is not a government entity, and you are not Patrick Henry. Banning people for continuing to spew harmful racist rhetoric on a private happy fun time message board is NOT censorship. It’s a choice about what you want this message board to be a platform for. It does not infringe on the civil rights of racist trolls to not let them do their racist trolling here, it just makes the experience of this board a lot more pleasant for most of the rest of us.
It’s not effective argument or debate if they continue and continue and continue to spout the same garbage for years, after dozens of posters have made good faith attempts to get them to support their arguments in a reasonable manner. It’s just intellectual masturbation. It’s us feeling good about ourselves because wow gee we sure are so much better than the racist trolls, let’s keep them around so we look elevated in comparison.
I now take back everything I’ve said about you guys. I must question your tactic of defending him right before banning him, but, hey, I’m okay with the result, so I don’t really care.
And, again, why in the world should we care that NDD is probably now more resolute in his beliefs? He can’t post them here anymore, and that’s all that matters. We can’t convince individual racists, but we can at least limit their ability to spread their crap to others.
Plus, note that brazil88 and any other people who have argued this stuff have not been banned. So it’s obviously not the idea itself that has been restricted, just the way NDD went about spreading it. As long as you keep it to an occasional argument, I’m okay with sometimes rebutting stupid ideas. But not when it’s your entire raison de post.
They’re not the only ones.
Yes it is. It’s not government censorship, it’s not an infringement of Constitutional liberties, and in the grand scheme of things it is not a big freaking deal, but it is censorship.
No, I take racism seriously. Way more seriously than I take some mostly empty circle jerking about “fighting ignorance”. I can see why that would be hard for an administrator here to grasp, though.
No, you take criticizing people for self righteousness and self importance and “empty circle jerking” very seriously. That’s pretty much all you do on this board. Even so, I acknowledged your perspective on the issue of racist posters and said that to an extent, you have a point. So I’m not sure why you think anybody would have trouble to grasping your idea.
I don’t get why the big push to ban him. I never spent a lot of time in those threads, and a lot of what he said I thought was goofy, to say the least. And I absolutely see how some people found some of his posts offensive. But I bristle at the notion that many on these boards want to simply shout down and/or ban unpopular views. It’s a friggin Debate Board!! If someone is an idiot, hold a mirror to him. Or just don’t engage. Why is that not a solution? I did scan one of the pit threads or maybe it was this ATMB, and I gotta say, there are a bunch of crybabies here that think themselves feeling offended is a bannable offense. And given that this whining resulted in multiple whining threads whining to the powers that be, and the powers that be finally buckled, I guess they’re right.
Perhaps we need a new forum entitled Circle Jerk, with threads like:
Was GWB slightly worse or slight better than Hitler?
Was GWB slighty worse or slight better than Genghis Kahn?
Who would you like your kids to grow up to be like: Al Gore or Michael Moore?
Is Obama super-awesome or super-duper-awesome?
Should people who don’t accept gay rights be allowed to vote?
Christianity did nothing to help form and build this nation. Discuss.
Should the U.S. ban the use fossil fuels by the year 2020 or 2021?
Let us count all the ways all the races are exactly equal—Part 37.
Why are Americans so lazy that they won’t pick fruits and vegetables—is it genetic or cultural?
Thank god for La Raza and the New Black Panthers. Which one should I donate to?
I don’t get you guys. Really. Why the desire for the echo chamber?
+1
I don’t think we’re stepping off the edge of some slippery slope, here. He wasn’t really debating at the end; 99% of his posts seemed to be definitions of logical fallacies he cut and pasted from Wikipedia.
NDD was a jerk, plain and simple. He didn’t debate. He parroted. He wasn’t banned so we’d get an echo chamber (after all, you’re still here!(directed to magellan01)) but to avoid stepping in shit everywhere.
Did he parrot “talking points”? :rolleyes:
Well, God knows that there are a ton of posters around here that need instruction in the logical fallacies. But the cut-and-paste school of debate is championed by BrainGlutton, so I guess he’s next, right?
No, he parroted Wiki and Stormfront. You, at least, are rational and coherent. Often wrong, but rational. 
NDD and his kind deserve nothing but scorn and banishment to the Netherhells.
Yes, he was a talking parrot.
As I tell people here, there is a point beyond which there is no point arguing with someone, and no point in defending yourself.
Again, if it bothers you, stop reading it.
If you find someone so offensive, and they haven’t been banned soon enough to suit you, isn’t that what the ignore list is for? It’s not like you HAVE to keep reading posts by people that repulse you.
Well, in fairness BrainGlutton pastes things that are actually new to some people. He is starting to annoy the shit out of me, though.
Exactly. First this board is firstly a American board, and here in America no one is locked up due to their opinions- only sometime how they express those opinions- the famous ‘Fire! In a crowded theater” point. Thus here, racists and other assorted nutjobs should be able to express their opinions. But never fear, if they continue for long enough they will cross the line into hate Speech or trolling. Then we ban them.
But until then, we should welcome them. The SDMB is likely one of the most intelligent, reasoned and literate boards out there (of those with a large, open membership). We should be able to rebuke and refute, with solid intelligent arguments, debates, facts and cites- any of these nutjobs. Oh sure, it’s unlikely we’ll convince* them,* but it’s very likely we can educate some naïf.
For example- “Voter Literacy tests”- they sound logical right? After all, who doesn’t want a literate electorate? Some teen or naïf may find some idiot expounding on why such testing is a great idea and be nodding his head. Until us SDMBers explain that the very people wanting these tests had worked for generations to keep the Blacks from being literate- starting with keeping them as slaves and whipping them if they picked up a book, to various “Jim crow” laws- where Black kids got a very unequal education. (and to a much lesser extent, some still do to this day- “inner city schools’ are notorious for not caring). Not only that, but the various redneck fuckwads (with their white hoods in the back pocket ) administering the tests would ask their brethren to read a line from “Dick & Jane” whilst a Black man might be asked to do the equivalent of ‘read and discuss Joyce’s Ulysses”. Now, we all know that "Voter Literacy tests’ are just a screen to keep Black voters out, but not everyone knows that.
Hell, we have educated reasonable posters here thinking that “voter ID laws’ aren’t more or less the same thing.
And if we ban “bigots’ who is next? Birthers? Holocaust deniers? Radical Tea partiers? 9-11 Conspiracy theorists?.. Republicans?
Nope, the Mods made exactly the right call here. Embrace then watch the nutjobs, waiting until he steps over that line from nutjob to troll- then ban him.
This is ridiculous. I’m happy to debate tax policy with jtgain, who makes me think. I’m delighted to discuss fourth-amendment issues with Bricker, who pushes the edges of my reasoning.
If you’re unable to see the difference between these debates–which ultimately recognize the dignity of other humans and remain in the sphere of civilized discourse–and the debates proposed by racists like NDD and others, the problem isn’t with me, it’s with your virtually Zoroastrian dichotomism.