Honestly, I don’t know what exception would be valid. I used your own phrases, and did my best to read no more any to your statements than I thought you intended. I don’t mean to speak for Poly. My point is this: If I failed to take your meaning, respecting and understanding your philosophy to the degree that I do, I wonder if I could ask nogginhead to interpret your remarks any better?
–I’m not defending nogginhead’s rudeness to you in GD; it’s inexcusable. However, I think it may be understandable, if he perceived, as I did, that your remarks were in their own manner rude to everyone else in the thread.
It’s like this, loser: I refuse to aswer that question. If you had said that originally, we wouldn’t be here. Maybe. Instead, you would answer “the moon is made a green cheese” and claim that you did answer the question.
To take this as a serious point, which I begin to suspect you don’t deserve, let’s see how it compares to our question to you. In that case, your money is gone and you actually have a choice about how it gets spent. You refuse to exercise that choice, which makes you a Neanderthal.
In contrast, there’s no imperative for me to decide my dickheadedness. I have control over my character and can decide to try to have a real conversation with you or to leave you to your ravings.
I certainly can’t speak for Nogginhead, but when I visit a new messageboard and don’t know someone who has been around for three years, I don’t assume the worst.
The exceptions I take have to do with the framing, contextualizing, and truncation of what I was saying. For example, I might quote that you responded to me by saying that you “failed to take [my] meaning”. But that would not be accurate; it would be a mere truncation of what you said.
You quoted me as saying that Poly had “lost [his] moral soundness”. You left off the dependent clause. Here is the entire statement with my comment:
“You lost your moral soundness when you seized a man’s property by threat of force.”
There is no way on earth that that could be construed as being about Polycarp. Do you honestly think that I believe he has ever seized a man’s property by threat of force? The “you” is the generic second-person who actually does do that. I could have said, “A man has lost his moral soundness when…”.
I might be guilty of poor exposition, but it is frankly laughable to think I consider Polycarp to be a tyrant. The victims are not the ones who are participating and pillaging. Those with political power and clout, it is they who are responsible for the tyranny.
I don’t put myself above you or Poly. Y’all are just like me — you have the same guns pointed at your head that I have pointed at mine.
You choose to express your opinion about how the tyrants should spend their stolen loot. So do I. It just so happens that my opinion differs from yours, and I expressed it over and over and over every time I was pressed to give it.
No, I think you summed it up very well. Lib stated his shallow, corrupt philosophy, we called him on it, and he called us names.
I humbly apologize to all and sundry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I scrupulously avoided any personal attacks and attempted to stick to the philosophical approach. I admit that my language was somewhat severe, and I apologize again if I offended anyone.
I also didn’t find Lib terribly rude there. Stubborn, for sure. Offensive? You bet. Shallow and corrupt (personally, now)? Without a doubt. But the main rudeness was in attacking individuals themselves, instead of what they were saying.
No I usually allow people to reveal their personalities in threads like these, and stick to fair arguments without personal assumptions. Newbie or not.
Says who? I do not have to accept your arbitrary bifurcations. I do not have to choose between throwing the money down this hole versus that hole. I may (and do) choose that it be returned to its rightful owners with respect to every question about government spending except the obvious one.
Sure. IMO, that opinion is not inconsistent with other preferences.
Here is the paragraph in its entirety:
"You lost your moral soundness when you seized a man’s property by threat of force. After that, you are merely fretting over what to do with the pillaged loot. Moreover, requiring me to bring down a tyrant before you will acknowledge a man’s rights is ethically Neanderthal."
I took the paragraph to mean that Polycarp, by contributing to government spending of its “stolen” money, had also contributed to the theivery itself. I based that interpretation mainly on that “ethically Neanderthal” conclusion to your paragraph. You used ‘tyrant’ and the generic second person ‘you’ separately in that last sentence, as if they were separate entities. If the ‘you’ in the first sentence was referring to the ‘tyrant’ in the last sentence, it is not a great leap logically to infer that the ‘you’ who is an ethical Neanderthal is the person you were addressing with your post.
ON PREVIEW: I do not share nogginhead’s assessment of your philosophy. As you knew when you asked. nogginhead: You would do well to apologize for your rudeness and ask to be educated concerning libertarianism. However, I recognize that harsh words have been exchanged, and that now might not be the right time for you to do that. If this is the case, perhaps you could suspend hostilities for now?
It boggles the mind that you are so obviously ignorant of Libertarian philosophy, yet you are so quick to condemn it. Fight ignorance, rather than wallowing in it. Might do ya some good.
Okay, then it looks like it was a simple but disasterous misunderstanding. I blame myself for not wording the post differently. Let me say for the record that I know no one who is kinder, sweeter, and more loving than Polycarp (except maybe Skulldigger). I do NOT believe that he is participating in the tyranny.
I don’t think he took it that same way, however, given his subsequent post. Besides, I just know for a fact that he could not possible misconstrue how I feel about him.
