Anyone else seen the fliers from these guys? Protest Warrior
As if I already didn’t get to read the Badger Herald (one of the student dailies that was founded and supported by a right-wing think tank) moan about the oppressed minority status of conservatives, now I get to see idiotic statements such as these gems in my classrooms:
UNAmerican - Hey UN We brought you into this world… we can take you out
End overpopulation…Support Socialized Medicine (with part of the medical symbol replaced with a skull)
Reparations to blacks! We already take half of people’s money by force and redistribute it, so what’s the big deal?
Saddam supported 9/11!
And my personal favorite,
Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism and communism, WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING!
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: There just isn’t a rolleyes big enough…
Is it really that hard to, I dunno, read up on your history and philosophy?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to generate discussion by using true statements and reason, instead of reactionary, aggressive absolutes? It’s this kind of idiotic bullshit that leads to conservatism being linked with ignorance and violence.
I’ve never heard of the group you mention but I have heard practically every argument you mention.
The ones that really get to me:
Where are all those dead Canadians? If anything, with my financial and medical coverage situation as a college student I’d rather be diagnosed with a rare and/or major illness or cancer while living in a nation with socialized medicine as opposed to living in a country where my best hope might be setting up jars next to gas station’s cash registers to collect people’s spare change.
As did Kim Jong-il, I’m sure. The man who has WMD and really is a threat to us at the moment.
While I mainly agree with what clayton_e wrote, how is this statement…
…factually incorrect (except for the part about communism, and for the fact that war has solved additional problems, such as Imperialism and Taxation without Representation)?
There are pacifists who oppose all war, and among their number are those that have suggested, by slogan or otherwise, that war either literally doesn’t solve anything or that it is ineffective in resulting in anything positive. On information and belief, there are board members here that are pacifists and share that view.
As to them, the statement is NOT a straw man.
I have no idea to whom the fliers in the OP are directed, so I have no idea if THEY represent a strawman argument. But it’s not impossible for the words to represent a legitimate counter-argument against the philosophy of absolute pacifism.
Since the idea of protestwarrior is to show up at any protest that espouses a viewpoint they disagree with, I could see them showing up at a pacifist rally with signs about the things that war has solved.
Actually, the idea of protestwarrior is to kick the ass of modern liberalism, by denying it the appearance of protest by using its own methods against it. The argument goes, in simplicity, that is they choose to protest publicly and bypass reasoned debate, then we’d better use their own methods agains them.
If you could find an actual pacifist rally, where the massed people are protesting the general concept of war, then no, it wouldn’t be.
I don’t recall ever seeing one of those, though. They aren’t very fashionable. With few exceptions, people protesting the invasion and occupation of Iraq are opposed to the particular action, and have a quite different rationale for their opposition-- that the stated reasons for the attack are dubious, that it’s a violation of international law, that is unnecessarily destabilizing the region, that it’s damaging to the U.S. economy and international relations, etc.
Pardon me, but think that whether you’re liberal or conservative, or further to the left or right, or somewhere in between, or even completely undecided, it’s pretty obvious that the best way to “kick the ass of modern liberalism” is not by marching a bunch of crazed, ignorance-spouting loons into the center of an existing protest.
Thisisnot the voice of reasonable conservatism, tired of having its debates “bypassed” by liberals.
No. Theseare the actions of a bunch of ignorant apes, distributing posters and waving signs.
I’m not sure that that is their argument, but at any rate it’s a hysterically ironic one. Reasoned debate or public demonstrations? That’s a big honking false dilemma.
Demonstrations aren’t an alternative to reason, they’re an expression of political opinion, and have an important role in the function of a democracy. Successful demonstrations have to be supported by reason – otherwise, the cause that they are in support of is doomed to fail. It’s a fact that wherever large groups gather, there will be a certain amount of empty-headed sloganeers, but they usually aren’t the ones that are organizing or motivating anyone.
A real activist organization isn’t just a slogan-mill. There’s an infrastructure there that’s dedicated to aggregating and propagating information and argument by which to engage in reasoned debate. A lot of work and thought goes into it, because if the reasoning is unsound, then there is no advantage to organizing. If you have solid arguments behind your demonstrations, than attention drawn to them through demonstration results in more people coming on side. If, on the other hand, you’re using demonstrations to try to advance an argument that is weak, then attracting attention to your argument is going to leave people unmoved, and your protests will remain ineffective gatherings of a handful of cranky malcontents. This is why Fred Phelps’ vociferous demonstrations are a consistent annoyance, but never gain any momentum, while Dr. King’s protests were an acknowledged success.
Protestwarrior is just a couple of ignorant kids who enjoy creating manifestly stupid and inflammatory propaganda. They’re not really political creatures, they’re just possessed of bigoted, jingoistic opinions that they’ve arrived at without a lot of thought. They’re the flip-side of the social morons you’ll see at protests holding “Bush eats babies” signs.
In the same way that it’s easy for leftists like Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon to argue against firearms owners by painting them as rabid nuts who need stand in penises?
Which is that though you may disagree with protestwarrior all day long, they have every right to publicly assemble and to have a website that they support with their own funds on which they discuss their opinions and beliefs.
They are also just as entitled to think that those with a leftist slant are morons, just as leftists are entitled to believe anyone with a rightist slant is a moron.
So, what’s this rant about? That these people are exercising their right to peacefully assemble and their freedom of the press?
I think it’s about the fact that the protestwarriors are idiots and that their arguments fall somewhere between the intentionally obtuse and the utterly moronic. Judging by their site and the accompanying photos, I’d say it’s mostly the latter.
And, while they do have the right to free speech, that is an issue that is completely inapposite here.
A wonderfully humorous site and group of people, Protestwarrior.com is. Not to mention, however silly they may be, they are mental giants among the idiotic protesters they target. Just look through the galleries for adequate evidence of that.
I know it may make you ‘Free Mumia!’ types sad and blue, but since your ‘protests’ are largely worthless and senseless affairs, I certainly approve of Protestwarriors’ efforts. Figure someone might as well actually make a point at those ‘protests’…
