If you ever find any other way to insult me other than pointing to my post count, please, do use it. Otherwise, until then, I’ll continue to :rolleyes: and consider you pathetically unimaginative.
As for Olbermann, I haven’t watched him in ages-except when he was covering the Superbowl.
My basement is overrun with rats and mice. I must get a cat.
Simple enough. Note: I have implicitly grouped rats and mice as a problem which must be solved. With the cat. I need not explicitly group rats and mice as identical, that would be, as the French say, tres stupide. They are not the same. So please do not post a dictionary excerpt to advise.
But they *are *the same in one crucial aspect, the defining point: I want them gone. And I don’t need to offer more, my audience is fully aware that a basement full of rats and mice is a Bad Thing. Just as the Orca of the Airwaves knows his listeners do not have to be told why liberals are akin to rapists and mice, they already know.
Rush does not explicitly say that liberals, rapists and murderers are the same. But the implicit (I’ll wait while you look that up, if need be…) equivalence is underlined by his insistence that all of these things must be resisted. He correctly notes an irrelevancy: that the motives of said rapist, murderes, and liberals are of no consequence, he is right that this is irrelevent. But that does not alter his original faulty equivalence, an inference that he clearly expects his listeners to grasp without further explanation. All of these people suck and must be resisted.
Now, note! He does not say rapists and murderers must be resisted more than liberals, nor does he say they must be resisted* less* than liberals! By this omission, he states them as being equivalent: The defining characteristic of each member of the set is that they must be resisted. Period. Full stop.
If he had offered a correction or modification, like noting that liberals are not, in fact, as bad as rapists and murders, or were not as morally culpable as rapists and murderers, he would be on safe ground. But he didn’t.
Therefore: he has implicitly grouped them together without offering any distinction betwixt. If he did not intend to implicitly state such an equivalence, he had every opportunity to say so. He did not.
Therefore, it was his intention to state such an equivalence.
Q.E.D. ipso facto, and in tres partes omnia Gallia divisa est. Oh, and Blubberbutt delenda est.
Well, I think we can all agree that this matter is settled, and the thread can be closed. If the mods will permit a few more posts for kudos and plaudits, I have no objection. Similary, howls of rage and fury from …certain posters…may also be permitted, in terms of my smug self-satisfaction, they are equivalent. Not identical, mind! Equivalent.
“Hey, check out the ginormous post count on her!”
"Well, I’m more of a location man, myself…
“N’encoulons pas des mouches” is the original, I think, literally “Let us not bugger flies.”
ISTM that benign or charitible intent should never be dismissed out of hand. They suggest that the holder of the intent is a human being of good will who could potentially contribute some good to the world.
C’mon now, sweetie, remember what we learned about precision and accuracy? If you start from a false assertion, everything else is meaningless, remember? *
And that’s been your whole argument on every front: “Here, let me reframe reality to make it easier for me to make my point. I’ll just assert that certain things are so without backing it up.” Then you go on to argue against the thing you’ve created. It’s called a strawman argument, and I grant that in this case you have not been exactly blatant, but you have done it all along nonetheless by telling me I said things I didn’t say. Try quoting me exactly and then making your argument.
You also did it when you simply skipped over the post I directed you to four times by dismissing it as a rehash of what I’d already said, when we both know that’s not true. It is parsing of Rush’s statement that you can’t refute, so you shoved it aside.
You know, honey, if you need to feel like you’re right no matter what, I understand, I really do. It’s way more interesting and fun to debate the genuine facts and to address the matters under discussion with rigorous honesty about who is saying what, far more challenging. But it’s also more difficult and we’re not here to make our heads hurt.
And the way you keep stepping in it every time you to try to prove your point you end up proving mine? Oh, darlin’ that’s gotta hurt. I feel you, really.
Well, 'luci has done rather a neat job of wrapping this thing up, though. Boris, my luff, I am so sorry to hear about your infestation! 
*In case you are genuinely incapable, vs unwilling, to see the distinction between your assertion about what I said and what I actually did say, let me explain it.
Rush did not say, nor did I accuse him of saying “liberals are equivalent to murders and rapists”. Despite my low opinion of him generally, I consider him smarter than to be so baldly inflammatory.
I quoted the pertinent statement exactly. The statement equated liberals with rapists and murderers by grouping them, a perfectly pedestrian rhetorical device that even a child understands, i.e.:
“Tommy, antifreeze is poison!”
“What does it taste like?”
“I don’t care what it tastes like, any more than I care what cyanide or arsenic tastes like!”
From this exchange, Tommy will conclude that antifreeze is as deadly and horrible as cyanide or arsenic is. And on the other hand, the conversation is not likely to go:
“Tommy, antifreeze is poison!”
“What does it taste like?”
“I don’t care what it tastes like, any more than I care what paper or lettuce tastes like!”
Yet that is essentially what you and a few others have argued, that there was a sudden disconnection from the core point he was making, which was that liberalism was incredibly bad, and a new connection to some random disinterest in underlying motives generally. "Gee, rush was just naming rapists and murderers as ‘other things that fall into the category of things I don’t care about the motives for’ "
Tommy’s mom isn’t going to use random examples of harmless things she doesn’t want to taste to impress upon Tommy that she doesn’t want to taste some things in this world and anti-freeze is among them, that’s stupid and it’s not what she’s trying to convey. She’s going to use examples of other deadly poisons she doesn’t want to taste because they are deadly poison so that Tommy will associate cyanide, arsenic and antifreeze as equally deadly substances.
“Caller, liberalism is poison!”
“What does liberalism taste like?”
“I don’t care what it tastes like, any more than I care what arsenic and cyanide taste like!”
If that had been the exchange, would you try to argue that Rush intended the caller to believe that liberalism was safe to eat, or that liberalism, like cyanide and arsenic, was deadly?
That’s now been explained to you several different ways and I give you the credit of believing that you understand perfectly, but you are simply denying that it functioned in the usual way in this particular instance.
You may find the distinction between your assertions about my words and my actual words to be trivial, in which case this argument is pointless because you do not appreciate precision, accuracy, and subtle distinctions. If so, your point of view about what Rush said and what he intended his listeners to understand is rather hollow, kind of like asking a man who has lost his sense of smell to be a food critic, even though he can only detect sweet, salt, bitter and sour.
Assertions aren’t facts. Since all my communication here is preserved, I’m sure you can trot out examples. Until then, this is a lie.
Hmmm. Alright, I accept your apology.
Is this a joke?
One person has a bullet wound which requires a trip to the hospital. It is the result of a violent act.
Another has an injury to his back that resulted from helping is neighbor wrestle his new refrigerator into his kitchen. It is the result of a charitable act.
These two injuries are not akin because they are the same injury, nor are they akin because they are the moral equivalent of the same injury. They are “akin” only in that they require trips to the hospital.
Similarly, the three items Rush mentions are equivalent only in that they require the same degree of intolerance, not because they are the same thing morally or as a matter of fact.
Stoid, are you listening?
Then perhaps you would be happy to relate how the bullet wound and broken back I mentioned above are the “same”. Equivalently speaking, of course.
Except for the fact that his original equivalence was not that they are the same, but that they are carry such ill consequence that their motives don’t matter. As has been said upthread and not only by me: rape and murder are simplhy the two best examples of acts whose consequences are so bad that the reasons they occur don’t matter. This to remind the listener that there are, even in this day of great liberal permissiveness, still some things that are so egregious they cannot be tolerated.
Or on the other hand he could be stating, as a result of this omission, that pink fairies fly out of his ass. The fact that so many of us here disagree as to what he was acutally saying even with the words he did use, it’s fair to say that the inference you draw from what you regard as an omission is entirely subjective, and therefore cannot be accepted as fact.
Well, reasonable men of good will, if such could be found, may well disagree that he would have been on “safe ground” with the ilk, no matter how flowery the encouchment of his words.
Still, as also mentioned previously upthread, there is not sufficient time – nor likelihood of continued listener interest – to address every possible subjective leftie interpretation of what he might say.
Far be it from me to question your psychic abilites. You may well even have a large, colorful sign in your front lawn touting your skills in this area (for financial remuneration, no doubt). Still, here at the good old Straight Dope, we only accept as fact that which can be proven. And the fact of the matter is that you simply have no way to know that there was such a deliberate omission, or the reason for it if so.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua Blubberbutt. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est Blubberbutt.
Indeed. And given that I strive to be gracious in victory, I congratulate you on your highly entertaining analysis of what by your own admission Limbaugh never said.
The problem is that liberalism, by and large, is not content to simply be of good will and contribute some good to the world. Liberalism, as it exists today, is an “impassioned do-gooder”. It attempts to force its remedies upon society while lacking the perspective, patience and discipline to do so with regard to consequence. In fact, it rarely cares about consequence at all and is generally scornful of those who do. “Do something, even if it’s wrong” appears to be the motto, and woe betide any who disagree.
There is also the inability of liberalism to put on the brakes when things have gone too far. I can’t think of a single instance when liberalism has said “Stop, we’ve progressed far enough in this case!” Whether in terms of censorship, sex, drug use, so-called individual freedom, government spending on social programs, whatever – there never comes a time when liberals say “This has gone too far”.
So liberalism, benign and of charitable intent though it may be, carries with it a hugely deleterious effect on society. It champions individual freedom over society on the one hand, yet paradoxically wants society to provide for everyone by making us all serfs to the government. And of course with government largess – scant though it always is – comes government control and therefore less personal freedom.
In short, liberalism is largely unworkable. It ignores what centuries of history have taught about human nature; it seeks a confiscatory government that punishes the productive and rewards the nonproductive; it seeks diametric goals at the same time; and ultimately creates a society that is less prosperous, less civilized, less productive and less free.
I’d respond but I need to go rinse my Braun hand blender…
:rolleyes:
Recently I saw on the history Chanel what took place just 2 generations ago:
So, was it human nature then to apply Jim Crow laws to the US Army then? Or it was the conservative thinking of the day? All that production was ignored then by many for racist reasons, but Roosevelt decided to ignore the nature of the commanding general of the area that thought that black soldiers would be a problem.
I just think that after the war, the example of the excellent work done by the black soldiers contributed to the idea of making the GI bill to also benefit them.
For the black soldiers it meant that after the war they became more prosperous, more civilized (several of the soldiers could barely read but did so during and after the work was done), more productive, and yes, more free when they demanded with more reason to end all the Jim Crow laws.
As for the general point of the OP, I was not born yesterday, the examples of the republican leaders (and Rush as become a de facto one for several Republicans) using this style of equivocation have become too many to mention. It remains an act done with the purpose to mislead. Mentioning items to equate evil with a group is done to allow them to weasel out of what they are doing with their words and then with their actions. (We never said Iraq was involved in 9/11, you where fools* for assuming we did when we actually mentioned them many times together when the war on “terra” was the subject.)
*The sad thing is that the last administration did not care that most of the fooled ones were conservative.
Because as we all know, all those things are equally evil. :rolleyes: Let me know when you’re ready to leave the fifties, if that ever happens. And what’s this with ‘so-called individual freedom’? I thought conservatives were all about the individual.
This is an amazingly bad analogy. Wow. A monument should be erected, so that obfuscators and pettifoggers might make pilgrimage, to gaze in wonder…
Oh? If they are not equivalent as a matter of fact or morality, in what way are they equivalent? Shoe size?
(I can easily see shooting a murderer or a rapist in the act, wouldn’t have a qualm. Might not have a gun, but wouldn’t have a qualm. No doubt you feel the same way. No doubt so does Rush, given his oft stated impatience with legal niceties.
By this reasoning then…that liberals are to “require the same degree of intolerance”, he means to shoot a few?)
The operative word is explicit. The implicit still applies.
Still trying to forget that one. Awesome. Totally. Leonard Pinth Garnell hosts Bad Analogy Theater.
And that is, in and of itself, an equivalence. They need not be identical, but equivalent. Why is this so hard for you to grasp, yet so easy for you to say?
Do you think that likely?
Actually, rather few of us disagree, but you explained that away, it’s all about there being so many “Rush haters”. You explained why so many of us agree by accusing us of being “Rush haters”, now you want to suggest that said general agreement doesn’t actually exist? Should I get out of the way so you can argue with you?
That he didn’t say it is a fact. I call it an omission, you call it what you like, but “accident” is pretty much all thats left.
This phrase is too crowded for me. I fold.
We have an abundance of evidence in the man himself. Its what he does. He deliberately makes arguments. Bad ones, to be sure, but deliberate. About the only way for it not to be deliberate is for the argument itself to be very poorly thought out.
Wait, it is very poorly thought out, isn’t it?. OK, your point.
Should such an occasion ever arrive, I’ve no doubt you will comport yourself in quiet dignity. You will most likely be far too old to do otherwise.
Drivel.
You’re getting way ahead of anything I’ve asserted. Where humanity and benign and charitable intent exist, correct focus and application of human energies have the potential to contribute good to the world. Do you disagree with this?
Bill Clinton, welfare reform; is this ringing any bells for you?
Fuck the equivalency issue. Without bringing rapists and murderers into the picture at all, Rush is still full of shit.
Ideally, liberals should be the idealists and conservatives the realists. Liberals push for progress, while conservatives ask, “Is this a good idea?” If the proposal has merit, then let it go ahead, but if it’s merely progress for progress’s sake, then it shouldn’t. The liberal’s default position is that Change Is Good; the conservative’s default position is Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken.
That’s the ideal (as I see it). However, that requires a certain amount of critical thinking on the conservative’s part, to understand the proposal and see the ramifications of it, positive and negative, and be able to present a clear case for or against the proposal.
By saying that it doesn’t matter why liberals do what they do, Rush isn’t advocating conservatism, only obstructionism in disguise. He’s advocating opposing liberals simply because they’re liberals, not necessarily because their ideas are bad. It creates a divisive, hate-filled political atmosphere which is wholly antithetical to a functional democracy.
Yes, there are people on the left who have pretty much decided that anything conservatives do is bad and must be stopped, too. But if you ask them about it, they can usually point you to examples and issues. And that’s good. Those on the right who can point out specific issues with the left, specific policies that have hurt the country, that’s fine too. Specific policies and issues are something we can talk about and maybe come to a resolution on.
But when a rallying voice for one side demonizes the other and insists that they are bad and must be stopped no matter what, what is there to argue about? All the other side can do is defend themselves or retaliate. It’s a war cry, no more, no less, and it sickens me that anyone would defend it or even tacitly condone it by arguing a side matter.
Of course, that’s why I understood what he was saying, sweetie, as you well know because I explicitly went over that in my new post you have ignored because it’s too hard for you to address.
But hey, that’s cool, babe. Peace love and understanding, honey, I don’t want you to stress.
Oh Robot, don’t be silly. Isn’t it abundantly clear that Starvy doesn’t hear, see, or understand anything that would disturb his fixed view of How Things Are?
He had no choice…all the good analogies turned out to prove that Rush was doing exactly what Starvy insists he wasn’t, and boy was THAT embarrassing!
Bravo! To your entire post.