It’s too bad nobody could have foreseen this happening back in October.
While I’m generally in favor of random insult-hurling (when it’s done with the panache and style I’ve come to associate with the SDMB ;)), I’m not completely comfortable with calling it “that same logic.” ISTM that the operative term in Richard Parker’s conditional is “arguing in good faith.” The accusation against the non-participant subjects of this Pit thread in particular is that they are not arguing in good faith. Under the circs, it is entirely reasonable that these subjects not be granted the best possible interpretation of their argument. This would be so even if the discussion of (alleged) bad-faith arguing on the part of non-participants were taking place in GD. In fact, you and Richard Parker may have muddied the waters by suggesting that a dichotomy exists between what happens in a GD thread and what happens in a Pit thread; I feel that the relevant question is: is this an argument among two good-faith participants?
It’s not my sense that the presence of a thread in the Pit automatically requires the participants to assume bad-faith arguing on the part of their opponents. Random insult-hurling should wait until an accusation has been leveled, and until then, “charitable argument” should be the order of the day.
FWIW, Lieberman was being interviewed on MSNBC a few minutes ago and says he has 61 votes lined up in the Senate to cut off any filibuster and pass the stand alone bill the House passed yesterday. He said it is just up to Harry Reid to move things and it could be done today.
I’m afraid I can’t let you continue to represent my views. While I appreciate some of your attempts, this one is so erroneous that it casts grave doubt on your ability to do this job. Naturally I’ll provide severance pay in lieu of notice, but as of now, you are dismissed from your position as my official spokesperson.
This.
There’s no law requiring gay NFL players to keep their orientation private, but there are no openly gay players in the league. I suspect we’ll have more three-star generals than openly gay Marines even after DADT is gone.
Anyone who hasn’t been lobotomized should realize that repealing DADT won’t magically make the military a less macho, more accepting wonderland of equality. Jesus christ. Integrating other races into the military didn’t end racism there, either, but it was the right thing to do, and over time lessened the acceptance of racist behavior within the military.
What it does do is take a concrete step forward in protecting gay military members from having their service abruptly ended over their sexual orientation. Remember when we lost a whole shitload of Arabic translators over this? That wouldn’t happen. There are a whole host reasons why DADT was and is a terribly policy, and the top ten reasons aren’t any touchy-feely bullshit about everyone getting along in a suddenly tolerant environment.
I am making an argument in favor of repeal, not against. The point is that even homophobic servicemen will not be affected (not that I care).
Thought experiment. If we found a 30 % increase in recruits due to dumping DADT, would that change your attitude toward it? Gays have proven themselves to be brave and important soldiers. There have been quite a few Arabic translators who were drummed out because they were gay. Anti gay actions have made us weaker in lots of ways. Letting front line bigots determine policy ,is stupid.
The thing with the 30% drop is that it means that more reservists would be activated, or, in the worst case scenario, a type of draft would be needed.
That said, the response of troops indicates that this won’t happen, so it’s entirely a moot point.
Bricker, I must be slipping: your arguments used to seem, well, not always correct, but at least, always lucid.
With this question you’re positing that in 1948, the time “was right” to end desegregation in the armed forces, and suggesting that 1917 was not the right time. Unless you’re just wasting time, this is reading as an attempt to argue that black Americans, between 1917 and 1948, had gained a measure of social and legal acceptance that gay Americans have not achieved yet. With respect, in 1948 no amount of integration had been achieved, the founding of the Harlem Globetrotters and the Tuskegee syphillis study don’t exactly seem to meet the requirements, and if the time was “right” for black Americans to be integrated into the military in 1948 (out of sheer kindness I’m not going to ask you to be consistent and explain why the time wasn’t right for slavery to be ended before Dec. 18, 1865), what possible basis is there for arguing that gay Americans today don’t have the same or better legal and social status, even in the military, than black Americans did in 1947?
Not to mention that arguing that bigotry can potentially be a winning argument against reasoned democratic principles is a poisonous act of cowardice that values threat over the rule of law, but you did already say you were in favor of allowing gays to serve openly in the military, right?
Voting on Saturday. Lieberman thinks they have 61 votes.
Wow Bricker, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but I still am. You’re really making a point to take the fucking bigoted and evil views of the homophobes as some small reason why certain rights may be delayed?
I don’t care if they integrated in 1948 or fucking 1848. Hundreds of years of racism hasn’t brought anything good to this country except hatred. If Washington had the power to do it, he should have integrated the military back in the 1700’s, and fuck all those who disagree. If we as a country cannot survive without massive racism or bigotry, then we don’t deserve to survive
Homophobes decreasing the military recruitment by 30%? Fuck them! Let them go!
The universe would implode like someone had divided by zero. The very idea is ludicrous–getting 40 Democrats to play as a team?
Yeah, you should have seen the Senate Democrats’ WoW guild attempt at 40-man raids. Pitiful!
I’m tickled pink by the mental image of a WoW guild that the Senate Democrats are members of. Their official WoW guild forum would be filled with posts by Joe Lieberman where he tries to justify him taking sides with the Horde.
I’m not.
But you only think I am because of your failure to read my posts.
If you had read the one in this very thread where I said:
… then you might have realized that I’m NOT arguing that this is not the right time. To the contrary, I am absolutely in agreement that now IS the right time.
Yeah, OK. Good luck in your world.
By law, there are only 498 Lt. Generals in the US military (that sounds like a lot, but… so says Wiki… I guess I’ll trust it). There are a hell of a lot more Marines. I would agree that the Marines tend to be hetero/macho/whatever, but if 1% of all Marines were homosexual, they’d outnumber all of the O-9s combined.
Let me see if I’ve gotten this right – because I think I agree with you.
The problem with pro-repeal-of-DADT posts to this thread, in your perception, is not that it’s not yet time to let gays serve openly; you concede that it is, and that only a small minority of bigots opposes it. Rather, the problem with those posts is that they’re arguing from a misperception of the antis’ stance – they’re not concerned with who the gays sleep or have sex with, but with their (erroneous) perception of how allowing gays to serve openly will impact enlistment and morale. And that misperception should be easy enough to refute by simple opinion surveys.
Have I got that right?
Are you neglecting RNATB’s qualifier of “openly”?