I think Shodan’s beef is that if Daniel feels free to paraphrase part of the Contract with America in order to give it a negative, leftist spin then he shouldn’t criticize others for doing the same thing because the agenda they are advancing with their paraphrase is one that Daniel doesn’t agree with. IOW, I see Shodan claiming this is more of a sauce for the goose issue than arguing with a specific spin that Daniel put on the CwA. He’s saying “Here you are criticizing a “dishonest paraphrases”, yet you did the same thing back in XXX thread”.
The problem I’m having is where his paraphrase was dishonest. Even if you want to argue that it was inaccurate, he stated up front that it was his interpretation of the CwA, and provided a link to the original so that anyone who wanted could read it without his biases interfereing. If that’s the standard for a dishonest paraphrase, then what the hell is an “honest” paraphrase?
I dunno. You’ll have to ask Shodan. I was just clarifying what I think he’s upset about.
I’m wondering why he didn’t address it at the time instead of saving it up as some kind of pathetic “gotcha” to score points off of LHOD.
Nearly forgot. Thanks Badger and Dio for doing the legwork.
As I said earlier, this all started, not because of a paraphrase, but because of a misquote. Big difference. **AQA **may have thought he was paraphrasing, but he didn’t say he was, and he put his (undeclared) paraphrase in quotes. That’s not equivalent in any way to what **LHoD **did.
Thanks from me as well.
Weirddave, I get what he’s upset about. If he’d addressed it in a respectful fashion, I’d have shown him the differences between my paraphrasing and the paraphrasing that I’d criticized that distinguishes behavior I consider appropriate and behavior I don’t consider appropriate.
If AQA had said something along the lines of, “Admittedly, this is my own interpretation of the loathsome Kennedy’s statements; read this link for his actual words,” then I would’ve had no initial problem with it. If, when confronted with the salient differences between his paraphrase and the initial quote, he’d either defended his paraphrase with evidence or backed down, I would have had no problem with it.
The behavior for which I criticized him lacked a disclaimer, unlike my behavior that Shodan is equating with his. It lacked a willingness to follow through.
**Shodan’**s engaging in more post-by-irony than I’ve seen in a long time. What next, will he call me a stalker?
John, I wonder if you’d be willing to elaborate on why you think my paraphrase sucked. Does it seem simplistic? If so, I’ll admit to that; it was one of several bullet points, and that one line was just one among many bullet points being used to illustrate a positive aspect of the CwA, so I didn’t apply Kerryian nuance to them. But I do believe that my paraphrase accurately represents what the Republican Party intended to communicate with the “shares the faith” line in the CwA; if that’s not what they meant, could you offer your understanding?
Daniel
Sam Stone’s pretty cool in my book… he likes my car…
Well, I wasn’t shooting for much nuance either when I wrote “sucked”. 
If I was looking for nuance, I’d say that it reflects a typical leftist, knee jerk [over]reaction to the use of a phrase that *might *have a *hint *of religiousity about it.
I didn’t read anything particularly Christian (or even religious) into the contract, including that one sentence. Sure, they invoke 'God", but that a quote from Lincoln, afterall. The gist of the contract is to take power back from the government and give it to families. And since there’s nothing overtly religious about any of the 8 major reforms or the 10 specific bills to be proposed, I don’t see why you’d imply that there would be.
What would be a non-religious way for a legislative body to “share faith” with its electorate? What does it mean for a legislative body to have “faith” at all?
That’s nuance? 
Again, I’m interested in how you read that phrase, especially in the context of the 1992 Republican platform and the rise during the eighties and nineties of the religious right.
That’s a fair criticism: I claimed that the bullet-points were specific proposals, but the bit I was paraphrasing was in the preface, not in the list of specific proposals. That was sloppy on my part, and I apologize for it. I’d assume it goes without saying, were Shodan not still skulking in the shadows of the thread, but that was not an intentional misrepresentation.
Daniel
I really don’t want to get into a debate about this here, but “faith” doesn’t have to be “religious faith”. The values and faith of the families is that they can take care of themselves better then the government can. If there were specific religious proposals being made, then maybe I’d see the point. But, as I said, none of the sepcific points of the CWA is religious in nature. I’m reading the phrase in the context of the entire document. You’re looking at the phrase out of context and offering an interpretation that is desingned to scare people: Look! they’re going to impose Christianity on the nation!! That was a paraphrase, btw.
I think the phrase “share faith” was pretty clearly chosen to play on religious sentiments but YM obviously V and it’s not worth arguing about.
I didn’t say that. I was just questioning your statement that nothing overtly religious was being implied. For the record, LHoD didn’t use the word “impose” either, That was Shodan’s “paraphrase” of what he said.
“Faith” doesn’t have to be “religious faith,” but again, I’m asking you to offer an interpretation that’s consistent with the Republican Party of the early nineties–remember, this is the party that had Pat Buchanan give a major address at the party’s last major meeting (the 1992 convention). You’d have to offer some pretty strong evidence to convince me that in this document that line isn’t referring to Christianity, or at the very least JudeoChristianity (a term, as someone on these boards mentioned recently, used almost exclusively by Christians).
In other words, I’m not looking at it out of context: I think the appropriate context in which to understand that phrase is an historical context, taking into account the major players in the party and the party’s tendency both before and after the Contract to side with religious conservatives.
My interpretation wasn’t really designed to scare people; rather, it was a reflection of something that scared me at the time. Remember, I posted that as part of my praise for the CwA, saying that it’s a document the Democrats should emulate. However, I do believe that the original document was intended to imply a more Christian government, and it was intended to do so to attract voters, not to repel them. As you point out, the one-page document doesn’t mention religion overtly; it seems very likely to me that this was a rhetorical flourish aimed directly at the party’s religious conservatives.
Daniel
Shodan has been playing this game for a while, most notably for me in a pit thread on the death penalty after the sole witness recanted. He lied, distorted, called people names, freaked out, and ran away. I never really noticed the behavior before then, but since then it’s been pretty much constant.
Maybe. If so, it’s just as likely to have been a throw-away line to make the RR feel good inside. It has no operative meaning in the Contract.
I was responding to LHoD.
Actually, in this case it was my paraphrase. It’s no more of a stretch than LHoD’s paraphrase of the Contract. Whate else would a “government based on Christian values” do?
Encourage? Use the values as a guideline for correct behavior? Be inspired by?
If a person’s behavior is “based on Christian values” does that mean that are imposing them on me?
I’m really not worried about the paraphrase; I only pointed out Shodan’s weird one because it was funny. You’re right that if a government based on Christian values isn’t imposing Christian values, it’s not doing anything significantly Christian that I can see; that’s a fine paraphrase of me.
As something interesting to look at, consider the Christian Coalition’s Contract with the American Family, released in 1995. (I’m linking to an article about it because the original is no longer on the CC website; the text of the contract appears at the end of the article).
Specifically, check out how Ralph Reed described it:
That rhetoric sounds pretty similar to the phrase from the CwA, especially the last bit.
What does Gingrich say about them?
Now, you may want to argue that the Contract with the American Family really isn’t a case of the Christian Coalition looking to build a government based on Christian values. I suspect you don’t want to go down that path, but let me know if you do. If you agree with me that Ralph Reed has never shown great interest in separation of church and state, it’s worth noticing how Gingrich used the word “values” in talking about Reed’s document, and about his commitment to keep faith with the Christian Coalition.
Again, I’m considering the phrase in an historical context: at the time, I never heard anyone doubt that the CC was instrumental in achieving Republican victory in 1994, and I’ve never heard anyone doubt that this was intentional on both sides. As such, I think it’s extremely likely that my paraphrase accurately reflects what the audience is meant to understand, while allowing for a little bit of plausible deniability.
Daniel
No, but if the government is based on Christian values, it does. What does a government, particular the legislative branch do? It legislates.
[LHoD]: As I said earlier, I really don’t want to debate this here. If you don’t want to just agree to disagree, then you can say you won the argument. If you really, really want to debate this, open a GD thread, and I’ll be glad to do so there. I just chimed in to say that I thought that your paraphrase was not at all the same as AQA’s. I don’t want to have to keep popping back into this thread to debate the Contract with America.
Good enough–we can agree to disagree on this. Thanks for the discussion!
Daniel