So I guess we really DIDN'T mean it this time

[mhendo]

I’d like to offer a comparative example here, if i may, and ask Jonathan Chance (and anyone else who wants to chime in) what he makes of it.

All bolding is mine.

Here is the exchange that led John Mace to open this thread:

@Der_Trihs

No; conservatives throughout history have done wrong things because they are evil people. I see no reason to care that they think that they are doing the right thing; that’s no consolation to the people being oppressed, exploited or slaughtered. Did it do any good for the blacks who were lynched during Jim Crow that their murderers thought they were in the right?

@Jonathan_Chance

Der Trihs, this post is unhelpful in the extreme and both hurts and stifles whatever debate may be possible. I appreciate that your political feelings are strong - many people’s are - but spouting hatred and such with a broad brush accomplishes nothing. Make a better, more reasoned, argument or avoid Great Debates entirely.

No warning issued but further examples will earn them.

@Der_Trihs

Why does conservatism get this special treatment? People condemn other people for everything from racism or communism to liberalism to feminism all the time; it’s only when it comes to conservatism that condemning people for their politics becomes taboo.

**Bending over backwards to pretend that conservatives are reasonable, well meaning people is a major factor in how bad off America has gotten. **Over and over again the Democrats and Obama and liberals & moderates of all sorts insist on pretending that conservatives mean well, and surely they can be talked into a compromise…and again and again the conservatives take everything they’ve been offered, give nothing in return and do everything they can to cause harm. Just how bad does conservatism have to get before it becomes OK to condemn it?

@Der_Trihs

**It’s not clear at all that my accusations are inaccurate; on the contrary, finding counterexamples is far harder **(which is why people trying to defend conservatism seldom try to come up with any, but just declare any criticism of conservatism unfair). And it’s humanly impossible to speak of large groups of people without using a “broad brush”; insisting that someone only criticize millions of people on a individual basis is just a means of saying that criticism of that group is forbidden.

Nor is condemning people for holding different beliefs either unusual or unethical; every time someone condemns someone for supporting racism, sexism, homophobia, or any number of other evils, that’s exactly what they are doing. The only question is if conservatism deserves to be added to that list, and I think it does.

@Jonathan_Chance

Der Trihs (God, I can never spell that properly)-

Again, I support your right to strongly held beliefs. However, it is your willingness to throw rhetorical bombs as a form of facile, non-thoughtful debate that I am moderating.

<snip>

In short, respect other people whose beliefs - both personal and political - differ from yours. There are certainly ways of getting your point across without being disrespectful. I encourage you to explore them.

And here is an exchange that Jonathan Chance had just this morning with a different poster:

@Jonathan_Chance

I’m right on the edge of closing this thing as being pointless.

Lekatt, debating is about more than bland assertions. While witnessing is inherently a part of GD usually it doesn’t include pages of non-debate.

Do it again and you’ll receive an infraction.

@lekatt

What does it matter that we put a man on the moon and still kill each other over most everything of value. That we hold prejudices against people not like us or think differently than we do. A man on the moon is not progress nor assembling a pile of money such a grand thing. All we did is crawl out of one box into another. In religion you were told to obey a certain doctrine and in science the same thing. Theories are not realities only guesses the same as church doctrine. Science says this and God says that, when will we learn.

@lekatt

I made my last post before reading this. I wondered how long before this would happen. Science assertions are OK but not spiritual. Shut it down as you wish. There were others who shared my views that were treated rudely and left. This is basically a atheist/science board and all others are not welcome.

@Jonathan_Chance

Bzzt. That earns the warning.

Focus, my friend. Make arguments, not assertions. People will pay more attention to you that way AND communication will happen.

I know that the two examples are not perfectly symmetrical. After the initial caution by the moderator, Der Trihs and lekatt took different strategies in responding. Der Trihs chose to argue that his “broad brush” characterizations were actually accurate, while lekatt simply made another “bland assertion.” But it seems to me that, in terms of actual contribution to the debate, and in terms of the spirit of honest debate, this is essentially a distinction without a difference.

Not only that, but lekatt explicitly made clear that he had made his most recent post before seeing the caution posted by the moderator. i find this very easy to believe, especially since he noted this before receiving his warning.

I’m just not seeing the substantive differences between these two cases, and i say that as someone who has far more in common with Der Trihs, politically and intellectually, than with lekatt. You offer essentially the same advice to each poster about what constitutes reasonable debate—advice i agree with, by the way—but only one gets a warning.

And this goes back to the issue of long-term patterns of behavior. You will probably argue that lekatt was filling that thread with bland assertions, while Der Trihs only made a single problematic post before you cautioned him. But, as others have pointed out ad nauseum, this debating style is par for the course from Der Trihs in GD threads. It’s not new behavior, any more than lekatt’s was.