I’m pretty sure that I said explicitly that Novak was not charged with treason. It was not my intent to solely list dissimilarities, but rather to both compare and contrast. For that matter, nobody who has ever posted on the SDMB has been charged with treason. The question is what is the overall context? The overall context of Novak’s life as far as I know is “ewww” offset by endowing a writing chair. The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Good line. Ever thought about writing plays?
Thanks, I think. 
I would only wryly observe that my addiction to reason has thus far made me a reasonably solid conservative on many issues. However, you’re right – I go where reason, and an informed conscience, take me.
It’s not really true at all. Your real goal here, seems to me, is to make the OP out to be a hypocrite.
:smack:
So you did. And I even quoted it.
Sorry about that. Belay my last.
No. My goal is to invite the OP and similarly-minded readers to examine ideas that they hold that are in tension with one another, and reach an appropriate conclusion.
Please don’t assume Bricker’s argument style in this thread is indicatvie of an approach taken by attorneys in general. It’s not. It’s the argument style of a criminal defense attorney, whose only real aim is to poke enough wholes in the prosecution’s case to give the fact finder reason to doubt. He’s not responsible for proving anything, just keeping the other side from doing so.
Let’s be honest, your goal is to say, “See, liberals are just as bad as conservatives!”
I read your post @166 to mean that your having a ‘personal idea’ meant that you believed you hadn’t shared it in the thread. If I misinterpreted you, my apologies.
So he’s like a Republican Congressman.
Then why have you been dishonest and dismissive? (i) Wilson had little Africa experience. (ii) Neither Novak nor Eslberg had the capacity to weigh the risks and rewards of their decisions. (iii) Any view that Novak was a traitor and Elsberg was not must be inconsistent. If that really was even a low priority goal, you’ve done a terrible job and been a very poor ambasador for your cause.
How very generous of you to share your superior intellect with us. :rolleyes:
Have you not yet seen that it is your own ideas that “are in tension with one another” (and what a charming way to say “hypocritical”) ? Much less to adjust them accordingly?
He’s the kind who gives the other 1 percent a bad name, huh?
Novak is dead but judging by this thread The Republican Fifth Column is alive and well.
Withdrawn; I only saw and read the first page of the thread and my question was answered later.
If it makes you feel any better i do feel pretty bad for the poor innocent brain cancer that died after its long struggle with Bob Novak.
But… what debate? There wasn’t a debate. There was someone posting something in the pit. Then you jumped in and said “hey, we’re having a debate. Your position is: X. Here are the guidelines. Go! What, you can’t respond to my telling points? That must be because your position in this debate that you’re in has no substance.”
True. I was employing some hyperbolic exaggeration. As, in fact, I did earlier in this very post.
This is tangential, but I kinda do, although not in the way I think you are talking about. When people are arguing about a topic that has a clear and direct impact on their own lives, I am willing to cut them at least some slack when it comes to their tone and emotions. If two people are arguing about stamp collecting and they start calling each other names, I think the fact that they lost their cool reflects very poorly on them. When two people are arguing about gay marriage, and one of them IS GAY AND WANTS TO GET MARRIED AND CAN’T, and that person loses his cool because he’s arguing about something which has an immediate and extremely important impact on the absolutely most important thing in his entire life, I am much more willing to be forgiving.
Told you it was a tangent.
Are you? From what to what?
The distinction I was trying to make is not whether or not gay marriage is in a special category, but that in that debate, it was clear from the start who had what positions, why they had them, THAT they had them, and that they were honestly trying to change other people’s minds. As opposed to this thread and the debating portions therein in which I honestly have lost track of who has clearly staked a claim to what positions and who you are trying to convince of what. It is hardly a coincidence that a fair number of people (including me, at least initially) had the reaction that you weren’t actually trying to convince anyone of anything, but simply trying to make people on “the other side” look like hypocrites.
As though there’s some moral failing associated with criminal defense?
Yes, but what WORKED in that thread? Lord knows there were plenty of people screaming at me, calling me a bigot and worse, and hurling all sorts of impassioned invective around.
None of that made me realize I was holding the wrong position. In fact, to the extent it had any effect, it was to dilute the persuasiveness of any reasoned posts made by the same posters that were yelling.
Way to miss the point, Counselor. :rolleyes:
Here’s a hint for you: The world is not a criminal courtroom.