Spiritus
Yes
Scylla
I was unaware that you were asking for a cite, as my French does not extend too far past “bonjour”. Next time try Hebrew or Yiddish.
My statement was not based on any particular cite, but an impression that you were deferential towards SM on a disproportunate number of occasions. Kind of hard to look up and compare, and in any event, there was no intention to put down. Substitute “esteems him greatly” if you like. Sorry.
SCYLLA, you make me laugh. 
Hmmm. I guess that means no cites.
Now get down and prostrate yourself before the great one and beg forgiveness, or I shall Ryanize thy future posts!
Izzy if you will allow. I know you and I have been on opposite sides of several debates, I don’t recall there being animosity. (perhaps you have a different recollection).
You linked several threads, making statements about Spiritus’ posting style. Linking a thread isn’t necessarily a good tactic for your challenge. When reviewing an entire thread, the reader is taking in the whole thing at the same time, and will walk away with a different viewpoint, often, then the participants may have had during the thread. there’s an ebb and a flow to how those debates go, some more politely than others.
In a written medium, it is especially important to be very precise in what we say and how we say it. (for example, you seemed to have thought I was being snide in this thread, when I thought I was merely making a gentle point that the first uncited allegation came from a drive by poster and not the two or three embattled veterans in the stand off).
You have your supporters in this thread, even people who are not in agreement with your OP, see you as being even handed for the most part, and yet they believe the same of Spiritus. How can this be???
Perhaps, if we could see (by your cutting and pasting) the specific comments you felt displayed the qualities you attribute? Then Spiritus would have a chance to make a specific rebuttal.
It is nearly impossible to defend oneself against an allegation that “in this 3 pages of statements, you weren’t fair”, and it isn’t a fair charge to make, IMHO.
wring
I actually think the opposite is true. The nature of my accusation (the gameplaying one, not the dishonesty one) is such that the entire thread must be considered. It can frequently develop that a given post can be interpreted varying ways if interpreted in a vacuum, but if the entirety of the thread is considered - if you look at the post that it was in response to, and the post that that post was in response to etc. only one is reasonable.
In any event, I’ve said my say. The evidence is out there, and anyone can decide what they believe to be the more reasonable explanation. Evidently, people believe Mundi’s. You win some and you lose some, and tommorow is another day.
But I do wish to correct your impression that I thought you were being snide in the thread that you linked. This is not the case. The reason I suggested that you might have meant your post to be humerous (if that’s what is giving you the impression) is not because I was trying to belittle your post - it was because I genuinely considered that possiblity. You did not clearly specify what the point was to your conclusion, I did not see what it might be, and you had chosen a humerous heading for your post, so I considered the possiblity that you might have meant your post to be a wry aside.
I guess it gets easier with practive, eh Izzy?
Thank you for providing yet another example of your unwillingness to admit that any interpretation other than your own might be valid. You will declare me a liar rather than admit that you are not absolutely correct about what I remember!! Is this your idea of intellectual honesty? If so, I am proud to be found lacking.
Does it hurt your feelings so much to think that someone might not have found your posts memorable despite exchanges “totaling over 20 posts”? (Did you really go to the trouble of counting them?) Is it such a blow to your ego that I did not recall these threads that the only way for you to find solace is to declare me a lier? How pathetic.
People that I respect have posted in this thread and mentioned that they respect you, too, so I can only assume that your normal standard of conduct is not quite so devoid of character. I am not always nice. I am not always kind to ideas that I find lacking. I have been attacked before on those grounds, and I have no doubt that I will be again. Those are disputes of style or personality. They do not bother me.
You crossed a different line. You leveled a charge of dishonesty, and you supported it with a wounded sense of self-importance and a misrepresentation. (Or do you still claim that our dispute in the election thread did not stem from your assertion that a mere accusation lent credence to an argument? A stance which, I must congratulate you, you have been quite consistent in applying here.) I said before (in the thread which prompted your OP) I do not intend to “get used” to being called a liar. I meant it. If you cannot support the charge with better than you have shown here, I ask you to recant it.
It would be the intellectually honest thing to do.
Izzy:
I would raise the possibility that, none of us being the ultimate in pellucid communicators, it is quite possible that SM may have simply misapprehended what you were trying to convey. And I do not say this to cast aspersions on your posting style, but because I have from time to time had exactly the same problem. IMHO you sometimes make tacit assumptions of what you believe to be shared viewpoints or groundwork in composing posts that lead to a statement that is obviously clear to you but remains opaque or at least difficult to garner the meaning from to other posters.
For example, two small exchanges in the “why is homosexuality considered a sin” thread. First, I had used what I believed to be an example of rabbinic fencing as an illustration of a point I was trying to make, purposefully to “neutralize” the point from the judgmental-Christian aspect and to show how a similar faith system adds to the written text to get to its interpretation of it. Since rabbinic fencing specifically and intentionally adds to the written text, I cannot see how that could be considered offensive. Zev, of course, corrected me that the point in question was, by rabbinic rules, considered to be more expansive than the verbatim text would indicate, with oral tradition providing the interpretation which the Talmud adds. This was information I had not had, and welcomed Zev providing, as it clarified my understanding of Jewish practice. But you seemed to take offense at my raising it at all.
My initial reaction to your comment was, “What, you have to be a Jew to be legitimately interested in how Jewish tradition interprets the Old Testament?” I bypassed that and responded to Zev, answering your question to me in passing as part of my response to him. (Which I hope you picked up on – I try not to let points addressed to me go unanswered, out of courtesy to fellow posters, and only now realize that I had not flagged that as also responding to you.)
Then, later, you drew a distinction to Hastur on the difference between an individual having what you considered a failing and a group advocating the acceptance of the same. I honestly did not see the point at which your distinction was driving, although it was clear that you evidently saw a difference in practice in how an individual should react to the two.
I raise these, not to flame you for foggy posting, but to illustrate the point that sometimes what is very clear in the mind of the person posting may not be so in the eye of the reader. And if I have had this problem with your posts twice, and (very unhumbly) consider myself as one of the more skillful people at understanding what someone coming from a different perspective is getting at, then I would suggest that there may be a real problem of lack of clarity in what you are saying – not faulting your skills, but rather flagging the question of whether you are not incorrectly assuming as shared to others the assumptions underlying what you actually write.
I say this with great diffidence, because I have come to respect what you have to say for the most part, and do occasionally find the opacity (to me) of one remark or another to be baffling in someone who is usually quite clear.
But that may be at the root of the problems provoking the exchange above. The thoughts are offered in that spirit, not with any intent to fault you or flame you.
Here’s my question and comment: Why would you care if people disagree with your opinion of SM? Or any other poster? This tremendous obsession that people have with being accepted is very puzzling. To the extent that you believe your views to be true, you should maintain them without regard to whether you agree this or that poster. And to the extent that you are unsure if you are right, than you should reexamine your beliefs in any event.
The only legitimate question that I can think of is that you are unsure if you are independently biased in some other way, which is shaping your beliefs, and are asking for an opinion as to whether people have seen evidence of this. But if you are simply asking people to decide whether your beliefs are right or wrong, I think you either lack confidence in yourself or are wasting your time.
:)[sub]sorry[/sub]
Spiritus…
Since everybody[sub]gadarene[/sub] seems to know MY voting preference, would it be fair to say that I can keep feeling self-important?
To finish off this post…
Izzy, I think that some of the more liberal posters on the board might be having a slightly stressful time right now. This whole Clinton taking money for pardons thing, and the possibility of the Rodhams going to jail is hard on them. Their hero no longer has an inJustice Dept. to clean-up after him and hush things up. The man couldn’t even last a week before he was under investigation. I thought RTFirefly’s pit thread about Milo was a little out of charachter, and I think SM taking this to the pit was a little strange.
But hey…if we were all always nice, polite and predictable, this place would boring:)
Did you actually read the thread that I opened? It is in the PIT because it was a direct invitation to another poster that had the potential to draw an insulting response. Which forum do you think would be appropriate?
The one who moved this exchange into acrimonious levels was IzzyR. Unless, of course, you feel that calling someone an “outright liar” is not acrimonious.
Here here! And a standing ovation to that as well!
This is a curiosity of the SDMB (And hey, folks in general) that has always puzzled me. Popularity of opinion means only that an opinion is popular, not that it is correct… I have had more than one discussion here where a poster has tried to impress upon me the fatal flaw of my view by pointing out that I seemed to be the only one who held it. To which I reply…“So?”.
Many, if not most, great ideas and beliefs started in a single mind. Not that any of mine qualify as either great or original, I’m just making the point that standing alone in one’s belief proves nothing about the value or truth of the belief.
stoid
PS: Which doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to close one’s mind to learning new information, of course.
Well, SM gets my respect mainly because he can accrately and quickly get to the root of flaws in people’s arguments. Others do, of course, as well—but this is about him.
Anyway, I’d like to think that I get something out of it. The Ayn Rand thread was when I was a newbie, and I would like to think that I’m mor reasonable about quite a lot of things.
Some day I’ll start a new AR thread and woe be all you socialists 
Really, though, I just need to stay out of the economic threads. Just so damn tempting…
Polycarp
Your point is well taken. I am cognizant of the general issue that you describe. I often try to preclude what I feel might be misconceptions about what I mean, but it can be difficult to project what specific misconception someone might have. Adding to the problem, no doubt, is the fact that I usually post from work, and this imposes time constraints on my posts. If, as you seem to indicate, you have a greater problem with my posts than with those of others, I wonder if it might stem from the fact that I come from a different background, and am furthermore often defending views that are not widely popular. Or maybe its just a failing of mine. In any event, it’s something to think about.
But I don’t know if I agree with your application to my judgement in this particular case. Among other things, I would note that I have debated with many posters, and can thus distinguish one style from another.
I will address your Gay/religious issues in that thread.
Freedom
Touché. (I’ve seen you use this technique before, and I liked it better the first time).
Seriously though, I don’t think there’s a comparison between the two instances. Here we are discussing the truth or falsehood of an issue. My point in your thread concerned discussing whether it mattered if certain viewpoints fit a certain label - they can fit the label or not fit it irrespective of whether they are true.
Stoid
Your statement that “that standing alone in one’s belief proves nothing about the value or truth of the belief” is true inasmuch as the value or truth of a belief will not change based on the opinion of others. But the likelihood of that belief being true may well be affected. All things being equal, the truth of an idea is a reason for it to gain acceptance, and if alot of people have considered the evidence and rejected your idea, you might reconsider the likelihood that you are right. Of course you might reconsider and decide that you are, but it might be with a lesser degree of confidence than you would have if you had garnered some support. (Another factor is the qualifier “all things being equal” - sometimes all things are not equal).
All this is not applicable in a case in which you are not alone in your belief, but merely happen to be the only one who shares that belief in a particular discussion (e.g. a liberal debating a group of conservatives or vice versa). In this case, the happenstance of what your discussion partners believe has no bearing at all on the likelihood of your beliefs being true or false. Though you might have to make a strategic decision if and how to debate it.
Of course you did, you had a slightly more objective position then. I found that hastur didn’t appreciate all that much either:)
I found our op’s very similiar.
Let’s just say…I recognize your viewpoint, and the information you used to arrive at it; I just disagree for these reasons:
IZZY
Freedom
What, no reply to me? I understand that you have apparently lost any general interest in discourse with me, but you did open this thread in the PIT specifically to call me a liar. You defended that position with what you felt was specific evidence. I responded to each point you raised. Do I not even get the courtesy of a reply?
Hmm, I guess the answeer to that is self-evident.
I find myself bizarrely fascinated by this OP. I feel like a gawker at the scene of an accident. You have actually mad a public declaration, and maintained it in the face of unanimous disagreement, that I am a liar because I said I didn’t remember you.
Oh my, I just have to say that again.
My lie was saying "I honestly don’t recall any particular disagreements with you on this board, though I do not doubt they might have occurred."
You, in your unfailing belief that your posts are unforgetable, are willing to declare yourself a more accurate reporter of my memory than I. How tragi-comic. The SDMB as filmed by the Coen brothers. “Hell, he says he doesn’t remember, but I know his mind better than anyone. There’s no way he could have forgotten me. Turn to the right!”
I have to ask (with the expectation that you will again refuse to answer) has your detailed knowledge of the particulars of my consciousness supplied you with any possible motive for my saying that I didn’t remember you? What possible benefit could I see in such a ruse? Was I ashamed of our previous exchanges? Was I afraid to admit that we had disagreed months before? Was I slyly trying to manipulate public sympathy by pretending to early senility? Normally I would not ask someone else to interpret my internal thought process, but you have shown such supreme confidence in expressing your views in this area that I look forward (perhaps in vain) to your response.
Spiritus Mundi, trapped in the theater of the absurd.
Freedom
Hey, I got your quotes but your “reasons” are a bit unclear. “:)”?.. 
!
The similarity is superficial. In my case, the whole issue is whether the idea presented is true or false. To the extent that the opinion of others has a bearing on this, it is worth considering. In your instance, your rationale for believing what you believe is independent of whether those beliefs might fall under the category of one label or another. So whereas it is true that the opinions of others might have a bearing on whether the label does or does not apply, whether the label applies or not should itself be independent of your belief. IOW, even if everyone else is right and you are a bigot, what’s the difference?
Where were you when I started a separate thread about the subject? It died a pretty quick death. 
Well, I got my apology. When it comes down to it, that’s all that really matters.
SM
There is no absurd going on here. It can be tough and trying to be a conservative kind of guy around here sometimes. You DDHVers drive us crazy:). When we act a little irrational, show some understanding, and cut me some slack for wanting to throw a tiny bit of support Izzy’s way.
Izzy…
I was just looking for input because it seemed like I was alone in my opinons. I made it pretty clear that I was not going to change my mind just because of other people’s opinions, but I would think about them if they were contradictory to my own. Self-examination.
Plus…I wasn’t going to ignore a charge of homophobia. I think a creeping charge like that can be pretty deadly if it goes unanswered. Now I don’t have to walk around on tip toes wondering if there is this issue out there waiting to explode on me.
It’s probably a similiar motivation to why SM had to address the charge of being a liar. Somethings need to be handled immediately and head on.
…and about that thread…
I’m afraid I never saw it. Link?
It is not your position that I find absurd. Are you saying that you find no absurdity in Izzy’s assertion that his determination of what I remember is infallible?
[sub]BTW, I am not a Democrat.[/sub]
Izzy neglected yet another opportunity to respond directly to me. Well, unless of course it took him more than 20 minutes to compose his paragraph to Freedom. Or if he was delayed between refreshing the thread and hitting reply. Hmmmm, too soon to tell. I guess I will just wait some more.
Come on, Izzy, demonstrate your dedication to intellectual honesty.
Freedom: link
Spiritus
I am not intending to respond to you in this matter. I thought this was clear, but in case it was not, let this be your notice.
I indicated earlier that I was not going to pursue the matter in the face of public opinion. But beyond that, I have no desire to engage you in debate, as I said out the outset.
I could theoretically go through your post rebutting point by point. You would no doubt counter-rebut, and we’d be back where we started. Unless I responded again etc. etc. Been there, done that. I agree that it is not right to fling out an accusation without providing the basis for this accusation. But having done so, I don’t think there is an obligation to either defend this viewpoint to the ends of the earth or concede. I am willing to let you have the last word, and I’m sure you will avail yourself of this in your inimitable style.