I was under the impression that the outlook for Mozambique is actually pretty good, and should give hope for other African nations. After having decades of military dictatorship, they were able to have somewhat successful electoral and economic reforms. The elections have been considered democratic and the government is progressive, at least by African standards. I was there in 2002 and the sense of optimism was palpable. Economic growth has been strong and Mozambique was the new hotspot for tourism when I was there.
Some sources are ipso facto not worth debating. The argumentum ad hominem is not always wrong, and this is one of the times when it ain’t.
I’m suggesting you not debate the source, but instead attend to the facts.
The notion that a link on a site you don’t care for renders an article ineligible for discussion is stunningly lame - approximately the equivalent of the 4th grader with his hands over his ears saying “Blah blah I can’t hear you.”
On a brighter note, it’s good to see that the Trustees of the University of Massachusetts have a strong moral compass and have decided to hit Mugabe hard for his crimes:
UMass Trustees Unanimously Rescind Robert Mugabe Degree
No lame pulling of punches there.
Actually, I think it proves my point. Bush had some bad warning signs, and turned out to be a terrible president. Zuma has some even worse warning signs, and though things could still go either way, could turn out to be a catastrophic president.
I guess it must be a different David Horowitz than the one who made that “Fight Back” show back in the 1980s.
That’s ridiculous. I’m not exactly sure what David Horowitz is arguing here, but whatever it is must be a damn good argument, because you apparently can’t come up with any response on the merits.
By the way, Brainglutton, I would really like to know exactly why this David Horowitz person is on your sh*t list.
Let me put it another way: What is the Brainglutton standard for determining whether a person’s arguments can be summarily dismissed as you have apparently done with David Horowitz?
See here. Dude’s a crank.
And this calls for rational people to reject discussion of anything he approves of?
What exactly would be wrong with evaluating the linked article on its own merits?
Without commenting on the specific case, if a person has a pattern of using flawed or falsified information, I do think it can get to the point where you just reject anything they say instead of doing the research to show that this crop of facts and stats and such is also untrue or misrepresented. At that point you just figure that if what they are saying is actually true, someone more reliable will pick it up.
I don’t understand what your criteria are. What exactly is the problem here?
That David Horowitz was criticized in The Nation?
That he criticized certain prominent blacks?
That he pointed out that the white on black rate of rape is very different from the black on white rate?
That he (allegedly) spins things to support his viewpoint?
Sorry, but I don’t have the time to go through that long article and guess what the standard is.
But on the surface, it looks to me like he is he a pundit who is about on the same level as any of a dozen other pundits in 21st century america.
I suspect that you just don’t agree with him on a lot of issues and conclude that he must therefore be a “crank.”
I agree. If David Horowitz had such a history; and if he was making an argument based on this sort of information, then Brainglutton would have a point. But I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case.
Well, there’s an old saying that the greatest fool in the world can say it’s raining, but that doesn’t mean the sun is shining.
Humans routinely make mistakes. The standard for switching from “This guy has been unreliable in the past - better check his stuff carefully” to “This guy is beyond the pale - never read anything he approves of, and condemn those who do” ought to be very stringent indeed. If it isn’t trivially easy to show the falseness of any chosen example, it argues that the condemnation was uncalled for.
And to defend this on the basis that someone is a “crank” seems to fly in the face of the concept of rational debate.
While I don’t fault them for doing what little they could, I do have to wonder what took them so long. Mugabe was pretty obviously a monsterous tyrant years ago.