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Author Topic: Speaking of Bill Clinton
Dagonee
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quote:
Yet instead of actually criticizing them, you spend your time taking me to task for how I criticize them.
quote:
Given that, I submit that a more useful approach than criticising criticisms that you consider easy to discount might be to make criticisms which are harder to discount.
I sympathize with Rakeesh's reluctance to do this. He might have different reasons, but I interpret the less accurate criticisms as a possible attempt to score political points rather than discuss the actual issues. I also fear being seen to implicitly support such criticisms and to provide fodder for spreading them, something that happens even if I qualify where I agree with such criticisms.
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Dagonee
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quote:
Apparently, it is. So I'll ask again:

Do you think that 9/11 is sufficient justification to make the changes we have and are making with regards to secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, wire tapping without warrant, torture, and holding people without trial?

With respect to this question, for example, I wouldn't answer until the changes under discussion are actually defined. This would require agreement about what the policies were with regard to these areas prior to 9/11 and what the policies are now, both of which I have very good reason to believe we disagree on.
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MrSquicky
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quote:
Actually, although I don't pay as much attention as I used to to Card's columns-well, the Internet in general really-I can't be sure when I say this, but Card hasn't much commented on the entire civil rights aspect of Bush's presidency, has he? He has been almost exclusively focused, from what I remember, on Bush's foreign policy agenda and actions.

Unless I'm wrong about that, I think it's pretty hysterical to start imprinting all of these hated (yes, hated) beliefs onto Card, if he hasn't remarked on them yet.

See, I don't agree with this. OSC has often expressed fulsome praise of President Bush and frequently risen to his defense. I don't know that he's ever raised any but mild criticisms of the President of his administration.

After a certain point, silence on prominent matters of a type you regularly commented on in other essays in the face of very frequent praise-filled essays (OSC has liked George Bush to the next coming of Abraham Lincoln for Pete's sake) is reasonably interpreted as consent or at the very least willful silence. Likewise, if someone often claims to stand for a principle, but only seems to stand for that principle in defense of specific groups and people, it's reasonable to doubt his commitment to that principle.

If you're discussing, say, the Civil War, and you take the side of the Confederates, defending many of their actions and likening them to a near ideal civilization while avoiding any mention of the whole slavery thing, I don't think that you're behaving responsibly.

If a lawyer takes a serious of unpopular cases, for say white supremicists, but claims it's because he believes that everyone deserves representation, I think it really damages his claim for motivation if he constantly ignores and even refuses people in near the exact same situation but who are black.

To me, silence is at least sometimes not merely inaction, but a choice of inaction. Choosing to do or say nothing is still a choice, often an irresponsible or even immoral one.

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MrSquicky
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Dag,
I think you must have missed my acknowledgement I was wrong in the Novak thing, but I did make it. I'll make it again here. I was grossly misinformed in that case. Of couse, I didn't actually come close to approaching OSC's level, but, nonetheless, public faults generally should be met with public apologies.

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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:
Apparently, it is. So I'll ask again:

Do you think that 9/11 is sufficient justification to make the changes we have and are making with regards to secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, wire tapping without warrant, torture, and holding people without trial?

With respect to this question, for example, I wouldn't answer until the changes under discussion are actually defined. This would require agreement about what the policies were with regard to these areas prior to 9/11 and what the policies are now, both of which I have very good reason to believe we disagree on.
Do you think that there haven't been changes since 9/11? Do you think those changes if any are good? Do you think that there may have been changes that are not good, but that people aren't using 9/11 to justify them to the American people? How do you think we disagree?
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Amanecer
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I think this whole thread is tacky. If any other forum member was being picked apart in this way, I think you'd see an outcry from the forum. If you want to attack OSC, I think it would be a lot better to do it at sake or somewhere else. It's hard to blame OSC for ceasing to post on this side of the board.
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MrSquicky
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There's a much wider issue here than OSC's failings in this particular instance. That there were many unjust attacks on Bill Clinton's attempts to deal with al Queda and Osama bin Laden is a relevant issue now.

Holding up OSC, a superior writer who has told us that he obviously considers issues much more we do, as an example of this, pointing out the actual words he used, illustrates the type of things President Clinton was met with.

OSC is also one of the many, many pundits who have neither apologized for, nor even mentioned the falseness of their castigation of President Clinton. He hasn't - yet, anyway - gone with the Republican party line of trying to blame it all on President Clinton, though there are plenty of people doing that right now.

So, I considered this important.

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MrSquicky
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Amanecer,
I started this thread with only OSC's own words. How is that tacky?

edit: If using someone's own words, without any comment, constitutes an attack, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the problem is with that person or at least their words, rather than with me.

I can't agree that OSC should be able to interact here without being faced with the things he said. To me, that's treating him much different than any other poster here.

[ September 29, 2006, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]

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TomDavidson
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quote:
If any other forum member was being picked apart in this way, I think you'd see an outcry from the forum.
In all honesty, I doubt it. In fact, I know for a fact it's not true, since several people have reposted things that other people posted in the past to demonstrate perceived inconsistencies.

quote:
I interpret the less accurate criticisms as a possible attempt to score political points rather than discuss the actual issues.
Hrm. This explains a lot. From my POV, most of these attempts to "score political points" are attempts to discuss the actual issues; the attempts are born of frustration with the issues themselves. It might be easier to focus narrowly on the specific problematic elements of each issue than you think, once you go to the trouble of pointing out what you think they are.
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twinky
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
From my POV, most of these attempts to "score political points" are attempts to discuss the actual issues; the attempts are born of frustration with the issues themselves.

That's my view as well. I tried to make a post expressing that a few minutes ago, but couldn't come up with the phrase I was looking for. This is a good way to describe it.
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MrSquicky
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I think it can be either or in fact both; much like objecting to simplistic characterizations can either be an attempt to defend what was being attacked or a desire for the attacks to be more effective and grounded in what is true.

I do know that when I object to simplistic attacks when I agree with the larger point, I generally do more than refute the attack, especially if it's something I'm very concerned about.

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TomDavidson
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IMO, when objecting to a simplistic characterization not because you disagree with the implications but rather because you found it ineffective, an ideal response is:

"I consider criticism X to be weak. A better observation is Y, the ramifications of which are just as troublesome."

Otherwise, all you've done is counter criticism X, doing direct damage to a broader argument you actually support.

I'm not saying that such counters aren't useful for both practical and ideological reasons; I'm saying that if you really believe an issue is important and believe your side should "win," you can make more of a contribution to your side by actually providing them with the better arguments that you believe exist in lieu of merely insisting that such arguments are out there somewhere.

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Dagonee
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quote:
I think you must have missed my acknowledgement I was wrong in the Novak thing, but I did make it. I'll make it again here. I was grossly misinformed in that case. Of couse, I didn't actually come close to approaching OSC's level, but, nonetheless, public faults generally should be met with public apologies.
Yes, I did miss it. I apologize.

I disagree about the severity of the accusation you were making, though.

quote:
Do you think that there haven't been changes since 9/11? Do you think those changes if any are good? Do you think that there may have been changes that are not good, but that people aren't using 9/11 to justify them to the American people? How do you think we disagree?
Why don't you answer some of these questions from your perspective? This is starting to sound like an interrogation.

I think there have been changes. I suspect we disagree about the extent of those changes. Therefore, if I say "I <favor/oppose> the changes related to X" you will not have an accurate perception of what it is I favor or oppose.

Suffice it to say I favor some changes, oppose others, think some of the ones I oppose are far worse than it seems many Bush critics do, and think some of the ones I oppose are far less worse than it seems many Bush critics do.

I'm not going to give general summaries on particular issues until I know we are discussing the same changes.

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MrSquicky
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Heck, even if you don't necessarily agree with them, but realize that there is some valid criticisms and consider discussion of the issue important, you may want to show them what a more sophisticated argument might look like.
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Amanecer
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quote:
I started this thread with only OSC's own words. How is that tacky?
I think it's tacky because it demonstrates hostility, not a desire to engage the person in conversation. OSC is both a public figure and a forum member. Here you are approaching the topic like you would for any public figure. I don't think that's appropriate when he is also a forum member. Hence my suggestion that it would be more appropriate elsewhere.

quote:
In fact, I know for a fact it's not true, since several people have reposted things that other people posted in the past to demonstrate perceived inconsistencies.
Sure, people have in the course of conversation brought up inconsistencies in what a person has said to that person. I don't know that I've ever seen a thread randomly started, without some discussion with that person immediately preceding it, for the sole purpose of pointing out a person's inconsistencies. If such a thing was done, I think it would be interpreted as malicious.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
Suffice it to say I favor some changes, oppose others, think some of the ones I oppose are far worse than it seems many Bush critics do, and think some of the ones I oppose are far less worse than it seems many Bush critics do.
The thing is, reading this, I understand it on general principles and yet still come away with absolutely no idea of what you actually think about any given issue. [Smile]

----------

quote:
I think it's tacky because it demonstrates hostility, not a desire to engage the person in conversation.
It's worth noting that in my direct personal experience, expressing a desire to engage OSC in conversation on a specific point of disagreement is apparently enough to justify future accusations of crazed, destructive fanboyism. So perhaps it's best that people who disagree with him do so at arm's length, as if he were a random figure of punditry.
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Dagonee
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quote:
I do know that when I object to simplistic attacks when I agree with the larger point, I generally do more than refute the attack, especially if it's something I'm very concerned about.
I make a point of not doing this, for the very simple reason that I won't place myself at the rhetorical disadvantage this creates.

And I mean that from the perspective of one thinks that real rhetoric is essential to the discovery of truth, not from an "I want to win" perspective.

quote:
From my POV, most of these attempts to "score political points" are attempts to discuss the actual issues; the attempts are born of frustration with the issues themselves.
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you are acknowledging that inaccurate or over-general characterizations are an understandable product of frustration, I might agree. But that doesn't change my mind about the futility of enganing prior to the frustration being replaced with a desire to exhange accurate ideas.

quote:
Otherwise, all you've done is counter criticism X, doing direct damage to a broader argument you actually support.
The damage is done by the original statement, not the correction of it. If criticism X is not a genuine criticism, then damaging it does not damage the broader argument.
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kmbboots
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For example:

I think that holding anyone without trial for more than a couple of days as we have been doing is contrary to the ideals of this country. Whether or not such things have been done before.

I think that 9/11 has been used to justify this.

I think that listening in on the phone conversations of citizens without a warrant or judicial review is wrong whether or not we have done so before.

I think that 9/11 has been used to justify that.

I think that 9/11 has been used to justify the use of torture in interrogating subjects. I think that this is wrong - whether or not it has been done before.

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Amanecer
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quote:
So perhaps it's best that people who disagree with him do so at arm's length, as if he were a random figure of punditry.
So why not do that somewhere where he actually is a random figure?
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Dagonee
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quote:
The thing is, reading this, I understand it on general principles and yet still come away with absolutely no idea of what you actually think about any given issue.
I didn't intend that you should.

There are issues you know my opinion on: abortion, I'm betting. The detention of citizens without full criminal charges should be another. Civil gay marriage. Spiritual marriage.

An opinion is a powerful thing. I try not to let one out until I know it's not going to do something bad.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
I think it's tacky because it demonstrates hostility, not a desire to engage the person in conversation. OSC is both a public figure and a forum member. Here you are approaching the topic like you would for any public figure. I don't think that's appropriate when he is also a forum member. Hence my suggestion that it would be more appropriate elsewhere.
You just said that OSC doesn't post on this side. He's a member of this forum, but he very rarely interacts with it, even on the other side, except through the indirect method of posting his articles. Are you saying that we shouldn't discuss his articles, except in taking the very, very off chance that he respond to the discussion being personally directed to him.

Because I don't agree with that. Nor do I agree that if we had another poster who almost never posted, but wrote articles that were linked to from this site that people found interesting to discuss, that I would treat their articles only in a personal manner.

I especially don't agree that going off to some other site to talk about OSC behind not just his back but the backs of most of the forum participants is not incredibly tacky. If you think it's okay to go to another site to say bad thigns about someone on this forum, you and I have very different ideas as to what is tacky.

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Dagonee
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quote:
I think that holding anyone without trial for more than a couple of days as we have been doing is contrary to the ideals of this country. Whether or not such things have been done before.
This opinion needs to be reconciled with the idea of prisoners of war. They are not tried, and are held for a longish time. I can't envision this not being necessary at times.

quote:
I think that listening in on the phone conversations of citizens without a warrant or judicial review is wrong whether or not we have done so before.
I think that searching citizens without a warrant is generally wrong. However, I also recognize that there are times when we as a society consider it to be acceptable or even desirable. A citizen returning from Mexico can be searched. Almost everything that crosses our international border can be.

quote:
I think that 9/11 has been used to justify the use of torture in interrogating subjects. I think that this is wrong - whether or not it has been done before.
I agree with the sentence. We probably disagree about what is torture and what isn't.
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Amanecer
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quote:
Are you saying that we shouldn't discuss his articles, except in taking the very, very off chance that he respond to the discussion being personally directed to him.
Not at all. I see his articles as a form of communication that are free to be commented on. If you had made your comments in response to a recent article and then linked the old article, that would seem a lot more appropriate than bringing this up at what seems like random.

quote:
I especially don't agree that going off to some other site to talk about OSC behind not just his back but the backs of most of the forum participants is not incredibly tacky. If you think it's okay to go to another site to say bad thigns about someone on this forum, you and I have very different ideas as to what is tacky.
I see your point, but I think that by going to another site it's then somewhat more acceptable to treat OSC like a completely impersonal public figure who can be attacked at random. I do not think that is appropriate here.
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kmbboots
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Do you think that your attitude was changed because of 9/11?

The specific issue I am addressing in this thread is that "9/11" is being used by politicians as a magic word to justify a lot of things that I (and you may not agree) think are dangerous.

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Dagonee
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quote:
Do you think that your attitude was changed because of 9/11?
Yes. For example, it forced the consideration - consideration not yet completed - of how to apply the principle "prisoner of war" to informal combatants.
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kmbboots
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We had informal combatants before.
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MrSquicky
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Amancer,
I already explained why I made my comments:
quote:
There's a much wider issue here than OSC's failings in this particular instance. That there were many unjust attacks on Bill Clinton's attempts to deal with al Queda and Osama bin Laden is a relevant issue now.

Holding up OSC, a superior writer who has told us that he obviously considers issues much more we do, as an example of this, pointing out the actual words he used, illustrates the type of things President Clinton was met with.

OSC is also one of the many, many pundits who have neither apologized for, nor even mentioned the falseness of their castigation of President Clinton. He hasn't - yet, anyway - gone with the Republican party line of trying to blame it all on President Clinton, though there are plenty of people doing that right now.

So, I considered this important.

If you don't agree with this reasoning, there it is, ready for you to say why you don't agree with it. I would, however, appreciate it if you didn't characterize it as an attack at random without at least acknowledging that I did post my reasons for why I thought it was relevant.

edit: Thinking about it, I think it's possible that you weren't aware of the recent stuff with Bill Clinton, nor the thread we had about it.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
Yes. For example, it forced the consideration - consideration not yet completed - of how to apply the principle "prisoner of war" to informal combatants.
And this to me has been one of the major problems I've seen with the Bush administration's approach to the somewhat undefined areas like domestic wiretapping or informal detainees.

If you're going out into unknown territory that you think is very important, it is incumbent on you to develop a system that ensures that the lines are going to be respected and enforced. It does not give you the license to do whatever the heck you feel like. The domestic wiretapping is a good example of this. If there are cases where the already broad FISA provisions don't fit, then you design and get authorized a system that includes some sort of oversight and explicitly bypasses FISA. You don't just decide to ignore FISA and engage in what is essentially a program that, because there is no oversight, allows you to spy on anyone you want.

Likewise, with the detainees, I can understand that this need developed without enough time to have a system in place for it. But having people sit for 3 years with the idea that "we can do whatever we want to them without any vetted system in place" is very wrong to me. If the situation develops, I think it is important to pursue, espeditiously as possible, a system for dealing with it that is consistent with our laws and values. If you're going to make an arguement that they are not POWs but also not going to be charged with any crime, you need to get a new designation and way of dealing with people with this designation passed through Congress.

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Don Domande
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Gonna jump in and jump out, 'cuz I don't have time to follow this all that much.

I did find the OP a bit deceptive, because all that was posted was the followup to another group of statements that pointed out that Clinton had never shown much interest in using military force to address terrorist attacks or other world events. This puts those statements into a whole differenct context that does not make his written opinions after 9/11 that out-of-character:

quote:
We are at war, by the way. That's the thing that everybody seems to miss. This was not a terrorist attack. Those who planned the attack might also have planned terrorist attacks like the bombing of the U.S. embassies in East Africa, but this attack, at least, followed the rules of war.

They attacked a military target. They attacked soldiers in uniform. They achieved surprise, at the cost of their own soldiers dying in performing the mission. But if this had been an operation by, say, Navy SEALs against an enemy power, we would regard it as a successful and legitimate military operation meant to unsettle and demoralize the enemy.

So when our news media persist in calling the attackers "terrorists," that leads us to a dangerous mindset. It makes us complacent -- this is a matter for police, we think, because we're dealing with brutal criminals, and our goal should be to arrest them and bring them to justice.

But in war, your goal is not to arrest the enemy. Your goal is to destroy the enemy's will and capability to fight.

In war, you don't have a trial. You find the enemy, you bring superior force to bear, and you win however you can. That's what they're doing. It's insane that we're not taking them seriously.

Sending an unescorted ship to refuel in a port where any rational person would recognize dire and immediate threat -- that's like the Israeli military sending their tanks to gas stations in Syria for a fill-up.


Then, the text that immediately proceeds the original post:

quote:

I think it's time that we remembered Bill Clinton's track record on valuing human life.

Let's start with his utter disregard for the weeks and months of slaughter in Rwanda. A sovereign nation. An internal matter. The U.S. couldn't intervene. Might lose a U.S. soldier, and after all, it was just a bunch of tribesmen killing each other with machetes. We can't police the world, right?

Bosnia. Uh-oh. This time it was Serbia backing their co-"Christians" in the territory of a breakaway nation. We watched as they herded thousands of Bosnian Muslim men into a stadium. We knew they were going to murder them all. But once again, Bill Clinton did nothing. Not the policeman of the world, yadda yadda.

Rwanda and Bosnia showed the world that we have learned nothing at all since the Holocaust. It not only can happen again, it has happened, and we stood and watched.


It actually is pretty prophetic in a way - he states that we are in a war, whether or not we are actually awake to that fact. The whole criticism of Clinton seems to be that it wasn't UNTIL the Lewinski affair that he took any steps to address it, and did so in a rather haphazard fashion.

Agree or not, that is a far cry from changing your tune when a new president is in the White House that you like.

Just sayin'

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TomDavidson
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quote:
An opinion is a powerful thing. I try not to let one out until I know it's not going to do something bad.
As long as you understand that other people will always be justly upset by your limited participation in conversations of this sort, that's fine. What isn't sensible is a reaction of "why are you getting upset when I'm just correcting the specifics of this opinion, which I may or may not agree with and may or may not think is important, and which I almost certainly will not help you accurately restate."

If you're okay with that, no problem. But I've seen you complain about it before.

quote:
The damage is done by the original statement, not the correction of it.
I disagree almost entirely. That's only true if flawed arguments are unable to achieve valid ends, which is demonstrably false. Undermining a flawed argument does not in and of itself advance the cause that argument was intended to support; in fact, in practice, the opposite is generally true.
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MrSquicky
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quote:
I did find the OP a bit deceptive, because all that was posted was the followup to another group of statements that pointed out that Clinton had never shown much interest in using military force to address terrorist attacks or other world events. This puts those statements into a whole differenct context that does not make his written opinions after 9/11 that out-of-character:
Yu're making a faulty assumption as to what I was trying to say. I have frequently made many statements regarding this, none of which has said anything like what you are talking about. If I'm to be judged deceptive in pursuit of a point, I would ask that it's the point that I've repeated said I was trying to make and not one you've invented for me.
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Dagonee
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quote:
We had informal combatants before.
Yes, but not in a manner that caused me to think about it. So what do you think is the proper way to detain people captured in combat who are not actually prisoners of war? For that matter, do you think it's acceptable to keep prisoners of war absent trial?

quote:
As long as you understand that other people will always be justly upset by your limited participation in conversations of this sort, that's fine
Why is this just? I'm annoyed enough by the near-constant miststating of legal issues to comment. Why should people be upset that I choose to comment on that and not other things?

Especially when things are demanded of me that aren't given. For example, I've been asked a dozen or so questions in this thread by someone who hasn't answered several or most of them.

You, especially, are incredibly guilty of that, although not in this thread. Beyond that, very often, when I have responded to one of your interrogations, you simply ignopre what I've said and never acknowledge it.

quote:
What isn't sensible is a reaction of "why are you getting upset when I'm just correcting the specifics of this opinion, which I may or may not agree with and may or may not think is important, and which I almost certainly will not help you accurately restate."
Why isn't that sensible? Why are you getting upset. I've NEVER seen a satisfactory answer to this question. Even now, you've simply said "it's just that they're upset" without bothering to explain why.

quote:
If you're okay with that, no problem. But I've seen you complain about it before.
I've complained far more about people who draw inaccurate conclusions about my views. I've been even far more vehement when, after I correct those conclusions, someone insists on acting as if the correction didn't occur and reiterates the conclusions.

quote:
I disagree almost entirely. That's only true if flawed arguments are unable to achieve valid ends, which is demonstrably false. Undermining a flawed argument does not in and of itself advance the cause that argument was intended to support; in fact, in practice, the opposite is generally true.
When I speak of damage, I speak of damage to the truth. You might think it a good thing to convince someone to agree with a good conclusion and bad "subconclusions" or reasons, but I don't. I think this is more harmful, because it covers up the errors and leaves them to sprout new, harmful conclusions later.
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MrSquicky
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Dag,
You've specifically addressed me on several occasions when I've stated that a significant number of members of certain groups have undesirable characteristics (such as bigotry) with saying that you don't see how saying that is going to change their opinion.

Should I have, in those occasions, been less truthful in order to be more persuasive to those groups? I'm not sure how this fits into what you said above.

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Dagonee
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quote:
You've specifically addressed me on several occasions when I've stated that a significant number of members of certain groups have undesirable characteristics (such as bigotry) with saying that you don't see how saying that is going to change their opinion.

Should I have, in those occasions, been less truthful in order to be more persuasive to those groups? I'm not sure how this fits into what you said above.

You really don't? Do you see the difference between a factual error in the premises that support an opinion and the characteristics of a group that holds a particular opinion?

I don't see why you would assume I would treat the two types of statements the same.

No matter why you do make that assumption, simply know that I don't.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Even now, you've simply said "it's just that they're upset" without bothering to explain why.
I'm sorry. I honestly didn't realize you didn't understand why this upsets people.

Picking apart details -- major or minor -- of someone's argument is generally perceived (rightly) as a criticism. When the argument in question has been advanced as part of a larger argument against some perceived problem, the other person -- unless they consider accuracy to be more important than any other virtue, and specifically the issue they were discussing -- will not recognize that you have struck a blow FOR accuracy, but rather believe that you have struck a blow AGAINST them. And when their argument is really a component of a larger argument, and you do not submit replacement components, their perception is going to be that you have struck a blow against their argument in general.

And if it appears to be an either/or situation, and you have not presented a third path, people will inevitably assume that this represents a blow FOR whatever they were arguing against.

If you don't make your motivations explicit, then, or take steps to offer what your target would consider constructive criticism, they will almost inevitably be "upset" in direct proportion to the importance they place on the issue. Saying "oh, I'm not saying I'm FOR X. I'm just saying your support of Y is flawed" will only make them more upset.

quote:
When I speak of damage, I speak of damage to the truth.
This is why I've called you Lawful Neutral, you know. [Smile]

For most people, truth is perceived as a variable, not a constant -- and even then it's a local user variable. To put it another way, discussions of accuracy and "truth" are generally perceived as irrelevant intellectual exercises, the kind of thing that Tresopax engages in; "truth" in law is especially regarded this way, since it depends on both interpretation and precedent and is therefore more an indication of precision than of virtue or an accurate depiction of reality. (Consider the flap over words like "unlawful combatant." The whole point here is to, through law, redefine reality to conform to a given view. This can be done precisely, but is it truthful?)

The idea that "the Truth" is more important than, say, whether or not we should be holding people indefinitely without trial is a concept that will upset many, many individuals. It just WILL, period. They won't understand that accuracy is a more critical issue to you; they will see your criticisms as a defense of torture, and I don't necessarily blame them.

It's important to be precise in one's criticisms when dealing with law, because Evil will use loopholes against you. But increasing that level of precision can be done in a constructive fashion, and when it's not, I don't think people should necessarily appreciate the "help."

[ September 29, 2006, 04:22 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]

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Dagonee
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quote:
And if it appears to be an either/or situation, and you have not presented a third path, people will inevitably assume that this represents a blow FOR whatever they were arguing against.
I'm at a complete loss as to why people consider this an either/or situation. I almost never discuss either/or situations, and, when I do, there's no doubt about which side I come down on.

The issues today have not been either/or, and, in fact, my insistence on not allowing them to be treated as such is what comes under attack most often.

quote:
The idea that "the Truth" is more important than, say, whether or not we should be holding people indefinitely without trial is a concept that WILL upset many, many individuals.
What I've posted does not suggest that truth is more important than whether we should hold people indefinitely without trial.

However, whether or not we actually are holding people indefinitely without trial seems pretty important to such a discussion. Further, when someone responds to a bill about how trials should be conducted with complaints about holding people without a trial, I think some clarification is in order before we can actually figure out what we should be upset about.

It's clear that prisoner of war rules (which would allow indefinite detention without trial and no judicial review) can't be applied to the detainees in wholesale fashion. It seems clear, to me at least, that there might be a reason not to apply criminal law in a wholesale fashion to them, either.

Again, the insistence that this be either/or - that Bush must be either a good president or a bad president, that the treatment of detainees is evil or perfect - is simply a guarantee than nothing useful will be decided.

What complicates this is that I don't know what my opinion is on much of this.

I do know that Hatrack is of no help in forming an opinion, mostly because the hype outweighs the reasoning.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
I don't see why you would assume I would treat the two types of statements the same.
I don't expect you to necessarily treat those two statements the same. I am, however, expecting consistency in your approach to the importance of rhetoric and truth.
quote:
And I mean that from the perspective of one thinks that real rhetoric is essential to the discovery of truth, not from an "I want to win" perspective.
quote:
When I speak of damage, I speak of damage to the truth. You might think it a good thing to convince someone to agree with a good conclusion and bad "subconclusions" or reasons, but I don't. I think this is more harmful, because it covers up the errors and leaves them to sprout new, harmful conclusions later.
In a rhetorical discussion, you found fault with my statements, not on the grounds that they weren't true, but rather that they weren't persuasive to some group not party to our discussion. If you expect me to abandon truth and sound rhetoric, to cover up the facts of the discussion and thus present and encourage an incomplete description, in order to make what I said more persuasive in that case, then I don't see how that fits with your statement of principles above.
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Dagonee
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quote:
they will see your criticisms as a defense of torture, and I don't necessarily blame them
And people who respond to "we need to stop people who are trying to destroy us" with "we can't change who we are" will be seen as a defense of terrorists.

Neither view is right, and I flat out won't indulge either one.

quote:
This is why I've called you Lawful Neutral, you know.
Actually, you called me lawful evil.

Besides that, I'm not lawful anything if you're using the D&D definitions.

I think the majority of good should be determined outside the law.

For things that are the law's proper subject, the law should be shaped to do good.

It's interesting that when I respond to a "lawful" argument (What Bush did was criminal/unconstitutional/impeachable) with the law, I'm accused of sacrificing good to the law. In reality, I'm meeting the accusation its own terms.

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twinky
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quote:
Originally posted by Dagonee:
Why is this just? I'm annoyed enough by the near-constant miststating of legal issues to comment. Why should people be upset that I choose to comment on that and not other things?

While I can understand being annoyed at misstatements of legal issues, I don't think it should come as a surprise -- for example, I try to be somewhat careful, but I'm sure I mangle my statements of legal issues all the time. The obvious analogy from my standpoint is my decision to simply refrain from discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on this forum, because it got to the point where I felt like I'd have to write an essay to respond to even a single one-line question. Actually, I did write an essay to answer a one-liner, but not here.

So I empathize with your frustration, and neither of the two solutions (ignoring it or addressing it; that is, posting or not posting) is ideal. You choose to post, and frankly I admire the effort, particularly given that it's an effort I have specifically chosen not to make myself. However, the precise nature of your clarifications can sometimes make things frustrating for people whose statements you're addressing. Most people, correctly or otherwise, skip over the premises of an argument and proceed directly to the exchange of ideas. I would say that Tom's first four paragraphs (of his 4:12 PM post) sum up the source of the frustration you encounter very well. For my own part, I would say that as someone who is often interested in what you think on a given issue, your desire for extreme precision in the expression of your opinions, which usually (but not always) results in a discussion of specifics that lasts long enough that the general opinion questions are never actually addressed, can be frustrating at times.

As you may have noticed, in cases where I'm particularly interested, I've taken to simply asking for your opinion if it doesn't look like it's going to come out in the context of a discussion. The straightforward approach is best, I suppose. [Smile]

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TomDavidson
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I sympathize, Dag. But here's the problem: the world marches on while you or I or anyone else tries to decide on the details. There's a role that needs to be played by conscience, here, a comfort zone that must be defined somewhere shy of the grey area so that, when we are forced to take time to deliberate where exactly that fuzzy line is, we don't discover too late that the cage of laws we've erected around ourselves is on the wrong side of it.

I'll admit to being particularly "sloppy" on this issue, myself, because I have little to no interest in prosecuting the War on Terror. I think it's a complete irrelevancy, and firmly believe most of the tools we're putting into law to prosecute a "war" on "terrorists" will ultimately be turned to domestic purposes via the same slow creep that affects almost all of our eroded liberties. I believe that going on the offensive against a non-state enemy is exactly what's exposed this grey area in the first place, and originally objected to our offensive on that very basis. And given that I don't accept the premise that certain elements of government should remain secret -- I've always said I'm in favor of complete and total non-tactical transparency -- I don't believe that elaborating on a specific legal method to hold massive numbers of non-military, non-criminal "detainees" is particularly important. It's the right question at hand, but it's only at hand because we've asked and answered several wrong ones.

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Dagonee
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quote:
In a rhetorical discussion, you found fault with my statements, not on the grounds that they weren't true, but rather that they weren't persuasive to some group not party to our discussion. If you expect me to abandon truth and sound rhetoric, to cover up the facts of the discussion and thus present and encourage an incomplete description, in order to make what I said more persuasive in that case, then I don't see how that fits with your statement of principles above.
Read what I said again. Please. "You might think it a good thing to convince someone to agree with a good conclusion and bad "subconclusions" or reasons." Your accusation was not a premise or a subconclusion to the conclusion being discussed.

We were discussing, "Should the law recognize civil gay marriage."

"Some people who oppose gay marriage are bigots" is not a premise supporting or opposing that conclusion. It is, quite simply, not the type of statement I was discussing in my post to Tom.

Had I made a general proposition, "Always say everything that's truthful" you might have a point here. I didn't say that, though.

What I said to you can be summarized as the proposition, "Statements, even if truthful, about the motives of a subset of those who disagree with your favored conclusion make it harder to persuade others to accept your conclusion."

What I said to Tom can be summarized as "It is not good to allow untruthful factual conclusions to stand unchallenged, even if those factual conclusions could be used to support a true conclusion."

These are very different statements.

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MrSquicky
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Yes, the statements themselves are very different, but the underyling principles should be the same. In at least some of these conversations, you and I and a few others were discussing the background surrounding the gay marriage issue. You said I shouldn't say these things because they are hurt the persuasiveness of my argument (despite the fact that, as far as I could tell, there weren't any bigots as part of our discussion).

If you're saying that you don't value truth and rhetorical soundness as much as persuasiveness in situations like that, then I guess I've got no beef, but it sure sounded like you were making a stronger stand that that above.

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Dagonee
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The underlying principle is the same. Who do the two propositions as I stated in the previous post contradict each other or some underlying principle.

Bringing up the views of other, unrelated people wasn't relevant to the discussion. I didn't say you should never say those things. I said you shouldn't say them when attempting to persuade.

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TomDavidson
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I think Dag's saying that not volunteering truth isn't the same thing as actually speaking falsehood. In other words, refraining from saying truthful things for rhetorical reasons can be acceptable, whereas saying untruthful things for rhetorical reasons never is.

As an example: Dag might personally feel that OSC's essay in this thread is reprehensibly inaccurate, but does not think it necessary to say so. Someone could post and, in the course of explaining why they believe OSC's essay is reprehensible and inaccurate, say something inaccurate. Dag would then see the value in correcting their inaccuracy, and would not feel compelled to mention that he also felt OSC had been even more inaccurate since it's not of direct relevance to his correction and, for whatever reason, doesn't feel like volunteering his opinion on the subject. If someone accused him of hypocrisy as a consequence, he would be genuinely confused and hurt.

I think it took me WAY too long to understand this.

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Dagonee
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The underlying principle is the same. Who do the two propositions as I stated in the previous post contradict each other or some underlying principle.

Bringing up the views of other, unrelated people wasn't relevant to the discussion. I didn't say you should never say those things. I said you shouldn't say them when attempting to persuade.

Further, there's a difference between "valuing truth" and "saying everything that happens to be true." No damage is done to truth when you refrain from discussing the alleged bigotry of some people who share a conclusion in common with your opponent.

Damage to truth is done when you say, "Law x allows the administration to do Y, therefore law x is bad" if Law x does not, in fact, allow Y. This damage occurs whether or not Law x is bad.

Edit: Or, what Tom said.

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MrSquicky
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When describing the background of the gay rights issue,acknowledging the large role anti-gay bigots play in it is, at least to me, extremely relevant. At the time, you said nothing about it being irrelevant. In these cases, you said I shouldn't say that (and strongly implied that my saying it there was a fault in what I wrote), that I should prefer pesuasiveness to rhetorical soundness, truth, and a complete picture of the situation.

If you're going to make high minded statements about those principles now and how they are more important than persuasiveness, I don't see how this situation reconciles.

edit: I agree with this statment:
quote:
No damage is done to truth when you refrain from discussing the alleged bigotry of some people who share a conclusion in common with your opponent.
and if it accurately described the situation that we were discussing, I wouldn't have anytihng to say. But it doesn't. Ommitting the role bigots play in the background of the gay marriage debate does damage the truth.
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Dagonee
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quote:
When describing the background of the gay rights issue,acknowledging the large role anti-gay bigots play in it is, at least to me, extremely relevant. At the time, you said nothing about it being irrelevant. In these cases, you said I shouldn't say that (and strongly implied that my saying it there was a fault in what I wrote), that I should prefer pesuasiveness to rhetorical soundness, truth, and a complete picture of the situation.

If you're going to make high minded statements about those principles now and how they are more important than persuasiveness, I don't see how this situation reconciles.

I'm sorry. I don't see how this situation contradicts in any way shape or form, so we're basically at a standstill here.

What's clear is that you don't understand the principle I'm getting at. What's also clear is that I can't restate it in any way that will make you understand.

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MrSquicky
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Dag,
As far as I see it, in some situations, you at least pretend to believe that persuasiveness trumps truth and rhetorical soundness and in other cases you don't. Is it the level of damage to truth that is important? Like, ommitting something relevant isn't as big a damage as claiming something that is false?

As I said, I don't have a problem with people regarding saying things that are untrue as worse than ommitting things that are true. I just don't believe that you can claim this is because of principles that would be violated in both cases.

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Dagonee
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quote:
you at least pretend to believe
OK, bye.
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MrSquicky
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Is that description inaccurate? I'm not trying to say what ytour motives behind your statements are, so I included all the possibilities. Looking at it, I should have gone with "claim that persuasiveness..."
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