Why (Power) Liberals Should Stick To Arguing About Who Cleversponge Likes Better

Yesterday, I posted a piece in which I agreed with Craig Westover's takedown of a particularly noxious, elitist comment on his blog - one which reflects a larger reality...

...well, we'll get to that.

"Smartie" from Powerliberal superimposed his partisan point of view, social prejudices and just-plain-naievete onto the argument, by way of completely missing the point.

why conservatives shouldn't be trusted with civil discourse

Because they get somebody you've never heard of to make a dumb statement. Then they immediately and hysterically extrapolate from that that EVEYONE THEY DISAGREE WITH AGREES WITH THAT STATEMENT AND MUST BE STOPPED.

No, Smarts. We "extrapolate" because it reflects a conceit that some of us have observed on the left - especially left-wing proponents of that most sacred of efty cows, the public school system and its' attendant academic establishment - for a long, long time.

Because it's not just a "dumb" statement by "someone" we've "never heard of". Westover's commenter sounded like dozens of public education supporters over the years - people who are neither dumb nor obscure nor, in some cases, of no influence on the lives of children.

The current, compulsory education system was instituted largely because society didn't trust the parents of immigrant families to raise their children to be good Americans, and wanted to counteract the influences of foreign politics and traditions, Catholicism and other things that society didn't want to encourage - and just plain knew better than parents about.

And you can call it anecdotal, but after having a couple of kids in various school systems for a total of (counting fingers and toes) 27 kid-years, I have a deep bench of stories of teachers, staffers, advocates and (especially) adminstrators who've said things identical in sentiment, and only marginally less dumb and offensive than what Westover's commenter said.

Some of them publish books.

We can come back to that later.

And then their ditto heads nod sagely.

Anyone who thinks I'm a "dittohead" of Westover's isn't paying attention.

And the nod may or may not be sage, but it comes from experience.

The only step left is to throw out the words "strawman" and "ad-hominem" against anyone who disagrees with them and then call it a smug self-satisfied day.

Nah. I just ignore it. What would they know?

Especially if they say things like...:

Call it the "Ward Churchill Process".

I'm trying to remember the latin term for non sequitur...

Posted by Mitch at August 16, 2006 07:58 AM | TrackBack