Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Our Friend has a post on Penigma explaining why Stand Your Ground is a bad idea because a certain legislator who might support such a bill, if it came before the legislature, was Not convicted of a crime in another state. Okay, he wasn’t convicted – he wasn’t even charged – but another guy Was charged and has Not been convicted either. So that proves that Stand Your Ground is bad legislation.
Attacking the man instead of attacking his idea might prove the man is a bad man, but it doesn’t prove the idea is a bad idea. That’s why an Ad Hominem argument is a logical fallacy and unpersuasive to thinking people. Which, apparently, does not include Our Friend or, presumably, the people who read her blog.
So does that mean I applaud bad men, celebrate them, and approve of all their actions? Obviously not; and even if I did, that still wouldn’t mean Stand Your Ground is a bad idea.
It’s too bad the legislator isn’t a Black man because then Our Friend’s opposition to his ideas would be racissss. Can’t you just hear the heads exploding all across Mac-Groveland?
Joe Doakes
The number of liberals – especially Minnesota liberal bloggers, but including not a few higher-level operatives – who can conduct a rational debate using the basics of logic, and without wallowing in all manner of logical fallacies, is disturbingly tiny, and supports my contention that Minnesota liberals are terrible debaters because they never have to learn how to debate rationally.
While Our Friend has always been a solid match for the average 5th grader she is too intellectually slovenly to better herself, like most progressives, a irredeemable case of arrested development.
Also it needs to be said that opposition to Stand Your Ground IS a substantially racist position since it tends to benefit low income blacks.
As the parent of a fifth grader, I take offense to your statement, Kel. Stop insulting my daughter. :^)
Opposition to Stand Your Ground is entirely, 150%, about whipping up wealthy, white, upper-middle-class, entitlement-guilt-addled liberals.
No more.
bikebubba I said average
And my point remains, don’t you think? :^) Let’s not even insult kindergartners by comparing them to….
At the bottom of our friend‘s blistering, senseless hatred of 40% of the people she shares a country with is snobbery.
Barone has an interesting article on snobbery as the foundation of progressivism here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371310/failure-obamas-aristocracy-merit-michael-barone
PM – I just finished flagging that Barone article to blog about later this week.
Kristof’s latest column delves deep into the worship of our mad intellectual class: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-professors-we-need-you.html?ref=nicholasdkristof
Kristof really believes that our salvation lies in listening to the en-elected, self-chosen academics. There is a lot of willful blindness in the column. He mentions with regret that far less public policy research recommends specific actions compared to the 40s and 50s. He is utterly blind to the social disasters caused by the policies dreamed up by public intellectuals in the 40s and 50s. The new living spaces they proposed for people were and are dehumanizing horrors. Kristof is definitely a liberal who believes that big government is great, and maybe there were problems with Big Government in the past, but this time we’ll have smart Big government!