Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Thursday morning, in a post that received much attention and inspired much discussion, I made an observation about the way liberals tend to introduce their audiences to the subject matters they want to discuss. My observation was in the way they, in keeping with the tradition of all collectivist economies and totalitarian regimes, discourage the acquisition of knowledge and assume a superior level on a sort of information-trickling pecking order, essentially telling people what to think. As a general rule, I observed, you would even be able to see it just scotch-taping a six-lines-per-inch printout of a liberal blog posting on the wall of a large room, next to a similar printout of a posting by someone ideologically inclined toward the opposite…then walking to the far side of the room and look upon their disparate forms:
The conservative (to your left) says “Look what this guy said, then look what happened over here. Now, my thoughts about this are these…”
The liberal works differently. He explains to you what’s going on in the world according to his own take on things. This guy’s “The Real Deal,” that woman is “stupid,” this guy over here is “a village idiot.” He’s clean and articulate. He’s a dimbulb. He’s sophisticated, he’s educated, she’s a bible-thumper bent on establishing an American theocracy.
If there are quotes at all, they’re in the bottom half. Just little snippets, very often taken out of context. Not there to prove anything, just to lead-in to the next snarky one-liner. It isn’t an absolute no-exceptions rule, but it works well as a general one.
What is funny about this, is I have also previously observed that liberalism has degenerated into a — what’s the word. Not a science, not a discipline, not a justice system, not a religious order, not a way of viewing the universe…but sort of a hodge-podge of all these things. A dogma. And if the dogma could be summed up in a single sentence it would be “Look at this thing over here I hate so much, come gather with me and help me hate it.”
I just think if that is the priority…and the evidence says that it certainly is…I would expect a greater emphasis to be placed on defining the thing. Right? But liberals don’t have that much respect for the individual. One liberal explains to another what is going on, and he’s essentially making an intellectual clone of himself.
You will note from the comment thread that one of our readers did not like this observation, because he’s a liberal. He was also the example I cited…which I know from having the same thing happen to me, this can be a little bit of a jarring experience. So he did what liberals tend to do with observations they do not like: Pretend I was defining a hard rule to be applied to everybody with no exceptions (I never said such a thing, and in fact said much toward the opposite)…and point me out as a hypocrite who can’t or won’t follow his own rules. Then he proceeded to prove me absolutely right, waxing lyrically about all the things he figured out the motives of Sarah Palin, whom as far as I know is a person he has not yet met. True to form, there was & is no firm evidence forthcoming to prove any of what he had to say about her, or even to compel a neutral mind to receive these ideas more hospitably. To the best of my knowledge, they seem to have been things that were fun to think, nothing more.
I say again (since it was ignored last time I said it): This posting is not an example of what I’m talking about because it is a re-inspection of something else that has already been inspected elsewhere. My observation concerns writers who introduce their readers to the topics they wish to discuss. If you want to see how I do this so you can weigh an accusation of hypocrisy in your own mind, you can check out how I do it over here.
And I don’t intend to allude back to that discussion again since it’s been milked to death…and I don’t like talking smack about Huckup because he is, kinda-sorta, in his own way a somewhat fair and principled thinker.
But I did upload the image with those essay-form-outlines for a reason, and I intend to embed it and refer back to it again and again and again, whenever the occasion calls for it. I intended that from the beginning, for this is something I have been noticing for awhile now…view conservative commentary from a distance alongside liberal commentary, you will notice even from twenty feet away a distinct difference that reflects the different thinking styles. Conservatives and liberals are both close-minded in their own ways. But conservatives close their minds after they have experienced something. Yeah, I’m even talking about that big one, “God doesn’t exist.” With most of them, the experience is parenthood, and I’m part of that crowd. I was raised Presbyterian and taught in childhood that you should have faith, which means slamming your mind shut like a steel door on the notion that we may be living in a godless universe. But in truth, I never did completely close my mind to this until I watched my son develop in his mother’s womb. And find out about what’s going on. This machinery, you know, it’s a whole lot more complicated than people give it credit for. Doctors can’t even explain it to you without using that troubling past-tense verb, “designed.” To keep all the secularists from being offended, everyone uses passive-voice so it’s linguistically unnecessary to explore who’s doing this designing. But eventually a truly curious mind will need to ‘fess up that someone’s doing it and it ain’t Darwin’s ghost.
To the subject at hand. I said that I intended at the beginning to re-embed the image of the paragraph-boxes. I did not expect to be doing it within just a couple of days. But this is a perfect fit:
People have struggled to define what the Tea Party stands for, but Sarah Palin has provided a manifesto for the incoming freshmen. She starts with the conceit that the results of the midterm elections have put the government back on the side of the people. But she quickly disabuses us of that belief. I will list Palin’s priorities for you, so you don’t have to read her entire screed.
1. Defund ObamaCare.
2. Eliminate earmarks.
3. Make is procedurally easier to cut taxes than to raise them.
4. Enforce zero-based budgeting.
5. Cancel all unstarted stimulus programs.
6. Return all non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels (she may have meant discretionary spending).
7. Extend all of Bush’s tax cuts indefinitely.
8. Control the growth of Entitlement spending.
9. Control the borders, but decouple it from immigration reform.
10. Continue our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
11. Get tough with Iran.
12. Sign free-trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia.
13. Oppose ratification of the START treaty.
14. Side with Netanyahu’s position that all of Jerusalem is part of Israel, and that no building in East Jerusalem can be considered settlement expansion.
15. Keep Guantanamo prison open and deny all prisoners there access to the courts.
16. Return to Bush’s freedom agenda.
17. If anyone in the press praises your actions, do a reappraisal because you’ve probably gone off-track.So, this is what Palinism stands for. It does not appear to deviate in any way from the policies of George W. Bush. Excepting earmark reform, increased hostility toward Latinos, and an even more Likudnik-friendly position towards Israel, nothing in Palin’s proposals would change how the country was run between 2001 and 2009.
It’s Bushism stripped of all it’s redeeming features. [emphasis mine]
What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think. What to think.
What to think.
What to think.
What to think.
What to think.
What to think.
What to think.
What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think, What to think, what to think…and…here’s a link.
A link that I don’t really expect or want you to click. I’ve summarized it all for you so you don’t have to do any of that…you know…that reading of things written by people who are not me. Don’t do that, just take my word for it.
Pardon me for noticing this thing people don’t want me to notice. I grew up in the seventies and early eighties, during which time I was told it was liberals who were “open minded.” Conservatives were just doltish old people who acted in movies, got elected President through nefarious means and then fell asleep in cabinet meetings. Liberals are smarter because they’re more humble and more curious…
Funny how I so seldom actually see any of this. Liberals telling other liberals what is going on, is purely an exercise in the-blind-leading-the-blind. There’s so little by way of actual exchange of knowledge, it’s so much more just dispensing of instructions.
Here’s what Palin actually said:
Welcome to all Republican Freshmen and congratulations!
Congratulations to all of you for your contribution to this historic election, and for the contributions I am certain you will make to our country in the next two years. Your victory was hard fought, and the success belongs entirely to you and the staff and volunteers who spent countless hours working for this chance to put government back on the side of the people. Now you will come to Washington to serve your nation and leave your mark on history by reining in government spending, preserving our freedoms at home, and restoring America’s leadership abroad. Some of you have asked for my thoughts on how best to proceed in the weeks and months ahead and how best to advance an agenda that can move our country forward. I have a simple answer: stick to the principles that propelled your campaigns. When you take your oath to support and defend our Constitution and to faithfully discharge the duties of your office, remember that present and future generations of “We the People” are counting on you to stand by that oath. Never forget the people who sent you to Washington. Never forget the trust they placed in you to do the right thing.
The task before you is daunting because so much damage has been done in the last two years, but I believe you have the chance to achieve great things.
Republicans campaigned on a promise to rein in out-of-control government spending and to repeal and replace the massive, burdensome, and unwanted health care law President Obama and the Democrat Congress passed earlier this year in defiance of the will of the majority of the American people. These are promises that you must keep. Obamacare is a job-killer, a regulatory nightmare, and an enormous unfunded mandate. The American people don’t want it and we can’t afford it. We ask, with all due respect, that you remember your job will be to work to replace this legislation with real reform that relies on free market principles and patient-centered policies. The first step is, of course, to defund Obamacare.
You’ve also got to be deadly serious about cutting the deficit. Despite what some would like us to believe, tax cuts didn’t get us into the mess we’re in. Government spending did. Tough decisions need to be made about reducing government spending. The longer we put them off, the worse it will get. We need to start by cutting non-essential spending. That includes stopping earmarks (because abuse of the earmark process created the “gateway-drug” that allowed backroom deals and bloated budgets), canceling all further spending on the failed Stimulus program, and rolling back non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels. You can do more, but this would be a good start.
In order to avert a fiscal disaster, we will also need to check the growth of spending on our entitlement programs. That will be a huge challenge, but it must be confronted head on. We must do it in a humane way that honors the government’s current commitments to our fellow Americans while also keeping faith with future generations. We cannot rob from our children and grandchildren’s tomorrow to pay for our unchecked spending today. Beyond that, we need to reform the way Congress conducts business in order to make it procedurally easier to cut spending than to increase it. We need to encourage zero-based budgeting practices in D.C. like the kind fiscally conservative mayors and governors utilize to balance their budgets and reduce unnecessary spending.
There in the insulated and isolated Beltway you will be far removed from the economic pain felt by so many Americans who are out of work. Please remember that if we want real job growth, we must create a stable investment climate by ending the tidal wave of overly burdensome regulations coming out of Washington. Businesses need certainty – and freedom that incentivizes competition – to grow and expand our workforce.
The last thing our small businesses need is tax hikes. It falls to the current Democrat-controlled Congress to decide on the future of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. If it does not permanently renew all of them, you should move quickly to do so in the new Congress. It would remove from households and businesses the threat of a possible $3.8 trillion tax hike hitting all Americans at the worst possible moment, with our economy struggling to recover from a deep recession! You must continue to remind Democrats that the people they are dismissing as “rich” are the small business owners who create up to 70% of all jobs in this country!
Another issue of vital importance is border security. Americans expect our leadership in Washington to act now to secure our borders. Don’t fall for the claims of those who suggest that we can’t secure our borders until we simultaneously deal with the illegal immigrants already here. Let’s deal with securing the border first. That alone is a huge challenge that has been ignored for far too long.
On foreign policy and national security, I urge you to stick to our principles: strong defense, free trade, nurturing allies, and steadfast opposition to America’s enemies. We are the most powerful country on earth and the world is better off because of it. Our president does not seem to understand this. If we withdraw from the world, the world will become a much more dangerous place. You must push President Obama to finish the job right in Iraq and get the job done in Afghanistan, otherwise we who are war-weary will forever question why America’s finest are sent overseas to make the ultimate sacrifice with no clear commitment to victory from those who send them. You should be prepared to stand with the President against Iran’s nuclear aspirations using whatever means necessary to ensure the mullahs in Tehran do not get their hands on nuclear weapons. And you can stand with the Iranian people who oppose the tyrannical rule of the clerics and concretely support their efforts to win their freedom – even if the President does not.
You need to say no to cutting the necessities in our defense budget when we are engaged in two wars and face so many threats – from Islamic extremists to a nuclear Iran to a rising China. As Ronald Reagan said, “We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.” You will also have the opportunity to push job-creating free trade agreements with allies like Colombia and South Korea. You can stand with allies like Israel, not criticize them. You can let the President know what you believe – Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not a settlement. And for those of you joining the United States Senate, don’t listen to desperate politically-motivated arguments about the need for hasty consideration of the “New START” treaty. Insist on your right to patient and careful deliberation of New START to address very real concerns about verification, missile defense, and modernization of our nuclear infrastructure. No New START in the lame duck!
You can stand against misguided proposals to try dangerous, evil terrorists in the US; precipitously close the Guantanamo prison; and a return to the failed policies of the past in treating the war on terror as a law enforcement problem. Finally, you have a platform to express the support of the American people for all those around the world seeking their freedom that God has bestowed within all mankind’s being – from Burma and Egypt to Russia and Venezuela – because the spread of liberty increases our own security. You, freshmen lawmakers, can and will be powerful voices in support of foreign policies that protect our interests and promote our values! Thank you for being willing to fight for our values and our freedom!
In all this, you should extend a hand to President Obama and Democrats in Congress. After this election, they may finally be prepared to work with Republicans on some of these issues for the good of the country. And if not, we will all be looking forward to 2012.
Remember that some in the media will love you when you stray from the time-tested truths that built America into the most exceptional nation on earth. When the Left in the media pat you on the back, quickly reassess where you are and readjust, for the liberals’ praise is a warning bell you must heed. Trust me on that.
I and most Americans are so excited for you. Working together, we have every right to be optimistic about our future. We can be hopeful because real hope lies in the ingenuity, generosity, and boundless courage of the everyday Americans who make our country exceptional. These are the men and women who sent you to Washington. May your work and leadership honor their faith in you.
With sincere congratulations and a big Alaskan heart,
Sarah Palin
As a conservative, you would have to be nuts to think such a manifesto is not necessary. It is not by any means some kind of order that has been put together by someone elected to office with authority in it; it is an offering, to be accepted or rejected according to future events. Just like our nation’s original Declaration of Independence. It is a statement of principles. The 104th Congress was brought in on the strength of just such a resolution. The goodwill that was made available from that moment, was all but squandered away by the sessions of the 110th Congress, by which time the legislative branch was working according to make-it-up-as-you-go-along. See, it’s that conservative mind-closing process to which I was referring earlier. Two methods are tried, one consistently succeeds and the other consistently fails. After awhile the sensible mind becomes closed.
But only within its own domain. In submitting such a resolution, Palin recognizes, as do all mature adults, that others may have different ideas. Even if everyone agrees on the primary subject matter, it is still necessary to have a debate proving that to be the case, and you cannot debate things that have not in some way been scribbled down. That’s why I did pretty much the same thing way back when Palin’s old running mate was selected (to my chagrin) as the Republican party’s nominee.
But the point is, in summarizing what has happened, the mature, capable mind will not attempt to obscure the details from those whom he seeks to persuade to his point of view. The mature mind does not seek to clone itself. It is not afraid of the different perspective brought by others, from their disparate life-experiences. It is does not fear individuality.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
WOW!!!
As a new reader to your site, I must say this post is my choice for BEST CONSERVATIVE POST FOR 2010! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! As someone who still thinks of myself as a “Scoop Jackson Democrat”, I must admit that I voted straight Democrat until I was 58. In 2008 I did not vote for a single Democrat and haven’t since. As a former 60’s radical who finally wised up and realized as did Arlo Guthrie that there is only one party actively pursuing limited government, I must say without any reservation that I cannot wait to cast my vote for Sarah Palin for President of The United States of America. Amen
- wtng2fish | 11/13/2010 @ 12:34OK, Morgan. Outside of the fact that you hold me to a standard form even in comment threads (which are themselves “reinspections of something else which has already been inspected elsewhere”) that you don’t hold for yourself or anyone else, let’s just go back to that original comment about quantitative easing that you say proves how you do things so much differently than the rest of us in terms of “telling us how to think” before presenting us with the evidence that should be the basis of our thinking. The very first sentence of this blog posting that supposedly exemplifies your model reads thus:
“I care about Palin-bashers. They’re a threat, although not to her. They create bubbles of fantasy, and then start living in them, every time they open their mouths. Which is often.”
What is this very first sentence if not a pre-conditioning of how your readers should think about what follows? Let’s break it down, shall we? First, you reference Palin-bashers without even providing any evidence up front about what it is that’s said about Palin that constitutes bashing. Maybe you’re right in your assessment about a criticism of Palin, maybe you’re not. Your reader doesn’t know because he or she hasn’t even seen yet that which you claim to be true about the subject you are referencing; and yet your reader is conditioned, essentially “told how to think,” about what to make of the person soon to be the subject of what presumably follow. Then you opine that such people are threatening in some inexplicable way. That such people create and live in “bubbles of fantasy” every time they speak. So, in those four short sentences, even before you give any data or evidence, you have painted a most unflattering picture, purely out of your opinion, of whoever is subject to what follows — before even presenting the actual comments of anyone. You have, in effect, told your audience what to think based exclusively on your opinions.
Now, in this posting, you go on to make this comment: “You will note from the comment thread that one of our readers did not like this observation, because he’s a liberal.” To which I answer that you are wrong. I did not like this observation not because I am a liberal (that’s your opinion), but because you are wrong in that observation. And I gave reasons why I believed so which had nothing to do with being a liberal. If anyone goes back and reads that thread, he or she will notice that I never once denied the way you characterized my blog posting. I owned it as it was. What I objected to was your argument that this way of arguing was somehow unique to a “liberal” process of thinking. And then I gave examples from your own blog, and pointed you to many other blogs, who write blog postings exactly the same way. In fact, you even admitted as much. I questioned the whole premise of your argument which was that somehow conservatives blogged differently than I do. So it wasn’t “because I’m a liberal” that I didn’t like your argument, it’s because I think you are wrong in the fundamental premise that liberal bloggers are somehow different in the manner in which they blog (and consequently think) than conservatives. You reduce my objection to and criticism of your point of view exclusively because of my liberalism. By that measure, it’s hard to get beyond the notion that nothing everytime I disagree with you it’s not because of reason, but rather because of ideology.
- huckupchuck | 11/13/2010 @ 15:53Okay Huck, one MORE time.
I don’t wish to take on a condescending tone here. But you need to take note of the meaningful difference between a hard-and-fast rule that is so be imposed on people, with no exceptions, and an observation of a general trend. A trend of events which, if somehow objectively measured, would yield statistics validating the suggested trend.
Does earning a Ph.D. have something to do with losing track of this difference, or maybe assuming a fair-weather-friendship with it, looking past it when it doesn’t service whatever point you’re trying to prove? A lot of people would say that about Ph.D.’s before they even catch wind of these exchanges we have over this issue, and here you are proving it.
When you introduced your audience to the subject for the very first time, you said:
And you had one link. The link led to an article that said…
By the end of that, we’re fifty percent of the way through that particular article. They were doing exactly what I was talking about. So were you. I, on the other hand, right after that snippet you quoted, went on to say “some background, although you probably don’t need it.” I went straight into the quotes and it was a mere formality, as during that particular morning the Memeorandum scroll was all abuzz with these tête à tête between Palin and Reddy. I called out that it was somewhat silly and extraneous to be going over the quotes and then I proceeded to do it anyway.
It certainly isn’t an example of telling others what to think, dictating reality to them. Or if you’re trying to say it is one, it certainly isn’t a very good one. Is it?
Your argument has been completely refudiated. And all I did was chase down links, excerpt what was there, and comment on what was found minimally. Thus it is with just about everything liberals have to say nowadays, which goes back to my original point: The plan seems to be that whoever is on the receiving end of the commentary, can’t or won’t bother to click anything open, or to read it. That’s the point.
- mkfreeberg | 11/13/2010 @ 17:37[…] at House of Eratosthenes and Right Wing […]
- “I Will List Palin’s Priorities For You, So You Don’t Have to Read Them” | Washington Rebel | 11/13/2010 @ 19:54It certainly isn’t an example of telling others what to think, dictating reality to them.
Of course it is. You’re telling them exactly what to think about me. There’s absolutely no question about that. You’re telling them before they even read my words, the reality that you are dictating to your readers, is that I’m a threatening Palin-basher creating and living in a bubble of fantasy la-la land. (I’m still scratching my head about the “threatening” part.)
As to the “observation of a general trend,” I know you are forwarding a hypothesis about general trends and extending that as a generalization about thinking. But you seem to be obtuse to the fact that this is precisely what I disagree with. You haven’t provided any significant statistical evidence to prove your claim. Your evidence is principally anecdotal, impressionistic, and based on subjective observation. As statisticians would say, your “n” is insufficient to allow you to draw any generalizable conclusions. And to demonstrate that, I point you to the evidence from conservative bloggers. Just go to RWN right now and check out the ten most recent postings on that site. You can start with Troglopundit’s posting that directly follows your crossposting there of this piece. Go to Michelle Malkin’s website and check out her last ten blog postings and apply your model to them, starting with the first paragraph of her most recent blog posting titled “Throw Carol Browner Under the Bus.” Then go to Hot Air and do the same for Allahpundit’s or Ed Morrisey’s blog postings. Then scamper on over to Cassy Fiano’s blog and do likewise to her most recent posting titled “Jessie Valenti is a Giant Coward.” And after that, head on over to PajamasMedia and RedState. Apply your test there. And if you scroll through my blog, you’ll note that my manner of blogging is essentially no different than any of these myriad of conservative bloggers. Sometimes I pop off and vent, other times I start my blog postings off with a video clip or a direct comment from someone and then offer my analysis and opinion of it. I’m no different than just about any other small-fry, but passionate political blogger, conservative or liberal. Even you admit that conservative bloggers do this. So then the question becomes a simple matter of determining how often this happens on conservative and liberal blogs. A good scientist would look at such instances and begin to question the validity of the test itself in determining a generalizable phenomenon. I don’t think your anecdotal impressions from a few blog postings like mine are convincing evidence; for I promise you that for every specific example you find of a liberal blogging in such a way, I can match you with a conservative doing the very same thing. In fact, I already have. My point is that you can’t generalize in the way you propose about liberal versus conservative blogging and thinking, because the hard scientific evidence that would pass the test of statistical significance is just not there.
And what’s the comment about my having a Ph.D. all about? What does that have anything to do with anything as it relates to the debate we’re currently having? I can’t see any reason to bring that up other than as some kind of anti-elitist dig at me. And if that’s the case, that would be bad form.
- huckupchuck | 11/13/2010 @ 21:01The point is that you’re avoiding the observation by complicating the matter needlessly. A good scientist would say x? A statistician would say y? So I’m writing a technical paper now to be submitted to a university or a scientific journal now? How come I have to meet this standard if you don’t have to?
I said somewhere before, in response to these protests of yours, that if one could conduct a survey and collect statistics the pattern would be validated. That is impossible to actually do, of course. You say you’ve done it. From what I’ve seen, you’ve compared liberals who actively seek to conceal the evidence from their audiences, with conservatives who meander a little bit giving some background before delving into the evidence, which is not concealed at all.
You just did it to me, in fact. You said I was failing to follow my own form…and then when you go back to read my post that you said was the incriminating example, you see I spent two lines “telling others what to think” — and then went into the evidence. From reading your excerpt of what I said, an interested reader wouldn’t know that I did this. He would have to click open the link and go read…and learn something directly oppositional to the point you were trying to make about me, which you concealed.
Now contrast that with Reddy and friends. They say Sarah Palin screwed up, citing a Wall Street Journal that says food prices are about to go up but not that they have yet. Anybody who bothers to click open the story, though, finds no less than four items of evidence in the story that say food prices have gone up. Those who cite Palin’s inclusion of the story as evidence of her weaknesses for dealing with details and facts, therefore, must be hoping nobody bothers to open it or read it. Or maybe they themselves didn’t read it. But when you inspect what they present for evidence proving what they seek to prove, you find it does not hold up, and in fact disproves what they’re trying to prove. That’s particularly embarrassing for Sudeep Reddy, since what Palin was suggesting about him is that he was in such a hurry to embarrass her that he doesn’t even bother to read his own paper. By the time he got done, he provided additional evidence that his Palin-hatred blinded him to the details.
Got an item or two from Cassy’s place or Right Wing News that provides symmetry to that?
- mkfreeberg | 11/14/2010 @ 06:59I said somewhere before, in response to these protests of yours, that if one could conduct a survey and collect statistics the pattern would be validated.
In other words, you’ve made a claim that you now concede you can’t prove. It is a claim made purely on the basis of subjective observation. How do you know that your theory would be validated unless you actually tested it? Does that then fall into the category of telling your readers how to think?
You say you’ve done it.
No, I haven’t said that I’ve come up with a test that proves a generalizable claim. That’s your argument. I’ve said that I’ve provided you with enough specific examples of conservative blogging that calls the validity of your generalized claim into question.
I spent two lines “telling others what to think” — and then went into the evidence. From reading your excerpt of what I said, an interested reader wouldn’t know that I did this.
First off, it doesn’t matter how many lines you spend conditioning your readers. You’re still doing it. Secondly, I could just as easily argue that, from reading your posting, an interested reader wouldn’t know (1) that most conservatives generally blog just like I do and (2) that I also make blog postings that you might consider correct.
Also, I wasn’t concealing anything. I was commenting on something that even you conceded was a well-covered subject — so much so that even you thought rehashing the details in your blog posting weren’t necessary, but which you did anyway. Furthermore, I don’t dispute that my blog posting was a hasty rant/vent where I simply posted my off-the-cuff conclusions to all that I had read. As to the content of the whole story about food prices, we can dispute the details and, as I have shown to you in some previous threads, I’ve argued that Sarah Palin’s claim that “food prices have risen significantly over the past year or so” is “refudiated” by the evidence. And then there’s the whole “smackdown” of Reddy that you reference which is based on a citation in a WSJ article from which Sarah Palin excised by the use of ellipses a critical piece of information that actually directly disputes her claim that “food prices have risen significantly over the past year or so.” What are we to make of that evidence when it comes to Palin’s efforts to defend her own exaggerated claim with even more obfuscation?
And I’m sure I can find an item or two or more from RWN or from Cassy’s blog that plays the same selective information game. But that’s a deflection from our current argument which centers around the fact that RWN and Cassy and other conservative bloggers regularly and consistently put up postings much like I do on my blog. A fact that you haven’t disputed, I should note. We can argue about the content of a story and dispute the interpretations of the evidence presented in such stories; or we can argue about how bloggers write and think and whether conservatives blog in ways that are essentially and qualitatively different than liberals who blog. I’m fine with either path. But let’s at least be clear in acknowledging that they are two distinct subjects.
And I’m still wondering about why my having a Ph.D. even matters to this debate. Care to comment on that?
Also, as an aside, before the passions get the better of us, I want to be clear that I enjoy debating with you. You’re a smart and thoughtful person whose ideas I find very challenging to my own. Keeps me on my toes, for sure! I respect that a lot and am thankful for it.
- huckupchuck | 11/14/2010 @ 08:32So you’re absolutely right, if we pretend things are different when you tell us they’re different even when they’re actually the same…and, when we pretend things are exactly the same just because you say so, even though they’re quite different. When we indulge you that way, you’re absolutely right.
But when I go to Right Wing News, I see…again…you must not have wanted me to do that.
I see William Teach excerpting first, and then commenting. I see he then goes to claim Dennis Kucinich said something and then he embeds video, after one paragraph of intro, proving it. Then I see Chris Wysocki explaining an anecdote…by telling the anecdote. Then there’s my cross-posting, then Troglopundit mixes his conclusion a little bit into his intro…allows the two melt together a little bit, but that’s not what I was talking about. He, too, leads with the excerpts.
When Reddy claimed Palin’s link didn’t support what she said it did, he quoted from a 1.4% figure, making it look like it was nothing. When you went to the article and read it for yourself you saw the 1.4% figure was put out there specifically to show how bad the problem was. And the guy you linked spouted off for six paragraphs, about 150 words, not only giving us his take on things but passing an absolute, final judgment. Then proceeded to quote Palin.
Somewhere in the last generation or two, it seems word has gotten out on the liberal side that if someone makes an observation you don’t like, you just dismiss it with “well, both sides do it”…kind of fill in the details a little bit…and your audience, through their subconsciousness, will do the rest. I think this is why Phil was making reference to Alinsky. One of the Alinsky tactics is to destroy the enemy by “making it live by its own rules.”
It won’t fly here, because when you base an argument on the premise that two things are exactly the same, our mindset is to go looking into it to make sure that’s true. In the examples you’ve offered, those two things aren’t true. Do you have more?
And, once again, thanks for the compliment. Right backatchya, sir. Wish more people on your side could be like you.
- mkfreeberg | 11/14/2010 @ 09:01Good grief, Upchuck, do you have a job or a family or a life or hobbies? How the hell do you have time to sit there and write this ridiculous screeds? Why do you care so much whether we like Palin or not?
As is his wont, Morgan shows far more patience with you that I would. Personally, I have no idea whatsoever what you’re doing here. You apparently followed the links over here from Right Wing News, and for some reason, decided to engage Morgan on his own turf.
Not content with going around and around and around, splitting hairs, moving the goalposts, and generally making an ass of yourself on RWN, you’ve chosen to pollute this blog in like fashion. You get your ass completely handed to you, yet like any glutton for punishment, you come back for more. No, you’re dead wrong when you say liberalism isn’t a mental disorder; it most assuredly is. You people are nuts and you need professional help.
I guess I should count my blessings that idiot D-Vega hasn’t come over here and started in on one of his tiresome harangues.
Seriously man….what the hell? Get lost.
- cylarz | 11/15/2010 @ 01:00