House of Eratosthenes

…the thread that opened up when Kevin Baker, over at longtime sidebar resource The Smallest Minority, quoted Yours Truly on the subject of liberals using their I’m-so-offended, you’re-an-obsessed-right-winger, whiny-butt, Lucy-yanking-the-football-away tactic of suddenly declaring they have no belly for the very discussions they wanted to start in the first place.

First some background: I really like Kevin’s site, because it places a great deal of emphasis on gun rights — almost to such an extent that the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking he’s a one-trick pony. But that isn’t really all his site is about. His site’s about all the schools-of-thought that go with the gun rights. You can have the finest emergency services known to God and man, really, and still the job of protecting yourself and your family is as personal as wiping your ass. Know why that is? Because bureaucrats — even cops — work according to rules and not according to outcome. Those are two different things. Two masters. No man may serve both.

You can see that this concerns a whole way of looking at life, at responsibilities. And that is what Kevin’s site is about, as I see it.

Anyway, after pissing off yet another left-wing friend…which means I got her to chirp out yet another bunch of tiresome cliches, to wit, “you’re obsessed and you’re just chewing this thing to death,” “you’re so intimidating,” “I’m so scared,” “looks like I hit a nerve,” “I don’t like to discuss politics (on second thought),” et cetera, you get the idea…I went and jotted down my thoughts. And Kevin linked them.

Quote of the Day

And this one’s not from John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education for a change:

I understand good manners involve one side acting completely guilty and the other side acting completely innocent. I understand the protocol expected is for the righty-tighty to leap, chest-downward, on the grenade. I understand the expectation is to repeat the scene where Tom Sawyer gets the whipping so Becky whats-her-name’s glorious butt cheeks remain unscathed. I get all that.

I’m just tired of doing it. It comes down to something very simple. ONLY LIBERALS CAN PRESENT “FACTS” WITHOUT BECOMING EVIL. — House of Eratosthenes, “Tired of the Charade, Pretending it’s My Problem”

The topic was economics rather than guns and gun laws, but the principle is precisely the same. Some more:

I’m tired of ignoring the elephant in the room, and the elephant in the room is this: The abrasive thing I did was to present factual evidence incompatible with the desirable trope. I presented some hard numbers that would compel a newcomer to at least remain open to an alternative point of view. That was my infraction. And I’m tired of pretending otherwise. Did I mention how tired I am of it?

Looking back on it, I could have shortened the whole thing.

Liberals can present…emotional tirades. And when they do, you should listen. It’s from the heart after all. You wouldn’t want to be an insensitive bastard, would you?

Liberals can present…cherry picked statistics and other data. And when they do, you should listen. You don’t want to be some kind of ignoramus who thinks cavemen used dinosaurs as beasts of burden, do you?

When a non-liberal — not a conservative, but a libertarian, an anarchist, a middle-o-roader, a secular humanist, anyone who is not a wild-eyed hard-core lefty-loosey liberal — offers an expression of emotion, that person is out of his fucking gourd. He’s lost his composure, he’s angry, he’s upset, he hasn’t gotten over losing the election, he’s a racist pig, he’s a prick, he’s insecure in his masculinity, he’s hateful, he’s threatening.

And when non-liberals present statistics and other data, that’s treated the same way as when they offer expressions of emotion. Ah…that’s when the tiresome cliches all come out…sorry, I think this discussion has gone too far. Things are getting too heated. Look, we’re not going to agree on this. You can’t discuss politics any-old-place. Oh dear, I think I hit a nerve. You’re losing it. Why are you so angry? You need to get over losing the election!

Once you’re aware of this, it is stunning how little time can pass between “let’s have a civilized, rational exchange of ideas” and “oh my goodness, you’re brow-beating me, I don’t like to argue politics after all.” From the same person. The quickest time I’ve seen is about 45 seconds. That’s what my essay is all about — let’s stop treating these little outbursts as sincere ideas. They aren’t. They are cliches the liberals whimper out when they sense they have been cornered.

They are ways to make the liberals’ problems look like someone else’s problems. Period.

Anyway, I guess Kevin’s been having this long-standing “debate” of sorts with some smarmy stiff-assed Brit about gun control. And if you’re looking for the anti-gun guy to say “I really respect your intellect and the initiative you’ve taken to educate yourself on this matter, but your arguments simply don’t convince me,” you’re going to be disappointed YET AGAIN. Nope. Being properly anti-gun, means you have to think everyone pro-gun is a blithering idiot. And that’s what Kevin’s antagonist, James, did.

Ah, but then James pulled out the card: You’re taking this too far! Let it go!

Kevin, do you ever give it a rest, man? I pointed out to you a number of times that you resorted to emotion far more often than I did in our debate (your inverted commas were fully justified, by the way) – most notably with your cynical juxtaposition of a picture of a horrifically-injured woman with words to the effect of “this is what James Kelly regards as mere ‘bumps and bruises'”. You also resorted to anger (an emotion, I believe) when I pointed out the blindingly obvious fact that the mass-murderer Thomas Hamilton simply would not have been able to kill as many children as he did in the time he did with almost any other weapon or implement. Given the importance you attach to the distinction between ‘data’ and ’emotion’, one can only conclude that you resorted to emotion on so many occasions because your ‘data’ (ie. voodoo statistics) simply wasn’t strong enough.

I also on two separate occasions directed the readers of my blog to a website setting out a barrage of anti-gun facts and statistics that could go toe-to-toe with the contents of your epic dissertations any day of the week. I simply didn’t need to replicate all of that, and I wasn’t interested in that sort of discussion. There was nothing in your honeyed debate invitation to me that would have suggested you had any problem with that – indeed you told me “it’s about the PHILOSOPHY, James”. If it needs to be pointed out, there’s quite a big distinction between philosophy and ‘data’. Except, it seems, in the worlds of Kevin Baker and Karl Marx, who both believe(d) their philosophies are literally provable beyond any doubt. In which case, I stand by what I said – if you’re the one claiming to deal in cast-iron ‘facts’, the burden of proof for you is that much higher.

I wish you luck in finding a willing ‘bull’ for your next gladiatorial encounter. I get the impression that for you it’s like sex – there comes a point when it’s just been too long.

I think most of us, if not all of us, who have deigned to argue with liberals have more than a passing familiarity with this. We are like savage pit bulls who’ve tasted blood and we never know when to let anything go. It’s like sex, there comes a point when it’s just been too long. They, on the other hand, are models of decorum and restraint. If they’re tired of the argument, that means it’s time to get tired of the argument. They’re the adults, we’re the children.

What a damning indictment that is against them. When they want to look like adults, they have to use indoctrination to do it.

I couldn’t believe this was all growing out of a discussion about my stuff…and here was this Cockney bastard pretty much proving every single word I said. Naturally I kept my silence about it, since I’m so restrained and so mature.

Erm, no I’m not, no I’m not, and no I didn’t —

Mr. Kelly,

As the author of the original piece, I find it fascinating you’ve led us all around full circle right back to the very social phenomenon that inspired my comments in the first place. Poor guy, Kevin just pummeled you into liquid form and then pummeled you some more. Meanwhile, it’s a matter of record that the two of you engaged in quite an extended debate about ground rules for the exchange you were about to have, that this goes well beyond documenting mutual agreement that the exchange was to take place.

Same shit, different day, folks. Someone who is opposed to freedom, wants to debate the merits of both points-of-view — until, at the drop of a hat, suddenly they don’t. And it’s the other guy’s problem of course.

Except now, a growing number of us are becoming, or have become, tired of pretending it’s our problem when it isn’t. We’re not going along with the pretend-exercise anymore. You shouldn’t either.

And that’s why I’ve given up on coming up with rules for conservatives who want to argue with liberals. My rules, nowadays, are for liberals who want to argue with conservatives — they’re the ones behaving inconsistently. And rule number one is that once you want to start scrappin’, you can’t unilaterally decide all of a sudden it’s beneath you and you’re tired of it, just because you’re cornered. You can’t do that. You can’t do that any better than a girl in the third grade wearing a brand new pretty dress, can decide to wrestle in the mud with the boys, and then all of a sudden want out of it with her dress all pretty and clean again.

It don’t work. Of course some liberal men are just third-grade girls on the inside, and think that will somehow fly. That’s because they’re pussies.

“Of course some liberal men are just third-grade girls on the inside, and think that will somehow fly. That’s because they’re pussies.”

“Some”!?! Ah, just go all in Morgan, Texas Hold ‘Em style, all liberal men…are pussies.
- tim | 07/15/2009 @ 06:22
Wow, I dunno if I can go that far. Remember the old adage, “all rules with ‘all’ or ‘none’ eventually fail, including this one.”

This is one of many reasons why I have so much antipathy against this thing called “liberalism.” It has shown a tremendous power to take in people from all different upbringings and walks-of-life, and mold them into a unified form of some whimpering, apologizing, scolding shell of what was there before.
- mkfreeberg | 07/15/2009 @ 06:57
Fair enough., I’ll change it slightly – all the men who I’ve ever met who are liberals where pussies.

There, no rules broken…I think.
- tim | 07/15/2009 @ 10:34
Be advised: the Cockney bastard in question appears to have some objections to being referred to as a “Cockney”. That said, those objections do not seem to be strong enough to actually confront you over them, but, true to form, he is instead just going to whinge about them at his very-carefully-moderated weblog.

As I said over at Kevin’s, I do not think you could have asked for a better proof-of-concept than James. He fulfilled the very concepts you were talking about initially, and quite vociferously and militantly at that. I have to admit to no small degree of amazement at a person seeing what amounts to be a trap, acknowledging it, and then walking into it regardless.
- Linoge | 07/16/2009 @ 13:49
I’ve read the history of William the Conqueror landing at Pevensey, engaging the Battle of Hastings, shooting an arrow into King Harold’s eye, and then kind of just wandering around the countryside between October and December to be crowned as the new sovereign on Christmas Day. I’ve always had some trouble trying to envision this wandering-around part. Didn’t the Saxons even understand they were being invaded? Didn’t anyone think to walk up and say “Hey, uh, you guys don’t look like you’re from around here, are you, like, uh, conquering us or something?”

Whenever I argue with anti-gun Brits on the innerwebs, it all becomes clear. The Normans must have spent those ten weeks just laughing their asses off as the Saxon villagers shook their fingers at them and screamed “This is an outrage! You MUST get in your boats and go back to the other side! You MUST!!”

“Thoughts” on personal defense from an anti-gun Brit, is like advice on how to properly land a 747 from a Siamese cat.
- mkfreeberg | 07/16/2009 @ 14:06

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