In Reply: "There is no intellectual or rhetorical vice exclusive to a particular side of any partisan debate."

In reply to the following two comments at the American Power blog post "Post-Partisan Obama Cult":
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'Putting aside all the particulars that have nothing to do with the topic, of course the conflict will continue... The Left & the Right have different political philosophies, and the idea that anyone's asking or expecting anyone else to give up or give in is a myth. Disagree.'

"All well and good ... until someone starts turning ideology into policy.

Then, the particulars do matter ... as well as the intellectual honesty of those making the decisions.

If the decision-makers do not have the intellectual honesty to recognize their own errors in the light of history and reason (or hide them behind popular acceptance of their position ... hey, even slavery was popular in some places once), then place both their own error and that of their political opponents in actual historical perspective, then their credibility as decision-makers is compromised.

It's not like I have seen this game before, repsac ... and you need to remember that intellectual honesty is inherently in short supply among the morally relative that dominate ONLY ONE side of this debate.

While you might have a stash of that ... many of your fellow-travelers, some of whom are now decision-makers, threw theirs in the 7-11 trash receptacles a long time ago."
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'Here, I prefer the traditional "conventional wisdom" that has gotten us through pretty much every conflict since we became a nation over your radical ideas about foreign policy.'

"Acutally, that conventional wisdom has only been applicable for the last 60 years or so ... before that, we usually decisively engaged our enemies and defeated them as expeditiously as possible, and did not engage in the perpetual paralysis-by-analysis/vacillation/navel-gazing/self-flagellation that is now the Left's stock-in-trade.

And it has also been in those last 60 years that technology, commerce, and (yes) freedom have combined to produce a highly-interconnected planet ... a place where a few dozen can stealthily leverage the above to wreak havoc on a scale that previously took years and armies -- both highly visible to the defenders of life and liberty before their use -- to perpetrate.

The game has changed ... so the conventional wisdom of the last century does NOT apply ... as if it ever did."
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@ Rich: I don't suppose I need to mention that you're drifting off topic, again...

Yes, there are conversations & circumstances where the particulars you brought up do matter. This isn't one of 'em.

No, popularity does not equate with correctness. Most good ideas are opposed by the masses, at first, and many bad ones have come to be widely supported.

There really is no intellectual or rhetorical vice exclusive to a particular side of any partisan debate. That you believe otherwise, and are willing to spread such a sweeping generalization over so much of the left, in big bold capital letters, no less, calls your own intellectual honesty into question.
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Posted Wednesday, November 12, 2008