You wake up early each morning to post tiresome tirades about "leftists", full of strawmen, weasel words, and appeals to yourself as an authority. It's funny how you claim others are histrionic.
stan | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 7:41 am | #

Just recently you claimed that "leftists" "swoon" over Ahmedinijad, now you're claiming "leftists" say we should have actually attacked Iran. If you are going to fabricate things each day, you might want to be consistent. Both claims are absurd, by the way.
Kevin | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 8:04 am | #

"Why are little ones born only to suffer for the want of immunity or a bowl of rice?". Much pathos but not much originality. The line is from "Roll The Bones", by Rush.
Surellin | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 8:41 am | #

Ah! I see today's crop of leftist trolls have appeared earlier than usual. Welcome! Read and learn.
Capn Billy | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 8:53 am | #

The Native Americans, from whom these doubtless lily-white Newagers cribbed this ceremony, knew the difference between astral projection and a coma. Shaman would pass to apprentice the right way to do things---how much the person to undergo a purification should feast before fasting, what should or should not be consumed before the fast, what color of skin and demeanor mean the difference between someone who might get something out of the ceremony, and who would just get sick.

Newagers don't get that you can't learn these things from a book. It's a symptom of their willingness to borrow from cultures they don't bother to understand.
R S | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 10:04 am | #

I doubt the lefty trolls even read Dr. Sanity's post. What she posted is all true, and can be backed up by facts.

For example, it is a fact that the many Muslim countries blame Jews for all of their problems. It is also a fact that there are literally zero Jews living in those Muslim countries. How, therefore, can the "Jews" be keeping those Muslim countries poor? Ain't no way! Rather, as the Doc as posted before, the Muslim countries have to find some external scapegoat to blame for their own internal failings.

That's really not much different from someone in America who blames others for his inability to get a job when the blamer is just sitting on the couch doing drugs and watching TV instead of going to school to get a valuable life skill that will lead to getting a job.

And to the troll "Kevin" (at least he's not "anonymous"!): You know that the left can harp on how Bush led us into an "illegal war" against Iraq, etc, ad nauseum, but you will also have to admit that if Bush had done nothing to go after America's enemies, and then let's say the terrorists detonated a nuke in New York city, then those same lefties would be screaming "But Bush should have done something to protect us!" Why doesn't the left actually try to work constructively with the current administration instead of trying to undermine everything it's trying to do? That's where the left has lost all credibility with me, and with more than half the country--the left can't build anything good any more, they can only tear down what others have built.
Garry K | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 10:09 am | #

As a "furthermore" to my point above, I think what this really illustrates is the typical liberal hope that their feelings and intentions will make up for what they don't bother to learn or understand. Their often-flogged sympathy for Native Americans (at least reading Ward Churchill) should, in their minds, make up for their utter ignorance of actual, real-life Native Americans and what they really want

Native Americans take a dim view of this as well:

http://www.aics.org/war.html

Kind of explains their bleating about the Palestinians and other "noble savages of the week," doesn't it? Do they bother to know these guys before declaring that they want peace, love, butterflies, and eternal nunter-gathering while wearing cute grass skirts?
R S | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 12:01 pm | #

"--the left can't build anything good any more, they can only tear down what others have built."
Right, Garry K at 06.07.07 - 10:09 am; that also applies to the Muslim countries that the left continues to enable.
Capn Billy | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 12:03 pm | #

He's not concerned with yesterday -
He knows constant change is here today -
He's noble enough to know what's right -
But weak enough not to choose it -
He's wise enough to win the world -
But fool enough to lose it ---

He's a new world man...

Long Live The Beast!
Jack Ryan | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 12:12 pm | #

Well, lets see if the trolls can actually make a case.

Simply touching oneself is not a sign of sexual maturity, no matter how much some people want to believe that to be true.
sigmund, carl and alfred | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 12:19 pm | #

I'd like for "stan" to even bother citing examples of his "weasel words" and "strawmen". It's easy to say these things, but he could at least give examples for discussion. Or is it that the assertations are indefensible?
DaveD | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 12:25 pm | #

"nearly cooded him to death", ay?

Since they didn't succeed with boiling, maybe next time they can roast him?
http://content.answers.com/main/ ...ibals.23232.jpg
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 12:51 pm | #

Dr. Sanity, I'm a great fan of your blog and normally agree with just about everything you say. However, the Rush quote about immunity and bowls of rice has been taken out of context, perhaps initially by the original commenter.

The quote comes from a song that argues in favor of a belief in free will while acknowledging that much is up to chance.

Rush have never advocated leftist blather, and for a while even promoted Objectivism.
The Bunnies | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 1:01 pm | #

BACK TO BASICKS?

Here's Paul Watson, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, advocating exterminating the REAL threat to the planet, HUMANS!

"After all, we Homo sapiens are the last survivors of the hominid line, a group that has been on its way out for some time. . . .
Humans are presently acting upon . . . [the ecosystem] . . . in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system. . . .
There is only one cure, only one way of stopping this rising epidemic of extinctions. The solution requires an extraordinarily immense effort by all of human society but it is achievable.

We need to re-wild the planet. . . .

. . . people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.

We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings.
http://www.seashepherd.org/ edito...l_070504_1.html
"

That is something to think about.
If I am catching the theme of this post right, the major problem with leftists is that they have managed to invert everything. They go backward and call it forward, they harm and call it help, they profain and call it reverence.
...
On another note, I wish to speek for myself in that atheism is not synonimous with nilhilism and victim mongering.
It is also interesting that the trolls are the quickest to post; it implies that they are the most devoted followers of your page.
Count to 10 | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 1:39 pm | #

I wonder if all that leftist experimentation with drugs had any cause and effect.

lol
ken | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 1:58 pm | #

"... once victim status is secured, then you are no longer burdened by a conscience."

Thanks for bringing this insight to our attention. The victimhood politics is carried into the classroom by some teachers. Leftist teachers and university academics inculcate victim status into children, teens, and university students. The children and students accepting this inculcation build up a mental structure of victimhood status and then act out the what results from that mental structure, a structure based on a lack of conscience.
Gloria | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 3:12 pm | #

ytba- beautiful catch.

From a logical pov, if we are going to 'reduce human populations' is clear we need to rid ourselves of the most failed, destructive and oppressive of human societies.

So long, lefties.
sigmund, carl and alfred | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 3:17 pm | #

NICE TOUCH!

"So long, lefties." --
sigmund, carl and alfred

LOL

And, thanks, but it was hard not to "catch" or more correctly, "be caught by" it. We know they feel that way, but when one to comes out and says it, it's still a shock.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 3:26 pm | #

Gloria cites this quote, "... once victim status is secured, then you are no longer burdened by a conscience."

Evan Sayet elaborates and explains . . .

"So long as the terrorists are merely murdering Christians, Jews, Americans and Hindus the leftists can portray the Moslems as an oppressed peoples. When the truth is shown ... that the Moslems are oppressing (via attempted genocide) peoples around the globe INCLUDING OTHER MOSLEMS, the left can no longer portray evil as the victim." [his emphasis]
http://sayetright.blogspot.com/2...- islamists.html

Today's extreme "progressives" are actually worse in some ways than the traditional Marxists. While Marxism was a bastard child of the Enlightenment, the current "progressive" movement is basically counter-enlightenment.
david foster | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 4:05 pm | #

"Just recently you claimed that "leftists" "swoon" over Ahmedinijad, now you're claiming "leftists" say we should have actually attacked Iran. If you are going to fabricate things each day, you might want to be consistent. Both claims are absurd, by the way." -- Kevin

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. What are we to do with you. Haven't you ever heard them say "we were for it, before we were against it." or "we were alway against it." when they had orginally been for it, etc., etc.,?

It isn't us it's THEM who are the hypocrits! DUH!

Now, setting our electron microscope on "stun" we zoom in for a closer look.

Daniel Pipes has a nice little piece on his blog from all the way back in '05, entitled "The Leftist-Islamist Alliance in Pictures." I quess you could call it a "Family Album" of sorts, with a whole lot of swoonin' goin' on.
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/273

Then, there's the "religious Left" in a swoon.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Arti...le.asp? ID=24801
(and you thought the "religious right" was dangerous!)

Now focus in on the flip side:

As to the Dems saying we should have made war with Iran rather than Iraq, They were just pulling that out of their "The President is wrong" bag of tricks. They didn't mean it. BUT, they DID say it.

As we see in this WashingtonPost article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...- 2004Jul22.html
"Did we invade the wrong country? One of the lessons being drawn from the Sept. 11 report is that Iran was the real threat. It had links to al Qaeda, allowed some of the Sept. 11 hijackers to transit and is today harboring al Qaeda leaders. The Iraq war critics have a new line of attack: We should have done Iran instead of Iraq."

You will notice that he doesn't "name names" there because at the time it was common knowledge and there were so many on that bandwagon that a list would have been prohibitively long.

Now, Kevin, be a good litle troll, and go play with your dollies until you grow up.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 4:24 pm | #

OF "NEW MEN?" WHAT ABOUT "NEW WOMEN?" . . . "NEW NEWS?" . . . "NEW HYPOCRISY?"

Evan Sayet has this to say about the Left's beloved Rosie, and the MSM who enable her (and the Left):

"First, Rosie O'Donnell was not fired. Rosie felt that with her hateful, anti-American rants she should be free to sell her lies to NBC or CBS if they offer her more next year. ABC wanted to lock her anti-American lies in for three years. In other words, ABC wanted to reward her for her vile and moronic anti-American statesments and Rosie felt her vile and moronic anti-American statements were worth more."
http://sayetright.blogspot.com/2...rosie- rant.html

". . . there is a difference between the hypocrisy of the left and that of the right in that, the Modern Liberal does not believe in higher values and thus their contradictory behavior is not going against their beliefs.

That is, the rules the Modern Liberal espouse are meant ONLY for others as they are all designed to undermine the power of the people they despise . . . [and I would add, to acquire the power they erroneously believe rightly belongs to them]

. . . Rosie O'Donnell is truly being hypocritical when she comes out against gun ownership even as she is surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards because it's not guns she's against, it's Americans (most especially Christians) she wants to disarm."
http://sayetright.blogspot.com/2...rosie- rant.html

YTBA

Wanna know why we didn't invade Iran? Y'all really want to know why we didn't invade Iran?

I'm gonna TELL you why we didn't invade Iran in 2003, though I am sure it was an option we considered:

After taking out the Taliban in Afghanistan, we were more than aware that the Talibs would merely flee somewhere else, hide out and resupply, and try to make a return. We couldn't do much about those who went to Pakistan, but we needed to do *something* about the ones likely to flee to Iran.

All things being equal, it would have been better to take out Iran, but all things were not equal. Iraq was literally one heartbeat away from the political untouchability currently enjoyed by Syria, and for much the same reasons. For all the talk of the Ba'ath "Party," Iraq was a dictatorship of one man, and had been so for a number of years. That one man was no longer a spring chicken, and was not getting any younger.

The Worst Case Scenario for invading Iran first would have involved Saddam dying while still leader of Iraq. Uday and Qusay could hold meetings with UBL his very own self, and the "world community" would be too busy counting their Oil-for-Food bribes to give a damn.

So Iraq it was.
R S | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 4:58 pm | #

Anyone remember the Victorian-era medical cure-all for "Hysteria"?

A HYSTERECTOMY.
Headless Unicorn Guy | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 7:34 pm | #

"I'd like for "stan" to even bother citing examples of his "weasel words" and "strawmen". It's easy to say these things, but he could at least give examples for discussion. Or is it that the assertations are indefensible?"

Oh for fuck's sake, that's all this article (and its responses) IS!

The ONLY evidence provided for "the left" are absurd comparisons to the USSR and some ridiculous "new age healers", and an article by *neoconservative* Charles Krauthammer.

Other than that, it's a bunch of "bloggers" fabricating tales about how "leftists" believe this, "leftists" believe that.

Show me where I'm wrong, losers.
stan | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 7:43 pm | #

why bother, Stan? go back to your cave where you can at least listen to your own echoes..
LLB | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 9:53 pm | #

IT'S ALL ABOUT "PROGRESS" ISN'T IT, STAN?

Deroy Murdock does an excellent job showing how it is violent and boorish people like stan who are the mainstay of the Left's "progressive" "new men."
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/20891
Read that to see how hysterical the Left has become, and how stan fits right in.

The Left is just a giant psycho magnet. It just sucks those on the border of sanity into it's ever growing intellectual and spiritual black hole, many never to be seen sane ever again.

The sad thing is that many of them, if not most, could have had normal lives if their minds hadn't been so poisoned by the Left.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 10:15 pm | #

Funny how not one single person other than DaveD even addressed anything I actually said...he challenged me, I responded to his challenge, and now everyone will call me names, pretend I didn't, and gleefully try to one-up the last guy with ludicrous claims about "leftists".

For people who claim to understand "reality", you sure ignore a lot of it.
stan | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 11:17 pm | #

"Show me where I'm wrong, . . . " -- Stan

The evidence is everywhere. You just don't know how to interpret it.

For example:

You object to Krauthammer being a "neocon," and because of that ad hominem label you dismiss everything he writes.

That would be fair, if all his facts were wrong, or if his opinion distorted the meaning of those facts. But his facts are right, and so it can only be his opinions you find fault with. But oddly you (and most other Lefties along with you) reject his facts as well as his opinions. If the facts are correct, at least admit it. But you don't! Why is that?

Permit me to explore a possible explaination.

What I cited above by him was the phenomena of Leftists saying "we should have taken care of Iran instead of Iraq", implying that we should have invaded Iran. At the time he reported on it, everyone knew the Left was saying that. It is an historical fact.

Just because Krauthammer said it doesn't make it not a fact. If you want to question his opinions, fine, I sometimes do. But his facts are much more reliable than the factoids of Leftists (Remember Dan Rather's whopper for which he was fired?), and you cannot (legitimately) object to them as being wrong. Yet, you reject them anyway, just because he's a "neocon." That, is irrational.

I could leave it at that, but I think I can manage a little more insight by exploring a bit further.

Consider that the MSM Leftist "Bubba Wawwa" (Barbara Walters) said of the deceased Peter Jennings, "what made Peter great was that he knew there was no such thing as the truth.". And no Leftist is "shocked" by that statement! NOW we are getting somewhere.

According to the Left, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FACTS (truth), which means THERE IS ONLY OPINION (feelings). Therefore, when you disagree with the opinion, everything else for you MUST be wrong. I.e., you "dont need no stinkin facts," and out goes the baby with the bathwater.

In other words, you don't think with your head, you think with your heart. And the Left knows that the heart is a lot easier to fool than the head, so that's where they fight all their battles for your mind. Once they have tricked you into "thinking" (feeling) the way they want, it's darned near impossible for you to find your way out because you don't know how to free your mind from your heart so it can function correctly.

You are lost in a labyrith of lies feeding off of feelings of envy, anger, hate and fear they have got you repeating mantra-like over and over and over, until nothing is left but a willingness to believe whatever nonsense they tell you.

You have downloaded bad software, and it is destroying you.

Only when you learn how to think using facts instead of talking points, a little cold logic instead of all feelings, will you stand a chance of climbing out of the abyss they are sucking you into.

Good luck. Your gonna' need it.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 11:35 pm | #

"Funny how not one single person other than DaveD even addressed anything I actually said -- stan

That's because you didn't say anything.

All you did was use a lot of profanity, call us names, tell us we were wrong without explaining why and make ludicrous claims about "neocons."

There was NOTHING resembling rational thought (see my last post) in anything you said in any comment you made.

You may have "responded" to DaveD, but you didn't say anything that made sense.

But still you think you've "won" an argument with us, when you are really basically just having a monologue with yourself.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 11:51 pm | #

I always like when I'm around someone who spouts that nonsense that "there's too many people in the world!" I always tell them, "You're right--we should get rid of some of the people. You go first!" That ALWAYS shuts them up! But it's typical lefty hypocrisy where they just want everyone ELSE to do something that the lefties themselves don't want to do. Sort of like when they want you to use less gasoline while they drive around in big SUVs and while Al Gore globe-trots in a big jet airplane.
Garry K | Email | Homepage | 06.07.07 - 11:59 pm | #

The reason I posted such a long "response" to stan wasn't to address him, but to work out something I just realized about why we can't talk to any of them.

Although I've known for a long time they think with their hearts and not their minds, I had still been under the illusion they were working from the same facts and just reaching different conclusions. Now, I realize that is almost never the case, or if it is, it is purely coincidence.

The result of their creativity with reality is that "reasoning" with them is impossible, because they will always redefine whatever "facts" they are "reasoning" from so that they "win."

And they will change those factoids in the blink of an eye, even if they directly contradict what they said moments before, if that is what it takes to "win."

And with them, it's all about "winning." Forget all that b.s. about "consensus." All "consensus" means is when everyone else finally agrees with them.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 12:17 am | #

I want you
I don't want anybody else
And when I think about you
I touch myself

Where was I?
Enough mindless bickering. Solutions, little Americans! Then holding feet to the fire and then action when DC does its usual nothing.

Iran and Syria:
We fund dissident insurgencies in those places - Reverse Terrorism! (Could be some issues about fighting terror with terror though.)

NoKo:
Cut the head off by giving Kim Jung Ill a gift of anthrax laced porno DVDs then move in quick with a coup to reunite Korea. (Maybe a reunited Korea would pose an economic threat to both Japan and China and cause them to find some excuse to invade and then it’s divided again but that’s a risk we’ll have to take.)

The Democratic Party:
“reminds me of the Republicans circa 1965 or so - impotent, shrill, no ideas, conspiratorial, reactive, out-of-touch with most Americans, isolationist, and full of embarrassing spokesmen." (stan can take that one)
americafirst | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 4:02 am | #

ytba, a fellow Evan Sayet fan, I see! He has such great insight into the Modern Liberal mind (but coming from a different angle to Dr Sanity) - having worked in Hollywood, and being New York Jew.

I like his explanation of the reason for the inversion of values: that which we call good, right and successful is assumed by the left to have achieved its status by oppressing what we call bad, wrong and failed - which is therefore the victim to be championed by the left.
Brett_McS | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 8:05 am | #

"What I cited above by him was the phenomena of Leftists saying "we should have taken care of Iran instead of Iraq", implying that we should have invaded Iran. At the time he reported on it, everyone knew the Left was saying that. It is an historical fact."

Weasel words and strawmen, ytba. Neo-conservatives spouting off nonsense about what "leftists" believe just doesn't do it for me.

"All you did was use a lot of profanity, call us names, tell us we were wrong without explaining why and make ludicrous claims about "neocons.""

I didn't say anything about "neocons". I made an easily verified statement about YOU: your positions are wholly unsupportable.

"There was NOTHING resembling rational thought (see my last post) in anything you said in any comment you made."

You can say that as many times as you like, but that doesn't make it true.
stan | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 8:47 am | #

Brett_McS | 06.08.07 - 8:05 am |

Yes. His approach is astonishingly accurate as well as refreshingly simple and direct. It's amazing what a few good conceptual tools can accomplish.
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 11:19 am | #

LAST TO IGNORAMUSTAN

"Weasel words and strawmen, ytba. Neo-conservatives spouting off nonsense about what "leftists" believe just doesn't do it for me." -- stan

That was a report on what they WERE SAYING, not thinking, oh dense one, and is an HISTORICAL FACT, not speculation. If they be "weasle words" they be YOUR (the royal "your") "weasle words."

If you knew how to google it, you could find plenty to verify that for yourself . . .
http://www.google.com/search?hl=...rong+country% 22


ALSO . . .

COMPARE THIS:
"The ONLY evidence provided for "the left" are absurd comparisons to the USSR and some ridiculous "new age healers", and an article by *neoconservative* Charles Krauthammer." -- stan | 06.07.07 - 7:43 pm |

WITH THIS:
"I didn't say anything about "neocons". -- stan

I picked that comment about "neoconservatives" to develop because it so clearly illustrated the problem you guys have with truth and consistency. Still does.

LIKE I SAID:

"And they will change those factoids in the blink of an eye, even if they directly contradict what they said moments before, if that is what it takes to 'WIN'."

I REST MY CASE

another great ref on their puerile attempts at mental gymnastics
http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog...ves/ 007325.html
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 11:59 am | #

fear of marxism How Quaint !!
John Ryan | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 12:49 pm | #

ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS?

"On the left the hands are being wrung over Iraq. It is argued that the decision to invade the wrong country has made our situation intolerably worse. Iran was always the bigger threat. While we were chasing phantom nuclear weapons in Mesopotamia, next door Iran was busy building real ones"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ tol...ticle720640.ece

Last September, even the once funny Bill Maher said
"Most people don't clutch the wrong organ, but then again, most people don't invade the wrong country."

Dishonest and stupid when they said it, stupid and dishonest when they deny having said it.

Is the country suffering from some sort of collective Alzheimer's disease, that they cannot remember what happened just last year?
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 12:59 pm | #

From wiki:

Generalization using weasel words

Generalization by means of grammatical quantifiers (few, many, people, etc.), as well as the passive voice ("it has been decided") are also part of weasel wording. Generalization in this way helps speakers or writers disappear in the crowd and thus disown responsibility for what they have said.

* "People say…" (Who are the people who say it?)
* "I heard that..." (Whom did you hear it from? How, where and when did they learn of it?)
* "Experience shows that..." (Whose experience? What was the experience? How does it demonstrate this?)
* "Few of those who knew the truth have spoken up for …" (Which people knew the truth and should have spoken up?)
* "It has been decided that..." (Who decided?)
* "It turns out that..." (How, and why, did it "turn out" that way?)
* "Popular wisdom is/has it, that..." (Who made it popular, and is it really?).

In the following phrases, an indication of where or how the stories started would have removed the weaseling effect:

* "It has been mentioned that..." (Who mentioned it?)
* "Rumour has it that..." (Where was this rumour published or spread? Who is included in the group that is just about anybody?)
* "There is evidence that..." (What evidence? Where is it? What are the details?)
* "A source states that..." or "There is an accusation that..." (What is the source? Is it reliable?)

Just add "leftists" into all of these as necessary, and there's your logic.

After *all* that time searching, you've come up with some columnist I've never heard of and a comedian's joke? Ummm...nice job!

P.S. I didn't say anything about neoconservatives, you moron, I merely pointed out that Krauthammer is one, to demonstrate the massive flaws in your logic I've already pointed out several times. Have a nice day.
stan | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 3:37 pm | #

Well, did you learn something new about yourself today stan?

Atta boy.
Jack Ryan | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 5:29 pm | #

Well, not to worry. John Edwards figures a 10,000 strong Peace Corps will be his new foreign policy advisers. I wonder how many beheadings the left could stomach?
ken | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 5:59 pm | #

Dear Dr,
I am an admirer. May I offer a slightly different view of the left and its particular form of hysterical nihilism? It is from my latest post which deals with the ways that the left argues and the reasons it may just be masochistic and counter-productive to feed their lust for sterile discourse. Here is a snip-

"After the fall of the Soviet Union, and now with the slow capitalization of China, they can no longer point to the steady evolution of the utopia. To avoid admitting that their ideology is now officially not a candidate for “survival of the fittest” but rather a victim of “extinction of the least fit”, they have sunk into a kind of glib but effective, antic nihilism which allows them to take advantage of their right of free speech to deconstruct and weaken the culture from within its vital institutions.

The glibness of the left is based on a kind of intellectual guerilla deconstructionism. They start with a patently false accusations and assertions and then, when challenged with information, fall back on a series of lines of defense consisting of reasonable-sounding requests for more information that are designed to eat away at the validity of the assumptions behind the information. A question that one of these might have thrown at Jefferson would be “So if you say the creator endowed us with these rights but later on you insist that there must be no official religion- how can you then use the deity to justify your claim to these rights?” This is an example of a question that is also really an accusation in disguise. Then, if you take the time and energy to argue with them, they just fade back behind more of those kinds of questions . When that last line of defense is breached they simply go back to the beginning and assert some other naive and obviously uninformed anti-western slogan thereby entrapping the unwary and sincere in an endless loop of fruitless talk."
Yaacov Ben Moshe | Email | Homepage | 06.08.07 - 9:57 pm | #

Responding to trolls is like wrestling with a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

Some people think (I've been guilty of thinking this myself, at times) that if you don't respond, they'll claim victory.

News flash, that's going to happen anyway!

The only possible reason to respond to a troll is to protect innocent third parties, but eventually, after having answered the same dishonest troll "point" 300 times, often from the same troll, you just have to shoo it away.

P.S. Even if you were to conform to stan's demands and provide a point-by-point linked defense of the entire essay, stand would respond with a minor re-write of its first post on this thread and then run off to declare victory.

Don't expect a troll to accept reasoned answers, that's not why they're here!
Merovign | Email | Homepage | 06.09.07 - 2:28 pm | #

Yaacov Ben Moshe,

“hysterical nihilism”
“lust for sterile discourse”
“intellectual guerilla deconstructionism”

Oy vey. Lets see if I can bust through your bubble. KISS?

Think pre-neolithic. Now try ‘instinctual power mitigation needs’. Is “evolution of the utopia” not “unconscious need for a best fit”?
americafirst | Email | Homepage | 06.09.07 - 5:54 pm | #

FRUIT LOOPIES

Yaacov Ben Moshe concludes his observations correctly observes that the Left defends it self with ". . . an endless loop of fruitless talk"

An excellent example is ignoramu-stan, who responds to every argument by dismissing it rather than answering it. Based on his last wild response, a laundry list which presents but doesn't show how it's connected to his point (because he has no point), I think I may have successfully pushed his buttons.

The fool doesn't even realize that WE are the ones who give reasoned arguments with proofs, and he is the one who just blathers nonsense.

But, as ben Moshe says, answering our objections isn't their objective, and can't be since they have nothing to refute them with.

Recently I wrote to another post that while we attempt to attack their strongest claim, they go after superficial "weaknesses" in our arguments, and hope to discredit us on some silly technicality. I.e., they fight dirty, because that's all they know how to do, like the pigs in Merovign's astute post.

And, Merovign, I completely agree. I use some of the trolls comments as a good way to segway into facts that many may not have access to. But I certainly don't think they will gain anything by it, and I don't get upset when they persist in insisting the facts aren't facts and reason isn't reason. And, that's another thing. They want to get us upset.

The more we understand their methods of attack, the more we can figure out how to get the frootloops to tie themselves in knots, and have fun doing it.

regards
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.10.07 - 12:29 am | #

Yaacov Ben Moshe

Nice site, btw. I'll have to spend a little time there.

regards
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.10.07 - 12:31 am | #

Actually, I think Ben’s describing the blind-faith ideologue, subsets of which could be Communists or even some Zionists.

Regarding my last sentence in my previous comment, I got the idea from this quote which I found online: “We tend to form into groups of 25 - 150 most easily.”
americafirst | Email | Homepage | 06.10.07 - 1:13 am | #

ytba,
Thanks very much- I've got a little change of pace coming up. I hope to have it ready by Monday. Its a parable about dogs and political architypes. Here's a taste that is appropriate to this thread:
" Harry, on the other hand, is a Progressive. He was supposed to be a miniature poodle- that’s what the folks at the big breeding kennel told us. He never grew up. He is now six years old and the size of a smallish cat. He is a lap dog. If you have never owned or known a poodle (especially the smaller varieties) you simply can have no idea how entitled, amusing, imperious, adorable, irritating and (ultimately) useless they can be. Harry struts around the house with the brisk assurance of ownership and if he doesn’t get his way he becomes petulant, often using the odd, strategically placed pile of feces and/or puddle of urine to express his displeasure when he feels slighted. Its not that he doesn’t know the rules, he just holds them in contempt, ad he does it with an insolent flair. Ever since I described the argumentative strategies of the modern left as “antic nihilism” in my post about the argumentative style of the left, I have been unable to look at Harry without thinking of that phrase. Of course, one of the reasons Harry seems amusing and adorable in spite of the other characteristics is that he is less than a foot long and weighs less than eight pounds. He ordinarily has no real ability to cause pain or disorder. When a human progressive leaves one of their verbal piles of excrement on the floor (oh, say, “no blood for oil”, or “BusHitler” or “Israel is apartheid” for example) it is not adorable, not just because it is untrue but because it causes liberals to become upset and encourages them to behave in ways that endanger everybody."
Yaacov Ben Moshe | Email | Homepage | 06.10.07 - 8:54 am | #

Yaacov Ben Moshe

Yes, our sages say we can learn a lot by watching the behavior of animals, some to emulate, some not.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.10.07 - 3:54 pm | #

AF

"Actually, I think Ben’s describing the blind-faith ideologue, subsets of which could be Communists or even some Zionists."

The Leftists, whoever they are, are all either "blind-faith ideoloques" (usefull idiots) or cynical self-serving liars. Of course, even the liars have to have a kind of "bliind-faith," because they need to believe their destructive behavior won't come back to harm them in the end, or that when they see it coming, they can lie their way out of it.
ytba | Email | Homepage | 06.10.07 - 4:09 pm | #