I went back and found the article that was involved
in the next dispute:
Perhaps one thing I should reiterate is that I only
post a small percentage of the articles I read. If there is a good point but
wrapped up with other inferior points, or if it is poorly written, or accurate
but not really that new, I don't bother posting.
In this case, I have seen the false arguments
mentioned here come up often. They generally weren't being used effectively, so
I never spent a lot of time on them, but this article did a great job of
sorting things out, putting in context, and clarifying, making it very
valuable.
This was not appreciated by one of my libertarian
friends. It was the same one who left the gun argument after I invoked the
commerce clause. He does come up a lot on gun issues, but he is even more
dependable on abortion, taking the tack that people who don't believe in it
should not have to pay for other people to get it.
Actually, while a line item tax apportionment where
your money only went to causes you supported could have some interesting
results, but it is wildly impractical. I am not an anarchist quite yet.
What stood out to me more from that discussion was
how much he jumped around. Sanger was evil in her pursuit of abortions - no,
she only grudgingly admitted support for abortions when it might be necessary
to save the life of the mother. It says it right there.
At first it was difficult to tell if he had not read
the article or thought it was lies, but it could have been a combination of
both. As it is, even the National Right to Life Center admits that Planned
Parenthood only started providing abortions in the 70s, specifically opposing
abortion in a 1963 pamphlet. Margaret Sanger died in 1966, but her point all
along was about preventing the pregnancy in the first place. Doing that
effectively should to a lot to prevent abortion.
The points in the article are pretty solid (which is
exactly why I liked it) so he started pulling out more random things. Every
time he argued something I made an appropriate counterpoint and he changed the
subject.
This is a tactic that I have noticed many times. I
had thought it was a symptom of how conservative radio and television doesn't
delve very deep into issues. They throw out a bunch of points in succession.
They don't explore deeply, and frankly a lot of the points wouldn't hold up if
they did, but there is an echo chamber going on where emotionally it feels like
"Yeah! That's right!"
That makes sense for a lot of what I've noticed, and
for some scientific explanations I have seen for why that would be attractive.
However, I recently saw a comment where a conservative called this a common
liberal tactic, and my story for tomorrow has a liberal engaging in this way.
Clearly some things are not dependent on party
affiliations, and that is probably only partially because of the limitations of
the parties with a lot more of it being due to how humans are. Still, better
things are possible. I have seen people learn from each other. I have seen
people be patient with complex points. I have seen people disagree on some
issues and make peace with the disagreement.
There are some things that I think are important
here, and this is why it matters to me that all of these people are from
church.
Theoretically we believe the same things, but Wad
should be able to have a lot more compassion. In a different memorable conflict
that we'd had, he was judging the choices of a family that was struggling
financially. The father had sought further job training and they had moved in
with the mother-in-law to save money and to help her with help problems. Even
though those sound like smart moves, to him everything they were doing was
stupid and it was their own fault they were poor. Employers who underpaid and
messed with schedules were not the issue at all. So forget all of Christ's
admonitions to help the poor, because they brought it on themselves. So Wad
insulting people who had been pretty forbearing with him follows naturally. Obviously
we had to be wrong; we disagreed with him.
For this incident, the other guy wasn't as bad, but
the tendency to jump around, never acknowledging the issues with your own
accuracy, feels dishonest to me. We believe in honesty. Pouncing on blurbs that
support your position without caring that they are false and easily disproved
does not go along with valuing knowledge or honesty.
The other thing that I'd like to point out is that I
don't jump in other people's mentions to argue what they post, and I know
people who post some pretty stupid stuff. If I take the time to post something,
I made a considered choice. If you try and argue it I will feel compelled to
argue back, even though it is often exhausting not just for the bulk of
half-truths and manipulations for also for the sheer disrespect that seems to
naturally flow with it.
Sometimes I think I should just delete the person,
rather than fight the uphill battle that will not change their minds. My
commitment to people and to honesty makes that hard to do. I may have to
incorporate a response where I say that the constant abandonment of failed
arguments to take up new ones is hard to take seriously. I don't know. When I
start blogging about the election, I will probably get to find out.
Anyway, one more argument tomorrow. For now, two old
links.
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