Which I always find to be a refreshing treat! A conservative with a brain! I guess I don't so much find it a refreshing treat as a remarkable oddity. A conservative with a brain really justs adds a veneer of respectability to a pot-luck dinner of insanity and ugliness.
Because to be a "conservative" generally means believing that your religious-philosophical delusions are universal truths which MUST be imposed upon the rest of the world and which MUST expel the other "false" delusions believed by "conservatives" from other cultures. Being a "conservative" tends to mean that ... bah, enough of this. The point of this "loose-ends" post is to simultaneously respond to the anonymous commentator's detailed offering from a couple of days ago, and put something up on the main page at the same time. Because time is a scarce commodity for me these days.
I just wanted to say though, that over the years I've found that I'm far down in the rankings for the category "smart people." I'm smart enough to have been nick-named "perfesser" at a couple of places where I've worked, but I'm actually slow to grasp things, I don't have a head for details, and I'm incredibly lazy. On the other hand, I've noticed that many "brilliant" people seem to be carried along helplessly by their ideas. Academics, left or right, humanities or sciences, can often whirl around and around in pointless circles, "perfecting" their elaborate theories and (especially in the sciences) causing all sorts of harm pursuing their ideas out in the real world, or (especially in the humanities) being completely ineffectual (thankfully perhaps) and disconnected from reality.
I'd place my anonymous conservative in that category. From the looks of things, he/she/it's a better writer than me, and appears to have a grasp on a subject that I could never approximate in my own areas of interest. But the guy/gal/thing becomes a twit when using these abilities to berate me for not giving a garbage book by a garbage writer a "fair" shake. And for saying that being a "conservative" means respecting the law of unintended consequences, when the consequences of taking a shit like Steyn seriously are thousands of people cheering for an illegal and disastrous war, poisoning the relations between the Muslim minority and the rest of society in the Western nations, and the perpetuation of a general "clash of civilizations" that is based to a large extent on utterly deluded beliefs on the aggressor side, but that all of these unintended consequences are supposedly not problematic.
So, without further ado, is the comment left by the anonymous conservative, interspersed with my replies:
Furthermore, you fall prey to the same rhetorical tendencies I identified earlier, specifically false attribution, straw-man arguments, and lack of nuance.
Anyone can look through the comments section of my recent posts about Mark Steyn to see that I've attributed nothing false to the dimwit's writings. It makes you wonder if reading the book is a useful exercise for comprehending it. My "lack of nuance" is an interesting notion, which I'll get to ...
It's pointless and, again, hypocritical to condemn an author for purportedly referring to a diverse group of people as a unified bloc while simultaneously telling your audience what "right-wingers" do and do not think.
Well, in this specific context, Steyn is clearly conflating "Muslim" with "Fundamentalist Islamo-fascist" which is clearly wrong, while I'm making more general claims about the war-mongering and racist beliefs of members of the political spectrum. General claims that are pretty much reflected in reality. Your own monumental efforts to correct a non-entity such as myself about the true meaning of Steyn's work appears to put you on the side of those who would revere Steyn, or at least take him seriously.
Indeed, you admit that you're categorically disinterested in exploring "the pointless nuances of their confused political beliefs."
That's about the size of it. There's a blogger called "Canadian Cynic" who I like because he takes the time to read through the products of bloggers from a collective called the "Blogging Tories" and who reports back on the sheer worthlessness of their output with suitably caustic commentary. Any honest look at what they write and what he writes about them shows that it's undeniable that these people are complete morons, and these people are the shock-troops of the right-wing movement. I've seen their ilk do their work in the United States, and it's clear to those with eyes to see it that the products of putting their stupid, ugly ideas into practice are grotesquely stupid and ugly, inhuman and cruel. From the illegal invasion of Iraq, to the bungling of the Middle East generally, to the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans to the faith-based "skepticism" about global warming, to their opposition to gay rights (from fear of their own sexual inclinations), from their destruction of civil rights via the PATRIOT Act and the PROTECT AMERICA Act, and the buffoonery of the Attorney General who implemented much of this and who corrupted the Justice Department so extensively, to gutless, doughy pro-war "Young Republicans" making lame excuses for not enlisting in the "cause of their generation" while the US military has been stretched to the limit for years on end forcing National Guardsmen to stay on "stop-loss" doing repeated lengthy tours of duty in Iraq, ... ugly, ugly, ugly, dangerous and stupid.
I'm simply not interested in sifting through their filth and spending my time debating with the "nuances" among what passes for thinking among these monstrosities.
What, then, are you attempting to peddle here beyond your own bias,
Not much. It's just my fucking blog. A little excuse to express myself in writing from time-to-time.
and where is the liberality we are supposed to expect of the left? As a conservative, what I find so ironic about some modern leftists is they display exactly the bigotry and intolerance they claim to despise while being thoroughly convinced they are open-minded people.
Yawn! You just dropped about five happy points in my estimation. (I'm sure you're heart-broken! [You're probably not even reading!]) But that's such a tired clee-shay. Yes, we on the left are intolerant of the right-wing's intolerance and stupidity. You haven't really produced very much that deserves being taken seriously. Deal with it.
ps: whether or not your shit is delicious is rather peripheral; whether or not you've read the book you've now twice used as a cudgel to beat down one of your fantasist stereotypes seems substantially more central than that.
Not when we're talking about two pieces of shit! My own actual defecation and the ideas splattered across the page by Mark Steyn. If by "fantasist stereotypes" you're referring to my characterization of right-wing opinions about Arabs and/or Muslims, there's plenty of sources for you to find the most nauseating forms of extreme racism, and you know it. And, seriously, go read the CounterPunch/Brian Cloughley piece demanding an apology from Steyn for cheerleading the invasion of Iraq. There's a lot of bigotry, and murderous racism that you're trying to explain away, and it's simply not worth it for me to read a book that is, anyway, just as I've described it. And, as I've said elsewhere; even it was not just as I've described it, another one of its defenders came to my blog and agreed with my characterization and defended the book as such: a call to arms against a Wahhabist Muslim population boom in Europe out to destroy liberal, Christian civilization there.
Like I said before, couldn't you write about real issues instead? We want to know why the working class can't radicalize itself (hint: they're happy with the status quo).
I assume that's a joke? You take me to task for not having read one shitty thinker's shitty book, but then you presume to speak for millions of people without providing any evidence?
I was going to deal with that very good question in this post, but I guess that'll be tomorrow's post. I've already spent too long blogging today.
3 comments:
All politics aside, what's troubling in your attack on Mark Steyn is your unwillingness to be an honest warrior, that is, meet your opponent on the battlefield of ideas and take him on in a fair fight. You want to dismiss Steyn, trash him, insult him, you just don't want to be bothered with the details of his argument.
To attack the positions Steyn argues in his book and then admit that you haven't read his book, we could stop right there. In real academic circles, you've just forfeited.
"Mark Steyn is a propagator of racist, eugenic, fascist drivel, yet he's an opponent of a mythical "Islamo-fascism."
"Steyn is an idiot who is simply not worth my time. His book's thesis is broad enough and bad enough that folks I trust and respect are able to convey it's utter worthlessness in a review."
"I'm simply not interested in sifting through their filth and spending my time debating with the "nuances" among what passes for thinking among these monstrosities."
Again, all local politics aside, this is an outright admission that you're not willing to engage your opponent's argument on its merits. Anyone can dismiss an argument with attitude, bravado and insults. But to shun the particulars of your opponent's argument because it's "not worth my time" leaves you in an embarrassing and indefensible position.
"There's a blogger called "Canadian Cynic" who I like because he takes the time to read through the products of bloggers from a collective called the "Blogging Tories" and who reports back on the sheer worthlessness of their output with suitably caustic commentary."
Are you dismissing the "Blogging Tories" because you've read them, thought about their arguments and then countered them, or because someone else, "Canadian Cynic", has actually done that academic work and then just passed the talking points on to you. Honestly, I don't know. You may actually have read the Blogging Tories and thought through their arguments. The point being, the nature of your attack on Mark Steyn leaves me to wonder, and that cuts your credibiltiy off at the knees.
I'm not arguing the politics of your position vs. Mark Steyn's. I'm only noting that throwing accusations at an opponent is one thing but taking him on in an argument is another thing entirely. And just as a matter of class or personal honor, if I didn't have the time or inclination to argue the details of the case, I wouldn't publicly accuse someone of propagating racist drivel.
Oh for god's sake.
"To attack the positions Steyn argues in his book and then admit that you haven't read his book, we could stop right there."
You're right. And I wish we had.
"In real academic circles, you've just forfeited."
Yes, but please to notice, this isn't a genuine academic forum, and Steyn certainly isn't a scholar.
I've already pointed out to you that whatever the (pointless) nuances of his book, whatever caveats he throws out to insist that he's talking about defending liberal values against religious fanaticism, it's nonetheless true that even his admirers (one of whom appeared here at this blog) say that he's pointing to the dangers of Europe being demographically swamped by radical Muslim fundamentalists.
I've spoken enough about why I'm not going to read his stupid book. And I've said enough about why Steyn is a revolting, useless, piece of garbage.
I'm not going to say anymore. You can crow one last time that I've conceded my credibility and that I've lost, and I'll post it, but I've no further interest in pursuing this arid discussion about the wit and wisdom of Mark Steyn with you.
Look, whether I revere Steyn or take him seriously is immaterial to the argument. I'm willing to take most anyone seriously if they're willing to engage in open and frank discussion. Yes, that includes people whose opinions I might instinctively find repugnant, but who am I to say that my instincts are right and their arguments are wrong without evaluating them?
The real problem with your perspective, if you'll permit me to point to it, is that it consists of nothing more than unthinking, knee-jerk partisanship. It's not partisanship on the basis of any political party, funnily enough, but your membership in the broad identity group known as the left. I could call leftists all sorts of entertaining names; I could say that they were morons and racists; I could describe their ideas as ugly and stupid; I could say that my contempt of them is only because of their intolerance and stupidity; and I could flesh out my unexamined bias by pointing to a number of ideological totems carried by my movement. It's not hard to do, you've now done it in somewhere around four separate posts, and it is certainly pleasant to feel the surge of moral righteousness as one erects one's tin soldiers in imaginary set-piece battles and then knocks them to the ground. It's not intellectualism, however, it's not anywhere near to being philosophical or broadminded about any issue, and it leads to nothing but the exchange of mutually exclusive and meaningless anathema between those who have chosen to rally around one arbitrary standard or another.
Ideology and categorical thinking serve social and psychological purposes for people of all political stripes, and ignorance and intellectual laziness are not preferentially distributed on the basis of class or race or gender or party affiliation. Lots of people need a "they" against which to sharpen their identity and to which they can attribute the ills of the world: for some this purpose is served by gays or ethnic minorities or the poor, for others by heterosexuals or the rich or the neo-cons or the so-cons or those bastards from Alberta. The group that they love to hate need not even exist and very rarely does in the form in which it is envisioned, but the social/ psychological function it serves is so powerful and integrally affirming that that doesn't really matter. In my time, I have met many conservatives who were close to being unreconstructed fascists, who felt their politics through their stomach, and who would have happily sanctioned crazy policies in order to fulfill their fantasies of marginalization and power. I have also met an equivalent number of leftists who, in spite of my genuinely mild-mannered exterior and interest in civilly discussing differences of opinion, were convinced that the world would let slip its timeless struggles were people like me forcibly uhm, reeducated. Realizing that you are someone else's personal embodiment of evil is a very interesting experience, one which tells you once and for all that pseudo-fascism and self-serving bigotry are not left or right, but simply human.
Leftists and rightists should understand that the political movements to which they adhere are essentially attempting to answer the same question: how shall human beings be allowed or induced to live well? Depending on the historical circumstances in which they operate, either set of assumptions and the solutions they engender might be most able to meet this goal. This is obvious to anyone who has actually studied history instead of simply trying to summarize it to serve their own preconceived notions. What is missing in the exchange of shrill, partisan invective is the spirit of benevolence that should pervade all interactions of any kind: we must assume that unless we have direct, specific, and incontrovertible evidence to that effect, that those who propose solutions or adhere to beliefs that we think wrong do so out of the earnest desire to do good. I think the peace movement one that is not exactly in touch with the realities of international relations, but their goal is a great, earnest, and universal one that commands respect.
The reason why, say, Ann Coulter is an idiot is because she does exactly the opposite: she attributes not just bad policy, but evil to those she is opposed to. She has formed her ideological bias, and nothing will shake her from it. I give you a hard time, m'man, because you do exactly the same thing, and you are content to see that as legitimate, just, and somehow in line with your principles even though you'd reject categorical thinking in other areas (race, as an example). If you're content to simply peddle bias and unverified assumption, that's certainly your right and I wouldn't deprive you of it for the world. You should probably watch who you call stupid, however, as a man who is so absorbed in certainty and his belief in the transcendant moral righteousness of his position is not just a fool by any classical defintiion of philosophy, but a mildly dangerous (though oh-so-commonly so) bigot.
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