[Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

Not that any of these are actual (allowable, productive, or informative) 
debates between parties sharing a common set of definitions and rules of 
debate as much as sets of parallel one-way articulations. assertions, 
presentations of each parties point of view and interpretation of history 
and the way the world works, the policies, decisions, and actions that are 
taken in the world as they see it.  What I find most interesting and 
peculiar is that all debate or discussions imply boundaries and rules of 
allowable or legitimate interpretations, rules of interaction and 
argumentation, and conceptions of rationality and reasoning.  In a real 
debate, the parties share these elements; in parallel conversations, 
discussions and talks, they do not share such elements in common, although 
they may assume or pretend that they do.  Hence, they are talking past each 
other and more focused on asserting one's claims than on reaching any sort 
of shared agreement or common conclusions.   Intellectually, in these 
parallel articulations, each party according to its own definition of 
legitimate and allowable rationality (i.e., rules of reasoning and logic), 
interpretations of activities and events, and acceptable definitions of the 
"facts" denies the other legitimacy and disallows what they have to say - 
often by personal attacks, ad homenem arguments, and/or declaring the logic 
of the argumentation to be fuzzy or irrational according to one's own 
definitions of the rules of rationality and logic, which they assert are the 
true, objective, and universal ones.

While the notion of whether or not this is a debate or what the rules of 
what is or is not allowed in the discussion are questionable, what is not is 
that you obviously disagree with those who you derisively cite and with the 
arguments that they make.  However, this disagreement has little to do with 
the limits of allowable debate (except that you seem to want to exclude 
those you disagree with from the conversation and would presumably do so if 
you had the power to do so); what it has to do with is differing points of 
view.  It is more than likely that others who subscribe to the 
establishments limits of allowable debate might very well disagree with the 
assertions and conclusions of Wilentz (and even some others who you also 
disagree with) on either the same or other grounds as you.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 12:57 PM
To: "Stuart Levy" <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Cc: "Peace Discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

> It's a positive review of a new book on James K. Polk and the theft of 
> half of Mexico (which even A. Lincoln knew was wrong).
>
> Wilentz thinks the Mexicans had it coming (cf. S. Hussein) on the grounds 
> that they were really Spaniards and Catholics.
>
> And it didn't have anything to do with slavery.  Nothing.  No way.
>
>
> Stuart Levy wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 12:31:58PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> The same edition of the NYT (I really won't miss it when it goes) 
>>> includes a review by the awful Clintonoid pop-off Sean Wilentz, 
>>> justifying particularly speciously 19th c. US imperialism, with obvious 
>>> present-day implications...
>>
>> Justifying as in US national interest?  White Man's Burden?
>> Societal Darwinism, as in, If we did it, it must have been
>> because we were Better?
>>
>>> David Green wrote:
>>>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22wright.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print>
>>>>  The NYT brings in Robert Wright, a liberal heavy thinker known among 
>>>> other things for his contributions to the dubious field of evolutionary 
>>>> psychology, to define the LOAD for Hasan/Ft. Hood:
>>>>  "Conservatives backed war in Iraq, and they’re now backing an 
>>>> escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Liberals (at least, dovish 
>>>> liberals) have warned in both cases that killing terrorists is 
>>>> counterproductive if in the process you create even more terrorists; 
>>>> the object of the game isn’t to wipe out every last Islamist radical 
>>>> but rather to contain the virus of Islamist radicalism."
>>>>  As long as we discuss various perspectives on "terrorism," we can't 
>>>> consider that this was not terrorism as commonly defined as attacks 
>>>> against civilians. Whatever the pathology of Hasan, we might compare 
>>>> him to a black soldier from segregated American asked to kill Asians 
>>>> (and perhaps return home to enforce martial law in Newark or Detroit) 
>>>> in the 1960s. What the LOAD will not allow us to do is to think of this 
>>>> event in terms of rebellion.
>>>>  DG
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>> _______________________________________________
>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>