[Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

[C. G. Estabrook]

	"If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
	 they don't have to worry about answers."


LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
> 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
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