[Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

Mon Nov 23 22:12:16 CST 2009

It is true enough  that if you control the scope and range of questions 
asked, you circumscribe the scope and range of allowable responses that will 
be regarded as legitimate meaningful answers. It does not necessarily limit 
the scope and range of responses which may be larger than that of legitimate 
meaningful answers that are allowed by the questions.   However, that is 
true for all sides  - yours, theirs, mine, etc.  Moreover, this is the case 
for everyone and a tacit unintended or explicit  intended strategy that all 
sides engage in via the mere framing of questions.

What is a right or a wrong question is a value judgment and a matter of 
perspective - not an empirical "objective" value neutral fact.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 3:36 PM
To: "LAURIE SOLOMON" <LS_64 at LIVE.COM>
Cc: "Peace Discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>; "Stuart Levy" 
<slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

> "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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