[Peace-discuss] Limits of allowable debate

Mon Nov 23 22:49:39 CST 2009

A "value judgment" can be a recognition of a moral fact, not merely an 
expression of opinion.

To condemn the Shoah is to recognize it as a vast objective evil, a crime, not 
just to express a taste, like preferring chocolate to vanilla.

As Wittgenstein said, "Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a 
condition of the world, like logic."

LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
> 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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