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Old 12-19-2005, 02:04 AM
sweetjazz sweetjazz is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Rhode Island
Posts: 95
Default Re: Let Me Paraphrase President Bush\'s speech tonight:

"There is a difference between honest critics who recognize what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right."

I consider myself in the former category, and really want to increase debate about what is going on in Iraq and what will and will not work.

I get so frustrated by the many people who are in the latter category -- and I think your post and that of the OP post are suggestive of that attitude. The approach of angrily denouncing Bush and using cheap arguments that are no better than many of his weak arguments is undermining the legitimate criticism of how Bush has handled the situation in Iraq.

I suspect you probably just hate Bush so much that you don't care or don't believe me. I personally don't hate Bush, but I am very disappointed with many of his policy decisions and I'd like to convince others why there are better alternatives.

I really fear that the rise of a leftwing outlets like moveon.org have encouraged the same lazy and sloppy thinking that the Rush Limbaughs brought to rightwing zealots in the 90s (and continue to supply).

This is a very simplistic formulation of public debate, but if you simplify arguments to petty namecalling and accusations, the right will always dominate. The right has mastered appealing to our emotions -- especially fear -- and will sway the moderate middle if that is where the debate stalls.

I think of myself as a (to the extent I can label my complex views in two words) classical liberal. (Which leads in practice to the fact that I tend to lean left but do sometimes think Republican ideas are better than Democratic ideas on some issues. And am not very happy with the ideas, or more specifically the lack of good ones, coming from either party.) If the public debate stalls at petty name-calling and attempts at fear-mongering, I think a lot of the policies I support will not be enacted.

If you choose to give up on improving the quality of debate and reduce yourself to petty Bush insults, then you are no better than Bush at his worst. If you are okay with that and want to blindly go on assuming that you have all the answers to everything (as a certain chief executive has done in the past), feel free. Ironically, while your policy preferences will be different, you will be methodologically similar to the very individual you so ardently (and counterproductively) ridicule.
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