Blogoversary
Kevin’s blog turns a year old today. Congrats. You can read 40 things about him too.
He also points to this article on gun control’s happy face. Folks have been saying this for a while so it shouldn’t surprise you but the gist is that the anti-gunners appear to no longer want confiscation (which is crap, because they do) but are now concerned with safety (my ass). Anyway, it’s a good read.
May 14th, 2004 at 2:00 pm
Uncle:
the anti-gunners appear to no longer want confiscation (which is crap, because they do)
Tweet! Flag on the play! Wasn’t it just yesterday that you were on our site complaining about generalizations about “the right,” and here you are making even broader generalizations about gun control advocates. Sheesh! 🙂
May 14th, 2004 at 2:07 pm
But i specified anti-gunners (who are anti gun and who do advocate confiscation) not the left/democrats or some other generalization. Anti-gunners is pretty specific.
Nice try. BTW, you and kev keep using that straw man defense. I do not think it means what you think it means.
May 15th, 2004 at 1:41 am
The “Straw Man” fallacy, as I understand it, means that you’re attacking a position that your opponent has never actually staked out. Rather like anti-evolutionists attacking the “we evolved from monkeys” argument that pro-evolutionists don’t make. Similarly, on Kevin’s post, you were attacking something he never actually said (but rather something you read into the argument), so that was indeed a man of straw.
As for specifying “anti-gunners,” mea culpa. Although, most pro-gun people I’ve dealt with don’t make a distinction between “anti-gun” and “gun control advocate,” so my apologize for misclassifying you. On the same token, you do talk about “gun control” and “anti-gunners” in the same breath here, so it’s not a difficult leap to make.
May 15th, 2004 at 8:34 am
Similarly, on Kevin’s post, you were attacking something he never actually said
That is an absolutely false statement. I said kevin generalized a group of people then said that would be like me doing something else (i.e., an example). THat is not a straw man fallacy. Again, i don’t think it means what you guys think it means.
May 15th, 2004 at 3:16 pm
At best, you misunderstood what he was saying and attacked his position as you (mis)understood it. So if that’s the case, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it wasn’t a straw man (in which you intentionally misrepresent what is said).
And sorry about your counterexample, but there’s no way you can rightly compare Ted Rall with Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh has a huge audience, and Rall is completely obscure. Cheney is a frequent guest on Limbaugh’s show, thus lending it legitimacy, while Rall doesn’t even have a show. The only way you can compare the two is if you are completely blind to differences of kind and degree, and say “obscure left-wing nut is the same thing as prominent, popular right-wing nut.”