Iaculus said:
Espy said:
Iaculus said:
Bah - I was going to respond to the mini-debate me and Gas were having, but I've just come back from the pub and now there's a vast wall of posts in the way. Frakkin' alert and opinionated forumites...
Hey! Don't let that stop you. He'll be back, 9am sharp, teeth filed and eagerly awaiting your post. :slywink:
(swallows hard).
Very well.
OK, not quoting to avoid creating a colossal wall of text, but...
1. Re: paranoia and education. Quotes from a philanthropist from a hundred years ago, a misanthropic social critic,
the Communist Party Education Workers Congress of 1918, and a British Conservative Prime Minister were your backup for your assertion that modern-day liberals are brainwashing kids into accepting global warming propaganda? I really expected a stronger opening salvo there.
The first quote in there was from the John D. Rockefeller General Education Board, which pretty much created the modern "public school" paradigm (at least in the northeast and parts of the south). The others were more colorful decoration, certainly. American public schools were designed and created with social placidity in mind, not education. John Taylor Gatto has written some very informative books on the subject,
and even put up a little taste online. Ironically, the people who created the system were probably as far from "liberal" as one could get (even the American definition) at the time... but since then control of the school system has changed to those.
2. I'd still wish for a bit more exactitude from an experienced debater such as yourself. The American definition of liberalism is quite recent and exclusive to them - it's really more of a hybrid of socialism and liberalism, euphemised as 'liberalism' due to the former component's negative stigma post-McCarthyism. Amusingly, McCarthy himself branded himself as a 'liberal'. As one professor of mine put it - 'Republicans are generally economic liberals, whereas Democrats are social ones'. Really, it's the libertarians who are the true liberals - though, being a minority party, they have a habit of being more extremist than your average European liberal. Our Lib Dems are a good example of regular liberalism whenever they can stop committing bizarre sexual acts on each other and actually develop a coherent set of policies. Besides, liberalism is far too broad and multifaceted a term to be associated with any kind of vast conspiracy. Would you expect a Pittsburgh heavy-industry worker to share the exact same views as a San Fran lawyer just because they both vote Democrat? Honestly, it reminds me far too much of Clinton's much-derided 'vast right-wing conspiracy' quote to take seriously.
For the purposes of most political debate, especially pertaining to American politics, it is the only definition that is relevant regardless of how "new" and "american" it is. It is the terminology that is being used. Much like it doesn't matter how much you still want "gay" to mean "joyful," or how there's really no difference between a "furry" and a "fursuiter" in the public mind, this is what the terms have come to mean when they are used.
3. Why shouldn't one side cheat in the global warming debate just because the other is doing it? Because it rapidly creates a vicious cycle that buries all legitimate scientific enquiry under a steaming mound of barely-coherent but usefully decisive propaganda. Far better to keep your hands off and only move in to expose the other side's misdemeanours. Besides, don't you think the green extremists used the 'he started it!' argument too? To be horribly pretentious and quote Gandhi, "An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind."
That's a very admirable and very inapplicable sentiment in this situation. It isn't the scientists who set policy, it's politicians goaded to action by panicked constituents. We've seen multiple times on multiple issues (the economy, global warming, foreign policy) that how decisions are made that affect the people, the world, and the future is packaging and image. No, it's not the ideal system, but it's the reality of how our lives are being decided
this very moment, even as we speak. The great swayers of public opinion aren't scientists and economists, they're comedians and actors. More people trust to John Stewart to form their opinions for them than a less pretty, less funny expert in any given field. Everything has to be sold like a product, and you don't always get to choose the site or method of the battles you fight. And the stakes are high. Heck, in the global warming debate, we're practically being told we have to choose between complete economic devastation and outright annihilation by natural disaster. I wonder if Ghandi might have not been less adverse to eyepoking if the Britons were gunning down every Indian they could find on sight.
