Paul writes:<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Have I been angering you? I suggest you cultivate the ability to have discourse on a subject without becoming emotionally involved with it. The next step after that is to entertain the opposing side's views on the subject as an intellectual exercise. I'm no expert in this, but I do try. That's why I think your "say *that* on a street corner in New Jersey and see how it works out" test is measuring the wrong thing. It's measuring how quick to anger New Jersey residents are. That says nothing about the value of the subject itself. </blockquote>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">In fact, if I had three wishes, one would be to grant everyone the
ability to look at topics dispassionately. Then people like Rush
Limbaugh and Michael Savage would not get any traction.<br></blockquote><div><font color="#888888">
</font><br>Don't confuse my frustration with the fact that you can't get a rather simple point with my being angry. Again, I teach logic; I write philosophy papers and books as a living and have achieved some level of success at it. I do not need advice from you about how to think about issues dispassionately and objectively. That is what I do for a living. Your arrogance is frustrating, as well.<br>
<br>Why did you think I was angry? Because I made some personal comment, something that might be personally insulting to you? Doesn't that illustrate the fact that there are some things with which NORMAL human beings can't speak dispassionately about? Isn't it natural that once I turn to something that personally offends you, your first impulse is to think that I'm reacting emotionally and have left the objective, "dispassionate" conversation behind? As right it should be. <br>
<br>Slavery is pretty clearly a topic which is bound to REASONABLY give rise to these same emotional reactions. That is what the New Jersey point is all about. You seem to think there is something irrational about folks from New Jersey or Spokane but the fact is just that these are just places which have more black people than does Moscow. That's all it is. Wilson can get away with this crap here but he would not get away with it in New Jersey or even Spokane. They'd have burned down his church a long time ago.<br>
<br>Anyone should be able to see this, that the very suggestion that such conversation is appropriate is offensive. Thus, anyone who wants to have a "debate" about the legitimacy of slavery must be up to something else, since they know that the issue is so emotionally charged "dispassionate" dialogue is out of the question. (Again, it worries me that you don't see this. I would have this looked at because your lack of empathy for others strikes me as abnormal. I'm not kidding.)<br>
<br>Wilson is not trying to have an objective conversation. He understands that slavery is not the kind of issue with which normal folks can be dispassionate. Thus, he clearly has some other political motive, part of which is merely raising the anger of liberals so that he can then accuse them of being anti-freedom communists, as was the case this morning. That you are naive and allow yourself to be used as a pawn in this game is another thing that frustrates me.<br>
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