Funny Enough to Post

I usually ignore insulting comments, but I got one at the group blog at Objectivism Online that elicited what I thought a clever and worthwhile reply. In fact, it might be useful to remember it as the socialized medicine debate ramps up. The post is here. I replicate the comments below.

Comment

Do you have any other thoughts than the standard rep/conservative talking points? Basically the same tired thing over and over.

Oh by the way, the Ann R. links are also very cliche'.

Posted by: Herr Schlage at August 18, 2005 10:39 PM

Reply

Insults like yours are cliche.

But there is a grain of truth in your charge that I'm making "standard ... talking points". For the benefit of readers open to argument, I'll explore it briefly.

If I sound repetitive here, it's because the socialist left keeps trying to do the same thing with a new spin every few years. So writing against such efforts ends up being fairly easy: Figure out a way to explain why the new spin makes no difference and then point out the fallacies behind the socialist position. (These do not change.)

It's a bit like counterarguing someone who pops up every few years trying to convince everyone else that the sun rises in the West. One year, he'll say that it's an illusion that it rises in the East. Another year, he'll insist that what we're calling "East" is really "West". And then he'll try to tell us that what we think of as "setting" is really "rising". Of course he's wrong every single time, and I end up repeating myself.

Whose fault is that, really?

I can see the "'conservatives' are parrots" meme being beaten to death, so it's good to have the advanced warning. Thanks for the heads up, Herr Schlage.

The insulting comment is a variant of the argument from intimidation.

-- CAV