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May 8, 2007I’m fuzzy on this ‘namecalling’ thingFellow bloggers, help me out, will you? In the post here, I linked to this piece by Tom Elliott, wherein he puts together a few questions he wishes the press would ask the Democrat leadership about Iraq policy. One question was this: Is a timetable for withdrawal intended to hasten victory — or defeat? Now, regular readers and (I hope) my fellow bloggers know that I rarely respond to intra-blog criticism, and I even less frequently do I engage commenters, either, because for the most part, I believe folks are entitled to their opinions and to think whatever they like, as long as they can quote me correctly. In our family we have a sensible rule: You have the right to disagree with and be annoyed by anything someone else says, just as soon as you can accurately repeat back to your opponent the thing they said. I try (and I think mostly succeed) to keep things civil on this blog, and that I have been as critical of invective from the right as from the left. While I’m as guilty of writing angry as anyone, I don’t think I’ve indulged overmuch in name-calling - goodness, I don’t even call Hillary Clinton anything but Hillary Clinton or - once or twice - “The Rodham.” But apparently I’ve innocently hurt the sensibilities of a tender member of the loyal opposition, who objected to that question and wrote in the comments section: “Is a timetable for withdrawal intended to hasten victory — or defeat?” That’s not a question, that’s namecalling. So…help me out here. Has the act of asking a pointed question of the left now become something too hurtful? Is it the equivalent of “name-calling?” Do I simply not understand what name-calling is? Maybe I’ve been doing it all this time and haven’t realized it - in which case, I would feel just dreadful. I always thought “name-calling” was invective - the stuff I routinely get in my e-mail, “christianist creep, asshole, nazi, hater, sycophant, bushbot, fascist, idiot, narrow-minded-baboon, knuckle dragging neanderthal, theocon totalitarian…” I guess I was wrong. I wonder if my fellow bloggers will help me out by posting some of the things they consider name-calling…you know, just the little messages they get in their comments sections or their emails…so we can get to the bottom of what, exactly, constitutes name-calling. Perhaps all too much blogosphere ugliness exists simply because one side does not understand - is not fully sensitive to - the delicate feelings of the other. Because I certainly don’t want to ask what I believe to be a fair question and find out that I have hurt someone’s feelings or - in all innocence - made an ad hominem attack upon someone. That said, unless someone can really explain it to me in a satisfactory manner, I simply am not going to be able to understand how that question was “name-calling.” And I stand by the response I made to that comment, especially this part: Bush is a “failed” president who has pushed through most of the legislation he wants, managing a robust economy in the face of an incoming recession, an attack on our soil, natural disasters and war…and somehow the “Bush hating peoples” of Canada, Germany and now France, have - over the past few years - voted in leadership that sees things Bush’s way…they must all be blind and “wrong about everything,” too. Because heaven knows, the left and the press are never anything but correct. Bush did tell us, though, that this war would be a “long, hard slog.” Can’t help it if some have forgotten that. I have been a classical liberal all my life. I was trained to believe that no one is ever “always” wrong or “always” right, but that everyone has a bit of “right” and “wrong” within them. I think that’s probably still true. The world, and humanity, cannot have changed so much that some people are “always” right, and some “always” wrong - about everything. As President Bush - who is apparently always wrong to some, and always right to others - said at a “townhall” debate in 2000, “this is just a difference of opinion, and that’s okay, everyone won’t always see things the same way…” Are we allowed to have differences of opinion, these days? Or does everyone who doesn’t agree with the establishment simply need to shut up and fall in line, or be castigated as stupid and immoral and beaten into submission? Oh, yes…I think we can call the elite left “the establishment” these days, mayn’t we? It’s a tough thing to be “the establishment.” Some will always kick against you, and if you’re not emotionally and spiritually equipped to handle dissent…well…it ends up being ugly for everyone. Everyone. http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/05/08/im-fuzzy-on-this-namecalling-thing/trackback/ 21 Responses to “I’m fuzzy on this ‘namecalling’ thing” |
May 8th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
You didn’t engage in name-calling and if the writer is honest with him/herself he/she knows you didn’t call a name.
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My question is since the Democrats and some Republicans say we need to get out of Iraq, just what do they mean by “get out”?
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Does it mean leave in defeat, declare victory and leave, or win and leave? Get out connotes declare defeat to me.
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I would say making mean-sounding names of people in public life would be name-calling. Things such as Pigliosi, Dusty Harry Reid etc. Things such as NYSlimes or WaPoo would also qualify in my mind.
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Address them by their names or names and titles without degrading them. Don’t call them demonrats, demokrats or Rethuglicans or Repukes.
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To me that’s name calling and child-like. Kind of like a little kid calling someone a poo-poo head.
May 8th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Wow, looks like “name calling” really hit a nerve. Interesting that it is those words you responded to, as opposed to the substance of the comment. I’ll admit that it may not have been the most appropriate choice of words, since after all I’ve been called “surrenderist” or “defeatist” or “defeatocrat”. I’m so glad that you acknowledge the coarsening of the debate on both sides. I read the Elliott piece, and was curious why you left out perhaps the most important part “These questions never came because the answers are obvious: Abandoning Iraq will hasten an American defeat, etc etc etc.” So basically these aren’t hard questions, they are rhetorical devices employed too often by the right wing in order to avoid real debate. And I find it a little hard to believe that these questions haven’t been asked numerous times. The American people have basically been scared into getting into Iraq, now we’re being scared into staying indefinitely for “victory”, and anything short of that is defeat. I really think it’s high time to question those assumptions. It’s time that we actaully accept that we live in a complex world, and that words like “victory” and “defeat” are simply slogans of a party that’s run out of ideas.
May 8th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Um, I may have wasted four years as an English major, but doesn’t name-calling require the use of…..names? An appellation, a word that describes a person, place, or thing, something along those lines. I don’t think questions count as name-calling, but then I also don’t believe apostrophes indicate the plural of an object. I could be wrong. Poo poo head.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Kougar, you didn’t hit a nerve - you simply had me wondering if things had devolved so much between left and right that questions were now “off-limits.”
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You and I disagree on the war effort in Iraq, and I’m sure we disagree on many, many other things. But we agree that we live in a complex world. For me, that’s all the more reason to be unambiguous about concepts like “victory” and “defeat.” If one party has run out of ideas, then I don’t know what it means for the other party whose only idea seems to be “make it stop, but we don’t want to be accountable for what comes next.”
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Both parties leave a great deal to be desired. But a defeatist attitude against a world-wide enemy that has no intention of simply “stopping the terror” if we leave Iraq simply won’t win the day. BOTH parties voted us into this war, based on the exact intelligence that BOTH parties had believed and speechified about since 1998. Seems to me that BOTH parties now owe it to our dead, and to our national reputation, and to the Iraqi people who have now twice trusted us to help them, to stop screwing around and playing political games with Iraq, and getting down to business.
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Bush has made many, many mistakes in prosecuting a war. Every wartime president makes mistakes - wars historically “never” go as planned. The Democrats have an opportunity to show they have guts and fortitude, here. And they’re not doing it.
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When we “leave” Iraq, with the job undone…then what? What happens next? What happens to the Iraqi people, what happens to the USA’s reputation? What happens when the next terror attack (in London, Bali, Vegas, Chicago, Berlin) kills a few thousand people? Then what? Who will lead? Who will believe enough to follow?
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These are real questions that need real answers. It’s simply not enough to hate Bush and stamp the feet. If we love our country and respect our troops, then we find the right thing to do, and do it, even if it’s hard - even if we hate the president. Hate is not sufficient reason not to do the right thing.
May 9th, 2007 at 1:38 am
Submitted for Your Approval…
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
May 9th, 2007 at 6:22 am
It’s a measure of the accuracy and importance of your question that it stings their guilty consciences. Your question goes directly to intent and their hypersensitivity betrays them.
As for guts and fortitude, it’s not in evidence in todays Democrats. It seems that, for some Democrats the acquisition of power trumps any other consideration. Why else do some extreme protesters actually accuse Bush of being a terrorist or the most dangerous man in the world? It’s a bizarre inversion of reality.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Kougar,
If it’s not a victory what is it if not a defeat? You either win or you lose. I don’t see any middle ground.
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A-excellent response and explanation. Those who are blind will not see, and that blindness can come from BDS.
May 9th, 2007 at 7:25 am
I’m sorry I flubbed that line. I’ve been up all night.
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There are none so blind as those who will not see, and the blindness seems to be coming from BDS.
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He’s the only president we have right now and, mistakes or no mistakes, we have to play with the cards we are dealt.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Some people are simply tender souls too fragile to deal with the rough and tumble world. I think we should provide them with a safe, protected place where they don’t have to deal with ruffians such as us. A happy place where bad things are not allowed to enter, and the timid can live out their days in serenity and peace. And where we don’t have to listen to them bitching and moaning about how awful things are.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:22 am
I don’t see any “namecalling” in the part you quoted, though I have noticed some amongst that faction reacting to disagreement as if it were a mortal insult directed at them. Perhaps that’s where Mr. Elliot got confused.
Btw, am I the only one who wonders if Kougar is the one who had a nerve struck?
May 9th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Considering the types and variety of perjoratives hurled at the President of the United States by the Left, I submit that they need to clean up their OWN act before accusing anyone of name calling. And no, A, asking a simple question is NOT name calling. Any more than criticizing the recently vetoed Iraq funding bill laden with pork and unconstitutional instructions to the Commander in Chief is “questioning their patriotism”.
The Bill of Rights does NOT include the right to be free from being offended - and if it did, my civil rights are violated on a daily basis by the left.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Web Reconnaissance for 05/09/2007…
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention….
May 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
oh my…
i am beginning to think the liberal democrat partisans have become children of the most juvenile nature.
name calling?
i guess this means, deep down, the writer of this silly comment knows democrats pushing for the abandonment of the now free Iraqi People are negligent, but are upset when facing this reality.
these democrat partisans have been creating policy by opposing everything the Republican President has stood for, which includes the rejection of the fight for the liberty of others, and the encouraging of the Radical Muslim Fascists who want to kill everyone who doesn’t follow their oppressive ways.
this is not a proud time for the liberal partisan, who is no longer liberal, but a closed minded bigot, who cannot accept their own agenda, when they are confronted by it.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
OH MY…
The Denial Grows……
May 9th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
[...] for answers These questions (H/T) about the war in Iraq should be asked at the next Democratic presidential debate: » Is a [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
My initial reaction was that this is a perfect example if why you are right to avoid exchanges with commentors. Kougar’s initial post was obviously made in bad faith, just another troll looking to put another “I stood up to the evil Bush Regime” notch in his belt.
But now I think I’m wrong. While I disagree with virtually every assertion in his response above, it is lucid and respectful, as was your response to him.
Something rarely seen. Congrats to you both on keeping this civil.
May 9th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Hmm…as another liberal, I would have to agree with Kougar’s restatement of “name calling” -that it is not. It is a loaded, partisan question…but one can always reframe it before they offer the answer, now can’t they? ;-).
FWIW- I agree with the question, actually- but then, I don’t agree with a publicized timetable for withdrawl. I do think we need to fight this out-whether we should have gone in the first place is a completely different question. We’re there now, we must finish what we started.
May 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I believe it is a reasonable question that they can just not figure out how to answer, and therefore the response is to accuse the questioner of doing something bad.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
The Council Has Spoken!…
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Does America Elect Defeatists? by …
May 11th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Watcher’s Council results…
And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Does America Elect Defeatists? by Big Lizards, and “Better a Thousand Israeli Invasions…” by Michael J. Totten. All members, please be sure t…
May 13th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Watcher’s Council Results…
The winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Does America Elect Defeatists? by Big Lizards, and Better a Thousand Israeli Invasions… by Michael J. Totten. Here is a link to the full results of the vote. Here……