"But words will never hurt me"

As an experiment, over the past two days, I visited every site from the 'Liberal Links' sidebar at Michael Brodkorb's Minnesota Democrats Exposed. This is something I have never done before. I will stipulate the limitations of the sample size. All were Minnesota sites, and that may be the only statistically valid conclusion. I didn't click through similar lists of links at any of the sites I visited. Perhaps if I had, and noted which sites were commonly linked from different locations, other patterns might have appeared. As is surely common throughout the blogosphere, present site not exempted, many got only a glance. What I wanted to find was genuine thoughtfulness; if this, then that, to "then surely it must follow as the night does the day" reasoning. Only The Loyal Opposition sufficed. Here is an entire post, from July 8th:


In order to get beyond rhetoric…
08Jul07
Then:
“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.” - Justice Harry Blackmun (in Bakke)
Now:
“The only way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.” - Chief Justice John Roberts (in Parents
It’s about time the Supreme Court actually got to interpreting the Constitution. The Democratic candidates, to their disgrace, do not like the equal protection clause, and can’t differentiate between de jure and de facto segregation.

"As the night must follow the day...."

At the other extreme, concatenated enthymemes, serious and therefore not to be taken seriously at all, name calling...mud wrapped in cooked cabbage leaves, garnished with dog dew, flung without reason, with extra exclamation points. Wherever I find this, I cannot shake the mud from my shoes and leave quickly enough. But I've thought about this irrationality. It is, I think, an argument for the validity of the position or issue from an appeal to superior virtue. (Note I do not say the validity of the idea; I cannot cite the missing.) What do I mean by this? The clearest example may racism; imagine post Civil War, reconstruction era racism. Blacks of that era got no respect; their full character was known, defined and confined into a single, starts with 'n-' word. All injustice, hatred, contempt, unfairness etc. would have been winked at. Just the 'darkeys', right? Or "Those damn wingnuts", eh? "They don't care, but we do! They want to deny...". Fill in your own diatribe.

When the political opposition is defined, de facto, as deranged, evil, uncompassionate, lying, what must one needs to but dismiss them with contempt, smears, slanders and libels? After all, the dignity and honor of "Suthen' white wimmen"shall not be smirched. Insisting on this position, no assertion need be defended logically. Instead of truth, that absolute defense, virtue pinch hits. This is false. The claim that ones ideas are valid bacause of some moral superiority is objectively false. It can be falsified, shown to fail, by asking this question- on the basis of what, does the left, or anyone, oppose any moral vice, pedophilia for example? "You don't care about...the poor, the homeless, the transgendered multi-cultured litany of victims of oppression" would never be offered up to excuse the pedophile by knighting him as a victim, or to condemn the behavior as reprehensible. Such behavior exists outside of "those damn nigra's" or "those damn right-wing nuts". Can it be the left will admit to right and wrong?