Sake White

Someone tried to apply some heat to one of my posts, using a halfway-decent argument.

First we start off with the ad hominems, as would be expected given my model of analysis.

The problem with giving practical first amendment rights to every fool out there is that a fool with a good template can look as good or better than people who are not fools.

And who does the Graphic believe is not a fool? Why the person who wrote this of course (link available through the link tree above).

Atrios flags this nice Grover Norquist quote from Garance Franke-Ruta and, correctly I think, notes that it doesn’t mean the base wants to leave Iraq. It just means they will go along with whatever Bush wants to do. In other words, Bush isn’t being obstinate about Iraq because he’s afraid that his base will desert him. He’s not running, neither is Cheney, and neither one of them appear to particularly care about the fortunes of the Republican party. He’s obstinate about Iraq for purely personal, philosophical reasons that have little to do with politics at this point.

So he is not subject to normal political pressure. As Norquist says, the base will stick with him come hell or high water. (I believe it’s a mistake, however, to think it has anything to do with him personally — the base of the Republican party are authoritarians who will blindly follow their leader no matter who he is, which is why they need to be kept away from the brown shirt section of Macy’s.) This is now a mind game between the Democrats and Bush/Cheney. The Republicans in congress are nearly irrelevant except to the extent a couple of them can help get legislation passed and feed the GOP disarray. All negotiations going forward will necessarily be strategized with that in mind.

Did you get that. Authoritarians. A Gridlock clone from Bookworm Room? Perhaps, perhaps.

The Left is big on posturing, small on analysis of truths.

Any argument that is basically founded on the idea – as this, and the materials cited later by the author – that “anything I do not understand must be wrong” is the acme of stupid.

Somebody obviously needs a remedial class in Sun Tzu The Art of War, for certainly Graphic doesn’t understand the precepts set down in that ancient and intructive book of strategy and philosophy. The argument I put down was that the Left doesn’t understand themselves nor their opponents and allies. It is a statement after all. If people want to draw a conclusion out that this means everything they don’t understand must be wrong, it is their business. I have nothing to do with it in the least.

When the Left talks about diplomacy, they are not talking from their anterior orifices. I mean that only in the sense that a competent diplomat with the resources and knowledge to use them, can take care of Iran easily if backed by the power of the US. That’s why “diplomacy” sounds good, but isn’t very effective. How can it be effective when its prime advocates are either mindless zombies or people with an affliction similar to multiple personality disorder? If the diplomat doesn’t even know himself, his goals, and his path, how is he going to fool or otherwise convince his counterparts in Iran? I mean the more crazy you seem, the less the Iranian diplomats and leaders will pay attention to you. And the Left has been pretty crazy all along. Oh sure, they use that craziness for Iran’s advantage, but then again, that is the duty of a competent diplomat and propagandist. Iran has many of those, the US has… well, the US has people fired by the Senate (bolton).

-Ymarsakar

Just to let my words speak for itself, the only time I used the word advocate was in that passage. What does Graphic derive from my passage? This.

People who “advocate entropy” do not fear change, nor do they say that “any change will spell doom.” Whatever you think of “advocating entropy,” or whether that is an accurate statement about the Left, it’s utterly contradictory with the next concept, which amounts to Cartoon Conservatism; that any change, no matter how trivial or overdue, will lead to the breakdown of civilization.

It’s like somebody put a few particles of photons through a blackhole.

Yes, so much easier to simply dismiss it all as nonsense, rather than try to grasp the idea that opposing a blatantly evil and unconstitutional war is not the same as not supporting the warriors,

My model cuts through this stuff effortlessly. It isn’t about opposing anything. Servants of entropy serve entropy, period. That’s what they do, and that is mostly all that they do. So it becomes a simple question of seeing who serves entropy, and then either killing them or turning them onto a more productive path. Evil is a human derivative of actions and choices, it is not the same thing as entropy.

A person trained in classic liberal thought – which, believe it or not, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with being Liberal politically – has no difficulty with admitting that Islamic Jehad may well have persuasive, even very telling arguments,

of course the Islamic Jihad has telling arguments to Graphic, when you both serve the same cause, everything on your side sounds more persuasive than the arguments from the other side.

The highlight of the resistance against Evil, after all, places much importance on making sure that persuasive arguments are those that argue for good things and unpersuasive arguments are those things that are untrue and harmful. Without such a foundation, representative systems of governance would dissolve by the sheer amount of evil and chaos it would find persuasive.

without conceding for a moment that those arguments justifiy blowing up people in wholesale lots.

The Left doesn’t believe anything is worth killing or dieing for, obviously they don’t think the Islamic Jihad should do so either. But they believe the US shouldn’t kill either, you know. So it is not exactly a positive trade here.

Of course, a person making that observation must also concede that no matter how seductive the vision of liberty, justice and democracy in the Middle East, it in no way justifies blowing up people in wholesale lots either. Indeed, for those valuing individual liberty, forcing democracy on anyone is a contradiction in terms.

Like I said, to the Left, nothing is worth dieing for, nothing worth killing for. Because in the end, nothing is worth living for, to them. Of course the Good justifies blowing up evil people. Good is strong and powerful like that, it gets to do things evil cannot do, after all.

The Tree of Liberty is not sustained by the blood of patriots and tyrants, to the Left. The Tree of Liberty is sustained by…. chaos, decay, parasites, and entropic processes. That’s not going to last for long, I can tell you that.

In one sense, people on the Left, people who serve chaos and entropy, or even becomes corrupted fully by evil, believe that they are on the path of progress. But the path of progress to where though? What is their real goal, and you find out more or less that their real goal is utopia, perfection basically. But perfection is just another word for absolute entropy. It is why perfection is de facto not a state you want to be in, where you cannot improve and where you cannot fail. Not being able to fail might appeal to the Left, so they find entropy a very nice temptation. Seductive even, you might say. But seduction has a hint of “not nice” about it, doesn’t it? Doing something you have been resisting to do or something you shouldn’t do…. how would this apply to liberty though? Why is liberty something that should not be done as in the case for Iraqis, Afghanistanis, Arabs, and Darfur blacks? Because entropy destroys liberty and evil hates liberty.

*The author concedes that this extremely bad pun is in poor taste and in no way should be taken to suggest that all gays are bitter. He does, however, suggest that being a Gay Republican is a lot like being a “Chicken for Col. Sanders.” Perhaps “Log Cabin Conservatives” would be a better name.

These people tie themselves up in knots. First Graphic links to the Log Cabin Repubs as an example of “bitter fruit”, and then he tries to backtrack all over the place. Is it any wonder these people don’t understand themselves, their goals, and how to get to them?

They don’t even know what their goals are or why these goals are the Good. But I do.