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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (6299)	12/7/2005 11:36:01 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542153

Understanding someone doesn't mean they aren't wrong- there isn't a "center" between wrong and right- in discussions where there is a more factually correct answer. If a child says two raised to the 3rd power is 5- you can understand how they got there, but it doesn't make the answer less wrong. If someone isn't doing a proper accounting for the services which they have used, and which their family has used, then they are wrong- and there isn't a center to go to for that. They simply need to do a better job working the numbers.

To: Lane3 who wrote (6299)	12/7/2005 11:39:21 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542153

I'm questioning your setting up this adversarial, picket-fenced dichotomy rather than trying to understand where he might be coming from. I'm just doing seminar type debating, no name calling, just discussing arguments. I assumed Tim's response would be that the problem with our discussion is "government." Some governments do practice something one could only call "extortion" and others do not. So that the discussion would move to qualifying the notion of "government" in the direction of ones that can be considered accountable to the electorate. As you may know, however, there is a principled position in political theory which says, as Tim does, that only a "watchman" state can be considered legitimate. Tim might have been defending that. Thus, my response was intended to draw him out in that direction as well. Hey, this isn't harsh. It's just debating. My wife and I debate this way all the time. No one has yet called anyone a "commie" or a "McCarthyite." ;-)