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

To: Lane3 who wrote (12079)	2/15/2006 10:43:56 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541674

My model for a debating society is people taking stock positions off the shelf and reciting them with great vigor, mostly oblivious and unresponsive to the opponent's view, which is argued with equal passion and indifference to other POVs. A sterile process in my book. I can read all the partisan rhetoric I like elsewhere (which is just about zero in my book).

To: Lane3 who wrote (12079)	2/15/2006 10:54:50 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541674

I'm not sure of the distinction your making between "conversation" and "debating." Would you elaborate? Fair enough. The metaphor I had in mind with the debating society was a place in which the point of talk was of a combat of egos to defeat the other. Some testosterone there as well. A conversational place is one in which some civility rules, and in which there is some, at least minimal, commitment to evidence as opposed to assuming there are two sides and one side is always right and the "other" always wrong. I could have used "shouting match" or "dart throwing" (my personal favorite) as negative metaphors as well.