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

To: Rambi who wrote (26573)	8/15/2006 12:29:38 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 540952

You know, isn't that one of the problems with SI? We feel the need to "explain ourselves"- but mostly because rather than concentrate on ideas, in some forums it is immediately assumed that YOU, and you personally, have something wrong with you because of the idea you post about- and the assumption is usually 100% wrong, and in fact often has no logical connection to the post. You might be suggested to be a friend of terrorism, a friend of fascism (or indeed a devotee), a person of limited intelligence, or an elitist, cynic or unAmerican effete Francophile. It's unfortunate that we feel compelled to defend ourselves, when all we are really talking about are ideas. SI would be a more interesting place if we simply dealt with ideas, rather than having posters make all sorts of assumptions about the poster, rather than the idea. I am sorry people made you feel you needed to explain yourself. I think all you need to explain are your ideas.

To: Rambi who wrote (26573)	8/15/2006 12:37:13 PM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 540952

If you are taking an academic view, you have to go pretty far out to reach extremism. It's hard to define exact criteria where the line is crossed, but being a passionate activist for one of the two mainstream partisan causes doesn't qualify, IMHO. That said, I like your substitute definition that puts the personal, subjective view up front without throwing around a lot of big words. ;<)

To: Rambi who wrote (26573)	8/15/2006 1:43:54 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540952

The use of the word "extremist" seems to have caused problems. How about I change it to "people who have gotten too rabid, too angry, too obsessed for me personally"? Then I don't have to explain myself, which would be a relief, since I feel like that's all i have done this past week on one thread or another and it is starting to depress me. I hear you. My apologies if I upset you. So let me explain myself.;-) I'm bothered by the use of the word "extremist" to characterize perfectly acceptable (but perhaps not one's own) critiques of the present administration. The word is clearly a spin word, meant to say disagreements are unacceptable. There are certainly some "extremist" views on the left and I've seen Chomsky take a position or two that could qualify. Is the whole body of his political work "extremist"? That's worth an interesting conversation. But one I'm definitely not going to do right now. As for Krugman and Soros, I don't think I've seen a thing written by either (and I'm a big reader of Krugman) that would qualify. In fact, I've, for different reasons, just skimmed two of Soros' books. They're not particularly good because he spends far too much time elaborating abstraction on top of abstraction. Loses his reader; at least this one. Quickly. So, where on SI have you been trying to "explain" yourself? If you care to say.