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

To: Paul Smith who wrote (154408)	1/15/2011 9:23:19 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541936

"There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left." Kinda like how it is on the right when anyone who might be Muslim does something? yawn Both sides are badly behaved when they want to nail the other side, and both sides are pretty ardent about the nailing. And both sides go on and on whenever they score a nailing, and even when they don't.

To: Paul Smith who wrote (154408)	1/15/2011 12:26:55 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541936

Why are you so surprised that the Times offers different points of view? I gather you think the Times is some sort of single ideology conspiracy rather than one of the great newspapers of our time. As for it's being "Krugman's newspaper," I'm certain both Krugman and the Times management would be more than surprised by that. Since neither thinks that way. My guess is they all welcome differing points of view. The mistake you make is to create some "liberal" point of view, herd as many folk you disagree with into that little pen, and then be surprised when some not only don't fit (your category problem) but display some independence vis a vis your category (in short, turn out to be human after all).

To: Paul Smith who wrote (154408)	1/16/2011 3:03:26 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541936

>>Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support. You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand. Concocting connections to advance an argument actually weakens it. The argument for tonal moderation has been done a tremendous disservice by those who sought to score political points in the absence of proof.<< I do think that the rush to judgement we saw in the media was abhorrent. But does Mr. Blow really want to advance the argument that moderating the tone of political discourse isn't a worthy goal simply because there was no connection between violent rhetoric and the events in Tuscon? It seems to me that the two issues aren't really related. He speaks of a "wrong in the service of righteousness," but it isn't clear to me what wrong he's referring to. It seems as though he's saying that the wrong is in the calls for a more civil public debate, which is obviously a ridiculous position to take. I think it's also important to point out that if people respond emotionally to a massacre, it shouldn't be a surprise.