Often in rhetoric, the implicit logic of a position is followed into absurdities, thus, the argument goes, illustrating the folly of the position. Going in the other direction is a little less popular, but can be used to argue that some cultural position is, if not absurd, at least flawed.<\/p>\n
In this spirit, I present the subject of an e-mail from known lefty organization MoveOn.org<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n Join us tomorrow: We deserve the full Mueller report NOW<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Stop and think about that: what have they done to deserve<\/strong> access to the full report? Are they such worthy creatures, by virtue of being American citizens – perhaps – that all such reports should be automatically bestowed on them? Have they attributes of Gods and must therefore have every whim satisfied? Is it true –<\/p>\n This line of If pressed, I suggest they’d shrug and suggest it’s merely a figure of speech. My reply is that reflects the basic absurdity of some facet of their philosophy of extreme individualism, and the >ahem< apparent divinity which goes along with it.<\/p>\n Naturally, as chronic readers of this blog know or can guess, I’m in favor of the full release of the Mueller report. Not because I’m<\/strong> a God[1]<\/sup><\/a>[2]<\/sup><\/a>, or need to satisfy some intellectual \/ prurient interest, or some other self-interested, self-aggrandizing, or even grandiose reason.<\/p>\n But because I think the more information we have on the character of our President, shrouded as it is in lies and deliberate metaphorical fog, the better our country, as a whole<\/em>, can make proper decisions about whether to cut his Presidency short – or to permit it to move on to a second term.<\/p>\n This may all seem akin to counting angels on the head of a pin, but let me draw a lesson from engineering: way too many times I’ve seem some subtle assumption or implementation decision that looked right, seemed right – and was wrong. And correcting that mistake rippled through the system like the waves of a pebble in a still pond, troubling the waters far out of proportion to the apparent size of the decision.<\/p>\n Operating from proper assumptions and philosophical underpinnings is far less likely to lead one astray. The self-entitlement mind-set evident in the subject of that email speaks volumes about the half-baked philosophy of those who wrote it.<\/p>\n <\/a>1<\/sup> Which would be a funny thing to claim for an agnostic.<\/p>\n <\/a>2<\/sup> Nonetheless, I’ve been proclaimed one an uncomfortable number of times, decaded ago. No kidding. Even in fun, it’s disturbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Often in rhetoric, the implicit logic of a position is followed into absurdities, thus, the argument goes, illustrating the folly of the position. Going in the other direction is a little less popular, but can be used to argue that some cultural position is, if not absurd, at least flawed. \u2026 Continue reading reasoning<\/del> ridicule can go on for quite some time, once you take their wording seriously.<\/p>\n
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