George Will nails it.. again

[Craig234]

Will's business is basically to sell an ideology to the vulnerable righties, much the way some were sellers of liquor in the past to vulnerable Native Americans.

He's the one to prevent their understanding the error of their ways - he'd be the 'other side' to an intervention, the one demonizing the intervener as making a profit.

He has a lot of basic fallacies he uses to do that. He's an advocate for wrong, packaging his propaganda in pretty little columns.

There are some who understand that and others who sit mesmerized in the pretty lights he shines in their eyes.

Let's just take the 'bolded paragraph' for a moment.

A characteristic of many contemporary minds

Let's stop right there for a moment, and note the propagandistic technique.

He knows his audience of 'conservatives' is already oriented to a romanticized view of the past and a dislike of the 'modern' approach, and so he's already pandering to them with this phrase to seduce them to view his point sympathetically. Whatever he's about to say is about 'contemporary' thinking, which to some might just sound confused but is actually a code word that already has his audience lapping it up.

Is he REALLY arguing that more historical thinking among most people was somehow better - the thinking that once thought Eugenics was a good idea, the thinking that gave us justifications for racism for centuries of our history until the 1960's, the thinking that women didn't need to vote until 1920, the thinking that 'eminent domain' was a good idea for genocide?

It's really just a barb to undermine the advances we have made.

is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment.

And yes, this is a straw man. It takes a better understanding of the role things like the 'culture of poverty' in sub-cultures has on people that's correct and important, and tries to throw out the baby with the bathwater with the misrepresenting of it as 'superstition' and claiming it's the only issue. No one says that, but it fits *right into* the bias of his readers who like to not only say there's more to the issue, but to simply throw out whole sub-cultures and ignore any other factors.

Their simplistic notions obviously work *so well* at improving things. Oh, wait, the opposite is the case, but they're great at rationalizing bad situations.

All they have is 'no' to any improvements - and they don't know how wrong they are. They remind me of the southerners who honestly believed slaves say them as 'family'.

From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress.

His first dig: the other side is 'politicizing' the issue (boo, hiss!); 'clevel social engineering' is more "dog-whistle" buzzwords for his audience to hate the thing he's talking about, a code phrase for any error by liberals who foolishly merely improve things, but to his readers, are Stalin-like commie dupes wanting to have the USSR here with its big utopian claims and big government tyranny. Then his next straw man, not debating the merits of liberal policies, but claiming they claim to 'perfect' things.

He paints it as some naive, unrealistic idiocy and yet again has a dog-whistle appeal to his readers' biases against any sort of 'centralized planning'. Boo, hiss!

Not only has he not said a word about real liberal policies or ideology, he has greatly misrepresented them to get his readers to hate whatever they are told they say here.

95% of what George Will says, I suspect, about liberals is also wrong or lies, and I haven't read enough to comment on the other 5%.

His phrase 'path to progress' - you guess it, another dog-whistle dig at 'progressives'.
Not really saying anything, just linking 'progressive' to the hate he just stirred up.

It actually is the crux of progressivism.

This is his straw man cementing - he just gave them dog-whistle words to make them feel hate at something, and then said that's the "crux" of progressivism.

He's a propagandist - which as I have defined is twisting a nugget of truth into a lie.

And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first.

And without really saying a WORD on the real issue, here he is soothing his right-wing addicts, don't listen to those mean people who might say the right's 'second amendment remedies' was wrong, there there those are nasty people who are like Stalin and you are correct to ignore any criticism. He's the soothing enabler of and apologist for his 'brand' of ideology, protecting his cult members from any correction getting to them. Any criticism is just a 'reflex' from Stalinites who are nice people but who would turn the world into some modern government-dominated tyranny but you our brave right-wingers know better.

His stuff really is like pouring a drink for an alcoholic, doing nothing but propagandizing to the faithful not to listen to anyone. Which protects his market for his product.

The only difference, really, between him and any other cult leader who preaches to his flock the evils of the outsiders is that his is big enough it's called 'mainstream'.

As I say, as with any good propaganda, there's a nugget of truth to it, but as a propagandist, he uses the nugget to tell a lie.

 

[matt0611]

Weak

I knew this was going to be the lefts excuse once it came out this guy was not a republican sarah palin loving talk radio listening teabagger.

"but but he could have been! umm rhetoric!"

jumping to conclusion fail

 

[werepossum]

Whether a by government or people, it doesn't matter. To see why that bolded statement is bullshit go through the following exercise: take whatever your core beliefs are, then ask yourself if you would still believe them if you were born 100 years ago? Would you still believe them if your parents emigrated somewhere else when you were 2 years old? For example, if you believe in racial and gender equality, would you have believed it in 1911? If you don't believe in universal healthcare, would you still dislike it if you grew up in Norway? If you believe you should tip for good service, would you have still believed it in 1911 when most Americans considered tipping a practice associated with servitude to European upper classes?

Now, if you're a bit honest, you should realize how ephemeral and arbitrary the majority of things people believe in are and how quickly they can change (quickly here means a generation or two). And of course leftists want to change society to be more left, but conservatives want to do exactly the same, but with their beliefs. To say otherwise would be exceptionally disingenuous.

You pretty much missed Will's point. It's certainly valid that the progressive movement has been moving more and more toward both a lack of individual responsibility and to a rejection of the notion of evil - conditional morality, if you will. Both these things lead progressives to seek an identifiable group to blame rather than the individual himself, much more so than do moderates or conservatives. Although almost every human wants a rational reason for something like this, if only to reassure ourselves that we are safe, progressives are more inclined to blame society for any ill. I think ol' George overplays the point, but it is valid.

You also mis-characterize conservatives, or at least some of us. Many of us think the USA is pretty swell as it is and don't want significant moves to the left OR to the right. I can have more conservative views and preferences without wanting to change laws and society to make everyone conform with my wishes. That can be said of some liberals as well, but not of progressives. Progressives by definition want to cause incrementally the social changes that are otherwise conferred via revolution. Progressives do NOT think the USA is pretty swell as it is, progressives want to fundamentally change almost every facet of American society and law. That's a huge difference between the two. If America does not fundamentally change, conservatives are happy and progressives are not happy.

 

[nick1985]

I knew this was going to be the lefts excuse once it came out this guy was not a republican sarah palin loving talk radio listening teabagger.

"but but he could have been! umm rhetoric!"

jumping to conclusion fail

Don't forget their new favorite word, "VITRIOL!!!"

rofl. Talk about a backfire...

 

[zsdersw]

Whether a by government or people, it doesn't matter.

Oh no, it certainly does matter.

To see why that bolded statement is bullshit go through the following exercise: take whatever your core beliefs are, then ask yourself if you would still believe them if you were born 100 years ago? Would you still believe them if your parents emigrated somewhere else when you were 2 years old? For example, if you believe in racial and gender equality, would you have believed it in 1911? If you don't believe in universal healthcare, would you still dislike it if you grew up in Norway? If you believe you should tip for good service, would you have still believed it in 1911 when most Americans considered tipping a practice associated with servitude to European upper classes?

Now, if you're a bit honest, you should realize how ephemeral and arbitrary the majority of things people believe in are and how quickly they can change (quickly here means a generation or two). And of course leftists want to change society to be more left, but conservatives want to do exactly the same, but with their beliefs. To say otherwise would be exceptionally disingenuous.

I didn't.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

So, Will's denying that society and environment influence individual behavior. And that government attempting to "engineer" a better society and, thus, better people is unfounded and hopeless. And you post such a thing on MLK day. That's pretty damn priceless man.

 

[werepossum]

He is not talking about "removing" randomness from human behavior.


He bemoans what he sees as some people's inability to accept the "randomness factor" and instead blame things like heated political climates, racism, whatever..


He's essentially saying he misses the days when people would say "shit happens, what can be done" and is tired of people attempting to use reason to explain contemporary horrors such as the Tucson massacre.

Perhaps I worded that badly. I meant not to change people's behavior, only to find a way to rationalize it so that it makes some kind of sense. Where most people shrug and think crazy people do crazy stuff, progressives are more prone to look for systematic factors to blame - to believe that people don't just go crazy, people are driven crazy. Or to use your example, progressives are more prone to believe that shit doesn't happen, it is made to happen. Theists (as opposed to deists) also believe shit is made to happen, but as G-d is anathema to progressives, humans must be found for progressives to blame. Will isn't just saying that people have changed, he is specifically pointing out how the progressive movement (to the extent that the progressive movement is identifiable with rationalism and secular humanism) is causing that change, or at the least that progressives are most vulnerable to it.

I understand and agree with his point, too; I just think he overplays it. Had a conservative Republican Representative been gunned down, many progressives would no doubt be saying the same things about conservatives and the Tea Partiers. But many conservatives would also be blaming progressives and their culture of hate and vitriol.

 

[werepossum]

Will's business is basically to sell an ideology to the vulnerable righties, much the way some were sellers of liquor in the past to vulnerable Native Americans.

He's the one to prevent their understanding the error of their ways - he'd be the 'other side' to an intervention, the one demonizing the intervener as making a profit.

He has a lot of basic fallacies he uses to do that. He's an advocate for wrong, packaging his propaganda in pretty little columns.

There are some who understand that and others who sit mesmerized in the pretty lights he shines in their eyes.

Let's just take the 'bolded paragraph' for a moment.



Let's stop right there for a moment, and note the propagandistic technique.

He knows his audience of 'conservatives' is already oriented to a romanticized view of the past and a dislike of the 'modern' approach, and so he's already pandering to them with this phrase to seduce them to view his point sympathetically. Whatever he's about to say is about 'contemporary' thinking, which to some might just sound confused but is actually a code word that already has his audience lapping it up.

Is he REALLY arguing that more historical thinking among most people was somehow better - the thinking that once thought Eugenics was a good idea, the thinking that gave us justifications for racism for centuries of our history until the 1960's, the thinking that women didn't need to vote until 1920, the thinking that 'eminent domain' was a good idea for genocide?

It's really just a barb to undermine the advances we have made.



And yes, this is a straw man. It takes a better understanding of the role things like the 'culture of poverty' in sub-cultures has on people that's correct and important, and tries to throw out the baby with the bathwater with the misrepresenting of it as 'superstition' and claiming it's the only issue. No one says that, but it fits *right into* the bias of his readers who like to not only say there's more to the issue, but to simply throw out whole sub-cultures and ignore any other factors.

Their simplistic notions obviously work *so well* at improving things. Oh, wait, the opposite is the case, but they're great at rationalizing bad situations.

All they have is 'no' to any improvements - and they don't know how wrong they are. They remind me of the southerners who honestly believed slaves say them as 'family'.



His first dig: the other side is 'politicizing' the issue (boo, hiss!); 'clevel social engineering' is more "dog-whistle" buzzwords for his audience to hate the thing he's talking about, a code phrase for any error by liberals who foolishly merely improve things, but to his readers, are Stalin-like commie dupes wanting to have the USSR here with its big utopian claims and big government tyranny. Then his next straw man, not debating the merits of liberal policies, but claiming they claim to 'perfect' things.

He paints it as some naive, unrealistic idiocy and yet again has a dog-whistle appeal to his readers' biases against any sort of 'centralized planning'. Boo, hiss!

Not only has he not said a word about real liberal policies or ideology, he has greatly misrepresented them to get his readers to hate whatever they are told they say here.

95% of what George Will says, I suspect, about liberals is also wrong or lies, and I haven't read enough to comment on the other 5%.

His phrase 'path to progress' - you guess it, another dog-whistle dig at 'progressives'.
Not really saying anything, just linking 'progressive' to the hate he just stirred up.



This is his straw man cementing - he just gave them dog-whistle words to make them feel hate at something, and then said that's the "crux" of progressivism.

He's a propagandist - which as I have defined is twisting a nugget of truth into a lie.



And without really saying a WORD on the real issue, here he is soothing his right-wing addicts, don't listen to those mean people who might say the right's 'second amendment remedies' was wrong, there there those are nasty people who are like Stalin and you are correct to ignore any criticism. He's the soothing enabler of and apologist for his 'brand' of ideology, protecting his cult members from any correction getting to them. Any criticism is just a 'reflex' from Stalinites who are nice people but who would turn the world into some modern government-dominated tyranny but you our brave right-wingers know better.

His stuff really is like pouring a drink for an alcoholic, doing nothing but propagandizing to the faithful not to listen to anyone. Which protects his market for his product.

The only difference, really, between him and any other cult leader who preaches to his flock the evils of the outsiders is that his is big enough it's called 'mainstream'.

As I say, as with any good propaganda, there's a nugget of truth to it, but as a propagandist, he uses the nugget to tell a lie.

LOL
Ain't it funny that those vulnerable, dog whistle following, right wing cult addicts are the ones who manage to take care of themselves and their families while the enlightened, independent, left wing progressives can't seem to manage their own health care, day care, education, employment, retirement . . . How odd that the progressives are the ones traveling in herds. It's almost enough to make one think. Luckily, progressives don't need to think.

 

[zsdersw]

So, Will's denying that society and environment influence individual behavior.

No. He's arguing that wackos sometimes do wacky things, and that no greater "explanation" for them (that society must re-engineer itself to fix) is required.

And that government attempting to "engineer" a better society and, thus, better people is unfounded and hopeless. And you post such a thing on MLK day. That's pretty damn priceless man.

Unfounded, but not entirely hopeless. No one would seriously suggest that government action to eliminate the race, gender, and religious injustices of the past were "hopeless" or "unfounded", but neither are they an indication of some magical power government has to engineer a better society. I'd say we're about at the point in our society right now where additional government involvement is going to do more harm than good.

 

[Craig234]

If you had said "most over-used debate technique", you'd be correct.

"most misunderstood word of the year", perhaps.

+1.

So, let's review what a strawman is.

Say you have to people in a disagreement. The one with the weaker argument has a hard time making his point in response to the other guy.

So this is where he instead takes the strong position of the other guy, and changes it to one easier for him to defeat - to an opponent that is a 'straw man' he can attack.

This is not about demonizing his opponent, like the 'I can't attack the points in his book so I'll imply he's lying for money by saying he wants to sell books' ad hominem.

Rather, it's about saying 'the opponent's argument is', followed by a false, weaker version of the argument he then argues well against - as if he disproved the real one.

For example, take the issue of Obama Care. Now, more real issues might be anything from simply protecting the insurance industry profits, to the controversy of mandates, among other things. But straw men are heavily used to actually make the arguments against the policy.

The allegation of panels who will kill you is a very simplistic straw man - and one that's quite dishonest, as we watched the governor of Arizona defend the rationing of healthcare as she made cuts costing lives. Another straw man is just the phrase 'socialized medicine', which has been used ever since polls in the 50's, as I understand it, found that the phrase creates a straw man people hate so much, just saying it gets a lot of opposition to whatever is being discussed. So much easier than arguing the actual issues - so when John Kennedy was arguing for expanding Medicare and all the benefits that would bring to the public, Ronald Reagan was using the phrase to argue against him. He could have said, "the AMA hired me to defend its more profitable system for their own interests at your expense", which would have been more honest, but not convinced many. But if he could imply Kennedy was trying to turn the US into the USSR, a straw man more easily attacked, he did better, if people bought the lie.

Of course, straw men can happen on the right, left, middle, any issue.

The essential thing of a straw man is to restate an opponent's argument in a weaker version.

When I say 95% of what is said about liberals here is wrong or lies and I can't remember the other 5%, much of that is responding to straw men.

Where people say, 'liberals want to have the government tell you what to wear when you get dressed' an an easy to argue against claim they want tyranny.

 

[Craig234]

It's certainly valid that the progressive movement has been moving more and more toward both a lack of individual responsibility and to a rejection of the notion of evil - conditional morality, if you will...

Progressives by definition want to cause incrementally the social changes that are otherwise conferred via revolution. Progressives do NOT think the USA is pretty swell as it is, progressives want to fundamentally change almost every facet of American society and law.

95% of what is said about liberals here is wrong or lies, I can't remember the other 5%.

You also mis-characterize conservatives, or at least some of us.

Irony of the week nominee.

 

[feralkid]

Will isn't just saying that people have changed, he is specifically pointing out how the progressive movement (to the extent that the progressive movement is identifiable with rationalism and secular humanism) is causing that change, or at the least that progressives are most vulnerable to it.

Well, I'd have to say "who would deny that?" that's Will's strawman.



I'd also have to conclude that if he believes we should simply accept mass killings, suicide bombings, political assassinations and all other human atrocities as "the will of the gods", and that any further intellectual or legalistic pursuit of fact is foolish progressivism...well Georgie, it seems a lot of the fundie wingnuts we have been fighting in afghanistan would agree with you.


Personally, I don't want to live in the 15th century.

 

[feralkid]

LOL
Ain't it funny that those vulnerable, dog whistle following, right wing cult addicts are the ones who manage to take care of themselves and their families while the enlightened, independent, left wing progressives can't seem to manage their own health care, day care, education, employment, retirement . .

I'd step back from that a bit...

That is unless you're trying to prove his point.

Economically, it is a fact; "blue" states contribute more to the national pie than they get back.



But this is all off topic, anyway...discussed to death already.

 

[werepossum]

Well, I'd have to say "who would deny that?" that's Will's strawman.

I'd also have to conclude that if he believes we should simply accept mass killings, suicide bombings, political assassinations and all other human atrocities as "the will of the gods", and that any further intellectual or legalistic pursuit of fact is foolish progressivism...well Georgie, it seems a lot of the fundie wingnuts we have been fighting in afghanistan would agree with you.


Personally, I don't want to live in the 15th century.

See the bolded in zsdersw's response below, he says it better than George or I could. Nothing to do with accepting bad things, merely with realizing that sometimes crazy and/or bad people do crazy and/or bad things for crazy and/or bad reasons. Stop 'em if we can, just no need to build a conspiracy to explain them.

No. He's arguing that wackos sometimes do wacky things, and that no greater "explanation" for them (that society must re-engineer itself to fix) is required.

Unfounded, but not entirely hopeless. No one would seriously suggest that government action to eliminate the race, gender, and religious injustices of the past were "hopeless" or "unfounded", but neither are they an indication of some magical power government has to engineer a better society. I'd say we're about at the point in our society right now where additional government involvement is going to do more harm than good.

I'd step back from that a bit...

That is unless you're trying to prove his point.

Economically, it is a fact; "blue" states contribute more to the national pie than they get back.

But this is all off topic, anyway...discussed to death already.

Just trying to point out the fallacies in his tired old argument that non-progressives are somehow unthinking sub-creatures that somehow keep him from being successful. As far as "blue" states contributing more to the national pie than they get back and yet still demanding ever greater redistribution - what's the definition of insanity again?

 

[Craig234]

Well, I'd have to say "who would deny that?" that's Will's strawman.



I'd also have to conclude that if he believes we should simply accept mass killings, suicide bombings, political assassinations and all other human atrocities as "the will of the gods", and that any further intellectual or legalistic pursuit of fact is foolish progressivism...well Georgie, it seems a lot of the fundie wingnuts we have been fighting in afghanistan would agree with you.


Personally, I don't want to live in the 15th century.

There is that 'nugget of truth' I mentioned.

As I have said before, I think the society tends to overreact to an event like this.

When correctly warned of errors - often from policies we're benefiting from, even if that benefit is just the saving of money to do anything - we might under-react.

Then when the problem happens, there's the overreaction.

There is something to be said about the need to keep the society from making bad changes in reaction to a 9/11 or an unstable person shooting leaders.

There are good lessons and bad lessons to be learned.

But on issues of the tone of political demagoguery, of help for unstable people, of gun policies, of free speech - how many should be different because of this one incident?

None. We might have had good or bad policies - the things is that our political system fell short where it did the wrong thing. But is the fix for that, 'react to this guy'?

Sometimes, it is. Maybe if a famous person were killed by a drunk driver when we did not have strong policies against drunk driving, we would have made a good change. When we added secret service protection to major candidates after Robert Kennedy was shot, that was a good thing.

But the position I stated on this was, before doing something because of this, recognize that any change that would prevent such incidents likely causes unacceptable harm to our freedom, and that we do need to be able to recognize these things will happen, rather than make bad changes when they do. The nugget of truth in Will's polemic does also identify the mistaken tendency by society to want to 'fix' something more than it should.

You mention Afghanistan - that's a situation where the Taliban is a real threat to people, and 'doing something' about them would help freedom, in theory at least if it's possible, while in contrast the measures to prevent one unstable person from doing something are a much different issue in the impact on people's freedoms.

An error by Will and his followers is taking 'don't overreact to this incident' and turning it into 'all criticism of the right on anything related to this is wrong'.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

No. He's arguing that wackos sometimes do wacky things, and that no greater "explanation" for them (that society must re-engineer itself to fix) is required.

So all society can do is allow these wackos to do their wacky things and just deal with the aftermath? That's still a pretty poor argument considering there are a million scenarios where a wacko doesn't turn into a mass murderer just like there are a million scenarios where one does. I have no problem with government taking reasonable steps to tilt the odds towards the former.

Unfounded, but not entirely hopeless. No one would seriously suggest that government action to eliminate the race, gender, and religious injustices of the past were "hopeless" or "unfounded", but neither are they an indication of some magical power government has to engineer a better society. I'd say we're about at the point in our society right now where additional government involvement is going to do more harm than good.

I would say government action to eliminate the race, gender, and religious injustices of the past is a pretty fair indication that government can engineer a better society, no magic about it. I don't like government over-intervention any more than anyone else, but like it or not it has a role to play in keeping a civil society. Abject denial of that is flat ridiculous.

The real irony hear is that Will seems to be condemning the left for what much the right has been has been trying to overtly accomplish for the past two decades or more, engineering a better society, except where the left goes wrong is basing that agenda on things like science and fairness instead of the real magic of good old fashioned Bible-based religion.

 

[zsdersw]

So all society can do is allow these wackos to do their wacky things and just deal with the aftermath? That's still a pretty poor argument considering there are a million scenarios where a wacko doesn't turn into a mass murderer just like there are a million scenarios where one does. I have no problem with government taking reasonable steps to tilt the odds towards the former.

We're already taking all the reasonable steps.. and too many unreasonable ones, with more and more unreasonable ones proposed every day.. usually by those on the Left.

I would say government action to eliminate the race, gender, and religious injustices of the past is a pretty fair indication that government can engineer a better society, no magic about it. I don't like government over-intervention any more than anyone else, but like it or not it has a role to play in keeping a civil society. Abject denial of that is flat ridiculous.

It's not indicative of that at all. The injustices of the past regarding race, gender, and religion have been undone; women can vote, slavery is gone, those who stray from Christianity are no longer "burned at the stake". What more is there for government to do, with identical significance, that will be as effective?

The real irony hear is that Will seems to be condemning the left for what much the right has been has been trying to overtly accomplish for the past two decades or more, engineering a better society, except where the left goes wrong is basing that agenda on things like science and fairness instead of the real magic of good old fashioned Bible-based religion.

George Will is not a terribly religious conservative. He's an economic and fiscal conservative. Irony not found.

 

[Generator]

I agree with Will, the shooter was just another white thug with a gun that saw an opportunity to kill a Jew. If you really want to get salacious, newspapers should have went with this:

WHITE CHRISTIAN MURDERS SIX, JEWISH REP SHOT IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Strawman...




lol Sorry I just had to say it. Very well written piece, although I don't agree with a lot of it. There are many good points but I really didn't like that it took some shots in the left vs right garbage. The sooner you all realize both sides are wrong and have sold out to the banks and corporate America the sooner we can improve this country. I could have written the exact same article from the exact opposite perspective, thus it has no real voice. It comes off as a be careful who your smear piece while smearing the other side in the same breath.

When will America see through this bulls---?

 

[NeoV]

I'm fairly certain that news travels a bit faster today than it did when Lincoln and Garfield were shot - in fact it travels faster now than it did when the Gipper was shot

Relevance to today? Zero.

The article is fail.

You can pretend that a leading Conservative figure didn't run an add, 'targeting' democrats, and that this loon who shot the Congresswoman had no connection to the very people who hold this Conservative figure in the highest regards, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Is Palin to blame? Of course not. Would it have been ok if she, or someone who ran her adds, apologized for the poor taste of those adds in light of what happened? Sure, not going to happen though.

Sadly, our entire news/political discussion is 99% meaningless rhetoric, spun by those telling the stories and their bosses.

 

[Double Trouble]

zsdersw, thanks for the post, Will indeed hit the nail on the head. I agree 100%.

 

[LumbergTech]

I actually felt this was one of the most power statements in this piece.



When presented with an alternative viewpoint the left falls onto racism or bigotry. That isnt intellectualism but a tactic to not debate the issue.

If one side didn't ignorantly deny that racism inherently exists and that it should not be tolerated then it might not be so easy to abuse it. People are racist as hell. Even those who try not to be are. It is not easy to defeat racism because of the way the human mind learns and also how it deals with the situations that it doesn't have a script for. The conservatives in power have chosen to purposely appeal to people who are openly bigots and they will continue to pay the consequences of abuse of the race card until they cut that bullshit out.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

The core of Will's argument is basically nature versus nurture.

Unfortunately his conclusion is seemingly based on if that question has already been answered, which it most definately has not.

So yes, strawman argument.

 

[dmcowen674]

The reason why Conservatives are blamed first is because it's clear they hate America.

Can't understand why they would want to stay somewhere they despise so much. That in itself is a bizarre behavior on their part.

 

[werepossum]

The reason why Conservatives are blamed first is because it's clear they hate America.

Can't understand why they would want to stay somewhere they despise so much. That in itself is a bizarre behavior on their part.

Conservatives want to keep America pretty much as it is. Progressives want to "fundamentally transform America" (Obama's words) into something completely different. Clearly, conservatives love America and progressives hate it.

If you had a brain, it would explode from a cognitive dissonance standing wave induced by your own words. Do not go down the yellow brick road. Do not meet with the wizard. Trust me on this one.