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How to win an argument with Liberals-Progressives-Socialists-etc...

POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Thursday, June 16, 2011 09:23
VIEWED: 32999
PAGE 23 of 31

TERRAN57

Friday, June 10, 2011 9:44 AM

Hmmm: Seems the only way my posts go through is to reply directly to Wulf. Weird! It must be a rightwing, Rush Limbaugh, Stalinist (nothing about Godwin please), al Queada conspiracy!!!!!!

Have a great night and a better tomorrow.

Terran57

DREAMTROVE

Friday, June 10, 2011 11:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Terran57:
Hmmm: Seems the only way my posts go through is to reply directly to Wulf. Weird! It must be a rightwing, Rush Limbaugh, Stalinist (nothing about Godwin please), al Queada conspiracy!!!!!!

Have a great night and a better tomorrow.

Terran57

Use the beta

http://beta.fireflyfans.net

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

SKYDIVELIFE

Friday, June 10, 2011 12:53 PM

RionaEire wrote:

"You know this thread has more posts than AI In A Box? Go figure.
:l)"

To the title of this thread:

I don't think its possible to "win" an argument with anyone. Expecially if a person has a strongly held belief.

Threads like this, or others, are sounding boards of different ideas. For every idea there is another to confront it, usually.

SIGNYM

Friday, June 10, 2011 1:35 PM

"Agree with them is how to win???"

Go suck on a smokestack.

NIKI2

Friday, June 10, 2011 3:54 PM

("Replying" to last post, but meant to respond to everyone since I was last here)

Quote:
Right now your argument looks like: liberalism ... single parent households, messed up generations, ineffective schools, increased crime, gun control, reduced speech, nanny state. I need the ellipses filled in for me. Is it secularism, feminism, both?.

That IS his argument, made over and over and over again, haven’t you noticed? Anything “liberal” is bad, all the bad things are attributable to liberals, and all liberals are “hippies”, his favorite term of derision. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on this before.

Quote:
you are resorting to personal attacks that you have no evidence of

Riona, you’re wasting your “fingers” (since “breath” d0esn’t apply here). Wulf’s never going to change his tactics, and the tactics you see here. He doesn’t WANT to be mature, he just spouts whatever comes to mind against those who disagree with him. It’s nothing new; it won’t change.

Quote:
There is a real benefit to having multiple instructors and peers for them to develop socially along side.

Happy, well said. For me, the benefit of socialization is a BIG one, and home schooling isolates a kid so they get virtually none. Kids, like puppies, and virtually every other animal, need to learn boundaries, need to learn that when a peer says “ouch”, it means back off, among other things. Given all the cuts to education we’re so “intelligently” (I use the term advisedly, obviously) making currently, there are fewer teachers per student, so about the only advantage education HAS, more and more, is socialization. And not of the best kind, but better than none.

Quote:
The main thing about homeschooling is that the biggest group that wants it are the religious fundamentalists.

That’s the other thing that bothers me about it. I remember from “The Authoritarians” that RWAs try to keep their offspring within their own circle, and this is another way of doing so, but again, no exposure to other attitudes and ways of thinking does NOT make for a tolerant child who grows up to be any kind of tolerant adult.

Quote:
Kids are going to make friends and socialize wherever

That’s not necessarily true. Where does a fundamentalist home-schooled child socialize with others who think differently from him? In church? In Sunday school? I would disagree that they get much chance to socialize with those with different ideas. While I agree with a lot of what you said about public schools, I think the potential for harm from home schooling is greater.

Riona has the same difficulties in that respect as I do. I’d never heard of co-op home schooling, Riona, thank you; I have less trouble with that, as it does give the kids a chance to socialize. I still have reservations about religious families home schooling, if their religion gets into it overmuch or slants their view of things.

I was nine when we went to Afghanistan, and nearly 12 when we returned. We immediately discovered that my EDUCATION was about a year ahead of my grade, but my SOCIALIZATION was at least a year (or more) behind. The school I attended in Afghanistan was an international school, with few Americans. We had no P.E. or organized sports, and the American kids (of which there were few) were only able to socialize amongst ourselves. To me it was very telling, and I’ve never forgotten it. I remember all too clearly how hard it was, as a 12-year-old, to fit in, to understand the nuances of my first year, jr. high, and later high school. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else.

I was going to bring up time, but you already did. Given how UNinvolved many parents are these days, who watches over home schoolers to see if they actually spend time with their kids and help them learn? I’m sure many, many of them do, but what about those who just shove books at their kids and make sure they memorize enough, or whatever, to pass “tests” that allow them to continue home schooling, and l

SKYDIVELIFE

Friday, June 10, 2011 4:06 PM

Hello Niki2,

Thanks for the welcome, Im still setting up my profile and when I saw how many posts there were in this thread, I got curious and wanted to put my 2 cents in.

I tend to lean center-right in my way of thinking, but lots of people do go extreme one way or the other. Politics tend to bring out the worst in people.

BYTEMITE

Friday, June 10, 2011 4:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"I like the idea of most services being run by local people and companies."

Until you pit them against a national or multinational company doing this:

Then what?

The trick is you have to kill the big multi-nationals, stomp them in the dust, so completely that even the parasites funding them don't even have the funds anymore.

There's a fine balance out there. Locals have an advantage in that there's much less transportation which means less preservatives and maybe pesticides that will kill you. Also generally less pollution because the would-be polluters have to LIVE there. You can't get away from knowing that what you might do might hurt people you know. Best way possible to stop crime.

The only advantage that the big multi-nationals have is that they have more people, but with greatly increased inefficiency: you may be creating some hi-tech manufacturing products with them, but look at how long it takes to create new things, to revolutionize. They stymie creativity and technology stagnates. All they can create is the same product repackaged with maybe more memory or more compact memory, and have it break in a few years so people have to keep consuming. It's ultimately a self-destructive business model. The only reason it's competitive? Because of kick-backs at the executive level, because of the same close-knit bunch of investors who have all the money, who have changed the system so that the large corporations get the advantage. Wall Street? It's the major firms and corporations that are traded. Laws? Pork-barrel? Hell, wars fought solely to give some assholes an exclusive contract?

I think you can see what I mean.

Call me naive if you want, but I think all of us can agree on which option is BETTER. The problem is these other guys are intentionally gaming and breaking the system. We have to figure out how to game and break it the other way, by revolutionizing technology the ground out from underneath them. We have to create an alternate, counter-economy, and we can do it, IF it's based on sustainability and self-sufficiency.

And hope to hell that they don't crash this economy before we've done so, because these people are chronically short-sighted, and even if they're the ones's who'll get hit hardest, like in the great depression of 1929 (people had the most invested in stocks had the furthest to fall), the rest of us will still suffer for it. I think we all know how very close the global economy came to a complete collapse and shut-down in 2008. It'll happen again. You know it will.

KPO

Friday, June 10, 2011 4:56 PM

Quote:
I'm something of a rational anarchist.

Hmm, so a system of simple, society-wide laws that communities can themselves enforce... But no government, no taxation? If so then you're exempt from the charge of believing you know what is better for others. But I still maintain that all the other political philosophies, and not just the ones on the left are guilty of it. Conservatism, even libertarianism believe in a government, funded by involuntary taxation, right?

Quote:
Governments should be formed for the purpose of undertaking projects the citizens themselves cannot perform. Sewage can be handled by a corporation. Water supply can likewise be handled by a corporate entity. (in fact, it is where I live) Power supply, corporations. Phone or network connectivity, again corporations. EMS in my area is handled by a volunteer fire company. They take donations or they charge you for an ambulance ride. Some fire companies also have subscription plans or charge for call outs. Sounds horrible? I don't know.

This doesn't offend me in any way - I don't begrudge it at all, if it runs well. If it works as well as government provided servies, then good for you. If it doesn't quite work as well, but the citizens are happier under it for ideological reasons, then it's still working in a way, so again, fair enough. If it works significantly better than government run services, then I'll be interested in adopting it where I live...

Quote:
My question back to you is this; what services do you receive from the Feral Government (no typo) that you could just not live without?

Hmm, well I'll start by saying law enforcement. If I wanted someone to come to my house to catch a home invader, or to solve the murder or rape of a family member, I'd presumably have to pay a private company? The inevitable result of this seems to me to be that the rich would get a better standard of justice and protection than the poor... This is a problem for me. I imagine I and a lot of the people I care about would get by - but that's just not the society I want to live in. The same with if you remove things like a free education system; you end up with a VAST underclass of citizens that don't get educated, can't get a good job, and thus can't afford education for their children. This seems like a recipe for a society that is unmeritocratic and very unharmonious (crime, poverty and strife ridden) - again, not a society I want to live in.

But it seems to me you and I have different criteria. I'm not so much looking at what parts of government I could 'do without', I'm looking at what's the right amount of government to make society work best. I'm looking to optimise - without any rigid, ideological constraints.

Quote:
So why do I need a government? Seriously? I have a large tax burden for which I receive next to nothing in return. Doesn't really sound fair.

Maybe you get more than you think. I imagine taking you on an 'It's a Wonderful Life' style tour of the USA in an alternate reality where it never had a government (say George Washington dissolved it immediately after independence). I imagine an America that is more insular, agrarian, backwards, poor, unhealthy, unequal, probably still slave-holding... That's all assuming you weren't colonised by the French, or whomever. How do you imagine it? Would America, or you yourself be doing better?

It's not personal. It's just war.

BYTEMITE

Friday, June 10, 2011 5:19 PM

Quote:
While the view of history, science, etc. are certainly not perfect in public schools, I shudder to think what they may be in religiously-centered home schooling.

As I said before, this doesn't change between homeschooling versus public schooling. If a kid is indoctrinated with fundamentalist views (which usually happens VERY early on), then they're not going to get much out of science as taught in a public classroom because they don't believe it anyway.

I mean, you've seen the videos of public teachers saying, "well, here's where I'm supposed to teach you about evolution, but you and I know jesus didn't come from a monkey." Speaking on a strictly societal level, they're not exactly going to be contributing to science or technology anyway, so what does it matter what they believe? So long as they aren't committing any crimes, should I care?

Besides, while I'll admit fundamentalist homeschooling is a significant chunk, and I agree that they'll have some serious deficiencies, that's something they and their families have chosen. If they want to handicap themselves, I'm not sure how it's any business of mine.

Also, parents used to be quite a bit more hands off at what their children got into. Society survived, children somehow figured it out. I think we've gotten into this habit of thinking that kids need their hands held until they can be shooed out of the nest (and sometimes even after that). But my experience has been kids will surprise you what they can pick up. And while homeschooling can be an aspect of hand-holding that is repulsive to me, I'm kinda torn whether public schools are a better option for that.

Homeschooled kids don't get exercise? And, what, sitting at a desk you do? From kindergarten to workforce to grave, people are spending most of their time SITTING nowadays, with major effects on health, fitness, and stress levels. The system's broken Niki, you and I know it. You don't defend what's broken, you change it so it's not broken anymore.

SKYDIVELIFE

Friday, June 10, 2011 5:39 PM

Bytemite,

You wrote: "Homeschooled kids don't get exercise? And, what, sitting at a desk you do? From kindergarten to workforce to grave, people are spending most of their time SITTING nowadays, with major effects on health, fitness, and stress levels."

I have this somewhat, unorthodox, idea.

Desks, where you have to stand. Hemmingway, it is reported, never wrote/typed while sitting.

He always stood to do so.

The desks themselves, could be adjusted for children of differing heights.

I know it seems a little strange, but it might help.