|
|
Post by thwhtguardian on Feb 17, 2016 15:44:31 GMT -5
And again I bring up the illness of our society that is the polarization of political thinking; because I believe differently than you yourself do your response to my argument isn't to respectfully engage me in conversation like an equal but rather to sarcastically threaten to take your ball away and leave the game. I'm perfectly willing to discuss the issues. But only if you are. And you are ignoring the specific discussions of Scalia's stance on the death penalty and what I feel is the myth of his "intellectual rigor" or his "judicial integrity" in order to create a discussion about how awful it is to call him a monster (which I didn't do) and also to create a pretty transparent straw man that I am somehow calling the Supreme Court monstrous most of the time because Scalia voted with the majority 75% of the time. And I'm not threatening to take my ball and go home merely because we disagree. It's the essentially dishonest nature of your argumentation. If you want to discuss issues, then feel free to discuss issues. If you want to continue tone trolling and concluding that I think the Supreme Court is monstrous because I think Scalia's stance on the death penalty makes him scum or because I am questioning the myth of his "intellectual rigor," then you can feel free to do that too. I'm interested in the issues. But this argument about how I allegedly think the Supreme Court is monstrous is not interesting to me and I doubt that it's interesting to anybody else on the forum. Show me where I've ignored those faults in his judgment. I've acknowledged the existence of his faults numerous times in this thread, stated that on many issues that are the most important to me I fail to see eye to eye with the man and that he was a flawed individual...but what I've also been saying is that those instances don't paint the full picture of who he was and how he fared on the bench. By pulling only the negatives you do nothing to illustrate that the idea that he wasn't a highly intellectual and rational being because all you're doing is cherry picking the outliers of his overall body of his work. And if you're only picking the negatives and not highlighting that in actuality his opinions were in line with the majority than what else is your goal than to paint him as scum, the villain or the monster(even if you never say it)? If I'm misreading your intent then I apologize, but when you only work towards tearing someone down while ignoring everything else that is contrary to that narrative then how is one meant to interpret your aims? And I bring up the question of your opinion on the Supreme Court's rulings in general over the past thirty years not to create a straw man, but rather to highlight what seems in my eyes to be a large disconnect in your reasoning; you wish to paint him in a solely negative light and yet the majority of his rulings don't jive with that idea...unless of course you also wish to paint the majority of the Supreme Court's rulings in the same light. When looking at the broader picture you have to essentially view the two as one because more often than not their opinions were the same, even on issues where the court was split. Humans are complex beings and you simply can't judge them based on a narrow set of elements but rather only by the larger picture and what I'm trying to get you to do is look at that larger picture, both on this issue and in general because it's that narrow focus that seems to be a cause a great many ills. |
|
|
|
Post by thwhtguardian on Feb 17, 2016 15:46:59 GMT -5
Here's Ted Cruz, weighing in on whether or not the Constitution applies to Obama when it comes to Supreme Court nominees: Like Scalia, Ted Cruz is someone whose brilliance you're supposed to respect even if you disagree with him. You're not supposed to use your own eyes and ears to make any judgments, it seems. I keep hearing both sides are the same. What's the liberal equivalent to a statement like that? I don't think many people think Cruz is brilliant...even in conservative circles he's often called a clown or a wacko. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 17, 2016 16:02:28 GMT -5
Show me where I've ignored those faults in his judgment. You've acknowledged that you disagreed with him. But you've also said he was still a principled, consistent jurist. And you've also admitted that you haven't looked at the specifics of the death penalty cases. So you've definitely ignored me when it comes to taking a substantial look at any of the reasons for why I might not have any respect for him. Instead, you've chosen to focus on a few unkind comments I made and to make up a straw man position that I think the Supreme Court is monstrous because Scalia voted with the majority a lot. I don't think it follows that because I think Scalia was horrible on many positions that, ipso facto, I think that every position he took was wrong. I'm willing to concede that there were times when the right thing was so obvious that even he couldn't find a way out of it. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 17, 2016 16:15:19 GMT -5
what I've also been saying is that those instances don't paint the full picture of who he was and how he fared on the bench. By pulling only the negatives you do nothing to illustrate that the idea that he wasn't a highly intellectual and rational being because all you're doing is cherry picking the outliers of his overall body of his work. And if you're only picking the negatives and not highlighting that in actuality his opinions were in line with the majority than what else is your goal than to paint him as scum, the villain or the monster(even if you never say it)? If I'm misreading your intent then I apologize, but when you only work towards tearing someone down while ignoring everything else that is contrary to that narrative then how is one meant to interpret your aims? I don't feel like I have any responsibility to paint a full picture of Antonin Scalia. There's nothing that says someone else (you perhaps?) can't talk about what a great guy he was. If you want to provide some balance, feel free to do so. From my point of view, the issues that he was wrong about were very important, very big issues. And I want to draw attention to that. And also to draw some attention that there is not universal agreement about his intellectual rigor or his consistent judicial integrity. I really really wish you would stop defending your straw man argument that I think the Supreme Court is monstrous because I think many of Scalia's most important decisions were terrible and were not as logically rigorous as many seem to think. I have not said nor implied that he never made a good decision and I really really wish you would stop saying that I said anything like that. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 17, 2016 16:23:46 GMT -5
And I bring up the question of your opinion on the Supreme Court's rulings in general over the past thirty years not to create a straw man, but rather to highlight what seems in my eyes to be a large disconnect in your reasoning; you wish to paint him in a solely negative light and yet the majority of his rulings don't jive with that idea...unless of course you also wish to paint the majority of the Supreme Court's rulings in the same light. I'm highlighting what I don't like about him. Anyone else can talk about a great guy he was. It's fine with me. Just because the majority of his rulings were with the rest of the court doesn't change the fact that he made some bad ruling and even at times seemed to gloat about it, as if he didn't care about the people he was affecting. Sorry, but it doesn't follow that I'm trying to smear the whole court because I didn't like a lot of Scalia's dissents. No matter how many times you say it. Please stop saying it, especially if you really sincerely want to talk about issues. |
|
|
|
Post by thwhtguardian on Feb 17, 2016 17:23:37 GMT -5
what I've also been saying is that those instances don't paint the full picture of who he was and how he fared on the bench. By pulling only the negatives you do nothing to illustrate that the idea that he wasn't a highly intellectual and rational being because all you're doing is cherry picking the outliers of his overall body of his work. And if you're only picking the negatives and not highlighting that in actuality his opinions were in line with the majority than what else is your goal than to paint him as scum, the villain or the monster(even if you never say it)? If I'm misreading your intent then I apologize, but when you only work towards tearing someone down while ignoring everything else that is contrary to that narrative then how is one meant to interpret your aims? I don't feel like I have any responsibility to paint a full picture of Antonin Scalia. There's nothing that says someone else (you perhaps?) can't talk about what a great guy he was. If you want to provide some balance, feel free to do so. From my point of view, the issues that he was wrong about were very important, very big issues. And I want to draw attention to that. And also to draw some attention that there is not universal agreement about his intellectual rigor or his consistent judicial integrity. I really really wish you would stop defending your straw man argument that I think the Supreme Court is monstrous because I think many of Scalia's most important decisions were terrible and were not as logically rigorous as many seem to think. I have not said nor implied that he never made a good decision and I really really wish you would stop saying that I said anything like that. When you say some one is scum because of reason X that's attempting to paint a picture of the whole, now if you wanted to say his opinion on X is scummy that's something else entirely as it target's a specific opinion rather than the person in general and you should feel that you have the responsibility to make that distinction as the former rout is a cheap ad-hominem attack that does nothing to forward your argument while the latter is a clear and rational stance. And it still isn't a straw man but an argument that a creating an image of a person that doesn't include the larger picture creates a logical disconnect, if you your narrow list of examples trumps the larger image than that's up to to illustrate. |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 17, 2016 17:26:55 GMT -5
Here's Ted Cruz, weighing in on whether or not the Constitution applies to Obama when it comes to Supreme Court nominees: Like Scalia, Ted Cruz is someone whose brilliance you're supposed to respect even if you disagree with him. You're not supposed to use your own eyes and ears to make any judgments, it seems. I keep hearing both sides are the same. What's the liberal equivalent to a statement like that? I don't think many people think Cruz is brilliant...even in conservative circles he's often called a clown or a wacko. The brilliance of Ted Cruz is actually a common meme. I hear it a lot from the commentators on MSNBC and CNN. I found three quotes. There are a lot more. - Allan Dershowitz - Josh Marshall - Bill Maher |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 17, 2016 18:32:35 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 17, 2016 18:43:16 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by thwhtguardian on Feb 17, 2016 19:31:35 GMT -5
What I actually said was this: I think if you looked at some of the specifics of some of the cases you might find that Scalia ignored a lot of questionable conduct from prosecutors (he also didn't think new evidence made a bit of difference) and always sided with keeping the death sentence in place. Not just cold. Not just doing the job. A frightening authoritarian extremist. With out reading his opinions on those specific cases I can't really comment on them or say whether those mistakes( whether they exist or not) are a fair representation of his decisions as a whole, but purely as a judicial philosophy what he stated about how to rule on those types of cases is sound. It's cold and dispassionate and jarring to our own senses of right and wrong which are often emotionally based but that's the way it has to be at that level. Again, he may or may not have always effectively carried out his duties perfectly objectively in every case, I know I haven't read anything close to them all to pass judgment on that, but as a philosophy I think he's a 100% correct there in this situation...which makes this a very rare case where I'm in agreeance with him. Which is markedly different than ignoring your point. You didn't provide the specific cases that you believed would put down his philosophy on how the Supreme Court should view appeals concerning the death penalty and since I haven't read every single one I spoke in general concerning the theory itself...and I stand by that. I've never read of a case at the Supreme Court over turning a death penalty case because of new evidence or because they felt the defendant was innocent, though I have read several where a case was sent back to be retried or over turned completely because they found that the state had failed to carry out justice for one reason or another whether it be improper interrogation techniques by the police, warrant-less searches or any number of other technical reasons. And frankly that's the way it probably should be, it seems cold not to take into account the human element of innocence or guilt but at the same time if the case has risen to the level of the Supreme Court chances are that any and all evidence that there might have been specifically concerning guilt has likely already been brought forward and all that is left to analyze and judge are the technical aspects of the case so why beat about the bush? Ha, yeah I'm not a big opera fan myself so I can't name too many myself  |
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Feb 18, 2016 12:24:01 GMT -5
Ted Cruz, who's like apparently super-smart and stuff, speaks out about the tyranny of politically correct meals in the military. |
|
|
|
Post by DE Sinclair on Feb 18, 2016 12:58:54 GMT -5
Ted Cruz, who's like apparently super-smart and stuff, speaks out about the tyranny of politically correct meals in the military.When I saw this I thought it was probably about providing meals in accordance with service members religious guidelines. Which is something that should be accommodated.
Then I read the article and found out he was talking about gluten-free meals for service members with celiac disease. Just when I thought my opinion of him couldn't go lower, he found a way to prove me wrong.
|
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 18, 2016 13:22:28 GMT -5
Ted Cruz, who's like apparently super-smart and stuff, speaks out about the tyranny of politically correct meals in the military.When I saw this I thought it was probably about providing meals in accordance with service members religious guidelines. Which is something that should be accommodated.
Then I read the article and found out he was talking about gluten-free meals for service members with celiac disease. Just when I thought my opinion of him couldn't go lower, he found a way to prove me wrong.
And just in case you get second thoughts, watch this to see how cruel he is to Stevie Wonder. |
|
|
|
Post by DE Sinclair on Feb 18, 2016 14:02:05 GMT -5
When I saw this I thought it was probably about providing meals in accordance with service members religious guidelines. Which is something that should be accommodated.
Then I read the article and found out he was talking about gluten-free meals for service members with celiac disease. Just when I thought my opinion of him couldn't go lower, he found a way to prove me wrong.
And just in case you get second thoughts, watch this to see how cruel he is to Stevie Wonder. I can actually forgive him for being an awful singer (don't know if Stevie Wonder could, though), because he actually admits that he is. Much more forgivable than the other garbage that comes out of his mouth. |
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 18, 2016 14:16:11 GMT -5
And just in case you get second thoughts, watch this to see how cruel he is to Stevie Wonder. I can actually forgive him for being an awful singer (don't know if Stevie Wonder could, though), because he actually admits that he is. Much more forgivable than the other garbage that comes out of his mouth. Yes, but couldn't he have done that to say, Slim Whitman or Jack Jones? |
|
