"Alan" on the radio
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Posted By: prometheus Posted on: Oct. 29, 2006 at 3:45 PM  11 Comments
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Good call. The comment about not wanting to come to this site because "average American" always has his right wing stuff posted here. I understand! But, this is why you should come here and post some articles! Now that the web site has changed (most space to advertisers), the battle for a little shelf life is greater than ever! I don't know for sure, but one of the reasons a right-winger might be trying to occupy so much space here is simply loyalty to his cause (I mean - running interference). He could be posting at some rightwing blog (there are hundreds of them), but instead here he is??? You don't have to read that stuff. Just bumb him on down the list with a good article or two. Freedom of speech free market.
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 01:15:36 AM
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| Your participation here is appreciated, but you can't expect all the radio listeners to do the same. Alan is no coward; he just has different priorities. I certainly don't spend my freetime posting on the blogs of every neocon blowheart I catch on the air. Haven't you ever listened to something that made your blood boil? I can imagine a Vietnam war veteran, listening to your armchair assessment of Iraq and the war he fought in, could get a little hot under the collar. He's not the one presuming to have all the answers, you are. I'm sure from Alan's perspective, he's simply enraged to here a "young punk" on the radio rewriting history he lived firsthand. On an emotional level, I can certainly understand why Alan would ask you: Where's your skin in the game? For you to attack him on this site, without the man here to fight back, is a bit low, don't you think? I read an interesting article in this month's Scientific American written by Michael Schermer (The Skeptic). The article is called Wronger Than Wrong and applies perfectly to your little fracas with Mike Newcomb. Scientific theory is simply the hypothesis that fits best under repeated experimental observation. Evolution fits best with our current body of knowledge. There are still many "gaps" in the theory, but this does not imply that the theory is in general incorrect, and in fact there exists NO evidence to disprove the theory of evolution to this day. It is simply the best working theory we have going at present, but if an observation should emerge tomorrow that cannot be explained by evolution, the theory will have to be discarded. The present "gaps" in the theory of evolution - "holes" as creationists (intelligent designists) calls them - do not disprove evolution, and do not need God to fill in the potholes, as the creationists insist. In summary, evolution may indeed (but not likely) someday be proven to be wrong, but creationism is wronger than wrong for operating on a blantantly false premise. I will skip how the concept of how wronger than wrong applies to such things as Bohr's model of the atom, quantum theory, and String theory. But one more example, if you will (hmmm, that sounded a lot like Dick Cheney). Up until the renaissance, many believed the Earth to be flat. After Columbus et al, we of course knew the Earth was a sphere. Early on in the space age, we learned from careful gravimetric measurement from orbiting satellites that the Earth is in fact an oblate spheroid, with many higher order small scale deviations from this shape. So the assertion that the Earth is a sphere is wrong. The assertion that the Earth is flat is wronger than wrong. There are different degrees of being wrong, and it is disingenous to equate them by saying: "Oh yeah, well they're both wrong." The person that still believes the Earth is a sphere can be forgiven. The person that believes the Earth is flat, in this day and age, is an idiot. So Average American, as I already told you, Mike Newcomb (or Alan, or myself) is not exactly on the high ground of Socratic debate when he asks you (paraphrasing) "If you believe in the war so much, why aren't you fighting it?" But you are deep in the valley for using the same sort of faulty logic and responding with a ridiculous human shield comment. You are not simply as wrong as Mike Newcomb - you are wronger than wrong. You can't fight a war without soldiers, but you can stop a war with free speech. A war protestor is much more effective staying home and working to convince his or her fellow citizens to not pick up a gun. You can stop only one bullet with your body; you can potentially stop millions with your words. How many terrorists have your words brought to justice? |
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 07:13:16 AM
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| I can change the minds of thousands of liberals who hate America here at home, I can't do that if I an in Iraq. Same lame arguement. Again I ask, if you feel so strongly about stopping the killing in Iraq why are you not there doing it. |
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 08:03:11 AM
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| No AA, you don't change our minds. What you accomplish is to make liberals laugh at you or hate you. You were stupid enough to answer a rhetorically and logically flawed question. Bravo for all your desperate attempts to change the humiliating results - very Republican of you.
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 08:37:53 AM
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| You know all this protesting of AA's over the Newcomb thing sure makes me think that AA has more than just a little guilt about not fighting in this war. "Thou doest protest too much" And AA, this "liberals hate America" line is very passe, kind of like the old 80's "angry white man" argument of the 80's. Opps, you troted that one out again in your CAMASU article. Boy, you Republicans just don't have ANY new or original ideas do you? Time to change course. Vote for the Democrats! |
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 09:25:45 AM
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| When you come on the radio sounding like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reillys love child people are going to be repulsed! If A.A. wants progressives to listen and read neo-con thinking he needs to do what every smart neo-con politician is doing a week before the election . . . look and sound like a democrat! And when you are a long time mouth piece of the chicken-hawks WAR >>> WAR>>> WAR>>> you are a pretty easy target when you don't go and actually fight in the war. You need to stop talking about the war because it seems you lack credibility in that area of expertise?
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 09:56:44 AM
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| One thing for certain, AA is determined to stay the course about his ill-fated scuffle wife Mike Newcomb. Neocons don't get their ass kicked, even when they totally get their ass kicked. Not content to be wronger than wrong, AA won't stop until he is wrongest. Time to cut and run AA. Every additional defense you toss out about your embarrassing encounter with Mike Newcomb makes you appear more and more whiney and sniveling. You wouldn't want to be labelled like that, would you? |
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 10:31:50 AM
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| Oh crap, that's not a good typo! I meant to type with Mike Newcomb, not wife Mike Newcomb. |
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 03:33:21 PM
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| My comment on this thread, i.e., you have to physically be involved with something in order to understand it . . . is that it is usually a false choice, or a flawed argument... None of us fought in the U. S. Civil War, for example, so does that mean no one, even one who has great knowledge of it, is qualified to comment on it? Bill Clinton was never a soldier yet was a successful president... in my opinion, of course, and further, led and directed our efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, etc. successfully. Even if we are kind and say that George Bush had "some" military experience, lo, he is a failure as a war leader. Maybe it's that hates to read thing... Wars are, perhaps unfortunately, fought by mostly young men . . . When I was 19 I thought the Vietnam War was necessary and righteous . . . it took years for the truth to get out, and for me to mature and keep reading and discussing it with others . . . and then there was that Gulf of Tonkin thing, that era's WMD gambit . . . . I am rambling but this particular point is that a young soldier in the heat of battle does not have the ear of the president or commanders who sent him there, he just wants to do his job and survive . . . reflection comes later to him, but the rest of us can help him/her with it now . . . by doing our part to get the truth out, etc. --KZ
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Oct. 30, 2006 at 04:07:53 PM
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| Does 'Average American' have a job? Does he have to work for a living, like the REAL Average American? I know I can't spend the time to visit the site more than occassionally with my average american efforts to cling to the American Dream. Is this guy subsidized by the rightwingnuts, or what?
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But Alan is to much of a liberal to actually have to discuss his views. By virtue of him saying he was in Vietman, he thinks he has won the arguement on war, when he mentions his kids, he thinks he has won the battle on understanding the whole thing about supporting the troops. That's idiotic. He loves to shot as he runs by. Now that I have answered his question with one of my own, where is he? Nowhere to be found because he has lost that fight.
I believe we should all be involved here, God knows I don't own the site.
I will say this though, I was one of the early writers on this site and I continue here for one reason only, It is the only place where I can say what I want unfiltered. Others will "flag" you and tell you what you can and can't say. I have been to those sites and it pisses me off.
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