iraq casualties

Ah, my dear friend reprobate, nothing quite awakes me from my dogmatic slumbers than abusive and circumstantial Argumenti ad Hominem. I use my knowledge of Latin sparingly so as not to seem pedantic, but then again a true critique, in the Kantian sense, would not be complete without the obligatory Latin terminology. If one wants to read more about pedantry, I suggest reading Montaigne’s essays “Of Pedantry”, and “On the Education of Children.”

Before I begin with my retort to your critique reprobate, I plan on taking up your advice to broaden my reading selections. I would welcome any suggestions you have to offer. Besides, good criticism of my writing can only lend itself toward my betterment as a writer.

As to the overall scope of your critique, I believe the overarching informal fallacy committed is called missing the point. This might be due to confusion about my original intent, but some of it is due to sheer fallacious reasoning on your part, mostly from a lack of sensitivity to the context of my original post. Some of it may have been due to my own writing, but I was not trying to present a formal argument per se, but discussion point in the form of questions. For example:

I wonder if reprobate is a lawyer, perhaps a probate lawyer? Is his name a pun?

I did not present an argument, but offered my own questions, in hopes of understanding better. I will illustrate this as I respond to reprobate’s critique below.

No. The motives are almost identical, they only vary in degree. But again, I was offering a question to be answered by s5 as to what exactly he meant. I wanted to know to what extent, exactly how did he mean by “full truth”. Now, I will explain how the motives and responsibilities of this site and the republic are not divergent and the parallels are anything but “specious.”

The United States of America has a TOS agreement. It is better known as the Constitution. Those who are supposed to use this agreement to the greater good of all are the officers of government such as the President and congressmen. Those served by these are the citizens. The owners and operators of this site are the analogous “officers of government”, and the members of various levels are the equivalent of citizens.

A state of war exists today. Not de jure, as in the Constitutional provisions of a declaration of war were met, but de facto, that is, war is carried out illegally. During a declared war, the suppression of information may be needed so as not to alert the enemy to our objectives and movements in the prosecution of the war. There are other reasons, but the one above is good enough for our purposes.

The fact that we are carrying out a war, regardless of how many times Congress votes to say the President is right in fighting the war, it is still not a legal war under the Constitutional definition. This is a violation of the people’s consent for the Federal government to act in their name because the people agreed that the government would only carry out war if Congress declared a state of war to exist. In fact, we have not had a declaration of war in this country since 1941, and a state of war not existed since 1945.

What we now have is a serious problem. There are certain guarantees for every man, woman, and child in the United States in that same document. These civil liberties, especially the first amendment guarantees of the freedom of speech and press which are assumed today to mean freedom of information are the liberties called into question by s5 in his post. And these seem to be suspended by the current administration, as far as the war is concerned; leading up to the so-called war, during it, and now in the “war’s” aftermath. And why not, other administrations have done this at least fifty times since the formal end of World War II.

The current administration excuses itself of guilt in violating the Constitution because “we are at war”. The law they hid behind is the National Security Act of 1948 which gives us a, “’perpetual war for perpetual peace,’” so called by Gore Vidal, in his book by the same name, who took the phrase from an historian called Charles A. Beard. I have never read Mr. Beard, perhaps he should jump to the top of my aforementioned reading list. But I digress.

Now, if this site decided to arbitrarily violate its terms of service, it probably wouldn’t stay in business for long. But, if for sake of argument, let’s say it did. The TOS has specific ideas, content, et cetera that the site is constantly fighting against, such as racist content. This is a perpetual state of “war”, but it is constitutional within context. This is understood by the members.

The difference is that we are conflicted as to what we are fighting in Iraq. Technically, it is not a legal war. But in matters of fact, it is war. We did not agree to this kind of information suppression in so-called peacetime. I think this is a good analogy. Correlation between similar parts with similar relationships between similar parts.

Specious indeed. But I don’t think it was me, it was the administration. And I do like the fact that this is a republic. I will return to this later.

Actually, s5 did write, “a better idea: why not just make the full truth available at all times, no matter what the issue, and allow everyone to decide for themselves whether or not the cost is worth it?” and I quoted it, twice now. So your premise in your first sentence above is groundless. I agree with your sentiments about who should be “gatekeepers of information” in wartime. The problem is created by the Constitutional crisis I outlined above. But there used to always be ways to “part the curtain” after a legal war was finished. Actually, there are still ways today, but most are blocked through force.

As for gatekeepers of information in peacetime, there aren’t any. Formal gatekeepers that is… The government is supposed to be transparent in the sense that there were legal ways to find out what your representatives were doing, albeit difficult gauntlets to run, but they were there. These ways are largely blocked by the National Security Act, and that act trumps the Freedom of Information Act, and the War Powers Act to some extent. Again, this is without a Constitutional authorization of a state of war.

Vigilance, I agree is needed, to not lose any more ground… we still have to retake what has been lost in the last 55 years.

I will address this below when I discuss context, especially with photographs. But how could you let me get away with that huge grammatical error? Boy, I really need to proofread.

Whoa, this paragraph is a doozie! I will try to break it down.

All the questions make sense in context of me putting forth points to ponder rather than a formal reductio ad absurdum proof. Again, in missing my point, you appear to have committed an indirect version of the Arguementum ad Populum where you appeal to snobbery by taking the information out of context.

To illustrate my point of contextual relavence, consider the sentence, “I shot the sheriff.” In a Bob Marley song, this carries a particular meaning: The fictitious narrator confesses to a crime. If I sing along in my car, I am not charged with taking aim at the local law enforcement, because the statement is out of context. If I said the line while on the witness stand on trial for doing that very thing, needless to say, I would be “in deep shit” as you mentioned in your post, reprobate.

And why exactly can the character of an audience be considered? Enemies can be in the audience. I put forth that in a legal war some suppression is understandable and vital in many cases. Character of an audience is the only place character can be considered in your dichotomy, because character of information is nonsensical. Period. This is a great illustration of the Anthropomorphic Fallacy: ascribing human qualities to nonhuman things. Information is created by humans just as a house is, but it does not have “character”. Character is a human trait. And it is completely contextually dependant. And the volatility of information is also dependant on the reaction to it by individuals. The polity’s right to be informed is never superceded completely, but my be delayed in some cases – legal war – and this leaves no alternative. Your distinction is a Flase Dichotomy Fallacy.

I have no problem with a high school student getting a White House press pass if s/he is a good journalist. With the towing of the line by much of the press and broadcast media in the past few years, this might actually be an improvement.

Well reprobate, we are at war, regardless of my feelings, or anyone else’s, about the legality of the war. We don’t have too many rules about fighting an illegal battle. That is why it is illegal. There needs to be a way out of this mess or it could end with the end of us all. I was responding to a particular post’s solution. Now, there are other things at stake, but again, someone was missing the point.

But whoa Nellie! Democracy? That is something that is patently false, historically, etymologically, practically, and I don’t think I have time to list all the other adverbs… Above you stated that we live in a republic. This is true, though we seem to be losing it. Republics are undemocratic by definition. I agree that we sometimes use these terms interchangeably, but to our own detriment. What is the use of having two different terms mean exactly the same thing? Speaking and writing two different languages maybe, but we are using these Anglicized Latin and Greek terms in English.

Democracy comes from the Greek meaning “many rule”. This means that the decisions and government are the responsibility of all citizens. That is not the case in a Republic – literally a “public thing”. Citizens give up huge portions of the decision making process to a constitutional government. In the United States we do not vote for president, we vote for electors to make these decisions for us. We elect representatives to make laws for us. They don’t have to answer to us. The agreement is that they answer to, and up hold, the Constitution and laws established under it.

I do agree that the public needs to be well informed and I hold this to be true in either government – demos cratos or res publica.

And the lying, wagging a dog (come on, what sane indivdual actually bought the USS Lincoln and those nuts?), and all the other considerations are important. But they are symptoms, not the disease. We need to attack the root(s) of the problems. And the opposition needs to fight amongst itself less.

I think we agree that total access to information is just plain impossible due mostly to time constraints. We also agree on the issue of (a lack of) veracity. But I like the allusion to Dr. Seuss. Been to the movies lately have we? How was that flick?

The way I do my best to avoid lying sources is to verify as much as possible from multiple sources. And I usually use two eyes to avoid the really deep shit in my field of vision.

Yes, several. Thanks for asking.

Again, missing the point, I was avoiding being pedantic. And if I was false in my words or arguments, I think they are anything but simple.

Actus reus, literally the “act thing” but taken in law to mean the guilty act and you concur that my use of “ability” is at least a bit synonymous. I use motive as a lay term to account for mens rea, literally “mind thing” but taken to mean “guilty mind,” as far as I know, in the law. Perhaps I should have offered up a précising definition to clarify my meaning. You did offer up the first case of Amphiboly Fallacy I have run across and been able to call. Thanks, I love the sound of the name of that fallacy and have been waiting for it to come up.

I will admit that my analogy is a bit weak, but I was not attempting to formalize an argument, but use the analogy as a metaphor for using reckoning and a small amount of information to realize an action is wrong. Next time I know to construct the argument more tightly, and try to be less literary.

I did, thanks again. But we will have to just disagree on how simple it is to see this war as wrong if I have not swayed you yet.

I agree again as a matter of principle that I should broaden my reading list. I never said, at least I don’t think I did, that we won this war. I didn’t offer up a definition of victory. Not many have up to this point. I believe it is for a myriad of reasons. My argument was that political and military objectives are tied together and used the Clauswitz quote to illustrate where I took the idea from. We have had several military objectives which we met along the way. These are meaningless out of context without a true political objective(s) for the war. The military victories along the way are meaningless without the context of political aims. There’s that context getting in the way of getting what we want. Dammit!

correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't lincoln serve in the french & indian wars?

(and, btw, fdr was responding to provocation. which you should know.)

If that were the case, Lincoln would have been over 100 when he was elected to the presidency.

Sadly nothing bores me quite so much as as misasserted logical fallacies. I was snide, because you were simplistic and supercilious. That was not and is not an ad hominem, it was contempt for your ideas and expression. Whats more you've outdone yourself at same here to the point where not even I am the slightest bit tempted to pick apart your tortured logic. This may be a first. Good on you. "A" for effort (and volume).

Incidentally, you can keep looking for your amiphiboly. There was no duality there, merely a fatally flawed major premise to your syllogism. If the first term is false, no conclusion may be drawn from it and the argument fails.

well he served in some such war. i haven't taken history since junior year of high school, cut me some slack. sarcastro.

We know you know Kant, but that doesn't get you a "Get Out Of Being Called Gay Free" card.