This is What Losing an Argument Looks Like

Even if you aren’t violent, you are fanning the flames, inciting those that may be on the edge. There is more at stake here than whether someone is for or against the issue. There is the rule of law. This misogynistic thinking imitates Sharia law. This is America.

Blogosphere Tip of the Day: if your opponent can’t respond to your arguments with anything other than lying, hysterical hatred, you’re allowed to declare victory, and there’s probably nothing to be gained from a continued dialogue with said sore loser.

The Paul File Continued (Updated)

The following is an addendum to my recent NewsReal posts about Ron & Rand Paul’s disgusting relationship with radicalism and their dangerous misrepresentation of facts on all things national-security and foreign-policy related:

During the 2008 Republican National Convention, Ron Paul held a counter-event, & the campaign invited crackpot Jesse Ventura to speak there. Ventura’s tirade about what “really happened” on 9/11 was met with wild applause by Paul’s audience.

On 9/11 Truther Alex Jones’ show in 2007, Paul claimed, “if you have a 9/11 incident or something like that, they use that to do the things that they had planned all along.”

In January 2008, Paul’s Midland County, MI, campaign coordinator was one Randy Gray, who happened to moonlight as “a longstanding active and vocal organizer for the Knight’s Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan.”  The campaign did not comment on the controversy, but did scrub all traces of Gray from their websites.

Rave Reviews 4!

You like me!  You really like me!

“It’s much easier to call people who are smarter than you are names then it is to argue facts, thanks in no small part to our liberal educational system.” – Randy

“…both intellectually dishonest and immature.” – M.P. O’Neal

“Enjoy that 100 trillion dollar currency debt you fools have mortgaged your children to them banksters.” – joe

“The author is another neocon Jew.” – Joseph Zrnchik

“…a man with a sheep’s brain…” – Bob

“Unintentionally Hilarious” – JB

“…just awful…” – More Stew

“What a sickening, hateful, sheltered, judgement, Friedburger brain bubble boy. He’s one of the the perfect examples of intelligent design. Cripes. What a creep.” – CJ

“…misinformed…” – Lord Howard Hertz

“Good God.” – Zach W.

“…dude if you are a polysci major I suggest you do a little more research before writing your blog because you lack any real depth of knowledge in the topics you discuss. Spend a little more time studying and less time dreaming up stuff.” – LeftofLiberal

“…desperation…illegitimate…” – annica2

“Boy you really are a fanatic nut head.” – RightWing

“Keep dreaming, but the reality is, you are the joke of this nation. The silent majority will just simply go back to the polls and vote Obama back in and you imbeciles can rant for another four long years. You will never learn. The dumbing down on the Right is almost totally complete!” – Liberallyproud

“…confused reasoning…” – PalmettoPatriot

“Trading insults gets you nowhere. It only benefits those who have nothing to say. As you mature you will most likely have a better appreciation for civil discourse and refrain from trading insults much less initiating such exchanges.” – The Inquisitor

“If you can’t win the debate, start name-calling, eh?” – John Galt

“Study history sometime.” – Elijah

“…both intellectually dishonest and immature.” – M.P. O’Neal

“Not a good way to advance a cause.” – princeliberty

“…you and the neo-conservatives are a bunch of war-mongering liberals.” – freedomfor you

“You’re arguing against a premise you wrongly inferred from the quote you posted. Comprehension is a wonderful thing, if you can comprehend what you’re reading that is. In this case you can’t.” – ED

“Carl your embarassing egotistical remarks are astounding for someone writing a publication with how many readers? It seems half of them don’t even like your obviously biased and ethnocentric reporting.” – James

“Perhaps, Calvin, you should try another line of work.” – Rightwingarbage

“You are not in tune with America…” – truthbetold

“Thumbs down…extremely biased…You wrote a very poor article.” – sas473

“More incessant neocon babbling…” – Carpe Cerevisi

“…another lame attack from a RINO…” – delapaz

“This article is terrible.” – T. Evans

“Why did I just subject myself to the slandering overtones of a hyped up alarmist co-ed, which was expected prima facie by the name Calvin Frieburger, in order to get my intellectual fix this morning. It’s usually the poli-sci guys that cry the loudest when they’re getting the crap kicked out of them for bloviating to everyone. AAAAh!!!!!” – A Smith

“This is bad journalism.” – Joseph

“…you know nothing about the military.” – David

“One only has to read the title of this faulty hitpiece to know it deserves all the contempt possible and it simply 100% baseless misinformation.” – Stefan

“…Zionist…” – Edip Yuksel

“I could not read much more than the 1st paragraph or 2, Calvin, you are completely wrong on so many levels. You may have a few facts straight, but your inferences are miles off target.” – JR

“Hypocrisy thy name is JEW! So Paul is disqualified from being taken seriously in American politics for some ‘unacceptable’ connections with white ethnocentrists. Meanwhile having deep connections with Jewish activist organisations the ADL, AIPAC, AJC etc etc is just fine. Why on earth shouldn’t Paul be ethnocentric enough to stand up for the interests of the traditional population of the United States? You know – the ones who’ve died in their thousands in Iraq for Israel? I’m sick of hyper-ethnocentric Jews telling us who and who is not a legitimate participant in the American political process.” – Peter Mansfield

“…stupid sh**…” – Steve

“The author of this propaganda is a BLATANT IGNORANT IDIOT.” – freeme

“…basically neo con apologist…” – Hammer

“If a college kid getting the typical US socialist education thinks there’s a problem, it’s practically 100% certain that the opposite is the truth.” – Syd Barrett

“Totally twisting of facts!” – freedom lover in KY

Calvin Freiburger Online: shouldn’t you be reading?

Why Do People Pay Andrew Sullivan to Talk, Again?

Andrew Sullivan, leading contender for Most Deranged Blogger in America, has apparently decided conspiracy-mongering over the sex lives of conservative women wasn’t interesting enough, so now he’s taken it upon himself to uncover the truth behind rumors that Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan might be a lesbian, and what the White House’s reaction to the rumors means for the struggle for gay rights:

Apparently unsatisfied with what seemed to be a clear denial from the White House that Kagan was gay, Sullivan asked, “Is Obama actually going to use a Supreme Court nominee to advance the cause of the closet (as well as kill any court imposition of marriage equality)? And can we have a clear, factual statement as to the truth?”

But they did give a clear, factual statement. And Sullivan’s Atlantic colleague Marc Ambinder has reported that close friends of Kagan say she’s straight; Ambinder tells The Daily Beast he has since received a similarly definitive answer from White House officials. Sullivan offers no new evidence to suggest the White House answer is wrong. In his first post on the issue, Sullivan wrote that further questions are fair game because “we have been told by many that she is gay”—without ever disclosing who the “many” might be and whether or not they are credible sources.”

When pressed, Serious Andrew’s line changes to:

Sullivan said that as a blogger, “my job is to think out loud. It is not my job to report stories.” As for information on Kagan’s orientation, “one need have no ‘evidence’ beside the fact that she is single and seems to be lacking in any emotional or relationship history to ask a question not about her private life but about her public identity.”

But Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, told The Daily Beast that Sullivan’s failure to provide any clear evidence that Kagan’s sexuality was in question raised major ethical concerns by pushing unsourced rumors into the mainstream press.

“It’s slimy locution here in that he writes ‘We have been told by many that she is gay,'” Gitlin said. “And what would constitute evidence? If someone shows up and says ‘I slept with Elena Kagan when we were in college,’ so what? I see nothing but slime down the slippery slope because accusers are a dime a dozen.”

Sullivan’s response?

“Gitlin’s remarks are so baldly homophobic, I’m a little taken aback.” (Gitlin stressed that rumors surrounding Kagan should not be viewed as a negative if true.)

“Since when is it ‘slime’ to ask someone a simple positive question about his or her orientation?” Sullivan added. “Since when is asking someone about her orientation an ‘accusation’? Is being gay something one is ‘accused’ of? And Gitlin’s blanket assumption that being gay means who you ‘sleep with’ is reductionist bigotry. Being gay is a core part of someone’s emotional identity and personal biography.”

Valiant though Greg Gutfeld’s above attempt may be, it’s no longer possible to truly parody Andrew Sullivan.  The man does it himself.

I don’t much care whether or not Kagan is gay; I care about the fact that, as a leftist, she’d be the antithesis of everything a good justice should be.

He’s Back…

Insufferable gasbag “Marcus Brutus” is once again plaguing NewsReal with his presence.  Just like before, he’s whining about “slander” against the object of his most-unhealthy affection, Ron & Rand Paul, and just like before, his hubris is making him look like the lying buffoon, not me.

Flashback: The FdL Reporter’s Double Standards

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to see what evidently doesn’t violate the Fond du Lac Reporter editorial board’s sensibilities:

Kristopher Purzycki, 6/2/06—“The law has no place for ‘logic’ that promotes the removal of freedom from the private lives of citizens!”

David E. Beaster, 6/6/06—“I suspect that Mrs. [Anita] Anderegg would have all of us to believe that we would be better off under a feudal system where the concentration of power would be in the hands of a group of elitists.” [In response to a proposal to reduce the size of the Fond du Lac County Board from 36 members to 18.]

Rea Dunca, 6/14/06—“How are these people [opponents of same-sex marriage] different then from Muslims who blow up hundreds of people in the name of Allah?”

Leah Woodruff, 7/7/06—“Just when it seems that Fond du Lac is accepting its growing diversity, people start writing racist letters directed toward hard-working, law-abiding citizens.” [In response to a 7/5/06 letter by Elizabeth Van Bommel, which argued not for racism, but against illegal immigration.]

Maria Kohlman, 7/13/06—“I felt the Reporter did a wonderful job with the story, then someone like you had to come along and rip it apart with your racist comments.” [In response to the same letter.  The Reporter reprinted this letter on 7/18/06.]

Brent Schmitz, 8/8/06—“Why then, does Mr. Fountain use the quote to try to force his religion on suffering and dying Americans who need the cures this research can provide?” [In response to Steve Fountain’s 8/4/06 letter, which argued against embryonic stem cell research using this quote, and making no reference to religion.]

A.G. Keberlein, 8/14/06—“This march to war was orchestrated by an inept Republican administration that lied to all of America about the need for such a war.”

John P. Stoltenberg, 8/21/06—“The definition of fascism in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is as follows: Fascism, a philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism…The Bush Administration perfectly fits the definition of fascism.”

Julie Labomascus, 9/10/06—“I wish to thank the two ladies who wrote the letters about 1950s morals and the male/female union. Both of you probably intended these letters to be serious, but they were so full of inaccuracies that they were the funniest things I’ve read in a few weeks. Thank you again for the laughs.” [This is the letter in its entirety. The author makes no effort to demonstrate what inaccuracies she’s referring to.]

Jan Starks, 10/4/06—“Yet it is groups such as this that seek to dishonor the memory of the fallen for a political advantage.” [Objecting to local pro-lifers who held a pro-life rally at Veterans Park.]

Ryan Long, 10/17/06—“There is no logical reason for this ban [on same-sex marriage]. Its supporters will come to the polls simply because gay people make them sick.”

Steve Fero, 10/30/06—“I’ll vote ‘no’ on the gay marriage ban amendment. It seems to me improper to use the Constitution to codify petty bigotries.”

Joseph E. Malson, 11/14/06—“By voting ‘yes’ [on Wisconsin’s Marriage Protection Amendment], you are saying it’s OK to discriminate against someone because you don’t like who they are. Plain and simple. That’s who you are as a people.”

On 11/26/06, the Reporter published a letter by Adam Kempf, arguing that not recognizing same-sex marriage is equivalent to banning interracial marriage. The letter was heavily plagiarized from a 2/12/05 Washington Post editorial by Colbert I. King.

Peter Cloyes, 11/28/06—“I have nothing but contempt for the parents who are trying to have the book [I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou] removed from the [Fond du Lac High School] curriculum. They are clearly moronic bigots.” [The parents objected to the book’s explicit rape scene, not its racial aspects.]

Kenneth Bounds, 11/28/06—“Nazis didn’t allow the Germans to read books, either. Way to go, Fond du Lac!”

Samuel McIntosh, 3/8/07—“It seems to me the only reason we are in Iraq is the oil, and to take out a puppet leader gone awry, but that’s only because he has oil.”

Ted & Hedy Eischeid, 4/1/07—“Mrs. [Linda] Clifford has an outstanding legal record, one of integrity and intelligence. Unfortunately, her opponent, Annette Ziegler, has clearly violated the Judicial Code of Conduct multiple times.”

Harold Gudex, 4/9/07—“Seventy percent of us want out of this illegal war. It is based on lies.”

Brent Schmitz, 12/14/07—“Mr. Freiburger seems to devalue debate and disagreement within the American political sphere. Evidently, only conservative teachers are worthy of community support and funding, as per the veiled threat he makes at the end of the letter.” [In response to my editorial here; my rebuttal is here.]

How Not to Argue Abortion (Updated)

I initially figured Capper was a shoe-in for the “Most Embarrassingly Self-Defeating Blogger in Wisconsin” Award—misattributing comments to people based on nothing but a first name, then digging in your heels when called on it seems pretty hard to top.  But we have a new contender for the crown: our old pal Scott Feldstein.

Veterans of Wisconsin blog debates know Scott well as a foul-mouthed, hypocritical leftist who would rather conjure up dishonest, unconvincing reasons for ignoring & dismissing opponents’ views rather than actually debating them.  In December, this charade devolved into an even more pitiful form: not only rationalizing why he shouldn’t believe his opponents’ claims, but fabricating reasons to suspect that his opponents don’t even believe their own beliefs!

His “reasoning” was—you’re gonna love this—pro-lifers don’t really see abortion as a human rights issue, because if they did, they’d all oppose abortion in rape/incest/life-of-mother cases, too, and they’d also support the sex-ed and condom distribution policies Scott likes; but because they don’t, it’s really all about controlling people’s sex lives.

Of course, Scott was confronted (by me and others) with credible arguments against all of this (by the way, here’s the latest counter-example to his anti-abstinence studies), but remained “skeptical.”  Mind you, he couldn’t offer any good reasons for his skepticism, but proceeded to flaunt the nonsense anyway, as if he’d done…well, something to prove any of it or refute his opponents’ objections.  As Allahpundit once said of Dingy Harry Reid, “like a two-year-old who’s just crapped on the carpet, he’s curiously proud of it.”

(Oh, and he also demanded to know what Planned Parenthood lied about, then when I told him exactly what Planned Parenthood lied about in painstaking detail, he ignored it for a hundred-something comments.  ‘Cuz he’s such a stickler for the truth.)

But it gets better, my friends.  Oh, does it get better.

This week, abortion came up once more on Boots & Sabers.  Allow me to quote verbatim, so we can all revel in the majesty that is Scott’s madness:

If you believe—as you say you do—that a 3 month fetus is the legal and moral equivalent of a toddler, then you would either a) be storming the abortion clinic like Rambo to kill the murderous individuals who work there, or b) you’re a pathetic coward who wouldn’t risk his life to save roomfuls of innocent children from death. Of course there is a third explanation: You do know that 3 month old fetuses are not the moral and legal equivalent of you and me.

So, lemme get this straight: unless you also believe in abandoning the political process and the rule of law and killing abortion doctors, you don’t really believe in an unborn baby’s right to life.

There’s really only one way to respond to that:

Make no mistake: These aren’t sincere questions that Scott would stop asking if only someone would give him a good answer.  He’s simply displaying a common tactic of left-wing hyper-partisanship: the need to attribute the beliefs of one’s opponents, no matter how sincere or well-argued, to any sort of ulterior motive other than the stated motivation, no matter how specious the evidence.

If Scott truly believes what he’s saying, then his ideology has so fully warped his mind that his capacity for rational, objective thought is completely gone.  But I suspect he does know better.  I think it’s all propaganda: he’s supporting a heinous practice, recognizes somewhat the odiousness of his position, and will throw out whatever he can to deflect moral judgment and make the other side the villains.  Indeed, he deployed this gem of a point as a way of not answering The Family Guy, who noticed he described abortion as “sad and distasteful,” and asked the obvious follow-up: “If it’s nothing more than a lump of tissue, then why is it sad? Are you sad when you have a wart removed? It too was alive.”

Either way…pitiful.

UPDATE: As if we needed another indicator of how messed up the left-wing, pro-abortion mind is, consider the following: Scott says that because humans develop incrementally, meaning that in the period between just-conceived zygote and just-delivered newborn, increasing moral consideration should go along with increasing complexity (he also voted for a guy who had a a problem with those just-delivered newborns, but I digress).  He also says that “a 12 week pregnancy can be terminated for any reason at all.”

Okay, so at 12 weeks, it must not be very developed or person-like, huh?  I mean, it’s not like it would have any of the biggies, like a heartbeat, a fully-formed brain, or the capacity to feel pain.

Oh, wait.  It has all of those things.

Something seems to have failed rather significantly in Scott’s efforts at drawing “reasonable” distinctions.  How do you think he’d respond to that?  If you guessed “dodge & deflect,” give yourself a cookie.

Pitiful.  And monstrous.

A Special Message to My Special Friend Marcus

I made a new friend recently!  He goes by the screen name “Marcus Brutus,” and attended my school, Hillsdale College, some time ago.  Unfortunately, thanks to our disagreements about Ron Paul and the War on Terror, we didn’t exactly hit it off.

“Marcus” wants me to know that he fared much better academically than he supposes I did: “I’ll ask [Hillsdale President] Dr. [Larry P.] Arnn at the next fundraiser if you’ve had a chance to examine that desk of his yet…my name is on plaques at Hillsdale, and yours isn’t.” He doesn’t think I have much “intellectual cultivation,” or that I’d make it “as a secretary for any office in any level of the federalist society in [his] chapter.”  Why, my heart positively shatters! (I don’t presume to be some great scholar, and I confess that I haven’t a single plaque to my name, but in my defense, I’m not exactly dead weight.)

His intellect, by contrast, is highly cultivated, and it’s very, very important for him that his readers know just how much, via seemingly-endless references to Scripture, English history, ancient Athens, and such.  Since graduating, he professes to have had quite the accomplished career—Marine Corps, Iraq, application to the bar, even some time spent in Israel.

Unfortunately, I don’t think “Marcus’s” way of going about things is doing him any favors.  In the spirit of friendship, allow me to humbly offer my fellow Hillsdalian some helpful advice.

A Case of Mistaken, Rabid Identity (Updated for Hypocrisy!)

Milwaukee blogger Chris Liebenthal (Boots & Sabers regulars may know him as Capper) has a cookie-cutter post about the tightrope future Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will supposedly have to walk between the crooked & incompetent GOP establishment on the one hand, and the tea-party lunatics on the other.  Blah blah blah…

Amusingly, the centerpiece of the post is a comment from somebody named “Calvin” on this post from Charlie Sykes’ blog.  Out of the State of Wisconsin’s five-and-a-half-million people, there’s apparently only one right-winger by that name, so Capper pegs me as the commenter.  I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you’ve got the wrong man.

I do, however, appreciate being recognized as a “rabid right winger.” Remember, kids: Calvin Freiburger is precisely the kind of ignorant, intolerant, right-wing extremist scum your Homeland Security Secretary warned you about!

Calvin Freiburger Online: shouldn’t you be reading?

UPDATE: Understandably embarrassed at his blunder, Capper is digging in his heels in the comments, insisting that some nonexistent inconsistency between my words here and there somehow proves Sykes-Calvin and I are one and the same.  Apparently his brilliant mind cannot grasp the concept that, in the comment he imagines to be a smoking gun, I was responding to a specific claim by Anonymous (who, now that I mention it, is probably the same “Anonymous” from that other article I was reading last week!).  With such a tenuous grasp on reality and utter disregard for truth, no wonder the guy’s a liberal.

In all honesty, though, I should have known better than to waste my time wading into Capper’s cesspool – after all, a central tenet of the liberal playbook is to make a scandal out of the very act of defending one’s self from a vapid liberal attack.  Live and learn, I guess.

In honor of what feels like the ten-thousandth time one of these bozos has given blogging a bad name, it seems like a great opportunity to revisit this Steven Crowder classic:

UPDATE 2: So it turns out that yesterday, Cappy whined about falling victim to the very same thing he did to me.  You can’t make this stuff up…

UPDATE 3 (12/22/09): The Capster’s paranoia has been going on for even longer than I thought.  If it weren’t so stupid, I’d be flattered.

In Defense of Hillsdale

As usual, there are a handful of criticisms of my Reporter editorial about free speech, most of them not worth addressing—the usual assortment of illogic & dishonesty (FDL54935—one of the liars referenced in my editorial—is a conservative?  Yeah, right).  One, however, warrants a response, as this isn’t the first time it’s reared its ugly head, and it won’t be the last:

DotingDad: “I wonder: when does he have time to do his schoolwork, since he is constantly writing these long-winded letters to the editor? Maybe Hillsdale is just about right-wing indoctrination, and as long as you subscribe to that, you’ll pass all your courses.”

Yes, Hillsdale College is a conservative-leaning school, but it’s also an honest one.  Its mission is to provide students with a solid grounding in the foundations of Western civilization—Greco-Roman philosophy, Judeo-Christian morality, the political ideas of the English Enlightenment and the American Founding, and classical free-market economics.  To be sure, genuine study of these things generally leads to ideas more in line with American conservatism than with progressivism.  However, that’s a sign not of how biased Hillsdale is, but of what a radical departure progressivism was from pre-20^th-century thought, as well as how factually inaccurate much of mainstream education is.

Most public schools are presented as impartial institutions with no aim beyond offering students a well-rounded knowledge base and preparing them for adulthood.  Ideology is disseminated—sometimes overtly, sometimes by stealth—to an unsuspecting, often-apolitical audience, their parents forced to support the school with their tax dollars, the teachers state-approved authority figures in the lives of impressionable minors.

Hillsdale, however, is honest about its mission.  The school’s emphasis on classical thought (which, as anybody actually familiar with the professors and the classes can guarantee, is a far cry from RNC propaganda) is out in the open; anybody considering Hillsdale is free to apply or not with full knowledge of its mission.

At most colleges, you can barely swing a dead cat without hitting some washed-up Marxist or an ex-Black Panther, and odds are he’d have tenure.  K-12 public education has more than a little propagandizing of its own to answer for, too.  Rest assured, if DotingDad is really that concerned about education, he’s barking up the wrong tree.