"Why do so many liberals have the seeming desire to want to be sad? Could it be because being sad allows you to FEEL like you're doing something about a problem, without actually having to do anything?"
- @billmaher
Hey @VoluntaryKeith regarding your recent debate:
The biggest problems with Jonathan’s angle are:
1. He dismisses political self-determination as a concept at first, thereby baking into his argument a presupposition that requires war. This is a fallacious type of begging the question. Interestingly he later backs away from this and says plebiscite would be a good way to resolve it if only the UN did it. Is this inconsistency in his argument to be attributed to keen sophistry or just an honest intellectual error? In either case we see an example of a mind that hasn’t thought through all of his ideas and made them internally consistent: to some extent he’s throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, using motivated reasoning. That’s not ideal behavior for a meritorious intellectual debate. My best guess is that he genuinely believes the secessionist regions didn’t want to secede. I think he’s just poorly informed, though I can’t rule out worse ...
