July 08, 2003
A New Syllabus Of Errors?

One reason I've been out of sorts and not posting much lately is that I get so tired of seeing the same false and discredited arguments repeated over and over by those who haven't been paying attention. You can learn a lot from reading blogs, but you have to be willing to learn, and the most convincing arguments are soon lost in the archives. Of course they can be easily retrieved if they're still there (not a safe assumption for Blogspot sites) and if you can find them, either via Google or by remembering who wrote them, neither of which is a foolproof method.

To take one small example of the kind of verbal kudzu that's been getting me down, consider the comment of one 'ralphy-boy' on this morning's 8:28 post on Daily Kos (no I won't link to it): "you do not see the children of the rich or educated over there" -- he means you do not see them serving in Iraq. In his brief comment, he also calls our soldiers "the bottom of the pile" and says "they would be pawns no matter where they landed- the service or the factory". Of course, hundreds of others have said the same sort of contemptuous and contemptible things on the web, but it is all demonstrably false. I have not forgotten that one of the first men killed in Iraq was Lt. Thomas Adams, a direct descendant (presumably in the male line) of presidents John and John Quincy Adams, whose grandfather founded a bank and a savings and loan and "helped rebuild the Old Globe Theatre and the Aerospace Museum after they were destroyed by arson". I don't think Lt. Adams joined the Navy because it was the only way out of the ghetto or the trailer-park, or because he was tired of working the night shift at the plastic factory. The same goes for Marine Lt. Therrell Childers, who made the dean's list at the Citadel majoring in French. (That's two of the three who share this news story / obituary.) Even someone faced with a choice of service or factory is hardly an utter pawn if he can choose between them. Of course, anyone who has relatives who have servied, or who even bothers to read what military bloggers like the various contributors to Sgt. Stryker say about their families already knows that 'ralphy-boy' is utterly and shamefully wrong.

Given the masses of similar crap floating around the blogosphere, I sometimes wonder whether it would be worth putting together an old-fashioned non-linear non-blog hierarchically-arranged site of FAQs on the war on terror -- sort of a political Snopes. It could theoretically help the ralphy-boys of the world get a clue. Of course, it would be a lot of work, and I'm not offering to do it myself, just tossing out the idea in the hope that it may inspire discussion, if not action.

<Begin obligatory pedantic content>
Such a site could be arranged negatively, like the Syllabus of Errors, subtitled "A Condemnation of Modernist, Liberal Errors", proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1864. Not that many of us are going to agree with Pius' list of errors. Here are some samples:

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.

63. It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them.

Pius saved the best for last:

80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

It is interesting and in some ways amusing that most of these errors are now considered obviously true by most educated westerners. I bet some of my readers are even know scratching their heads wondering why I bothered to quote them: because they're supposed to be wrong, that's why. They also show what real traditional conservatism is, or rather was: those who think of George W. Bush as some kind of "mediaeval" "theocratic" "reactionary" wouldn't recognize the real thing if it came up and bit them, even with various Wahhabis and Iranian mullahs to give them a strong hint.
<End obligatory pedantic content>

Posted by Dr. Weevil at July 08, 2003 11:53 PM
Comments

Yikes. Maybe a list of blogs to read would be a bit easier?

In dark moments, I despair of the Ralphyboys, but generally I am an optimist who believes the ignorant can gain education. Of course, there are the willfully ignorant, like the Holocaust deniers...

Posted by: John Anderson on July 9, 2003 06:31 AM

I like this idea very much. As I read the opening paragraph, I was thinking, "aha, we need a Snopes for politics". I quickly saw that we were thinking along similar lines.

It would be relatively easy to create a site with this information (with emphasis on relative), the harder part is gaining the necessary credibility.

Might be worth checking with Snopes to see how they are organized.

One potential model is to throw up a sample response, baased upon some cursory research, then set up a discussion area (The Perfect World could be used), to debate the issue, and get more people involved in tracking down verifiable facts. Then a revised version can be published.

Version control (to archive past versions and document the process) should be considered, as well as allowing continued discussion after an issue as been "settled".

Posted by: Phil on July 9, 2003 10:43 AM

"... 15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

55. The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.

63. It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them.

Pius saved the best for last:

80. The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization..."

The above should be written in assembly language, and snuck into the computers over at the DNC. They'll never be heard from again!

Posted by: Frank DiSalle on July 9, 2003 12:08 PM

The DNC? What DNC are YOU reading about?

Man, Doc, you get a perfect example right in your own comments thread.

That's part of the reason I rarely post about politics. I cannot stand the assholes who email me to tell me that if I weren't so stupid, I would see the plain truth of their position--which, of course, is the opposite of mine.

There is no such thing as civil discourse on the web that I can find. Someone always comes along and screws things up.

Posted by: Meryl Yourish on July 10, 2003 01:29 PM

Save yourself the trouble:

Check out SpinSanity.com

Posted by: Ara Rubyan on July 11, 2003 12:05 PM

I'll second Meryl's comments. I made the mistake of trying to invite people across the spectrum of political philosophy to WildMonk.net when I started in January. And, oh man, did I get them. I was *hoping* for some intelligent feedback and perhaps thought that, as a former lefty flamer myself, I could offer a unique insight.

Boy was I wrong. I was soon buried under a mountain of absolute and utter trash from hard lefties "proving" that Bush=Hitler, that the US was racist, that the war was criminal, etc. based on "authoritative" quotes from Chomsky, Krugman, Fisk et. al. Indeed, I came to conclude that these people weren't interested in discussion as nearly every attempt to discuss points dispassionatly was met with a response worthy of a rabid rottweiler. These people seem to live in an echo chamber.

I hate to say it but I've had little appetite to blog since business began picking up in April - I've found I just have better things to do.

Posted by: Mark Brittingham on July 11, 2003 02:16 PM

Hmmmm? An "old-fashioned non-linear non-blog hierarchically-arranged site of FAQs on the war on terror -- sort of a political Snopes".

Would it work on factually challenged State-of-the-Union addresses? Plug Bush's SOTU into that and see what comes out. Ya'all make me laugh.

Posted by: O'McSomething on July 13, 2003 07:03 PM

[I have deleted 3060 words of irrelevant trollage here. Get your own website, troll number 167.226.81.5. You might also want to try to figure out the meaning of "hierarchically-arranged" and the difference between a statement that has been disproved and a statement for which a single supporting argument has turned out to be mistaken: they are not the same thing, and neither is necessarily a lie.]

Posted by: O' on July 13, 2003 08:06 PM