[eDebate] ans Stannard

[matt stannard]

By your own standards, you never "shut up and debate," and you are an 
ideologue.  You routinely insult people and mischaracterize their arguments. 
  You refuse to even try to understand the sentiment or reasoning process of 
those who disagree with you.  You make conclusions about others' arguments 
and then answer them according to your worst characterizations of them.

Actually, Mikee, I'll make you a deal.  We will debate, coach debate, 
facilitate academic debate, welcoming people from all political persuasions, 
AND some of us will write a couple of unintrusive posts to edebate informing 
other like-minded opponents of the war to join a private forum devoted to 
discussion.  We'll defend both academic debate and public engagement and 
won't interfere with similar projects from people with other political 
persuasions.

We won't get in your way.  But we won't shut up.  You don't get any 
political intimidation or humiliation points from any of your insipid posts 
because:

1. You're no longer capable of convincing people that you're smart.  Your 
recent contributions to debate theory forced Branson to reluctantly and 
politely school you in one post but he's young and naive enough to think you 
actually ever earned your stripes in this activity (he obviously never 
talked to anyone you coached; although this may be due to advice that 
ex-Korcok debaters commonly receive from their therapists not to talk about 
it).

2. Your alignment--lock, stock and barrell--with the Bush administration on 
the war proves you aren't self-reflective and are satisfied with an 
anti-critical approach to engaging the world.  As someone who criticized 
Clinton and would have criticized Kerry, and who is ON-RECORD critical of 
many movements on the left as well as the right, I say you are a pretender 
when it comes to the critical thinking skills you laud.  You can compile 
data on it but you don't live it.  You are no more a model of public 
engagement or critical thinking than Louis Farrakhan.  The difference is you 
could be if you wanted to.  Instead you ACTUALLY make the argument that 
those on the left love saddam, want al qaeda to kill us, all the shitty 
arguments everyone makes fun of but nobody thinks people are really, 
sincerely making, until they hear you and Hannity.

3. Your red baiting is way off the mark:  (a) I am not "using" the debate 
community to "recruit" people into a movement.  I am seeking those who 
already decided to self-identify to come together for a political purpose.  
(b) For what it's worth, I haven't breathed a word of "communism" in doing 
so.  (c) Not only would I not get upset about the religious right doing the 
same thing, I have actually defended those who have done so--calling attacks 
on the "vision" of the Liberty team unwarranted and insulting.  That's the 
difference between me and you: I recognize that people I disagree with often 
have important points to bring up and I also defend their right to speak; I 
wouldn't hold a Christian debater responsible for the Spanish Inquisition 
just as you shouldn't hold a democratic socialist responsible for Stalin.

4. You aren't funny.  None of your posts are funny.  You're like the unfunny 
guy at a party trying to be funny.  You're more like the unfunny guy at the 
party that everyone has just found out ran over the owner's dog and then 
tries to be funny.

5.  You have let yourself become a tool.  The fact that you see Hannity as a 
model of cross-examination ("duh, why do you hate our country?") and Coulter 
as a model of intellect speaks for itself.

I'm done with you until you come up with an original thought and some kind 
of acknowledgment of the aptitude and ethics of those with whom you 
disagree.

stannard