A Quick Response to Paul

In the comments section, Paul, whom I believe to be the guest blogger at Wizbang! who wrote the piece about the partisan blog response to the tsunamis, wrote a response to my response to his response (got it?). Perhaps I'll post a more complete post on the genuinely interesting question of where liberals "live and die by the appeal of emotion" later, but I'll make a few quick responses right now.

hmmm let's see...

Is anti-academia the same as anti-intellectual? Sure sounds like it to me.

Not only wrong but duh! an emotional appeal. No facts to back it up.. Just "Republicans hate academics" so much for an intellectual debate.

I must say, Paul, you really confuse me. It appears you want to champion the intellectual integrity of the right (which in and of itself I don't really question), but then you write the above. Which was the intellectual part of your analysis, the "duh!" or the part you put in quotes that I never said?

I assume we can all agree that Republicans often complain about the "liberal elite", so no evidence needed so far. I then claim that the term includes academia; I'll admit that could have used some evidence, but it seemed pretty obvious to me. However, a quick google search on "liberal elite" academia comes back with over 1,000 hits; quickly reading several links to both conservative and liberal sources verifies I'm not the only one who believes academia largely falls in the "liberal elite" category. Do intellectuals fall into the "liberal elite"? That's less clear, though that search did bring back over 8,000 hit; as I said, it sounds like it to me.

I live on the planet where Republicans are trying to create a new aristocracy

And to think I said you made emotional appeals... Silly me, where would I get such an idea?

Of course I never claimed I didn't make emotional appeals. If fact, I think liberals need to re-learn how to make emotional appeals. My rant was largely based on how Bush just dominated Kerry on emotional appeal in the last election.

But sure, if you insist: by eliminating inheritance tax the children of the wealthy will be virtually guaranteed great wealth themselves which can then be passed along to the next generation and so on. When this cycle goes unchecked one ends up with a group of people born into fabulously rich families. One word often used to describe such families is "aristocracy". Intellectually, I don't see how you can argue that this won't be a long term effect of eliminating inheritance tax. Feel free to try.

Ok, back to the emotional, purely value based judgment: I believe this would be a bad thing. Do you disagree?

I live on the planet where Bush tries really, really hard to appear much more stupid than he really is


Your intellectual skills continue to amaze me here. I mean, calling someone stupid... Why would I accuse you of making emotion based arguments?

I didn't call Bush stupid; if fact I linked to an article stating Bush probably has a higher IQ than Kerry and specifically stated "he had me fooled once upon a time, but no more." Does Bush try to appear less intelligent than he really is? I think so. I've read some detailed arguments claiming this, if I find them I'll update this post with links.

Thank you for making my point better than I ever could. You guys can't make an intellectual argument to save you lives. All you do is bash one group of people to appeal to another.

That is all you did for the whole post.

geeze!

Which group was it I bashed to appeal to another, exactly? All I can think of is I bashed conservatives to appeal to liberals, which I actually tried not to do but am willing to concede I may have failed. Are you claiming this is unique to liberal, that conservative would never stoop to liberal bashing to appeal to other conservative?

To back up a bit, I may very well be wrong that conservative bloggers are more conformable looking emotional and that liberal bloggers go more out of their way to appear intellectual. But obviously I push a button of Paul's who I guess believes that conservatives own the intellectual side of the debate and liberals are nothing but a bunch of over-emotional bleeding hearts.

As a side note, I see Paul has a post on the lefty response to his original post "A Partisan Tsunami?". I wasn't on the list, I feel so deprived. Perhaps it's because I actually made an attempt, however imperfect, to actually answer his allegations. Then again, I've only been around for a bit longer than a week, what can I expect.