Re: An excellent article

Alex Brown spews forth:

> Gregory Wharton's supposedly 'excellent article'by David
> Kelley is a load of
> fascist crap which I consider to be 'an assault on
> civilization'. I thought
> the UK and the USA fought a war in the 40s against this kind
> of BS. Kelley
> should put his thumb in other places.

I'm curious, Alex: do you even have the smallest inkling of understanding of
what fascism is?  Did you actually read Kelley's article?  If you did, you
would realize the ridiculousness of the statements you have made above,
particularly in the context of the content of Kelley's article.

It is neither fascism nor an "assault on civilization" to advocate and
uphold liberty, individual rights, the rule of law and the pursuit of
happiness.  Quite the contrary.  Fascism is opposed to all these things.
Civilization is built on them.

Kelley identifies the underlying philsophical poison which has led to such
things as these terrorist attacks.  That poison is a deep-seated cultural
nihilism and hatred of reason and individualism.  That poison is the same
poison which created fascism, against which we had to fight so hard in the
1940s.  Guess what?  We defeated one instance of it then, but now it's back
in an even more pernicious form.

> I will of course provide detailed refutations of Kelley's
> 1940s Germanic
> twaddle on request, but in the meantime I offer my apologies
> to the list for the colourful nature of my language.

As well you should apologize for your silly and irrational outburst.
Apologizing for it ahead of time does nothing to mitigate your actions.  It
merely means you did it with malice aforethought.

It is always and act of rhetorical desperation to try and call your
opponents Nazis or fascists or some such, particularly when the accusation
has no reasonable basis and is intended to pre-empt rational discussion
rather than promote it.  If you're going to try and refute Kelley's
insightful points, you're going to have to do better than that.

You're venomous screed was inappropriate and a blatant attempt to draw
attention away from the important content of Kelley's essay by focusing on
inessentials, engaging in the fallacy of argument from intimidation, and
throwing around insults.  Those are the tactics of ~intellectual~ terrorism,
not reasoned discourse, and are more akin to fascist bombast than anything
I've every seen from Dr. Kelley).  It's obvious you don't like what Kelley
wrote (assuming you even read it, which--quite frankly--I doubt very much
based on what you wrote).  Insults, distortions and bullshit tell us nothing
about why.

If you want to address Kelley's points rationally, knowledgably and
seriously, do so.  I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.  If all
you can muster is bile, keep it to yourself.  None of us are interested in
that.

~g
_____________________
J. Gregory Wharton
Architect|Philosopher