Hello Andrew,

It seems like forever since I have commented on soc.men. It wasn't
deliberate. I was simply busy with other things and will be busy again
in about a week. We'll be vacationing down in the Florida Keys and
hoping that the Hurricaines continue their God given mission to
terrorize the Northeast states and avoid Florida. :-)

In article ,
Andrew Usher wrote:

I am not going to reply to the contents of this post in detail,
as very little of it is pertinent to the argument. Instead I
will summarise what you are doing, and comment on that.

Andrew, what you just did was engage in the classical defense of a
strawman: Rewrite my argument for me and argue against it.

First, you seem to turn every point to your obsessions with
leftism/socialism (you deliberately conflate the two) and gays,
usually ignoring my actual argument. Indeed, I can say that I
have never seen a straight guy as obsessed with gayness as you.

First off (in reply to your "first" claim), your claim is unsupported
and a blatant overgeneralization. "Every point?" Hardly. And as I
observed before, the people-who-argue-against-gays-are-closet-gays is a
classic leftist gay ad-hominem attack. Note that I'm not just arguing
against gay men (which you chose to focus on which therefore, using that
logic, says that you're obsessed with male homosexuality) but rather
against gayness in general and the skyrocketing rates of female
homosexuality as they are unable to find the male breadwinners they
crave.

It's a simple observation that leftism is friendly towards gays and
regards them as valuable members of their special interest entitlement
groups. If there's nothing wrong with gayness, why the hostility from
you and personal ad-hominem attacks against me for observing that
leftism is gay?

Secondly, you seem to be unaware, or deliberately ignore, that
you are arguing with me, not with leftism in general, which I do
not even represent. You're addressing Michelle Bachmann while
debating Newt Gingrich!

Unlike you, I am not taking this personally. I am addressing your
arguments. If someone quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck, they
aren't necessarily a duck but I will address their argument as if they
were a duck.

Note that I've often gone out and made points that support and even
sympathize with leftist positions, just as I have shown sympathy for
most positions since very few ideologies are totally devoid of merit at
least from their theoretical point of view. "Nice feminism", for
example, probably seemed nice at a time but now in hindsight is
laughably morally, intellectually, and even economically bankrupt.

If I steer the topic of men's interests towards that of the gayness of
leftism and leftism's close relationship with feminism, it's because
it's appropriate that that philosophies undermine heterosexual
masculinity. For all the talk of leftists wanting to make the world
into a copy of Sweden, but without emasculating men, it's instead ,aking
it look like London or Detroit.

Don't shoot the messenger.

Thirdly, you do correctly diagnose the hypocrisies and
inconsistencies of the Left. But for some reason you are unable
to see anything similar on the Right.

One of the few merits of a free-market and dog-eat-dog capitalistic
position is that it doesn't require much of a need to engage in
hypocrisy. :-)

I have certainly criticized the right for looking the other way at
illegal immigration, for example, because it allows them to undermine
labor costs while at the same time foolishly importing future leftist
voters.

In terms of social issues, the left has revealed itself as laughably
hypocritical and I enjoy deflating them when they try to portray the
right as prudes. Was Anita "Coke Can" Hill a right winger? Of course,
the left tried to claim she was a church going Republican but the book
by David Brock (before, as a gay, he went to the left what a surprise)
exposed her as a typical affirmative action recipient leftist.

This blindness, admittedly
not uncommon in the world of politics, suggests that you read
nothing but right-wing propaganda.

Nonsense for this simple reason: I read your posts. I may disagree with
them or disregard what you say, but certainly I am exposed to different
points of view. As you know, I was one of the few to welcome Parg on
this forum. So I'm hardly a closed minded true believer hanging around
in church.

There you go quacking like a duck again. A classical hallmark of
leftists is for them to accuse their opponents of being victims of right
wing propaganda.

I honestly don't know what to make of you. But you seem 'obsessed' as
you would put it, with categorizing me in order to neatly file my
opinions away as irrelevent. There's no need. Believe whatever you
like. I accept that I cannot force people to change their minds. It's
one of the most powerful weapons in my debate arsenal because having
accepted that reality, while they cannot accept that they cannot change
my mind, causes them to grind their gears like a BMW driver caught in
mud. :-)

FYI, I prefer to watch CNN Headline news, Russia Today, France News, and
even the BBC if only because I prefer their format. (I like how CNNHN
puts multiple stories out in a few minutes. Russia Today is sadly
looking more like Foxnews in it's format with half hour long discussions
rather than the multiple news stories I originally started watching it
for.)

Fourthly, you can not admit that big business is at least as
corrupt as big government,

I'll disprove that right now. I totally agree that big business is
corrupt as big government. Or heck, even small business. I've worked
for a lot of jerks over the years.

In fact, one of my best anti-socialist arguments it to observe that as
government grows bigger, the centralization of the state and size of
businesses grow in tandem making it even harder to regulate big
business. How much of that stimulus money did the average worker see?
:-)

I'm a realist in the sense that I don't think a utopia is possible and
that we'll have to take a founding fathers' approach and set up a system
of checks and balances to keep the various elements of society from
destroying each other. I'm not an anarchist and I'm not a socialist. I
wouldn't even say I'm a libertarian since that term is also laden with
baggage. In many ways, I agree with socialists although I do not share
their worship of big government.

in spite of all the evidence. My
analysis, that you (and other defenders of capitalist ideology)
must in their inmost hearts believe in the flawlessness of the
free market, seems sound.

Strawman. I never said the free market was flawless. I think even most
free market advocates will acknowledge that the free market is at best
the most efficient system around although certainly not fair or perfect.

Last[sic, should be lastly], you seem unwilling to honestly debate. I do not make that
accusation against everyone with whom I disagree, as you could
find from my history. But you seem to be just playing to the
grandstand like a politician. I am not interested in argument
under that condition.

The fundamental problem with that accusation is that those who debate
dishonestly will almost always accuse those they disagree with as being
dishonest as a preemptive strike.

I will add to be fair that there were a few constructive points
in your last post, which I could reply to in a normal fashion.
But given this, it seems absurd to do so right now.

Andrew Usher

I happen to believe that there's a point in a debate where it's
sometimes good to just let things rest for a while rather than getting
into a flame war. It appears you drew the same conclusion. Good.

regards,
PolishKnight