Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "RattlesnakeTV"
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"Definitions don't matter." Utterly absurd. Laws, opinions, briefs and arguments are composed from words. We can't have "a nation of laws and not of men" if laws can't be nailed down. That's why leftists always attack definitions and objective truth. Because our fundamental laws are devised to secure our rights. If there are no definitions and no truth, all that is left is power, and they will recognize no limits on their power. They will gladly invoke our principles when it favors them tactically, but they have no allegiance to them. That's why they say that all arguments and reasons are merely instruments of power. First of all, because that is what they are to them. Words are to them tools to manipulate their victims, not vehicles of information, any more than the braying of a donkey. Since objective truth and clear distinctions favor us, they must discredit them. They must maintain that we are doing the same thing they are doing and project the mirror image of their motives and methods on us.
This is an instance of Bulverism. It is what they teach in schools today instead of critical thinking. The Bulverist invokes an ignoble or irrational CAUSE for our beliefs or statements, thus (they hope) giving themselves and their listeners an excuse to reject their opponents' positions without consideration. Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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