The post below the fold is being re-posted due to criticism I received from Facebook "friends"--old Air Force acquaintances, no less--who claim that I don't support my opinions nor talk about the thinking which went into those opinions. (Actually, they never say anything that polite or with the slightest amount of good faith; they assume that no thinking went into my opinions and refer to me as a parrot and worse. I wonder why that is. Is it that difficult to click on the links on the left sidebar of my Facebook page?)
Fact is, I've grown weary of methodically laying out the chains of occurrences, premises, conclusions and examples which have served as undergird to my opinions. Fact is, whether I make the effort or don’t make the effort, I get this sort of thing (in response to Razing Arizona):
I object to you and almost everything you say. I think you are full of sh*t. That plain enough? I'm [here] to object to you and your invective, which I find personally offensive. At some point, people have to say, I object.
This guy kept insisting over and over again that he objected; I imagined him punctuating each objection with a foot stomp.
And, using the fact that he objects to me and everything I say, this “gentleman” came to the conclusion that I must be crazy and delusional. Surely, that is the only reason that I could possibly be 180 degrees from him in all opinions. Right?
The funniest thing, however, was that, in this man’s repeated exclamations of objection, there was never any specific direct object. (Linguists will groan at that pun.) He never did pick out a topic about which he and I are in opposition and defend his viewpoint on that topic, even after I repeatedly invited him to do so.
It's plain, Greg, but it's still pretty generalized. There has to be a specific reason tha[t] you think that I am full of sh*t and you certainly should be able to take a specific issue and explain to me why I am wrong about it--in a sane and non-delusional, invective-free and sh*t-less manner, of course.
Come on. I know you can do it.
To which, I received this charming response:
I don't have to defend it to you -- or explain it -- anymore than I expect you to do the same [sic]. You have an opinion -- I think you're full of sh*t. My opinion. I don't really TRULY have to say anything else.
My five-year-old niece would call such a response immature. I wouldn’t, however. It’s obvious that either the man is intellectually incapable of defending his opinions or he is too lazy to think through his premises and conclusion and, afterward, articulate them. Due to the puling, I vote the latter. Petulance in adults is almost always a cover-up.
Then again, hasn't our president repeatedly claimed that the time for talk is over?
*****
Twenty years ago this week in Berlin, President Reagan uttered his memorable challenge: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Conservatives who extol Reagan's legacy might ask themselves what he would have thought of the idea that our response to hard-working risk-takers so eager for a piece of the American Dream that they endanger life and limb to come here should be a Berlin-style wall of our own.
(Emphasis mine.) But for the analogy to make sense, a US border fence’s main purpose would be to keep US citizens from escaping to a freer country, not the other way around. (To be fair, I suggested here—borrowing the idea from Victor Davis Hanson--that a secondary purpose of a border fence would be somewhat similar to that of the Berlin Wall; that it would make it more difficult for Mexican nationals living in the US to travel back to their country of origin, and thusly, be one of the prongs which could force them to at least try to assimilate to their new home’s culture and society.)
Here’s another area in which the analogy breaks down. The Federal Republic of Germany’s (then known as West Germany) pre-1989 policy towards its Soviet-controlled brethren to the East was always geared toward reunification (Articles 23 and 146 in West Germany’s Grundgesetz; roughly translated as ‘Constitution.’*)--especially after the 1960-1961 Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall between French, UK and USA-controlled West Berlin and Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Therefore, any escapees from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and from East Berlin specifically were treated as West German citizens.
Additionally, West Germany’s legendary Chancellor Willy Brandt (previously mayor of West Berlin during the construction of the Berlin Wall and, subsequent to that, West Germany's foreign minister) was the architect of Ostpolitik--a policy to normalize diplomatic, economic and cultural relations with the Soviet Union, Poland and, most importantly, East Germany—something which was very controversial at time, to understate things. However, today the policy is viewed as another important step in the path toward the subsequent political reunion of the two countries.
With that history in mind, Jeff Jacoby’s idea that Ronald Reagan would view the intent of a proposed US border fence on either or both borders the same as the intent of the Berlin Wall makes plausible the idea that our betters have a plan similar to that of the rather tin-foil hattish North American Union—a political union between Canada, the USA and Mexico. Is that what he is suggesting is being prevented? Probably not; though I've been wrong before.
(Thanks to Newsbusters)
*A more accurate translation: ‘Basic Law.’ IIRC, my German language teachers said that the difference between a Grundgesetz and a Verfassung (Constitution) was that the latter could only exist in a country that was whole. However, the Grundgesetz remains in force today.
RE: Immaturity, intellectual incapability, and inarticulate sloth.
I think you're mistakenly rejecting the first hypothesis and creating a false dichotomy on top of it. None of the three are even remotely mutually exclusive, and "all of the above" is the more likely answer. :-)
Posted by: Tully | May 21, 2010 at 08:48 AM