Letters to the Editor
DCLaw1
Published Letters: 807 Editor's Choice: 2
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usmlrf:
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]People in other blogs might call a commenter such as yourself a "concern troll." I've never been a fan of cheesy internet shorthand and lingo, but I think that comes fairly close to describing the effect of your words.
Really, your post is quite incoherent. You concede that Krauthammer's column is hypocritical, but then you seem to condemn the way Glenn (others?) have pointed out the hypocrisy, or the particular type of hypocrisy they point out. In the end, your comment manages to say practically nothing at all, negating most of itself, save the portion where you scold people here for not playing sufficiently to "centrists."
You apparently have a great deal of concern for winning over them "reasonable" folk in "the middle," but you know what helps destroy liberals' arguments in the minds of the undecided? Hearing from voices such as yourself, again and again, proclaiming that they are "fellow leftists" but that, gosh darn, you know, they're awfully worried that the arguments expressed by other liberals are too extreme or ill-formed.
I don't think that's honest of you -- and even if it were, it certainly isn't as "helpful" as you might think.
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Politically Lost:
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, maybe that's the point of my thing here. It appears to be logic, but is actually a thin veneer of transparent bullshit usually used in a manner to obfuscate what is painfully obvious. Better practitioners of this art create doubt where none exists. They bend reality to the breaking point and once they've staked out what appears to be conflicting positions they find ways to entrench those positions deeper, never ever allowing the contradictions to penetrate the bubble they've created.
You pretty much just described a large portion of the legal community.
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Politically Lost
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kidding aside, I would posit that reputation for such things as specious logic and dishonest arguments may work well for unsuspecting clients but, I imagine judges would would have little patience for such.
I'm thinking of Kyle Samson's e-mail where he's talking about stalling the senate on appointing US attorney's without senate confirmation and he uses the phrase in quotes "good faith".
That's the difference between an expert and a hack -- the ability to spin a weak (or even utterly baseless) argument into one that can convince even a seasoned judge. If you have any doubt that this can be done... well... I'm sure you've read plenty of court decisions in your legal studies.
What amazes me is that Mr. Samson would record such naked thoughts, in an email no less. Much like there's a difference between expert and hack lawyers, there's a difference between smart and not-so-smart bureaucrats.
Makes me wonder what kind of amazing stuff is in all those "lost" RNC emails.
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usmlrf--
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You make quite a display of how liberal and politically engaged you are, as if that's in any way consequential to my argument. I don't care if you're Karl Marx or Barack Obama's campaign manager, my point stands: your comments were incoherent and amounted to not much more than a self-elevated attempt to portray yourself as having spent so much more time dispassionately analyzing Krauthhammer's article than the other commenters here, adopting a scolding tone as you simply repeat what Glenn and others have been saying from the start.
Here's a perfect example:
"To wearily repeat my substantive point, then: GG asks (rhetorically) how CK can demand that people not score political points off of the tragedy, while having done the same thing himself the day before. I take the question seriously though -- how can CK do that? It raises the even more perplexing question, how can CK say that while himself making political points not just the day before, but in the middle of his own column? The answer is that he sees certain types of political points (such as his own) as more legitimate than others, and certain types of people making them (such as himself) as more legitimate. For me, it's an interesting insight, that what matters to these guys is not the type of argument you make (linking a tragedy to a political lesson) but who is making the argument, and what type of political lesson you conclude."
You acknowledge that Glenn's point was "rhetorical," and what makes it so? The inferred answer, obviously. And throughout these comments, to say nothing of Glenn's original post itself, people have been acknowledging the exact same point you seem to regard as such a distinctly insightful observation. The whole point of saying something is hypocritical, especially in a political sense, is exactly "that what matters to these guys is not the type of argument you make (linking a tragedy to a political lesson) but who is making the argument, and what type of political lesson you conclude." So congratulations.
Ask anyone here who's familiar with my commenting -- I am not unreasonable or overly combative. But when you jump into this discussion with such a holier-than-thou and scornful proclamation that you are seeing things so much more objectively (or whatever) than others here, especially when you're essentially making the same exact point, you have to expect that someone will call you on it.
So please, spare me the "sleazy" and "smarmy" epithets, and perhaps expect a little bit more from this crowd -- they're smarter than you think.