Letters to the Editor
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@ Anonymous 5:54 PM
You are right. People shouldn't call Obama's supporters childish and they shouldn't refer to Obama as a kid. He's a boomer technically. So they shouldn't say things like "All Obama's supporters are childish." However, they could say in response to a particular poster -- I have one in mind: "I find your name-calling childish and your ideas undeveloped." I actually think the person who would best fit this description in this thread is older than I am. Childishness is not a quality of age always but sometimes of mind.
To me, it is okay to critique people's ideas and language. This is just normal debate. However, when people are reduced to name calling or always reach for the most extreme adjectives, they have actually lost the argument.
Personally, I would like to see people's discussions be more precise, specific, and detailed. To me, elevating the debate means elevating the language and not just having good manners. I don't want the debate to go away. I think debate is good for us. I used to teach English with a particular emphasis on critical thinking. I would introduce the class by saying that we were going to learn to argue. Always, some of my students, many of whom were 18 or 19 were uncomfortable. They had been taught not to argue. They had learned nothing about how to argue. They did not understand that in order to refute someone's opinion, that they actually had to try to see that other person's viewpoint. In my class, I taught them to value the bones of argument. (It was a remedial class.) All the fancy flourishes of flesh were secondary.