As I’ve said before, I want to attack beliefs, so I know which ones are strong enough to rely on.

This is hard to do when people refuse to defend their beliefs, or answer questions about them, such as you have refused.

Or do you think that you are a midwife of truth, drawing it out of others while espousing none yourself? Are you our century’s Socrates?

Point of fact: You may be one of the sophists Plato disdained, who uses rhetoric to “win” rather than to find the truth.

Socrates: But what is Truth?
Other dude: You’d just spin my answer any way you want, so I won’t answer.

LOL!

In the past you’ve refused to answer questions if you thought that they could embarras your position or Barack Obama.

Absolutely untrue. Rather, I knew that answering would do no good, an answer would be a non-answer. When you can spin everything to your liking, I have no need to answer; you might as well create the answers you like — those that are “useful” to you — for me.

However, it’s odd that you can spend so much time on building an imagined identity for Obama — racist, Bush III, befuddled, etc. — which you proceed to attack with silly posts like this one rather than offer substantive critiques of the candidate and the candidate’s actual policy suggestions — but object when the same sort of attack is leveled against yourself.

As I mentioned elsehwere [1], a substantive comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain is straightforward. Indeed, I’ve made it. [2] Simply posting variants of “Obama is lukewarm on trade, Obama is lukewarm on immigration, Obama supports legal infanticide,” etc., is not to interesting. Certainly I’m open to the possibility that I’m wrong in this analysis, but there’s not much reason to think so.

What does interest me is the question of who Barack Obama is. What is his style? What are his beliefs? Who does he empower? Right now, “Bush III; Supporter-Driven Consensus; Racialists and the Establishment” seem to be the best answers. If you disagree and have a reason for doing so, please tell. But as we discuss, remember that conversation is a two-way street. In the past you’ve refused to answer questions if you thought that they could embarras your position or Barack Obama.

Seerov,

But my grammar (or lack of) is all my doing

LOL!

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/19/the-foreign-policy-advantages-of-obama-as-bush-iii.html#comment-88555
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/04/06/why-i-support-john-mccain.html

I’ll have to credit to my parents for this characteristic

However, it’s odd that you can spend so much time on building an imagined identity for Obama — racist, Bush III, befuddled, etc. — which you proceed to attack with silly posts like this one rather than offer substantive critiques of the candidate and the candidate’s actual policy suggestions — but object when the same sort of attack is leveled against yourself.

Certainly one can imagine Obama means something other than the plain meaning of his words. The same is true on his economic policy as well [1,2].

Still, if we want to give Obama credit for being forthright, we should at least demonstrate that he is forthright. If we wish to give Obama credit for attacking the quarter or so of blacks without a high school degree, we should demonstrate that Obama was in such a way attacking them.

I also note that you insult me for writing my opinion on what you call this “minute” statement, but you don’t criticize the New York Times for prominently featuring this “minute” statement. If the Times took Obama out of context, shouldn’t they be criticized?

more blathering of your own.

How is your insult useful to me? How is hosting such insults useful to my blog?

Seerov,

I don’t always agree with your opinions, but I thank you for being polite. I hope Curtis — and all othre readers of this blog — can learn from your example. Unlike some bloggers [3] I don’t like relying on insults to make a point.

That said, Wright’s statement on black-white “learning styles” was overly simplistic. His “jumping on the desks” comment seems closer to distinguishing unruly v. well-behaved students, as opposed to blacks and whites. (There’s no purpose in using a vaguer and more error-prone categorization scheme when you can use a more specific and correct one.)

Relatedly, Half Sigma criticizes Obama for a piece of low expectations that I missed [4].

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/15/obama-flip-flops-toward-truth.html
[2] http://www.phaticcommunion.com/archives/2008/06/obamas_economic.php#comment-2545
[3] http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_06_15_archive.html#5821644735356952898
[4] http://www.halfsigma.com/2008/06/obama-scores-points-by-kicking-deadbeat-dads.html