Marc2b
Posts: 6660
Joined: 8/7/2006
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quote:
Is rescuing someone from a fire not altruistic? Seems cogent to me.
Whether or not rescuing someone from a fire is altruistic is not the point. Whether a single incident can be extrapolated to praise or smear whole groups of people is the point. It is not.
quote:
i.e., if you are arguing that saving someone from a fire is "good", regardless of how altruistic it may be, while denying medical care for someone else that will result in their untimely demise is "bad"because it's "altruistic", by which we may probably infer, "unprofitable".
It's all politicking, pretending like it's not a distinct and cogent conundrum is politicking too.
It's evasion, essentially.
The OP's argument is essentially:
Cory Booker is a Democrat.
Cory Booker saved a woman from a fire.
Therefore all Democrats are good and all Conservatives are evil.
It is illogical (false equivalency) and it is bigoted (all those people are the same). Period.
The mistake that you and the OP, and pretty much the whole of humanity (including myself upon occasion, I'll admit) are making is that people can disagree on such things as tax policy and the proper extent of government power, etc, ect, and still be good people. Just because people oppose your ideas, it doesn't mean that they do so for malicious reasons.
It is also false equivalency to extrapolate people's argument to the absurd and then claim that they are the same thing. Any argument can be made to look ridiculous if you push it to the extremes. Example: Some people think we should raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour. Well if that is good, then why not $20? Why not $50? Hell, lets make it $1,000 an hour and then we can all be rich. What? You say that most business can't afford to pay a $1000 an hour? Well that pretty much proves that the whole idea of minimum wage is bad for the economy then, doesn't it? Obviously it doesn't... and that's the point.
The same thing goes for people's political philosophies and positions (the alliteration is unintentional... but still kind of neat). A person in favor of Obama-care is not necessarily (or even likely) to be an America hating, big government worshiping, commie who wants to ban the bible and take away everyone's guns. Likewise a person who opposes Obama-care is not necessarily a Bible thumping, gun toting, nazi who enjoys watching cancer patients suffer and die.
Such notions about others amount to little more than cheap ego stroke-offs: "We're so wonderful, oh yes! We're good, moral people and they're not! Oh yes! Oh, God, yes!"
It is also counter productive. Trying to convince someone of your position by insulting them is very poor strategy. It is a complete backfire. When you ("you" in the general, generic sense, not you specifically) insult someone, they focus on the insult, not on your arguments in favor of or against a particular position. They give no credence to your arguments because they are now associated with you and since they don't like you, they don't like anything to do with you. Any argument or evidence you put forth will be dismissed out of hand for no other reason than it came from you. You see this all the time in political "debate." Each side dismissing the other side's argument for no other reason than it came from the other side.
Until we can get past this "we're intelligent and moral, you're stupid and immoral" phase, and actually learn to listen to and respect each other, things are going to keep on going the way they have been... badly.
Oh, and by the way, I know some people will regard my calling the Original Poster's position bigoted as insulting and therefore hypocritical. I don't see it as such because the presumption that certain people would not try to help the woman in the fire based upon their political positions fits the definition of bigotry. It also does not mean I regard the OP as a bad person (one whom I have a roughly 50/50 agree/disagree track record with) since I believe that we are all bigoted to some extent or another. Bigotry is an aspect of human nature that stems from our tribal instincts. The bigotry of the Original Post does, in my opinion however, render it a non-argument with no basis for determining the validity, or lack thereof, of any particular political philosophy.
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Do you know what the most awesome thing about being an Atheist is? You're not required to hate anybody!
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