Posted on 06/08/2005 10:35:04 PM PDT by Crackingham
"Explain to me how I threw up a straw man by responding in this manner."
Sigh. All right.
The point of bringing up your nieces was to try and get you to think about the matter in the context of females with regard to whom you might feel protective, females you not only know and like, but with whom you have blood ties.
I could have posed the question in terms of wives, but daughters and nieces tend to be younger and more innocent, and therefore more in need of protection.
I was hoping, futilely, that you might reflect, "Gee, if the women I care about deserve protection, then the women other people care about do too."
Guess not.
My argument was never about incest in any way, but about protecting your nieces from exploitation by *other* men. I was actually surprised when you brought up the subject of incest, because it had never entered my mind.
Your setting up and knocking down the incest argument was, therefore, a straw man.
aren't most politicians whores anyway?? seems she might be over-qualified to me!!
No, it was an answer to your question. You simply expected me to respond in a different way. You might want to check out this: Straw Man.
Let's look at your link.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
Person A has position X.
(Call my position as described in my last note position X.)
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
(You presented this position Y: “Since society rightly dictates that having sexual feelings for members of one's own blood family is wrong, you now have a device by which you can leap to this conclusion: "since I wouldn't want to see my niece naked in Playboy magazine, Playboy magazine---and everything pornographic in general---must therefore be wrong." Clearly a misrepresentation of my position.)
Person B attacks position Y.
(Which you did, saying, for instance, “I merely pointed out how specious it was as a line of reasoning.” Yes, I agree, it is specious as a line of reasoning. However, it is a line of reasoning I never advanced.)
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
(Res ipsa loquitur.)
"No, it was an answer to your question."
As we have just seen, it wasn't. It was an attack on the straw man you set up: the incest argument.
You are helplessly without a clue.
I brought incest into the equation as an answer to a question you asked me. It was neither an argument for or against the issue at hand, pornography, but rather, an explanation as to why I would not care to see one of my nieces in Playboy magazine.
Have you been drinking?
"You are helplessly without a clue...Have you been drinking?"
I'm not going to follow this down into a morass of personal insult. I'll just point out one more time for any observers that this:
"I brought incest into the equation as an answer to a question you asked me."
...is not the case.
As seen from your own words, quoted in note 84, you asserted that I was making the incest argument, position Y.
Now, since I don't need the aggravation, and since you seem utterly unwilling to allow yourself even to become consciously aware of the arguments I have actually made, I'm done with this.
Good, because as I noted above, you're interested in preaching, not in reasoning. Or discussing. Or in comprehending the simple fact that I gave you an answer to your question.
Looks like the Christian Right is grappling with the Pro-Business Wing of the GOP.
IMO, the GOP is at heart a pro-business party. They only give lip service to conservative cultural issues so as to get blue collar votes that would normally go to the Democrats.
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