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To: sitetest; Trinity_Tx
Maybe my last post wasn't clear enough. Let me try to put this another way.

The reason I jumped in here in the first place was that you were condescending to someone who was in no way condescending to you.

Probing further, your position seems to be that you and your friends are the quintessential, mainstream, model pro-life advocates, and that the behavior of other types of pro-life advocates is to be dismissed completely. Therefore, any criticism of those people or acknowledgment of their influence in the movement is invalid.

You also don't appear to believe anyone has a right to disagree with you about that.

Having said that, I'll go back to the reason I jumped in:

If you don't think pro-lifers treating other (often pro-life, or fence-sitting) people condescendingly is a problem, I strongly disagree - but I recognize that you are certainly welcome to your views.

I suspect all we will agree on is the last seven words of the paragraph above. I'm content to leave it at that.

1,503 posted on 03/13/2005 2:22:14 PM PST by DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet (Gnome sayin'?)
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To: DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet; Trinity_Tx

Dear DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet,

"The reason I jumped in here in the first place was that you were condescending to someone who was in no way condescending to you."

As I explained, my experience was one of amazement at such a distorted view of reality.

And disgust at the insult offered to the pro-life movement in general.

And I wasn't keen on Trinity_Tx's taunting of others with false premises.

"Therefore, any criticism of those people or acknowledgment of their influence in the movement is invalid."

Well, not quite. You should go back and read what I wrote. What I actually said, repeatedly, is that the effects that Trinity_Tx claims don't actually exist.

The fact is, that Trinity_Tx taunted others with the alleged failure to pass a ban on partial birth abortions due to the inability of the pro-life movement to compromise. Well, it's true that these laws have been held in abeyance by the courts, but the fact is that pro-life actually HAS achieved compromise, and actually HAS passed the ban in many states and the federal government, contrary to Trinity_Tx's false assertions.

Thus, Trinity_Tx's contention that the ban hasn't passed because of the intransigence of the pro-life movement (whether in the entirety or in part) is false. Not because the presumed cause is false (though it is) but because the named effect doesn't actually exist.

If you say, "The sun didn't rise today because the rooster didn't crow," the problem isn't that you've made the logical error of post hoc ergo propter hoc. The problem is that the premise - the sun didn't rise today - is false. Thus, we can't get to the remaining errors in the statement.

The poster also insisted that pro-lifers don't support candidates who respect the Constitution. We do nothing but. Certainly, if Ms. Rice can't bring herself to declare that Roe must go, then our failure to support her is an example of REFUSING to support a candidate who DISRESPECTS the Constitution.

As well, I pointed out that we pro-lifers support many flawed candidates, out of the willingness to seek compromise. And that many of these candidates win. Because of, in part, pro-life backing.

Thus, what may be true in small numbers, in some individual cases, is proven untrue generally, by the actual facts.

"If you don't think pro-lifers treating other (often pro-life, or fence-sitting) people condescendingly is a problem, I strongly disagree - but I recognize that you are certainly welcome to your views."

Well, I haven't offered much of an opinion about that, now have I?

However, I think that Trinity_Tx's actual complaint was more oriented toward our failure to compromise, and our failure to support candidates who respect the Constitution, as in:

"It is your 'strategy' of dogmatism and rudely offending everyone who you even think veers even slightly away from your position that hasn't even been able to get rid of partial birth abortion - which would be easy to outlaw if the fight against it weren't bogged down by the heavy-handed, 'no compromise' baggage."

and

"If pro-lifers worked to elect politicians who respected the constitution, rather than blowing them off because they didn't toe the whole moment of conception, no compromise line, that wouldn't be a problem."

It seems that she didn't mention our awful "condescension" until later in the discussion.

I merely pointed out Trinity_Tx's egregious insults offered to the whole of the pro-life movement through the poster's failure to accurately identify the actual course of history over the last 32 years.

As well, your attempt to smear the entire pro-life movement with the violent actions of a few nutcakes, and their sympathizers, isn't attractive, either.

Or perhaps you didn't realize that violence in the dispute over abortion is a hundred times more likely to come from the pro-death side. In this, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Very few people know this, because the pro-abortion elites in our country have no desire to tell the truth about it.

But perhaps in the future, you could check your facts before smearing millions of good people.

If Trinity_Tx, or you, want to complain about some unruly or surly posters at FR, be my guest.

But don't smear an entire movement with complaints that don't actually track with reality.


sitetest


1,509 posted on 03/13/2005 2:55:48 PM PST by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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