Once again I am left virtually speechless but the sheer blind rage in this election. The moral leaders of the Church in the Valley in Leakey, Texas felt that it was appropriate to post this sign reading: “Vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim! The capitalist, not the communist!” Putting aside the violation of its tax-exempt status, church leaders thought nothing of the lesson given their children in making such false and prejudicial statements. It shows the dangerously thin line that separates the faithful from the hateful in our society.
Of course, in addition to repeating the false statement about President Obama’s religion, the sign adds the common and equally ridiculous mantra about his being a communist. A term that, when pressed, seems beyond definition for some of these protesters.
The Church in the Valley headed by Pastor Ray Miller (who came up with the idea of the sign) sees nothing wrong is defining people primarily by their alleged faith — whether it is falsely Obama as a Muslim or Romney as a Mormon.
Equally disgusting is the response of a least one local businessman who insist that the controversy will be good for business. Damon White is quoted as saying “I love it. Even if it’s bad attention, bring it on. Come to town, see what it’s about.” Well, Mr. White, we certainly now know what you are about. It does not matter if it is unfair, prejudicial, and disrespectful, it is good for business. Now there is a lesson for the children of Leakey, Texas.
Notably, on its website, the Church proclaims “We believe our faith should be visible in concrete forms and models of personal and social behavior.” That model appears to include insulting and prejudicial statements about people with whom you disagree as well as use of false claims to achieve your political ends. I don’t recall the passage where Jesus Christ led the smear campaign against Pontius Pilatus. Indeed, I seem to recall something out “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Perhaps but it does not sum up Paster Miller or the good people of the Church of the Valley.
Source: KENS as first seen on Reddit.
Your comment from http://jonathanturley.org/2012/10/22/a-sad-sign-of-our-times/#comment-436870 was the very first mention of taxation, Enoch. It reads in relevant part:
“As for tax exemption… the needful right of Congress to levy taxes notwithstanding, a tax is not just or proper simply because it’s lawful. Power, to lie in the people’s hands, should never be allowed to levy taxes by taking. Government should never have the power to take private property without just compensation and for a good that is not unconditionally, universally and equally available to all.”
It’s the fourth comment of the thread and your first.
That’s a fact.
Mike – Thank you.
First, I don’t participate on any pages other than this and the Washington Post’s “comments” pages. I sent an email to JT, giving my philosophical take on his opinion piece re. free speech and, in a follow-up email, asked if he knew a forum for more intelligent discussion than the Post’s. He suggested his own, and here I am.
If I came across as trying to “be” anything – alpha dog, sycophant or anything in between – it is completely illusory. I give you my promise that, for better or worse, I’m just being me. If I break any of the conventions of this site – in tenor, not content – let me know: I’m perfectly willing to learn Rome’s ways when in Rome. On the same token, though, if someone chooses to attack me through my comments rather than discuss things with me, I consider myself under no obligation not to return change in the same coin.
One of the more important things that I look for in any discussion are opposing points of view. I’m not looking for a fight, but I’m also sure as hell not going to learn anything by talking to some surrogate for my existing points of view. Writing with my opposite, though, requires that all that passion you mentioned has to be kept in check: maybe you aren’t the best person for me to correspond with. I want to know if what I think are my views, formed in a vacuum, are really rational and defensible, if my opposites can add anything to my calculus I hadn’t thought of myself or if, maybe, I really have thought my positions through.
Finally, regarding the topic of JT’s original blog here, it was two others who first brought taxation and democracy into the discussion, not I. I replied to these comments, and some others took off on me because of them. From that point forward, my departure from JT’s blog took on a life of its own, and you and I find ourselves here.
Frankly, if this helps you and me understand each other better, I’ll consider it a worthwhile exercise, all the rest notwithstanding.
“If I break any of the conventions of this site – in tenor, not content – let me know: I’m perfectly willing to learn Rome’s ways when in Rome. On the same token, though, if someone chooses to attack me through my comments rather than discuss things with me, I consider myself under no obligation not to return change in the same coin.”
Enoch,
One of the rare beauties of this site is that there are no conventions, except for five words banned by WordPress and not threatening anyone personally. Also I would assume the legal strictures such as slander and libel in possibly some extremely rare instances might be abutted. That’s what free speech is about. However, if you comment here, you don’t get to choose who will respond to you, whether or not you wish to engage them.
I must note though, which you have chosen still not to respond to, that you have not once as yet actually responded to anyone, on any issue. Instead your methodology is to deflect into something else. This is a tactic that is we’ve seen attempted on this site many times, that proliferates on the Internet and the mainstream media. As an example I present your first comment on this thread in its entirety:
“The right to speak freely includes the right to speak stupidly – and this isn’t a case of shouting, “fire!,” in a crowded theater. Be disgusted by the message, but it’s a little hypocritical to claim we have any “inalienable” rights, and then complain when someone uses one.
As for tax exemption… the needful right of Congress to levy taxes notwithstanding, a tax is not just or proper simply because it’s lawful. Power, to lie in the people’s hands, should never be allowed to levy taxes by taking. Government should never have the power to take private property without just compensation and for a good that is not unconditionally, universally and equally available to all.”
These two short paragraphs illustrate your technique perfectly and in fact are excellent examples of what the “Tea Party” and many faux conservatives use as argumentation. In the first paragraph you give a false hint that you might condemn this billboard, but then pivot away into raising a “Straw Man” argument that criticizing the billboard puts one on a side against free speech. So in fact we never know what you think of this sign.
Your second paragraph then gets into what is probably the basis of all your thought processes which is that taxes are an unwarranted taking of a person’s private treasure, even if their levy is legal. Which has little to do with what was presented in the post. However, your hubris is such that you really exposed yourself in the following comment directed at Gene, which only shows that my judgment of your motives has been correct all along:
“I made a strategic error engaging with you on my first day or so here, Gene. I hadn’t learned the landscape yet, the players and the devices they improvise for combat (and you are quite the combatant, Gene). I didn’t know that someone like you was here. I won’t make the same mistake twice.
That said, the lessons of asymmetrical warfare are apt here. A guerrilla fighter will pop up, incite return fire and disappear, leading the regular forces to disclose more about themselves than they should. When opportunity smiles on the guerrilla fighter, he might toss a grenade, actually inflicting damage great or small, but harassing, always harassing the regular forces, always making him fight on the guerrilla fighter’s terms, and inflicting casualties when and how he can.”
To deconstruct your verbiage: “I came here on a mission to spread my personal propaganda, believing that the people here would be as clueless as those hanging around my local Tractor Supply Warehouse and discovered that there were people like Gene who were more or less immune to my legerdemain. Having been shown that people weren’t buying, I’m going to switch my tactics by not engaging with the less gullible, but keep throwing the propaganda up there for those who I can propagandize.”
Enoch please stay around as long as you’d like, but be aware that your reconnoiter of the landscape is very incomplete. Most people here are immune to your tactics. Now let me also give you another clue about your ineffectiveness thus far. You pretend to be a mere farmer, fourth generation no less, but you studied philosophy and have alluded to other occupations including military service of the Intelligence variety. That is obviously an attempt to present yourself as a mere “salt of the Earth American”, which you are not. Aw shucks!…….Methinks you are awash in excrement and I don’t mean from cowpies.
Too bad for you Enoch that by injecting your comments into the commons on a forum dedicated to free speech completely negates any control you might have over who you converse with and whether they treat your babble and weak trollish attempts to misdirect threads as meriting anything other than deconstruction mixed with mockery, tea bagger.
Mike – I know you won’t like my answers, but the first is, even with your account of yourself, I don’t have enough information to describe you (I would suggest that only you can define yourself, while others are left, at best, to describe what they see). As you do, I also have views that might be considered consistent both with conventional liberal and conservative politics. What you are is something I can know, if at all, only by getting to know you better.
My second answer goes to your observation re. mono-linear thinking. Several people here have observed that, in the real world, people don’t [whatever]. Here, some background about me might be helpful.
I live in a very real world. Farming is the 4th most lethal occupation in the country. Logging is the 2nd most lethal, and that is my winter occupation (I run my own sawmill, from taking down the trees to lumber and, on commission, to finished cabinets). Every year, someone I know dies or is maimed in one of my occupations. In ’76, when I graduated from high school, my parents kicked me out of the next. I joined the Navy, where I served as a Cryptology Technician Technical (1791) until I reached E-5, when I earned the Navy Enlisted Classification 9102 (National OPELINT [operational electronic intelligence] Analyst), under Naval Special Warfare Command (take a good look at my “avatar”). I come here – especially now, as I go through some very unwelcome preoperative procedures and processes for a very unwelcome operation) – to get away from my very real world and a more than adequate history of fighting. This is my drawing room. My coffee – still Navy black and strong enough to use for battery acid – is my brandy and my Marlboros are my cigar.
I’m looking for the abstract conversation, the investigation into the intellectual principles beneath the real world and the real people in it. I don’t believe that my purpose here is antithetical to an attorney’s blog, either, insofar as practical law sits atop some rather impractical philosophy. And philosophy was my major in college. If I took the department’s word for it as frankly as it was given, I was rather good at it, too, with laurels enough to give some support to the belief.
Please, in that context, then, don’t look at my “mono-linear” questions as if proof of my perception of the world and the people in it as equally mono-linear. I don’t. But in the context of academic conversation, we are not bound by what the world is.
I don’t expect you to join me in my threads. Perhaps I’d like you to, if we can do it in the manner of two people talking quietly over brandy and cigars (metaphorically speaking, of course), but there are some people here I hardly hope that from. I don’t hold that against them. I just prefer not to engage in discussion with them.
Enoch,
Now that we have each defined ourselves and by use of our real names openly express our opinions fearlessly, let me again assert why I have reacted to you as I did.
“I’m looking for the abstract conversation, the investigation into the intellectual principles beneath the real world and the real people in it. I don’t believe that my purpose here is antithetical to an attorney’s blog, either, insofar as practical law sits atop some rather impractical philosophy.”
I can, but I don’t do abstract philosophy. I am far too passionate about the ills that plague humanity to want to deal with peoples pain in the abstract. What bothered me in your first comment was that you tried to take the discussion from a particular topic, to one that was not even an abstraction of that topic. You did it in a way that was very familiar to those of us that have been here for awhile and is characteristically that of people who troll various blogs they disagree with, to disrupt the conversation. As for trying to deal with the “real” issues that are masked by the “noise” of societal conventions: Enter “Mike Spindell” in the search function on the top right and you will get the entirety of my blog posts since I’ve become a guest blogger here. what you will see is that 2/3 of my writing have dealt with the myths that have proliferated in our country to hide the “reality” that exists below.
Thus far what I’ve seen from you is someone who has tried to come across as an “Alpha Dog” by trying to turn the discussion into your own direction, while not being interested responding to others. Perhaps I’ve misjudged you in this respect and my history here is that if that is the case I will apologize without the equivocation of “Ifs”. What you need to understand about this site is that it is a free speech zone in the sense that no one gets banned for their point of view, or for much else. However, as a free speech zone sometimes people can be harshly criticized for what they present. That is the price of free speech and there are times when I exercise mine, loaded with the passion with which I approach life. Those I attack are free to respond to me in any way they deem appropriate.
On the specific topic of this particular post, you have not at this point expressed any opinion on the Church’s sign, other than to plead the case that a lot of others do the same. Can you see how this might be construed as trying to deflect the topic away from its’ theme, whether you meant to do that or not? If you can then perhaps there is a basis for discussion, if ot we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
“I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff a poodle’s butt and a car hit me.”
Bron,
Hilarious anecdote. I personally prefer the taste of Kal-Kan.
“For the collectivist, it’s all about what’s in it for some “me;” whereas, for the individualist, what happens to some “me” is comparatively unimportant, relative to the underlying principle of individual liberty, choice and responsibility.”
Enoch,
Never having responded to one of my criticisms of your comments here except by “non sequitur”, or self-serving attempts to spread your personal propaganda, let me again reply to you in what I expect will be an unrequited attempt to actually establish a dialogue with you. Your view of political, economic and sociological issues seems to me to be structurally deficient in that you divide peoples beliefs into one of two convenient categories and naturally ascribe to your own predilections as superior.
The innate flaw in that kind of mono-linear thinking is that these beliefs are so easily categorized into us versus them propositions. Take me for instance, it has been known here for many years that I take issue with many progressive mantras. Indeed, I have also discussed that I took issue with Communists in the labor movement in the late 60’s and find them distasteful. By the same token the people who’ve know me in my life have always considered me to be highly individualistic as a person and in terms of my political preferences. As far as government goes, I have written numerous guest blogs here criticizing our governance and the policies of both “liberal” and “conservative” activity. I have also stated that at least since the 1960’s our government has neither been a Republic, nor a Democracy, but rather a coup-instigated Oligarchy. While I’m not a member of the NRA (far to non-individualistic for my tastes), I am a supporter of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.
The reason that I came to this particular blog many years ago is that I believe so strongly in civil liberties and Jonathan Turley is in the vanguard of the fight for civil liberties in this country. On the other hand I do believe that there are some tasks better handled by government than by private industry. While I believe that capitalism as Adam Smith conceived it is a excellent economic model, like Adam Smith I also understand that uncontrolled Capitalism leads inexorably to a tyrannic use of wealth. ow given that how do you define me: Am I a “Collectivist”, or am I an individualist. If, as in your past comments here, you do not respond to that simple question, than I think it will confirm that you merely deal in propaganda rather than intellectual discourse. This has been the critique of you made by myself, GBK and Gene.
true story from friends daughter:
“So I’m at Wal-Mart buying a bag of Purina dog food for my dog. While in the check-out line, a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. Why else would I be buying dog food, RIGHT??? So on impulse I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again, and that I probably shouldn’t because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in intensive care with tubes coming out of every orifice and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a Perfect Diet and all you do is load your pockets with Purina Nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.) Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff a poodle’s butt and a car hit me.”
Ariel:
Mike S does have a point, not all Pit Bulls attack toddlers. I know at least one who is about as sweet a dog as I have ever seen, like a happy 3 year old, just loves people and other dogs.
Was your job in jeopardy?
It is hard to put aside your personal bias. It is hard to recognize your personal bias.
Ariel,
You should learn how to ask a question. I still see no question from you until your post of Oct. 25 @ 5:40 am in your last sentence:
“gbk, out of everything I wrote that you nit-picked to death, I asked you one real, salient question which you assiduously avoided. I am going to paraphrase it, go back and quote my earlier question to undermine my paraphrase makes you a weasel (or some other disgusting furry animal): If tomorrow the world went insane and slavery became morally acceptable and legally permissible, where would you stand?”
Before this you said in your post of October 22 @ 7:20 pm:
“Bear with me (if you’ve read this far you obviously are), gbk stated an unarguable, obvious historical fact, while Enoch asked a question about moral absolutes and applying temporally, drawing obviously from the present. I noticed that gbk used “morally acceptable” for an obvious reason, he couldn’t bring himself to use “morally right”. If tomorrow the world went insane and made slavery morally acceptable and legally permissible (for the USA, the Reconstruction Amendments are repealed) I doubt gbk would endorse the change. I am not picking on you gbk whatsoever. I don’t like applying morality backwards either. But the question shouldn’t be dismissed either.”
I don’t see a question here, Ariel. I see you saying that I really wanted to say “morally right” instead of “morally acceptable” and then you state that you doubt I would endorse the change if the world “went insane . . .”
I don’t see a question there.
Then in your post of October 22 @ 10:34 pm you supposedly clarify :
“I did frame it, it was the one Enoch asked, and I framed it as follows: ‘while Enoch asked a question about moral absolutes and applying temporally, drawing obviously from the present.’ I furthermore framed it this way ‘I doubt gbk would endorse the change. I am not picking on you gbk whatsoever. I don’t like applying morality backwards either. But the question (Enoch’s) shouldn’t be dismissed either.’
You refer to enoch’s rhetorical “questions” here as your “question.” Then you lecture me with a diatribe of your own making in your Oct. 24 @ 10:14 pm post where it all boils down to this statement:
“Actually, I don’t admit that, my question to you was always the distinction between ‘acceptable’ and ‘right’. I do not view the terms as the same, and I’ve admitted, as well endorsed, your phrasing for past cultures, past societies, as being correct. It was ‘acceptable’, but that word is not commensurate with ‘right’.
I’ll say it again: you never asked a question. Additionally, you are the one that brought the phrase “morally right” into the fold, I did not state this, and yet you choose to equate this for what I said.
Then on Oct. 25 @ 5:40 am, after calling me a weasel for not divining your question, you finally ask your question:
“If tomorrow the world went insane and slavery became morally acceptable and legally permissible, where would you stand?
Here’s my answer: I would be against it. Got that. See how easy it can be if you just ask your question?
You’re the one that conflated “morally acceptable” with “morally right,” Ariel, not me. And then you claimed enoch’s “questions” were what you asked of me, then you dribble on pointing out the distinction between “acceptable” and “right” though I never used the second word, then you call me a weasel, and then you ask your question!
You should accept what people write as what they meant to say and learn not to overlay your own ill-founded equivalence onto what they’ve said. Additionally, learn how to ask a question. Okay?
Bron – It’s easier than one might think: abstract every singular pronoun from politics, and who gets hurt? The collectivist, or the individualist?
enoch:
good luck explaining that.
Bron –
“[C]all me out of touch but amazon has a lending library for kindle. Free books.
“Amazing what the private sector and the profit motive can devise. What exactly has collectivism actually done for society? Except keep it down.”
===
And therein lies the grand paradox. For the collectivist, it’s all about what’s in it for some “me;” whereas, for the individualist, what happens to some “me” is comparatively unimportant, relative to the underlying principle of individual liberty, choice and responsibility. In this construction, it should be no wonder that the individualists afford society the greatest good, while the collectivists represent the greatest weight holding society down.
…and again, Ariel –
I didn’t catch the post to gbk you refer to in your post to Bron; but, as you explain yourself in that post (this morning’s), you do catch part of what I meant correctly. I believe it is defensible to say that, if any proposition is determined morally wrong that was once unoffensive to a person or society at large, it is the understanding of the moral agent that has changed, not the intrinsic morality of the proposition. Capital punishment may serve as an example of what I mean: as we learn more about the influences that lead some people to commit crimes punishable by death, we are more inclined to view state-sanctioned causation of death as the full moral equivalent of the punished crime, itself. This argument is still on-going (in the US, at least), and neither side has definitively made its point supreme, but we see the operation of growing understanding influence our moral debate.
Another point I’ve been trying to make, though, is that the very notion of morality is so elusive that, except like pornography, we know it when we see it, it defies codification – and this, against the very real and absolute need we have of a codified, immutable scheme of morality. If we allow the notion that morality is determined by what we agree is moral, there is no impediment to the most horrific abuses of man by man. If all that we require is consensus that (for example) capital punishment – or slavery, or genocide – is morally defensible, we become blameless for imposing capital punishment, instituting slavery or committing genocide. This is untenable.
On the other hand, take the account of morals that suits you best, from Plato to Beth Singer (“Operative Rights”), and we can demonstrate its utter failure in some perfectly plausible circumstance.
I believe that this is the cat that our Founders/Framers were trying to skin with the notion of natural rights descending from our “Creator:” if “God” determines right and wrong, good and bad and the legitimate scope of individual conduct, no legislation or executive fiat can modify those terms, rendering, coincidentally, the chance that government will trespass on those moral propositions we know when we see them much less likely. This, of course, is very thin ice to build a scheme of ethics on, and (I believe) such a scheme can only survive and persist if its claims are very few. The more fully we investigate the notion, the nearer we get to that case in which it, too, fails. This is one of the foundational explanations for the Founders’/Framers’ insistence on a limited government: the narrower its authority over propositions of ethical import, the less likely it will err in the exercise of its authority over propositions of ethical import.
Bron, thank you by asking your question of gbk and moral relativism, my slow, dull wit came to a realization:
gbk, out of everything I wrote that you nit-picked to death, I asked you one real, salient question which you assiduously avoided. I am going to paraphrase it, go back and quote my earlier question to undermine my paraphrase makes you a weasel (or some other disgusting furry animal): If tomorrow the world went insane and slavery became morally acceptable and legally permissible, where would you stand?
I could answer the question in four words without blinking, hedging, diverting, or avoiding.
Ariel – There are a lot of people who are not honest players. There are even people writing on this blog who have no interest in understanding the others here, but see this space only as an opportunity to belittle them. One might hope that words or phrases that mean something different to the reader than the writer clearly means to express would inspire the reader to seek clarification or a more common vocabulary…but such hopes would be quickly dashed. One would hope that, being confronted with beliefs and opinions different than one’s own, a conversation might proceed in which each explains to the other why he thinks of believes as he does, accepting the obvious fact that both believe themselves to be right, and letting who really is right be a question for another time in favor, perhaps, of learning something new. That hope, too, would be quickly dashed. Of course, it’s happened to me, but not only to me – and not only here, but in other places and contexts.
Your experience with ACORN seems something of the kind – a conversation in which the other side is largely irrelevant, except in the serendipitous case that the irrelevant party might provide an opportunity for the other to do even more harm. ACORN seems not to have had any interest in being right. That would require a coherent argument in which a party who believed otherwise would have something to say about it. Instead, it seems that ACORN’s only purpose in meeting with you was to insist on the doxological proposition that you were wrong.
I’ve seen too many circumstances such as you describe – many (sadly) even here.
Hi, Bron (Bron 1, October 22, 2012 at 10:54 pm).
No, I wasn’t calling gbk a moral relativist. I’m not so presumptuous, usually, to draw a conclusive label from so few words, something others make a career of rather than just a hobby. I prefer neither.
I was only weighing on the choice of words, “acceptable” versus “right”, and weighing that moreover Enoch’s words read as a question of moral right versus accepting what was morally acceptable temporally. I did pose the question to gbk of what if the world went insane tomorrow and slavery was both morally acceptable and legally permissible, would you endorse/accept it? No answer unless I missed it, but I did get a lot of criticism about my view of his words, as well my interpretation of Enoch’s words, which of course was wrong because it wasn’t his interpretation.
Yes, gbk. my further comments to you may extend to others first, indirect versus direct.
Just when I think there’s meat, I find vegetarians.
“I was only weighing on the choice of words, “acceptable” versus “right”, and weighing that moreover Enoch’s words read as a question of moral right versus accepting what was morally acceptable temporally.”
Ariel,
Both GBK and myself answered Enoch’s query by answering that it was introducing a point into the discussion that was not relevant to the discussion. I further asserted that he did so in order to later set up the real line of argumentation he wanted to assert, which had nothing to do with the blog post this thread was discussing. either he, nor you, ever dealt with us raising those points, yet you see fit to call GBK a weasel. Given the topic of this thread as encapsulated here:
“Vote for the Mormon, not the Muslim! The capitalist, not the communist!” Putting aside the violation of its tax-exempt status, church leaders thought nothing of the lesson given their children in making such false and prejudicial statements. It shows the dangerously thin line that separates the faithful from the hateful in our society.”
I note that neither Enoch, nor you, have anything to say on that sign or what Professor Turley is saying about it. You and Enoch seem so capable of ignoring others points, yet responding to them with questions that are “non-sequiturs” to the issue, while casting aspersions on peoples ethics. May I ask you both a simple, yet highly pertinent question? What do you think about the Church’s sign and Professor Turley’s response to it.
Hi, Otteray Scribe,
I had a very personal experience with ACORN in the mid -80s. Granted, it was only the local group, but I left meeting with them feeling like I had waded through a sewer. A sewer of really stagnant waste. Anaerobic.
I was supervising a Haz-Waste facility and was still on my game as a BSChe. Behind the facility, south, was a rendering plant and about 1/2 mile west was an uncovered WWTP that gave the Black Canyon Freeway (I-17) the title of “the smelliest curve in the US” in national magazines.
The meeting with ACORN was supposed to be a discovery meeting, at least that was what we were told. The meeting was nothing of the sort, unless Judge Parker’s court was “a discovery meeting”. ACORN lied to us from the very beginning. The decision on their part was made with no evidence whatsoever, other than HW=Bad=Illness. We came with wind pattern data, approximate release data, and more, but judiciously kept quiet the whole meeting because there was no point to doing otherwise. They should have had an interlude of entertainment with kangaroos as the main attraction.
The funny part was that the meeting went on and on about “the smell” (I think of Agent Smith here) from my facility which made people sick and ill, yet the smells they described were obviously from the rendering plant and the WWTP. We handled Freon, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, methylene chloride, ketones, alcohols, and aromatics, with some esters mixed in some streams. I was on the pad everyday (7 days a week, as I did at least one check on my days off, sometimes twice, even with 1 man assigned for each day). The smell they described did not match the chemicals whatsoever.
I have no faith that juxtaposing the word integrity with the acronym ACORN has any meaning. I wasn’t surprised that ACORN could so easily be shown to be dishonest.
“I was supervising a Haz-Waste facility and was still on my game as a BSChe. Behind the facility, south, was a rendering plant and about 1/2 mile west was an uncovered WWTP that gave the Black Canyon Freeway (I-17) the title of “the smelliest curve in the US” in national magazines.”
Ariel,
What an amazing evidence of the evil of ACORN. About 25 years ago you were supervising a Haz-Waste facility and went to a meeting with one local group that treated you badly in your opinion. You of course had no vested interest involved, after all as the supervisor of the plant you knew with absolute certainty that the plant was doing absolutely no harm. They treated you skeptically, not understanding that you were true of heart.
Those vile ingrates! More importantly though we should take your unbiased evidence from that one local meeting to draw conclusions about a national organization What a stunning piece of argumentation I am overwhelmed by its logic.
Malisha,
I love your blah, blah, blah defense!
idealist 707-
You have to come to the USA to get the real thing.
Bukka White-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0jRX69mxcE
Barbeque Bob-
Hi gbk,
This: “there is a world of difference between the words “acceptable” and “right” within the context of this thread” and that was my point, so we read the thread differently. Not unusual with the context of our own lives and intellectual predilections.
This: “Conversely, enoch did not make the claims you attributed to him, they are what you expanded on in reading what you wanted to read.” I’ll hold by my interpretation because you gave me no argument otherwise. You only gave me a declarative, “you’re wrong and I’m right”. Sorry, that was a Freudian slip. Obviously, I have no history of what he writes, and even if I did I will still interpret his words by his words. Otherwise, I would be acting by prejudging. We aren’t so easily defined by others assessment so I try to use just the words at the time.
I went to this: “I see no question directed at me in this post of yours. I see a lot of innuendo and assumptions, but no question directed at me. You admit as much later in your post of October 22, 2012 at 10:34 pm with a morass of verbiage.” Actually, I don’t admit that, my question to you was always the distinction between “acceptable” and “right”. I do not view the terms as the same, and I’ve admitted, as well endorsed, your phrasing for past cultures, past societies, as being correct. It was “acceptable”, but that word is not commensurate with “right”. It’s just not and I did think you picked your words carefully thus my exception to your words.
This: “my opinion rhetorically offered so that he could segue into his libertarian rant”, yet I explained I was not assuming whatsoever, and gave “I don’t care about the isms”. The height of prejudging is “I know this person therefore everything they write must be predicated on what they wrote before, and how I judged those words, and I will judge their words accordingly”. I didn’t do that with Enoch or you ,I have no history. I still called him out on another argument, because I thought the words were wrong.
And this: “What makes you think that I used the phrase, “morally acceptable,” because I couldn’t “bring myself” to use the phrase, “morally right?” Do you think I don’t know the difference between the words, “acceptable,” and “right” given the context of this thread.” Yes, I do, I think you picked your words carefully. It is why I drew the distinction, and it’s all there in my comments. Yet now we quibble over the context of the thread, yet I so very hard tried to write that it is only between the two comments, which kills everything in the thread but those two comments. I try to use words as you do, which makes me verbose and gives you “morass”. I repeat my third paragraph, just because it obviously needs to be repeated until it sinks in. But you’re really telling me that no matter how I explain it you’ll take exception, drawing from any words I use that give you the possibility of exception. I believe you meant exactly what you wrote. Never questioned that.