Reasoned Discourse

Reasoned Discourse

I appear to have offended Markaphasia. Apparently through an act of omission - I haven't written anything condemning Joseph Stack's re-enactment of 9/11 on an office building in Austin, Texas earlier this week in his attempt to wreak vengeance upon the Infernal Revenue Service. Since, according to Marxadelphia, Stack was obviously part of the America's version of "The Base" (aka Al Qaeda), my omission is obviously tacit approval of his act.

I've left a comment over at Marxy's blog, which, BTW, is titled a most martial "Notes from the Front". Is that the Eastern Front, or the Western Front, I wonder?

Anyway, suspecting that the comments over there might degrade into what we in the Gunblog Community derisively term "Reasoned Discourse," I've decided to print my comment in its entirety here as well:

Once again, Markaphasia, you illustrate just how right I am when I say that you are a perfect an example of the Left in this country. Thanks.

You say that you "have stated previously that it was only a matter of time before people who think like Stack start committing acts of violence."

I believe I've been saying it longer than you have, since 2003 at least. I've also said that such acts are the acts of people pushed beyond their thresholds of outrage, and they're not helpful to my side of the argument.

Now, one thing I'd like to point out is your lack of reading comprehension. You state, in quotation marks (that's "verbatim" just so you know): "As has been said many times at TSM, 'the time for reasoned discourse has passed.'"

Really? Please point, by means of a hyperlink, to that phrase in any post I've written. You just accused me of wanting to kill you - "As a Holocaust survivor once said, 'When someone says they want to kill you, believe them.'" - using those words as your evidence.

The closest you will come, I believe, are these words from my recent and oh-so-accurately titled Überpost What We Got Here is . . . Failure to Communicate:

Their vision is an activist vision, while the constrained vision is a largely passive one, intent largely on limiting the power of government to judge or interfere with individuals exercising their individual rights.

It is, indeed, a conflict of visions, and the time for passivity is over.

Which you, apparently, have read as a call to arms for "the base" to rise up and kill . . . you?

And you call us hyperparanoid?

Indeed, the time for reasoned discourse is over. It does not, however, follow logically that the alternate to "reasoned discourse" is violence (except if you're a Leftist.)

As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, repeatedly, the Left, the Unconstrained Vision, believes that talking and reason is all that's necessary to prevent violence, but when that fails, all they have left (no pun intended) IS violence. On the Constrained Vision side, we believe in deterrence.

Or as Clint Eastwood once so famously said: "Go ahead. Make my day." ;-)