Analytics wrote:I found his comments to be full of disdain for secularism, and I thought he was putting all sorts of ugly thoughts into others. But I wanted him to clarify his position before I judged him too hard. I asked him,Here is a serious question: What’s your point? Are you saying that if everybody saw the light and became secularists that the human race would literally become a species in danger of extinction? Or are you saying that since various backwards cultures over-breed that secularism will go extinct unless they continually get converts from the irresponsible breeders? Or are you saying that if we want our culture (i.e. our non-Catholic, non-Islam, white western culture) to survive, we need to outbreed the Catholics, Muslims, and welfare moms?
Smac got highly offended at the way in which I asked him to clarify his position, and decided to have a chat with the mods. There response to me was hilariously ironic, given Smac's posts on the thread.
(bold mine) Of course Smac was offended. You asked your question offensively (whether he deserved it is beside the point as such a judgment is subjective).
Analytics wrote:Therefore, I’m pro-Mormon, right?
I knew that less than half of the people there would get the point, but was surprised that Momus almost immediately shut it down with a terse “No personal threads.”
If you're smart enough to make the point, you should have been smart enough to leave yourself out of it in the first place.
Analytics wrote:Strike 3
But I thought my point was worthwhile, so I started the thread again, slightly reworded so that the slower mods wouldn’t be confused as to the point. I made some headway with somebody who originally claimed that “pro-abortion” was a correct term, but then conceded,You are right that the pro-abortion label is likely unfair to place on all proponents of abortion. Many do believe that the right to an abortion should be protected, even if the person would never choose one for themselves or loved one--I supect there are some LDS who take this stand and would never consider themselves pro-abortion. I'm certain Mitt Romney was one who thought like this(when he ran as pro-choice).
Labeling the other side "pro-abortion" is a political tactic. But so is labeling your opponents "war-mongers". Both sides don't care about being honest or accurate--they care about winning and making extreme statements about their opponents is a normal tactic.
I decided to quibble with the last point, because the word “warmongering” is a superlatively accurate description of President Bush’s actions before the Iraq invasion. In contrast, “pro-abortion” isn’t at all accurate.
The topic of the thread was accurately labeling people, and all I’d done is juxtaposed the word “warmonger” with the word “pro-abortion”, and compared and contrasted whether the words were heated and whether the words were accurate. I was right in the middle of the strike zone of the thread’s topic. But again the moderator was too dense to understand my point, and responded,You just turned this into a political thread. Thread closed.
You took the bait and got sidetracked. You should have requested that the poster leave out the comment about "war-mongering" because of how easily it leads to political fights. However much I may disagree with the Bush administration, there are those who might view said policy as inevitable instead of pro-war or warmongering.
That said, welcome to the board. I appreciate an intelligent critic.