Berkeley City Council Doing Its Anti-Democracy Bit

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

spot on, HM!

Cut the Latin, for a start, UG. It just makes you look like a pompous ass. Say it in English. Or Spanish, or German, or any other language actually in common usage today.

Zen: no. And I have Spanish, French, and Russian and hey, I can say it in any of these. If I choose to use my admittedly scant store of Latin, look upon it as a chance to enjoy the same broad horizons I do, rather than an excuse to complain at me. I'd say that's beneath your dignity. I'll make this plain: I do not listen to such requests, deeming them both beneath me -- a request to dumb down, which is the request I forever deny -- and beneath the asker also: is he not asking to be dumber? (What???) If you don't feel like rejecting that whole I-wannabe-a-dullard frame of mind yet, I'm not doing my job of making you a better man.

In that vein, I've not often found Happy Monkey to be all that well advised anyway. I did catch him at some good thinking over in Philosophy once, and I'd like to see him at it again, but his ideology does cause him to say absurd things. He's not the only one; this is the usual fate of the posters who wrangle with me on ideological grounds. Leftism keeps you childish and in a condition of dependency -- that's the only way the left retains influence -- and you say things that sound like they're from six-year-olds, not adult humans of free estate. No thank you; I enjoy a better road.

What makes it better? Boy, that would take a long essay. A lot of that work has already been done by writers through history. Orwell inoculated me against leftism in the beginning; Heinlein was a booster shot, and then there is the kind of writing free adults can do when they're conservative: almost every month of the year in National Review. To remain left of center, you have to carefully avoid the wit and wisdom on display there.

So, reading this thread over, it looks like the usual debate-club mess-up: can't dispute the validity of the argument? See if you can piss on the guy's style. Tsk tsk. That's going to carry the day for the opposition? That's known as a losing battle, people. Make a fight when you have a case. Don't try covering that lack up with a lot of noise over peripherals or personalities. That may have fooled some... has it fooled me, do you think?