Moved from D1 forum

[FireIceTalon]

This essay displays exactly the same problems that make your posts so difficult to swallow. Whatever you thought this was supposed to prove, it merely reinforces my poor opinion of your critical engagement skills.

Rather than engage with actual opponents, you assign opinions to vague strawmen and specious formulae: "Most Americans," "How many of us know ..." "We wish(/know/dislike/whatever)" "the western world thought" and so on. If you don't attack and defend specific ideas from specific people, you don't have to worry about your opponents beating you - anyone can argue with straw men. It's very easy to argue with someone who "completely ignore[s] invisible structures beyond their control", because such a person would be a complete idiot. Unfortunately, there is nobody who actually believes this proposition (or if there is, you certainly haven't cited them.)

You pose bold, entirely rhetorical questions, many of which have quite reasonable answers, but you do not appear to even consider potential criticisms of your arguments. Many of your rhetorical questions are of the "did you enjoy beating your wife" variety, for instance: "Can a system that seeks to create competition but defeats its very purpose by eliminating competition be considered fair and just?" Well, no, but you haven't done anything more than merely assert that capitalism is a system that eliminates competition, so how are we supposed to judge?

You smash history up into bits and reform it as you please, with no regard for chronology, or even basic sense. For instance: "We are also a nation of patriots and dislike terrorists, yet we condone counter terrorism in the name of imperialism and Manifest Destiny – something we fought against England in the American Revolution." What on earth does this mean? The American Revolution had absolutely nothing to do with counterterrorism, or manifest destiny, which is in any case a doctrine born 60 years after the American Revolution. And America does nothing "in the name of" imperialism, since whether one thinks of America as an empire or not, they do not call themselves such. Perhaps you mean "in service of"? But that would require using words to mean specific things, which is a difficult business. It would prevent you, for example, using the word "paradox" to describe whatever strikes you as vaguely contradictory, the word "fallacy" to mean a misconception, or the word "paradigm" to mean... whatever on earth you think it means. ("paradigm of illusion? What the heck is that?)

You make bold declarations of false propositions, accompanied by neither citation nor defense. America is not the most unequal democracy - it isn't even close (Brazil? Argentina? South Africa?). Capitalism is not based on Social Darwinism - indeed, it predates Darwin by at least a century, depending on definition. The United States has dozens of active political parties that contest national elections, not just the two most successful ones. (See: Duverger's Law)

Your use of Rawls is practically trivial. You don't quote him, you don't try and apply his ideas in any careful way, but instead just glance in his direction during pauses in your ranting, and claim his support. John Rawls is not a Marxist, but you don't make any relevant use of this distinction between equality of opportunity and distributional equality, or deal with the Pareto criterion for acceptable inequalities. Rawls' ideas have interesting implications for liberal egalitarianism - but you don't get there.

This is really just the surface. The piece is riddled with confusing, nonsensical, rambling sentences and paragraphs. The whole thing is strung together on almost no evidence. But most worryingly, it is an argument against no-one, which is precisely what we are complaining about here on the lounge. You are not debating with actual people, using real evidence and detailed arguments. You are yelling at strawmen, and when they do not yell back, you declare the brilliance of your argumentation and the clarity of your writing. But we do yell back, and if you want to be taken seriously, you are going to have to get off your soapbox, and step up the quality of your arguments.

-Jester

There are several things wrong with this post. The essay its difficult for YOU to swallow because I question American traditions and norms that few people would have the balls to question. But I don't suffer from blind patriotism, I call things as they are regardless of the response people will have. If people are to hate me for it, I say oh well. I should have mentioned in that paper that most Americans do not accept eccentric viewpoints very well. John Stuart Mill would have been proud.

Second, this isn't an argumentative paper, but more like an analytical paper. It is a paper discussing a particular theory of John Rawls and then applying it to various aspects of American society. I wrote about some of the issues and paradoxes of American politics and economics, and applied Rawls' theory in its actual context, then tied it all together with cultural/social aspects in our society. You are missing the point entirely. Im not trying to argue ANYTHING in this paper. I am merely using the context of Rawls' theory of "Justice As Fairness" to question and look at many entrenched propositions in our society from an alternative perspective. Whether you agree with that perspective or not is another matter. I'm simply putting it on the table. Also, I did very little quoting of Rawls' because that was part of the instructions for the assignment, quoting the theorist was to be kept to an absolute minimum.

As far as me smashing history up into bits, not really. When we were fighting for our independence from England, was the control they had over us not a form of terrorism? Sure the word didn't exist yet or at least wasn't applied in the context that we use it everyday today, but in the context of the situation I think it can be argued relatively easily. And it is well documented that England was an empire that seek to colonize the world (the reasons are irrelevant), and that was THEIR Manifest Destiny. Ours of course, would come later. How many nations are we in today, whether actively fighting or stationed there?? I've friggin lost count by now. Maybe you don't consider this imperialism, but I don't see why its difficult to argue that it is. We've been acting as the worlds police now and sticking our nose in everyones business for the better part of the last century, that is a fact, unless of course you've been living under a rock or another planet this whole time. US is without any doubt a global military empire, surely you are not that blind that I need explain this?

Yes, Brazil and South Africa are more unequal than America in terms of economic inequality, but my statement was referring to the advanced/industrialized democracies of the world (which I could have made more clear perhaps, but nevertheless), of which the US has some of the largest and most distinguished disparity in social class and income. Social darwinism coming before or after capitalism is irrelevant. The principles of capitalism is based on what the very meaning of social darwinism is -- survival of the fittest -- and you cannot sit here with a straight face and tell me that is not true. Well you can, but I will laugh at you and dismiss you as being too thickheaded to have any conventional wisdom as to being reasoned with. Proponents of social darwinism use it as a justification for the continuance of capitalism, and its probably a safe bet to say that at least some proponents of capitalism justify the existence of social darwinism in an economic context. I suppose it is possible to embrace capitalism and dislike social darwinism in other contexts, but in an economic context, the two go hand in hand.

Im aware the US has more than two political parties, I even stated it in my paper but you obviously missed the point I was making entirely. Which was that only two parties have any real or substantial political power (this is not even up for debate considering both parties have dominated politics for 150 years or so, also stated in my paper) to represent the will of 310 million+ people.