06-18-2011, 03:56 PM
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
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