Treason Trials All Around, My Children!
Jan 28, 05 | 7:59 am by John SabottaMr. Johnson’s article at Strike the Root, leaving aside the finer points of whether or not anyone can be charged with “treason” against anything, is more or less drivel from beginning to end. His happy idea of criminalizing policy disagreements would make elections more interesting though - from being “rehearsals for civil war” to actual civil war. Undoubtedly Mr. Johnson would extend his “treason” indictment to anyone who agreed with Bush publicly, wrote articles supporting him, ran political organizations and think tanks facilitating Bush’s treason, or anyone who just happened to vote for Bush. Treason trials all around, my children!
I also note that Mr. Johnson, in his other Strike The Root articles, is given to making assertions like:
“This cornerstone idea, that the Jewish religion through the Hebrew Bible should be used to control the sheep, is what motivates and holds together the Jewish and Christian neocons.”
Oh. Okay, Mr. Johnson! Those sneaky darn Jews! (And Christians too!)
“But threaded throughout this Hebrew Bible is a game plan for the Jews like Leo Strauss, the Kristols, Wolfowitz, ad nauseam, to take and keep the high ground in society and in world affairs.”
says our Mr. Johnson. I like how he can use foreign words like “ad nauseum” - very intellectual! More Johnson wisdom here.
So, does Strike the Root actually pay money for this contemptible shit?
January 28th, 2005 at Jan 28, 05 | 1:04 pm
Well, if you’re going to advocate violent takedown of one’s own government, you should at least get to have kangaroo trials at the end. I mean, what’s the fun of being a revolutionary if you don’t get to partake in an orgiastic bloodbath against your former tormentors (and anyone who ever said anything nice about them) at the end of the revolution. Being a market anarchist is so boring, what with it’s “peacefully coexisting” and “non-aggression.” Let’s just seize the reigns of power and award ourselves Godhead. It’s the civilised, righteous thing to do.
January 28th, 2005 at Jan 28, 05 | 1:51 pm
I’ve read the Bible plenty of times and studied it pretty closely in the past, and I can’t say I’ve ever found anything in there that would count as political strategy in a mature liberal democratic society in the 21st century. Was that in one of the in-between books they leave out of Protestant Bibles?
January 28th, 2005 at Jan 28, 05 | 2:18 pm
I see no evidence that Johnson has read Strauss.
January 28th, 2005 at Jan 28, 05 | 3:40 pm
“So, does Strike the Root actually pay money for this contemptible shit?”
I’m proud to say they have paid for my own contemptible shit. Don’t like it? Don’t read it. Most of what I see here are ad hominem attacks using vulgar language and reductio ad absurdium arguments, while a great deal of STR’s writers deliberately try to use actually valid arguments which are (gasp) derivable from their premisses (not a typo). I admire Rob, not just because he turned me into a paid, published author, but because he pays for and posts things he may not necessarily agree with. Basically, his only criteria are that no submission may advocate voting, government, or the Constitution. Good standards, in my book.
January 30th, 2005 at Jan 30, 05 | 11:26 pm
Yes, voting is so much worse than hating Jews. Great standards.
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 2:46 pm
“Yes, voting is so much worse than hating Jews. Great standards.”
Whoops! More logical fallacies. Let me look that one up in my Handbook of Fallacies and see… ah, here it is: a Boolean fallacy. Obviously, one must either unconditionally love Jews, or one is anti-Semitic (in inaccurate term in itself, but I use it for convenience). No criticism of Judaism is permissible, or the critic hates Jews. I notice an ad hominem thrown in for good measure. Wonderful how different types of bad reasoning work together, eh?
Sorry, try again. This time, let’s go with a valid argument, shall we?
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 2:58 pm
Treason trials?
This thread over at No Treason has been giving me a few chuckles. Apparently, this site is dedicated to showing that anarchists and libertarians are foul-mouthed tribalists incapable of using logical argument. Do you think these guys could be the…
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 3:43 pm
Well, Yancey, despite your claim to be a purveyor of logical arguments, you haven’t made any here–at least not any regarding Sabotta’s expressed opinion about Johnson’s writings.
And that’s relevent to what Johnson writes how? Oh, and I suspect that they’ve also paid for Lopez’s and Kennedy’s comtemptible shit, too.
That means we shouldn’t comment on any of the crap someone else writes, or does it just apply to the crap that you happen to like? May we comment on crap we find at, say, the democraticunderground? Besides, if you believed that, you wouldn’t have posted an entry about NT on STR today. After all, if you don’t like NT you don’t have to read it.
Does it matter what the premisses are, or is that irrelevant? After all, there’s a lot of good analysis out there starting from good ol’ fashioned marxist premisses.
If you want to contribute to this topic, you could state whether you agree that:
John Sabotta says this is “comptemptible shit.” You haven’t convinced me that he’s wrong, only that you don’t like his saying it… which is no argument at all.
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 4:57 pm
“That means we shouldn’t comment on any of the crap someone else writes, or does it just apply to the crap that you happen to like? May we comment on crap we find at, say, the democraticunderground? Besides, if you believed that, you wouldn’t have posted an entry about NT on STR today. After all, if you don’t like NT you don’t have to read it.”
Well, Stedman, I read NT for the (unintentional) hilarity. As far as commentary goes, I don’t recall saying that Lopez or anyone else shouldn’t say just any damn thing they want to–oh, wait, that’s a False Dichotomy (just because I said someone shouldn’t read what they don’t like doesn’t mean that I mean that, once someone reads something, they shouldn’t comment on it). Never mind.
“If you want to contribute to this topic, you could state whether you agree that:
‘This cornerstone idea, that the Jewish religion through the Hebrew Bible should be used to control the sheep, is what motivates and holds together the Jewish and Christian neocons.’
‘But threaded throughout this Hebrew Bible is a game plan for the Jews like Leo Strauss, the Kristols, Wolfowitz, ad nauseam, to take and keep the high ground in society and in world affairs.’
John Lopez says this is ‘comptemptible shit.’ You haven’t convinced me that he’s wrong, only that you don’t like his saying it, which is no argument at all.”
Thank you, Stedman, for your gracious permission to contribute to this topic if I address what you think I should. I will state for the record, then, that, yes, I do believe that, throughout history, religion has been used as a tool of control by an oligarchy to quell the potential of the masses to actually start thinking about what the oligarchy is up to, and Israel and her apologists are no different, and that this conviction of religious rightness is a common thread between so-called fundamentalist Christians like Bush and his fellow-travellers who happen to be Jews. I do not believe all Jews to be evil Zionist conspirators bent on world domination, but I know a group of politicians using deeply-held beliefs as a propaganda whip when I see it. After all, the mullahs have been doing it for years. Now, one could criticize Johnson’s style, and one could even prove by, say, pictures of the man in a Nazi uniform standing in front of a burning cross, that he is a Jew-hater, but does that alone refute his argument? Sorry, that’s Poisoning the Well (just because a Nazi says communism is bad doesn’t make communism good).
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 9:49 pm
Actually, I went back and checked, and John Sabotta said that it was contemptible shit, not Lopez. My apologies for any confusion.
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 10:21 pm
Yancey:
Most people understand “Don’t like it? Don’t read it.” to mean “Shut up about it.” That’s the common usage. The literal interpretation you’re suddenly insisting on is nonsensical–how does he know whether he likes it until he reads it?
You’re welcome. As for NT’s unintentional hilarity: Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
January 31st, 2005 at Jan 31, 05 | 10:35 pm
I note that Partick Yancey claims that NT doesn’t make “true anarchists” “look good”. Now, I don’t want this to come across harsh or anything:
Yancey, I don’t give a runny shit what you think I come across like to anyone in particular. Got that?
I’ll tell you what, though: you tell me exactly what in Sabotta’s post qualifies as an “ad hominem attack” and exactly what is wrong with “reductio ad absurdium arguments” and I’ll start to take you seriously.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 1:11 am
I don’t recall anyone in this thread attempting to refute his “argument.” I don’t waste my time at LibertyForum refuting the tinfoil hat conspiracies about the evil jooos, either. I just call ‘em for what they are.
Of course, Johnson isn’t calling organized religion in general the opiate of the masses; rather, he is saying this about Judaism in particular. And he makes similar claims about Jews in many of his articles. If you don’t know why the claim that “the Jews and their gentile lackeys are trying to take over the world” is so offensive, I doubt I’d be able to explain it to you. Go read a history book or something.
To reiterate, the question is not, “Do Jews deserve our hatred?” Rather, it is, “Is this an example of Jew-hatred and hatred of Judaism?” Clearly it is, and disproportionately so. Using the “But I hate other religious too!” excuse doesn’t quite cut it, since he’s not making an argument about religion in general, but about Jews and Judaism in particular.
And to reiterate the logical validity of my earlier point, hating Jews is fine and dandy for STR’s standards, but advocating voting is off-limits. Got it.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 5:30 am
Ghertner: I don’t recall anyone in this thread attempting to refute his “argument.”
Pay attention now, Yancey, because this is important:
The most murderous ideology in recorded history is explicitly athiestic.
So folks chattering and foaming on about “Jews” and “organized religion” are, in the most charitable interpretation possible, missing the point entirely.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 5:40 am
True, Lopez, but apart from Christian conservatives, I don’t think very many people take seriously the argument that communism was so murderous because it was explicitly athiestic. I have no doubt that the consequences would have been the same if not worse if communism in practice had incorporated elements of Christian socialism.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 9:45 am
Lopez is exactly right to point out:
But I’m not so sure about the major premise:
It’s true that Marxist-Leninism has a truly monstrous record, and that it alone is a good enough reason to stop laying exclusive focus on “organized religion” (or, worse, da Jooz–not that this will stop the mouth-foamers, since they have always considered Bolshevism to be one of the leading arms of ZOG perfidy).
It’s not clear, though, that the top body count goes to Bolshevism. That … honor … may actually go to militant Christianity after all: it’s easy to forget that the French Wars of Religion claimed about 2,000,000-4,000,000 lives, the Thirty Years War about 11,500,000, not to mention the millions or hundreds of thousands committed to the fire variously by the Crusades in the East, the special crusade against the Albigensians, the Reconquista, the central European witch hunts, the Inquisition, the English Civil War, the pogroms in the Ukraine and Poland, etc. Bolshevism has piled up a truly ghastly pile of bodies, but late medieval and early modern militant Christianity had a longer time in which to work and killed greater or comparable absolute numbers of people in a substantially smaller population.
People who rant about the monolithic evil of “organized religion” are wrong. But it is, in the end, not hard to see that there are some rather ghastly facts at the center of their delusions.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 9:48 am
Über-rationalist Yancey:
Ahem. How, exactly, does someone advocate a trial for treason–a federal crime defined, in the U.S., in the Constitution–without advocating either government or the Constitution? What else would it be treason against?
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 10:59 am
Ghertner,
I’m not making that argument. My point is that evil doesn’t coalesce neatly into “religion be bad”, or the even-worse “Jews be bad”.
Rad Geek,
If this is any guide, the Communists are well ahead in the slaughter stats.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 12:02 pm
Ghertner:
Actually, I’m not sure that this last is true. Christian socialism, in Russia (e.g., Tolstoy) and elsewhere has traditionally been either (a) some mild form of social democracy, or (b) utopian, anarchistic, and pacifist. There are plenty of reasons to think that widespread adoption of a Christian socialist programme would have caused plenty of problems, but little reason to think that it would have collapsed into the sort of bloodbath that centralist and bloodlusting Marxist-Leninism did.
Of course, this isn’t any kind of argument against atheism, or any kind of argument that the Bolsheviks slaughtered as many as they did because they were doctrinaire atheists.
P.S.: the word is a-t-h-e-i-s-m, folks. As in the opposite of theism, derived from the(os) + ism.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 3:43 pm
“I note that Partick Yancey claims that NT doesn’t make ‘true anarchists’ ‘look good’. Now, I don’t want this to come across harsh or anything:
Yancey, I don’t give a runny shit what you think I come across like to anyone in particular. Got that?”
My point exactly.
“I’ll tell you what, though: you tell me exactly what in Sabotta’s post qualifies as an ‘ad hominem attack’ and exactly what is wrong with ‘reductio ad absurdium arguments’ and I’ll start to take you seriously.”
Let’s see, how about equating legitimate criticism of the religious justifications used by a particular political group to support its policies with anti-Semitism? I’d call that an ad hominem attack. Rather than refuting the argument presented, just call the guy a Jew-hater and be done with it. Don’t have to bother refuting it, as others have so eloquently stated, since it is so obvious it doesn’t bear discussion? I love the old Assumption of Common Knowledge fallacy. It prevents so much time-wasting over at LibertyForum. Or is that redundant? Oh, and what is wrong with reductio ad absurdum (typo before, sorry) is that the absurdity must follow from the premisses, something not always proven in these parts. Reductio arguments are, indeed, useful, especially in math, but in discourse they can be tricky.
Oh, and I don’t care if you take me seriously. I wouldn’t reciprocate.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 3:57 pm
“Über-rationalist Yancey:
‘Basically, his only criteria are that no submission may advocate voting, government, or the Constitution. Good standards, in my book.’
Ahem. How, exactly, does someone advocate a trial for treasonâ??a federal crime defined, in the U.S., in the Constitution’ without advocating either government or the Constitution? What else would it be treason against?”
Thank you, Rad Geek, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever called me (and I know the rest of you can well believe it).
To address your concern, I think what you, and everyone else from the first post on, have been missing is that Johnson’s article is laden with irony. Johnson does not seriously (key word: seriously) believe or contend that Bush should or will be charged with treason. It is just a literary device for pointing out bad policy decisions and their effects. He is saying to Bush and company: “Look, you boobs, at how your benighted ideas, far from destroying the enemy (whoever they may be), are actually helping them recruit and gather support.” This refusal to see the intent of the column but to attack its method is the classic Straw Man, one of my very favorites.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 4:01 pm
“‘Thank you, Stedman, for your gracious permission to contribute to this topic if I address what you think I should.’
You’re welcome. As for NT’s unintentional hilarity: Don’t like it? Don’t read it.”
But I do like it. It’s funny. I just said so. So I guess that means that I don’t have to shut up about it. Yay!
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 4:09 pm
“Pay attention now, Yancey, because this is important:
The most murderous ideology in recorded history is explicitly athiestic.”
Never said it wasn’t. Communism bad, bad, bad. Fascism bad, bad, bad. Socialism bad, bad, bad. Democracy bad, bad, bad. No government good. Did I get the point?
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 6:24 pm
Yancey: “Let’s see, how about equating legitimate criticism of the religious justifications used by a particular political group to support its policies with anti-Semitism? I’d call that an ad hominem attack.“
Um no, it’d be ad hominem if Sabotta were to say “Jackson’s a Jew-hater, and thus his unrelated arguments are wrong”.
“I love the old Assumption of Common Knowledge fallacy.“
Translation: you can always hide behind the claim that you’re as ignorant as the day is long. Ought I assume that you have to be hand-held and spoon-fed your way from a blank slate to something that resembles a reasonably functioning human being, or are you willing to stipulate that there is indeed such a thing as common knowledge?
“Oh, and what is wrong with reductio ad absurdum (typo before, sorry) is that the absurdity must follow from the premisses, something not always proven in these parts.“
Please explain how outright civil war isn’t the logical consequence of handing out treason trials like candy.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 7:18 pm
“Um no, it’d be ad hominem if Sabotta were to say ‘Jackson’s a Jew-hater, and thus his unrelated arguments are wrong.’”
Example of Ad Hominem
Bill: “I believe that abortion is morally wrong.”
Dave: “Of course you would say that, you’re a priest.”
Bill: “What about the arguments I gave to support my position?”
Dave: “Those don’t count. Like I said, you’re a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can’t believe what you say.”
http://www.ramdac.org/fallacies.php?fallacy=Ad%20Hominem
Now, is the fact that Bill is a priest unrelated to the stance he takes on abortion? No, since the Catholic church opposes abortion and Bill has sworn to uphold Catholic doctrine no matter what. Does that negate the validity or soundness of his other arguments against abortion? Of course not.
“‘I love the old Assumption of Common Knowledge fallacy.’
Translation: you can always hide behind the claim that youâ??re as ignorant as the day is long. Ought I assume that you have to be hand-held and spoon-fed your way from a blank slate to something that resembles a reasonably functioning human being, or are you willing to stipulate that there is indeed such a thing as common knowledge?”
You *are* good! A Straw Man and an Ad Hominem at the very same time! I never said there wasn’t such a thing as “common knowledge,” I just said the *assumption* of it was a fallacy. Others agree with me.
Link [Folks, long URLs fuck up the blog layout and are ugly besides. Learn to code them or use tinyurl JL]
Scroll down to No.6.
February 1st, 2005 at Feb 01, 05 | 9:00 pm
Yancey: “Example of Ad Hominem“
From your cite:
So according to your own definition, you need to show that Sabotta is rejecting Jackson’s argument on the basis of some irrelevant fact. He isn’t doing that, he’s just calling it nonsense. Now, you could make him look foolish indeed by simply pointing out that this:
…has something behind it.
“I just said the *assumption* of it was a fallacy.“
How can it be “common” if it can’t be “assumed”?
“Scroll down to No.6.“
And “Pre-Pubertal Learning” is relevant how? I can assure you that I judged Jackson’s piece to be nonsense well after puberty.
February 2nd, 2005 at Feb 02, 05 | 7:49 pm
Yancey: “To address your concern, I think what you, and everyone else from the first post on, have been missing is that Johnsonâ??s article is laden with irony. Johnson does not seriously (key word: seriously) believe or contend that Bush should or will be charged with treason. It is just a literary device for pointing out bad policy decisions and their effects.“
Johnson states here:
That’s clearly an endorsement of folks following their oaths to the Constitution. It’s the only alternative he offers. He isn’t saying “do the right thing”, he’s saying “do the Constitutional thing”.
Here, Johnson says:
That’s an anti-voting piece, and he’s obviously presenting the Constitution as something to be defended. Nobody who thinks about the matter cares what form of government the US was “meant” to have”, since beating the shit out of niggers was “meant” to be perfectly bloody fine as well. It’s obvious as the nose on your face that neither republican government nor slavery is at all moral.
Another subtle piece from Johnson’s own website titled “CHRISTIAN COALITION UNLEASHES NEW ATTACK ON U.S. CONSTITUTION!
I think that last quote stands on it’s own ringing idiocy.
To sum up, Yancey, I judge you’re completely off base - Johnson is quite plainly a defender of the Constitution of the United States of America. Charging Bush with treason isn’t a literary device, it’s consistent with his previously-expressed beliefs. I don’t think that you have any basis at all for your claim, I think that you’re trying to construct a defense for the column in question out of thin air.