Stardate 20020623.1951

(On Screen): Far too many of those who oppose the war come from a culture (one might say a cultural fungus if one was cruel) growing out of certain university environments. In that environment of enforced sensitivity, it is considered somewhere between rude and criminal to actually disagree with anyone else, or to try to get them to defend or justify their opinions. The orthodoxy is that all opinions are equally valid, and the mere fact that someone holds an opinion grants it credibility. Within this orthodoxy, the greatest sin is to say, "I'm right and you're wrong."

The theory is that this inspires diversity by freeing people to explore alternatives without the coercion of peer-pressure to conform, but the practice is that it inspires sloppy thinking (and a non-trivial amount of conformance anyway). When you defend what you believe against the arguments of someone who disagrees, it forces you to truly understand why you believe it, since you have to try to explain it to someone else in a convincing fashion. That's straight out of John Stuart Mill, one of the two historic figures that I have studied that I most respect.

In the early weeks following the September attack, I kept running into this attitude. People would make what I considered truly outrageous comments in a group-participation forum I used to participate in (before I got fed up), and whenever I called them on it and tried to get them to explain how they could believe such things, I would get called names. Indeed, to these minds, being asked to defend their beliefs was a form of persecution, a form of censorship. They saw themselves as being victims of a police state. That was a radically different point of view from how I saw it, but perhaps that's because I understand the power of the marketplace of ideas, and because I have read Mill and found his arguments utterly persuasive.

I finally reached the point where I issued a formal challenge for a debate. No-one took me up on it.

The anti-war rhetoric all along has, in fact, mostly been intellectually empty. Depending on the voice, it's either been sanctimony or hallucination or hand-wringing or hysteria or snide nitpicking or empty assertion of a priori beliefs or reference to authority, but what's been conspicuously absent has been any attempt at actually making a cogent argument against the political path our nation is following, or that our allies are following.

So I'm pleased to discover an antiwar voice who seems to actually understand how to make a compelling argument for his point of view. The pseudonym is a reference to a book by Orson Scott Card. It is regrettable that he is not sufficiently secure in his point of view to reveal his true identity, but that's as may be. His writing is articulate and his arguments well constructed, and they are susceptible to honest evaluation and criticism, because they are notably absent in a priori assertions.

Which is not to say that I fully agree with Demosthenes; I do not. However, he has for now mostly been taking on some of the more raving, foaming-at-the-mouth writings out there and indeed much of Demosthenes' criticism of them has been valid. Some of the writings about our enemies, or about those who oppose Israel, has approached the point of bigotry, and when that happens it's a disservice not only to those enemies but also to ourselves, for it clouds our thinking. When you start thinking in stereotypes you tend to think in channels; and the use of clever nicknames has a tendency to substitute for critical thought. That's part of why I largely try to avoid such things, which is why you don't see newspeak words like "Islamofascist" on this page.

Demosthenes also rightly criticizes the tendency of some to announce, "Fuck it! I hate 'em all! Nuke 'em and let Allah sort 'em out." There may well come a time when that kind of violence and slaughter becomes necessary, but not for that reason. Voices saying that kind of thing have ceased to cogitate and have given in to their hatred. Again, that serves no-one well.

The most refreshing aspect of Demosthenes writing is that unlike so many amongst the anti-war left, he doesn't simply say that he hates the path we're currently following. The most notable and impressive thing about Demosthenes is that he actually says what he thinks should happen instead, and tries to explain why.

We have, for example, this rather long piece which begins as a response to a brief comment Glenn Reynolds made. Demosthenes tries to explain why it is that the Palestinians are so ferocious by citing a series of horror stories about how awful things have been for them.

Unfortunately, there's a logic gap here, because all the stories cited take place after the Intifada began, and describe how the Israelis behaved (often quite brutally) in response to the Palestinian decision to begin making suicide attacks against Israel. As a result, none of these can be used to explain why the Intifada began in the first place. On the contrary, what these things show is just how much grief the Palestinians (or their leaders) have brought down on themselves through the decision to begin the latest part of this war. Demosthenes has cause and effect reversed.

Demosthenes also does a certain amount of projection: