Just because your Position is Right doesn't mean your Argument is Correct
Just because a position on an issue is right does not mean that all arguments favoring that position are correct.
For a cult, there is utility in exclusion via nonsense arguments. If you are not an non-critical thinker the creationists don't want you anyway. You will just be making trouble all the time. Acceptance of nonsensical arguments becomes a test of faith. Only somebody completely dedicated to the cause could rationalize believing such nonsense.
But if one hopes to ever persuade anyone the correct positions mean nothing and correct arguments mean everything. Preaching to the choir is merely a harmless pastime. But preaching a sermon that only the choir would accept to people outside the choir is down-right counter-productive.
Few people are persuadable on most hot topics, but for the few who may be, "my position is right" is an insufficient argument.
I suspect that after the last few days some people here think I am a gun-nut, and others think I favor mass confiscation of guns. It depends which posts one reads.
Some of the arguments on both sides are just hopeless and I find myself fighting with both sides.
(For the record, I am as much in favor of gun control as a person can be while being a staunch Civil Libertarian. I am both, and that means a lack of simple answers. I do not expect to ever own a gun but I know that my personal preferences are not an argument. There are arguments for gun control, but they are not simplistic. For me the tipping point is that proliferation of guns has, on balance, reduced our basic freedoms, so the liberty aspect loses most of its argumentative power.)
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A demand for uncritical orthodoxy and a display of virulent hatred and contempt for those who have not accepted the orthodoxy is a hallmark of so-called conservatives.
Are there only two sides to the "gun control" issue? One that can be reasonably debated by liberals and progressives according to the merits. Maybe there is a third side. One involving Karl Rove and some of his minions. He already announced his strategy to divide Democrats, and separate independents from Democrats, by posting on web sites. (As earlier posted on DU, Watch out for Karl Rove and his trolls http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002973944)
He also knows that in the 1994 election when the political advocacy for "gun control" was at its height, and when "gun control" was a wedge issue, a sufficient number of Republicans won to shift a 40-year control over the House to the Republicans. Even Bill Clinton publicly stated his view that advocating for gun control cost the 1994 election.
But here we are, once again, with some DU posters (and apparently some DU posers) engaging in hateful name calling and reviving the 1994 issue over "gun control." For Karl Rove and the Karl-Rove types, it's not a real issue. It is a wedge issue.
There are millions of voters who own firearms, including gun-owning Democratic DU posters, other gun-owning Democrats, and gun-owning independents. What are the odds that reviving the 1994 issue and hatefully calling gun owners "gun nuts" (and posting such things as "Fuck the NRA"
is going to cause them to change their minds?
A distinguishing characteristic between so called "conservatives" and liberals or progressives is that the so called "conservatives" are authoritarians who demand lock-step thinking. They don't want actual thinking. They want orthodoxy. They demand it. For them, the actual thinking process and principles to be applied are less important than the orthodoxy. There's no doubt that Karl-Rove minions with their demands for lock-step thinking can be found on DU.
If anyone can think of a better wedge issue to divide Democrats, and also alienate gun-owning independents, what is it?
