Quoting Arlo Bensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > [Platt] > In pursuing that moral goal, personal attacks should be shunned. > > [Arlo] > The underlying question is, when social level rhetoric is used to > assault intellectual patterns, is it immoral to finally combine > intellectual response with a counter social-level attack? Or, in > short, when one is assaulted with social-level anti-intellectualism > is a solely intellectual response adequate? My answer, is no. Or to > say it proverbially, one must fight fire with fire. > > The more aggressive social-level anti-intellectualism becomes, as in > the case of repeated distortions and misdirection of intellectual > responses and the repetition of socal-level assaults, one has to > couple the intellectual-level replies with a social-level > condemnation of the assault and rhetorical devices being used. And > those who continually rely on social-level anti-intellectual > rhetorical trickery, deception and distortion should not be surprised > when an intellectual response is finally coupled with a condemnation > of those tactics as "moronic". > > The Buddha may take the high road and meet such ongoing, despicable > assaults with non-response, but for mere humans one finally has call > a spade a spade. This may indeed be lowering oneself to the level of > those who wield such tactics in the first place, but in the face of > such anti-intellectualism there is little other recourse, I'm afraid.
Can you explain, with examples, the difference between intellectual level rhetoric and tactics and social level rhetoric and tactics? I hope it's not simply a matter of one's political views. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
