It's smart that you're watching the replays and copying your opponent's build order. It's a shame you aren't actually running the Democratic campaign, because that's how you win.
But that doesn't mean you copy every stupid-ass tactic he uses; just the part that beat you. Study the effective lies and self-defining pejoratives, but don't envy them. Counter mustard gas with gas masks, not with sarin. Get into an arms race of lies and you risk helping your party by harming democracy itself.
Firm moral statements, good. Torture is wrong, period. You have a good point that the best argument to use may be to ignore any buts and leave the edict to hang in the air. Torture is wrong.
There's nothing inherently wrong with imposing morality, as long as you don't try to legislate taste. Once you take aesthetics out of morality you have ethics. Codify ethics and impose them on everyone and what you end up with is law. Just about everybody supports some form of law. Angsting about how we'll be filthy bigots if we impose our ideas of right and wrong on anyone else is foolish relativism; as destructive in its way as the evangelical and straussian absolutism.
Be careful when talking about 'what we need to do'. You are neither the average Democratic voter, nor the power behind the Democratic throne. The Democrats are a seperate and distinct group with whom you have interests in common. You're a weird and disorganised sub-group, as alien to the average democrat as they might be to the average republican, and you will be working toward your own goals in parallel with the Democratic party.
Since we don't actually have a political power base, Monde's idea of talking to Republicans is probably the most productive. However, I'm concerned that the sort of Republican and swing voters who most need to be talked to won't be hanging around online. The internet is inherently new-fangled and cosmopolitan.
Therefore we must, of course, build a swarm of flying, talking remote-controlled cameras to descend upon the Heartland like locusts. Er.
* Although if they did, Ashcroft would happily implement it.
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But that doesn't mean you copy every stupid-ass tactic he uses; just the part that beat you. Study the effective lies and self-defining pejoratives, but don't envy them. Counter mustard gas with gas masks, not with sarin. Get into an arms race of lies and you risk helping your party by harming democracy itself.
Firm moral statements, good. Torture is wrong, period. You have a good point that the best argument to use may be to ignore any buts and leave the edict to hang in the air. Torture is wrong.
There's nothing inherently wrong with imposing morality, as long as you don't try to legislate taste. Once you take aesthetics out of morality you have ethics. Codify ethics and impose them on everyone and what you end up with is law. Just about everybody supports some form of law. Angsting about how we'll be filthy bigots if we impose our ideas of right and wrong on anyone else is foolish relativism; as destructive in its way as the evangelical and straussian absolutism.
Be careful when talking about 'what we need to do'. You are neither the average Democratic voter, nor the power behind the Democratic throne. The Democrats are a seperate and distinct group with whom you have interests in common. You're a weird and disorganised sub-group, as alien to the average democrat as they might be to the average republican, and you will be working toward your own goals in parallel with the Democratic party.
Since we don't actually have a political power base, Monde's idea of talking to Republicans is probably the most productive. However, I'm concerned that the sort of Republican and swing voters who most need to be talked to won't be hanging around online. The internet is inherently new-fangled and cosmopolitan.
Therefore we must, of course, build a swarm of flying, talking remote-controlled cameras to descend upon the Heartland like locusts. Er.
* Although if they did, Ashcroft would happily implement it.