Tuesday, January 04, 2005

SUPERB ILLOGIC

As I have noted previously, I sometimes put up posts on a new blog called Majority Rights. I think the cause concerned is an important one. Why should minorities have rights -- including the right to celebrate their own culture -- when the politically-correct crowd are frantically trying to deny the same rights to the majority? They are even trying (often successfully) to deny us the right to mention Christmas, for goodness sake!

The blog concerned is however a group blog with a fair range of contributors and some are a bit nutty by most people's standards -- with the inevitable deep suspicion of Jews occasionally popping up. I am however one of the most pro-Israel bloggers there is so it is perfectly clear that I myself am not of that ilk. In fact, I am so outspoken on the matters concerned that I get a lot of flak in the comments section from the more paranoid types who read the blog.

So, knowing all that, note the following comment posted by Jason Soon:

Apparently there's a new blog on the block that calls itself Majority Rights. The Australian blogosphere's err. unique . John J. Ray is a contributor. While Dr Ray is undoubtedly an intelligent and erudite man, some of his opinions can be regarded as monomanical and eccentric. But his membership of this group blog which includes a genuine anti-semitic conspiracy theorist and people who just 'love their race' among its contributors really doesn't do wonders for his reputation, except insofar as one can say that he comes across as among the most reasonable and moderate of its regulars. And for his pains, in a relatively innocuous post arguing that Hispanics are not dumb, he gets excoriated by one of his readers (wintermute) as a 'far Left monstrosity' (an honour he apparently shares with our Queen). Needless to say, any blog whose readership regards Dr Ray as a 'far Left monstrosity' will be of great entertainment value to Catallaxy readers but I daren't say much else for it.


The post shows some attempt at balance but I posted a comment about Soon's use of the term "monomania". I said: ""Monomania" is a clinical term associated with paranoid psychosis. Don't you think some more moderate term might become you better...?"

Soon replied:

"As for monomania, call that poetic licence. Your obsession with associating leftism with nazism (a rhetorical ploy now undercut by your association with actual nazis) is a monomania though your means of expressing it may be outwardly coherent".


I replied:

I guess Galileo was a monomaniac too with his ridiculous idea that the earth revolved around the sun. In Galileo's case, you just had to look through his telescope. In my case you just have to read the historical documents. But both actions were/are "absurd" according to the contemporary wisdom. Galileo was still right, though. And his campaign to educate people in the facts WAS important.

You also seem to be overlooking the fact that I reduce the "Nazis" on the blog concerned to what is apparently teeth-grinding rage. I guess that by Jason Soon logic, if I oppose Communism, I must be a Communist.


The amazing thing is that Jason had himself noted how much the antisemitic commenters on the blog dislike my posts but he still seems to think that it discredits me to post stuff that enrages them! Jason Soon logic is definitely too deep for me to follow. I think it will be a long time before I read any more of his posts.

Jason was once a Gene Expression blogger so would have been seen by most people as pretty Rightist. In recent years, however, elitism seems to have lured him to the Left, with all the devotion to argument-by-abuse that is customary in such circles. I suppose quoting out of context will come next. Maybe as he gets older, however, he will re-establish contact with reality and logic.

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