Pangloss

That's an example of calling-PCness-a-straw-man in itself becoming a straw man. Whether the "Christmas Controversy" is an example of "government honoring the establishment clause" or an example of "lefty behavior" is a matter of personal opinion, and valid either way.

This sounds vaguely familiar. Are you thinking of Steven Hatfill, by any chance?

Oh my god, soldiers died because of FISA! Can there be no end to this left-wing madness?! The Post can be pretty ridiculous sometimes (always?).

I agree with Sisyphus. Which still, I think, allows criticism and accountability for doing their jobs. Obviously nobody wants judges goofing off and playing golf when they're supposed to be sitting on the bench trying cases, but of course it also extends deeper than that -- bribery, favoritism, ideological partisanship, etc. To me what it boils down to is that I trust the judicial process more than I trust ABC News, Fox News, or any news.

In thinking about this some more, working out various arguments in my head, I think I have to agree with the suggestion of the original post (when fully considered with its caveats). Much of the time it's used as a poor excuse for an argument. But there are other aspects of this that have to be considered. In addition to the majority/minority problem I mentioned before, I think people also need to understand that while Political Correctness is a tool of the far right, criticism OF it is a tool of the far left. For every Rush Limbaugh running around screaming about Christmas, there's an Al Franken running around screaming about right-wingers swinging the "PC" bat. It's every bit as wrong for Al Franken to dismiss conservative concerns as "anti-political correctness" as it is for Rush Limbaugh to dismiss liberal concerns as "political correctness". But is it always a straw man? Let's take a look at a couple of specifics. Usually the term straw man means to misrepresent someone else's argument. I can see how someone might construe this as a straw man because the school board presumably had what they considered to be valid reasons for these actions. But doesn't this person have a right to their opinion that the school board's actions are wrong for the community? And more importantly, don't they ALSO have the right to the opinion that the aggregate collection of school board decisions indicates a general trend in a direction they don't like? Isn't that all their trying to sum up with the above statement? Where I think the straw man argument comes into play is when somebody actually tries to use the PC argument in debate. For example: That's obviously a straw man, because it clearly and succinctly misrepresents Person A's argument.

Depends on if you're in the majority in a given community. If you are, and someone who disagrees with the community uses the term "politically correct", then you see it as a fallacious straw man. Makes for easy ammunition, too.

Well like I said I was hoping for something a little more informative than what my mostly-random Googlings were giving me. But I do appreciate the reply. At any rate I played around with some more keywords and eventually something caused me to think to use the word "stabilization" (I think one of the articles I read that mentioned it briefly). That lead to this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilization_Wedge_Game This appears to be what I was looking for. Socolow is mentioned by Gore fairly often and one of his papers came up in my earlier searches (which is probably where I thought of using that other keyword), so I probably should have found this sooner. Oh well. Anyway the general idea of this is pretty interesting. The idea seems to be that if we look at forecasted carbon emissions growth, it's a climbing line on the graph, which ideally you would like to see become a downward-trending line. What these guys did was mark off the space formed between that rising line and a FLAT line and point out that achieving that goal can be accomplished by any number of means. They then divided the apparent wedge into 7 smaller wedges, each accounting for around a billion tons of carbon emissions per year (i.e. cut out 7 billion tons of carbon emissions per year and you've achieved zero growth -- a good start). They went on to identify 13 or 14 areas that each account for a 1-billion-ton reduction in emissions. Any combination 7 of those could be used to accomplish the immediate goal. They developed this into a game, in which players combine various identified wedges, playing off the various pros and cons. A full description of the game in PDF format from Princeton University can be found at the URL below. It includes a full description of each wedge and what it means, and handy cut-outs for use in a classroom. http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/resources/CMI_Resources_new_files/CMI_Wedge_Game_Jan_2007.pdf

I guess my opinion on it would be the same. They're prize-award announcers, not accuracy validators. Just because I think the award suffers from political taint doesn't mean I think the IPCC is wrong. I'd expand on this further, but a representative of the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Committee is at my door, waiting to validate my years of contribution to the world.

I agree with all of those statements.

I realize this wasn't in reply to me but I think I kinda started this disagreement and it seems to me that I perhaps owe everyone another response. No, it's not at all impossible to conceive how a liberal/Democrats American politician might deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Not in the slightest. As for whether everything must be about American politics, I don't think anyone has suggested that everything is. I don't even think that this is about American politics. I think this is about international politics on the issue of valid versus invalid American behavior in international affairs, such as global climate change and the war in Iraq. In my opinion the Nobel Committee decided to weigh in on those issues by awarding this medal in the manner that it has. It's possible that I have that opinion because of what I generally refer to as my slight conservative bias (which I'm sure some view as not-so-slight, but I don't mind people thinking that and I don't assume that they do). It's also possible that I have that opinion because I focus too much on political angles to stories and not enough on the deeper purposes that organizations like the Nobel Committee are likely to have. It's also possible that I'm right. I realize that's not a popular point of view and I'm not winning any points here with that opinion. I respect the opinions of a number of people posted here that I disagree with, such as swansont, yourself, iNow and others. Hey, maybe I'm wrong -- I always keep an open mind about these things. But that's how it seems to me and I haven't seen a shred of evidence proving the contrary. I've seen a lot of circumstancial validation of their proclaimed non-partisanship, but that doesn't prove anything, and I've already acknowledged the validity other points of view. Nothing irks ME more than unsubstantiated claims, so I can understand why people are irked with me over this. I also realize you can't prove a negative. But it's just my opinion. What can I say. I'm sorry if I've annoyed anyone in this thread. What will ultimately decide the issue for me is probably reading biographies and histories many years from now. It's been my experience that the fullness of time and the academic process have a way of exposing truth that cannot be seen when the issue is at the forefront.

China is a real concern. They're a much worse situation than dealing with American lack of concern for the environment, because unlike the US, where you always have that chance to win hearts and minds, China is institutionally uninterested and defensive about its internal policies and practices. Ironically, one of the biggest international sufferers of Chinese air pollution policy is the United States, being the first major country across the pacific in line to deal with their high-altitude atmospheric output.

Sure that's why they HAD slaves, but security (i.e. slave revolt) was an important issue and factored into every single slavery-related debate of the day. Franklin was surely aware of that when he made the statement about freedom and security, as he was one of the most prominent abolitionists of his time. Not to mention an extremely intelligent and insightful guy, and of course witty as all heck. Which of course is why we quote him. (grin) So it's pretty much impossible to conjecture that he wouldn't have considered this angle. But I'm really just guessing about this, having only read two or three Franklin biographies and none of them recently -- I don't recall any of them mentioning this quote in that context, so this is entirely my conjecture. If you have something that suggests the contrary I'm all ears. I'm not criticizing your point of view at all, by the way. If anything you've given me something new to ponder (about Franklin), which I always appreciate. Well we could haggle about the course of the debate, but this would seem to support my point that they saw the value of compromise to freedom for the sake of security. I'm glad we agree.

Is our judiciary under seige, or is the extra attention warranted? That's the question I hope to focus on with this thread. Bill O'Reilly does this quite often on the subject of child pedophiles, sending Fox News reporters to challenge judges in their own driveways when they let pedophiles go with sentences he feels are too lenient. But it's not just him! I just watched an ABC News report exposing Texas judge Sharon Keller for closing her courthouse at 5pm rather than let it stay open a few minutes longer to hear a potential appeal on a Death Row inmate who was then executed shortly thereafter. ABC showed the judges photograph and even stationed a camera outside her home and showed her getting into her car. (Here's the print version.) Isn't this just another form of ideological outrage? Are Bill O'Reilly and ABC News just looking out for you and me, or are they really demanding societal change on their respective pet issues? Sure, you can hammer Bill O'Reilly for chasing a conservative cause with the pedophilia thing, but if you say that then don't you also have to level the same charge at ABC News? I haven't seen any personal telephone numbers or addresses in flashing lights or anything like that. But I can't help but wonder what adverse affect this might have on the process of judicial reasoning. I'm worried that smart people won't want to become judges anymore if they're constantly inundated by extremism. I do think shining a light on the judiciary is generally a good thing, especially since many of them are elected without a whit of attention by the voting public. But I think we need to work out limits. This is not a democracy, and the judiciary and its value and functionality needs to be understood by the critical public BEFORE it levels its criticism. People need to understand that they're there to enforce the law, not respond to popular pressure. I also feel that wayward judges, those who do step over the lines and make mistakes, have to be held accountable. But I think the judicial self-regulatory process is actually pretty darn sound. It's inherently objective and self-introspective, and seems to produce the correct result most of the time. What do you all think?

Ok, maybe my Google skills just suck, but I can't seem to bring this up. I saw it in a news story last week and it blasted itself back into my skull when I woke up this morning in a strange, Dok Gonzo-like episode. (Ok, don't draw any funny ideas about Pangloss' lifestyle from that.....) Anyway, I was just wondering if someone could tell me more about this. I believe the idea is that scientists (?) have come up with 14 or 15 singular instances of things that can be done to flatten carbon emissions down to zero growth. I think each of them represents a billion tons (tonnes?) per year of carbon emission. If I remember right, only seven have to be completed in order to accomplish the goal. Each one represents a "wedge" in the arc of the growth line, and if removed would flatten the curve. I think one was nuclear and another was wind power, but to what degree I don't recall -- that's what I was interested in learning more about. Any assistance in terms of papers/articles would be appreciated. (Edit: Was this something from Al Gore's movie? I still haven't watched that.)

I think the actual statistic IS "most" -- like 80%. I.E. 80% of the voting population will pull the "Democrat" or "Republican" lever just like they did last time, regardless of the issues or the candidates. That's a commonly held and widely repeated statistic, but mind you I've never seen a report or study that actually shows where that number came from, so take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure the actual number varies, because it's a big country and people certainly change their minds from time to time. There are also trends based on age, which this statistic doesn't seem to account for, like the old addage about how the difference between a liberal and a conservative is whether or not they have children. (Nonsense, of course, but certainly not unheard-of. Obviously there are trends and issues that push people the other way as well, like Iraq or the influence of Hollywood and the media.) My personal opinion is that in general all the debate IS over just a very small percentage of the population that's actually willing to reconsider its normal ideology, and choose carefully by issues and candidates. One statistic that I use to illustrate this point (though I admit that my sample is poor!) is that out of all the people I know outside of cyberspace, I am THE ONLY ONE who has ever crossed party lines. I voted for Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, and I've voted as many times for Democrats as I have for Republicans. I don't know anybody else who can make anything LIKE that claim. I know a few people who typically vote one party who SAY they sometimes vote for someone in the other party, but they can almost never back it up with a name. Almost everyone I know votes either Republican or Democrat. Always. They'll even stand there and agree with you about the stupidity of doing so, and then go right back to the poll and do it again.

You know what I think might be an interesting addition to this discussion is to explore a bit of why religious people sometimes feel that there IS such a war. Bear in mind that we've seen one aspect of that war, if it exists, right here on these boards, in the way religious scientists face criticism from atheists for their point of view. (A point of view which, by the way, is quite common, and perhaps even represents the majority! Are they all deluded and mislead? Even the ones with MDs and PhDs?)

Well, and of course they didn't think of a few, like yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater. But whether they're the same or different is a subjective judgement. For example, the slave owners of the Southern states would have been behind that statement 100%! Of course, Northern abolitionists would have viewed that statement exactly the opposite way -- that the South had removed the slaves' right to freedom in exchange for the owners' security. Like I said, a matter of perspective. Don't get me wrong, I think Franklin's statement is a valuable insight and a guiding light of wisdom from the past. But clearly either he or his fellow founding fathers didn't view it as an absolute then, and neither should we today. I think if the founding fathers were alive today they would be as split over the issue of national security in the war on terror as we are. Airport security, recording of international phone calls, border security, all these things have valid points on BOTH sides. That's what makes them difficult issues to resolve.

Which of course was no more valid then than it is today, since the Constitution is all about compromise of various freedoms for various securities.

That was a joke, iNow. I'm sorry you don't like my opinion but I'm not going to be heckled for it. If the Nobel committee's word that they're non-partisan is good enough for you, well hey, more power to you. I don't publically smirk and rib Phi for All or YT when you say something I don't like. MoveOn already! (Yeah, that was another joke, just meant in respectful good humor. If you want to make one comparing me to Rush Limbaugh I promise I won't be offended!)

Awesome, now he can wear his ideology around his neck as well as on his sleeve!

We've actually talked about this here before, and some of the most interesting comments have come from ostensibly liberal members who feel that classical liberalism has been supplanted (to some extent, depending on who is posting) by progressivism and political correctness. I think that's a long way from a "war on religion", but there are aspects of progressivism that are clearly at odds with religion, just as the opposite is true. That's why I think (my opinion here) that people need to learn how to recognize partisanship and ideological intolerance and REJECT IT, whether it comes from the right OR the left. It's ALWAYS bad. That's not to say that Richard Dawkins doesn't have some really important and interesting points, or that Rush Limbaugh can't shine a light on a significant problem. (Ok maybe not Rush -- perhaps Bill O'Reilly might be a better example.) Partisanship is a personal choice and partisans have opinions and votes just like anybody else. Partisanship can even be argued to help society (something I learned here at SFN), at least in the sense that it points out the places you don't want society, as a whole, to go. But ultimately people need to realize that partisanship doesn't move society forward. Compromise is NOT a bad word, and finding middle ground can move society forward. (Isn't it interesting that that's what "progressive" actually means -- gradual, forward progress, but the progressive movement actually preaches intolerance and refusal to compromise? Not that the radical right is any better, mind you, but I think it's interesting. One of my favorite examples of misnamed right-wing groups is the "moral majority", which was clearly neither!)

That isn't my opinion, and it isn't necessary for you to demonize me -- we simply disagree on the issue. Sure I can. Just as you do.

Last year's award wasn't explicitly axe-grinding, but it does meet the other criteria I mentioned. From the prize description: Pretty obviously politically correct, matching the group's far-left ideology -- something that in my opinion is more important to them than whether it's good for humanity.

That's ok, cross-posting happens. Can you explain what you were trying to say to bascule, though? I don't think I understand it in that context either.

I don't understand what you mean, MrSandman.