Reply #132: dissent [View All]

Many here, I notice, will say they support dissent and would never suppress it, and then start complaining about the "type" of dissent - dissent with "a dismissive quality" in your case.

"This I do not get at all - The 'Left's' case against Kagan is a doomed commitment. She's very likely to be confirmed."

What does the likelihood of "winning" have to do with dissent? So we should only criticize when we are on the "winning" team? I cannot imagine a more powerful call for suppressing dissent than that.

And why would you put quotation marks around the word Left?

Why would you call critics "idiotic" and tell them to "suck it up?"

Here is how "the game is played" - we speak out, and more people learn what is going on, think things through more, and we have planted the seeds for social change. That is the only way the game is played.

My response to what you said may have been dismissive. You are claiming that I was therefore dismissive of Kagan, and then go on to say that "dismissive" is the type of dissent that you don't like.

You have your own personal feelings mixed up with the issues in this situation, and so are assuming that others do as well. You are speaking to people here as though they were grade school children who didn't get their ice cream cone. Yet you complain about others being dismissive? A lot of projection going on, methinks.