Eric shoots (but doesn't score...):
Why are you holding him up as an example of clarity?
He says in this paragraph [still attached below] that he knows what he
believes--real world conditions be damned--and simply needs more facts
on the matter so he can effectively debate those who disagree with him.
And by the way, he's already labeled the people who disagree with him as
"demagogues."
---------------------------
Ursula answers:
Krugman doesn't say anything of the kind, Eric. You're still shooting
first and asking questions later.
(And you accuse me of knee-jerk reactions?) Krugman is revealing his
instinctive and emotional bias -- the ancient Greeks called that ethos
-- presenting yourself honestly. Then he admits that he's been looking
at some unbiased research and finding some uncomfortable facts -- which
he can't simply ignore. More ethos. Then he goes on to say that if
he's going to uphold his position, he'll have to find answers to these
serious problems -- not just ignore them while they get lumpier and
lumpier under the rug. The Greeks called that Logos. As to the
demagogues...he's not suggesting that anyone who disagrees is a
demagogue. He's merely acknowledging that the demagogues among his
disagreers are dangerous and need to be answered. I call that honest
investigation. You can call it anything you want.
Ursula
in NBay
Eric wrote:
Carol quotes K:
In other words, I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review
of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the
economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular.
If people like me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant
demagogues, we have to acknowledge those facts.
---------
______
"A man must consider what a blindman’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four: so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression."
from Self-Reliance, Emerson 1841
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