Oh, what excuses, dearie! It’s quite obvious that any child of yours (that is if you ever really have one) wouldn’t have the stuff to get into Columbia, which accepted less than 9% of its applicants this year!
As for the “exact same group of people who defend blatant liars and crucify those who rely on widely accepted intelligence,” you mean, your fellow neoCONs, don’t you?
BTW, if you paid any attention to the last time you tried to slam my supposed lack of humor, you might have noticed that virtually no one here but your fellow trolls find you in the least bit amusing. (Actually I do find you amusing but only when you prove what a fake you are by misspelling common legal terms while claiming to be an attorney, etc.) That is to say, “without a doubt the MOST humourless person on TP” is you, dearie. We don’t go for dead child jokes.
Noodle-loo to you!

Said - I made the exact point you eloquently made – remember this is the same group of people who defend blatant liars and crucify those who rely on widely accepted intelligence. These days truly remind one of “alice in Wonderland”.

Sorry, but logic is indeed “black and white.” The highest intellectual and moral standards are “black and white.” That is the nature of a standard. (In your own way you agree with this because you admit to the hope that my students will not “cut ethical corners.” And you admit that public officials should choose their words carefully, so you agree with me that McCain was morally deficient, just as I originally claimed.) Unless my students learn how to reason logically and how to exhibit integrity in their thought and conduct, they may enter public life and turn out the deplorable way McCain, Bush, Cheney, Feith, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice, and so many others have turned out, harming the country and the world, perhaps irreparably, by their cutting ethical corners, lying, manipulating information and the American public, and worse.

If you have any doubt about my professorial status, do a search at the Columbia University website.

The disagreement between you and me is not a rhetorical one, as you contend; it is one of intellectual method and substance, but you fail to understand that. I may sound autocratic, but if you’ll check my post at #111, you’ll see why it sounds autocratic but really isn’t. Intellectual discussion requires shared rules, such as the rules of logic. Neither of your two earlier posts to me followed those rules; instead, you attempted distraction from the issue, evaded my claims, offered a “straw man” fallacy, used rhetoric instead of reasoning, and the like. I’m not the only one to point this out to you. If you want to discuss, then discuss in a way that exhibits intellectual and moral integrity. (This means, at a minimum, trying to learn how to improve your reasoning skills so that you can do better.) If you can’t or won’t, then why bother posting here? What do you hope to achieve besides annoying people–hardly a sign of good character? All you do is appear silly and needlessly inflammatory, and no one’s mind will be changed by anything you say. If you really value discussion, as you imply, you would make every effort to act appropriately, and this is conspicuously absent. I too will refrain from any further discussion with you after these good-faith efforts on my part. There is too vast a gulf between us. My time and energy is better devoted to helping my students.

“If you have any understanding, you would agree with me. ”
And if I don’t agree with you, I have no understanding? Your seemingly autocratic and sweeping statements brook little room for discussion, so I will refrain from engaging in rhetorical disagreement with you.

Once again you fail to address the point I made. What you call “misspeaking” I consider a lack of intellectual and moral integrity. Anyone who doesn’t choose his words carefully in a public forum in discussing a matter as serious as the invasion of Iraq–especially in McCain’s flippant, frivolous, dismissive, and condescending manner–has shown that he lacks integrity. This makes him unworthy of the public trust. Trying to compare his speaking publicly on a matter of such overriding importance to my students speaking in the private setting of the classroom is absurd. If you have any understanding, you would agree with me. If you don’t understand, I have to wonder–as apparently others at TP have–whether you’re really a lawyer or just an adolescent pretending to have an adult’s level of understanding, reasoning ability, and interest in the truth.

Just what we need. Another four years of a president who “misspeaks”. He somehow thinks there is nothing wrong with mispeaking. Well, I certainly don’t want the leader of biggest bully in the world to misspeak. We’ve already seen what happens to a country with a leader like that. The only problem is that Bush doesn’t even call it “misspeaking”. All he does is lie. And that’s what McCain is doing. He is lying, not misspeaking.

I also oppose his dropping bombs on Vietnamese civilians. We killed about 3,000,000 in that war because we wanted to control that part of the world. The Pentagon Papers said we must not allow the free elections we had agreed to because Ho Chi Mihn would win 80% of the vote. They also said the domino theory was not true.

Hu,

Please give me an apology for your inability to understand.

I beg to differ, Professor. McCain said he sometimes “misspeaks” – something I am certain we have ALL done on occasion. (If you have never misspoke, you certainly are rare.) What is interesting is the thought that had a student of yours deliberately twisted an incident to fit an agenda, would YOU have been so cavalier in your grading?

In my profession, people are instricted they can choose to disregard all or part of a witnesses testimony if it is discovered that the person lied or misled the court. That is a decision for the trier of fact. Perhaps the art and study of philosophy has differing standards.

Comment by stonehinge — April 9, 2007

You appear to be totally misunderstanding my post. I was criticizing BucketsofBlood (aka ChildrenofLir) for his destruction of threads on this website. He has this wild obsession with Zooey saying Feinstein did a couple good things in the 1970’s and three of us defending her. He was attacking endlessly Feinstein, Zooey, and us from the Left a few days ago. I am saying we who are left-of-center should not do that. I am not a troll. I am not on the level of Limbaugh. There is a problem with your comprehension.