trail wrote:
MOP_Mike wrote:
With ESM's, MJuric's, and Vitus's voices muted, who will carry the banner of intelligent, reasonable counterpoint to the idealists here?
Counterpoint to the idealists? Just questioning, because I'd consider the first two to be hardcore ideologues, and the 3rd not very far behind. I don't intend that as a pejorative, just a description: the arguments of ESM, for example, are strongly colored by his vision of the ideal world being one that adhered to his particular ESM-branded of school of libertarianism. And I think "pragmatist" was something of a dirty word to the first two.
You have a good point. I chose the word "idealist" as a less offensive alternative a lot of more pejorative terms, in keeping with my new-found desire to not be unnecessarily confrontational here. But, I suppose my intent was more towards countering "authoritarian collectivism" which I regard as naively idealistic, and of which there is a strong streak here in the LR, hence the inclusion of ESM on the list.
As an honorable mention, I'd also like to nominate dave_w to carry on in vitus's absence.
In the mean time, IIRC, vitus doesn't live far from me. So, I may look him up and buy him a beer. :-)
"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."