Patrick, why would you put up with such abuse over there when you have much worse abuse in STR's own forum?
Last week some guy said he wished he could kill me. Can No-Treason's forums top that?
Arguments get heated sometimes eh? :>)

"This thread over at No Treason has been giving me a few chuckles. Apparently, this site is dedicated to showing that anarchists and libertarians are foul-mouthed tribalists incapable of using logical argument."

Not to put too fine a point on it, Patrick, but a logical argument was made, at length in Lopez's original post at http://www.no-treason.com/archives/2005/01/25/is-george-bush-a-traitor/ and more briefly in the first half of the first paragraph of Sabotta's follow-up, on the subject of "treason trials" for wicked politicians and why the notion is absurd from an individualist standpoint. That is the subject from which this post takes it title, and yet nowhere here or in the comments of either article have I seen any argument in response to the case against the notion of treason. Instead there seems to be a lot of kvetching over whether or not John Sabotta was right to point out that Johnson seems to have a problem with Da Jooz and whether or not he was a bit rude in using the phrase "contemptible shit."

So who seems to be playing the part of the tribalist incapable of logical argument so far?

Well, Rad Geek (if, indeed, that is your real name), I replied to your comment over at NT, where I said:

"To address your concern, I think what you, and everyone else from the first post on, have been missing is that Johnson’s article is laden with irony. Johnson does not seriously (key word: seriously) believe or contend that Bush should or will be charged with treason. It is just a literary device for pointing out bad policy decisions and their effects. He is saying to Bush and company: “Look, you boobs, at how your benighted ideas, far from destroying the enemy (whoever they may be), are actually helping them recruit and gather support.” This refusal to see the intent of the column but to attack its method is the classic Straw Man, one of my very favorites."

Thanks, Ali, for the concern, and, yes, I recall the vituperative venom (I love alliteration, don't you?) I got when I posted there and would pop all the little balloons of conceit those folks would so kindly float before my eyes and within my reach. I have held off with these guys before now because they were funny (and still are), and because they hadn't attacked anything I cared about personally. Now, however, I feel they need to be shown for the children playing at intellectual anarchists they are. As to arguments getting heated, I am more amused than anything. Calling me names just proves my point. How could I be unhappy with that?

Let me just quote myself:

"To sum up, Yancey, I judge you’re completely off base - Johnson is quite plainly a defender of the Constitution of the United States of America. Charging Bush with treason isn’t a literary device, it’s consistent with his previously-expressed beliefs. I don’t think that you have any basis at all for your claim, I think that you’re trying to construct a defense for the column in question out of thin air."

Follow this link for the appropriate cites, of course: http://www.no-treason.com/archives/2005/01/28/treason-trials-all-around-my-children/#comment-6986

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