Another Entry In the "Walls Are Always Evil And Never Effective" Genre
facepalm
My God this is ****ing terrible. I mean, this new genre, beloved by the left, is nothing but sophistry from beginning to end so far as I can tell...but this one seems particularly awful and either dumb or dishonest or both.
There are plenty of sound arguments against Trump's wall. The best one: there are massive stretches of the border that basically no one is ever going to try to go through. They're just too wild/undeveloped. They are their own barrier. Building artificial barriers there is a waste of money.
But trying to prove that no fencing is called for anywhere on the border is silly. And trying to prove that on the basis of some crackpot historical universal generalization that walls never work is utterly daft. And trying to argue that all walls are immoral...that's...just...off the scale ridiculous.
Yet another general reason I'm against the contemporary left: even when good arguments are available, they eschew them in favor of bad ones. I suppose it's because their worldview is so nutty. Good arguments look bad to them, and bad arguments look good. And only the most extreme versions of their favored views are really pure enough. It's not cost-effective in many places is of no interest to them, because they want no barriers at all...because they want to borders at all. And they want the polices they oppose to be not merely wasteful, but awful and evil.
It's also notable that, as soon as Trump started bloviating about a wall, these stories started being cranked out at the usual places--NYT, WaPo, Newsweek, Salon--to the effect that--amazing!--no wall has ever worked throughout all of history!!! All those people, living desperately, on the brink of horrible death, with few resources...they all built walls for protection despite the fact that they don't work at all! How were they so foolish and benighted about such a simple matter so important to them? Downright astonishing, when you think about it... Anybody who's being even a little bit honest can see that these essays are sophistry. But the commenters seem to eat 'em right up...
My God this is ****ing terrible. I mean, this new genre, beloved by the left, is nothing but sophistry from beginning to end so far as I can tell...but this one seems particularly awful and either dumb or dishonest or both.
There are plenty of sound arguments against Trump's wall. The best one: there are massive stretches of the border that basically no one is ever going to try to go through. They're just too wild/undeveloped. They are their own barrier. Building artificial barriers there is a waste of money.
But trying to prove that no fencing is called for anywhere on the border is silly. And trying to prove that on the basis of some crackpot historical universal generalization that walls never work is utterly daft. And trying to argue that all walls are immoral...that's...just...off the scale ridiculous.
Yet another general reason I'm against the contemporary left: even when good arguments are available, they eschew them in favor of bad ones. I suppose it's because their worldview is so nutty. Good arguments look bad to them, and bad arguments look good. And only the most extreme versions of their favored views are really pure enough. It's not cost-effective in many places is of no interest to them, because they want no barriers at all...because they want to borders at all. And they want the polices they oppose to be not merely wasteful, but awful and evil.
It's also notable that, as soon as Trump started bloviating about a wall, these stories started being cranked out at the usual places--NYT, WaPo, Newsweek, Salon--to the effect that--amazing!--no wall has ever worked throughout all of history!!! All those people, living desperately, on the brink of horrible death, with few resources...they all built walls for protection despite the fact that they don't work at all! How were they so foolish and benighted about such a simple matter so important to them? Downright astonishing, when you think about it... Anybody who's being even a little bit honest can see that these essays are sophistry. But the commenters seem to eat 'em right up...
posted by Winston Smith at
9:53 AM
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