>On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> Carrol Cox wrote:
>>
>> >Sigh!
>> >
>> >And Featherstone avoids the thorny question of _Is it possible to fight
>> >terrorism?_
>> >
>> >The question is wrong and an evasion of reality.
>>
>> And which reality is that? Since about 95% of the U.S. public would
>> ask the same question (how to fight terrorism?), aren't you the one
>> who's evading reality?
>
>Note: by Doug's logic here, an Abolitionist living in the South in
>the early 1800s would be "evading reality". We can't judge the
>ultimate success of a political viewpoint or strategy by how
>popular it is today.
Why do people keep addressing points that weren't made, or answering questions that weren't asked?
It's evading reality not to have an answer to the question - to dismiss the question from the first as "wrong!" with a McLaughlin-like epithet. The analogy would be avoiding the slavery question altogether, not avoiding an abolitionist position because it was unpopular. You have to have an answer to the question; it doesn't have to be George Bush's or Chistopher Hitchens'.
Doug