I don't believe you intended an attack, but the rhetorical tactic of "some say . . ." is unseemly regardless, and it's best to leave it to Fox News and its likes. If you would like to cite criticisms from specific persons, you would want to attribute them to the persons offering criticisms. If you would like to discuss public opinions critical of particular leftists or "the left" in general, you might offer opinion surveys. Charges based on anonymous sources and secret evidence are unanswerable charges (and you know you have no rights when you face those in court, to come back to the topic of the judicial system discussed for the last several days).
>Here's a clue: some would say _I'm_ an embarassing leftists. Go read
>some Dean supporting blogs for a taste of what think about analyses
>the likes of what passes for ordinary, uncontroversial argument on
>this list. Almost everyone here is an embarassing leftist on their
>view.
I very much doubt that Dean supporters would find leftists "embarrassing." To be embarrassed by a real or imagined failing of someone, you have to put her on a pedestal or at least identify with her in a very intimate way. That's why children often find their parents embarrassing in the process of growing up, because they begin to grow taller physically and intellectually and acquire vantage points that reveal hitherto invisible faults in persons to whom they are attached and even have really looked up. Are there any leftists whom Dean supporters identify with deeply, let alone put on a pedestal?
I'm sure Dean supporters can find many arguments made by others -- including LBO-talk subscribers -- outlandish, despicable, even appalling, but such feelings are very different from embarrassment. Embarrassment (in its most often used modern sense) is a very peculiar feeling, nearly indescribable.
Older meanings and connotations of the word "embarrass" are much less complicated (it originally meant simply "to block, obstruct," as in obstructing the enemy), but that's not the sense in which it is being spoken here. One of the older meanings is "to perplex," and the Oxford English Dictionary has a delightful quotation as an example of its usage in this sense: "1673 DRYDEN _Marr. à la Mode_ v. i, Pray do not Embarrass me. Embarrass me! what a delicious French word do you make me lose upon you too!" ("embarrass, v.," <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50073582>).
>Meanwhile, you might consider Carrol's very compelling reasons why
>we should avoid the kind of claims he made in that post. He's
>written about it before, and I've called it out as an important
>principle we should try to uphold. I'm sure he was just having a bad
>evening. :)
Carrol throws out a hypothesis and expects me to come up with evidence (with footnotes, hopefully the ones that survive close scrutiny and won't get "Bellesilesed" or "Churchilled") to support it. :-> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>