Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> On 6/14/05, Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Carrol Cox
> > Such slang as "fundies" belongs in the same part of the
> > lexicon as "darky" and "towelhead."
> >
> > ^^^^^^^
> > CB: Not. Lets not bend the stick the other way too far the other way in
> > demonstrating how much we can turn the other cheek to the vicious practices
> > of this rightwing juggernaut. The fanatics are not going to get out off the
> > road to fascism because we say nice things about them.
> >
>
> no, they're not, but
>
> (a) that's not an argument against carrol's point, and
> (b) it's not the fanatics we're trying to turn off the road to
> fascism, at least in the first instance. so let's let go of that
> little straw person, shall we?
Precisely. My argument that we speak to those who already agree with us is an obvious and long-established point which many posters on this list seem either to have great difficulty in grasping or else simply choose to distort it for fun. Imagine yourself in the center of a circle with a 200 yard radius. Your voice can't rise above a shisper. You want to reach out as far as possible. But who do you talk to _first_? Obviously, those standing next to you. And you need to convince them to talk to those near them.
The point about a fundamentalist who is ALSO a "fascist roader" is not that she is a fundamentalist but that she is a "fascist roader." We son't talk to her. We talk to the fundamentalist standing next to her who happens _not_ to be a "fascist roader" but someone who opposes the war. Attacking "fundamentalists" (or referring to them sneeringly as "fundies") cuts us off from that fundamentalist who happens to agree with us on the main point now.
Carrol