My point is that by radically overstating a case, using inflammatory and
insulting language, you alienate the best people, and attract the worst
sort. For example, just look at some of the ad hominist goofballs
that infest this list and others like it. I understand the temptation to
twist the rhetorical knife, but I disagree with it as an effective strategy.
I also disagree with your battleground us-and-them frame. There are bright
people on many dimensions of the political spectrum, and you can learn
from them. The individual factors that constitute the freedom index are
relevant all over the world. The index looks as if it could maybe have
some modest degree of explanatory power, perhaps more if it was tweaked.
To dismiss this possibility as "meaningless" just because you don't like the
theorists' politics is to commit the ad hominem fallacy.
Thomas
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