<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2604" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY><PRE>Dennis Redmond wrote:</PRE><PRE>>Thomas Brown wrote:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>> I would also suggest dropping your closing paragraph. It would be foolish<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>> to suggest that the factors in the index are "meaningless", or that<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>> everyone on the right doesn't try to make sense. At best, you can argue<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>> with how the index is constructed and what it means. To go beyond that is<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>> demagoguery.<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>><o:p> </o:p></PRE><PRE>>No, it's called critical interpretation, a.k.a. putting the facts into<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>context -- and it's the key to political activism, aesthetics, social<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>consciousness and transformation. (That's why works of art can be >untrue<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>-- fictional or false, in the narrow sense of the term -- yet deeply >true<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>on another level). If you cede that ground to the Right, you've<o:p></o:p></PRE><PRE>>automatically lost the battle before even starting.<o:p></o:p></PRE> <o:p> </o:p> 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. <o:p> </o:p> 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. <o:p> </o:p> Thomas <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p></BODY></HTML>