If your argument rests on your reader’s imagination, and you don’t care to elaborate when your readers don’t demonstrate that imagination, then yes, it is a failing of your argument. You can’t just say, “Well, if you don’t understand that’s not my problem,” unless you are saying, “Look, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a good idea here but I don’t know how to articulate it.” The point of the comic, if I understand, was that they took literal quotations and replaced ‘guns’ with ‘ballistic missiles’. Not being able to do the same with ‘free speech’ does make it different.
If you want to argue that overreach for freedoms is better than underreach, using Singapore doesn’t feel like ‘picking on someone your own size’. Singapore is internationally renowned for outlawing chewing gum, everyone knows they balance the good of society (as they see it) higher than personal freedom. What actual western democracies that have free speech and freedom of religion but don’t hold them as absolutely as the US does? My observation is that the US is closer to being a police state than Germany or France is, despite those countries banning certain kinds of hateful speech entirely.
And while saying that the entire system of US laws is invalid would be too far, I stand by my statement that Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, and the thinking they represent, are totally deserving of ridicule.
From what I’ve read it was the city’s police force. They wanted to deal with who they considered domestic terrorists without getting the authorities that are for handling terrorist threats involved.
One person’s poignant comic strip is another person’s propaganda.
The gloves came off so long ago that anyone in the middle has long left the dialogue. There really is no compromise left to be had because each side now will only accept total victory. When was the last time we’ve heard anyone say “well, let’s take a look at both sides of the situation and see what we can hash out”? It’s all just trench warfare for the foreseeable future.
The [implied] portrayal of gun owners this comic is the very reason why the NRA is able to maintain such high membership levels. They can point at this and say “do you see what the other side thinks of you?”
What is the middle? I don’t think… okay scratch that, some are talking about total disarmament, but the focus I’ve seen most often is just tougher gun laws that are actually enforced.
The feeling of alienation works both ways, as a method of entrenchment.
This comic is what is called a “logical analogy”. We take an argument - a real argument that someone made, not something that we just made up - and replace the thing they are talking about (guns) with another thing (ballistic missiles). Then we say, “look, your argument would also support ballistic missiles, so unless you actually support ballistic missiles, you have to admit there is something wrong with your argument.”
You say there is no compromise left to be had, but that is nonsense. People who want gun regulation would be very happy to pass a variety of reasonable regulations, but the anti-regulation crowd sees any regulation as a slippery slope towards seizure of all guns. A boingboing linked article explained this well. People assume that other people are like them. So people who oppose all gun regulation assume that people who are for regulation as just a ideological as they are. It isn’t true. People who want gun regulation, on the other hand, can’t understand why people who opposed it won’t meet them halfway, won’t make any kind of reasonable compromise.
I’m pretty sure that if someone says there is no rational middle ground in the gun control debate, you can be about 99% certain they are against gun control. Saying there is no rational voice in a debate when you actually take a stance in it is practically admitting that your beliefs are irrational.
Remember, blue states pay more in taxes, and red states take more. Those of us who pay taxes would be better off if the various “government is evil” groups were eliminated from both sides of the ledger.
For the record, you are allowed to own chewing gum, you’re even allowed to chew it (and dispose of it properly!). It just can’t be sold in the country.
I think the comic is a little more inflammatory than a “logical analogy”. Sure, I get it, it’s satirical. But I don’t agree with your argument because guns and missiles are not the same thing. It’s like saying because I can come up with a stance which supports vector control and the logical analogy of that stance could also be used as a justification for extermination of all rodent species (by simply replacing the terms) then my argument for vector control is invalid.
This is a simplistic dichotomy. There are some shaky assumptions being made here.
I will admit that I’m a bit cynical over the entire debate because there is so much vitriol spewing from both sides. But I don’t see how my belief that there is a lack of civility and compromise and that I am on one side of the debate is an admission that my beliefs are irrational.
For the record, I do believe in background checks, licensing and closing of loopholes. However, I also believe in CCW and that firearms are a viable means of self defense.
I had a discussion with a co-worker about all this and he said “neither you nor I are wrong, we just have differing opinions” and left it at that. There was no debate regarding who was or was not being rational because we both know each other as rational people.
