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actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
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Who cares what consensus is? What matters is what is right. Edit waring has it's uses. For some reason it seems to be an effective way of increaseing the number of citations.
The problem with believing that being right is paramount is that it tends to shut out other views which may be just as right.
No, that is the problem with being wrong. It is those who are wrong that want to shut out the views that may be right. That is how you get gulags, political prisoners, censorship, whole nations that are gulags of cheap captive labor where emigation and escape are prohibitted.
Thank you for proving my point. I was talking about Wikipedia articles, and you want to talk about Guantanamo.
Really? Integrity and character, fairness, tolerance and equality under the rules matter on little things such as wikipedia articles too. When a clique, gets ahold of a page, the wikipedia rules no longer apply, they make the rules. Sometimes you can shame them a bit with their hypocrisy, sometimes they are shameless. But being a clique or a "consensus" doesn't make them right.
Guantanamo is an embarrassment, but wars are messy, I'm probably a pacifist myself (I'm not quite sure), but what seems plain is that the non-pacifists who oppose the war in Iraq and who somehow have supported some other war and how that war was fought, are probably among the worlds greatest hypocrits. The U.S. has liberated Iraq without using conscript/slaves, with careful targeting to avoid unnecessary damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure, with no territorial ambitions, and without using "allies" that are beneath contempt such as Stalin, certain warlords in Afghanistan or the U.N.
-- Silverback
actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
-------------- Original message --------------
actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
-------------- Original message --------------
Who cares what consensus is? What matters is what is right. Edit waring has it's uses. For some reason it seems to be an effective way of increaseing the number of citations.
The problem with believing that being right is paramount is that it tends to shut out other views which may be just as right.
No, that is the problem with being wrong. It is those who are wrong that want to shut out the views that may be right. That is how you get gulags, political prisoners, censorship, whole nations that are gulags of cheap captive labor where emigation and escape are prohibitted.
Thank you for proving my point. I was talking about Wikipedia articles, and you want to talk about Guantanamo.
Really? Integrity and character, fairness, tolerance and equality under the rules matter on little things such as wikipedia articles too. When a clique, gets ahold of a page, the wikipedia rules no longer apply, they make the rules. Sometimes you can shame them a bit with their hypocrisy, sometimes they are shameless. But being a clique or a "consensus" doesn't make them right.
Leave it to the anti-Castro clique to declare that principles should only be applied when to do so would be of minimal consequence.
Guantanamo is an embarrassment, but wars are messy, I'm probably a pacifist myself (I'm not quite sure), but what seems plain is that the non-pacifists who oppose the war in Iraq and who somehow have supported some other war and how that war was fought, are probably among the worlds greatest hypocrits. The U.S. has liberated Iraq without using conscript/slaves, with careful targeting to avoid unnecessary damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure, with no territorial ambitions, and without using "allies" that are beneath contempt such as Stalin, certain warlords in Afghanistan or the U.N.
So you would have us believe that the warlords with whom the U. S. has allied itself in Afghanistan are more virtuous than the ones it opposes! That may be the case on your planet, but not on earth.
Some of us do believe in respecting the views of others, and I do know that there are others here who might share some of your POV. The point is that this started off with your, "What matters is what is right." As much as I may disagree with that position, I can recognize it as being relevant to writing an encyclopedia. But what do Fidel Castro and the Iraq War have to do with it? Do these topics represent your extension of Goodwin's Law? If you have nothing better to do than attempt to inflame passions maybe you should just go away.
Ec