Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Progressivism - A Motte and Bailey Approach to Politics.

Video reference - Nicholas Shackel

The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions which share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial (the "bailey"). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position. Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer can claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte) or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).
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A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century. The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales following their invasion in 1066. Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries. Windsor Castle, in England, is an example of a motte-and-bailey castle. By the end of the 13th century, the design was largely superseded by alternative forms of fortification, but the earthworks remain a prominent feature in many countries.
“I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knockdown argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”

The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper some of them- particularly verbs: they're the proudest- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"
-Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" (Ch. VI)

81 comments:

  1. So which is the motte argument and which is the bailey argument?

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  2. "Racism is bad" is the "motte". "CRT is the cure" is one of many "baileys".

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  3. Racism is bad? How the hell else would white people become superior enough to make affirmative action decisions?

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  4. The motte is the "troll's truism," and the bailey is the deepity that trades from it.

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  5. To a progressive liberal, only the "other guy" is a racist. Stop revealing their hypocrisy, beamish.

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  6. Wait, what? You mean they are deliberately hiring racially inferior people to meet a quota?

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  7. "The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position".

    Except CRT isn't controversial and Progressives aren't abandoning defending it when challenged. Only the right's imaginary version of CRT is controversial.

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  8. Well that certainly explains the acceptance of CRT by all at local school board meetings around the country.

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  9. btw - Didn't you once tell me that this guy didn't belong to an "all white country club"?

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  10. ..all the ground abandoned in the bailey, of course.

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  11. According to the whines I've heard, the imaginary version of CRT is something like "America is an inherently racist country", "all White people are racist", "White people should hate themselves", "the purpose of CRT is to teach kids to hate America", "other bullshit I'm forgetting".

    btw, I don't know how there could be any "acceptance of CRT by all at local school board meetings around the country" when "there is little to no evidence that critical race theory itself is being taught to K-12 public school students" :P

    There is non-acceptance, but it's by White dumb-dumbs who believe Lefty educators want to indoctrinate their kids into hating themselves, etc (see paragraph above).

    As for the country club Minus refers to - article he linked to has "all white" in quotes. And I didn't tell him that. I quoted what the club said. If memory serves, it was that they previously had non-white members. Also that non-whites were not barred from becoming members (confirmed in the linked article). Also (again, as the linked article), "This guy" says it's family members who are members.

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  12. I think its abhorrent to see pictures of white schoolchildren holding up signs that say "I am not an oppressor." Well, duh. The poor dears aren't even allowed to carry guns to school, much less knock a fool out with a slapjack upside the head. It's a sad state of education when people have to protest for the right oppress people. Most of us just oppress people anyway for the fun of it.

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  13. "This guy" says it's family members who are members.

    Are they the supposedly "non-White" ones? LOL!

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  14. ps - And it was never the "theory" that was being taught in K-12 schools. It was the teacher's "praxis" derived through the CRT taught in Universities to the teachers themselves.

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  15. ...but please, continue to take words like "theory" "literally and narrowly" so as to conflate the bailey with the motte.

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  16. Now that racism is a public health emergency let's see if we can stop its spread by limiting the interactions between races?

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  17. I only listen to what the people who come up with the theories (CRT) or start the organizations (BLM) say THEIR theories mean and what their organizations stand for. Unlike you, who tells them they (people who came up with the theories and started the organizations) are wrong. And their their theories and organizations actually mean and stand for what YOU say.

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  18. So when they are playing "literal" with you, you're perfectly fine with not calling them out. Got it. Minorities are secular saints in your religion.

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  19. Pretending racism exists where it does not?

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  20. Bloodless scholars... (Nietzsche)

    "Nooooooo! Don't kill him! If you kill him, he won't learn nothin..."

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  21. In the two Gladwell videos (one you posted on your blog and one you linked to above) he talks about human nature. But in neither does he talk about human nature in the context of Progressives v Conservatives. That "Progressives are worst inter-cultural mitigators on the planet" isn't anything Gladwell ever says. Or implies. Yet you post or link to his YouTubes as if they prove your point.

    Are you sure the opposite isn't true? Isn't it conservatives who believe things should be done their way and make no effort to understand anyone's differing point of view? Or care to understand cultural differences? I'd think Progressives would be very good at this, given that progressives are more empathetic :P

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  22. The empathy of the walrus and the carpenter...

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  23. So NEVER question black culture. It's perfect just the way it is... it's why its' actions require naught but our affirmation.

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  24. Conservatives criticize all cultures, progressives only their own.

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  25. Why, because they refuse to ever want to be accused of punching "down" when the rest of us all have long since realized, we can only punch across.

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  26. We distinguish to this extent between factual and value judgement--that we deny the right to tamper with human beings to an unlimited extent, whatever the truth about the laws of history; we might go further and deny the notion that "history" in some mysterious way "confers" upon us "rights" to do this or that; that some men or bodies of men can morally claim a right to our obedience because they, in some sense, carry out the behests of "history," are its chosen instrument, its medicine or scourge or in some important sense "Welthistorisch"--great, irresistible, riding the waves of the future, beyond our petty, subjective, not rationally bolsterable ideas of right and wrong. Many a German and I daresay many a Russian or Mongol or Chinese today feels that it is more adult to recognise the sheer immensity of the great events that shake the world, and play a part in history worthy of men by abandoning themselves to them, than by praising or damning and indulging in bourgeois moralisings: the notion that history must be applauded as such is the horrible German way out of the burden of moral choice.
    - Sir Isaiah Berlin, "Letter to George Kennan" (2/13/51)

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  27. History is irrelevant to morality. It maintains no universal account of "debts" or "credits".

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  28. There's only the question of now, is the act I'm about to perform moral, or is it not?

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  29. "So NEVER question black culture. It's perfect just the way it is... it's why its' actions require naught but our affirmation".

    No, as a White Supremacist your role is to be extremely critical of Black culture. And accept White culture as perfect. It's only EVERY OTHER culture that needs improvement. You only need complain about how White culture is under attack via "cultural genocide". Don't worry, you are fulfilling your chosen role perfectly.

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  30. Either / or. Nietzsche had no immoral category in his dichotomy. We're always moral. 😉

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  31. So, slave. A pawn never checkmates a king alone.

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  32. "The empathy of the walrus and the carpenter... ...to the oysters".

    Exactly. Progressive only feign empathy to trick Black voters. Who fall for the trick because of their inferior intelligence. At least that is what is going on from your White Supremacist point of view.

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  33. I knew a black guy named Tom that surmised the false empathy of progressives and all the progressives around started claiming him as their uncle. It was weird how they wouldn't let him subvert their stereotypes.

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  34. Make the king avoid death until he is regulated into inaction. Chess is revolution.

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  35. Castle to the more and stall for an opening 😉

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  36. Sounds to me like Minus sees himself as a White savior. Conservative's constructive criticisms of Black culture will cause (the smart) Black people to realize they need to get off the "Democrat plantation" and become more self reliant. "Thank you so much for saving us, Master Minus. By making us realize we need to act more like our White superiors".

    Thought Criminal: The empathy of the walrus and the carpenter...
    Minus: ...to the oysters.


    Previously Minus has denied that "Thought criminal" is one of his many sockpuppets. Here one completes the other's thought. So convincing that it isn't the same person behind both of these accounts. Not.

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  37. We must all sound alike, Beamish.

    Check motte.

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  38. Trump was far too left wing for my tastes.

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  39. I'm far too left wing for my tastes....

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  40. Dotard lied re the things he promised that were left wing.

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  41. Trump refused to nuke Tehran for worshipping Allah instead of America.

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  42. Average leftist.... Gotta wait until nuking Iran costs more

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  43. So Dotard's lefty agenda of bringing back off-shored jobs to America was successful? Dotard didn't go back on his pledge to protect medicare and social security? Regarding wars begun by a republican president (gwb) Dotard brought the troops home and not Joe Biden?

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  44. Joe Biden brought some troops home? THAT won't last....

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  45. GWB started a war? Why did we go after all Qaeda?

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  46. F*ck Jimmy Dore. What an a-hole. He is the personification of "with friends like these, who needs enemies". He clearly really misses Dotard Donald. We should ignore terrorists training in poor countries because...? I didn't know "anti-war" meant "pro-terrorism".

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  47. Depends on which Weatherman you listen to.

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  48. I thought you hated Muslim extremists. Jimmy Dore cries when a Joe Biden drops bombs on them -- and you cry along with him. It's terrible if innocent people die, but your (and Dore's) issue seems to be who ordered the bombs dropped. Dore NEVER mentioned that the purpose of the bombs was to kill terrorists. He (and his guest) just kept saying over and over that Joe Biden is killing poor people. And say maybe Biden will drop bombs on poor people here in the US. Did predisent Dotard stop the bombing? I hadn't heard that he did.

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  49. It's a shame we can't drag the bodies of skinny Somalis through the streets after we bomb them.

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  50. They say "blue lives matter" not because police uniforms are blue, but because all police officers are Democrats? Who knew? So why do republicans feign such bigly support for the police and insist Democrats want to defund the police? Why did the biggest police union in the US endorse Trump if all the police are Democrats?

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  51. The cops aren't. But all city pols are...

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  52. Police officers get paid whether they do their job or not. It's one of the more lucrative government welfare outlets with the added bonus that they can kill anyone they want and challenge prosecutors to prove they aren't scared little pussies.

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  53. So what you're saying is that all police chiefs are Democrats? And that, if a police chief tells officers to drop bombs on black people they don't want to do it but say "yes, sir". But if the police chief tells officers to not shoot unarmed suspects, they say "f*ck off, we'll shoot who we want"?

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  54. No, they tell their officers that they have to assume every person they encounter is a micro-second away from killing them so the decision to kill them first must be on the spot and based on the fears they are indoctrinated with between drinking themselves stupid and slapping their wives around.

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  55. And unarmed Black brutes can kill them for sure because they are innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and terrifying criminal predators. So why would they oppose bombing such beasts?

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  56. Super-predators. Haven't heard a Democrat call a fellow human being that in a while.

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  57. Because it's a republican thing. Why they're OK with the police shooting so many unarmed Black people.

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  58. You're a Trump Republican now? One of the Bernie Bros that jumped the turnstiles to vote against Hillary?

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  59. Maybe the cops should put Covid vaccines in their bullets?

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  60. I hate Dotard's guts with a passion. He is the worst president in American history. I voted for Hillary Clinton. I would have voted for Bernie Sanders, but he didn't secure the nomination. I was never a "Bernie bot". I was and remain a smart Bernie Sanders supporter. Not a dumb one that would vote for a horrible candidate like Dotard (who went on to be a horrible president). Clearly you got confused by my comment re how trumper White Supremacists view Black people.

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  61. I think your opinion of Trump is weak, as he clearly was the worst President America will ever have. Your opinion leaves room for someone worse to come along.

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  62. I suspect you say Dotard is the worst (and will remain the worst) because the next "autocratic outsider" will succeed in transitioning the government to autocracy (having learned from Dotard's mistakes). And that wouldn't be worse, it would be much better. Certainly that would be the opinion of Minus.

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  63. I suspect you make up names to insult people because your debate skills are weak. That's one of the more cringey things I disliked about Trump.

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  64. I don't make up names to insult people. Kim Jong Un dubbed tRump "Dotard". And I only shortened MinusFJ to "Minus". The minus symbol is the first character in the Blogger ID he chose.

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