Friday, July 10, 2015

Reason and morality don't work

A reader comments:
as has been pointed out in this blog before and shot down: you have to fight these people with their own weapons of emotionalism, victimhood, and irrational blatherings. Reason and morality don't work with them.
Here is someone trying to have a logical conversation with a liberal, about a big Hollywood celebrity divorce:
me: What is interesting to me is that you highlight the shortcomings of the man as a “husband/father”. You don’t mention the possibility that the woman (who sued a previous husband for divorce on May 9, 2003) might have any shortcomings as a wife/mother.

Cambridge liberal: She has no shortcomings as a mother if she’s raising 3 children effectively on her own [the Daily Mail quotes Garner saying “You have to have a great nanny…” and has photos of the father caring for the children while the mother parties; also shown is a nanny; litigators such as Floyd Nadler in Illinois told us that a female parent who stays home with a nanny wins “primary caregiver” status but not so for a male parent]

me: What’s your basis for saying that “she’s raising 3 children effectively on her own”? Do you know this couple personally? Or you are relying on a plaintiff’s assertion in litigation? (keep in mind that every additional day of custody that this plaintiff [actually a “petitioner” in California] can obtain will result in additional cash paid to her under California’s child support formula)

Cambridge liberal: Based on the article’s claim that she was disillusioned with his workaholicness and that she pretty much was left to raise the kids alone.

me: is it reasonable to accept uncritically the statements of a plaintiff looking for tens of millions of dollars merely because she is a woman? What’s your basis for the idea that the parent who initiates a divorce lawsuit, thus breaking up the children’s home, is automatically the superior parent? [papers from Malin Bergstrom show the harm done to children by an American-style divorce; ironically, Garner is a trustee of Save the Children]

Cambridge liberal: I do put more faith in women than men, yes. Men have a spotty record to put it mildly. Nearly all mothers have to be good at motherhood for us to survive. Fathers on the other hand can get away with being pretty shitty at that job.

me: Would it be okay if I were to say, after hearing about a plaintiff of Race A suing a defendant of Race B, that “I am pretty sure that the plaintiff is telling the truth and is not motivated by cash considerations because people of Race B are ‘pretty shitty’ parents and ‘have a spotty track record’ as parents”?

Cambridge liberal: No that would not be ok because you’d have no scientific basis for making such claims. Human fathers, on the other hand are demonstrably worse caregivers than mothers on average, by far. [he had no research or data to cite]
Yes, the Cambridge liberal is loaded with unscientific prejudices as much as he vigorously denies them.

Maybe the reader is right. You cannot reason with such a liberal, using logic and common sense. You have to emotionally call him a bigot, or something like that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Traditional western values of logic, reason, and morality are now considered obsolete because it was all made by males.

Now it's all about the subjective and the emotional for decision making as well as law making, effectively and stereotypically (but correctly) feminine in approach.

If that's the current zeitgeist, then you have to fight fire with fire. Playing chess when your opponent is playing poker doesn't work.

Anonymous said...

The other part of the problem is that there's a large system and industry surrounding family law that makes a huge profit AND has a great deal of control over people. Very hard to dislodge these things once entrenched, and entrenched it is.

Hearts, minds, money, and control. These are the things that have to be addressed to make the change. Not logic, not reason, not science. It's like speaking English to someone who only speaks Chinese. Speaking louder in English, which is what the Dad's Rights movement has been doing using reason, logic and morality, doesn't improve intelligibility. Speaking or writing Chinese does.