Ann Coulter (Is she hateful?)

Hi FEY. I understand what you mean - I feel something similar when you slander "liberals" and call them all "liars" and "biased" without a shred of evidence to support such claims. You're far from the only one to make me feel those things around here, either - just to throw a few names out, crashfrog and RAZD have both been able to make me feel pretty damned angry. Not enough to involve blood, of course.But when I get too upset, I stop reading for a bit. Sometimes I go and get laid - that always helps. I remember that, whatever happens, this is just an internet debate site. In the end, arguing on the internet is akin to the Special Olympics - even if you win, you're still retarded (hopefully others will excuse the somewhat offensive joke in favor of its intent). This debate board can never hurt you, and none of the participants can cause you any harm except that which you allow by getting all riled up. Just relax. I feel that sort of anger every time I listen to Fox News.How should we determine which of us is listening to absurdly biased media, and which is closer to the facts? I doubt a screaming fit, trollish nonsense, or "blood" will resolve the disparity. What do you think we should do? Personally, I'd suggest looking at issues one at a time and comparing the spin to objective evidence. What do you think?

Can we call you Phil (for those who don't know what I'm talking about, see Creationism Road Trip)?--Percy

Then why do you keep coming back and reading them?Do you understand that this is neither a healthy nor a normal reaction to reading arguments about science on the internet? Wow, what are you like when people disagree with you about things that really matter? So prove it. So far you've made a complete hash-job of doing it in this thread, because you put yourself out there to defend Ann Coulter without being, as you admitted, actually familiar with her body of work. In retrospect does that seem like a good idea? Don't you think it's possible that it was actually us, who have read her books and researched her remarks, that had an accurate characterization of her, and you who, not actually knowing much about it, who had arrived at a mistaken impression about her?Why does it seem like a good idea to defend someone or something you don't know anything about?

Jesus actually said quite a bit on this subject. It is true that we are saved by grace and not through the worth of our actions. But a Christian is someone who loves Christ. Jesus said that our love for him is shown through our actions.From John 14:23-24:Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my father will love him and we will come unto him and will make our abode with him.He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings and the word which ye hear is not mine but the Father's which sent me.I know you don't trust anyone here. Why not ask a Christian you trust about this?

Just putting this in the public arena. Foreveryoung responded to my previous post with a PM that said only this:

quote:

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From foreveryoung
To Rahvin

​

Fuck you

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He then began jeering all of my posts from today. And GDR's as well, for some reason.

Hi foreveryoung Curiously, the anger is due to the cognitive dissonance (CD) between what the posts say and what you believe. The more you are emotionally attached to your beliefs the more you feel anger when they are threatened.All people react this way, it is part of the "human condition" to react this way because we are essentially emotional beings with the ability to have a thin veneer of rational thoughts ... but not to the extent of being able to lose the emotional responses.As I see it, there are two factors that contribute to the amount of CD:

• the degree of disagreement between your belief and the presented information, and
• the degree of emotional attachment you have to your belief.

The greater these are the more CD you (we) will experience. Yes, they were angry because her posts contradicted what they believed, and this caused CD in them that then caused anger. Anger is the first symptom of CD.One way this CD (and the anger) is reduced by rejecting the contradictory information as false or intentional propaganda (as you have done and as military leaders did).Another way is to show by evidence that the information actually is false.The question remaining, then, is whether you can actually show that this is false information and propaganda, rather than just hiding behind it to salve your attachment to your beliefs.Just claiming something - without providing any empirical objective evidence that it is so - is just making another blind assertion, creating another emotion based belief. It may satisfy you, but it certainly won't necessarily satisfy anyone else.Enjoy.

He started this thread to get people to react. That is the only purpose of this thread. I think there is a mental health issue here.I think I said this before he got kicked out last time. Time to stop feeding the troll.

For the record, I have 6 PMs from foreveryoung.As a matter of principle, I think it better to keep private messages private, so I didn't post any of them here. I am interested in an open and honest public discussion with foreveryoung and attempting to publicly embarrass him does not seem likely to help.

Anyone that send PM's like that should be publicly exposed as the troll they are.

Hi RAZD,
I've been following your cancer thread and I'm glad to see you hanging in there.But I've got to say that this post is a bunch of blabbertygook. Patronizing among other things.The reason foreveryoung gets angry is that, if he is a true Christian, which I don't know yet but hope he is, he hasn't brought his emotions and thoughts "captive" to Christ, or under the Lordship of Christ, which is hard work for all of us and I've certainly blown it big time myself.But there are more proximal reasons, as they say, and EvC is a place to try one's patience if ever there was one.One proximal reason is that he doesn't always get his views clearly said but you all hold him to his words anyway and then he doesn't have a chance to correct them. That's frustrating for anyone.Yet he did get his basic opinion said well enough on this thread right away. The President of Fordham accused Ann Coulter of "hate speech" and he objected to that as a hateful thing to say about her. I also don't follow Coulter much but what I've seen of her I've found to be funny and smart and insightful, and yes, very acerbic. That's what polemicists and humorists do, and there are certainly many of those on the Left. She speaks for many conservatives, yes, many. But nobody here likes her and anyone defending her gets trounced. Can't even have a difference of opinion without getting told you're some kind of idiot. That's frustrating.Then he gets contradicted and mocked even when he says something clear and truthful, such as when he said "Jesuits are liberal people." I said Jesuits can be either conservative or liberal depending on how the wind is blowing, but he's right in the current context that it's blowing liberal and they're liberal and the President of Fordham is liberal, but this was contradicted by jar, who flatly declared that Jesuits are Conservative, who turned out to be not only wrong but deviously sophsitic in his defintiion of "conservative." Would you believe he meant by "Conservative" that the Jesuits were formed in the Catholic CounterReformation to preserve the status quo, which is a "conservative" definition after all. Do we use the term that way today? Shall we say that being for gay marriage and abortion and socialist values is "Conservative" because they are held by a Jesuit who wants to see the Protestant Reformation overthrown so we can return to the "status quo" of the Holy Roman Empire? This is rather frustrating.I eventually showed that the university itself is typically liberal although the liberals here didnt recognize it and seemed to take offense at the obvious fact, which puzzles me, and foreveryoung chimed in to agree with me that they don't know they're liberals, and got mocked and scorned for that too. Well, they don't know it, but they don't know they don't know it. Etc. That's frustrating.And now unkind people are exposing his angry PMs.So there's a LOT of provocation here. We don't jneed the psychobabble unless you want to drive the guy over the cliff.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I have several jeers from foreveryoung in this thread, and one from Faith.To be honest, I think I value those jeers even more than I value the cheers.

Yeah, but when you did it, it was a momentary lapse in a record of thoughtful posts. If Foreveryoung was a tenth as thoughtful as you usually are, it'd be one thing.But he's only got one mode, here, and it's inchoate rage at anyone with the temerity to defend a different view than he has. He's got no arguments for any position he holds; he just thinks he can get mad enough to bully us into submission. Except that she's not a humorist. She's serious, and unlike someone like Bill Maher - perhaps one of "those on the left" you were thinking - whose targets are the powerful, Coulter targets only those without the power to fight back or harm her in any way. Minorities. 9/11 widows. Atheists.When has Coulter had harsh words for the Catholic Church? When has she had harsh words for Fox News? When has she had harsh words for anyone at the RNC, or anyone else in a position to harm her financially or materially? When has Coulter ever attacked someone on her own side?She's just a stupid bully who picks on those who aren't afforded an opportunity to respond. I know you're an honest person, so tell me honestly - what is there to like about Ann Coulter except that she's unapologetically on your side? Do we continue to use "conservative" to refer to the political temperament that seeks to preserve traditional values and time-tested social institutions from change? Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what we all still mean by "conservative", even you. Should they not? If he didn't want them exposed, why did he send them? Do you think Foreveryoung is reacting to disagreement the way a healthy person should? Surely you're not so blinded by the fact that he's "on your side" to think that he is, or that his anger is in any way excusable. It's not like we cornered him on this - this is the thread he opened up. None of us were talking about Ann Coulter until he brought it up. Why did he bring it up if he didn't want to talk about it?Don't you think this is the bed he's made for himself? I know you're not the kind of person to ignore someone's faults and missteps just because they're "on your side." Level with me. As frustrating as it can be to be to talk to Theodoric and Jar - our own versions of Foreveryoung, to be sure - is this really the right reaction? For what it's worth I think you're making a better case for your side than Jar is making for his. But also, for whatever it's worth, Jesuit colleges are more conservative than other colleges. But being colleges, they may still be what you would consider "liberal." I'm not sure it's possible for a college to be "conservative" in the way you think of it.

I understand your feeling, nwr, and I'm glad you treasure my Jeer, but your 9 rating makes a bit of a hypocrite of you. From a Bible-believing Christian YEC Creationist Conservative point of view it's a high honor to get a very low rating at EvC.

Well, Crash, I am not familiar enough with foreveryoung to have a sense of his record here and am likely to confuse him with other Christian/creationist posters too. All I know is that on this thread there was plenty of reason for a person who isn't very experienced at this kind of debate to lose his temper. I'm afraid you would have to give me examples of this as I don't think of her that way, I think of her as targeting the establishment that holds certain ideas, not people they hold the ideas about. Or really, she's targeting the IDEAS, period, the ideas about how best to run a society, not people. But perhaps you can show me I'm wrong, and I can tell you that liberal jokes and jabs can stab to the heart of an ordinary conservative like me and I'm not one of "the powerful" so I'm not sure your distinction makes a difference. Well, first of all how often does anyone on the Left attack someone on the Left? But second, the Catholic Church? Fox News? The RNC? Most Christians have no clue about the Catholic Church, so effective has been their propaganda, and there ARE many Catholic conservatives so evangelicals just blindly join with them. Lots of them at Fox for instance. Actually the RNC is coming under a lot of fire from conservatives lately, I don't know about Ann. But I'm not really politically focused these days and haven't been keeping up with a lot of stuff. As I said I don't see her this way, you'd have to demonstrate it. I'd object if I thought she was bullying vulnerable people -- i'd FEEL it -- hasn't happened. Think, Crash. Dictionary definitions are just a pedantic evasion here. What jar meant, or after the fact says he meant (I don't think it's what Theodoric meant when he said the Jesuits are conservative, or what you mean either, down the post when you say Jesuit colleges are usually conservative), is that the Jesuits were formed to preserve the status quo of the domination of the world by Catholicism, i.e., the Holy Roman Empire, against the "liberalism" of Protestantism. Not in so many words but that's what it comes down to. All that stuff about freedom of religion/conscience that came out of that lesson learned in Europe but someone can talk about returning to the tyranny of Rome as a "conservative" point of view? The mind reels.If that's Conservativism I'm not a conservative, but I oppose gay marriage, abortion, legalized marijuana, the whole idea of "multiculturalism," and a whole swarm of concepts that I identify as "liberal." If you want to try to come up with more accurate terminology for the different positions, go for it, but at the moment it's devious to define Jesuits as "Conservative" when they are pushing those positions conservatives know as liberal, and when it turns out that "Conservative" means favoring the reestablishment Holy Roman Empire. (Oh you poor poor people who have no sense of history and have no idea what it would mean if that happened, who have no sense of how western prosperity and freedom have depended on the legacy of the Protestant Reformation and are so gleefully scorning it and trying to kill it, and succeeding I might add. Oh you have no idea. Sorry, digression.) As I said, I don't know enough beyond what I've already said about it. I will defend the underdog in some situations and that's probably a lot of it in this case. I've seen far worse on the Christian/Creationist side than anything he said on this thread. I really do think he got treated unfairly here. But that's par for the course and we do have to learn to deal with that.I'm happy to hear you say that you find jar and Theodoric frustrating! But on my side of things it's hard to find others to align with at all. Too many differences among us. That almost makes me cry, Crash. I can't remember getting any kind of compliment on my arguments here from the Loyal Opposition before. Maybe it's happened but I don't remember it if so. Wow, I'm actually making a better case for something HERE? It won't last but thanks for the momentary cheer. Which I pretty much said myself somewhere along the thread. Conservatism is in bad shape these days and there might not be a university I'd regard as conservative at all. I'm willing to believe that there COULD be some Jesuit colleges that are conservative because as I said they blow both ways, but you'd have to show me one. I know there are plenty of true blue Catholic conservatives out there but universities? Haven't seen it yet.I think what I showed of the liberal "multicultural" page at Fordham (and that's not the only "liberal" clue there by the way) SHOULD be a clearcut demonstration of their liberal position, and as I said I'm puzzled that this isn't immediately recognized. Got a lot of Jeers for that, something I really think is just a statement of fact.People here roundly scorn and mock conservative positions, I mean all the time, including on the Humor thread, without seeming to recognize that they are representing the liberal position in doing so, all those positions listed on that page for instance. How come I know those are liberal positions and the liberals don't? Edited by Faith, : clarification

You should probably take a break from debating here then. If reading random posts from people you don't know on an internet forum is causing you so much hatred and anger, maybe you shouldn't be here. If you're having thoughts of violence and "blood" then you've taken this way too serious.- Oni