Hi Faith,
I note that you're tired, and so don't expect any quick response, but I'm really struggling with your distinctions here.
Dr A proposes a hypothetical statement that he wishes Ann Coulter die in a fire. I think that we can all agree that such a statement would be a harsh statement.
You characterise Dr A's hypothetical statement as:
talking of a personal desire to see Ann Coulter herself die a miserable death
and therefore an attack on the person and not her ideas.
In contrast, we have Ann Coulter's statement that Timothy McVeigh should have bombed the NYT building. Again, I think we can all agree that this is a harsh statement.
There is no logical distinction between DrA's hypothetical statement and Ann Coulter's - both of them express a desire to see an event occur which would result in the death and suffering of one or more people. You cannot logically distinguish them from each other in that context.
And yet you characterise Ann Coulter's statement as an attack on ideas, and Dr A's hypothetical statement as an attack on the person.
You have no basis for making that distinction (except of course for the fact that you are a supporter of one person's ideology and not the other's).
There's a legitimate debate to be had about polemical hyperbole, and where the boundaries should lie - but you have to accept that they should lie in the same place for everyone, regardless of the ideology of the person using the hyperbole. Moving the boundaries, depending on your personal preferences, will not help to sway the debate.
Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?
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