Was this really necessary?

[Warren DeMontague]

85. Couple things. One, Gary Johnson is pretty different from Ed Meese.

Two, it only matters as to "how someone labels themselves" when it is part of a disingenuous and dishonest pattern of debate, particularly when trying to conflate disagreement with the extreme parts of the agenda of outliers with "bigotry" against a larger group- like Creationists saying "we're Christians" (technically true) but then turning around and portraying all criticism of Creationism as "Christian Bashing".



I wrote out an example of this sort of thing a while back, it kind of sums up why it matters:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2601779

553. Here's a totally made up example of the sort of logic at play:

1) Hoznofsters call themselves Flimshotters, even though Hoznofsters have a history of criticizing large swaths of other Flimshotters, telling Flimshotters they're not REAL Flimshotters, using derisive terms for other Flimshotters -like "Funflims"- who don't agree to all the Hoznofster definitions of what constitutes "real" Flimshottery, etc.

2) However... when experiencing general, widespread rebuke or -ever worse- open mockery and notbeingtakenseriouslyenough,dammit-ry... Hoznofsters will, however, immediately claim that "Flimshotters are under attack!" and even better, since Flimshotters -the larger group- are known primarily as arguing for equal rights for Wagglehorns, this allows the Hoznofster to move the argument onto a favorable playing field, because really everyone who is at all reasonable believes Wagglehorns ought to have equal rights.

3) Next move is to point out that a widely despised, if ill-defined, group- let's call them Mrazplotzes--- are known for criticizing Flimshotters.

You know what that means, right? If Mrazplotzes criticize Flimshotters and we've established by assertion that Hoznofster=Flimshotter... then everyone who criticizes a Hoznofster MUST BE a dread Mrazplotz!


It's logic!