Tuesday, July 05, 2011

AVI In the News

Congratulate Assistant Village Idiot on being quoted at Instapundit (and by Insty's wife Dr. Helen, and others). The subject was Thomas James Ball's dramatic courthouse steps suicide last month to protest perceived discrimination against men, himself in particular, by the family services system.

AVI raises a good point about the government's inability to respond, though it seems to be conventional wisdom that men face discrimination in family services cases. But I don't know anything about family law, and (like AVI commenter Donna B.) tend to regard suicide as crazy per force -- other than to save another's life -- even if dramatic.

Most interesting to me is the media blackout and Wikipedia wipeout of the event. Though unsurprising, the paucity of debate outside the blogosphere is ominous. It's evidence for AVI's view that debate between left and right is increasingly impossible. Especially when journalists ignore facts, cheerlead for liberals and do the White House's bidding.

1 comment:

Whitehall said...

Fact checking can be useful but only if your correspondent believes in facts.

Personally, I find the best discussion technique is to make predictions. "If we adopt your position, would not X happen?"

The test of a scientific theory is basically, can it make predictions and do they pass that test?

Of course, people will deny allowing untoward predictions but it will plant a seed of doubt.

For example, "Let's let every woman be paid by the government if she has children. What would happen?"

A conservative would predict lots of unwed mothers and fatherless children, men without families once there is no need to support them, etc.

What would a liberal predict? Surely, it wouldn't make much sense.