Free Speech thread

[Brimshack]

Feel free to dismiss my arguments as book learning if you like Cenimo; it'll save us both a lot of time and effort.

 

[cenimo]

That's a little evasive. Very reminiscent of the hospital scene in Slaughterhouse Five when the writer is working on a book about the fire bombing of Dresden and the main character, in the next hospital bed tells the writer's friend he was there. The writer than says, "Let him write his own book."

Please give us some actual life examples instead of parrotting globalist-socialist anti-American theory. 

Til then, toodles.  

 

:tin:

 

[Dewjunkie]

My statements are based on personal experience (been to 13 countries), book knowledge (been to college), and definitions of the words in question (looked 'em up).

I also have enough experience to see the merry-go-round of non-productive debate starting up, so I will avoid banging my head on the keyboard and go find a nice "Hi, I'm new" thread to waste my time in.

 

[cenimo]

Dewjunkie

My last reply was referring to Brimshacks last post...

but nice to live where we have free speech and you can stay or leave

nice attempted dig on the "new" thread mention

bye bye

 

[Brimshack]

Yes, that's right cenimo, you are the one dismissing an argument simply because you think it came from a book, but I am the one being evasive here. To refer to my ragument as parroting a theory is hardly an effective means of showing that the argument is invalid. What it demonstrates is that you are unwilling to look at facts you find inconvenient. Your staunch refusal to consider anything but personal experience is a straight-foreword celebration of ignorance, and no, I'm not interested meeting those terms at all.

 

[cenimo]

When the Cuban boy was in the news and they first mentioned sending him back to Cuba, many of the Cuban players in the major leagues sat out a game in protest of that policy. People didn't care or want to know what these players opinions of living under Castro was, the people already had the cherished pre-formed opinions of it. In other words, let's not ask those who have lived under Castro about living under Castro, because we already know what we think about it. What we think is based on The Daily worker and Radio Havana. We don't need any real life insight here.  

That mentality seems to permeate this thread, and that mentality displays ignorance more than anything else. . So, 73's. I'm gone.

 

[Dewjunkie]

Argh, I'm going to regret this....

Living under Castro is not the Cuban culture. It is their unfortunate political situation, and because they're stifled under Castro and his political agenda, they stuff 35 people on a raft and float towards Florida. They do not flee Cuba to escape their culture. They flee Cuba to escape political oppression. By definition, regardless of how many countries you've been to, culture and politics are not the same thing. Therefore, people coming to America because of the freedom we enjoy that they may not in their country of origin does not make America a superior culture, but a place for them to escape political oppression. A Korean driving a car in los Angeles does not make them any more American culturally than me eating Hunan Chicken in Hong Kong makes me Chinese culturally.

 

[seebs]

It's worth observing that people who fled Cuba to be here are probably not entirely representative of Cubans who have not fled.

In any event, I am 100% behind the decision to place the kid with his dad. Parents have a right to raise their kids.

I don't think my dislike of a government qualifies me to take kids away from their parents.

 

[cenimo]

That's not the point at all...the point was despite the ballplayers having lived in cuba and having real life experienceof it, the people in favor of returning the boy wanted to know nothing about those real life experiences, they already had their minds made up, solely by their opinions formed by second hand knowledge through books and the media...

and obvioulsy in the ballplayers case the desire for freedom overcame any cultural reasons to stay in Cuba...

 

[Dewjunkie]

Cenimo,

I think it is you who has lost sight of the point of the debate. The point is that we in America cannot call our culture superior to anyone else because we have free speech. Free speech is a political right, and if a person leaves another country to come to the US to seek that right, then they are fleeing for political reasons. I do not deny that the US is a better place to live than many other countries, but that does not make our culture superior to anyone else's. That is the point of the debate, and I do not believe I have missed it in any of my posts.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by cenimo
That's not the point at all...the point was despite the ballplayers having lived in cuba and having real life experienceof it, the people in favor of returning the boy wanted to know nothing about those real life experiences, they already had their minds made up, solely by their opinions formed by second hand knowledge through books and the media...

Like, say, people who believe what ballplayers say.

Anyway, I formed my opinion based on one simple thing: Parents have a presumed right to raise their own kids, no matter what we think of their cultures.

and obvioulsy in the ballplayers case the desire for freedom overcame any cultural reasons to stay in Cuba...

Yes, but that tells us that the ballplayers *did not agree* with people who wanted to stay. They had different opinions, and were not representative.

Also, uhm... Desire for *MONEY*. I mean, we're talking baseball players, not people who have devoted their lives to the betterment of mankind.

 

[cenimo]

not people who have devoted their lives to the betterment of mankind.

like Castro? ...let's not forget the mother lost her life trying to get the kid out of Cuba...

but the point isn't cuba or the ballplayers - that was triggered by book learning vs reality

 

[Brimshack]

If this is meant to demonstrate the superiority of personal experience over book learning it doesn't do that. The ball players may have had personal experience, but for anything that others learned from them would still be second-hand information, learned from a written source most likely, unless of course you are arguign that electronic media are superior to print media. Either way the point is that by your own logic, we cannot use this information.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by cenimo
like Castro? ...let's not forget the mother lost her life trying to get the kid out of Cuba...

Well, for instance, Elian's dad apparently liked Cuba. And yes, the mother lost her life trying to get herself *and* the kid out... But that doesn't mean that there's some universal sense in which she was right and all the people happy to live in Cuba are wrong.

but the point isn't cuba or the ballplayers - that was triggered by book learning vs reality

I don't see the distinction you're trying to make. I guess it seems sort of silly. Yeah, personal knowledge can be much more in-depth than accumulated statistics or knowledge. It can also be very misleading; a friend of mine has had way more crashes on his Mac than I have on my PC. Is that because Macs are more crash-prone? No, it's because *ANY* computer my friend uses crashes constantly; he's a hardware jinx.

My personal experience of living in Minnesota is that we have wonderful weather, with nice, crisp, winters. Someone who doesn't like cold might have a very different first-hand experience. If you want to know whether you'd like it here, an atlas telling you the typical temperature range will help you a lot more than my personal experience will.

 

[Brimshack]

It should also be said that many who are presently unhappy with Cuba are not necessarily fans of the U.S. either. That was one of the themes expressed in "Strawberry and Chocolate" a movie directed by Tomas Guttierrez Akea, himself a Cuban. The movie is sharply critical of Castro's regime, but it celebrates cuban culture. I would also add that it would be a terrible mistake to think either that the reason Elián became a conservative cause celebré had anything to do with Castro's oppressive policies or that the problems in Cuba are unrelated to U.S. policies. The INS turns back thousands of children every year despite coming from poor and/or oppressive regimes, and imprisoned many Hatian refugees for years, but no, it was a crime to send this one back to Cuba? Of course, I relied on newspapers for that, so I suppose it will be dismissed as book-learning of sorts, but for most of us that would remove the whole topic from the table. As to the historical relationship between the U.S. and Cuba, that too would require book-learning, since no-one can experience past history, and since politica economies are not manifestly evident to the senses. How convenient that so much information relevant to the context behind what individuals experience can just be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Cuba is poor and it's people oppressed, but we in the U.S. have VCRs and most of us are free, so our culture must be inherently superior. No need to look into it any further than that.

 

[Gunny]

Originally posted by Brimshack
Cuba is poor and it's people oppressed, but we in the U.S. have VCRs and most of us are free, so our culture must be inherently superior. No need to look into it any further than that.

I don't believe that we are superior, just blessed.

Many a man paid the ultimate price to ensure United States of America's freedom and that of many European Countries.

Freedom is not free.

 

[Brimshack]

But see I have no argument with this. One can be proud of his country without asserting it's cultural superiority. It is the specific claim that 'Western culture' is inherently superior to others' that I object to. It appears that we have no argument here Gunny, not yet anyway.

 

[Dewjunkie]

Originally posted by seebs
Well, for instance, Elian's dad apparently liked Cuba. And yes, the mother lost her life trying to get herself *and* the kid out... But that doesn't mean that there's some universal sense in which she was right and all the people happy to live in Cuba are wrong. 

Wonderfully said, seebs.