Fact Free principles: Romney equates a piece of trash video with American principles worthy of

[patrice]

a response demonstrating the resolve of our armed might to show "our values" and to defend "our interests".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=mfwEUbgG-dc&feature=endscreen

Also, notice the logic problems in this: aggressive "defense" of "principles", principles are super-ordinate categories of values, which have more than one sub-type/examples/manifestations. The sub-types are identified deductively, moving from principle analytically to examples of that principle applied to empirical information. Deduction produces truths that are more logically necessary, more probable.

Moving in the opposite direction in reasoning, moving inductively from a particular fact to a general principle is less logically necessary, because various principles can inher in one degree or another in a given phenomenon. A variety of things can be inferred from a given fact, many of which are improbable all of the way to impossible. Remember the example of this from Science class, about the barnacles on the bottom of the boat & the question, "How did they get there?" and an example of inferential reasoning could be something like, "Spontaneous Generation" or "We threw pottery in the water, so pottery generates barnacles."

That's what Romney is doing here, TTE, "Someone posted a video about Muslims on the internet. Muslims did violence on our embassy. Therefore, Muslims are a threat to our 1st amendment rights worthy of the resolve of our armed might and Ambassador Patterson should not have apologized for any unintended insult to anyone's religion and President Obama should not have supported her."

Q. How does one piece of trash video become grounds for going to war on "principles"?

A. DYSFUNCTIONAL logic.

And it will be very interesting to see which Americans CAN'T or REFUSE to recognize this particular dysfunction.

[madaboutharry]

1. Exactly.

How is a hateful video representative of American values?

This is how: if you are a bully and a bigot then you don't see the wrong.

[patrice]

5. +1google for there's a bunch of those bigots and bullies out there. nt

[icarusxat]

14. got that right

We have already heard the British call him Mitt the twit, how much longer before his own party begins to call him "Mitt the s**t head?

[Heather MC]

2. Maybe someone needs to make a crappy movie trashing The mormon leader. depicting

the leader raping young girls forcing them into marriage and what ever other disgusting things he has done. I wonder if Mittens would defined that as America's Principles"

[patrice]

3. ??? That's pretty inferential of you, from where I'm sitting. Do you care to provide anything at all

resembling empirical facts, because I'm considering alerting on your post.

[patrice]

4. IOW, dysfunctional reasoning: it's NOT okay when we do it, or support it. nt

[Heather MC]

7. Your Out Rage is my Point

He is definding this Film as American Princples, but if there was a flim of that nature made about his Religion I am sure he would share your same Out rage. and he would scream an attack on religious freedom. And free speech wouldn't matter.

It is wrong to attack and degrade someone's beliefs.

Unfortunately Romney is calling that America's Princples

[patrice]

9. Thank! you for that clarification. We agree; it isn't okay when we do it, so questions are good.

[Heather MC]

10. Sometimes I get lost in translation

[patrice]

11. I also have that problem! I'm just kind of working something out in my own head &

EXPERIMENTING by writing it and, then, there's this here inter-tubes environment that does not include a lot of the other kinds of meaning cues that people use.

I really do mean to write only things I actually think or believe, but since I'm also experimenting, I'm not always sure where that's going to take me.

[Ardler333]

6. Another great video

That was a great video. Here is another one- its a song written by David Lereah that was inspired by the 2012 Democratic convention. He's not a musician so the quality of the song is only fair-- but the lyrics send a strong message to the Republican Party:

&feature=plcp

[patrice]

8. I love this request for understanding!! We MUST stop being AFRAID of understanding.

We NEED understanding.

I really also like how he asks for an explanation for downsizing "the American dream". That is so very much at the heart of what is happening.

GOOD lyrics and I like his voice too, because it seems to be in the style of Neil Young, a righteous troubadour indeed!

Thanks!

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Romney and the right of free speech

Since when does free speech mean that we have to give the one freely speaking a free pass? Mr. Romney certainly wouldn't give the press agent at the Cairo embassy a free pass for his or her remarks.

Yes, I support the right of Rev. Terry Jones and the mysterious Sam Bacile the right to say what they please. I can also exercise my free speech to call Rev. Jones and Mr. Bacile a couple of irresponsible sectarian bigots and right wing morons. I'm not going to suggest that either of them should be locked up in a dungeon or strung up on a lamp post over it, or even participate in demonstrations in front of Mr. Bacile's house. There are idiots and villains in this world worthy or more attention.

Among the idiots or villains more worthy of time is Mr. Romney. For from condemning him from merely exercising his right of free speech, I would encourage him to exercise it more. He can start by freely telling us how he proposes to balance the budget and exactly which deductions he plans to eliminate. Perhaps we will discover that his expertise in government finance is better than his expertise in foreign policy. But I doubt it.

I'm good with Mr. Romney's defense of free speech. I'm not so good with his implication that Rev. Jones and Mr. Bacile should get a free pass expressing hatred of somebody else's religion, or to the billion people or so to adhere to that particular faith. While free speech is an American value, Mr. Romney could have taken the opportunity to remind everybody that sectarian bigotry is not. The omission of such a remark may have all but ended his chances of being president at home and made him an ugly American elsewhere.

All I am doing to show my displeasure with Mr. Romney's remarks yesterday is to urge those considering voting for this irresponsible idiot to please reconsider.

[patrice]

13. I like your point about Ambassador Patterson's right to free speech on American embassy grounds.

And how does the American right to free speech extend to a video on the international internet, anyway??? . . . though I suppose that would be up to the receiving nation to monitor & control anyway.

Besides which, for some reason, too many of us forget that our rights to free speech do not legally extend to "crying fire in a crowded, darkened theater, with few or un-marked exits", the idea being that inflammatory speech, which puts other people in real danger, is NOT protected under the First Amendment. These are the legal grounds upon which hate-speech is prosecuted.