I'm just front-paging something I wrote in "The Green Rat Café."
This made me want to read "The Principle of Charity" (Wikipedia):
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation....I'm making a tag "the principle of charity/humanity," because I think it might help me (and you!) remember to do something I very much believe in doing. You might say it's too similar to calling for civility (which I'm known for calling "civility bullshit"), but it's not the same thing. It's not about tone. It's about interpretation and understanding.
[Donald] Davidson sometimes referred to it as the principle of rational accommodation. He summarized it: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement. The principle may be invoked to make sense of a speaker's utterances when one is unsure of their meaning...
[There are] at least four versions of the principle of charity...
A related principle is the principle of humanity, which states that we must assume that another speaker's beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her "the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances"...
- The other uses words in the ordinary way;
- The other makes true statements;
- The other makes valid arguments;
- The other says something interesting.
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230 comments:
1 – 200 of 230 Newer› Newest»“Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity.”
After Nate Phillips served time in Lincoln, he camped out on the Mall in DC; in a teepee. More recently he was at Standing Rock, ND. He’s been on TV and in the newspapers many times. Sandman, on the other hand, is a high school kid in a flyover state.
Phillips needs to move back to Thurston County, Nebraska.
"...but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions."
Now that's comedy !
Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity.
Nonsense, absolute nonsense. What kind of ordinary man bangs on his little drum inches from a 15 or 16 year old child?
meant to say "child's face."
Trashing Phillips raised the ire of the SJWs, which might be a reason to leave him alone if you don't want to take them on, but he's hardly an ordinary person living in obscurity. He's a man who deliberately works at becoming a news item. The people who went after the boys really messed up. The people who went after Phillips exposed a fraud. There's a big difference there. There's no walking this back. The folks who attacked the boys need to don their sack cloth and sit in the ashes instead of making excuses, and they ought to be a lot more skeptical of what they hear in the msm and see on any You Tube video less than an hour long in the future.
What does the principle of charity say regarding the Black Hebrew Israelites who called the kids faggots and Jesus was coming to take them down?
> neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
This is exactly what Phillips and his camera crew wanted. Why did he edit it and call the media?
Other than he did not want a second film.
He was prepared as well as a oft-AWOL 4 year private could be.
Making a habit of publicly banging a drum in peoples' faces indicates to me a desire to rise from obscurity.
Yes, Phillips didn't look for media spotlight at all. Exactly for this reason, he had somebody in his entourage record everything, then publish the video.
It strikes me that all the institutions and norms that promote these principles are under attack and have been for a while. Christian churches that embrace them whither while those that preach hell and damnation thrive. Colleges and Universities have become indoctrination centers where any deviation from Correct Thought is punished.
This is too depressing for a Friday morning.
People who employ Alinsky type tactics against children, with video cameras at the ready, are not souls longing for a peaceful, quiet life.
"They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions."
True. Phillips assumed his little stunt would result in the kids -- and only the kids -- being "inspected and judged by millions." He didn't count on a much longer video exposing his shameful behavior.
Except for the wild inaccuracy about Nathan Phillip's role in all of this, I whole heartedly agree. Sandmann did nothing wrong and is owed more sincere apologies than he will ever get. Phillips...deserves a slightly different fate.
Aside from showing up and camera-hogging at every nationally prominent protest, appearing in a music video, and touting himself as a "tribal elder" and Vietnam veteran, poor Nathan was just trying to live a life of quiet anonymity.
I prefer the Principle of Clarity to Charity. I don't seek to put the best possible light on someone's comments or actions. I prefer to try and understand their intent or meaning. Truth over accommodation, you might say.
That's Augustine's view of charity. Think the best of people rather than the worst.
That's now charity comes to be soul-saving.
Later charity meant money. It's quite unrelated but profitable.
The First Agreement: Be impeccable with your word.
This is Phillips career.
Using Alinsky tactics to further his cause.
And he’s been shown to be continually lying and changing his story.
He deserves our scorn.
Legal insurrection has a great explanation of his tactics.
Newneo explains how Sandmann had no good choices.
The most charitable interpretation I can come up with for Phillips is that he's just a guy who who shows his love by being extremely obnoxious.
I don't want to trash Phillips, but he did give an interview to the press that was a lie and his target was the teenagers. So I don't know that he didn't want any attention. And *somebody* posted the video on Twitter and drew attention to it.
"They each did something that got them into the spotlight"
This is at best misguided, at worst an outright lie. The boy did nothing but be there.
Phillips is a serial agitator, liar, and perpetrator of stolen valor, as he has repeatedly presented himself as a Vietnam combat veteran, instead of the mechanic who never left Nebraska while in the service he was. He also went AWOL 3 times.
Phillips was trying to provoke an incident. The boy did not take the bait, so the Democrats and their lapdogs in the Lame Stream Media© manufactured an incident.
You are better than this Ann....
They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
Phillips, however, did ask for Sandmann to be judged by millions, which is far less “charitable”.
When P goes on TV saying he is a Vietnam Vet and recon ranger, implying he is Rambo or a code walker,
is it trashing him to look up his service record and remind he spent two days in KS as rifleman, and the rest of the time in NB repairing refrigerators? Does knowing he came out a private after 4 years and went AWOL 3 times pertinent to his story? How about his video history as a confrontation seeking activist?
Perhaps as Alyssa Milano tweeted, simply wearing a MAGA hat is the new white hood: all you need to feel.
zipity said...
You are better than this Ann....
No she isn't.
Phillips was obviously seeking press coverage for his lifelong 'Indian-victim-hood' project. How else can you interpret the deliberate provocation of banging a drum and chanting, inches from an unknown high school kid's face, and the videotaping and release to the press, along with his interview? Suggesting otherwise is ludicrous. Ordinarily, I respect and usually agree with your commentary, but this is so wrong.
He got what he wanted, until it fell apart on closer scrutiny. Now, I think, he's getting what he deserved for the stunt he pulled.
Have no sympathy for Chief Phillips. He's been a public buttinsky for years. He deserves the scrutiny revealing he's a Reefer Man (MOS, USMC), irresponsible (AWOL several times), some criminal history, and a fable-maker. And an annoying drum-beater.
Seriously? A lying professional protestor shouldn’t be investigated because......why I can’t even come up with a reason.
Oh, got it. He’s a democrat.
Let's talk to those Black Hebrew Israelites and see what they have to say.
The fact is, as Freeman Hunt so insightfully said, what happened in front of the Lincoln Memorial was America--people acting freely in the public square, spouting their views, with others looking on.
What happened afterward was the USSR, China during the Cultural Revolution, or Cuba--self-appointed thought-police descending on the internet to start the Five Minutes Hate. (Go watch the John Hurt/Richard Burton film of "1984").
Here is Dorothy Sayers, one of the first women to get a degree from Oxford and mystery writer of note, in 1938:
"To oppose one class perpetually to another — young against old, manual labor against brain-worker, rich against poor, woman against man — is to split the foundations of the State; and if the cleavage runs too deep, there remains no remedy but force and dictatorship. If you wish to preserve a free democracy, you must base it — not on classes and categories, for this will land you in the totalitarian State, where no one may act or think except as the member of a category. You must base it upon the individual Tom, Dick and Harry, and the individual Jack and Jill — in fact, upon you and me."
I won't go into the why as it's been pretty well covered by previous comments, but Althouse is either trolling us, or delusional.
As soon as the "clearer picture" came out, I thought, "someone should really call out Nathan Phillips for being so intentionally deceptive".
alanc709 said...
I prefer the Principle of Clarity to Charity. I don't seek to put the best possible light on someone's comments or actions. I prefer to try and understand their intent or meaning. Truth over accommodation, you might say.
I try to resolve ambiguity in the person's favor. I do not support making stuff up to pretend what they did is better (or less harmful) than it really is.
Attributing sincerity to a paid professional Demonstrator is a bridge too far. You might as well attribute sincereity to Trial Lawyers. That theory fits a rare witness, but it never fits an adversarial professional who is paid to win by putting on a fictional play in public. Shakespeare nailed it in Hamlet. Appearing innocent is part of the act.
AllenS--I love your comments generally, but lay off our hostess. She put it out there, and you have taken shots at it (with which I agree).
Our hostess is great, and so are you. Let's move along.
You can call me a toadying asshole--I beg to differ.
What happened afterward was the USSR,
I agree....Phillips, Sandmann, and the Hebrew Israelites all have the absolute right to express themselves out on the Mall. The press had the right to go with half the story, but they should have taken pride in getting the story right. Rather than go with Phillips' version of the story, they should have gotten the whole story before they published or took to Twitter.
The celebrities calling for the kids to be destroyed....that is truly scary. The press knew what they were putting the kids up for when they acted the way they did. But boy oh boy....what do you have to do to get people to notice the way they judged the kids and spoke about them was really really bad? (I suspect you can't keep talking about "whiteness" being bad and "toxic masculinity". We are training people not to see individuals, and this is not good)
Just a guy living his life, in a Veitnam Vet caught between a beast and prey, but then next:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nathan-phillips-rally-attempted-to-disrupt-mass-at-dcs-national-shrine-91038
“There were about 20 people trying to get in, we had to lock the doors and everything.”
A source close to the shrine’s leadership corroborated the security guard’s account, telling CNA that during the Mass, Phillips and the group tried to enter the church while playing drums and chanting, and were prohibited from entering the building by security personnel, who locked the main basilica doors with the congregation still inside.
On the basilica steps, Mr. Phillips read a statement which said: “We demand that the students of Covington Catholic High School be reprimanded not just by their school officials but, as seniors, by their upcoming universities.”
“We demand that the Catholic Church hold itself responsible for the [indistinct] hundred-plus years of genocide that indigenous peoples have endured and endure persistently by implementing the following: with reparations of land and restorations to the indigenous peoples in the U.S. and across the world.”
“We demand that the Catholic Church revoke the papal bulls related to the doctrine of discovery, which laid the foundation for religious prejudice and the dehumanization of indigenous peoples.”
What does the Principle of Charity/Humanity do to the whole "dog whistle" meme? It was such fun attributing views to people based on what they didn't say. It is sort of like being aggressive by standing there. And we all know what "Make America Great Again" really means.
After being introduced as “Uncle Nate,” Phillips goes on to read prepared remarks:
We demand that the students of Covington Catholic High School be reprimanded — not just by the school officials as seniors, but by their upcoming universities. We demand the Catholic Church hold themselves responsible for the hundred-plus years of genocide that our indigenous people have endured — and still persist through — by [implementing] the following: with reparations of land and restorations to the indigenous peoples in the U.S. and across the world.
--
Still..he persists...using the kids as a tool to get at the church.
If you can't see this lying, stolen valor professional protester for who he is, cataract surgery won't help with that.
Phillips, who was 19 at the time, was “charged with escaping from the Nebraska Penal Complex where he was confined May 3,” according to a May 9, 1974, article in the Lincoln Star. The court approved a bond of $500 and set a preliminary hearing for May 14.
He pleaded guilty to assault on June 19, 1974, and was fined $200. In addition, he was charged with underage possession of alcohol in 1972, 1973, and 1975, as well as negligent driving. A destruction of property charge against him was dropped in August 1973, but Phillips was sentenced to one year probation for a related charge of alcohol possession by a minor. In December 1978, he was charged with driving without a license."
This guy is two years older than me and he escaped from the State Pen at age 19. Nice guy!
Sorry Unknown..was typing at same time. But worth repeating.
> “We demand that the students of Covington Catholic High School be reprimanded not just by their school officials but, as seniors, by their upcoming universities.”
Charity.
And unless Sandmann goes to Hillsdale, I would not be surprised if he was treated unfairly in college.
Purposely obtuse, willfully ignorant, or knowingly evil - it makes a difference when one is seeking to be charitable in ascertaining the intent of the individual's actions/words. I would think that one of these mindsets requires a great deal of push back, the others could let you feel better about yourself if you shake your head and walk away. If you believe this existence is all there is and that everyone engaged is playing by the same rulebook, then being charitable in this manner would make life less contentious. Of course, everyone isn't playing by the same rulebook.
If you believe in something more, than it doesn't matter if everybody uses a different rulebook. Being charitable no matter the provocation or circumstance is about the elevation of your soul and the example you set for others to see - no matter if they mock and scorn and crucify you. You don't care. It isn't about the here and now.
Fuck you. That meth mouthed piece of stone age garbage deserves to be attacked. He intentionally stuck that retarded drum in a kids face, lied about it, then called for the kids to be expelled. Then he attacked the National Basilica while mass was being performed.
Stupid liberal old white cunts like you who think that their pet minorities should not be held accountable for their actions like human beings are 10 times as racist as any smirking kid. Fuck Philips and fuck you for defending him.
Sounds like the professor is trying to prove that two wrongs do make a right.
Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity. They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
Bullshit.
Phillips deliberately and purposefully created this controversy. His bad acts include invading the personal space of sandman, attempting to intimidate sandman, deceptively editing the video of the confrontation, lying about the confrontation, lying about his past and he still continues to claim that he is the victim and still demands punishment for the boys who did nothing wrong. Phillips must be condemned.
Why are you unable to see this?
Amadeus 48, you are a toadying asshole.
This is a good concept to examine. In my personal interactions I make a conscious effort to take the words at face value and try not to read intent into the communication. In the business world, I almost always rephrase their statement back to them with my additional take as to how it affects me, influences my future actions, and goals. All to see if what I understood them to say, had the desired affect on me.
Too many times, what was said, was NOT the message they wanted conveyed.
In this case, someone smarter than me is going to have to explain the actions of Phillips and get them to align with some benign intent of Phillips.
To me, one of the most laudatory characteristics of an intelligent person is the willingness to readily admit a mistake. That happens not to be evident on this blog.
The best article I have read about the incident is The Media Botched the Covington Catholic Story by Caitlyn Flanagan, published two days ago on The Atlantic website.
There were three groups in that area -- the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group of Native Americans, and the Covington Catholic kids.
For a long time preceding the incident, the Black Hebrew Israelites were mocking the Native Americans. That was the main activity, and the Covington Catholic kids were involved only peripherally.
In this situation, rambunctious Indian elder Nathan Phillips walked into the middle of the Covington Catholic kids.
Phillips did not intervene between the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Native Americans -- which was the main conflict.
https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1088285433673515009
video by
🚨Nathan Phillips, January 3, 2018🚨
"I'm a Vietnam Vet. I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5, 1976. I got honorable discharge and one of the boxes shows peacetime or, what my box says is that I was **in theater**. I don't talk much about my Vietnam times."
The left relishes in exploiting the principle of humanity. When confronted with the 'fact' that some federal employees were 'showing up' at homeless shelters Wilbur Ross made the point there was no reason for that since there are countless institutions offering non interest payday loans to anyone who is furloughed. Never mind the fact that anyone with a hint personal responsibility should have a few months cash on hand for such emergencies. Well to the lefties he might as well have said they should all burn in Hell...
Bleeding heart humanity. Fuck em...
What did Trump mean when he said, "There are good people on both sides"? I thought he meant there were good people on both sides of the issue of whether to take down the Confederate memorial statues. Many people yelling on TV and the internet said he meant the white nationalists of the Stormfront variety. I believe he believed he was talking about the protest of the statue removal. What do you think he meant?
Where is the Principle of Charity/Humanity in all this?
Nowhere in sight. And is that no where or now here?
Alinsky's rules: Make the opponent live up to his rules.How many times dishonest lefties said "Jesus wouldn't say/do that?"
Yes, the Bible says "forgive your enemies" but first, get even.
Seriously, no one is "Trashing" Phillips unless you think telling the truth = "Trashing". He seems to be your typical Left-wing activist. Pushing the Left-wing ideology of hate while pretending to be some sort of great Indian leaders and Vietnam Vet. The record of petty crime and mental illness is par for the course.
I visited a client in the Nebraska State Pen once in the 80's on a criminal appointment. How Nathan Phillips escaped from it is quite the trick.
I won my case.
President-Mom-Jeans--Thanks. I beg to differ.
And you throw like a girl and look stupid in those jeans.
Rambunctious Indian elder Nathan Phillips is a trouble-maker.
One of his main methods of making trouble is to tell lies. He is a skilled liar.
People fall for his noble-Indian act.
This was his most successful trouble-making antic.
The Left has been using minorities for ever to attack Conservative Institutions and values.
is it our job to clean up someones mess if they are lying or disingenuous?
This used to be known as giving someone the benefit of the doubt, and it's nonexistence in public life now. I blame social media. Zuckerburg is obviously diabolical and should be wood-chipped.
There is nothing worse than decaying old white boomer liberal woman, except perhaps the white knighting cucks that m'lady for them when they say and do retarded things.
Althouse has a point.
There's really no need to trash Phillips. He's doing a pretty good job of trashing himself. Piling on might just make him more sympathetic, not less.
Somebody once said, Never Interfere With an Enemy While He’s in the Process of Destroying Himself.
They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
Sorry to be crude, but that's just bullshit. Phillips was there praying to made viral. He's a long time demonstrater at various lefty causes, and if his crowd didn't record the event and publish it, they were pretty happy it happened the way it did. He immediately followed up on his good fortune by trying to invade a mass nearby:
Now Catholic News Agency reports that he and his merry band of righteous dudes tried to invade the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during mass on Saturday.
On the following evening, rambunctious Indian elder Nathan Phillips intended to enter a Catholic church during a mass and pound his drum and sing his Indian song.
Fortunately, members of the church stopped him from entering. He was able to make his loud noise only outside the church.
An ordinary person!
Sandmann was just some HS kid waiting for the bus to arrive, and before you know it, he's a figure of 2 minutes of Left-wing hate. Why? Because he looks like a Catholic White boys a lot Left-wing journalists and Hollywood producers hated when they were 18.
Our liberal cultural elite need to see a psychiatrist.
There's an interesting video posted by Rosie Memos on Twitter last night. It shows two well-dressed white women in the crowd at the Phillips/Teen confrontation, laughing and taking photos on cells. "Rosie" says the two knew the teen boys were from Kentucky and seemed to be involved in the incident somehow, perhaps two media pros who helped the video go viral (her speculation). Video is here:
https://twitter.com/almostjingo/status/1087851979882156032
I can't figure out what you are trying to say, Ann, and think you are dead wrong. High school kids in DC to support the right to life march (which the press has not even covered) find themselves in the midst of wacko protestors while waiting for their bus. Phillips deserves to be heavily scrutinized, and under that scrutiny he has been shown to be a prevaricator, at best, and an outright liar at worst. In this case, the kids deserve all of the benefit of the doubt. All of it.
Phillips, who was 19 at the time, was “charged with escaping from the Nebraska Penal Complex where he was confined May 3,” according to a May 9, 1974, article in the Lincoln Star. The court approved a bond of $500 and set a preliminary hearing for May 14.
He pleaded guilty to assault on June 19, 1974, and was fined $200. In addition, he was charged with underage possession of alcohol in 1972, 1973, and 1975, as well as negligent driving. A destruction of property charge against him was dropped in August 1973, but Phillips was sentenced to one year probation for a related charge of alcohol possession by a minor. In December 1978, he was charged with driving without a license."
This guy is two years older than me and he escaped from the State Pen at age 19. Nice guy!
All this was DURING his Marine Corps enlistment period. That never seems to be mentioned, somehow, which surprises me. Maybe his violence was due to a desire to go "In Country".
Ann, you are trying to be cruelly neutral, and it ain’t working.
It's not trashing Phillips to point out his part in this whole thing, particularly the fact that he incited the confrontation, and including his lies about his actions (and Sandmann's), his lies about his background, and his obnoxious scolding of Sandmann and his classmates.
If there was any trashing of Phillips it was brought on by his actions that day and those immediately after.
President-Mom-Jeans--but who covers for you every waking minute of very day when it is clear to all that you are a raving lunatic?
Sincerely, Amadeus48
Althouse--see where the Principle of Humanity takes us? He assumed my beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attributed to me "the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances". And I did the same with him. We each think the other is a delusional jerk, possibly with mental illness.
"They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions."
Sorry Althouse. This time you are going to have to say you got it wrong.
Phillips filmed it and posted it. He actually WAS asking for and prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
For various reasons, here's hoping they'll both be Nine Day Wonders, unlike poor Monica and Linda Tripp. Perhaps one of them should hire Roger Stone to facilitate that.
If Phillips apologized to the teen for banging a drum in his face and lying about him, then I’d be inclined to be more charitable toward him. But he’s not apologetic. He’s just an asshole.
at the students of Covington Catholic High School be reprimanded not just by their school officials but, as seniors, by their upcoming universities.”
How should one respond when an adult leads a movement to limit the lives of minors of class "students of Covington" - for the hate crime of "standing still on camera"?
What does the NYT "reporter" call for, behind the weasel words"
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1086777325356752897
Maggie Haberman
There are dozens of students laughing and egging on the behavior. Will be interesting to see if anyone is actually expelled, as officials suggest is possible.
President-Mom-Jeans said ... approximately what I thought.
But it seems Althouse was smart enough to take my free advice, which was to watch a video before writing stupid things about it.
FTR, the Propaganda Media are obviously seeking the imprisonment and death of Deplorable People that cling to the Christian Religion. To push that agenda they accuse us of crimes that do not even exist and then incite a riot to do their work. But whatever...we assume their goal is not theft and murder, so it must be to create a new man to replace us. How noble can you get.
In a propaganda war there is no incentive to be charitable.
It is not a question of charming people, or, that absurdity, convincing them, but of overwhelming them.
Its a brutal approach based on a realistic appraisal of human nature, at least in the mass. As in anything human, or natural, there are of course exceptions, but in any given case its not the way to bet.
Given that, the only counter with any hope of succeeding is the equal and opposite.
It is war, a contest of pain. As in any war both sides escalate the pain inflicted on the other until one gives up.
Instead of "charity", how about not casting judgment?
Now that the Sandmann family has a top defamation lawyer, the one thing Nathan Phillips had going for him is that he's "judgment proof".
How about a Bayesian principle of charity? Start by assuming 1-4, then update as evidence about the speaker's mendacity floods in.
One wonders if the school will have any charity left over for the chaperone who approved the use of school cheers to drown out the crazies. How has he avoided doxing, so far?
You started with charity bullshit, falling for the image of a "man in the middle," and I see you are sticking with charity bullshit.
But in war, the principle of charity does not apply.
To continue the rebuttals:
Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity.
Phillips was a prominent figure at the illegal and often violent Dakota Access Pipeline protests in North Dakota. Media interviewed him numerous times. He was there to the end, as the last standers burned the camps down.
Here's a photo. Such a private person.
One of these times a Democrat will win.
And the bigots won’t have to apologize and backtrack the next day.
Ann is still treating the lying stolen valor professional protester with more respect than the high school kid.
We would sit in the chow hall eating our breakfast before going to bed to wake up the next night and go back out into the shitty sandbox watching the news and watching the people back in the states just being absolute fuckheads.
I am reminded of how many of us felt in Afghanistan: “fuck this shit.”
This is his puppet master
https://romeroinstitute.org/team/daniel-sheehan
but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
Why did you make such an obviously false assertion with respect to Phillips? His actions show he intended to create a viral media event featuring himself. He's gotten exactly what he wanted with the slight difference that people know more about what really happened than he intended.
Is Nick Sandmann the new Emmanuel Goldstein?
Well, why not?
I agree with Althouse. There are mixed up over dosed idiots on every street corner. I had a conversation yesterday about the strange people I've run a cross in a particular neighborhood. If you put a microphone in their face that will say nothing aproximating reality.
People in the media run into these cranks every day. Every day. Yesterday today and tomorrow. They are unreliable sources of information, and it is professional misconduct to quote them or base a story on what they say.
Megan McArdle is right on this. There was no story, none at all. There were every indication right from the start that it was unreliable, and it should have ended there. But it didn't because of a mixture of blithering stupidity, suck your brains out grievance studies jackassery, knee jerk click bait "journalists" mixed with racial hatred.
The people who need rocks thrown at them are the journalists and editors. Their names are all there. They like Phillips to be the target because then they aren't.
The left really went overboard this time. The desperation to find a crime was pure leftwing totalitarian bornwshirted asshole.
She's not going to fuck you, Amadeus, no matter how many excuses you make for her retarded defense of liberals favorite minority mascots. She already has a lawn boy to mooch off that taxpayer funded pension who tells her she is always right and never challenges any of her nonsense.
Heh
What really happened was never reported.
All the assholes on the loyalist cult left made their inner freak flag Nazi brownshirt fly.
tim maguire wrote -
"Except for the wild inaccuracy about Nathan Phillip's role in all of this, I whole heartedly agree."
I too agree, and except for the examination and exposure of Phillips' lies and agenda, both parties should be left alone going forward. That the examination and exposure of Phillips fell to the public, rather than the media, is on the media and those who propped him up as both victim and secular saint.
Phillips is a pitiful figure in my estimation. But pitiful or not, he has caused great damage to an innocent person in his attempts at gaining attention and unearned status. My concern is when does further examination and exposure cross the line into doxing. At some point, it begins to look ugly and appear comparable to the unreasoning hatred shown toward Sandmann.
Althouse is absolutely right. As a Christian, I believe that the famous "love is" from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians is in fact a description of how I should be treating everybody around me, not just my wife. Everybody, including leftists activists, deserves to be treated with charity.
Still, fuck that Indian.
DOes "cruel neutrality" mean treating everybody the same, even when one side is very obviously in the wrong?
President-Mom-Jeans--I rest my case.
Ideally, they would never have been a news story at all. It is the media — mainstream and social — that deserve criticism."
Have you (Althouse) singled out any media for criticism? I don't recall reading any retractions of stories or any mea culpas from the media. Now it's on to casting stones at Stone.
Nathan may or may not have lied about what he heard. The media are the liars. They pimped the leftist nazis on twitter without actually watching all the so-called incriminating video..
Then - a pack of other assholes with names like Amee Vanderpool and Linds - who are knows leftist twitter hater-twats - tried to cherry pick video where again - no real proof of Covington kids doing bad things was actually proven.
Does "cruel neutrality" mean treating everybody the same, even when one side is very obviously in the wrong?
I think that back in AA's days on the UW faculty, the only opinions that wouldn't have gotten her ostracized would've been to continue to condemn the smirking white boy or to say "both sides deserve charity." Seems to be a habit of thought that's hard to let go of.
The lie/MSM/Narrative on the let carries the day. The desperation to smear kids wearing MAGA hats who had the audacity to attend a pro-life march - they must be destroyed.
I love Dickin's turn towards using saltier language to describe deserving women. This works much better coming from a woman than from a man.
Some truth: Not found in the DNC hack press
By now the Native American ceremony has begun, and the attendees have linked arms and begun dancing. “They just don’t know who they are,” one of the Black Hebrew Israelites says remorsefully to another. Earlier he had called them “Uncle Tomahawks.”
The boys have given up on him. They have joined the larger group, and together they all begin doing some school-spirit cheers; they hum the stadium-staple opening bars of “Seven Nation Army” and jump up and down, dancing to it. Later they would say that their chaperones had allowed them to sing school-spirit songs instead of engaging with the slurs hurled by the Black Hebrew Israelites.
By now the Native American ceremony has begun, and the attendees have linked arms and begun dancing. “They just don’t know who they are,” one of the Black Hebrew Israelites says remorsefully to another. Earlier he had called them “Uncle Tomahawks.”
The boys have given up on him. They have joined the larger group, and together they all begin doing some school-spirit cheers; they hum the stadium-staple opening bars of “Seven Nation Army” and jump up and down, dancing to it. Later they would say that their chaperones had allowed them to sing school-spirit songs instead of engaging with the slurs hurled by the Black Hebrew Israelites.
Althouse is pulling our collective leg again. Either that or nearly all of her commenters have far more insight than she does.
Ann Althouse said...They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions. We should be charitable toward both of them.
This is where the nice people get the rest of us killed. If all we had were the video clips and no one had made statements then you'd be correct. But that's not what happened. Phillips and his people took clips of the encounter and spread them, then he went to mainstream Media outlets (first the WashPo) and made specific false statements (lies) about what happened. He tried to push the story--his lies--to frame the event and drive the narrative. This wasn't something that was done TO him, this was something he DID. So to say "neither really asked for" it is just wrong--Phillips specifically asked for it and wanted it. Possibly he didn't want the scrutiny that pushing his (false) story would bring, but he wanted to push they story to millions and some level of scrutiny comes with that.
There is no point in feeling sorry for him having to suffer the consequences of his actions--he set out to smear some kids and it backfired on him. How charitable should we be towards people who intend to do us harm?? That's not charity, that's gullibility, and that's exactly what people like this exploit. He wanted a confrontation and he wanted to spread his false story as wide as possible.
Jack Reacher: Remember: you wanted this.
You might say it's too close to calls for civility (which I'm known for calling "civility bullshit"), but it's not the same thing. It's not about tone. It's about [rationalizing patronizing a Native American when you like to think that you're not the sort of white person who does that].
FTFY
More Truth not permitted in the Twitter-Nazi Maddow-CNN hack press:
And then you hear the sound of drumming, and Phillips appears with several other drummers, all of them headed to the large group of boys. “Here come Gad!” says the Black Hebrew Israelite excitedly. His religion teaches that Native Americans are one of the 12 tribes of Israel, Gad. Apparently he thinks that his relentless attack on the Native Americans has led some of them to confront the white people. “Here come Gad!” he says again, but he is soon disappointed. “Gad not playing! He came to the rescue!” he says in disgust.
The drummers head to the boys, and keep playing. The boys, who had been jumping to “Seven Nation Army,” start jumping in time to the drumming. Phillips takes a step toward the group, and then—as it parts to admit him—he walks into it. Here the Black Hebrew Israelites’ footage is of no help, as Phillips has moved into the crowd.
Now we may look at the viral video—or, as a CNN chyron called it, the “heartbreaking viral video”—as well as the many others that have since emerged, none of which has so far revealed the boys to be chanting anything about a wall or about making America great again. Phillips keeps walking into the group, they make room for him, and then—the smiling boy. One of the videos shows him doing something unusual. At one point he turns away from Phillips, stops smiling, and locks eyes with another kid, shaking his head, seeming to say the word no. This is consistent with the long, harrowing statement that the smiling boy would release at the end of the weekend, in which he offered an explanation for his actions that is consistent with the video footage that has so far emerged, and revealed what happened to him in the 48 hours after Americans set to work doxing him and threatening his family with violence. As of this writing, it seems that the smiling boy, Nick Sandmann, is the one person who tried to be respectful of Phillips and who encouraged the other boys to do the same. And for this, he has been by far the most harshly treated of any of the people involved in the afternoon’s mess at the Lincoln Memorial.
F the left.
Thank you Chicken -
Leftwing bitch-hags need to punch some mirror glass.
If all we had were the video clips and no one had made statements then you'd be correct.
This is not correct either. The video came from Phillips' ally, it wasn't some random bystander. His group took, edited, and released the original video. We're to believe someone who releases video of themselves is seeking privacy? Absurd.
People need to be careful about trashing Phillips by asserting only relevant facts. But he fully deserves criticism for his attempt to manipulate public opinion based on lies.
Taking the side of a POC just because he/she is a POC is prejudice.
What the hags and liars and assholes on the left did - including other assholes like Bill Kristol - asshole extraordinaire - was/is not forgivable. Word for Disney? Hey - you can twitter out wood-chipper death wish without consequence.
They all smeared these boys and then kept it up and kept it up and then started to use video footage that didn't prove anything. The kept the harassment going.
No formal apology from the Democratic hack press ever came. CNN? Nothing.
No civility from me on this subject.
The left proved beyond any doubt they are leftwing brownshrits and child abusers.
Althouse in another post from several days ago, I quoted my old criminal law professor who often talked about effective courtroom arguments and the skill of being able to characterize your opponent’s argument(s) with “charity and precision.”
One of your other readers presumed it was a typo and that I must have intended “clarity and precision.” But it was not a typo.
Ann is trolling us. I’m not taking the bait. Mt. 10:16
I mostly agree about not trashing Phillips, because he seemed to be just doing what he wanted to do in public. Phillips didn't do anything really wrong in the video.
But, Phillips hasn't covered himself with glory since then. He has made demonstrably false claims that borders on Stolen Valor. He has given multiple and contradictory statements about events of that day. He has been involved in many other protests that were violent. It seems clear that Nathan Phillips is not a good person, yet he and the media are making him out to be a victim. At some point, their perception must be countered with evidence.
The "principle of charity/humanity" requires the butter of false moral equivalence to be spread liberally on both pieces of toast.
This fancies up the shit sandwich real nice.
I am Laslo.
Yes, Laslo.
There is no way to sugarcoat it. The comments section on Althouse is the loitering ground of right-wing POS in the plural. They've bitten the hand of the blog mistress who "charitably" gives them a forum for their hate and insults in the name of freedom of speech (FOS) because they have no loyalty to anyone but Adolf Schlump. I say let those deplorables rant until they are blue in the face. If we're lucky, they will have apoplexy, and be incapacitated.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=apoplexy&form=EDGEAR&qs=PF&cvid=159ea5505d3045a287975f25134d9474&cc=US&setlang=en-US
Trumpit is A-OK with leftwing lies. As long as it fits the narrative.
I don’t want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day.....
[There are] at least four versions of the principle of charity...
The other uses words in the ordinary way;
The other makes true statements;
The other makes valid arguments;
The other says something interesting.
I see that there is little in the use of charity when it comes to this post. Despite being a reader of this blog for nearly 10 years, I've never taken time to analyse whether Althouse trolls or not. I almost always assume these 4 principles until I see sufficient evidence to doubt.
I most often assume she is saying something interesting, followed by using words in the ordinary way (unless her post is about words not being used in the ordinary way in which case she focuses on how the words are being used), then making true statements (if she were not then she might be trolling, I suppose) , followed at last by making valid arguments. The last is a bit tricky. One can believe they are making valid arguments when, in fact, they are not. Maybe we should say they are honest about their belief in the argument they are making even if their logic or premise turn out to be mistaken.
So, when I see something I disagree with that Althouse has posted I can land on either the side of error, or the side of disingenuousness. Given that Althouse's post was ABOUT these four principles of charity, it would be the pinnacle of hypocrisy to then violate those very principles in the post. Doing so would sully the brand she has build up over 15 years and would be very foolish in someone who has spent her adult life parsing meaning and analysing arguments.
All that to say, I am in a quandary with regards to her call for being more charitable about Phillips due to his accidental elevation into the public sphere. I would like to know, given the challenges to her premise that others have made, if she still holds that Phillips is an accidental celebrity or if he did indeed attempt to promote a narrative that turned out to be false. I am referring specifically to the confrontation at the Lincoln memorial which he seems to have been prepared for. Is it that he simply got drawn into the scene with no more intent than to bang his drum in the faces of those who he thought were not acting charitably, and someone else did the filming, without his say-so, edit it, and then distribute it? If so then his guilt is in defending himself with less than accurate statements, but we should be more charitable because he is not a sophisticated and polished political actor. But if he was the driver behind the scene, the director behind the filming, the editor of the product, and the publisher and promoter of the final result, then he violated the principles of charity and thus deserves the some of the scorn he is receiving.
Trumpit bleats: The comments section on Althouse is the loitering ground of right-wing POS in the plural.
So WTF are you doing here???
I think Ann's philosophy on this is reasonable as of a day or two after the (non)story broke. And if this was a simple misunderstanding between two people it would be reasonable. The problem is once the full video was revealed it became obvious that Phillips was trying to provoke a confrontation and, when that failed to materialize, he manufactured one through a selectively edited video. Once you do something dastardly like that, you no longer get the benefit of the doubt. Further digging into his past shows a man that wants to be a public figure, something which he had failed to do except in a very limited sense until now, so really this philosophy does not apply to him. The philosophy requires good faith and Phillips is anything but good faith.
Unfortunately, charity is something that cannot be applied at all to a large percentage of the people involved in the story. There was an almost universal failure among journalists to do anything resembling journalism and, frankly, many of them joined the mob. A large number of them deserve to be fired for incompetence, but they won't. Supposed responsible adults including clergy were climbing over each other to condemn the boys without knowing the facts or even seemingly caring what the facts were. Supposed conservatives were thrilled to join in as well, despite the fact that they know how this sort of thing works and most of the time it is a hoax or exaggerated beyond reason. We still have people condemning the boys, some of which seem immune to evidence that disputes their worldview, some of which have manufactured new reasons to blame the boys that are either objectively absurd or so minor that they are clearly just an excuse, and some of which just hate and hate and hate. And, of course, Twitter revealed itself to be the hatefest hellhole that it has become, a most useless thing that no longer has a useful purpose.
Things are rotten.
"Nobody should be all that surprised that leftist mobs and their mainstream media allies perpetrated a false story about Covington Catholic schoolboys in MAGA hats supposedly "mocking" a Native American, followed by a Twitter feeding frenzy that's going to get them a lawsuit. As John Hinderaker notes, the blue checkmarks are now swiftly deleting and scrubbing their Twitter statements in a pathetic bid to avoid getting sued."
F the left.
" The full video has since shown that in fact, the kids were the ones being provoked, first by a group of fringe fanatics called the "Black Hebrews" who shouted racist and homophobic slurs at the kids, fighting words, which, if they drew a reaction, would be protected by law; and then by the media-vaunted Native American "elder," who, the video shows, walked up to the kids and beat a drum into one of their faces. The targeted kid, who, it must be noted, was a kid in need of protection from his chaperones and didn't get it, was a kid who returned the act with a smile, a perfect expression of non-violent resistance on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The provocation from the radical followed an earlier attempt by the same man to beat his drum into the face of a 15-year-old girl who expressed terror at the act, something that didn't suit the camera shots his activist buddies and media allies sought, which is why he moved on to the next kid. "
"Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity. They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions. We should be charitable toward both of them. Ideally, they would never have been a news story at all. It is the media — mainstream and social — that deserve criticism."
@Althouse, I hope Laurence tried, gently, to set you straight, because one of the two was manifestly not an ordinary citizen living a private life. People trying to live a private life do not bring their own videographer with them to a protest event so that a thoroughly edited version of an encounter he initiated can be posted to YouTube. And, for the thousandth time, Sandmann did nothing wrong. He had a right to be where he was, he needed to be where he was, he had a right to stand his ground, he even had a right to smile. On the comment thread of another of your posts Gahrie asserted that anyone who does not recognize the innocence of Sandmann is part of the problem.
You, Althouse, are part of the problem.
This is the fourth time in approximately two weeks where you have been a ditzy twit, starting with your foolish assertion that the Gillette commercial was not offensive to men, even though every man — the manly ones, anyway — told you otherwise. Please stop.
Charity isn't a suicide pact.
Christian love doesn't typically require forswearing self-defense.
Asking one side--always the same side!--to be martyrs is unreasonable.
Refusing to accept the the truth about someone and recognize their ill intent isn't compassion, it's folly.
Jesus said not to judge one another but never said we should be blind to the realities of people who want to harm us. I'd almost say encouraging people to not recognize when someone wants to hut them is a form placing a stumbling block in front of them!
@mockturtle, now you know why I wrote that comment yesterday.
False equivalency is the opposite of charity, because it has nefarious intent. Sandmann did nothing wrong, and everything right, according to his Christian principles. Phillips is a liar, a provocateur, a fraud, a democrat party member, and the instigator of acrimony, anger, and offense.
Fucking Democrat party members who lie and slander and falsely accuse non-democratic party members of crimes should be prosecuted fully, but they never are because fucking soap opera women run our country now. Time for that shit is up
When you go looking for trouble or agitating, don’t be surprised when you find it.
Phillips is a community agitator.
Why the missing teeth? Are they like some kind of actor's prop to dramatize his desitution? Has he got an exaggerated fear of dentists? Is he too busy with protests to sit for dental work. Is he too destitute to afford dental care?........Are these questions verboten? Why?
HoodlumDoodlum: Asking one side--always the same side!--to be martyrs is unreasonable.
If you want them dead, it's perfectly rational. And hey, it's worth a try. Sometimes they oblige!
One of the oldest definitions of "fairness" (that much-disputed term) is "receiving what you have earned". Certainly there are others:
- getting the same as everyone else (regardless of your own contributions, talent, intelligence, etc.)
- being paid reparations *from* people who have done nothing to you, personally, *for* wrongs done to others (often, people long dead) *by* people (also long dead), because you belong to some oppressed ethnic/racial/gender group
1. Nick Sandmann did *nothing* to put himself in this spotlight except refuse to move when an adult chose to bang a loud drum right in his face. Not only did he NOT retaliate - he actually tried to restrain a classmate from doing so. Yes, he released a statement defending himself, but he was being defamed and viciously attacked.
In subsequent interviews, he was nothing if not charitable to Nathan Phillips, with the notable exception of saying many of Phillips' accusations were simply not true. Even then, he didn't malign Phillips. Can you honestly say Phillips was charitable to Sandmann or the other boys?
"There was that moment when I realized I've put myself between beast and prey," Phillips told the Free Press. "These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that."
2. Phillips is a long-time activist who has sought out media coverage for years as part of his activism. Far from being reluctantly dragged into the spotlight, he embraced it.
I realize that the "just deserts" model of fairness is out of fashion nowadays. And certainly, charity often means giving someone *MORE* than they actually deserve. But I am appalled at all the folks who are whitewashing Phillips' actual words and deeds. One can be charitable - recognize that he's old, and may have all sorts of issues - and still look at his actions squarely, without condoning them.
That's where I stand, no doubt with an Evil Smirk that somehow threatens all that's holy and good on the planet, due to my lamentably pallid visage and unearned race and gender privilege :p
/just need the hat, now to complete my move to the wrong side of history
This alt-narrative constructed by the press and activists successfully removed the spotlight from planned parenthood, selective-child, and the wicked solution. #HateLovesAbortion
You would certainly need a lot of charity in gallon doses to stomach Augustine and his hypocrisy.
Now for a dose of clarity as follows
"Augustine's mother had followed him to Milan and arranged a marriage for him. Although Augustine accepted this marriage, for which he had to abandon his concubine, he was deeply hurt by the loss of his lover. He wrote, "My mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding." Augustine confessed that he was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, so he procured another concubine since he had to wait two years until his fiancée came of age. However, his emotional wound was not healed, even began to fester.[51]"
Phillips youthful crimes were not all that heinous. Drunkenness and assault are not examples of off the chart evil. Still, I wonder about his marriage. A predisposition towards assault and alcoholism sometimes shapes how a man negotiates marital disputes. His wife has passed onto the spirit world, and he sometimes invokes her spirit. I would be interested in learning more about their marriage, but, here again, we find questions that will never be asked.......We have seen that high school boys can be guilty of behavior that is worthy of universal condemnation and damnation.. Is it possible for Phillips to engage in any behavior that is worthy of even the mildest form of disapproval by people on the left? I think the people of the left are holding their breath that no further revelations about Phillips come out. The journalists, you can be sure, are not investigating his past life with the zeal and attention that they paid to George Zimmerman.
Narayanan asserts: You would certainly need a lot of charity in gallon doses to stomach Augustine and his hypocrisy.
Where's the hypocrisy? He is being honest. Hypocrisy demands dishonesty.
Narayanan, that’s why Augustine called it his “Confessions”.
These were his sins, laid out as sins.
"As soon as the new view of Sandmann emerged, I said (ask Meade), people need to resist trashing Phillips."
I concur, she did say that. My answer: people need to resist trashing fellow human beings. All human beings. Unborn human beings, near death human beings and every human being in between. I myself am trying very hard right now to resist trashing several human beings (I assume President Mom's jeans, Big Mike, et al. are not robots) right here in these comments. Not sure how long I can hold out so I think I'll take a break now — go walk a dog, shovel some snow — and give some human beings the opportunity to delete their own trash comments.
Neither Charity nor Clarity but POUNDING THE TABLE by Professora.
There's an old legal aphorism that goes, "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."
"...people need to resist trashing Phillips"
Are we deplorables considered to be people? I think not, so no issues if we trash him.
"My mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding."
Who hasn't been there?
Unknown said...
> neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions.
This is exactly what Phillips and his camera crew wanted. Why did he edit it and call the media?
Other than he did not want a second film.
He was prepared as well as a oft-AWOL 4 year private could be.
Pretty much on point. The bully fake Vietnam Vet was seeking notoriety. He got it, in spades, what he's been seeking for years. And by doing so, all his lies were exposed. Well, most of his lies. And a lot of his background came out. He's your basic loser, not a Vietnam vet, faking it for sympathy. Telling the truth about him is now being referred to as trashing him. For those with any knowledge of the military, discharge as an E1 is a huge tell. It's actually difficult to do that. Promotion to E3 during any initial enlistment is near automatic. E4 is where the competition starts. E1 at the end of enlistment says loser, troublemaker, or some combination. Doesn't say stellar performer and great human being.
If the mainstream media, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc., were really interested in doing what they say is their job, we would have heard about the fake Vietnam vet's background from them, with their layers of fact checkers. We didn't. It took bloggers. What is yet to be determined- What tribe is this Native American Elder a member of? Does the tribe actually have designated Elders? Is he one of them? I'm willing to bet the answer to the last question is NO!
To clarify a point I made poorly in my last comment, I'm not sure Phillips' remarks sit any better with me, even when given the most charitable interpretation. And I'm shocked at how many news stories have completely glossed over what he did say.
The most charitable interpretation for publicly accusing a group of boys (who are already being vilified on social media and in the press) of "looking like a lynch mob" or "being beasts" or about to attack 4 black gentlemen is that Phillips was deeply frightened by them.
Were his remarks true? Interesting? Valid?
I agree Phillips shouldn't be trashed, but don't believe criticism is off limits and don't see him as a wholly private figure due to his past and current activism. Part of me sees him as someone who was cynically used to support a larger agenda.
You would think that some SJW dentist with charity in his heart would offer his services free of charge to Phillips......Perhaps there can be a go fund me page for a hairstylist.....,.Nobody has a morbid fear of barbers. That bad hair is Phillips statement. He has bad taste in choosing that hair style. Perhaps if he wore his remaining hair in a hair bun he could annoy even more white people. It's worth a shot....... Can we criticize unfortunate hair styles in people of different races or is that verboten?
What about human beings like Kathy Griffith or Debra Messing. Celebrities who bask in the glory of child abuse?
"We should be charitable toward both of them."
Of course, at this point, after Kavanaugh, after Gillette, after Sandmann, no one buys Althouse's charity BS.
But she is still useful as an indicator, a scary one: of the attitude of nice feminist women who think of themselves as "charitable" and exercising "sympathy" and sometimes even "writing carefully," and who rationalize their own support for the culture warriors and stand by while the earth around them gets scorched by people who don't give a damn about charity or sympathy but just want to win--nice women who, as the next outrage unfolds, proclaim themselves "terribly sad."
One more thing: thank you, Ann, for providing a Lively forum for debate and interesting questions to think about every day.
You don't have to agree with anyone, and the world would be a far more boring place if you did. At any rate, you have my gratitude - there are few sites I can tolerate these days, and I appreciate the opportunity to examine current events in a different light.
Re: occasional nastiness, consider the source :p
You’re wrong. Phillips absolutely wanted the spotlight on himself and his cause and he behaved accordingly. He exploited our polarized politics and fooled most of the country for a day or two. He’s a professional activist and a liar.
The kid didn’t seek anything out. He and his friends were harrasses by bigoted adults and then used by Phillips for his propagandistic ends. The kid just stood there and smirked.
Confession or Boast?
Did Trump confess or boast in Billy Bush tape?
mockturtle said...
Narayanan asserts: You would certainly need a lot of charity in gallon doses to stomach Augustine and his hypocrisy.
Where's the hypocrisy? He is being honest. Hypocrisy demands dishonesty.
1/25/19, 10:34 AM
Blogger buwaya said...
Narayanan, that’s why Augustine called it his “Confessions”.
These were his sins, laid out as sins.
Indians, by and large, have better hair than white people. I therefore think it's permissible to criticize Phillips' bad hair. Bad teeth can be indicative of poverty, ill health, or of cowardice. The moral ground for criticizing Phillips' teeth is not necessarily the high moral ground. Still, I'd be interested in why Phillips can spend the time to participate in all these demonstrations and not have the time or money to get his teeth fixed. And why is this not a legitimate question?
Phillips . . . ordinary people living private lives in obscurity
As others have noted, Phillips is not an "ordinary" person living a "private life in obscurity." He has a long history of public agitation. And as for giving his Lincoln Memorial antics the benefit of the doubt, as also noted, soon afterward he went up to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to agitate up there too.
From his many remarks and conduct, one can reasonably infer what his intentions and motivations were.
There is indeed the obligation of charity in interpreting a person's remarks. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains -
2477. Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:
- of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor . . .
2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:
"Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved." (quoting St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 22
However, this charitable obligation does not require throwing reason out the window and ignoring truth. In fact, respect for truth requires seeing things for what they are.
Narayanan,
Confession, which is why you should read the whole thing.
I read that it was the Twitter account of a teacher (using a fake profile) that originally pushed the edited video. Then I saw an article about a teacher in Colorado who doxxed a Covington student that wasn't at the protest. Now I see a Dartmouth professor who was still calling for doxxing the students after many news agencies had already begun walking back the story.
What is it with these teachers? Why do they hate children?
@Cassandra, it is true that Phillips “was cynically used to support a larger agenda,” but I note that he has eagerly embraced that role.
Narciso, thanks for the link to the Christic Institute. I'll bet that is the pipeline through which the money flows from Soros, et al.
There they are.
I scan these comments for narciso's links and buwya's and Bruce Hayden's comments.
That's it Meade, run off and do some bitch work. Gotta keep that mealticket happy and paying the bills, amirite?
Hopefully you don't have some retard with a drum stick it inches from your face when you are out there.
Anybody defending Chief Meth Mouth is either an asshole who hates children or a racist liberal who patronizes minorities as never being responsible for their actions. Or both.
@Meade, I will not walk back a single HTML tag. There are times to display Christian charity, but (a) I am an atheist; and (b) at any rate now is not the time. Your wife is simply factually wrong about both Sandmann and Phillips, and I am waaaay past trying to do “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” when the one actor is wildly out of line and the other, with benefit of days of hindsight, might have done something different that maybe would have resulted in a different outcome, then I don’t draw the line — for reasonable people the line is way over there someplace.
Be cool, Mom Jeans. Shoveling snow is not “bitch work,” and a man should defend his wife, even when both are wrong.
P-M-J
There is a big difference between defending someone and being charitable toward them. You are doing the blogging equivalent of banging a drum in Meade's face. You should hope he is more charitable than you seem to want to be toward him and Althouse.
I do agree that Phillips appears to not deserve much charity since he not only instigated the confrontation, but played it up and showed no contrition given the fact that he was wrong to assault a teen even if he might have been initially mistaken as to who was the initiator of the conflict (given him the most charity, here.) So, if confronted by the full facts he does not restate himself and apologize for being wrong, he loses any right to a charitable assessment of his initial actions.
What is it with these teachers? Why do they hate children?
You'd be surprised at the number of teachers who hate kids. I was when I started teaching.
(eaglebeak)
Haven't trashed Phillips (in print) yet, but think I'll start.
I do agree that Phillips appears to not deserve much charity since he not only instigated the confrontation,
I don't think this framing is accurate. Everyone deserves charity of intepretation. But this charity only applies to the range of possible so people's actions inherently limit how people can be charitable interpreted. The problem with Althouse's statement is that Phillips' actions and statement limit reasonable interpretation far short of her claim that "[Phillips] neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions."
So it's more accurate to say that even the most charitable reading of Phillips does not include this interpretation.
This, Ms. Althouse, is false equivalence. Phillips is a professional agitator- he walked into that crowd of teenagers looking to create an incident. Sandmann wasn't doing that- he was waiting for his bus to arrive. Phillips is fair game in a way Sandmann isn't.
Infinite Monkeys said...
I read that it was the Twitter account of a teacher (using a fake profile) that originally pushed the edited video.
The twitter account claimed to be a teacher. But the teacher doesn't exist and the account is a political front.
“I'm making a tag "the principle of charity/humanity," because I think it might help me (and you!) remember to do something I very much believe in doing.”
Good tag. It’s a principle we could all aspire to following.
Again, as so often, principles are invoked where they do not apply.
This was recognized in ancient times. When you are facing an army arrayed against you, in rows and columns, faces invisible behind shields and armor, with spears in hand, mercy is out of the question. And is any principle of charity or humanity. You may as well be facing a tidal wave or a thunderstorm, or indeed a machine. Once the front has passed, with wounded on the ground, when they are no threat and at your mercy, then they are persons again and you can be merciful.
That is your situation. You are not in an ordinary dispute. You are facing an army organized for battle and not in a mood to discuss anything.
Also again and again, I bring up Salamanca, 1936, the confrontation between Millan Astray and Unamuno. Unamuno thought that it was a philosophical argument. Millan Astray, that son of Mars, understood what was at stake as Unamuno could not, that his men had taken 50% casualties and the issue was in doubt. It was not a time for philosophy.
Ah, Philips asked for it.
He preened and lied on CNN. Without him, there was no CNN instant faking the incident.
Maybe that vision problem is worse that Althouse is telling us. She certainly has a cross-eyed view of Mr Phillips.
It’s a principle we could all aspire to following.
Maybe you can explain your support for this principle considering your assertion that the Republican Party desires to implement the Handmaid's Tale and that Republicans believe as Todd Akin did they're just smart enough not to admit it.
Inga personifies the left wing belief that principles should never be applied to the In Group.
They exist only to justify criticism the Out Group.
I agree with Althouse on the principle of charity. What I disagree with is her statement that “Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity.”
Phillips was not, and is not, an ordinary person living a private life in obscurity.
“There is no way to sugarcoat it. The comments section on Althouse is the loitering ground of right-wing POS in the plural. They've bitten the hand of the blog mistress who "charitably" gives them a forum for their hate and insults in the name of freedom of speech (FOS) because they have no loyalty to anyone but Adolf Schlump. I say let those deplorables rant until they are blue in the face. If we're lucky, they will have apoplexy, and be incapacitated.”
Indeed. I could say much more, but I’ll be charitable.
Nathan Phillips could live off Inga for a year. Maybe two.
We can arrange a meeting when the firefighters remove her picture window and get her out of her house with a cherrypicker.
The only charitable thing I could say about Phillips is that he is a low level grifter. He probably wouldn't rate a public shaming except for the fact that he attempted to feed off the encounter with Sandmann- he was the first one to take a public interview, and in that interview he completely mischaracterized the encounter itself, as was proven by the longer, unedited video which appeared the same day. My duties of charity ended at that point, as should have that for any other reasonable and honest human being.
Indeed, Phillips still hasn't retreated and apologized, so is still deserving of no charity.
The wearing of a MAGA hat is completely volutional on the part of the wearer. Fair enough. But why does the left get to define that hat as provocative and confrontational. Shouldn't the wearer be entitled to define the meaning of the hat as he, the wearer, chooses?......Bad teeth and long, stringy hair: There are negative connotations about these things, but unlike MAGA hats you could never in public voice your negative feeling. Bad teeth can never be interpreted as having anything to do with laziness or a fear of dentists. The only possible explanation for bad teeth is poverty and the failure of America's health care system. To even ask questions about Phillips' bad teeth makes you the kind of callous asshole who would wear a MAGA hat.....,,You wouldnt wear a MAGA hat to Church, but disrupting a church service with banging drums is what the first amendment is all about.
"The wearing of a MAGA hat is completely volutional on the part of the wearer. Fair enough. But why does the left get to define that hat as provocative and confrontational. Shouldn't the wearer be entitled to define the meaning of the hat as he, the wearer, chooses?......"
I mean, what was she thinking wearing a short skirt in that kind of neighborhood?
Infinite Monkey @ 11:01
Thanks for the link to the CO teacher who doxxed the wrong kid. All in the name of self-righteous leftwing piety.
When leftist twitter twats convince themselves of their superiority, they blind themselves to facts and fact-checking.
But oh well. If a few lives are ruined, it was still worth it.
Phillips is not an innocent man: he set the encounter up, he had people with cameras, and he lied. I think the 72 hour rule applies as much to presumptions of innocence as it does to presumptions of guilt.
Actually, CNN's chryon didn't reflect Phillips actual words. Imagine CNN sexing up an anti Trump story! Find an actual quote of Phillips claiming to be a combat veteran, you can't do it. He should sue CNN too.
Blogger AllenS said...
Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity.
Nonsense, absolute nonsense. What kind of ordinary man bangs on his little drum inches from a 15 or 16 year old child?
Living private lives in obscurity vanishes when a high school junior's signature is placed on a letter written by a PR firm to sway public opinion - and I can only believe that Mom and Dad Sandmann, both good Catholics (I would think) permitted Nick's name to be falsely and deceptively used.
And I wonder what is so terrible about Nathan's service in the Marines - whether in or out of a war zone and what an AWOL incident means since he returned to duty - but dirt is important for placing blame. Thank you for your service Nathan Phillips.
When it comes to destroying lives - leftwingers are really good at it.
They take pride in it.
That being said, his description of the events compared to the video reads like a Mr Magoo cartoon. Magoo was always the hero of his own narrative, but the humor came from the contrast with what the viewer sees.
What can't be said is that Phillips is a faintly comic figure, which the boys reacted to. In the mind of the left, he is a bearer of absolute authenticity. To them, Phillips is like a Christian thrown to the lions and only the most despicable person ever laughs at something like that.
"The wearing of a MAGA hat is completely volutional on the part of the wearer."
"Volutional" is a word that is hardly used from my experience. I don't think that you meant "delusional," but that is the word I would have used instead. Can we agree on "devotional" to express the MAGA catholic boys' childish infatuation with Schlump?
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/devotional
Not to mention that the MAGA hat alone is enough to stir the hatred, look at gadfy blaming the family, which has been flooded with death threats, for trying to get some handle on the situation.
"It's an evil beast! When attacked, it defends itself."
Tim in Vermont - 12:36
Exactly.
"Living private lives in obscurity vanishes when a high school junior's signature is placed on a letter written by a PR firm to sway public opinion..."
How dare that kid and his family make every effort to defend his reputation against smears and threats to their lives.
Trumpit arrives and proves our points.
Teens deserve total destruction - no other reason than wearing a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hat.
All those lies are worth it, right Trumpit?
Gadfly is blinded by Trump-hate. You're really a douche, dude.
it's that French proverb, 'what a vicious animal, when attacked it defends itself'
"Both Phillips and Sandmann were ordinary people living private lives in obscurity. They each did something that got them into the spotlight, but neither really asked or was at all prepared to be inspected and judged by millions."
False equivalence as Civility Bullshit?
I read the above as volitional. Especially since the u is next to the i
Know why some people are 'trashing' Phillips?
Because he's a lying POS who created a situation - all by himself - where a high school kid's life is possibly ruined for good.
People like that deserve more than being 'trashed.'
these kids had the audacity to defend themselves against the leftwing lynch mob.
David Hogg, Professional Bully, -- who profits off the death of his fellow class-mates, has officially come out and trashed the kids who have been bullied by the leftwing lie machine.
You cannot make this stuff up.
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