The "General Petraeus thread spawned a lengthy and very interesting sidebar discussion concerning free speech and its consequences. At issue is 1) whether an inciteful act, such as desecrating the Koran, is free speech; and 2) even if it is free speech, whether or not the person doing it should be held responsible for the often-violent reaction to the act.
I decided that in order to continue this discussion without (further) hijacking the Petraeus one, that we might open the subject for debate, ShadowSpear style. The rules for this exercise are below. I hope many of you who were active in the Petraeus threus" threadead will sign up to discuss it here as well. I will also tell you that if you took a specific position on this subject in the other thread, I will most likely assign you to argue the opposite point of view for this exercise.
Also, I had a little trouble coming up with the points of view for this topic, if any of you can think of better ways to word them, let me know.
Important details:
1)If you want to participate in this exercise, your first post in this thread should be, "I'm in" or something related. After that, I will assign you to one of the two points of view above. You can request to be assigned 1 or 2, but that doesn't mean you'll get it.
2)You are not allowed to provide an opinion directly related to the topic of this thread unless you have previously been assigned a point of view (see below). If you comment on something related to the topic without being assigned a point of view first, I'm just going to delete your post. Sidebar commentary (i.e. "peanut gallery" comments) are allowed from people not participating in the debate, but providing your own opinion or substantively commenting on the posts of others participating in the debate is not allowed unless you, too, are in the debate as defined above.
3) Me assigning points of view means that you may have to debate this topic from a point of view that is different than what you currently believe. THAT IS THE POINT OF THIS EXERCISE. I assign points of view so not everyone chooses one over the other and to keep the level of outside commentary down. I also do it to help people think about an argument from the "other" view.
4) You do not need to caveat your posts with something like, "I don't believe this in real life" or words to that effect. That immediately undermines your argument and taints everything you say afterwards. If you do that, I'm going to delete your post. Act like you believe it; you'll do better research and make a better argument. There will be plenty of time to say what you really believe later.
5) We have done several of these exercises in the past, and people learn a lot. So keep it civil, keep it fun. There are no "winners" or "losers" in this exercise, we are all winners due to the education we receive from being exposed to well-researched and well-argued points of view on this topic.
... and with that, game on!
POV 1
dirtmover
CDG
Marauder06
POV 2
Skrewzloose
LOST
SOWT
I decided that in order to continue this discussion without (further) hijacking the Petraeus one, that we might open the subject for debate, ShadowSpear style. The rules for this exercise are below. I hope many of you who were active in the Petraeus threus" threadead will sign up to discuss it here as well. I will also tell you that if you took a specific position on this subject in the other thread, I will most likely assign you to argue the opposite point of view for this exercise.
Also, I had a little trouble coming up with the points of view for this topic, if any of you can think of better ways to word them, let me know.
Important details:
1)If you want to participate in this exercise, your first post in this thread should be, "I'm in" or something related. After that, I will assign you to one of the two points of view above. You can request to be assigned 1 or 2, but that doesn't mean you'll get it.
2)You are not allowed to provide an opinion directly related to the topic of this thread unless you have previously been assigned a point of view (see below). If you comment on something related to the topic without being assigned a point of view first, I'm just going to delete your post. Sidebar commentary (i.e. "peanut gallery" comments) are allowed from people not participating in the debate, but providing your own opinion or substantively commenting on the posts of others participating in the debate is not allowed unless you, too, are in the debate as defined above.
3) Me assigning points of view means that you may have to debate this topic from a point of view that is different than what you currently believe. THAT IS THE POINT OF THIS EXERCISE. I assign points of view so not everyone chooses one over the other and to keep the level of outside commentary down. I also do it to help people think about an argument from the "other" view.
4) You do not need to caveat your posts with something like, "I don't believe this in real life" or words to that effect. That immediately undermines your argument and taints everything you say afterwards. If you do that, I'm going to delete your post. Act like you believe it; you'll do better research and make a better argument. There will be plenty of time to say what you really believe later.
5) We have done several of these exercises in the past, and people learn a lot. So keep it civil, keep it fun. There are no "winners" or "losers" in this exercise, we are all winners due to the education we receive from being exposed to well-researched and well-argued points of view on this topic.
... and with that, game on!
POV 1
dirtmover
CDG
Marauder06
POV 2
Skrewzloose
LOST
SOWT
