[MD] S/O and Morality

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

> [Platt]
> In pursuing that moral goal, personal attacks should be shunned.
> 
> [Arlo]
> The underlying question is, when social level rhetoric is used to 
> assault intellectual patterns, is it immoral to finally combine 
> intellectual response with a counter social-level attack? Or, in 
> short, when one is assaulted with social-level anti-intellectualism 
> is a solely intellectual response adequate? My answer, is no. Or to 
> say it proverbially, one must fight fire with fire.
> 
> The more aggressive social-level anti-intellectualism becomes, as in 
> the case of repeated distortions and misdirection of intellectual 
> responses and the repetition of socal-level assaults, one has to 
> couple the intellectual-level replies with a social-level 
> condemnation of the assault and rhetorical devices being used. And 
> those who continually rely on social-level anti-intellectual 
> rhetorical trickery, deception and distortion should not be surprised 
> when an intellectual response is finally coupled with a condemnation 
> of those tactics as "moronic".
> 
> The Buddha may take the high road and meet such ongoing, despicable 
> assaults with non-response, but for mere humans one finally has call 
> a spade a spade. This may indeed be lowering oneself to the level of 
> those who wield such tactics in the first place, but in the face of 
> such anti-intellectualism there is little other recourse, I'm afraid.

Can you explain, with examples, the difference between intellectual level
rhetoric and tactics and social level rhetoric and tactics? I hope it's not
simply a matter of one's political views. Thanks.


 




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