Shouting The Loudest In the Blogosphere

John Edwards just has a knack for picking bloggers–that is if he wants controversy. This time he’s got Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a rural liaison who has started blogging at Swampland by attacking all those city folk:

I have bitched and moaned for years about the lack of tolerance in the elitist wing of the Democratic Party, or what I refer to as the “Metropolitan Opera Wing”. These are the people who talk of tolerance but the only true tolerance they ever exhibit is for their own pseudo-intellectual arrogance…

I am certain I will get personally attacked for this next statement, but in all honesty, I don’t care what the “Metropolitan Wing” of my party thinks. I don’t like them. The damage the pseudo-intellectuals have done to my party by abandoning tolerance, combined with their erroneous stereotyping of my people and culture, is something that brings out my incivility. In his column, Joe said, “…the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere.” Amen. I must add that this same intellectual arrogance and intolerance overtook the party years ago, and for that very reason, my people in rural America left the tent.

So to those bloggers who believe in a straight-forward dialogue and exchange of ideas, God bless you and thank you. Together, you’re coming up with a lot of good stuff, and frankly, much of it has been helpful to me. At the same time, those Democratic bloggers, who have appointed themselves as intellectually superior and believe the only way to win an argument is to shot the loudest with personal attacks, you can go to Hell.

(On update, Raw Story reports that an Edwards spokesman says that Mudcat speaks for himself.)

This will not win Saunders support in the blogosphere with such over-generalizations. There is a grain of truth to his post as we all know that, even if in the minority, there are examples to back him up. We all know there is a certain faction who pontificate on things they know absolutely nothing about and care far more for personal attacks than for intelligent discussion. This can be seen in the attacks on me over at The Democratic Daily (see posts here and here).

I criticize the acceptance of every conspiracy theory of the day, and warn others against attributing such views to other liberals. Their response is to hurl personal insults without any coherent response.

I criticize their defense of anti-Semitism and downplaying of holocaust denial. Their response is to hurl personal insults without any coherent response.

I write on the need to accept science and reason, in an era where a majority of Republicans deny the basis of modern biology, warning that their advocacy of astrology, belief in ghosts, and repeating creationist babble thinly disguised as new age thinking is a step backwards away from reason. Their response is to hurl personal insults without any coherent response.

They just don’t get how meaningless this is. They can go around the blogosphere saying I’m a conservative because I don’t agree with their beliefs, but without any response to my actual beliefs this carries no weight. Similarly they typically dismiss other views they disagree with by labeling them conservative, as if this is sufficient to win a debate. They don’t understand that it is the ideas which count, and the evidence which backs them up, as opposed to their labels and loud shouting. An idea is not right because it is liberal or wrong because it is conservative. Coherent arguments based upon facts is necessary to prove a positon, but people like Pamela Leavey prefer to shout out insults, and then call it sexist or bullying should anyone stand up to her attacks.

In the end, their insults do not matter as the source much be considered. Kooks, whether they call themselves liberal or conservative, who believe in conspiracy theories, defend Mel Gibson-type anti-Semitism, and believe in astrology and ghosts are already at the bottom of the intellectual totem poll, in no position to insult anybody.

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