Commenting on the virtues of the recently (and ironically or appropriately) deceased Helen Chenoweth at Crooked Timber, Scott McLemee suggests if anyone deserves the appellation “wingut,” it is the former Representative Chenoweth. The subsequent comments were of two sorts: compiling evidence of just how insane Chenoweth was and the standard “don’t call people names because it degrades debate.” Here is my question: when people speak of “degraded debate,” what is the “un-degraded debate” to which they refer? Put another way, when was politics ever rational? Or is it just that there are a lot of naive Habermasians commenting at Crooked Timber? (We’ll set aside the “polls versus betting markets” nonsense that one contributor to CT insists on repeatedly discussing.)
Far more interesting, the full text of Claude Levi-Strauss’ The Elementary Structures of Kinship is available here.
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and the standard “don’t call people names because it degrades debate.” Here is my question: when people speak of “degraded debate,” what is the “un-degraded debate” to which they refer?
What you’ve overlookd in the comments is (as I pointed out myself) the person making that comment – one Karole Cuddihy – is himself the associate of Grade A wingnuts, hence his sensitivity on the matter.
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