The rules of discussion

Just to continue the argument about the militias which the only reason we are having it is because the second amendment makes a reference to them, even though I think we both agree the second amendment is not a good argument for or against gun control, I want to say that the difference between a volunteer and and a paid employee is huge, very huge. Okay done there.

Yeoman does seem to be a term with different meanings at different times. I think you mostly like what Thomas Jefferson said and I think Thomas Jefferson was an irresponsible loud mouth.

Actually drinking went down during prohibition. I think that forbidden fruit is an over rated argument.

I’m not disputing that bazookas etc are outlawed in the US, I just wondered what the mechanism was. Fifteen minutes of internet research has turned up nothing. Maybe they aren’t illegal.

I meant the anti gun control people are in control. Obama being in his second term has nothing to do with the big bucks gun companies are raking in. Guns started flying off the shelves before he even took the oath.

But the gay marriage people are winning big time. Even that wacky governor of Arizona had to veto that stupid anti gay law. What I always found peculiar among the foes was the argument that if gay people were allowed to marry it would do damage to heterosexual marriage, and I never could figure out how that would be so I made a point of asking you if it would damage your marriage and you said it would, and now that it is roughly half legal I wanted to know how it has hurt your marriage.

I don’t really expect an answer, how could gays getting married have an effect on your marriage? Just something that slipped out of you I imagine in the heat of argument.

Sometimes we just get into these kind of stupid arguments, like the second amendment and the def of militias and yeoman. Last night I tuned into NPR and there was a discussion between a gun nut and an anti gun nut, and you know I knew everything they were going to say. This guy said this so the other guy will say that, and they will go through this, let’s call it a duet, and the pro gun guys will like their guy because he said everything they would have said, and the anti gun guys will like their guy because he said everything they would have said. And maybe they would all go away thinking there had been some clearing of the air, but all their had really been was an exchange of the same stale air and a big waste of time.

See to me this is the difference, and this is more definitions again, but I think definitions are good if they make some kind of distinction between things that might seem the same, but on closer inspection are different.

An argument is like a debate, somebody will win and somebody will lose, like a baseball game, but at least with a baseball game there are clear rules about how to score runs, with an argument each guy keeps his own score and I’m sure they win everyone and go away feeling good about themselves.

I prefer what I call a discussion, and I think when you have a discussion and when the other guy says something instead of just reaching into the grey matter and plucking out the response, you have to consider what he said, does it make any sense? Why is he saying that? And I think you have to go into the discussion with the slight possibility that you might change your mind about something, or maybe learn something you didn’t know before.

Well I am a dreamer.