How to comment and succeed at Opine Editorials in changing our minds

In my vision of the olden days, colored by a number of entertaining (though perhaps not historically accurate) shows have left me with the mental image of a world where you didn't need a business card. You could swing open the parlor doors of the local gathering place and announce, "I am Leif, Erik's son from the North", or "I'm fast-draw McGraw". Word got around.

Sometimes, you didn't even need to announce yourself. If you had a reputation for trouble that preceded you, you'd know because when you walk down the street and people would shutter their windows, you'd walk into the gathering place and everything would go silent except for whisperings barely out of earshot to help inform people who are not yet familiar with the reputation.

I've gone from "Hello, I disagree with X and Y on your article, and I'm from Opine", to entering a web site community to see it go immediately go silent except for the gossipy whisperings to each other about Opine's reputation. Unfortunately, however, like all gossip it is mostly untrue and undeserved. We are not masters of mental gymnastics that can seemingly defy the gravity of being well grounded in our facts and reasoning. We are not (as opposite this may sound to the above) immovable deaf stones who are never impacted by any sort of reasoning we see.



The truth is, the arguments wielded against us are simply much weaker then their users expect them to be. The internet is full with site after site of self-declared master debaters, people with their own jiujitsu style or set of arguments that they trained themselves in that they expected to have some sway on us. But we aren't new kids on the block, we were thrust into the debate from the trenches of other culture wars.

And, honestly, many have seen the validity of our arguments here at Opine. One "Republic" website is an example of a site that banned our participation, while fully acknowledging that our arguments are valid enough even to him to mean that marriage is hear to stay. Another author from a "Fallacies" website long ago a stalker of Opine, also acknowledged that we do have a valid model for marriage equality in the equal recognition of the rights and responsibilities of the man and woman and child they potentially have together. We've also had people who wrote is in privacy saying they changed their minds, but were afraid of what their friends (fellow sycophantic activists) would do to them if they found out. I'm afraid that while we are very good at ration and reason, we are not good at solving problems such as separation anxiety with a bunch of cliquish people who try to drive human behavior with social intimidation.

Honestly, I'm glad we have a reputation in some ways it is meant to protect others. At times I felt really sorry for these activists, given some poorly constructed arguments to wield, and slapped on the back and sent into the fray with a promise that this time they might be the ones to succeed in slaying the Opine dragon. And each time to see their hopes smashed, only to be consoled with even stronger lies about how powerfully evil Opine is and promises they'll never be sent in against is again.

Clearly it was the poorly constructed arguments that were to blame, but they can't abandon them. Why? Because however flimsy they may be, it is all that is supporting their self image as being progressive and egalitarian -- the in crowd on the right side of history they always wanted to be in. To abandon those arguments, however poor they obviously are, is to abandon their own images as shining knights of the progressive round table, egalitarian in every foe they vanquish. And that is something they can't abandon, especially when reinforced socially by their peers.

A little part of me feels their pain every time we have to show them that their side is not egalitarian, it is in fact very promoting of a particular form of prejudice at the expense of everyone else. I feel it when they realize their ideas are not progressive, they are regressive. But what really causes pity and empathy is the sight (figuratively speaking) of their shattered self image, limping away clutching strongly those bad arguments as more precious then the ideals they believe themselves to be fighting for, only to have their wounds consoled by the people who did them the injustice in the first place.

I'm not worried about how evil they caste Opine to be in order to explain the failure, our record stands for itself when look at as a whole and in context, there is nothing evil about our emphasis on marriage to explicitly be a means to promote responsible procreation. I'm worried about them being stuck in a lie, where they have to construct a convenient but false reality based purely on good and evil, where good is their self image, and evil is anything that might deflate it. That self-protecting reality soon becomes the hardest menagerie to break out of.

The quality that makes Opine unique is that we are an altruism activism site more than a political activism, we are looking for what really is true and helps people rather than finding political expedience and quid-pro-quo. We are based solidly on the grounds of logic and respect for human dignity, because those ideals are bigger then we are, bigger then any single group or people such as conservatives, liberals, gays, or christians, you can't be in a menagerie of self-gratification when you look circumspectly at everyone and everything around you with a passionate will to truly help everyone. To find some way that ensures that we don't promote someone above another, but instead we promote the ideals that transform people into magnanimous individuals willing to sacrifice and help others who most deserve and need it.

We throw the arguments up in the air, and let them blow in the winds of our best evaluations of rigor, reason, and respect, and charity let them fall where they may. And that is the way we decide where to go.

I wake up every day checking Opine expecting, like perhaps Linus's search for the great pumpkin, that we have been sincere enough to be given what we look for. Perhaps that is the gift of knowledge of why marriage has to be neutered. What justifies this violent reform of against the altruism that has been, and continues to be, so important to civilization? I wake up hoping that someone can give me something that will challenge my perception of myself to promote growth into someone even more circumspect and founded in the principles of reason and human dignity.

Such events of growth are not easy, but they are worth it. I live for them.

Know that when you comment here, we are looking for you to succeed -- not on the grounds you may expect but on the grounds of circumspect humanitarianism (meaning more than focusing on just one group at the expense of others) also known as human dignity, reason and sincerity.

Tomorrow I'll post what doesn't work, and even how you can succeed even if you feel you can't avoid that kind of argumentation that hasn't worked on us in the past.