03-05-2017, 08:22 PM
(03-05-2017, 04:55 PM)Dill Wrote: You did Write: "If your ideas cannot be articulated into words sufficient to win over the people then you only have yourself to blame."
You DID NOT write: If your ideas cannot be articulated into words sufficient to win over the people then you only have the strength of your argument to blame.
This distinction is such hair parsing as to be inane and boring by definition. See what you've been reduced to?
Quote:And I disagree with you either way. There are many reasons why arguments might not "win" people over. the criterion "properly formulated" begs many questions. Hitler won over many people. His argument was properly formulated for a certain audience. Is there an audience-independent criterion?
Absolutely there is. If you don't tailor and modify your argument to fit the vagaries of the present situation then you failed as a messenger. It often times doesn't even have to be that severe a change.
Quote:The winning candidate in the last presidential election was fine with "treating opposing view points as disdainful relics of a bygone era"--whether opposing Republicans or Democrats. His voters loved it when he shut up "little Marco" for his "bygone" immigration stance. Perhaps this was "properly formulated" for that audience, but not for Democrats?
100% incorrect. He did not treat opposition arguments as relics, he treated them as disdainful pandering to the mores of a culture obsessed with political correctness and protecting people's feelings. You watched the last year and half worth of events and clearly learned nothing.
(03-05-2017, 05:20 PM)Dill Wrote: The secession and the rise of Nazi Germany were not offered as cases in which meeting only words with violence was acceptable. They were offered as cases in which people with honorable motives and good arguments failed to win over enough people to their side. Given these and many more examples (e.g., SCOTUS cases involving Dredd Scott and Homer Plessy), my claim was that the "losers" in such cases do not have "only themselves" to blame.
Except the counter arguments won over far more people than they lost.
Quote:To recap, I said: I don't think that German liberals who couldn't dissuade people from voting Nazi in 1932 had only themselves to blame.
Nope, they have the political machinations of von Schleicher, von Papen and Hindenburg to blame.
Quote:And you said: Given that a large percentage of the population voted for a party other than the NSDAP, and their vote count was actually receding by the time Hitler was appointed (not elected people) I'd say you'd be wrong about that.
You'd be 100% wrong by indisputable fact.
German federal election, July 1932:
NSDAP: 13,745,680 votes / 37.27% of the vote
German federal election, November 1932:
NSDAP: 11,737,395 votes / 33.09% of the vote
Hitler appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg on 01/30/1933.
Facts prove you to be incorrect.
(03-05-2017, 06:45 PM)Dill Wrote: ??If I say that the Nazi party plurality made Hitler the prime player in forming any government in the 1932-33 Reichstag, then I am treating the Reichstag like our congress??? That is almost as surprising as your claim a plurality doesn't "mean much" while presuming familiarity with the Weimar parliamentary system.
LOL, no. The NSDAP was not going to partner with anyone unwilling to subjugate themselves to their party agenda. They were incapable of forming a coalition government, largely because their expressed intent was to destroy the system from the inside. Given that, and their extreme views, no other party was willing to cooperate with them despite their plurality.
Quote:Claiming that the Nazi party could find no partners to form a coalition government is just factually wrong. A coalition with the DNVP was a condition of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933 and gave the Nazi Party a majority in the Reichstag. The Zentrum joined them to pass the Enabling Act with a two-thirds majority. At each step of this process, some party members failed to dissuade other party members from voting with the Nazis.
Your argument has now entered the inane. Of course they formed a coalition government after Hitler was backdoored into the Chancellorship, they had no choice. Additionally, it was part of the naive strategy of von Papen that a coalition would allow him to control and reign in Hitler's, and the NSDAP's, more extreme views. In short, they thought they could box Hitler in, they couldn't have been more wrong.
Quote:Had Hitler's opponents dissuaded enough people from voting NSDAP, Hitler would not have been a player. That violence attended the elections of '32 and '33 does not negate this point. How would it? If anything, that violence reduced the Nazi vote. Plenty of groups and individuals were publicly arguing against Nazis and other anti-Semitic groups, e.g., in newspapers and pamphlets. But they did not dissuade enough people from voting.
In the long run, they absolutely did. Support for the NSDAP was on the wain. Again, their high water mark only encompassed around 1/3 of voters. Hardly earth shattering. Consider that the Dems are whining about Trump winning the presidency with a far larger share of the vote and then realize how weak your argument is.
Quote:Saying these people had only themselves to blame is cruelly indifferent as well as simplistic. Yet you must conclude that if you stick by this claim: "If your ideas cannot be articulated into words sufficient to win over the people then you only have yourself to blame."
Endless repetition of failure doesn't produce different results. Make a new point or stop wasting my time.
Quote:My counter-point is still that there are many reasons why people lose arguments, court cases, and elections. They may themselves be to blame sometimes, but certainly not always. People do not have only themselves to blame when they fail to convince people not to vote for bad leaders.
If you're talking about a single incident, then sure. If you're talking about a political movement, then no.
Please don't bother responding unless you produce a new argument. Constantly pointing out how your banal repetitions are wrong is becoming both tiring and utterly boring.
