Let me point out that I don’t care.
Coincidentally, so do I. I believe that acting like an adult does not include sugar-coating things. I believe that acting like an adult involves point-blank critiques, which means not only the argument but the person making the argument. Maybe some people prefer the government method of infantalizing others; I don’t.
Do you think that someone like Mr1001Bolsheviks is open for a rational discussion? If you do, I have some oceanfront property in Kansas I’d like to sell you.
Do you believe in the non-aggression principle?
Surely you can’t be suggesting such a vacuous notion as an insult being aggression.
You don’t care whether your approach changes the mind of anybody? It’s hard to imagine how one can advance the scholarship of liberty in the Austrian tradition without changing anybody’s mind.
There is simply too much functional correspondence between the assessment of the above and the mood of the potential insulter to let that be a standard.
You are in a distinct minority among non-religious-fundamentalists. And since we’re talking about general effectiveness, that’s all that matters.
I don’t really spend a lot of time talking to other people about Austrianism. A big reason why I’m so into it is because its protection from being mindlessly enslaved by mass marketing and peer pressure.
Though this will change as I’m getting a spot on a radio show soon 
If anything infantilizes others, it is insults, because they only serve to elicit emotional responses, which is exactly the only kind of response infants are capable of.
For those who may be missing the subtle sarcasm, of course an insult is aggression. Not one there is legal recourse against, but it certainly is an attack on the other guy.
So there seem to be 3 schools of thought emerging here:
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If the goal is to raise the banner of AE in the world, insults are not the way to go. In fact it’s immature to insult people [most of the time].
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Maybe, but my goal is to keep out the riff raff, or to be a bad ass, or to have fun. As such, insults are the way to go. So I’m immature. That’s what I’m here for, to relax a bit. If you want maturity, visit an old age home.
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The goal is indeed to educate people about AE. And nothing will drive home a point like a good old fashioned terribly clever barb. especially to the whackos who clearly are asking for it. And if it won’t get the victim [crying to his knees] to read Mises and Rothbard, it will have that effect on the appreciative audience.
I’m clearly in the 1.camp.
Though I see some validity for 2., I think the stakes are too high for that kind of thing. The USA and the world is in deep shit, and we need every person we can get on our side.
As for 3., I respectfully submit that the school of hard knocks will teach us otherwise, sooner or later.
No. With such people, one should (a) make them look bad to the gallery by taking the high road and still shredding their position, (b) ignore them, or (c) ban them. In none of those cases does it do any good to degrade ourselves by throwing schoolyard insults at them in the process.
Congratulations! You should make an announcement thread to share the details. [:)]
Smiling Dave,
Thanks for that excellent distillation.
Me too.
A forum graced with the name of Ludwig von Mises is simply not the place for that.
Indeed.
I still think #3 has its place, but I can imagine being proven wrong in that regard.
Though this will change as I’m getting a spot on a radio show soon
Yes, congrats indeed. If you need a juggler for your radio show, drop me a line.
When you’re at a bar, and a drunkard starts to challenge you, do you take him outside and fight him? I mean, he is not capable of rationalizing in his current state of mind. Or, do you just ignore him or walk away? The situation is the same, only you’re on a forum. Personal insults are not acceptable. Just because your opponent can’t rationalize doesn’t mean that you should stoop to his level.
Loser. 
TY, and I like your comics.
I understand the points of the so-called polite crowd but a few things. The good cop, bad cop route isn’t all that bad, but it is usually the bad cop that everybody looks down upon but it is also the bad cop that has given the strength for the good cop to hit the home run. The bad cop, at times, tends to be the grunt doing all the work and is slammed by the opposition AND the good cop. So they take hits from both sides because they have a call that reaches higher and deeper, at times.
When I worked in the justice system the bad cop was looked down upon but each of the units I worked in had one or two. They drew the line. They were the backbone and spine of the operation. They never gave in. They took all the spits and punches, but in the end when some of the teenagers left the facility it was the bad cop they turned to and thanked for they realized that the bad cop loved them so much that they would never let them down. They would never give in to them. They were always there for them trying to stop them for doing something aweful. The good cop could only step in after the bad cop calmed the situation down. Somebody being unreasonable is only going to laugh at the good cop. But we all play out part and to think otherwise is far worse in my opinion.
If they stop searching for the truth, then they were never looking for it to begin with. Truth or Love or some other abstract beyond the individual ego, is the curiousity, it is the call, it is what somebody for Truth is trying to filter through.
Secondly, to believe a person is holding somebody back actually puts too much egoness on the person that thinks they can persuade everybody. On this point it no longer becomes about the other person, the newcomer, it is about how well the learned, the teacher, method is. It is not about the student but about the teacher which misses the whole point if this is to try to persuade another person. It is not thinking about the other. It is only thinking about the method of ones own self. What this means to me in the larger picture is this. I nor anyone person is the sole convincer or persuader.
In Zen there is a practice in some sects to whip the student with a bamboo rod when that student while meditating is not concentrating. It wakes them up. It instills seeds of focus. It shatters something in their ego. It is not that they wake up to the larger picture of their training upon that very moment. It quite well be that they revert or they generate. The point is, however one person approaches any event or learning it is a collaboration of events that may finally wake any one person up to a much larger picture and they finally move on from their old shell.
It is the wind blowing in a certain way upon a winter day that catches their attention, but then they move on without fully realizing. It is a car beating it’s horn at another car, but then they move on without fully realzing. It is this same person hearing some profound truth like the “Sound of one-hand clapping”, but even though it worked on somebody in the past - it hasn’t fully worked on this person, so then they move on without fully realizing. Then they sit down, drink a beer, and then pass out. Wake up. Have a hang-over. Vomit. And go for a walk. Everything that happens to them that day is terrible. The world is against him or her. And all those previous seeds far beyond what I mention here have collaborated. They finally find the light of day. And to think it was one person that changed everything for him or her is to over-exaggerate and think too highly of themselves. It was the politeness of the doorman and the strengthen of a person long ago shouting in the streets, “You’re all going to hell if you don’t shape up!!!” They all boil through the mind of this person in one sudden swoop, memories coming together, everything begins to simply click and THEY on their own realize it. The choice is theirs. To think otherwise is a slight of hand tyrannical.
Exactly Knight. I’m a parent and to be polite to my son would only mean a son that in time walks all over everybody. A son that never had anybody to say, “NO” to him. Some people are so harmed by hearing “NO”, but sometimes people need to grow up and be responsible for their own actions. All this, “But only if we do it this way or that way,” isn’t waking up to the fact of choice. I thought liberty was about choice and thus being responsible.
One thing is being stern, another thing is calling your son a “retard”.