John:

I thank you for your posting this as it reveals what is called a Tactic of Obfuscation. It also shows your repeated grave sin of rash judgment in presuming I am offended. I am not; not even close.

The reason this is a tactic of obfuscation, even if said without consciously knowing it, is that when a person is losing a debate, or just doesn't want to accept the opponents views, or perhaps just doesn't like the opponent, or for other reasons, an obfuscating tactic is used to divert attention away from the opponents viewpoints, or to suggest some defect in the person's character that may lower his credibility with the audience and thus make it appear that the viewpoints offered by the opponent are somehow flawed.

In this Tactic of Obfuscation #75 the innuendo is that I, the opponent, got emotionally upset and offended. Thus, the arguments I gave that oppose John's rather odd views, may be tainted by emotion, rather than offered with thoughtful consideration and intellect.

This is a very common technique. Even though John offered to not have this published, the obfuscation technique still applies, even without an audience, in that it becomes the last word to me, the opponent, to let me know that my viewpoints are being dismissed, or at least tainted, by an accusation that I was emotional in my responses.

This tactic does work for those who do not see it and are unsure of their viewpoints in the debate; or by those easily baited into an emotional response. That did not happen here. I was not offended and did not respond in any emotional way at all.

Sometimes people think a person is angry or offended because of the intensity of the debate. This is nonsense that has developed over the last 60 years whereby an intense or heated debate is somehow considered wrong and the persons angry and emotional.

Debate over differing views, even to the point of heat, is a tradition that goes back to Plato and Socrates, and older. It took a mamsy-pamsy political correctness and false civility to destroy that 1000s of years old tradition. By the way, the word, nice, comes from the Latin meaning, ignorant. By the 15th century, i think it was, the word came to mean false civility. Then it developed into what we think of it today, but with the tyranny of the politically correct, the tyranny of the perpetually offended, and the tyranny of those who think Jesus was a 60's flower-child, the false civility is what the effective use of the word has become, or I should say, has returned to.

See an essay, Three Secret Strategies of Satan, for more information about this issue of nice and political correctness.

Anyway, I thank you for the debate and for this final comment that is an obfuscating technique (even if you do not know it or intended it), because I am writing a book on this subject and always like to use real-life examples.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary