Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!ittvax!bunker!bunkerb!garys From: garys@bunkerb.UUCP (Gary Samuelson) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: ...same old stuff (flame moved from net.abortion) Message-ID: <323@bunkerb.UUCP> Date: Mon, 26-Mar-84 15:25:00 EST Article-I.D.: bunkerb.323 Posted: Mon Mar 26 15:25:00 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 27-Mar-84 02:01:47 EST Lines: 270 Well, I should have expected to called a liar. I expected to be called lots of nasty things, but not a liar. Attached are four articles which probably should not have been written. Three of them are from rabbit!jj, and I include them in their entirety (as received on this system -- it's possible that they may have been truncated at some point), and one of them is mine. Each un-edited line is prefaced with either 'jj:' or 'GMS:' to indicate whose article contained the line. Interspersed are my comments, which are intended to refute the charge that I am a liar. Also included are a few brief excerpts from the article by Sophie Quigley, to which article I responded jj: From bunker!ittvax!decvax!harpo!ulysses!allegra!alice!rabbit!jj Wed Mar 21 11:01:48 1984 jj: Subject: Abortion again. Still the same old stuff. jj: Newsgroups: net.abortion jj: jj: jj: >From alice!allegra!ulysses!harpo!decvax!ittvax!bunker!bunkerb!garys Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 jj: >... jj: >I'll buy that. Abortion results from a careless attitude about life. jj: >Certainly, a careless attitude about life is a bad thing. Thus, it jj: >seems clear that abortion is a bad thing. (Typically bad causes have jj: >bad effects.) Now, the above is in response to the following (from Sophie Quigley): "Has anybody who believes that abortion is a murder ever considered seriously the possibility that abortion might be an effect rather than a cause of our carelessness about life in general?" I think it should be obvious that we are in basic agreement about the statement, "Carelessness about life (i.e., disregard for its value) results in (among other things) abortion." jj: >... jj: >You left out infanticide. jj: >... Sophie also listed numerous atrocities which have been committed by human beings over the years. This happens to be one which she did not list. Since she had made the statement that acceptance of abortion was a relatively modern phenomenon, I thought it important to mention infanticide, since it is also a way of disposing of unwanted children. Now we have jj's first attack: jj: jj: jj: Well. There we have it again. jj: "Abortion results from a careless attitude about jj: life." Thank you, Gary, for explaing that to me. Let me ask jj: you now, is abortion a result of a careless attitude toward jj: life, or do people who aren't careless sometimes need abortions? jj: jj: Do you honestly believe that ALL unwillingly pregnant jj: women are careless? If you do, sir, I suggest that you study jj: the subject. I also suggest you study the economics of the situation. jj: jj: I have never stated that unwanted pregnancies are the result of careless use, or lack of use, of birth control methods. Thus, your words are unimportant, and I do not hear them. jj: I was going to go on to comment on your use of the word infanticide, jj: but I think I'll stop here, I'm getting too annoyed with your jj: projection of your ethics onto everyone else. jj: jj: Please ignore my .signature, I don't feel quite that jj: cheerful at the moment. jj: jj: jj: End pointless torture! jj: -- jj: TEDDY BEARS ARE NICER THAN PEOPLE--HUG YOURS TODAY! jj: (If you go out in the woods today ... ) jj: jj: (allegra,harpo,ulysses)!rabbit!jj I reacted to the above in anger. Perhaps I should not, but I did. Following is my response to the above attack: GMS: From: bunkerb!garys (Gary Samuelson) GMS: Newsgroups: net.abortion GMS: Title: Re: Abortion again. Still the same old stuff. GMS: Article-I.D.: bunkerb.319 GMS: Posted: Thu Mar 22 11:44:39 1984 GMS: Received: Thu Mar 22 11:44:39 1984 GMS: References: rabbit.2617 GMS: GMS: Now I know how other people feel to whom rabbit!jj has "responded." GMS: I write a reply to something that Sophie Quigley wrote, and he yanks GMS: my response to her completely out of context. You can't even tell GMS: what I was replying to. Not one word of the article to which I was GMS: responding appears in jj's "response." Otherwise, he might have GMS: noticed that most of what he quoted from my response was actually GMS: in agreement with the original (Sophie's) article. Oh well. I GMS: guess if you have been quoted out of context and flamed at by GMS: someone like rabbit!jj you must have said something important. GMS: GMS: Gary Samuelson Note that I said that most (not all) of what he quoted from my response was in agreement with the Sophie's article. I refer the reader (if there are any) to the above comparison of our respective statements concerning the connection between 'carelessness about life' and abortion. Next is jj's response to my angry response to his attack. jj: jj: From: bunkerb!bunker!ittvax!decvax!harpo!ulysses!allegra!alice!rabbit!jj jj: Newsgroups: net.abortion jj: Title: Re: Abortion again. Still the same old stuff. jj: Article-I.D.: rabbit.2623 jj: Posted: Fri Mar 23 12:49:10 1984 jj: Received: Sat Mar 24 03:45:11 1984 jj: References: rabbit.2617, <319@bunkerb.UUCP> jj: Relay-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decvax.UUCP jj: Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site rabbit.UUCP jj: Message-ID: <2623@rabbit.UUCP> jj: Date: Fri, 23-Mar-84 12:49:10 EST jj: Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill jj: Lines: 24 jj: jj: jj: jj: Damit, Gary, I see you like to lie, too. Take another look jj: at my article. I specifically say that I am departing jj: from your article after I make one point concerning jj: a QUOTE of it. jj: I did take another look at jj's article. I did not find any statement, either express or implied, that he was deliberately departing from my article, unless I am supposed to so construe the word "now." If that is the intended parsing of jj's article, then his "point" is reduced to "There we have it again" followed by (sarcastic) "Thank you, Gary, for explaing [sic] that to me." Not much of a point. I didn't deny that he quoted me; I assert, and continue to assert that he quoted me out of context. So much for the charge of lying. (Of course, it is somewhat difficult to be sure what statement of mine jj claims to be a lie, since he doesn't say). jj: I see that you just like to jump on a trend and jj: make fun of people who don't agree with you, and since you jj: think that rabbit!jj is already a tempting target, you use him jj: to take your frustrations out on. jj: I was not attempting to make fun of jj. I was reacting in anger to what I perceived to be an unfounded attack, which attack was based on a quote out of context. I will have to admit that jj does make a tempting target, however. If a person reacts angrily to a statements made by another, then there are three possibilities: 1. The statement is uncomfortably true, and the person doesn't want to hear it. 2. The statement is false, and the person doesn't want to have untruths about him repeated. 3. The one who made the statement (regardless of its veracity) is simply obnoxious. When a large variety of statements on a large variety of topics make a large variety of people angry, and the only constant in this set of statements is that they were all made by the same person, the last possibility seems ever most likely. That is what makes jj a tempting target. jj: You should do TWO things. jj: 1) Apologize to this newsgroup for making a totally jj: off the wall, ad-hominem attack that wasn't in net.flame. By "this newsgroup" is meant net.abortion, since that is where the article appeared. And I will defend myself in the group in which I am attacked. jj: 2) Go back and READ what you wrote, and what I wrote, jj: and then apologize to me. I did go back and READ what I wrote, and what jj wrote, and I find no reason to apologize, unless part of jj's article was lost in transmission. jj: jj: Stuff it. jj: -- jj: TEDDY BEARS ARE NICER THAN PEOPLE--HUG YOURS TODAY! jj: (If you go out in the woods today ... ) jj: jj: (allegra,harpo,ulysses)!rabbit!jj Finally, another article by jj: jj: From: bunkerb!bunker!ittvax!decvax!harpo!ulysses!allegra!alice!rabbit!jj jj: Newsgroups: net.abortion jj: Title: Re: open letter to pro-lifers jj: Article-I.D.: rabbit.2624 jj: Posted: Fri Mar 23 12:56:10 1984 jj: Received: Sat Mar 24 03:45:19 1984 jj: References: <7257@watmath.UUCP>, <2040@cbscc.UUCP>, <7341@watmath.UUCP> jj: Relay-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decvax.UUCP jj: Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site rabbit.UUCP jj: Message-ID: <2624@rabbit.UUCP> jj: Date: Fri, 23-Mar-84 12:56:10 EST jj: Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill jj: Lines: 18 jj: jj: jj: After reading Samuelson's second submission, I'm even more infuraited. jj: jj: You don't agree with Sophie, the way I understand it, and jj: I think, from the 200 line rebuttal she posed, she must jj: think so too. jj: The attentive reader will recall that I said that most of what jj quoted was in agreement with what Sophie had said. What Sophie thinks is seen in the following: "Gary, I am glad we clarified these issues and we now agree, except of course on whether abortion is evil or not, but my original intent was not to debate this, but rather to debate the other stuff: that abortion is the cause of other evils. Good." So much for the way jj understands our discussion. jj: Your arguments are quite slanted, Gary, and you make assumptions jj: continuously saying "nobody argues that..." when the "assumption" jj: is what half of the discussion in this newsgroup is about. jj: I could not find (and neither could 'grep') someplace where I said something starting with "nobody argues that...". I couldn't even find the word "nobody." So I submit that jj is not correct in that I do not continuously say, "nobody argues that...". (Perhaps jj uses quotation marks for something other than quotation.) I cannot tell with certainty if the assumption to which jj refers is that a fetus is a human being with rights, since he is indulging in vague attacks again, but it seems likely that that is the assumption he means. Now, as unusual as it is in the discussion of abortion, that assumption was not relevant to the discussion Sophie and I had. Thus, our discussion must be in the other half of the newgroup. jj: jj: Enough. jj: -- jj: TEDDY BEARS ARE NICER THAN PEOPLE--HUG YOURS TODAY! jj: (If you go out in the woods today ... ) jj: jj: (allegra,harpo,ulysses)!rabbit!jj For those who have had the patience to read this far, thank you. It is a shame that the discussion between Sophie and myself, which was completed so successfully (for a net discussion), had to be interrupted by someone with jj's need to flame at random. But he did at last say something I can agree with: "Enough."