Here is Max Sawicky's reply to my second-to-last post, in full:
I DON'T HAVE TO ARGUE WITH IDIOTS. I think it's in the Bill of Rights.
I'm sure he's right as a matter of constitutional law: he doesn't have to argue with idiots, or with me, or with anyone else. But when someone pleads the Fifth, observers tend to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that he has something to hide. Or is this a case of nolo contendere? Perhaps a lawyer could say which is a better analogy. Either way, I think it's safe to say that Max Sawicky is an intellectual fraud: he makes sweeping allegations and refuses to back them up when challenged.
I would have said all this in his comment section, but he banned me months ago, after my previous challenge. He recently had the nerve to send an e-mail to one of my commenters accusing me (among other misrepresentations) of deleting his comments here. (I know because he cc'd me.) That was true, but not the whole truth. I only deleted those of his comments that were made after he had banned me from his own site, and I will continue doing so in the future. What kind of jerk thinks he has a right to keep posting comments on a site whose owner he has already banned from his own? That's a rhetorical question: no need to post your suggestions on the particular genus and species of the order of jerks (Ierkoidea?) to which Max Sawicky should be assigned.
Update: (11:03 PM)
Now Sawicky's comment-trolls are piling on.
I'm ignoring Bush's many huge lies! (So says 'yellowecho', too cowardly to give even a Hotmail address.) Such as? No examples are given, and it's not as if plenty of people aren't already working that angle, so far to little effect. I challenged Sawicky's statement because no one else had done so. I certainly don't claim to be able to correct every falsehood in the world. And contrary to what 'yellowecho' seems to think, two wrongs do not make a right.
'bobbyp' (also too gutless to give an e-mail address) insists that Sawicky is retroactively right about North, who is now (he says) a hero on Fox. Big deal: he's still not 'worshipped' by warbloggers, which was Sawicky's original claim, still unretracted, and still utterly false. North is sometimes quoted by 'warbloggers' as a useful source for what's going on at the front lines, just as Geraldo Rivera and Robert Fisk are occasionally so quoted, and I don't know of any 'warblogger' who worships either of them.
I will pass over bobbyp's McCarthyite use of the standard McCarthy comparison, and just mention his final slur: "As far as Weevil's analysis of how the Klansvolk vote, I found it disingenuous and totally lacking in fact. Apparently he doesn't have much time to conduct in depth research either". My post made it quite clear that I don't know how Klansmen voted, and I'm not sure it would be possible to tell. It's not my job to dive into the sewers of Klan-related sites to do Sawicky's homework for him and find out whether the Klan endorsed Bush or Buchanan or one of the lesser-known candidates or let its members follow their stunted little consciences. He needs to either offer evidence that he's right or withdraw his statement. And that's "Dr. Weevil" to you, 'bobbyp': I didn't spend five years in graduate school to be an ordinary 'Weevil'.
Sawicky says I'm "not a serious person". No, not always: I like a joke as much as the next man, but I'm utterly serious in wanting to know why Sawicky thinks he can slander Republicans with unsupported and implausible Ku Klux Klan analogies and not come across as a pathetic lying asshole.
Posted by Dr. Weevil at April 12, 2003 09:06 PMThe only mention of the Fifth Amendment, Dr. Weevil, is yours. His claim of Constitutional protection is one with which I am not familiar. Perhaps it's one of those unenumerated rights suggested by the Ninth Amendment. I wouldn't presume to guess.
Posted by: rlbtzero on April 13, 2003 06:56 PMAh, the good Weevil has the best of the argument again as only the Fifth Amendment provides for a right to remain silent.
Posted by: R Roberts on April 13, 2003 10:09 PMI suppose Sawicky's retort to your last could be:
"That's Mr. Asshole to you, buddy!"
This sort of thing is par for the course when it comes to Maxey-boy, Dr. With him it's alway's *heads I win, tails you lose or, failing that, I'll ban you from my site.* I had the honor of being "banned" from posting on his supposedly free-for-all forum a few months back.
Once I got the pop-up message that told me I'd been BANNED BY MAXSPEAK! I complied with the spirit of the message and didn't attempt to post anything there again, although I could've easily walked down the hall, logged onto another computer, and posted to my heart's content. It was, and remains, my feeling that it was his site, after all, and if he wanted to ban me from posting there I had no complaint coming.
And most of what follows in this post is only deductive speculation--but I'd wager that's it's a lot closer to the truth than anything Maxey-boy's posted on the matter since, ummmm, forever.
I knew that banning me was symptomatic of his inability deal with his critics on anything like a fair playing field, and kept tabs on the boy. That's exactly why he banned you, Dr.: he doesn't enjoy being on the losing end of a fair fight. I also knew that he couldn't simply ban me and let the issue die--I'd burned him one too many times in debate, and had gotten under his skin. Sure enough, a few weeks ago he posted some nonsense about how the only people he'd ever banned from his site were "a Nazi, a couple of anonymous flamers, and Dr. Weevil," or words to that effect. Well, I wasn't the "Nazi" and I wasn't Dr. Weevil, so I assumed that I was one of the "anonymous flamers" he was referring to--except that I was neither "anonymous" nor a "flamer" in the accepted sense of that word. That was a serious shading of the truth from Maxey-boy, if not an outright lie (in my opinion, of course). Maxey-boy apparently knew *exactly* who I was--as he stated himself a few days ago when he mistakenly attacked some guy who just happened to post his name as "Jacob." I don't know who this "Jacob" was, and it really doesn't matter, but Maxey-boy responded to "Jacob"'s post in his typically ponderous manner (which I believe he thinks is actually quite witty), and wrapped the matter up by telling "Jacob" that "you may change computers from time to time, but I know who you are and I think you're weird," or words to that effect. It hit me as I read it--Maxey-boy must think "Jacob" is me! I'm flattered, of course, that he apparently took the time in Google searchs and the like to nail down my identity, but in what sense could I have been "anonymous" if Maxey-boy was telling "Jacob" (who was indeed innocent of being me; sorry "Jacob") that "I know who you are"? It was another delicious example, in my opinion, of how Maxey-boy likes to debate: first he gets ponderous, then he gets obscurely silly, and finally he just descends into old-fashioned name-calling. In that sense he is the perfect leftist: he starts by sneering, and goes straight away to vituperation when opposed with nary a pause. Note how he side-stepped your legitimate question with a snide post about not being required to debate with "idiots"--this is Maxey-boy's notion of how point-counterpoint argument should function in a civil society.
None of which is to say that I don't believe he can ban whoever the hell he wants from posting on his own site--myself included. But he shouldn't cloak his inability to face up to those debates with blithe dismissals of his more acute critics as "idiots" or "weird." But that is Maxey-boy's way, and I suspect it always has been. Not long ago he punctuated an anti-war post with this gem: "Relatively speaking, the 60s-70s anti-Vietnam War protest was much more supportive of the North Vietnamese regime. There was a good reason to root for the other side then (1/19//2003 Entry)." That's Maxey-boy to the core: there was a "good reason" to "root" for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong who were killing American soldiers to keep up the good work "then." He would obviously try to qualify that statement with "greater good" arguments in the cold, hard light of those reflections were he called to task about them on C-Span or O' Reilley's radio show, or any of the popular programs he's always bragging about appearing on--but the fact remains nevertheless: Maxey-boy actually seems to think that there was a legitimate reason to "root" for the "side" that was sending American soldiers home in body bags for the sake of a despicable cause. That says it all, and pretty much sums it up. Sawicky is part and parcel of the leftist intellectual gutter in this country that brays from underneath the sidewalks as the vast majority of us negotiate our way down varying ideological points of the main road. He should be considered, at the end of the day, in precisely that light: just one more rat pitifully squealing from a place most of us will never have cause to go. Sincerely, "Jake"
I don't think a man who many people believed was likely to include Powell in his cabinet would be getting much of the Klan vote.
Posted by: HH on April 15, 2003 09:54 PM...and Condoleeza Rice.
Posted by: Fred Boness on April 15, 2003 10:52 PM