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Originally Posted by jb2000
I did notice that you were careful to qualify your statement about McCarthy, but not about Republican leaders. You assume that the Republican attacks on gays are because they legitimately believe their own words, but yet you don't extend the same benefit of the doubt to Mr. McCarthy. Why is this?
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Ooh. I'm sure that there are republicans that are against gay marriage solely because they believe homosexuality to be immoral. Because I've heard them say as much. But I do believe that there are republicans that don't base their opposition to gay marriage on any notion of homosexuality's being immoral. Because I've heard them say as much. I base it on their stated reasons, provided they aren't self-evidently false and are backed up in some reasoned way.
I don't really know much about McCarthy, to be honest. Perhaps if I did, I wouldn't consider him a user of scare tactics. That's not to say that I wouldn't consider his tactics to be of another deplorable kind, perhaps.
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Republican attacks on gays by portrayal of them as representing a threat to our society and culture is indeed a scare tactic. So is Democratic portrayals of the Bush Doctrine respresenting a threat to a peaceful, cooperative global community.
Both are definitely feared amongst their respective groups. Even the leaders making those portrayals may legitimately believe them. And ultimately they may well be true. But they are still scare tactics.
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Replace 'gays' with 'gay marriage', and I don't consider either of those to be scare tactics. Nor do I have a moral problem with either. You're right, it can't be known for certain what people actually think when they speak. Thus, it can't be known for certain if one is using a scare tactic. But when you expand the definition as you did, to include all statements declaring that a given stance/action is dangerous, you end up categorizing nearly all publicly announced disagreements as scare tactics, and the word loses its weight. Scare tactics no longer are necessarily a bad thing.
So what would I consider a scare tactic? Person A makes a negative false statement B about an action/stance C. If it turns out that person A had prior knowledge that statement B was false, or is unable to provide backing of any kind for statement B, then it's a scare tactic. It might be a scare tactic if there is backing for the statement, but the backing is very easily debunked.
Hope that clarifies it all.