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Something from the Norfolk City Council meeting that bothered me..

marshaul

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Flyer22 wrote:
marshaul wrote:
mpg9999 wrote:
Reverend73 wrote:
I thought it was retarded for him to say that. :banghead: When I saw it on the news clip, I cringed. He should have had someone proof read his "speech" prior to actually delivering it. IMHO.
I had the exact same reaction when I saw the video.

Same reaction here, too.
I picked this post almost at random--there are several posts that would work. I fail to see how anybody could cringe at the statement on the video. (Which I watched, by the way.) While Freud didn't specifically say what the gentleman thought he did, who among us could possibly think that fear of weapons is NOT a sign of immaturity after reading a few of the hysterical anti-gun screeds that pop up from time to time?

It's not about the truth of the statement, it's about how it came off.

This wasn't a meeting of gun-owners sitting around congratulating each other on how right we are, it was a meeting to convince other people to respect our position. Since the audience is implicitly people who are not in agreement with us, it would behoove us to consider our speech from their perspective.

And from the perspective of someone who doesn't already agree that fear of weapons is a sign of sexual immaturity, him saying that would come off as a childish and insulting, not as a valid point. Trust me; I'm inclined to agree with the alleged Freud quote, and it still came off as childish and insulting to me. That is not the way to win over an audience. And remember, that was the point: to convince an audience, not deliver self-congratulatory monologues.
 
G

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marshaul (13 October 2008 Monday 03:00) says:

That is not the way to win over an audience. And remember, that was the point: to convince an audience, not deliver self-congratulatory monologues.
Thank you.

I mean no offense to the gentleman who made the remark under discussion; not everyone speaks well in public (or at all). Still, there are situations where if one is not good at something, perhaps one should not do it -- even if it is one's right to do so.

Unless there's a really interesting October surprise on the horizon, it looks like we're in for an Obama presidency. Whatever else that means, it can't be good for RKBA, and IMHSHO there's going to need to be a lot of grassroots work just to stay where we are now. Put simply, we need more people to be on our side. Calling them names won't help -- maybe especially if the names are true.

If you haven't read Raging Against Self Defense by Dr. Sarah Thompson, I think it would be worth your time. Note especially what Dr. Thompson says about dealing with fearful anti-RKBA people. Maybe they shouldn't be afraid of us, but they are. We need them to be less afraid, not more.

There is absolutely no reason whatever that one can't be courteous and reasonable while holding strongly to one's position. It is particularly good for our side for the general public to perceive people who walk around with visible firearms as courteous and reasonable. You don't have to dress like a yuppie or apologize for exercising your rights, but staying polite and reasonable will do much more for Our Side than some of the alternatives.

Courtesy and reason. They're not the law, they're just Really Good Ideas. Especially if you are armed.

regards,

GR

PS: As to famous quotations ... has anyone actually seen that Freud quotation in an unabridged copy of Freud's works? Using bogus quotes or statistics, however inadvertently, can blow your credibility like you wouldn't believe. We don't need that either.
 

Doug Huffman

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Doug Huffman wrote:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud#Misattributed
  • A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.
    • This is not a statement that appears in any translation of any of Freud's works. It is a paraphrase of a statement from the essay "Guns, Murders, and the Constitution" (February 1990) by Don B. Kates, Jr. where Kates summarizes his views of passages in Dreams in Folklore (1958) by Freud and David E. Oppenheim, while disputing statements by Emmanuel Tanay in "Neurotic Attachment to Guns" in a 1976 edition of The Fifty Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales (1955) by Robert Mitchell Lindner:
 

Renegade

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While reading this thread the image that came to my mind was one of every VCDL member standing up a speaking for a moment in front of City Council.

Some would prepare and rehearse their three minute speech.

Most would stand up and speak a well though out sentence or two. Short and to the point.

Some would simply approach the microphone and state that they agree with everything that VCDL members have said.

Could you imagine the difference if we had 50+ people speaking! Say ten well rehearsed three minute speeches, thirty short and to the point, and ten more just to say they agree!
 

Neplusultra

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Gentleman Ranker wrote:
marshaul (13 October 2008 Monday 03:00) says:

That is not the way to win over an audience. And remember, that was the point: to convince an audience, not deliver self-congratulatory monologues.
but staying polite and reasonable will do much more for Our Side than some of the alternatives.
I was going to say something else but I have to say I agree. Polity is a foremost character of civil society. I've heard somewhere that manners is a consideration for the feelings of others. How would you feel if someone didn't fairly consider your thoughts on a subject or unfairly made light of them? (LEO229 does not actually wear short short hot pants! AFAIK) Being "polite" is always being cognizant of others.
 

deepdiver

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Even if Freud had said it, it was a bad cite to authority. Freud has been much maligned by throughout the psychological and psychiatric professions and educational venues. The majority of people who have had a college psych class or have read Psychology Today have heard Freud dismissed as misogynistic and irrelevant without any attempt to place his theories in the historical context of his being on the vanguard of a new scientific approach to mental health and understanding (yes, I was a psych major and am an admirer of Freud and have read most all of his English translated works).

The point is that among the more formally educated people who would be inclined to be anti-gun, Freud is very much likely to be seen as a false authority rather than a trusted authority. It would be loosely akin to an anti-gunner using Sarah Brady as an authority to influence the opinions of 2A supporters. The moment the abhorrent authority is cited the entire point and the speaker himself are dismissed in the minds of listeners. So I too agree that the quote, even if it were accurate, was less than helpful. The fact that it is not entirely accurate on top of citing to a likely noxious authority for the audience makes it even less helpful. Clearly the man had no malicious intent to our cause making his comment unfortunate rather than something else.
 
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