Re: Three cheers for Eli!

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2018-06-12, at 02:33, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > At the risk of sounding quite rude and assuring it's not my intention at
>   > > all: do you _like_ to be called an animal?
>
>   > Wow, I didn't see that coming.  Even if the analogy is slightly flawed,
>   > point taken.
>
> I think it is a very good analogy.  Every human being is, in fact, an
> animal.  (I doubt any plants, fungi, or unicellular organisms are
> reading this message.)  Nonetheless, calling someone an "animal" has
> another meaning, and people don't like to be called "animals".

As I said, I agree the analogy is good (even if it has some flaws).

> Calling the person a "Republican" -- who actually disagrees with that
> party -- is perhaps a closer analogy.

I actually think it is much worse.  For starters, while all humans are
(at least in certain technical sense) animals, they are so much more
that calling them "animals" is offensive.  That is not true of any
political party.  Last but not least, what is truly offensive is calling
someone "left-wing" (admittedly, both Republican and Democratic parties
in the US are quite strongly left-wing, but Democrats seem to be much
worse in that regard).

Best,

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl