As someone who strongly supports marriage equality and read the full opinion when it came out, I was kinda dismayed to find the dissent a more convincing argument. Did anyone else experience this?
I rarely (I would say never but that would make me a fool) agreed with the man but his dissents were usually well written, worth reading and understanding. For better or worse, he represented the view point of many in America.
Intelligence is no excuse for harm. And Scalia harmed many, in a multitude of ways, over decades in the court, through his plausible misconstrual of the constitution and the law.
Dang, could explain the difference between what generic_user and vonnik is doing that prompts the different response?
Is it the difference between saying someone is in hell, versus wishing someone were in hell? Or is it the difference between attacking another user vs a third party? Or is it because you think Scalia is a legitimate target of hatred?
The difference is small. vonnik got the flamewar rolling. But I'd say generic_user made it worse in two ways, by upping the rage ante and by making it purely ideological, i.e. completely unmoored from anything factual in the story. Once things get to that point, people are just taking turns bashing each other tribally and trying to outdo the other in venom, and that's always bad for discussion here.
My issue has nothing to do with Scalia; it's the venom. There are plenty of examples in this thread of thoughtful, substantive critiques of Scalia. Consider https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11096422 and all its replies. That's how it's done.
That linked comment is really just a description of Scalia's stance. How can one say "here's why Scalia is bad" without being called out for being inappropriate? Even people who've listed their grievances with sources are being downvoted to gray.
Am I correct in saying a commenter is only encouraged to praise a person, and if that can't be done, to only describe without opinion?
edit: and to be clear, this is comment is unrelated to the flamewar above
I originally thought bradleyjg was being more critical than that, but you might be right. Edit: here's a good example of substantive criticism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11096847
It's definitely not the case that one can only praise a person or describe without opinion. But I would push back a little against the formulation "Person X is bad". That's the sort of thing people say about an enemy, and one can't have civil discourse and war at the same time.
It's better to criticize something a person did or said than to denounce the whole of them. Not one of us would like to be regarded as merely the sum of the bad we did, nor would we consider it fair.
Fwiw, the Tweet I quoted was a joke, an attempt at humor referring to Scalia's relation to the Constitution's intent. Because of course the founding fathers are not burning in hell. And of course, hell doesn't exist.
