Creating a Windbreak

Part of maintaining an ideological cadre is sheltering it from the destructive criticism to which every ideology is vulnerable. One way to do that is to make anyone leveling such criticism out to be such an idiot that they aren't even worth reading. For instance, Geoffrey Plauche recently posted the following:

"Another irony: someone..."

"Someone"? To Plauche, I am apparently he-who-must-not-be-named: he periodically references something I have just written without naming me or linking to my post.

"enamored of Voegelin recently attempted to use a Hayek quote to argue, in effect, that liberals/libertarians are no different than statists, "

This is a favorite netwit tactic: When someone makes a comparison between A and B, the netwit comes back with: "So, you think A is the same as B!"
Me: Dogs are like porpoises in that they nurse their young.
Netwit: So you think dogs are no different than porpoises?!
Well... NO. That's why I compared them:  because, while they are different, they share certain things in common. I would not bother comparing a dog with itself: there would be nothing to say. You'd think an Aristotelean scholar would be comfortable with such ideas.

And look at the post Plauche is failing to reference: What in there could even remotely be taken to read "libertarians are no different than statists"? What the post claims is that there is a certain error, which Hayek called "constructivist rationalism," which one may commit, regardless of whether one is a libertarian, a liberal, a socialist, a conservative, or whatever. But the fact that all of these political persuasions are capable of committing the same error certainly does not make them all the same! Humans and flies can both fail to notice danger in their environment, but does pointing that out mean that I think humans are "no different than" flies? Anyone who would suggest that it does is either an idiot or intellectually dishonest... and Plauche is no idiot.

"which he then followed up with an argument-from-authority-cum-non-sequitur invocation of the charge of Manichean gnosticism by means of a Voegelin quote."

This would, indeed, have been a very bad argument by me... if it had been an argument.

"(Argument by quotation really should be an official variation on the argument from authority, applied to people who tend to 'argue' by quoting assertions from people they consider wise authority figures while providing little or no supporting argument of their own or directly addressing counterarguments.)"

Apparently, Plauche's world is all arguments all the time, so anything you post is an argument. "Look at that terrible argument Callahan posted in the top right corner of his page! Why all it is is a photo of the Lauterbrunnen Valley. What kind of an argument does he think that is?!"

Sometimes... no, most often... I post things just because I find them interesting. They aren't an "argument" for anything at all. Now, the quote itself my be part of an argument found in its source... but if you want to engage that argument, dig up the source!

But how much nicer for your cause if you can cast someone who posts an interesting quotation now and then as an idiot who doesn't know what an argument is!