Thank you for reading and responding. We are committed to including diverse voices and encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse on all topics, including this one.
This Substack piece reflects one perspective. If you’d like to join the discussion, we welcome and encourage you to send your own to submissions@fairforall.org.
Thank you for reading and responding. We are committed to including diverse voices and encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse on all topics, including this one.
This Substack piece reflects one perspective. If you’d like to join the discussion, we welcome and encourage you to send your own to submissions@fairforall.org.
I guess the question I would have here is: how are you defining “good-faith”? I would say that a “bad-faith” argument would be one where the author attributes to others arguments or beliefs without providing any evidence to back it up. Alito wrote a long, long opinion in the Dobbs decision. If she thought his reasoning made him like Shylock, why not quote something, anything, that he said which supports this claim? That would be one thing. It’s a whole other thing to assume intent on his part without any evidence. Alito wasn’t the only one misrepresented in this essay but I’m not going to spell out every instance in which Melissa presumed to be a mind-reader. See the other comments for that.
Second, is it an example of “good-faith discourse” to ignore critical comments (even clearly respectful ones) and virtually only engage with those with whom you agree? It would be one thing if Melissa didn’t look at the comments to her essay at all, but you can find her liking one-sentence comments that amount to, “great essay” while not even touching the majority of comments which disagree with her. Is this an example of the FAIR standard of good-faith discourse?
Third, a good example of how it should be done (so far) is in today’s essay on the same topic. That author quotes people and takes them at their word, based on those quotes. I would say that’s in good faith. In the comments section you see quite a number of people who strenuously disagree with him, but they disagree with his POINT, and in a way that is enlightening to readers. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, both the essay and its comments have interesting perspective. Contrast that with Melissa’s essay, where most of the comments are focused on the various parts where she was factually incorrect.
In sum, the issue isn’t that a voice such as Melissa’s shouldn’t be heard, but I believe that her essay was written in bad-faith, based on her lack of evidence, lack of understanding, and routine mischaracterization of those with whom she disagrees. This essay doesn’t add to the conversation, it just rehashes already-common misunderstandings. FAIR should not abide such bad-faith, mushy thinking.
Thank you for reading and responding. We are committed to including diverse voices and encouraging compassionate, good-faith discourse on all topics, including this one.
This Substack piece reflects one perspective. If you’d like to join the discussion, we welcome and encourage you to send your own to submissions@fairforall.org.
I guess the question I would have here is: how are you defining “good-faith”? I would say that a “bad-faith” argument would be one where the author attributes to others arguments or beliefs without providing any evidence to back it up. Alito wrote a long, long opinion in the Dobbs decision. If she thought his reasoning made him like Shylock, why not quote something, anything, that he said which supports this claim? That would be one thing. It’s a whole other thing to assume intent on his part without any evidence. Alito wasn’t the only one misrepresented in this essay but I’m not going to spell out every instance in which Melissa presumed to be a mind-reader. See the other comments for that.
Second, is it an example of “good-faith discourse” to ignore critical comments (even clearly respectful ones) and virtually only engage with those with whom you agree? It would be one thing if Melissa didn’t look at the comments to her essay at all, but you can find her liking one-sentence comments that amount to, “great essay” while not even touching the majority of comments which disagree with her. Is this an example of the FAIR standard of good-faith discourse?
Third, a good example of how it should be done (so far) is in today’s essay on the same topic. That author quotes people and takes them at their word, based on those quotes. I would say that’s in good faith. In the comments section you see quite a number of people who strenuously disagree with him, but they disagree with his POINT, and in a way that is enlightening to readers. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, both the essay and its comments have interesting perspective. Contrast that with Melissa’s essay, where most of the comments are focused on the various parts where she was factually incorrect.
In sum, the issue isn’t that a voice such as Melissa’s shouldn’t be heard, but I believe that her essay was written in bad-faith, based on her lack of evidence, lack of understanding, and routine mischaracterization of those with whom she disagrees. This essay doesn’t add to the conversation, it just rehashes already-common misunderstandings. FAIR should not abide such bad-faith, mushy thinking.