EP45: The Gish Gallop to Gomorrah - Gracearchy with Jim Babka

There's a line of reasoning amongst many traditionalist conservatives. The Eisenhower years were essentially the Garden of Eden, and then... The Fall. The 1960s. The Original Sin varies from commentator to commentator. It could be… The Beatles. Prayer removed from public schools. Hippies. Drug culture. Vietnam protests. And more (as you'll see in a moment). In every case, they argue respect for tradition and authority went out the window – and with it came the destruction of American culture. It's been downhill ever since! All our present social troubles, the deviancy, and the terrors that presently surround us, all trace back to this Fall. Even when the believers in this myth aren't explicit, they still imply that if we could just get back to the way things were done in the 1950s (or some other halcyon moment) then everything would be fine. Does this make sense? A listener sent an article to us. The author of that piece had his own hypothesis... The Original Sin in this case is The Pill. The writer is speaking of the contraceptive taken by millions of women every year. This particular writer believes The Pill opened up sexual possibilities, permitted people to experiment, and now look at what they're doing! He traces its role in the hatred of motherhood and familial responsibility, abortion, pornography, Hillary Clinton, and tampons in the boy's room. Eventually, this led to communism at the highest levels of our government. We're on a Gish Gallop to Gomorrah! The argumentation style of the piece is quite typical for this genre. In this episode of Gracearchy, we cover four hallmarks of articles and arguments like this. Spotting them is the first step. Knowing how to counter them is the second. We cover both steps in this episode. Not everyone always has time to listen right away, so we'll share the four hallmarks with you here. But we hope you'll listen, later, to get all of the details. 1. The Gish Gallop. 2. Treating objects as moral actors. 3. Turning an ought into an is. 4. The purpose of Sex. Timeline 0:00 Intro 0:44 Fundamentalists losing control 2:04 Nostalgia-ism 3:42 Gish Gallop 7:18 Objects are not moral actors 8:10 Apocalypse has a poor track record 9:04 Hoplophobia 9:55 Is is not Ought 12:49 Grace for absolutists 14:37 Sex has several purposes 16:39 Individual subjective journey 18:57 Suppression of loving reason 20:37 Eisenhower in the Garden of Eden 21:11 Review of four rules 22:17 Grace points Bill Protzmann is your moderator. ZeroAggressionProject.org is the sponsor. Be grace-full to each other. We are grateful to Sergio at https://www.youtube.com/@KeysofMoonMusic for our intro theme. ► https://www.patreon.com/user?u=10500501 or you can purchase his music on BandCamp: ► https://keysofmoon.bandcamp.com/ ► If you have any questions please feel free to write to Sergio at: serjo.de.lua.music@gmail.com