Countering in Blogging

  Countering is the method of establishing one's views in a position alternative to a cited text. Harris places much emphasis on the fact that effective countering is not completely invalidating the source, as little ground is gained in finding flaw in every piece of thought offered by another; instead, it is necessary, in order to be seen with any sense of authority or rationality, to accept part of the text and then simply offer another point of view on the subject. This adds legitimacy by lessening the possibility that one is just being argumentative for sport, as the case was in the silly Monty Python skit featured in Harris's chapter dedicated to the method. But I doubt that serious intellectual circles of today are immune from this same sort of belligerence.

  Sullivan, once again, provides a handy example of exactly what I'm looking for. Upon establishing that Mark Noonan is okay with torturing Americans suspected of involvement in the Fort Hood shooting. He doesn't outright cast claims of complete ignorance upon his opponent, but he does assert that he is misled in his conclusion. Sullivan warns against being so hasty to say that it's okay to harshly interrogate people.

  What remains the same is that the event is "terrible." (I know, this is a bit of a stretch, but Sullivan doesn't allow for much sympathy in his response--a particularly harsh sample of "countering".) What is gained is the fundamental insight that it isn't okay to torture people to extract information from them. What else is added is the analysis that the phenomenon of this seemingly-increased acceptance of torture as a legitimate means of interrogation is the result of Bush's presidency.