Emerod's Weblog

The comments on this article revealed many things about Coures’ motivations, such as local politics, loss of tax money, and stereotyping, not to mention concern for every child not under direct government supervision. That is actually quite unusual, since most writers would not allow themselves to be sucked into such a conversation. It inevitably results in complete exposure of the writer’s logical fallacies and personality disorders.

The bad publicity was mostly imaginary, since it was just a biased opinion article using recycled news stories, running in a relatively small media market.

The threat of increased regulation was very distant, since the non-proposals would not have been enacted under any scenario. The only legislative action in question was a resolution to create a study committee, which failed in the prior session. Any possible regulation will not even be considered until the next session after the upcoming short session.

Coures wasted his time provoking people and defending his motivations, but the article is what it is. He should have stayed out of the comments, and instead paid more attention to documenting sources and clearly stating his personal agenda.

He later said he wanted to (1) raise awareness of Skinner’s proposal, (2) raise the issue of lost property taxes, and (3) raise awareness of the complaints of families who have pulled out of the school system. But, mysteriously, he seems to have decided to save those until strategic points in the „open“ discussion. That was his agenda, but instead of stating it upfront, he wanted to ambush people with it. That’s dishonest. He wasted the time of all the people who thought he wanted a purely open-ended discussion.

He said that he wants to do the same at the school board candidate’s debate and the mayor’s roundtable. He might actually be more successful now that his agenda items are out in the open!

Coures wasted his opportunity to bring up some substantive, actionable issues in public. He kept whining about how the board only talks about buildings and such; so why didn’t he write an article about the threat of rape in school? Why didn’t he write an article about how the community could come together to help out Caze students?

Why not write an article about all the reasons why loyal public school parents pull out of the system? Why write about something that the readers cannot actually act on, that would not have effect for at least a year, when there are surely pressing problems in this area that could be solved now? He wasted the newspaper’s space and credibility.

He used a lot of tactics in the article that were either obvious at first glance or became obvious in his comments. However, he seemed to be most proud that all his examples were „true“ and that he was not asking anyone to change any laws, just discuss issues.

It didn’t matter whether the examples actually pertained to the proposed discussion topics; that is irrelevant to him, because they are „true.“ He is not claiming that they mean anything at all; he just thought you should know about them. Draw your own conclusions. However, you are a self-righteous bully if you attack his use of them, since that simply entails you denying that they are „true.“ And after giving the specific, lurid examples, he admits that maybe they are exceptions. Maybe they don’t mean anything at all. He never said they meant anything.

He’s not against homeschooling; he just wants you to realize that all homeschoolers are not perfect. Not as if that means anything. Draw your own conclusions. He just wants everyone to discuss some questions, but they aren’t his questions. Sure, they have to do with regulation, but that doesn’t mean he wants that regulation. He just wanted to bring it up, in case you didn’t know about it. Just discuss it. He isn’t saying that these regulations would have helped the people in the specific examples. He’s just giving you facts, and asking you to discuss something, that’s all. You’re a self-righteous bully if you claim that he supports regulation, or that he believes any regulation would have helped anyone, ever. He didn’t say that.

Sure, the article is written in the context of the Harbison case, but he doesn’t mention it, because he knew it would upset people. He never said they were related. He never said that any homeschooling regulations, which he isn’t proposing and which aren’t his ideas anyway, would have helped Harbison. Draw your own conclusions.

It’s just one weasel move after another. The reason he thinks I’m some kind of professional debater is simply because he has so many inconsistencies and contradictions that are easy to point out, and he can’t really explain them, so it makes him squirm. He would be a much more effective communicator if he would combine his passion with clear explication of his claims, clear support for his claims, and logical relations between points.

The weasel moves are just tricks to confuse opponents who are also weaselly, and he frankly says that he only expected that type of person to argue with him. Therefore, if you argue with him, you must be weaselly. That attitude is corrosive to the idealism he espouses; and sincere, clear-thinking people, including people who might otherwise agree with him, will be put off. It’s a pity if his defects end up causing more problems for the community he cares about.