I absolutely agree with your hypothesis about war and you were completely right to use the lessons of the past to make your point.

But you gave me the ultimate straight line here Bowser which, if you look at it as I did, is filled with hypocrisy and most of all irony. What I see in the two arguments is selective methodology and the convenient omission of the big picture to make your point. It's one of the primary tactics of the neo-cons in their debating style. Should we be emulating them?

Obviously, this is Flame and your intent was not to necessarily inform and create reasonable debate but instead to push buttons so some of this criticism is just as overblown. Sometimes it's fun to push the buttons back even if you agree with the premise.

However, let's look at your argument about war. You show all the bad that comes from it throughout history but none of the benefits that even very reasonable and peaceful people acknowledge. In my mind and obviously yours, the balance is grossly tilted to the bad side but you do yourself a disservice and limit your potential audience by making your case without mentioning the occasional good that comes out of warfare. (Truly evil people get killed. Population is kept in check. Jobs become available. Women outnumber men. Great plots are made for movies. Etc.)

So when you were presenting your side of the argument about the legalization or decriminalization of drugs, you gave us only the dark side and conveniently left out the huge neon sign of history that says that prohibition was a dismal failure. In that case there wasn't this very one-sided balance of good and evil. Both sides of the argument had compelling stories and I believe your credibility became strained because your argument was black and white.

Often on here I think you shoot yourself in the foot by trying to out-nasty and out-bully the other side, too many gotchas. There's certainly risk in sometimes starting out from a compromising position. I certainly have been nailed when I tried to play nice from the get go but I think that most times it's worth it. The attacker shows their true soul when they take advantage of your reasonable style and generally lose their own credibility.

And in the spirit of Flame - Take that you ignorant slut.

Art