George Bush is an idiot

How does a child or an immature ideologue deal with people with whom he disagrees? He calls the person an "idiot," leaps on his high horse, and rides away without arguing the issues. George Bush is called an "idiot" for no reason other than to dismiss Bush in a highhanded way while avoiding arguing the issues. We know frustrated Bush haters use "idiot" as an epithet. The subject of this debate is whether "George Bush is an idiot" is true in the literal sense of "idiot," in the sense of profoundly limited mental capacity. The meaning of "idiot" in terms of mental capacity was made abundantly clear in the debate challenge. Even though the meaning with respect to mental capacity was clear, Pro first attempted to equivocate by equating "idiot" with "funny." Pro references a definition of "equivocation" from the non-authoritative debatefans.org that equivocation means changing the meaning of a word in the middle of an argument. But if one goes through to the debatefans references, one finds "Equivocation is the type of ambiguity which occurs when a single word or phrase is ambiguous, and this ambiguity is not grammatical but lexical." Pro's attempting to use "idiot" to mean "funny" from the first round is therefore equivocation. Since I made the definition clear in challenge, it actually meets Pro's definition as well. We are discussing Bush's mental capacity and nothing else. Pro shows that he understands exactly what is going on when he references a list of Bush policies in support for his claim that "Bush is an idiot." Among the events claimed to support the claim of "idiocy" is the Valerie Plame affair. Ultimately Richard Armitage, a liberal Democrat was found to have outed CIA employee Plame. http://www.cbsnews.com... How on earth does that show Bush to have diminished mental capacity? Neither Bush nor his staff had anything to do with Plame being outed. Pro then responded that there were other policies on the list he presented that showed idiocy, but Po didn't say what or defend the claim that the showed Bush was an idiot. The list has nothing beyond ordinary debatable issues like "foreign policy." Pro wants to know how something can be both common and extraordinary. The claim that Bush is proved an idiot by the Plame affair is an example of an "extraordinary" claim. It is extraordinary in the sense that it defies logic and the facts of the matter, just as belief in astrology defies logic and the facts, no matter how common the belief. The phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" was popularized by Carl Sagan, who used in in the sense of claims that go beyond the apparent known facts, not merely uncommon. http://en.wikipedia.org... Bush earning an MBA from Harvard, running successful campaigns, leading the government, and conducting the business of the executive branch is not remotely consistent with the claim of him being an "idiot" and therefore the claim of inferior mental capacity is an extraordinary one requiring extraordinary evidence. 1. Pro asks why Bush's recall of people he has met should be better that recall of lists of world leaders. It is for the same reason that students have a different problem in recognizing their classmates than memorizing names in history books. It is simply a different skill, and Bush by all accounts had exceptionally good skill for remembering people he met. Bush was noted for giving people odd nicknames. That's a variant of a well-known technique for remembering things by association. 2. I challenged Pro repeatedly for evidence of mental deterioration outside of the context public speaking events. Did Bush become forgetful of people, unable to conduct meetings, disoriented, unable to identify his colleagues, or unable to field questions? Pro offers no evidence that any such thing happened. Pro cites one incident of Bush being unable to quickly identify the exit door at a public speaking event, but anyone could suffer such a minor embarrassment. Everything else Pro offers is a collection of verbal stumbles shown in YouTube clips. That's all in the context of public speaking. A book by investigative reporter Bob Woodward revealed Bush to be asking all the right questions of all the right people. I challenged Pro for evidence of progressive deterioration. Pro has nothing other than video clips that showing that on some occasions he spoke worse as President than one occasion when he spoke as governor. Pro has no objective evidence of deterioration, like statistics on his verbal stumbles. My impression is that Bush improved as a speaker during his Presidency. Pro simply asserts that he did not. We do know that Bush's Farewell Address was perfectly coherent, with few stumbles, and that recently Bush spoke well without a teleprompter and with few notes. A person with mental capacity diminished to the level of "idiot" could not have performed so well. 4. Bush tends to stumble over words while speaking in public. A basic question is whether word-stumbling makes Bush "an idiot." I pointed out that James Madison was probably the worst public speaker among presidents. Pro first pretended not to know the significance of a counter example to his theory that speaking ability is liked to idiocy, and he offers, "I don't know enough about James Madison to have an opinion on whether he was (or is) an idiot." Pro doesn't know that Madison wrote the Constitution? Actually, Pro doesn't need to know on his own, because I provided a reference citing Madison as one of the greatest thinkers on government of all of history. I also provided a list of famous intelligent people who suffered from mental disabilities, including speech impairments. Pro's contention that a speech problem proves a person "an idiot" is disproved. 5. Bush has the credentials of high IQ and education. Bush was examined by a team of physicians every year. Evidence shows that the physicians examining the President look for mental deterioration. We know that the physicians would have an ethical obligation to expose any mental problems, particularly anything that would remotely justify calling the man "an idiot." There is a team of physicians, and they would recognize their obligation to the well-being of the country. Pro offered merely the irresponsible diagnosis of a Bush-hating physician who never examined Bush and ignored the contrary evidence of Bush being fully capable outside of the public speaking context. But even the irresponsible diagnosis did not come close to justifying the term "idiot." Pro claimed I had not addressed the substance of Dr. Price's bogus diagnosis, only the ethics of a physician diagnosing a person he had never met. In fact, I pointed to the examinations by physicians who had actually attended and tested Bush and to the evidence inconsistent with the diagnosis. Pro offered no justification for believing an unethical physician. 6. Pro referenced two ridiculous critiques of the SAT, neither by a credentialed author and neither offering any refutation of the high correlation to IQ cited by MENSA and others. One of Pro's references is a diatribe entitled "The Fascist Origins of the SAT Test." Yeah, sure. he test was invented at Harvard for the purpose of identifying for admission bright students who suffered from poor schools. 7. Vice President Biden is a constant source of gaffes, many involving wild errors of fact, not just verbal stumbles. Pro comments that, "Biden is just as susceptible to foolishness and, in turn, mockery." Sure, but the question is whether all the people who branded Bush "an idiot" also point to Biden's gaffes as proof that Biden is an idiot suffering from severely diminished mental capacity. No, Biden gets a free pass. He is said to be just silly, not mentally defective. Verbal stumbles are not evidence of severely limited mental capacity. The resolution is negated.