Just as an aside.... here's an impassioned plea from a fan of formal logic: when you guys engage in these otherwise wonderfully entertaining and spirited exchanges, can you please stop insisting that you are using "logic," or at the very least concede that you are employing some odd manner of logic that has no rules or structure?
Seriously -- most people wouldn't know real, formal logic if it walked up and bit them on the ass. A few pointers:
* Real logic does not abide by ad hominem attacks. Your argument isn't aided by making personal attacks against the person you are arguing with, or by repeating those attacks with slight variation, or by the speaker responding in kind when an ad hominem attack is leveled against him.
* Real logic recognizes that ad populum appeals are invalid. If you are delusional, or wrong, it doesn't matter how many people share your delusion, or how many other people are wrong in the same way you are -- you are still wrong and/or delusional.
* In order for logic to work, and for opposing sides to come to a consensus regarding the proper logical conclusion, there must be some measure of facts stipulated to begin with. When two opposing sides cannot come to an accord on something as simple as the date when a measure was proposed, and/or a date it went into action, it's probably best just to part company right then and there and give up on hashing out the argument. You aren't going to progress towards a conclusion if you can't even agree on the underlying facts that serve as the starting point for the discussion.
This list could go on for quite some time, so I'll just leave it at that.
My point is, please, for the love of all that is decent and good and true, leave my poor, beloved friend logic out of your web-forum-based ranting and raving, fuming and flaming. He didn't ask to be invoked, and he's pretty sure you don't have the first clue who he is.
Thanks,
- Q.