Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/RJII v. Firebug/Evidence

I post here something I also posted on the RFC page.

Its going on the Talk page of this one, rather than the main page, only because the radical mallard coterie was more blunt about their real goals there than they've yet been here. Anyway....

My comment from the Rfc
The radical mallard, below, gives away what is really at stake here. His critique of RJ doesn't have anything to do with RJ's violation of any policies at all. RJ just happens to have a different take on certain political and philosophical issues from the mallard. This is a fairly typical sample: "RJII (and others like him), have mentioned Ayn Rand as an inspiration of 'anarcho-capitalism', yet Rand argued very much against anarchists and the Libertarian Party style 'libertarians' in her day."

Now, let's think about that. First of all, anarcho-caps (I don't claim that RJ is or isn't one -- how he wishes to label himself is his own concern, after all, not mine) but anarcho-caps don't generally believe in unquestioned authorities. So there is no contradiction involved in saying (a) some anarcho-caps are inspired, in some respects, by Ayn Rand, and (b) her position was very different from theirs. Why should that be a contradiction? or a sign of "spin"? Would it be equally problematic to be influenced by Marx (or Plato, or Rousseau, etc.) yet to occupy a position importantly different from Marxism, Platonism, or Rousseauism? What the mallard really wants is for all articles on political philosophy to categorize matters the way he would -- yet as Mick Jagger might remind him, you can't always get what you want. If you try some time, you just might find ... I'm tempting the copyright lawyers here.

The mallard reflects precisely why this whole Rfc is a bad precedent. The "No Personal Attacks" policy tells us "Using someone's political affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views - regardless of whether said political affilitions are mainstream or extreme" constitutes such an attack. The people pressing this Rfc seem intend upon using political affiliations in exactly the way in which they aren't to be used. It is sadly ironic that they claim (1) RJ is making personal attacks amd (2) his political affiliations are themselves a problem, when (3) the second of those is itself, according to policy, an example of the first. The mote in his eye and the beam in theirs.