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Maybe the claim can still survive it, that's not an excuse. Scott has covered this exact sort of topic pretty recently and I think he highlights the problems with "well I still think it anyway so stop nitpicking" defense
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/if-its-worth-your-time-to-lie-its
If it's worth FTTG's and Wesley Yang's time to make claims based off piss poor criteria (and it seems people agree with me, even if they don't wish to admit it, that they are piss poor given no one here actually wants to give an affirmative defense for why trans awareness month should be included but black music month should not) then I'm going to point out that the criteria used is terrible.
Bad criteria like this from the left gets called out by multiple users here. Little reason for me to do the thing everyone else will do. Bad criteria like this from the right when called out gets "how dare you nitpick?" and endless meta complaints. Lots of reason to point out it's terrible then, very few others will. The reaction here is cringe behavior as Scott puts it.
Well, from my perspective, I conceded the nitpick immediately? I did not call it 'cringe', or imply that you shouldn't have done it. Insofar as precision is a good thing, correcting that example was a good thing to do.
(And for what it's worth I do similar things myself. There's always time for pedantry!)
I suppose I see two possible errors here.
The first is the error that you're pointing to - where one becomes indifferent to specific truth-claims as long as the larger argument that they're in is correct. I agree that this is bad behaviour and worthy of condemnation. A correct conclusion should not need to be supported by misrepresentations or lies.
The second error, and I do not accuse you of making this, though it's one that I sometimes worry about, is when a person successfully quibbles an ancillary point and therefore dismisses an entire argument and even an entire author as irredeemably stupid. To give an example, I once ran into someone who read Scott's article against public food, and noted that question about kosher food or halal food is unnecessary because all kosher food is also halal. If kosher is catered for, halal is covered also. On this basis the entire essay and its argument were dismissed. The point about kosher and halal is correct, but one mistake in a supporting example does not negate the whole piece.
So the position I want to take here, basically, is that you are correct about the calendar of remembrances being a bad argument, but also that this does not entitle us to dismiss FtttG's entire argument.
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Gee, I thought you were a libertarian. Now suddenly you are concerned about people not calling out the right compared to the left?
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