Dear Mr Jardine,

We have your test results back and we know the problem.

You’re stuck in the undergraduate ethos of your university club and society. Please take 50 mg of Luvox (Fluvoxamine) by suppository every morning.

If the regressive OCD symptoms persist, we recommend an optic nerve/bowel resection to rectify your fecal attitude.

An extra 2% GST would fix a whole lot of unemployment which is about to happen, and a whole lot of company closures. You can't have bigger wages without paying bigger tax.

Malcolm
Wow. We are amazed at the cogency of your arguments.

Since you obviously don’t know what an intellectually honest dialogue would look like, it would look like this:

Jardine:
At what stage short of actually shooting people do you renounce the use of violence to enforce the policy you advocate?

Malcolm:
At no stage, because if I did, at that stage my proposed policy would cease to be enforceable. It would cease to be a policy, because it would become voluntary by the employer simply escalating his non-compliance up to that stage. Now the entire point of my proposal is that compliance with my opinions should not be voluntary, since that’s the situation we’ve got now which I don’t want. Therefore to avoid intellectual dishonesty or the appearance of it, I openly admit that I advocate the use of aggressive violence up to and including shooting people to force them to obey.

Jardine:
Thank you for that admission. That was like drawing teeth wasn’t it?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
By what non-arbitrary criterion do you know better than the employer who is the best person for the job?

Malcolm
I don’t.

Jardine
Well how do you know, either as a general principle or in a particular case, whether an employer’s preferring one person rather than another, is down to legitimate preference, for example age-related fitness for purpose, or illegitimate discrimination?

Malcolm
I don’t.

Jardine:
Do you have any way of knowing?

Malcolm:
No. You’ve proved that. The ultimate criterion is the subjective evaluation of the consumer or employer. Otherwise I would’ve identified what the objective criterion is. I can’t.

Jardine:
So discrimination is just another word for preference?

Malcolm:
Yes, except that the former has a pejorative connotation to it. However as to what that might denote in my argument, that is clearly completely arbitrary. It has no rational or real criterion.

Jardine:
What about you, do you treat all people equally?

Malcolm
No.

Jardine:
Could you if you wanted to?

Malcolm:
No. If you think about it for a sec, clearly that would be neither possible nor desirable.

Jardine:
Why don’t you employ every single one of the older workers who, according to you, are being wrongly discriminated against in the market on the ground that, according to you, they represent a huge profit opportunity that everyone else is too prejudiced to recognise?

Malcolm
Because what I was saying was bulls!t.

Jardine:
So it’s not wrong on the ground that Jardine doesn’t agree?

Malcolm:
No. it’s wrong on the ground that it’s not even consistent with my own theory and argument. Not even I agree with it. If I did, I would make a huge profit from employing all those old people who, according to my theory, are under-valued in the market. Clearly my theory is wrong, as my own actions prove.

Jardine:
The government steals 40 percent of the average workers' earnings through its many taxes, mostly hidden, and then inflates away what's left. What effect do you think that might have on would-be retirees?

Malcolm:
Clearly it would send many people into retirement broke and dependent on government.

Jardine:
Thus negating your basal assumption that government knows better or cares more?

Malcolm:
Yes, that was daft of me. I don’t know what I was saying that for.

Jardine:
With an irrational belief system, even when faced with an unanswerable proof that the theory is illogical, or self-contradictory, or factually incorrect, we ignore the disproofs, and just keep persisting in what cannot be rationally defended. And that’s what you’re doing isn’t it, which is why you can’t answer my questions, because you’re wrong, and so you’re just trying to pretend that it all hasn’t happened.

Malcolm:
Yes. If I could have answered your questions, I would have, but I couldn’t so I didn’t. I thought no-one would notice if I tried to slime out of it.

Jardine:
Quite pathetic really, not to mention intellectually dishonest?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
And that’s why you tried your last diversionary tactic, ad hominem psycho-babble alleging a mental disorder on my part?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
When the disorder was all in your argument?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
If you read it back, it really was quite a display of infantile narcissistic rage with homicidal fantasies, wasn’t it?

Malcolm:
Yes, sorry.

Jardine:
The bit about cutting up bowels has got shades of Pol Pot in it, hasn’t it?

Malcolm:
Yes. Hey, I just noticed something! I was openly fantasising about killing you in my impotent rate at you’re having proved the indefensible irrationality of my argument, and at the same time, I was advocating government control of the means of production!

Jardine:
Fancy that.

Malcolm:
What a coincidence.

Jardine:
Yes. Do you think it might have any connection with your compulsory government indoctrination?

Malcolm:
Oh, I never thought of that.

Jardine:
So we have now established that your assumptions, the theory based thereon, your argument, and article are all…?

Malcolm:
… complete crap.

Jardine:
And in fact I have proved all the same against you in prior articles, haven’t I?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
Which you were similarly unable to answer, and similarly tried to slime out of with fallacious evasions?

Malcolm:
Yes.

Jardine:
Which makes you…?

Malcolm:
… a complete berk.

Jardine:
Meaning?

Malcolm:
Berkely & Hunt.

Jardine:
Which is…?

Malcolm:
Rhyming slang.

Maybe the debate is over gentleman.. we get the point. You both think your right!