Author: VD

I saw this joker pop up on Miller the other day, and it struck me that his argument was almost too stupid bother breaking down. I haven’t bothered deconstructing Alterman’s ludicrous notion that a media consisting of Democratic journalists and Democratic editors owned by huge corporations is conservative because the ownership group of huge corporations is conservative because the entire premise is based on a silly myth: big business is opposed to big government.

Yes, there is a pay-to-play fee, such as the EU just stuck Microsoft with the other day. But big business and big government not only don’t have a fundamentally antagonistic relationship, they have a deeply symbiotic one. Remember the phrase “special interest group” and the many complaints that they run the government? Well, guess who most of those special interest groups are? Exactly, and big business, wielding big goverment as a weapon to beat down internal and external competitors, not to mention feeding off government as a primary customer, is perhaps the largest and most dependable fan of incessant government intervention in the economy outside the politicians themselves.

Of course, Alterman probably hasn’t figured out yet that the political spectrum extends outside Democrats and Republicans, so perhaps we should give the poor guy a break. If I ever happen to debate the doorknob – he smiles as if even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying – there’s going to be less left of him than there was after Sheikh Yassin got close and personal with the missile.

As always, I prefer an axiomatic approach, but Anti-Socialist Tendencies has the statistics for those who require such things to support their logic.

I read today that French firefighters are demanding the right to retire at 50, instead of 55. Now, perhaps they start working earlier than their university graduates – I had a French roommate and Parisian girlfriend one year in college – but that would seem to indicate that they would be working somewhere around 25 years, or one-third their life expectancy. France will have to import a lot more Arabs to make up for the potential loss of man-years due to demographics and the fact that the French want to work less and less; I expect this, like most French concepts, to eventually blow up in their haughty faces.

Keep in mind that it makes no sense to give into these progressive demands. They only lead to the next one, so you might as well stand your ground the first time.

AA writes: How to argue like a conservative:

1. Pretend that liberals are more prone to use various forms of irrational argumentation that conservatives.

2. Pretend that conservatives are less likely to deny the facts when they do not accord with their beliefs.

3. Number things.

This is a nice little batting practice pitch. My experience is nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but nevertheless it does suggest that liberals are far more prone to use these methods of irrational argumentation than those of other political stripes, to the left and to the right. After all, you have to be irrational in order to believe that government involvement improves things, let alone all things. Has anyone ever heard a liberal argue for less government involvement in the economy? Ever heard a liberal group agitating for anything but more government money for their pet project? (Classical liberals and war protests aside.) You don’t have to be irrational to self-identify as liberal, but it helps.

But more importantly, conservatives, being conservative and historically more accepting of the status quo, are far less likely to open a conversation with something that is expressly designed to test the political views of the other person. Liberals glorify progress and dialectic, now suddenly I’m supposed to believe that they are no more interested in challenging those around them than your average non-intellectual worker bee? That defies both reason and experience.

I don’t actually think conservatives are less likely to deny the facts that contradict their beliefs, but then, AA is mistaken in assuming that this is necessary to either of the arguments I described. Nor am I surprised that he describes what is a systematic breakdown of the steps of an argument as a mere numbering of things, as it’s evident that the notion of a train of logic is foreign to him. And then, of course, there is his fundamental misstep, namely, assuming that I am a conservative.

TS writes: I must take issue with your comments regarding Ann Coulter’s column on Richard Clarke. I thought that it was, basically, spitballs against a battleship, to use a time-worn phrase. You’ll note that Coulter’s column mentions only two specifics regarding Clarke, his “interpretation” of Condeleeza Rice’s facial expression (taking half the column) and “6 unanswered attacks” (not true, by the way). This is hardly a “demolition of Richard Clarke”.

I think it was a demolition of Richard Clarke, the man, not necessarily his case. I have little respect for someone who, while in power, can’t be bothered to do anything, but now that he’s out of it, is claiming that he was ringing the alarm bell. He certainly didn’t think it was important enough to risk his career over, did he. His points about Rice were not only inaccurate, but downright strange.

I watched all of Clarke’s open-session testimony yesterday on C-SPAN and found it quite believable (not to mention riveting). Attempts by panel members to go after him, especially by Gov. Thompson, were failures. Where do you think Clarke told untruths/lies? Yes, terrorism happened on his watch. He acknowledges this and apologizes for it. But there’s plenty of blame to go around here, and his is the voice of (bitter) experience. Why do you insinuate he is a “left-liberal”?

From what I heard on Hannity’s radio show yesterday, the entire panel is a charade. The Clinton administration did have an opportunity, several, apparently, to get not only bin Laden but also the two financial backers of the attack on the Cole, and turned it down. Both sides are covering this up; we’ll see if the woman who called in and claimed to have the documents – she was an non-governmental intermediary – can back up her story, which puts the lie to both sides. I don’t think Clarke is a left-liberal, I think he’s being used as a hammer by left-liberals. His personal views are irrelevant, as I neither question his motives nor care about them.

As I’m sure you must know, he also was a member of the Reagan and Bush (1) administrations. I’m not Conservative, nor Liberal, but Libertarian. I’m only interested in the truth here. And Ann Coulter’s column made no contribution to this…

It’s true, Ann is sometimes more interested in playing Republican attack dog than delving into the truth. As much as I adore her, and today’s column was a lovely piece of slicing-and-dicing, she does not always appear to be particularly interested in discovering the truth, much less the whole truth. I expect that far from both administrations being innocent, the truth is that both were guilty of extreme incompetence at the very least.

This is the second time Silver Lake students were discovered to have had sex on a school bus. On Dec. 12, 2002, a 14-year-old junior high school girl was reported to have performed a sex act on a 16-year-old male high school student. Other junior high school students on the bus told their teachers about the incident and the two students were disciplined. Middle school parent Beth Dwyer, when told about the latest incident on Wednesday, said she was extremely disappointed that the same incident took place yet another time at Silver Lake. “But this is why I and a lot of other parents drive our kids to school. It’s because of what happens on the school bus,” said Dwyer.

Because, of course, nothing bad could possibly happen during the other eight hours of the school day. They’ll surely be too busy with all that learning they’re doing. The operative word, of course, is discovered. Heck, I was a zero until 10th grade, and even I managed to score on the bus a few times before I graduated from high school.

Quick request, Alex or whoever. I need to know how to say “I feel, therefore I am right.” My Italian is going to screw me up here, I just know it. “Sentio ergo rectum” would be just too good to be true. I might just use it anyhow.

1. Make an untrue statement

2. Express astonishment that the source could possibly be inaccurate

3. Ask what motivation the source would have to lie.

4. Assert that the other party’s inability to explain motivation is tantamount to proof that the source is not lying.

5. Question motivation of contrary source.

6. Argue that all sources are equal.

7. Get very upset and storm off; alternatively, change the subject.

Never forget that an answer to a question you have asked should be regarded as a personal attack if the answer is something you don’t like or don’t approve of. Hmmm… Space Bunny just asked what next week’s column will be. I think I may have an idea….

Oh, there will be emails. Oh yes, there will be. (snicker-snicker-snack is the sound of the knives as they are sharpened.)

Paracelt is appalled by the generally blase reaction: what the HELL does all this about men and women chasing each other have to do with the government having to LIE to us to manipulate the economy? Did anybody read that bit about policy-makers SYSTEMATICALLY fooling the public?

Yeah, it’s just that it isn’t news around these parts, Paracelt. It’s not only not news, but if you understood Austrian theory, you’d know that it’s a given. Heck, even if you only bought into Keynesian theory, you’d know that these economic statistics are an agglomeration of approximations. Given the level of error implicit in each, it’s obvious that the end result of these errors stacked on errors is little more than fiction. And given the vast quantities of money and power at stake every quarter, one would have to have a childlike faith in the purity of government indeed to believe that any temptation to monkey with the numbers will be resisted.

A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. A libertarian is a conservative who’s realized just who it is that does the serious mugging.

Ann Coulter’s column today is a demolition of Richard Clarke and whatever shards of credibility he might have despite failing, by his own admission, to defend the nation against terrorism in not one, but two administrations. And the notion that the media would spike coverage of an anti-Clinton book upon request/command while trumpeting an anti-Bush book to the heavens is hardly news. But Ann sounds almost surprised that the left-loving press would enthusiastically embrace something that can’t possibly be true.

The thing that conservatives often have a hard time getting their brains around is that left-liberals are both evil and functionally stupid. It’s not either/or, it’s both. This is the typical liberal argument:

1. Make a statement that is demonstrably untrue, (usually out of ignorance, not deceit).

2. After proof is given that the statement is untrue, argue that the underlying point did not require the statement to be true.

3. After being walked – slowly – through a train of logic demonstrating that the point did, in fact, require the statement to be true, state that there are other facts, which unfortunately cannot be cited, that do support the underlying point.

4. After it is pointed out that there is no reason to accept these unidentified facts given the now-proven unreliability of the source, attack the secret motivations of the person who has been methodically destroying the argument.

5. After it is patiently explained that a) the person has no secret motivations, and b) the liberal started the entire conversation in the first place, say that it’s all irrelevant and attempt to change the subject.

The biggest difference between liberals and conservatives, and I am neither, is that conservatives can be convinced of something that is in opposition to a position they hold by reason and logic. Often they won’t be, but it is at least possible. A liberal cannot be so convinced to change his mind, because the foundation of his opinions is his emotion. Some of the most accomplished escape artists I know are my liberal friends, who will redefine a well-understood word as many as four times in a single conversation in a desperate attempt to evade the logic of their own words.

From the Mises Institute: Anyone who wants cuts in the size and scope of government should be concerned and frustrated with the policies of President George Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress. Government spending has increased enormously and the federal budget has plunged ever more into deficit. Protectionism, regulation and government power are on the rise, and we are at war or in conflict with a record number of countries around the world. The Republican-controlled Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to below 1% while it frantically tries to flood the economy with money and credit. Even mainstream economist Jeffrey Frankel has recently noted (in the Milken Institute Review) that the “Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government, and failing-grade microeconomics.”

However, there has not been a sudden sea change in party platforms and the rampant fiscal irresponsibility of the Republicans is not a mystery; they are merely returning to their historical roots. The Republican Party was established as a party of big government and economic intervention. Their reputation as a party of limited government is of more recent vintage and stands on a flimsy foundation.

Well, at least George Delano has a sound historical reason for his embrace of so-called strong government conservatism.