The Ethereal Party - "OK,

The Ethereal Party - "OK, so Bush never said anything about Weapons of Mass Destruction. But he implied it."

"No, we can't find any examples of any right wing talk show hosts actually advocating harm to anyone. But they create a climate of hatred".

"So what if all the empirical evidence shows that shall-issue concealed carry laws are a good idea. Emotional responses are just as valid as your data!"

Arguing with liberals can be a tough row to hoe. The minute you get them on empirical grounds (and you usually do), they switch to emotions, perceptions, things that have no material, empirical existence.

For example, Bush's supposed claim that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat. Andrew Sullivan has been tearing bloody holes in the argument that the President ever said there was an "imminent" threat from Iraqi WMDs - to the point that the major media, after weeks of trying to turn it into a meme among the less-literate, is finally starting to back off the claim.

The claim's been replaced, of course, by the argument favored by that class P.J. O'Rourke calls "everybody's first wife"; "You didn't say it, but you felt it".

Fraters writes about the imminence scam today - but their paragraph applies to so many Democrat and DFL positions:

The beauty of that argument is that it's almost impossible to refute. Since the act of implying is mostly a subjective rather than objective process, it is very difficult to prove that a particular implication is not accurate. In a way implying is almost like feeling. And we all know that you can't tell someone how they should feel. Or prove that their feelings aren't valid.

It really should come as no surprise that the left has once elected to shrink away from logic and fact based arguments and instead hide behind their old friend feelings. At this point it's the only thing they have left.

I doubt it'll work for the Democrats - not that playing to peoples' feelings isn't a great campaign strategery (the New Deal was as much psychotherapy as actual economic reform), but the empirical case is getting strong enough that even the less wonky among us can see it; the economy's picking up, the Kay report says there are many nuances yet to work through before we declare Iraqi WMD claims false, and bit by bit the justifications for war in Iraq, even some very subtle ones, will become apparent.

Posted by Mitch at October 14, 2003 06:31 AM