How the left argues
John Hinderaker of Powerline expertly takes Adam Gopnik to task for Gopnik’s relentless and shameless sophistry in this New Yorker article on gun control, describing point by point how Gopnik goes wrong.
Unfortunately, though, neither Gopnik nor the vast majority of Gopnik’s readers will care. As Hinderaker himself writes:
This is a great summation of contemporary liberalism: what [liberals] think is “sanity and common sense,” what [conservatives] think is “fanaticism and irrationality.” Facts? Arguments? Not needed!
Facts are not needed because demagoguery that appeals to emotions works. In fact, it works really really well, because emotions are simple and factual arguments are usually more complex.
I said that emotions are simple, but that’s probably not strictly true. However, emotions can be triggered by simple arguments and appeals that are easy to follow, and that makes them extremely useful.
As for Gopnik, it’s the old “knave or fool” argument again: does he know what he’s doing, or does he actually believe what he’s saying? The answer can be found here, and it is “both”; just substitute “leftist” for “Stalinist” and you have it:
It is in the nature of Stalinism for its adherents to make a certain kind of lying””and not only to others, but first of all to themselves””a fundamental part of their lives. It is always a mistake to assume that Stalinists do not know the truth about the political reality they espouse. If they don’t know the truth (or all of it) one day, they know it the next, and it makes absolutely no difference to them politically For their loyalty is to something other than the truth.
“their loyalty is to something other than the truth.”
There is no ‘truth’ (objective) there is only what serves the collective.
My first thought was “ad hominem”.
Gun makers are responsible for the criminal use of their product. McDonalds is responsible as a “joint employer” of franchisers. The Koch brothers are responsible for an untold number of things. Yet, Obama and Holder, et al are not responsible for anything that happens during their watch. I don’t get it.
my first thought was that Hinderaker might be short of self esteem. though I disagree with the New Yorker article, I got no sense of “bullying”.
Given the numbers of people with low faculties, emotions win…
if you play the numbers then you side with the dummies…
the left plays the masses… it makes it easier if you call every dummy a genius for making a choice between the easy and the hard, the osmotic to the learned…
Tom Murin, you dont get it?
dog pile on the opposition, beatification of your side
nothing matters, because the constructs we believe matter, like truth, validity, etc. are all human constructs, for the convenience of human intercourse. to the left, such things are to keep the others out, those too weak minded or low intelligence to participate… their method is just as valid in reality, as it cuts the higher intelligence out due to its adherence to those things. who is right? whomever wins…
artfldgr. You are correct. I get the “by any means necessary,” mindset to a point, but can’t employ it. Heck, I even admit to a liberal (my wife’s one) when they have a point. Conservatives respond to fact and logic in my experience. Funny how the liberal media tries to portray them as inflexible dolts, but the fact it is that it is liberals who are inflexible. Those knees really do jerk when the subject is guns. I’m like Charlie Brown with the football. I keep thinking that we’ll get intellectual honesty. Silly me!
An emotional argument should always be a red flag. A warning that the facts are not strong enough to support their argument.
Jonah Goldberg explains it very well here.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395526/year-liberal-double-standards-jonah-goldberg
Neo doesn’t believe that anything was accomplished by the arguments between her father and her uncle but that is probably not correct. Her father accomplished his most important task, to teach young Neo the value of truth. This training obviously made a deep impression on Neo and has been a guiding ever since. That is what made it possible for Neo to change from a so called “liberal” to a conservative (aka. a classical liberal).
Conservatives have lost the culture wars except on guns. Republicans have governed irresponsibly when they’ve had power, ballooning the debt with corporate welfare and a reckless shoot first foreign policy, when they’re not trying to push their big government morality into people’s bedroom. They can basically only win elections when the turnout is so low as to produce and angry old electorate — which means even when in power they are rendered impotent by factional differences and the lack of a true popular mandate.
Yet rather than reflection and examination as to why their policies and worldview are increasingly rejectedby broad swaths of the population (and growing) they retreat further and further from the personal responsibility they love to talk about: whining, crying, mean old liberals, media out to get me, paranoia, negativity, pessimism, I’m bullied, I’m a victim. It’s tiresome, off-putting, and predictable…and ironic since this is what they like to think of “liberals”.
Gun control in America is effectively dead, but Republicans can’t even take yes for an answer. Somehow they, are the victims of bullies even when it comes to the single issue they’ve prevsiled upon. Yes, owners of semi-automatic weapons are the true victims of society’s bullies, not the kids killed by conservstive refusal to support sensible reforms to reduce mass slaughter by attempting to keep military grade weapons of mass destructions out of the hands of nutjobs. And yet they wonder why their party is on the verge of a generational wipeout.
“Republicans have governed irresponsibly when they’ve had power, ballooning the debt with corporate welfare and a reckless shoot first foreign policy, when they’re not trying to push their big government morality into people’s bedroom. ”
Perhaps this is satire to meant to reinforce Neo’s point?
Solyndra anyone?
Undeclared war in Lybia?
Gay rights taught in school? Castro street fairs?
Yes indeed, delightful satire.
DK, do you write for The New Yorker too? Damn those Republicans for bringing the government into the bedroom. Why don’t you care about government intrusion into all the other aspects of our lives? Hey, you forgot to mention the Koch brothers – better review your liberal talking points!
DK, for every person murdered by a lunatic, GOVERNMENT has murdered 1000s times more. You are far more likely to be killed by government bullies than any terrorist or lunatic.
One of the cities around here passed a law micro managing peoples landscaping giving total control to the city planners and $1000 dollar a day fine for noncompliance. That’s a bully law. Instapundant has a story today on all the ways law enforcement can raise revenue. Vampire governement. Just like that crappy little town in Missouri. No wonder the rioters want to burn it down.
Also, I know you hoplophobes have a stick up your butt about evil black rifles, our response in the Great Northwet to universal background checks is build our own ARs in the privacy of our own homes. No background checks, no serial numbers. http://youtube.com/watch?v=xwRtll3jjU4
Enjoy.
I have read that a law, however good the intention , that is named after a “victim” is usually not a good law.
Too many of these are just feel good measures, and/or something that a law maker can point to at election time and say: “See, I have done something.”
We watched “The Giver” on New Years Eve. Given who starred in and produced this movie, I was left agog. IMO, it was very subversive, from a leftist POV. Maybe it is another Rorschach Test?
It occurs to me that several of the dystopian fantasies of the last decade, geared toward the millenials, have also presented social engineering and overweaning, intrusive government, in a suspicious and negative light. So what gives? Do you think literature has the power to shape social policy. I was certainly influenced by Lord of the Rings, Slaughterhouse 5, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, etc…….
My particular hobby horse, is the Bureaucracy, by any other name the Technocracy, the Clerisy. I think Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, nailed it when he wrote, “ To a greater or lesser extent, the story of this Euro-election has been the rise of the minor parties — some of them bizarre, some of them downright potty, but all of them united by a…… visceral dislike of the EU bureaucracy: its arrogance, its remoteness, its expense, its endless condescension and its manic and messianic belief in its right to legislate for all 500 million people in the EU.”
The reason, I bring this up is to suggest that there is “push back” and that the Left doesn’t succeed as thoroughly and widely as they would have you believe.
How dare they own unregistered machine tools, use CAD files and micrometers and bore gauges. Some might even be tool and die makers, and we cannot have that. Forget CNC, a mere Bridgeport J head in their hands is a threat to our peace and security. Trigonometry should be outlawed too, along with any motive power device or the use of unserialized metals by ordinary citizens. What need has any peaceful citizen for a billet of 1020, or a ball nose cutter?
Only then, after all this has been banned, will we have peace and justice.
Oh I forgot about men who stay fit, practice martial arts or lift weights. They should be outlawed too, as they are selfish; and their selfishness leads to depraved indifference which is aggression which destroys our safe spaces.
In addition to emotions over facts, a favorite ploy is changing the subject/moving the goalposts. When a conservative is making a valid point about the discussion topic, they will not respond to it, they’ll just drop one of their favorite memes or bring up some variation of the topic. It’s a sort of drive-by argument style so that the conservative/opposing voice never wins, is constantly attempting to catch up.
An expert at this is Bill Maher (if you can stand to watch his HBO show). Every time a libertarian or conservative guest manages to make a decent point, he’ll drop a standard Lefty, jokey line, (like “Yeah, but you’d never want to go hunting with Dick Cheney!”) and then -BOOM!- he changes the subject completely. And his audience laughs like trained seals and feels superior to the libertarian/conservative speaker. Same goes for Jon Stewart.
There is no truth, but there is the Party Line.
The blogger Bookworm had a recent post about her interaction with a foaming-at-the-mouth Obamacare-loving Lefty, and I have experienced this sort of response, too. I think the reason for their ill-contained anger is that it is taking so much energy to fight recognition of the truth. It’s got to take A LOT of work to deal with the cognitive dissonance of something like Obamacare myths vs. reality, with so much of their ego tied into the success of such a program. Anyone who dares to bring up these conflicting facts and emotions must be shut down.
Who is dumb enough to push gun control in the middle of a leftist-led anti-cop mania?
In other places I frequent, I see a lot of sentiment that we have no need of evil cops – that communities can come together and defend themselves. With what? Harsh words and rocks?
Yes, owners of semi-automatic weapons are the true victims of society’s bullies, not the kids killed by conservstive refusal to support sensible reforms to reduce mass slaughter by attempting to keep military grade weapons of mass destructions out of the hands of nutjobs.
Are you related to those Democrats in California running guns to gangs and terrorists in Indonesia, btw?
A lot of people don’t realize this, but DHS, Fast and Furious, Holder, Benghazi under this Regime, is responsible for a lot of the military weapons being supplied overseas and domestically, to crush dissent.
If you’ve ever wondered why they hate us, you can perhaps start there.
The sole intent and purpose of a gun is to propel a small projectile. The sole intent and purpose of premeditated abortion is to terminate a wholly innocent human life.
The gun control advocates lose credibility with their mistaken priorities. More human lives are lost in planned parenthood rituals through lethal injection, decapitation, and dismemberment than during capital punishment, wars, Islamic State terrorism, and mass shotings combined over the same period.
Gopnik loses credibility when he demonstrates an illogical understanding of risk management. Premeditated abortion carried out in a back-alley, where the mother faces the same risk of mortality as her child, would reduce the number of premeditated abortion cases. Effectively, nature acts in self-defense on behalf of the unarmed child.
Both lose credibility if they believe that government and criminals will not maintain access to guns. The latter simply because they ignore proscriptive measures. It is ridiculous to grant them an exclusive right to enjoy this leverage. The first responders are the people on the scene, usually the intended victims, not governments agents.
Shooting has multiple intents, that do not necessarily included committing murder. Premeditated abortion has only one intent: to torture or murder a human life. Even while fighting wars, there is a concern for causing collateral damage. While premeditated abortion has only one intent and purpose: to cause collateral damage. That is to say, premeditated abortion has the sole intent and purpose to terminate a wholly innocent human life with a sincerely held prejudice (e.g. “burden”).
As for Newtown, the guy first murdered his mother, then he claimed possession of her guns, and finally he committed mass murder. The mother did not perceive the risk posed by her son; neither did his psychiatrist. Unfortunately, gun control would not have stopped her son from taking possession of his dead mother’s licensed guns and then running amuck.
The gun did not malfunction. The human wielding the gun malfunctioned. The mother failed to properly assess the risk posed by her son. She lost her life and her deranged son claimed possession of her licensed guns. That said, the first-responders are rarely authorized personnel, typically government agents; but rather the people at the scene, including the intended victims. It would be unconscionable to deprive them of an effective means to carry out self-defense and respond to a mortal threat.
Why isn’t it enough to say that guns are the great equalizer? Why must the less aggressive, smaller, weaker, more vulnerable be subject to the ancient law of the jungle where the violent, aggressive and physically endowed have all the power? Isn’t this what drives gun ownership among women? When seconds count, the cops are several minutes away, if you are lucky.
Republicans have governed irresponsibly when they’ve had power, ballooning the debt with corporate welfare and a reckless shoot first foreign policy, when they’re not trying to push their big government morality into people’s bedroom.
The debt is ballooning due to policies set in place by Democrats.
The “reckless shoot first policy” was bipartisan, receiving nearly 40% of Dem House votes and over 60% Dem Senate votes, not to mention Obama has yet to find a VP or SoS who did not vote for the Iraq War. What happened is that Dems undercut the war when it would help them politically, because power, not principles or national interest, is what motivates them.
The idea Republicans are trying to push public morality into the bedroom is Dem hysteria. It is the Dems pushing for “Yes means yes” laws, and otherwise are attempting to intrude upon every aspect of private life.