{"id":4348,"date":"2013-08-06T09:25:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T14:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4348"},"modified":"2013-08-06T09:25:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T14:25:27","slug":"no-you-calm-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4348","title":{"rendered":"No, YOU calm down!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ron Ross’s piece over at The American Spectato<\/a>r is really a mess.\u00c2\u00a0 AmSpec usually does a pretty good job of keeping the tinfoil hat brigade off the page and only in the comments.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so this time.\u00c2\u00a0 The core view is that liberalism is a lie propped up by lies and executed by liars.\u00c2\u00a0 Why would these folks lie so much and be such liars? Well, because they want power.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of Ross’s examples aren’t examples of lies per se<\/em>, but more cases of either confusion, just being wrong, or are matters of reasonable disagreement.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, Ross holds that President Obama lied when he said he’d uphold the Constitution.\u00c2\u00a0 But because Obama’s interpretation of the Constitution conflicts with his, Ross takes this as a lie.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama took a sacred oath to uphold the Constitution. He never had the slightest intention of adhering to the Constitution, as we now well know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oy.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not a lie.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a disagreement about what the Constitution allows for the executive branch (between an opinion journalist and a man who taught Constitutional Law), and using ad populum (“that we all know”) to cover that over is more in lie territory than what he’s accusing Obama of.\u00c2\u00a0 Regardless, Ross’s view of liberals culminates in the following assessment:<\/p>\n

Liberals cannot<\/em> tell the trut<\/strong>h, and in this context the word has two meanings. They cannot tell the truth because what they want to accomplish isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what most people want. And they cannot tell the truth because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become habitual not to. It is so much a part and parcel of their being that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become second nature. They do it without thinking. They actually enjoy<\/em> lying. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s their favorite pastime<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s particularly irritating about the piece is Ross’s regular complaint that liberals can’t even see any conservatives as reasonable.<\/p>\n

They cannot imagine any legitimate reason anyone would disagree with them. If you disagree there must be something wrong with you.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First off, the lying view and this No Reasonable Opposition view are inconsistent.\u00c2\u00a0 If you must lie to get your view out, you must think that reasonable people will reject it.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why you must lie.\u00c2\u00a0 So the lying thesis requires reasonable opposition.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not the real problem here.\u00c2\u00a0 Look at how Ross has painted the liberal, as someone who has no interest in truth or rational exchange, but rather as someone looking for raw power, someone who has something wrong inside.\u00c2\u00a0 I just wonder if Ron Ross’s house has any mirrors.<\/p>\n

The problem with No Reasonable Opposition views is that they actually have a very heavy burden of showing how the opposition actually fails to even be in the hunt for truth.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s taken to be an all-to-easy burden, but it’s actually a very demanding burden to handle.\u00c2\u00a0 No wonder those who make use of it (perhaps because it’s rhetorically very powerful) never properly deploy it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ron Ross’s piece over at The American Spectator is really a mess.\u00c2\u00a0 AmSpec usually does a pretty good job of keeping the tinfoil hat brigade off the page and only in the comments.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so this time.\u00c2\u00a0 The core view is that liberalism is a lie propped up by lies and executed by liars.\u00c2\u00a0 Why … Continue reading No, YOU calm down!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,35],"tags":[135,1711],"class_list":["post-4348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ad-hominem-abusive","category-tu-quoque","tag-ad-hominem-tu-quoque","tag-no-reasonable-opposition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4349,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions\/4349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}