Only Liberals Can Present 'Facts' Without Becoming Evil

It's probably too early to be laughing, but check out Right Wing News, "Ten Commandments For Liberals Who Want to Argue About Politics." This piece is actually a follow-up to an earlier essay at House of Eratosthenes, so let's start at the beginning:

It’s a dicey, personal subject and I don’t like to vent about such a thing on the innerwebs…even on my own, personal pages, which as we’ve said many-a-time before — altogether now — nobody reads anyway. But this time, the aggrieved party was sufficiently gracious to explain her feelings very early on. Not so early that she behaved with consistency. But early enough that it’s pretty simple to retrace what happened here.

I wanted to know if we had a wager in effect about the 2010 midterms. Or if our first upcoming bet was about the President being re-elected.

She presented a chart showing the public debt (as a proportion of GDP) has been going up when Republicans were office, and down when democrats were in office, from Truman onward anyway.

I questioned which party had Congress during those times, and sent her the chart exploring where the debt is projected to go from here-on-out.

She sent back a soothingly scolding retort observing that she “must have hit a nerve,” counseling me that her husband likes to argue but she does not.

How else do I put this? I’m tired of pretending it’s my problem. I understand good manners involve one side acting completely guilty and the other side acting completely innocent. I understand the protocol expected is for the righty-tighty to leap, chest-downward, on the grenade. I understand the expectation is to repeat the scene where Tom Sawyer gets the whipping so Becky whats-her-name’s glorious butt cheeks remain unscathed. I get all that.

I’m just tired of doing it. It comes down to something very simple. ONLY LIBERALS CAN PRESENT “FACTS” WITHOUT BECOMING EVIL ....

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I remember years ago I sent a certain family member a particularly well written, fact-supported article that I recall being published by The Heritage Foundation. This family member had always presented herself as proud of being pragmatic and open minded, not left or right, but her pragmatic reasoning just happened lead her to fall squarely to the left side of the divide.

Her reply to the article was something like, well, I see that came from the Heritage Foundation and they are well known for being conservative

That was it. It was an argument for dismissal based upon the fact that it came from conservatives and presented the conservative viewpoint. No rebuttal of facts. Merely being conservative was enough to dismiss it. To say “I don’t believe this.” To say “don’t read this”.

In other words ...

Shut Up.

Now, when you finish that, go back to Right Wing News. The first "rule" of arguing with liberals? "IN, or OUT. Your preference is to argue politics, or not to ..."