aquapub said:
This would be addressed by her listing off numerous other felonies Democrats have committed (and gotten away with) in addition to Kennedy getting away with murder.
At least in what I've read of her work, this is not the case. Often, one or two quasi-related incidents are related, and then cast over all liberals.
Of course, at least some liberals do the same things to conservatives, and I find both regrettable.
aquapub said:
I remember this, and that's not what she was objecting to. She was objecting to liberals advocating releasing criminals just because some random DNA was found at a crime scene, as if that meant someone else committed the crime or that he couldn't have participated.
My recollection is that she was using some specific instances where this was done to thereby discredit the entire program of DNA testing in cases where it was not originally done to help determine guilt or innocence. In short, because it had been abused a couple of times, we shouldn't do it for anybody.
aquapub said:
She thinks, as I do, that when there is a mountain of evidence against someone, you make sure that the DNA evidence actually disproves something rather than just using it as an excuse to release criminals-which liberals do a lot.
In order to know whether it disproves something, you have to know what was proven first. Most trials that result in conviction revolve on circumstantial evidence only--very seldom are any smoking guns or video evidence actually found. If we look at the percent of cases the FBI admits the convict is exhonerated by DNA evidence as a proxy for how well our justice system works, then approximately 1/3rd of all convictions are wrongful. This really ought to give anyone pause.
aquapub said:
I've heard her condemn actions as immoral and condemn the officials who did them, but I've never heard her argue that you can't run an office and have an affair at the same time.
I guess to my mind it isn't anybody's business what someone does in their sex life; my only concern is how well they do their job. Also, it seems to me that bringing up personal matters in an Op-ed article about a politician seems like a critique of the job they're doing. If large numbers of people are persuaded to vote for an inept moron on the basis of the fact that the other guy (who happens to be competent) is promiscuous, this has a real and lasting effect.
That said, I'm not for censorship of any kind. If people actually fall for that kind of thing, they deserve to have an inept moron leading them. This example is hypothetical and has nothing to do with Bush; I actually think Bush is rather clever, though entirely evil.
aquapub said:
Only if the truth is appalling. Only liberals parade dead relatives around to keep people from bringing up the gaping holes in their logic as they slam and smear people.
My point is that this sort of reaction goes to irrelevance--the 9/11 widows can parade their dead relatives all they want and it won't change the truth value of their position one bit. The only thing that will do that is logical evaluation, which Ms. Coulter will not (and, I think, probably cannot in this case) allow.
Aquapub said:
And she did list off some of the partisan crap they said, and I listened to some of it independently as well.
What she said needed to be said. These people are reprehensible.
They may be--again, my point is whether they're reprehensible or not doesn't matter one whit. They could be Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Stalin, and the Three Young Turks reincarnated and it wouldn't matter. What matters is whether their position has any merit--and determining that has nothing to do with their reprehensibility.
aquapub said:
I've never seen this referred to as a flaw.
This is one of the major psychological motivations of the conservative mindset, and from a liberal perspective, it very clearly is a flaw. Liberal positions are often nuanced and involve an element of ambiguity. Failing to understand this is a failure to understand the liberal position, and so to misinterpret and misrepresent it.
Consider a hypothetical but nevertheless realistic conservative poll that might be posted here by a conservative:
Q: Was overthrowing Saddam a good thing?
Possible answers:
Yes
No
A liberal could not vote either yes or no. A liberal would say that there was some good and some bad; on balance, it might appear good or bad to successive generations, and there's no privilleged viewpoint. So it's impossible to determine whether it was good or bad--the better question is whether it was our right to do it or not.
Most conservatives would probably answer yes without reservation.
A conservative will use this feature of liberal thinking to accuse them of being soft, indecisive, or lacking common sense. To a liberal, this feature of conservative thinking is used to accuse conservatives of being cavalier and just plain stupid.
The fact is, neither side has the correct view of the other. Liberals are not soft or indecisive as a group, any more than conservatives are. But conservatives as a group are usually not cavalier and certainly aren't stupid.
But when a conservative is trying to articulate a liberal position so as to criticize it, grasping this essential point is critical--and failure to do so leads to serious misinterpretation. Ann Coulter tends to do this pretty frequently. Since a liberal, asked whether the overthrow of Saddam was a bad thing, might say "Well, not necessarily," Coulter will (again hypothetically, but this is typical of her work) run with that and say that liberals acknowledge that it was a good thing, but they hypocritically want to withdraw the troops, leaving the poor Iraqis to defend themselves against those ruthless Iranians, and this all goes to show how cowardly and double-faced liberals are.
But this clearly is not correct.
