Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Talking Points
Hugh Hewitt has a great post this morning, the topic being a failure of imagination on the part of the left. As a little background, Talkingpointsmemo is a popular left-wing blog. Here is Hugh's post:
[Talk about the pot calling the kettle black: Kilgore accuses the right of "post hoc ergo propter hoc"? His entire chain of "reasoning" is post hoc ergo propter hoc.]
Kilgore concludes:
And Hugh mops up:
UPDATE: Apparently the New York Times editorial board, that bastion of Bush cheerleading, doesn't quite agree with Kilgore (h/t Austin Bay):
Ed Kilgore, guest blogging at TalkingPointsMemo, signals the left's spin on the democracy movement in the Middle East --it has nothing to do with BUsh!:"[I]t literally never crossed my mind that Bush's fans would credit him with for this positive event, as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment. This is the kind of thinking, of course, that has convinced God knows how many people that Ronald Reagan personally won the Cold War. It's the old post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) logical fallacy. This is a president and an administration that chronically refuse to accept responsibility for the bad things that have happened on their watch--even things like the insurgency in Iraq that are directly attributable to its policies. Barring any specific evidence (provided, say, by Lebanese pro-democracy leaders) that Bush had anything in particular to do with Syria's setbacks in Lebanon, I see no particular reason to high-five him for being in office when they happened.
[Talk about the pot calling the kettle black: Kilgore accuses the right of "post hoc ergo propter hoc"? His entire chain of "reasoning" is post hoc ergo propter hoc.]
Kilgore concludes:
Let us congratulate the Lebanese, not those in Washington who would take credit for their accomplishments.
And Hugh mops up:
By citing to Reagan, Kilgore demonstrates that he wouldn't accept even "specific evidence (provided, say, by Lebanese pro-democracy leaders)that Bush had anything in particular to do with Syria's setbacks in Lebanon," because he won't accept specific evidence from Eastern European leaders that Reagan had anything to do with the fall of the Soviet Union. Here's Lech Walesa on Reagan:
"When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989."
As with the Poles, so with the Lebanese --they are putting their lives on the line to face down their oppressors. But American policy stands with them and encourages them, and pressures the dictators not to strike back, and threatens the tyrants if they do. The refusal to recognize that American policy does indeed have consequences is yet another exhibit in the huge array of arguments as to why Democrats cannot be trusted to run the nation's foreign policy ---they don't think it matters. Kilgore's dissmissiveness of presidential rhetoric --"as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment"-- isn't just a misguided slam at W, it is an admission of awesome ignorance of the power of the American president to shape a world through words, a failure of imagination and an admission of an inexperience with foreign affairs that makes you question his commentary on literally everything. It is tantamount to saying "How many divisions does th Pope have?"
If you don't understand the power of the presidency, then you and your candidates ought not to be trusted with it, for it will end up a replay of the Carter experiment with presidential "small ball," where resignation to events is the dominant theme, and America's enemies to set the tempo and most of the rules.
Democrats have spent more than 15 years trying to deny Reagan his role in bringing down the Soviets. I suppose they will be trying to minimize Bush's role in introducing democracy to the Arab world for an even longer period of time. Both efforts ask the public to set aside the facts they have witnessed and watch the Michael Moore movie over here, with post viewing commentary provided by Howard Dean. It didn't work with Reagan and it won't work with Bush.
UPDATE: Apparently the New York Times editorial board, that bastion of Bush cheerleading, doesn't quite agree with Kilgore (h/t Austin Bay):
Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance.
# posted by mds : 8:43 AM
