Doonesbury vs. Reason

In our newspaper the Leftist cartoon, Doonesbury, is placed in the comics section along with the “funnies”. Doonesbury is never funny of course, because it is always very busy lobbing ad Hominems at everything that is non-Left. This week’s D’bury is somewhat of a classic. So if you missed it, I’ll give the gist of it here.

The scene is a radio station program room with two characters, the radio program host, and the guest.

Host: We’re still talking to conspiratologist Page Griffin about American gullibility…

Guest: It’s quite remarkable, Mark…

Americans believe in many things that can’t be verified. For instance, almost half of us believe in ghosts and 40% in alien abductions.

And that availability to alternative reality is reflected in conspiracy theory, from Truthism, which holds that Bush was behind 9/11, to Birthism.

And, of course, we still have many legacy fringe groups like the JFK Grassy Knollers, the Staged Moonlanders, etc.

Host: Professor, is there any counter to these powerful theorists?

Guest: Not really Mark. Only the Reasonists.

Host: Reasonists?

Guest: They believe in an evidence-based world, something called rationalism. But it’s a tiny group, not so influential.

The Left always claims rationalism for their own, but what they use is much closer to the Romanticism of Rousseau, the antithesis of rationalism. The Left's anti-rational arguments are devised in an attempt to be deceptive to the partially educated and seductive to the uneducated.

The idea that demanding to see existing evidence which is being deliberately withheld is conspiracy theory, is ludicrous. So “birthism” is buried in fallacious conjunction with actual illegitimate conspiracy theories to paint it guilty by association, a common informal logical fallacy.

The overall effect is cynical as well as anti-rational, indicating the underlying Leftist belief that Americans are not just ignorant, they are too stupid to differentiate between actual, reasonable rationalism and blatantly false accusations.

This is also the tenor of the national debate on socialism. When there is any evidence to consider, it is ignored in favor of self-righteous proclamations of moral imperative – based on false data. Evidence such as the failures of Canadian, British, and French government health systems; evidence such as the federal inability to properly manage healthcare in existing systems such as Medicare, Medicaid, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Veteran’s health care; evidence such as the congressional OMB reports that disclose the inability of the nation to pay for such systems; evidence that the uninsured population isn’t 45 million, it is less than 5 million; evidence that most Americans don’t think that health care really is a huge crisis and that congress is running amok with no countervailing force to stop it.

There’s plenty of evidence, but that is not what is being discussed; what is being sold to Americans is moral, the morals decreed by the self-anointed “partner of God”.

I predict that desperate moral imperative is what will be the selling point of the upcoming Obama speech to congress, and that whatever evidence is discussed, if any, will be suspect, at best. We’ll see.