Blueprint

The Following nugget of leftie thought that I found on a friend's blog as a comment, serves as an excellent blueprint of common left leaning fallacies. Here is the comment and my reaction:

"This is Matt and I am a fiscal Conservative and a social Progressive. I believe in balanced budgets, capital punishment, and I am against abortion. I vote completely Democrat.
I read your posts and noticed a lot of misrepresentations of what Democrats believe and will try to explain by going through them one item at a time.
We Democrats also believe, along with Republicans, that America must defend its citizens by all legal means possible.
Democrats, in general, do NOT believe G W is a terrorist. Although some Liberals do. We just believe he is an unintelligent man who got elected by money and Karl Rove. He just likes being at the big party with the wealthy. And, like most drunks, he is probably a fun guy to have a few drinks with.
I don't know any Democrats who are defnding terrorists. Please be more specific.
We are not against the War on Terror. To say so is absolutely a LIE. We are against the obvious mismanagement of this war. This administration has no intention of ever bringing this war to a conclusion.
We are not against wiretapping and surveillance of all real enemies of America. I am in favor of both domestic and foreign wiretapping, but, only of our enemies, not political enemies. As you know, many in the Republican ranks characterize people who speak out, like myself, as traitors. And thus, by that Limbaugh definition, are valid targets for eavesdropping. Those who believe this are drinking Limbaugh Kool-Aid and eating Ann Coulter Candy. And they have been deceived into believing that the Neocons who have taken over the Republican Party are Conservatives. Incidentally, it is a completely bogus claim that you can tell who are Christians, and who are not, by what political party they associate with.

Evidentally some mistakes were made at Guantanamo as evidenced by the fact that roughly 300 prisoners have been released. Otherwise they should have been tried. Why do you think we have checks and balances in the U S? Is it not to prevent errors and prevent those in power from misusing their power? What would happen if people in power could just, on their say so, have others jailed indefinitely. Will those in power always be right? What if they make a mistake? How will that ever be found out if they never have to give an account for their actions? They must be subject to proving their actions are not errors. This how we keep everyone honest. Otherwise they would be, in effect, dictators.
I an against secret prisons and detention of people without it ever being known. I am not against the locations being secret.
As for financial tracking programs, they are no big deal. I send large amounts of money to a missionary in Africa. I have to get a swift number to facilitate that transfer. There is nothing secret about this system.
We are not against harsh interrogation techniques, but, I am against sexual violations, killing, and broken limbs. Information gained by that method cannot be reliable. Things of that nature happened at Abu Gharaib. They were not just college fraternity pranks as Limbaugh portrayed them on the radio. I often heard the phrase, " These people would just as soon as kill you as look at you". Is the smae people that Rumsfield went over and released 6,000 of? If so, then he ought to be tried.
We are absolutely not for giving terrorists the ALL same rights as Americans. But, if you jail some one then you must have some PROOF for that action. Either try them or dispense with them.
How can you claim that person is a terrorists without proof? we don't have to provide them a lawyer, but, they must be allowed to present a defense. Why not? Either you have proof or you don't. You can't jail people, in limbo forever, just on specualtion.
We are for having an actual strategy for eventually extracating our troops from this diversion in Iraq. We don't ask for deadlines and dates. We need to get back to intelligently fighting the War against Islamo-Fascists. Do you know why G W and company have no strategy? Its because they didn't think they would ever need one. They just assumed they were going to be big heroes and everything would fall into place like dominoes. By the way, it was Nixon who cut and run in Viet Nam.
You know darn well that Democrats and Republicans are on the same side when it comes to the real War on Terrorists. Disagreement does not make one a traitor. It is actually traitorous to keep your mouth shut when you see blatant mismanagement causing needless harm and deaths to our troops.
Answer me this. What country did Britain attack to catch those terrorists cells in England who were planning to hijack a bunch of planes enroute to the U S? Police work is what did the trick. Not by sending an Army to invade somewhere. The thumb-your-nose diplomacy in Washington is creating more enemies for us. Which we will have to continue to deal with in the future."


Matt:

This is Jaz and I am an (actual) Conservative and a Capitalist.

You say,

“We just believe he is an unintelligent man who got elected by money and Karl Rove. He just likes being at the big party with the wealthy. And, like most drunks, he is probably a fun guy to have a few drinks with.”

By making this personal attack, you’ve established that you hate Bush. I imagine that this passionate Bush Bashing drives most of your political thought process and analysis. With that in mind, let's move on.

“I don't know any Democrats who are defending terrorists.”

Isn’t Ramsey Clark a democrat? He is currently on the legal defense team for Saddam Hussein who I consider a terrorist. Saddam was the leader of a state friendly to terrorists (giving financial dispensations to suicide bombers) and the leader of a state who used the tactics of terror (rape rooms anyone?).

Since you’re a classic Bush Basher, I know I’ll never get you to see Saddam as anything approaching a terrorist, so we will just have disagree and proceed.

You mention “Kool-aid drinker” but when you said, “This administration has no intention of ever bringing this war to a conclusion. “ I caught a whiff of Kool-aid. Is there some sort of Michael Moore type conspiracy information that you are privy to involving endless bloodshed in the name of oil, or perpetuation of the American Military Industrial complex that you would like to share with us, or are simply implying that, as is the case with other conquered nations like Germany and Japan, we will have troops in country in one form or another, indefinitely? If the latter is your flavor then you are correct. At least I hope you are. I hope we will be keeping a garrison in Iraq at least for the duration of the war on terror, AKA indefinitely.

“We are not against the War on Terror. To say so is absolutely a LIE.”

Bush bashers love this word “lie”. As in “Bush lied, people died” or the classic mantra of “Bush lied about WMD”. These are two laughable bumper sticker slogans, but like your own statement, they share a very loose definition of the word lie. First of all, I don’t see the statement: ‘Democrats are against the war on terror’ in the original post, so this “lie” arrangement is a bit of a Straw man argument but certainly no intentional misrepresentation of what the original author believes to be true has transpired. A lie is when I tell you that something is true that I know to be false. In this case, conservatives don’t know exactly what to believe about Democrats. All of the evidence that we are exposed to suggests that, at the very least, you are not helpful in our efforts to fight terrorism (a goal you claim to share).

You give a run down of many of the tools used to fight terror and detail exactly what specific conditions have to be applied and what standards upheld. It’s not that standards and red tape are bad necessarily, it's just that you seem more concerned with raising hurdles in front of efforts to fight back than you are in strictly fighting terrorists. Democrats don’t want to be pinned with the idea that they are making it harder to prosecute the war on terror yet you surely would concede that certainly, you are not making it any easier with this anti Bush agenda by attempting to block legislation (Harry "We killed the Patriot Act" Reid) and so forth.

“I am in favor of both domestic and foreign wiretapping, but, only of our enemies, not political enemies. As you know, many in the Republican ranks characterize people who speak out, like myself, as traitors.”

I don’t know whether to consider this a straw man argument or simply a red herring. Nowhere is the debate centered on the wiretapping of political enemies. This paranoid charge is something to hide behind. Democrats have problems with the wiretapping of terrorists, which is what is being debated.

“We are not against harsh interrogation techniques, but, I am against sexual violations, killing, and broken limbs.”

Here we go with the straw man again. Nowhere is anyone proposing that we sexually violate, kill, or break limbs to get information. Suggesting that Americans are that bloodthirsty reminds me of Kerry’s Winter Soldier testimony. “...Cutting off limbs… blowing up bodies…in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”

“We are for having an actual strategy for eventually extricating our troops from this diversion in Iraq.”

First of all, Iraq is not a diversion, to say so is a LIE... just kidding. I would not consider that statement of yours a ‘lie’ because I understand that you believe Iraq is a diversion, you are just incorrect. I wonder, do you support the use of American troops anywhere? I know, you were for going into Afghanistan, please spare us. However, if you are genuine in your desire to find a solution in Iraq, as Charles Krauthammer has pointed out in an Op-ed, a possible solution will inevitably involve the co-option of some of the Sunni insurgency into the new Iraqi government by granting limited amnesties. Guess who was against this notion? Democratic leadership, principally among them the sophist, Chuck Schumer.

Then you conclude with,

“What country did Britain attack to catch those terrorists cells in England who were planning to hijack a bunch of planes enroute to the U S? Police work is what did the trick.”

This is representative of the John Kerry approach to fighting terrorism. It is the law enforcement answer to fighting terrorism that Clinton and Madeline Albright pursued throughout the 90’s. Guess what? It don’t work. We are thankful that Britain was able to thwart an attack using Scotland Yard and law enforcement resources, but I for one believe that we have to use all of the tools of law enforcement, plus the military, plus political (restructuring) solutions. Simply using law enforcement is the old playbook, didn’t you see “Path to 9-11” with Harvey Keitel?

All of that said, I appreciate you stepping forward and representing rational left leaning individuals, but you are still incorrect on a wide array of topics.