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Global warming, pagans, wicca rituals, debate no evil

The Left: spirited debaters

by Klaus Rohrich
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Last week I wrote a column on global warming and how I doubted that man was the cause, given that there was scientific evidence to the contrary. I received a number of really supportive emails following that article and one that wasn't quite so supportive. Written by a chap associated with the web site pagannews.com, a site devoted to magic, Wicca rituals and "the desert moon grove" in Iraq, it simply stated: "Dear Mr. Rohrich: You are an idiot." That's the great thing about those denizens of the Left; they really know how to spark a debate.

It would appear that the reason the Left is losing ground so precipitously is that they seem to have forgotten that debate is all about the exchange of ideas, of presenting opposing viewpoints backed with evidence to support a given position. To call someone with whom you disagree "an idiot" may be satisfying on some deeply infantile level, but it hardly proves one's point in opposing "the idiot's" view.

Often the Left resorts to name calling when it winds up on the downward slope of a losing argument. That's why if you are in favor of immigration reform that demands documentation and insists that rules be followed, you're a racist. Or if you oppose gay marriage on the basis of deeply held religious convictions, you're a homophobe. Or if you maintain truthfully, like former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, that women are less likely to be scientists or mathematicians, then you are sexist. It's a nifty form of shorthand designed to end any debate, as it sticks one's opponent with the task of having to defend himself against a spurious attack on his character rather than having to counter his argument with logic.

More and more, the Left is engaging in this type of debating tactic, leaving the topic to be debated in favor of an ad hominem attack on one's opponent. This wouldn't be too serious had it not found its way into the body politic in most Western nations today. Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Monte Solberg recently commented in parliament that today's immigrants were much more likely to require assistance with language, since the majority of immigrants to Canada currently originate from countries that do not have a common Greco-Roman tradition of language. To hear the firestorm emanating from the opposition benches you'd think Solberg had walked into parliament in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood. There was nothing of a spurious nature in what Solberg said; he was stating a fact. But the opposition parties, hoping to make Solberg and the Conservative Party look bad, accused him of racism because of stating a simple fact.

Mark Steyn wrote some months ago bout a U.K.-based author who expressed concern about gay couples being allowed to adopt children during a BBC interview having been interrogated by London's Metropolitan Police to determine if she was guilty of "hate speech". It's an illustration of how far the Left has taken its agenda of ‘debate no evil'.

It's one of the reasons why the security personnel at airports are doing cavity searches on 80-year old Scottish grandmothers, while young men of Middle Eastern descent traveling without luggage are often just waved through the security gate.

This probably explains why the Left is losing ground politically in most Western countries today, as the public at large realizes that real debate of issues has been cut off in favor of Looney tunes ideologies rammed down people's throats. Rather than counter right-wing arguments with logic and reason, the Left has become so certain of its infallibility that any argument can be reduced to a mere word, such as racist, sexists, homophobe and in the minds of the paganites, idiot.


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