No philosophical deed goes unpunished, Part Two
Power Line
Maybe I should spend more time reading lefty blogs because they can be quite amusing. Yesterday, I noted that two members of the reality-based community, Yglesias and De Long, had been honest enough to note that there was nothing improper in William Bennett's allegedly racist reductio ad aburdum argument against defending abortions based on utilitarian goals such as reducing crime. Now Garance Franke-Ruta (great name, not-so-great journalist) is taking co-blogger Yglesias and De Long to task for being intellectually honest enough to commit a philosophical deed when they could have ignored the merits and simply engaged in helpful Republican-bashing.
She writes:
One of the reasons the left has such a difficult time
moving public opinion is that, all too often, it reacts
with cleverness to situations where outrage would be a
more appropriate response. Bill Bennett yesterday offered
left bloggers a golden opportunity to make political hay,
and what do we have? The spectacle of them explaining his
remarks away in order to prove ... what exactly? That
they, too, studied Latin and philosophy?
So that's the left's problem -- too much intellectual sophistication, not enough venom.
Ultimately, of course, Franke-Ruta wants to show that she too is familiar with reasoned argument. If anything, though, she demonstrates the contrary:
Implicit in Bennett's statement is the assumption that
African Americans contribute only criminality to America,
and that if he could he wave his magic wand and bring
African Americans' tenure in this nation to an end, that
is all that would disappear. That's what's offensive
about his statement.
But Bennett made no factual assumption that African Americans contribute only criminality to America. Instead, he implicitly assumed that even if that were all they contributed, it would still be reprehensible to argue in favor of aborting black babies. The moral bankruptcy of arguing for abortions on that basis made it unnecessary to resort to a utiltarian argument based on all the positive things African-Americans contribute to America. Bennett's whole point is that these sorts instrumental considerations have no place in a discussion about the right to life.
Maybe Franke-Ruta disagrees.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has a similar, though perhaps less amused, reaction to Franke-Ruta's effort to enforce the mindless orthodoxy of Republican bashing.
It certainly reads to me like she's upset that liberal
bloggers are being too intellectually honest. The upshot
of Franke-Ruta's position seems to be that deliberately
distorting Bill Bennett's intent and meaning is a small
price to pay to villify him unfairly and for the added
bonus of angering-up southern blacks in order to get
limousine liberals like John Edwards elected. And if Matt
Yglesias or Brad DeLong see it differently, they should
just be quiet -- for the sake of the movement.
I find this very illuminating. We get a lot of grief
around here from time to time for supporting conservative
politicians or figures -- including Bennett -- when
liberals insist the only intellectually honest position
is opposition and outrage. Therefore we must be operating
in bad faith. And here we have someone at The American
Prospect all but declaring that intellectual honesty is
corrupting liberalism and its nakedly partisan ambition
to attain political power.
Nice movement she's working on.
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