Ever since the passage of ObamaCare, the airwaves, newspapers, and blogosphere have been crackling with allegations that the opponents are racists (a few anti-ObamaCare protesters are said to have shouted the N-word at black congressmen, but the tapes don’t reveal that they did) and there have been some incidents of violence directed at House members on both sides of the controversy. The assumption the pro-ObamaCare writers make is that the violence was perpetrated by “tea party” zealots, although it’s just as possible that it was done by ACORN types who want to create antipathy toward opponents of the legislation.
This piece by David Franke injects some common sense into the matter.
As a simple matter of logic, whether a few “tea party” people said or did reprehensible things is irrelevant to the real debate here. If ObamaCare is a ghastly mistake, as many learned people have argued, that argument is not undermined by the actions of individuals who oppose it — any more than the case for it is undermined by the violence some union thugs visited on ObamaCare opponents last year, or the sleazy tactics the Democratic leadership used to get the votes to pass it.
Back when I was in law school, the professor who taught Evidence told the class that when a lawyer has a really bad case, the best tactic is to try to get the jury to believe that the key point is some irrelevant fact you know you can prove, such as (his example) whether the butler’s buttons were silver. That’s exactly what is going on here. The authoritarians who love ObamaCare (and the rest of the president’s coercive agenda) want Americans to think that the righteousness of ObamaCare depends on the behavior of a few protesters. If the latter are bad, that proves that ObamaCare is good! Of course, that’s supremely illogical, but people who want to steal from you and whittle away at your freedom don’t mind resorting to fallacious arguments.
