There are some things people with different values just won’t “get” about their opponents. Folks who support gun bans and greater gun control just don’t “get” arguments for the Second Amendment and for “more guns” in peaceful citizens’ hands. And so, when confronted with a scholar and analyst of gun control like economist John Lott, they shy away from actually arguing with his points.
Their approach? Scattershot. Sniping. Crossfire.
Thus it was, this week, on Piers Morgan’s CNN interview show. Morgan grilled Lott in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater atrocity. Lott ably started making his case numerous times, but Morgan refused to engage Lott’s points, instead unleashing a barrage of “isn’t your positions just ridiculous?” non-questions.
The lack of engagement with ideas is astounding.
When Alan Dershowitz joined the “debate,” it only got worse. Dershowitz repeated an accusation of “junk science” without really demonstrating how the science marshaled by Lott was unsound, and engaged (falsely) in the favorite ad hominem gambit of the age: “research funded by the NRA.”
The sad thing about this is not the inability of Morgan and Dershowitz to understand Lott. The sad thing is their unwillingness to even give it a good ol’ college try. It was downright uncivilized. Dershowitz is a lawyer, so his resorting to base rhetoric in a no-holds-barred attack is understandable. But Morgan is allegedly a journalist, on the advance guard of history, a seeker of truth.
But Morgan is not seeking truth; his mind is already made up. Facts be damned. That doesn’t lead to good interviews.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Caught in the Crossfire”
Whether the topic is a Constitutional Amendment, a Supreme Court decision or the last episode of the latest American Idol, to a greater extent our citizenry has lost the ability to properly debate a point from a reasoned, rational position.
Our society has raised the “sound bite” based argument to the pinnacle of cultural achievements. Led by our political representatives in the search for the pithy, disarming phrase that will make all opponents wither rather than enter into an honest debate of positions.
It seems the very acknowledgement that an opposing opinion has merit somehow means defeat of one’s argument. Compromise equals capitulation. No more can one adopt a “live and let live” attitude.
All this is done because it is easier than doing the research and forming a defensible opinion. That ties one to a position. A position that holds the potential of making one accountable to their constituent, party or benefactor if their position is found to be out of favor.
In my opinion, it shows a lack of character. Something missing from the majority of American society today.
Dershowitz is doing the typical lawyer thing. If you can’t argue the facts or the law, pound the table. Excusable but part of why so many find lawyers so detestable.
I take issue with your statement that Morgan should have done better because he is a journalist. He has ably proved that he is not. And CNN continues to prove that it is not a news organization, but rather that it is a shill for this administration, much like its activities in the past that earned it the appellation the Clinton News Network.
One of your best columns.
Shows the hoplophobes (as well as liberals- but I repeat myself) for what they are.
.… Neither Messrs Dershowitz nor Morgan are seeking truth; Their “minds” are already made up. Facts be damned .…
In fairness to them both, what each of them is demonstrating is that he labors under the Fascissocialist Psychosis, among whose definitive symptoms are the morbid Denial and pathological Projection with whose symptoms each of them presents.
Totalitarian “Liberals,” like this pair, pathologically Project on to all of We The (Sane) People their own zealously-to-fanatically wanting to destroy those who dare disagree with their frequently deranged positions. They subconsciously believe — feel, more accurately — that we deserve shooting and that had they guns in their hands, they’d shoot us. And that we must “feel” like that, too. (They don’t get “Think,” either)
Note: “Subconsciously.”
All the while morbidly Denying the source (self-loathing) of their irrational gun hatred.
Morgan is probably just adhering to the direction that his bosses at CNN tell him to take. As a result of cleaving to shilling for the president, the public acceptance of whatever CNN tries to spoon feed them has resulted in an 8% drop in viewers over the past year, bringing them down to a third of the numbers that are watching Fox, 627,000 versus 1.85 million.
So bad that the CNN president, Jim Walton has been volunteered to resign. At the rate they are going, eventually the only way that Presbo is going to get anyone to listen to his programers in the various progressive-fawning networks is to make it mandatory.
Look for the new programing to debut in schools where it will be an enforced part of the public school curriculum.
just like all the airports are force fed CNN