Why We Will Never Have An Honest Debate With The Left

Maureen Dowd is the poster girl for why its impossible to have an honest debate with the left.

I am not a big reader of the New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd. I was reminded of why when I clicked onto her column today, Men In Black. According to Ms. Dowd, the right side of the Court, whom she describes as "hacks dressed up in black robes," are wholly partisan. Thus she not merely excuses Obama for his repugnant attack on the Court yesterday, but eggs him on.

Her column is one long ad hominem attack after another. But its the few arguments she makes that are what have me frosted. Her arguments are at best intellectually dishonest. The other options are that she is either intellectually lazy or, worse, not too intelligent. You can decide for yourself.

For instance, at one point, she takes Justice Scalia to task:

If he’s so brilliant, why is he drawing a risible parallel between buying health care and buying broccoli?

Now, she's not a lawyer, so she can be forgiven for not understanding the nuances of the law. But this is not nuance. The basic argument against the Obamacare mandate is so simple anyone can grasp it. It is that our government is one of enumerated powers, it does not have the power to force someone to buy something, and if it does, then there is no limit to government power. I hope for her sake that she is not so dumb that she is incapable of understanding why Scalia's question goes to the heart of the whole case against Obamacare. She is either being deliberately disingenuous or she is too lazy to bother making the tiniest effort to understand the arguments in the case.

But she doesn't end there. She later adds:

Just as Scalia voted to bypass that little thing called democracy and crown W. president, so he expressed ennui at the idea that, even if parts of the health care law are struck down, some provisions could be saved: “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” he asked, adding: “Is this not totally unrealistic?”

Poor girl, she still hasn't gotten over Bush v. Gore. That aside, I don't expect her to understand the legal nuances of severability and why the Supreme Court has no business trying to rewrite a law where Congress itself included no severability provision. That said, she should at least acknowledge that if the Court opts to only throw out the mandate to buy insurance, this bill will have no funding provision, and that would drive health insurance costs rocketing skyward. Is she so dumb that she is unable to fathom the consequences of what she is asking for?

And lastly, Dowd concludes:

But it isn’t conservative to overturn a major law passed by Congress in the middle of an election. The majority’s political motives are as naked as a strip-search.

Whoa. That is her closing argument for why Obamacare should be found constitutional? That constitutionality should turn on election year politics? What sheer idiocy. There can be no common ground with people this dumb, lazy, or dishonest. And Dowd is at least one of those, if not all three.

Tweet