I just started listening to Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy but already I have several ideas for blog posts from the material. Then this evening I read How the Academic Left Engages in Debate by John Lott. It could have been another case study done by Sowell. The academic left, aka “the self-anointed”, comes up with some idea for social policy and then when the results come in different than what was expected they make excuses, attack those that point out the policy is a failure, and in general show a complete disregard for factual data.
Here is a sample:
In a debate carried nationally on National Public Radio, Donohue claimed that Wilson not only was employed by the National Rifle Association, but had let his employment bias his academic findings:
The lone dissenter was someone who was not an econometrician, who admitted in his dissent that he wished he knew more econometrics, and who had previously testified as an expert witness on behalf of the execrable NRA.
When later called on to justify this claim after the debate, Mr. Donohue did not offer proof, but instead called on Wilson to prove that he had never gotten paid by the NRA. When asked for evidence, Donohue e-mailed me: “Do you have Wilson’s email address or not? I am going to assume you do and that you know he worked for the NRA since you could ask him via email to confirm or deny and cc me, and you are not doing so.” Even later in 2009, after Wilson had denied that he had ever worked for the NRA, Donohue refused to accept it: “On the issue of the NRA, somehow I suspect that the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy doesn’t think the NRA is a bad organization and therefore any affiliation would not be deemed problematic.” Even during the last couple of weeks, with repeated calls to publicly retract his claim, Donohue has yet to correct the record.
Their beliefs cannot be refuted because facts are irrelevant to them. The leftist ideology is faith based. They just worship government instead of god(s). I find this very depression. Theocracies of any flavor have a strong tendency toward bloody repression of dissent.
How is that different from a rightist government?
All governments are theocracies. We got rid of the king, and we got rid of the dogma that the king was God’s man on earth, but we kept the kings men, and we kept the presumption that the kings men are doing God’s work on earth.
To a certain extent you are correct. Perhaps I should have said those that advocate for big government advocate for theocracies.
“On the issue of the NRA, somehow I suspect that the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy doesn’t think the NRA is a bad organization and therefore any affiliation would not be deemed problematic.”
Interesting. This says that even if Wilson didn’t work for the NRA, it doesn’t matter, being a Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy means that he has untoward sympathies to the NRA, and implicitly his analysis is suspect. And Donohue reaches this conclusion based on somehow having that suspicion.