Robert Tracinski over at The Federalist gives the quintessential Glibertarian Douchebag argument on the edited videos attacking Planned Parenthood: If we frame everything using my “facts” then I win.
Of course, it’s easy to use “context” as an excuse to explain anything away. But it’s also easy to view the Planned Parenthood videos through the perspective of your pre-existing animus and seize on the worst possible interpretation of their words, or focus on the one sentence that justifies your hatred while ignoring those that might undermine your justification.
I have (somewhat ironically) a very Christian attitude about this: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. God forbid anyone should pore through any of my own conversations and read them the way people are reading the Planned Parenthood transcripts. So if someone were to ask me what I’m writing today, and I were to respond, “I don’t know, the Koch Brothers haven’t told me yet” (and I’m not saying this exchange has never occurred), I would hope people would understand it as a joke. But someone who wishes me ill would inevitably come along and seize on this as final proof that I’m in the pocket of Big Oil.
If we want to keep the moral high ground when the left pulls this sort of trick on us—and they will—then we need to make sure we’re being scrupulously fair, even to people we hate.
“Let’s have a fair and reasonable debate over subject X using the criteria of fair and reasonable that I get to define in advance” really is one of the oldest tricks in the book. In fact, it’s the entire shtick of The Federalist in general.
Tracinski says the abortion debate in general and Planned Parenthood debate in particular is getting reduced to “memes” by a cartoonish and juvenile smear attempt by the right, then equates that to Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on Iraq as somehow an equivalent move by the left.
What I’m afraid of is that this whole Planned Parenthood controversy is becoming memified, i.e., turned into a self-reinforcing meme.
I’m thinking of the way the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln was used against George W. Bush.
In context, it wasn’t President Bush’s expression of triumphalism; it was for the sailors and aviators on the aircraft carrier, who had in fact accomplished their mission. But it became a stand-in for a narrative about all the reasons lefties didn’t like Bush. Its original meaning disappeared, and the accuracy of that meaning no longer mattered. It became, not a real idea, but a meme, not an argument but a symbol for a collection of biases.
It’s a ridiculous comparison on its face and yet that’s the plan: define what “fair and reasonable” is through Both Sides Do It legerdemain, and then present your carefully defined argument as the only possible and acceptable course forward for any future discussions. He’s literally setting up an argument he can’t lose because he’s made the rules.
If that’s not Glibertarian Douchebaggery 101, I don’t know what is.