Emotion vs. Debate

I offer my condolences to Cindy Sheehan for the loss of her son. I also offer my unqualified condemnation of those who are attempting to prostitute her grief in an attempt to bypass the need to justify their positions on myriad issues, most notably the war.

Before I explain this last sentence, some background is in order. Cindy Sheehan lost her son Casey in Iraq on April 4th last year. Although she opposed both the war and President Bush before her son died, she stated, after a private meeting with Bush following her son's death, that "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis ... I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss." For reasons I need not and will not speculate on, she has since contradicted this statement and is protesting against Bush, demanding a private meeting, in Crawford, Texas, while the President is there for a working vacation this August.

Michelle Malkin sums up the reception Sheehan has had from the far left.

Anti-war activists and far-left organizations have been galvanized by Cindy Sheehan's continuing protest outside President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch. MoveOn.org has hopped on the bandwagon with a newspaper ad and Internet campaign. Air America hosts, all too happy to talk about something other than their own unpleasant political and financial woes, have embraced Sheehan. Dem activist Joe Trippi is plugging a "Meet with Cindy" website, which in turn plugs the Crawford Peace House. Even the "Hip Hop Caucus" has hitched a ride[.]

She also notes that Sheehan posts on Michael Moore's site in response to some conservative punditry.

Malkin, like Patterico and others notes that the leftist MSM have been pretending that Sheehan's statements on her initial meeting with Bush were never made and, aside from portraying the protests in a positive light, have been giving them far more coverage than they warrant.

Before I explain what the leftist hubbub is all about, I note again, that out of respect for Mrs. Sheehan's grief, I will not comment on the moral status of her actions. But.... To understand why this is a big deal, we must consider Mrs. Sheehan's actions and their broader context of how one should respond to them. The text of her recent open letter to President Bush provides all the essentials we need of her actions. The letter is not a reasoned argument. It is disrespectful, demanding, and hateful in tone. The entirety of its intellectual content is a rehash of seemingly every loony charge ever made against Bush. The following passage captures its spirit.

You feel so proud of yourself for betraying the country again, don't you? You think you are very clever because you pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the people again. You think that you have some mandate from God …that you can "spend your political capital" any way that you want. George you don't care or even realize that 56,000,000 plus citizens of this country voted against you and your agenda. Still, you are going to continue your ruthless work of being a divider and not a uniter. George, in 2000 when you stole that election and the Democrats gave up, I gave up too. I had the most ironic thought of my life then: "Oh well, how much damage can he do in four years?" Well, now I know how much you have damaged my family, this country, and this world. If you think I am going to allow you another four years to do even more damage, then you truly are mistaken. I will fight for a true vote count and if that fails, your impeachment. Also, the impeachment of your Vice President. The only thing is, I'm not politically savvy, and I don't have a Karl Rove to plan my strategy, but I do have a big mouth and a righteous cause, which still mean something in this country, I hope.

This letter, in short, could have been penned by almost any member of the radical, anti-war left -- or at least the more polite ones (See Malkin.).There is nothing special about this letter except the tragic circumstances of its author, a grieving mother. And this, aside from the fact that I know so little about Mrs. Sheehan, is why I will not speculate on the appropriateness of her actions. The grieving are frequently bereft of reason and say reckless things they do not really mean. Almost everyone, at one time or another, has said something in the heat of passion that he would not have said were he fully in control of his emotions, were he fully rational.

And this fact holds the key to what Michael Moore and company are doing with Mrs. Sheehan's grief. How? They are hoping that no one will dare, out of respect for a grieving mother, speak out against what they are doing and what they stand for. Emotionalists themselves, they are hoping to transmute the public's sympathy for Mrs. Sheehan into support for their political agenda. Most revealingly of all, they want us to take this letter (and other statements of Mrs. Sheehan's) seriously. In short, they expect us to exempt Mrs. Sheehan's stated ideas (which they share) from rational evaluation or debate.

In a rational debate between two men interested in unearthing the truth, each will present the facts he knows and support his position with logical argument. One or both men may discover that they were wrong, but the product of such debate is a victory for both. They leave wiser.

But when a rational man is confronted by an irrational one, the latter has nothing to offer in the way of obtaining a better grasp of the way things are -- except insofar as he reveals himself to be irrational and/or dangerous. Two extreme cases of irrationality will allow us to make sense of Mrs. Sheehan's grief pimps in light of this.

(1) In the case of the grief-stricken who say angry things in the throes of passion, the decent thing to do is let that person get it out of his system and then pretend it was never said. One might say, "That wasn't Jack speaking. That was his grief." And one would assign no moral import whatsoever to anything that was said. Jack gets a moral pass.

(2) But suppose someone is dangerously irrational, like a range-of-the-moment criminal who wants your wallet and is willing to hurt you to get it. The last thing you should do is pretend he didn't say, "Your money or your life." You hand over your wallet and, if you escape the situation alive, you do whatever you can to help law enforcement catch him. If you judge him dangerous enough, you may even have to harm or kill him. You pay close attention to anything this man says, but not in the sense of an intelligent airing of views. You do so in self-defense. And you judge this man on what he says and does. You conclude that he is dishonest, evil, and dangerous.

Mrs. Sheehan is case (1). Michael Moore and the America-hating left are case (2). The leftists want you to listen to them without critically evaluating what they have to say. They want you to focus on the emotions of a grieving mother, and accept their dangerous agenda without debate.

They (quite literally, come to think of it) want your wallet, but they also want a moral blank check to go with it.

-- CAV

Updates

8-12-05: Corrected typo.