Thought of the Day 03.05.10

Every argument advanced for a position appeals to some standard of evaluation. But when someone enlists a standard because it supports him but won’t endure its subsequent criticism, you know he’s just making an argument of convenience and shouldn’t be taken seriously. This is why people who refer to the Bible only when it helps them are properly described as religious hypocrites.

Just the other day I realized that self-described political “liberals” have been effectively guilty of this problem with one particular line of argument. In the debate over abortion, I have often heard that “Roe v Wade is settled law after 37 years.” Likewise, in the recent criticism of the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance, the allegation was that it, “overturned 100 years of legal precedent.”

Although I had never quite noticed before, I suddenly realized that these were conservative appeals, not liberal ones. It is conservatives who defer to traditions, and that’s why we might never have noticed the shameless irony of people trying to tell us on the one hand that legal abortion is a long-settled issue while on the other hand they tell us that a completely new definition of marriage is in order. It’s interesting, I think, that anyone calling himself a “progressive” would actually appeal to tradition this way. But then again, as in so many examples, people will say whatever they think will work.