Vol. 1.0.0

How to Argue With a Democratic | How to Recognize Closed Minded People

by Christopher Skyi on July 31, 2009

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How to Recognize Closed Minded People

How to Rec­og­nize Closed Minded People

Ques­tion: How do you argue with a liberal?

Answer A: Ask ques­tions and lay out the facts as best you under­stand them.

Answer B: Just agree

Answer B qual­i­fied: Just agree if the per­son is closed minded.

I’d like to focus on Answer B, qual­i­fied, and, by way of one exam­ple, address how to rec­og­nize peo­ple who are closed minded on a par­tic­u­lar topic.

How to Argue With a Rad­i­cal Left-Wing Demo­c­ra­tic Over Health Care

I had a shock­ing and unpleas­ant writ­ten exchange with Dr. Ron Chusid on his blog: Dr. Chusid is a Michi­gan based physi­cian and is the author of an extremely pop­u­lar, well-written rad­i­cal left-wing demo­c­ra­tic blog called Lib­eral Val­ues. He blogs on many top­ics, and not sur­pris­ingly, health care is one of them.

While it’s writ­ten from a clearly rad­i­cal left-wing per­spec­tive (per­haps more on the mod­er­ate end of the rad­i­cal left on some top­ics),  I liked and enjoyed it. I com­mented on quite a few posts, most of which are still up, and I was also inter­ested in learn­ing what made it such a pop­u­lar blog from the per­spec­tive of the writ­ing. I encour­age any­one who want to increase their own blog’s pop­u­lar­ity to study the author’s writ­ing and style.

How­ever, most while we’re all  ide­o­logues to some extent, most rad­i­cal left-wing ide­o­logues are fun­da­men­tally close minded and lazy indi­vid­u­als, and the break came over this post: Health Care Reform And Scary Exam­ples. I’ll let inter­ested read­ers work their way though the post and it’s com­ments, and I’ll just focus on the dra­matic high­lights with some comments.

I started to get into trou­ble with Dr. Chusid around com­ment #17, when I agreed with this part of the post:

I’ve fre­quently con­demned those who use the health care sys­tems in Great Britain or Canada as scare tac­tics to argue against health care reform. They should either be ignored as being totally igno­rant of the issues cur­rently under con­sid­er­a­tion or con­demned as liars who are dis­tort­ing the issue. Sys­tems such as those in Great Britain and Canada are not on the table, period.

I should have seen his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of those who bring up the health care sys­tems in Great Britain or Canada as “total igno­rant” or (worse) “liars” to be “con­demned” as red flags — but I had been com­ment­ing on his blog for sev­eral months, and I felt I the guy would be as fair and level headed as pos­si­ble over the issue of health care reform.

I con­tin­ued my comment:

True enough, team Obama is NOT using those plans as a tem­plate. But the cred­i­bil­ity prob­lem remains — call it what­ever you want—socialized med­i­cine … government-run health care … “a pub­lic plan”… indi­vid­ual & employer man­dates — a Wash­ing­ton Post-ABC News Poll, June 18–21, 2009 sur­vey found 4 out of 5 Amer­i­cans agreed that a health care pre­dom­i­nately run by the gov­ern­ment would: REDUCE HEALTH CARE QUALITY, INCREASE COSTS, LIMIT CHOICES OF DOCTORS, INCREASE THE FEDERAL DEFICIT.

The gloves are off and the fight is on, and I intend to join.  Cato.org will soon launch a series of radio ads (you can here one here) and Bob Barr has come out with this [Health care Never Never Land] in the Atlanta Jour­nal Constitution

…

With the auto bailouts, cap and trade, and now this health reform bill, Obama’ s domes­tic agenda will not be sup­ported by a vast major­ity of lib­er­tar­i­ans (many of who sup­ported his can­di­dacy).

We need health care reform, but not this!

Dr. Chusid responded:

Nobody is advo­cat­ing “government-run health care.” Most polls show pub­lic sup­port for the plan. Oppo­si­tion to the plan in some polls is not a reflec­tion of the plan but the degree to which they fall for the type of false right wing talk­ing points you quote.

I responded (note: this com­ment was deleted from the thread by Dr. Chusid, or some­one, so I’m recon­struct­ing it from mem­ory as best I can):

If it isn’t “government-run health care” then WHAT is it? A free mar­ket mar­ket approach? Is it an approach that advo­cates LESS gov­ern­ment involve­ment? If what you’re advo­cat­ing is MORE gov­ern­ment involve­ment, than that’s the prob­lem. That’s how I and every­one who’s against team Obama’s health care reform sees it. The bill clearly advo­cates MORE gov­ern­ment con­trol. While the cur­rent health care reform bill is not a full take over of health care, given that gov­ern­ment cur­rently directly or indi­rectly con­trols 46 per­cent of all med­ical care trans­ac­tions, this is step towards a health care pre­dom­i­nately run by the gov­ern­ment, exactly what many peo­ple fear. You have a cred­i­bil­ity prob­lem when you say “Nobody is advo­cat­ing ‘government-run health care’.”

How to Rec­og­nize When Peo­ple are Closed Minded on Cer­tain Topics

Dr. Chusid responded (Dr. Chusid, or some­one, sub­se­quently deleted this from the thread):

[Com­ment deleted for lying about the con­tents of my results and respond­ing with straw man attack.]

# Ron Chusid said:
July 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

So you not only post a bunch of false infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject but also lie about what what I have said on the topic.

I will not waste my time with peo­ple who resort to this. Your com­ments here will now be moderated.

Let me tell you, that was a kick in the gut. I couldn’t quite believe it. I was just pub­licly accused of being a liar and I fig­ured from that point on, if I con­tin­ued to press my case, ask ques­tions, chal­lenge an “author­ity” fig­ure, my com­ments would not be tol­er­ated because any­thing I say that cuts too close to the bone will be seen as “a bunch of false infor­ma­tion,” know­ingly, appar­ently, and will be sum­mar­ily expur­gated from the com­ment sec­tion. So you don’t waste your time, it’s crit­i­cally impor­tant to rec­og­nize closed minded peo­ple when it comes to spe­cific top­ics . To me, that Dr. Chusid is closed minded about this issue of health care reform is a no-brainer.

I told Dr. Chusid to do some­thing with his key­board that’s prob­a­bly phys­i­cally impos­si­ble, and I’ve never com­mented sub­se­quently on his blog, and I never will.

Accord­ing the head­lines, health care reform is in trou­ble. That’s too bad. The whole issue could pos­si­bly just be dropped because it’s become such a headache, or — more likely — the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor ideas will be the only ones to make it into a final­ized bill. What a wasted oppor­tu­nity. Like mil­lions of oth­ers, I don’t have health insur­ance and I check and dou­ble check both direc­tions before I cross any street. But the truth is, in Wash­ing­ton D.C., there never was an hon­est open debate on health care reform with all options on the table (see, for exam­ple, the Cato Institute’s excel­lent web site Cato On Health Care Reform. Reform, yes … but the right reform).

If Dr. Chusid is typ­i­cal of the mind set and atti­tude of those who advo­cate for the cur­rent health care reform bill, it’s lit­tle won­der the entire issue now seems bogged down in a quagmire.

But — that’s a good thing because:

Yes, House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee chair­man John Cony­ers (D-MI) ass is now in a sling …

The Real Goal of Demo­c­ra­tic Health Care Reform

If you’re inter­ested in read­ing about pro-market solu­tions to our cur­rent health care cri­sis, visit Cato On Health Care Reform or check out these links:

Stud­ies

Articles/Op-eds

Pod­casts

Books

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Tagged as: Health Care, Liberals, The Radical Left-Wing

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