Worst argument about Michael Moore ever

It may seem counterintuitive, but I like taking conservatives seriously, I really do. Edmund Burke, for example. Great stuff there, and I actually agree with him on a few things, and even on those issues I continue to strongly disagree with him, I’ve benefited from taking him seriously. One of my favorite teaching moments is when I get (sometimes trick) liberal students into taking Burke a bit more seriously than they would like.

There are a few others in the realm of political theory. Oakeshott, Kekes, and even Von Hayek, while not as consistently worth reading as Burke, all have something of value to offer the thinking liberal/leftist.

Now I’d like all this to apply to contemporary conservative commentary. The problem isn’t that I refuse to take conservatives seriously, it’s that they won’t let me, by virtue of stupidity of the arguments they make. This has gotten worse in the last few years, as the largely self-inflicted pressure to defend the current administration’s policies on some level. Given few of these policies really have much to do with conservatism as a set of principles or governing philosophy, it’s caused even clumsier and sloppier thinking.

Jonah Goldberg seems to have a reputation for being one of the serious or thoughtful conservatives. I’m not sure where this comes from, but when he insinuates arguments like this, there’s not much that can be said. He could follow that a few thousand words of brilliant and incisive conservative social and political commentary, and I wouldn’t be able to recognize it as such, because I’d be thinking noone capable of suggesting a parallel between Michael Moore and Joe McCarthy can possibly have much of anything insightful to say on matters political.

Here’s the point:

If the new Moore-standard says you can be a force for good even if you argue through half-truths, guilt-by-association and innuendo, then the case against Joe McCarthy evaporates entirely.

Even if I were to stipulate to this criticism of Moore’s film, this argument would fail because…..well, I won’t insult your intelligence by spelling it out for you.

If you need a hint, it has something to do with political power being used to ruin peoples lives. And blacklists, too.

For first rate mockery of Goldberg, see fafblog.