Why make a case against conservative views when you can simply misrepresent them?

Liberals excel at slaying strawmen, creating false dichotomies, and generally misrepresenting the views of conservatives.  They also like to create absurd, unrealistic scenarios that would make it seem unconscionable to hold conservative views.  I see this phenomenon often in the comments sections on Pajamas Media and National Review Online.  One common argument of Internet-dwelling liberals is that conservatives want a libertarian paradise like war-torn Liberia or Somalia.  And of course, who can forget the frequent and passionate pleas on behalf of all those women who are pregnant after being raped and want to have an abortion?  (Proponents of abortion don't talk as often about the remainder of abortions, most of which are performed just because somebody doesn't want to have a baby.  See "Why women have abortions".)

Now, I wish to present Exhibit C.  Check out this totally unbiased article on Yahoo about a Republican debate, titled "Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die".  During the debate, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about a hypothetical, uninsured, comatose man and whether he should be left to die.  Immediately after this, a few people in the audience shouted, "Yeah!"  Personally, I think this outburst was a sarcastic response to a stupid question.  The unspoken false dichotomy is that you either have to support Obamacare in its entirety or you want poor people to die.  (And you probably hate puppies, too, you bastard.)  For all I hear about how nuanced, sophisticated, and intelligent liberals are, they sure aren't very good at making distinctions. 

I sincerely doubt that the good and generous people of the United States (and by "people", I mean conservatives) would let our hypothetical man die.  Blitzer's silly false dichotomy is nothing but an attempt to make conservative views of limited government and personal freedom seem unconscionable and ridiculous.  Harrumph!  Harrumph, I say!  End rant.

The New York Times Will Show You How Real Journalism Works

Take a look at the following observations from The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web by James Taranto:

The men who rank first and third in the list of longest-serving U.S. senators, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, both died this decade. That's not the only thing they had in common. Both began their careers as segregationist Democrats but later repented and supported civil rights legislation. Both had obituaries in the New York Times written by Adam Clymer--but therein lie some differences:

The Thurmond obit, published June 27, 2003, was headlined "Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100."

The Byrd obit, published today, is headlined "Robert Byrd, a Pillar of the Senate, Dies at 92." (The early online headline said "Respected Voice" rather than "Pillar.")

The Thurmond obit mentioned the senator's opposition to civil rights in the third paragraph.

The Byrd obit, doesn't get to his opposition to civil rights--and his membership in the Ku Klux Klan--until paragraph 16, the topic sentence of which is, "Mr. Byrd's perspective on the world changed over the years."

Now it is true that Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as a "States' Rights Democrat," so that he was a more important figure in the reaction against civil rights than Byrd was. On the other hand, compare and contrast these details from deep in the two men's obits:

Byrd, paragraphs 17-18: "Mr. Byrd's political life could be traced to his early involvement with the Klan, an association that almost thwarted his career and clouded it intermittently for years afterward. In the early 1940s, he organized a 150-member klavern, or chapter, of the Klan in Sophia, W.Va., and was chosen its leader."

Thurmond, paragraph 16: "In 1940, he called on the grand jury in Greenville to be ready to take action against the Ku Klux Klan, which, he said, represented 'the most abominable type of lawlessness.' "

There was one other big difference between the two superannuated senators: Whereas Byrd remained a Democrat until his death yesterday, Thurmond became a Republican in 1964. That may account for the somewhat different treatment they got from Clymer.