Who Can Really Say?

Impose This!

The other day I posted about something I called ugly, an RNC campaign flyer that warned the Bible would be "banned" as part of a "liberal agenda" if Democrats are elected. (It doesn't mention any candidates by name, at least not on the one side of the flyer available to view here.) The RNC has now acknowledged they sent the flyer. Eugene Volokh has several posts. I second Captain Ed's comment:

No one, to my knowledge, has ever raised the question of banning the Bible. In fact, that smear is as grounded in reality as Republicans supposedly secretly planning on bringing back the draft. It's a stupid charge, easily debunked, and insults the intelligence of the voters to whom it was directed. In the Internet age, spewing forth like this only makes the spewer look bad when they're caught, and as Dan Rather found out, they inevitably are. The RNC should apologize.

Political rhetoric often stretches accuracy and logic. The flyer argues that liberals want to "impose" their values. I don't know whether it's funny or ironic when Democrats argue the very same thing in opposition to flyers like this one. The argument suggests that it's simply wrong to impose any values, but every law is based upon some value or other, and once it becomes law that value is "imposed", isn't it? I think we'd be better off, or at least appear slightly smarter if we admitted this and started arguing over which values are the ones we want.

Posted by Peter at September 25, 2004 07:06 AM