Some of the implicit assumptions underlying liberal rhetoric

We all have assumptions that guide us, and we’re not obligated to explain them every time, regarding everything we say. However, to be an intelligent audience, we must always understand the speaker’s assumptions. In this excerpt from How The Left Was Won : An In-Depth Analysis of the Tools and Methodologies Used by Liberals to Undermine Society and Disrupt the Social Order (printed with author’s permission), Richard Mgrdechian explains some of the assumptions that underlie rhetoric from the Left:

Let’s Assume (Section 2 of Implicit Assumptions) (pages 46-48)

Liberals love to assume. “Rodney King was beaten because of racism”—we’ve all heard them say something to that effect. “You know the whole thing would never have happened if he was white.” Oh, I do; well tell me why. “Come-on, admit it—the cops were racist.” Okay, if you say so.

I don’t know about you, but I would have to think that all the other circumstances like the adrenaline of a high-speed chase, King’s maniacal behavior, his refusal to stay on the ground, the drugs involved and the officer’s fear for their lives having seen so many of their colleagues killed in the line of duty just maybe had a little bit to do with what happened. But don’t bother trying to explain that to a liberal because they will simply circle back to their implicit assumption about racism and scream it in your face even louder than they did the first time.

Want more liberal assumptions—how about those having to do with illegal immigration? If you happen to be opposed to it, it must be because you hate all immigrants. Of course, no consideration is ever given to the real reasons why immigration needs be controlled—you know, little things like preserving our own language and culture, reducing the risk of terrorism, ensuring that anyone who comes here contributes to the system rather than leaches off of it and to prevent the spread of certain diseases like tuberculosis, known by the CDC to have an extremely high incidence among certain groups of immigrants.

But enough about race. Now take a look at liberal environmental policies—there is certainly no shortage of implicit assumptions there. Take global warming for instance. Based on some very short term data, it seems that there has been an extremely slight (less than one degree Celsius) warming trend over the past hundred years or so. Looking at this, the logical questions would be: has this happened before and what could be the cause?

Well, in terms of this happening before, we all know about the ice age which ended around 10,000 years ago—one of dozens of ice ages over the past several million years, I might add. Now logically, if there have been all these ice-ages, there must have also been an equal number of periods of global warming. After all, something can’t get cold again unless it was somehow warmed back up.

This fluctuation naturally leads to a question, that question being—what is the “right” temperature for the earth? Should it be ten degrees warmer than it is now—or ten degrees cooler?

It turns out that the answer to this question is that there is no answer. There is no “right” temperature since the earth’s climate naturally goes through these sort of changes as a result of the cumulative effect of hundreds of different dynamics, most of which we have no understanding of whatsoever. But this fact has not stopped liberals from deciding that they know exactly what the right temperature is and exactly why it may be changing. They know (i.e. they implicitly assume)—with absolute certainty—that global warming is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases by corporations and SUVs.