The fallacy of verbal facility

I know I’ve posted before about a very common error on the Left:  The belief that, if someone speak fluidly and articulately, his ideas must be as good as his presentation.  The examples of famous evil demagogues, with the most famous being Hitler, fail to deter Progressives from this belief.  The same people are equally committed to the corollary idea, which is that a hesitant speaker, such as George Bush or Moses, must have bad ideas.

Let me say this very clearly (given my wonderful verbal skills):  Oral fluency has nothing to do with the quality of ones ideas.  Both Hitler and Churchill were gifted speakers.  One was a fount of evil thought; the other a man deeply committed to Western freedoms.

I mention this because, once again, the New York Times has given space to an idiot, this time a man who is outraged that Joe the Plumber got a book deal, when others who handle the English language more elegantly (at least, in the opinion of this particular Times‘ guest writer) did not.  Certainly, if you have good ideas, it’s easier to convey them if you’ve mastered your audience’s language.  But for this writer to assume that those who have mastered the language have good ideas, while someone who is not verbally gifted has only bad ones, is the kind of typical failed logic that characterizes modern education and that drags our world down on a daily basis.