Via Julian Sanchez's twitter feed, here's another reaction to Jim Manzi's takedown of Mark Levin's global warming denialism over at Redstate:
Mark recognizes that when you are at war, while it is important to get facts right (and I think Mark did a darned fine job sourcing his book, giving you the chance to criticize it), it is also important to inspire the troops and to do so by distilling the realities of the fight into useful information. I frankly don't know if every statistic in Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative was correct or not. Nor do I know if every statistic or number in Reagan's A Time For Choosing speech in 1964 was correct. I DON'T CARE. I know the facts were in the ballpark, and more importantly, the principles were timeless and correct. I have read Mark's book, and I know a little about the topics in question -- and it's a good book, with good citations and a lot of good facts.
The "war exception" that Republicans and now many Democrats think allows the government to dismiss constitutional protections against surveillance or right to trial is now being applied to empirical facts. Ceding the above freedoms is necessary because of the war against al-Qaeda, while abandoning any kind of attempt at determining empirical fact is necessary because of the war against liberals. This is all justified and necessary because there's no other way to preserve freedom and liberty against tyranny.
Right.
-- A. Serwer
