To raise an argument against a liberal narrative is by itself considered to be an attack on the truth. According to liberals liberalism in all its forms is truth. There can’t be a challenge to such “truth.” To do so is to deny reality whether it’s about climate change, race, abortion, evolution, school choice, immigration, economic policy, etc. You name the issue, and you will find liberals who will denounce you for making an argument.

The latest example is from Jill Filipovic, senior political writer for the soft-porn magazine Cosmopolitan,1 who complained about comments made by people on the conservative comment site Twitchy regarding her pro-Planned Parenthood views:

“Filipovic decried how she had been ‘Twitchied,’ after she defended Planned Parenthood immediately after the Center for Medical Progress released its first undercover video on the abortion giant’s harvesting of unborn babies’ organs and tissue. She underlined that the conservative site’s ‘role as an organized harassment tool is almost never discussed,’ and contended that ‘going after liberals seems to be a part of their mission, but they also tend to single out women and people of color.’”

There you have it. To argue against a person’s position is “harassment.”

Filipovic’s article “The Right-Wing Hate Machine” describes how when she “tweeted out relevant information” (according to her) about the first Planned Parenthood hidden camera video in an attempt “to clarify that the group releasing the video, the Center for Medical Progress, was not actually a medical organization but anti-abortion activists posing as medical professionals,” she was taken to task in a less than sympathetic way.

We are talking about killing unborn babies which is a bit more morally atrocious than drowning a litter of puppies or a dentist killing a man-eating lion. These are babies, not fetal tissue.

It’s important to note how Filipovic framed her pro-abortion, pro-Planned Parenthood defense:

“The Twitchy post from July 14, 2015 documented that Filipovic attacked the Center for Medical Progress as ‘anti-choice internet yahoos,’ just two minutes after she underlined that the organization is ‘not any sort of medical group. It’s an anti-abortion group.’”

This is an argument? So what if the Center for Medical Progress group does not have medical credentials. That fact does not nullify what’s being revealed on the seven (so far) videos. A witness is a witness, even if the witness has an agenda. What do the videos reveal, and are the revelations true? You don’t have to be a medical practitioner to expose pre-meditated murder and the selling of the murdered victim’s body parts.

Did it matter that Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was not a professional authority when he investigated “the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States” and as a result exposed the “health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century” that became the novel The Jungle (1906)? Sinclair worked undercover in the meatpacking plants of the Chicago stockyards for his research.

There are numerous undercover videos about animal cruelty from groups like Mercy for Animals and websites with names like Butterball Abuse and Chick-fil-a Cruelty. Where are the hue and outcry from liberal groups about these undercover exposés?

Hoping to deflect attention away from the content of the Planned Parenthood videos, Filipovic asked, “Has anyone seen the actual names of the people who run ‘The Center for Medical Progress’? Ten dollars says they’ll be familiar anti-choice activists.” Of course they’re anti-abortion activists. No one is hiding that fact. They certainly wouldn’t be pro-abortion activists any more than those who might go undercover to expose animal cruelty would be indifferent to animal cruelty.

The agenda is to expose an opposing point of view. That’s what they do!

Filipovic goes on and on in her criticism of Twitchy and its content, all in an attempt to divert attention from the content of the bloody business of Planned Parenthood. It’s a classic case of a red herring. Her rant should be used in every class that teaches fallacious reasoning.

1. “Victoria Hearst, 58, the born-again Christian granddaughter of the Hearst Corporation founder, began a campaign in April, called Cosmo Harms Minors, which is aimed at forcing all retailers to censor the publication, and stop selling it to children under the age of 18. Along with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), a group which ‘opposes pornography by highlighting the links to sex trafficking, violence against women, child abuse and addiction’, the group has scored what it sees as a major victory in its campaign; as of [July 31, 2015] all stores owned by Rite Aid and Delhaize America (which includes Food Lion and Hannaford Stores) agreed to cover up issues of Cosmopolitan.” [↩]