Law school professors

Schroeder’s a law student in Fort Worth, TX. One of his law school professors didn’t know that Ulysses S. Grant was a president. Schroeder had to argue about it with him and the rest of the class! Unbelievable story, which really is a great metaphor to the kinds of “debate” going on in the public policy arena these days.

In the last few days, there’s been some talk of a “reality-based community” that’s supposedly separate from some kind of non-reality-based community. The “reality-based community” uses facts and logic, whereas the others uses emotion and faith. Basically, a Blue vs. Red thing. The lingo sounds so elitist that it seems like something lying liars would have made up to make the left look bad.

But there’s a valid point in all that: these days in public discourse, non-facts are given the same weight as facts. Kerry said he earned his medals and some Vietnam vets said he didn’t, so the media reported on both without trying to conclusively determine whose argument was true and whose was false. One of them’s gotta be wrong!

If the media won’t analyze arguments anymore, we need to o it ourselves. Look at the original source material. Contact the authors — journalists are always willing to talk. Don’t believe a factual claim just because someone says it’s true. Otherwise, have no right to bitch when a law school professor teaches his class that Ulysses S. Grant wasn’t a president.