I don’t watch a lot of debating TV shows, because the format is geared towards using shouting matches instead of actual discussion, causing the conservatives to “win” the debate while actually losing the argument, and causing me to want to poke my eyeballs out with a fork and run around with gauze wrapped around my eyes, draped in robes and telling people on the streets about the pending end of American civilization. That was my reaction after watching a few minutes of Bill Maher last night. When we first flipped it on, it was shockingly good. Not great—still jumping around, not making cohesive points, but at least it wasn’t a cage match between some liberals who actually want to talk about the issues and some conservative doing the dance of destroying the conversation so that no one can speak a moment of truth on TV. It was some actor/activist guy who was alright, though he got a little excited and stated things that were largely true in ways that made him easy to discredit. And then there was Robert Reich and Rep. Barbara Lee, both of whom were awesome and amazing and making solid, killer points about our coming economic downfall from the twin national disasters of funneling wealth up (to the upper classes from everyone else) and out (into Iraq). Because things were getting uncomfortably intelligent, they had to drag some pipsqueak conservative on stage. I forget her name, but her parents should be ashamed. At that point, all the oxygen left the room and stupid reigned supreme. The liberals were winning, but instead of making genuine arguments, they were stuck scoring points with the audience, which doesn’t amount to much at the end of the day.
But what occurred to me was that liberals or even people who just care about keeping this country from flying completely off the tracks do need to go on these shows, because these shows have the audience that we need to reach. But if you go on them, you’re going to face off with a conservative who isn’t there to argue (because their arguments don’t hold water), but to make sure that you don’t have a chance to argue your points. What we need is some kind of training to see these distraction tactics coming, so that people speaking for the left/thinking people can avoid these traps and make their arguments. Here’s a list of a few tactics conservatives use to shut down discussion, and what people arguing with them, especially on TV, need to do.
Moving goalposts/changing the subject. This was last night’s pipsqueak’s favorite tactic. She couldn’t make a coherent point, so whenever someone did make a point, instead of answering it, she jumped around like a madwoman. Reich was game for this and scored a small point on a technicality, but Rep. Lee dropped out almost completely. It was frustrating, because there’s a simple, straightforward way to get around this tactic, which is demand your opponent respond to the challenge they gave you.
For example, to address the idea of the poor suffering rich who pay so much in taxes, Reich was trying to express a fact, which is that the middle class pays more of our income to the government than the rich. This was making pipsqueak insane, because censorship of this fact is critical to retaining middle class support for the Republican party. She kept cutting him off, trying to shout over the fact, and Maher finally jumped in and allowed Reich to state it, pointing out that a rational person considers the tax burden as a whole, including sales taxes, property taxes, and payroll taxes to get the final percentage. At what point, the pipsqueak, beat on the facts, lied and moved the goal posts, trying to exclude certain taxes from being described as taxes, because they get paid back in services to the middle class.
What you need to do when someone argues like this is keep them honest. Reich tried, to be fair. He started to talk about how corporations and rich people do get “entitlements” in the form of bailouts, but that was probably the wrong strategy to take, because it allowed pipsqueak, with an assist from Maher, to change the subject to how bailouts are necessary to keep the economy from collapsing. What he should have done is reframed entitlements as services and said something like, “I don’t distinguish between different taxes for my bottom line, because taxes go in and services go out. And since the rich and corporations get more services than the middle class, they should pay more to get more.” And then go into the corporate bailout rant. At that point, pipsqueak will jump in, and you can say to her, “Why do you think that corporations and the rich should get more without paying more?” Stay on subject, keep them honest.
Smuggling in assumptions that are the actual argument. Favorite fucking tactic of the dishonest. Pipsqueak (sorry, I don’t remember her name—Amy something?) was a hotshot at this maneuver. Somehow, through the changing-the-subjects strategy, the topic got onto abstinence-only education. Pipsqueak just kept repeating one line over and over, which was something about how parents are the major influence on children’s morals and therefore sex education shouldn’t be in schools. Which, if you think about it, is a nonsensical thing to say, and Maher called her on it, pointing out that kids who don’t have perfect parenting could use some education to keep themselves from getting hurt.
But no one called her out on the underlying assumption she smuggled in with this nonsensical non-argument, which was her actual argument: That schools undermine parental authority. By repeatedly stating that this is something parents should teach, she was establishing the argument that school instruction and parental instruction cannot co-exist. That there’s actually such thing as teenagers out there who are eager to wait for marriage (or whatever—abstinence-only proponents don’t exactly share the values of most American parents, who don’t really care for their kids to wait for marriage so much as they want them to be adults) as instructed by parents, but give up the second they learn what a condom is. But no one called out her bullshit. How hard is it say, “Are you suggesting that because my kids learn the mechanics of contraception in school, I am forbidden to talk to them at home about morals or standards of behavior?”
Please, people who go on TV: Call out underlying assumptions.
Look! Over here! This is the strategy of refusing to talk about the real issues, instead dwelling on side issues that are minor, irrelevant, or in fact imaginary. This is a favorite tactic of anti-feminists. We have a troll or two going nuts on the blog now, and this is all they can do—talk about 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions of “convenience” and the poor male souls out there who got tricked into handing over their sperm to a woman looking for that gravy train of a child support check that will counterbalance her brand new child-related expenses to the tune of 10-15% of what they are.* In both cases, the issues are distractions from the real issue. Later-term abortions are a small minority of abortions, and even then, the vast majority of those are performed long before a fetus has developed into anything that reasonably could be called a “baby”. Most of them are done for health-related reasons, and the few that aren’t tend to be early 2nd term abortions that happen only because the woman in question was prevented by anti-choice tactics from getting a 1st term abortion. The man who was tricked into supplying his sperm is more the stuff of legend than reality, though of course I won’t say that it never happens. But MRAs pretend it happens exponentially more than it does, probably to a factor of hundreds or thousands of times more often than it does. But the woman who gets pregnant to get that child support check is the stuff of pure mythology; even those who do consider getting pregnant without getting a man’s cooperation are usually thinking about getting the baby, not the check.
Anyway, the point is that the myths of “2nd trimester abortion to fit her prom dress” and “conniving bitch who steals sperm” are set up to distract people from the real issues, which are the vast majority of women who get abortions as soon as they are able and the vast majority of child support cases, where the child was eagerly wanted and supported by the father until the divorce, and that the child support battles are over trying to control a woman who has slipped out of his control thanks to divorce laws.
The proper reply to people who yell, “Look! Over here!” is to say, “Actually, we can look at that after we’ve dealt with the actual issues, if you don’t mind. Or even if you do. Let’s talk about the majority of people and leave the stuff of urban legends or marginal cases out of this. There’s exceptions to every rule, but let’s talk about the rule, why don’t we?” Rinse and repeat until your audience sees distractions for what they are.
*For the record, that’s how I like to make money. By spending more of it than I’m taking in. Hey, MRAs say it’s a gravy train, so they would know.
34 Responses to “Debating those who won’t debate”
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Not to disagree with what you’re saying, but this appears to be true of the whole American middle classes at the moment, so you might forgive the MRA dickheads for getting confused about itSome of the above tactics sound familiar.
You nailed it, Amanda.
Pipsqueak is the new “conservative” regular on the Maher show, usually as a panelist. She is the apparent replacement for Ann Coulter.
I also find Pipsqueak extremely annoying, for all of the reasons you documented, plus she speaks in a smooth, civil-seeming tone which is less jarring than Coulter’s jarring histrionics, which to the uninformed can almost sound reasonable. That makes her even more undermining overall, IMHO.
Amy Holmes is her name–I’m watching it right now, and you’re exactly about the tactics she uses. Another part of the smuggling in underlying assumptions is the constant repeating of things that are factually inaccurate. Holmes said over and over that contraceptive education didn’t work, when in fact, it has done a terrific job in lowering teen pregnancy and STD rates. Is it going to lower them to zero? No (and this is related to goalpost moving), but no one ever said it was going to. We’re just trying to get it lower.
Meh. I suspect part of Holmes’s ability to get onto television is that she’s a telegenic woman of color who happens to be conservative, and that’s a hard combo to find.
Amy Holmes is her name–I’m watching it right now, and you’re exactly about the tactics she uses. Another part of the smuggling in underlying assumptions is the constant repeating of things that are factually inaccurate. Holmes said over and over that contraceptive education didn’t work, when in fact, it has done a terrific job in lowering teen pregnancy and STD rates. Is it going to lower them to zero? No (and this is related to goalpost moving), but no one ever said it was going to. We’re just trying to get it lower.
Meh. I suspect part of Holmes’s ability to get onto television is that she’s a telegenic woman of color who happens to be conservative, and that’s a hard combo to find.
Collect the whole series of stratagems!!!
man, this should be required reading of all bloggers who likes brawlings… heee…
It’s like the complete Kung-Fu moves for bad behavior online.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/index.html
The Art of Controversy
Arthur Schopenhauer
Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem the contrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.
…
Dialectic, then, need have nothing to do with truth, as little as the fencing master considers who is in the right when a dispute leads to a duel. Thrust and parry is the whole business. Dialectic is the art of intellectual fencing; and it is only when we so regard it that we can erect it into a branch of knowledge. For if we take purely objective truth as our aim, we are reduced to mere Logic; if we take the maintenance of false propositions, it is mere Sophistic; and in either case it would have to be assumed that we were aware of what was true and what was false; and it is seldom that we have any clear idea of the truth beforehand. The true conception of Dialectic is, then, that which we have formed: it is the art of intellectual fencing used for the purpose of getting the best of it in a dispute; and, although the name Eristic would be more suitable, it is more correct to call it controversial Dialectic, Dialectica eristica.
Dialectic in this sense of the word has no other aim but to reduce to a regular system and collect and exhibit the arts which most men employ when they observe, in a dispute, that truth is not on their side, and still attempt to gain the day. Hence, it would be very inexpedient to pay any regard to objective truth or its advancement in a science of Dialectic; since this is not done in that original and natural Dialectic innate in men, where they strive for nothing but victory. The science of Dialectic, in one sense of the word, is mainly concerned to tabulate and analyse dishonest stratagems, in order that in a real debate they may be at once recognised and defeated. It is for this very reason that Dialectic must admittedly take victory, and not objective truth, for its aim and purpose.
—
I.
The Extension.—This consists in carrying your opponent’s proposition beyond its natural limits; in giving it as general a signification and as wide a sense as possible, so as to exaggerate it; and, on the other hand, in giving your own proposition as restricted a sense and as narrow limits as you can, because the more general a statement becomes, the more numerous are the objections to which it is open. The defence consists in an accurate statement of the point or essential question at issue.
———-
VIII.
This trick consists in making your opponent angry; for when he is angry he is incapable of judging aright, and perceiving where his advantage lies. You can make him angry by doing him repeated injustice, or practising some kind of chicanery, and being generally insolent.
—
XL.
If you make an induction, and your opponent grants you the particular cases by which it is to be supported, you must refrain from asking him if he also admits the general truth which issues from the particulars, but introduce it afterwards as a settled and admitted fact; for, in the meanwhile, he will himself come to believe that he has admitted it, and the same impression will be received by the audience, because they will remember the many questions as to the particulars, and suppose that they must, of course, have attained their end.
…etc etc….
One thing that has vaguely annoyed me about liberals is that they are seemingly unwilling to play dirty and petty when it comes to TV debating shows or-and hopefully this is not the case-they feel that are above it.
Television is an entrainment genre; save the calm, rational debate for the pages of the New Republic.
Seriously great points.
The pipsqueak’s name is Amy Holmes, and she’s the most annoying thing about BIll Maher;s show. We won’t discuss why Bill has such a braindead reactionary as a regular commentator, but the fact that he kept touching her during the discussion might shed some light on it…
Dawkins is on next week though, which should be awesome.
Jonathan, they don’t have to play dirty. They just have to call out the dirty tactics of conservatives.
I’ve often thought a long article, with examples of such tactics and methods of defeating them, would be a very good thing to have and spread around. For everybody.
Just to flesh that idea out:
1) for each type of tactic, give two modern examples from actual discussions.
2) show how they work, why they are bullshit, and how to recognize them QUICKLY — ‘what are their earmarks’. (The faster recognized, the more time to arrange one’s ammo.)
3) give strategy and tactics for defeat of same.
And about strategy:
4) how to phrase one’s points in a bulletproof manner so as to defeat the opponent before they can start huffing and puffing and lying. IE, denying them the opportunity for distortion.
Now, what publication would be the most effective to get that out and USED?
Apropos (well, vaguely) of the “different taxes” bit, check out the latest bit of class warfare from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/05doctors.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Universal health care would work just fine if it weren’t for all those poor people clogging up the works, getting care and stuff like they matter or something. Yup. That’s the problem, there’s the solution. Simple.
Eric, Rejector of Memes April 5, 2008 at 1:13 pm
1) for each type of tactic, give two modern examples from actual discussions.
uhm, wouldn’t it be better to actually catalog all of rightwing common fallacies? (use wiki and swarm it?)
just basic fallacies category are all over the net.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fallacies&btnG=Search
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
PS. when will pandagon actually own a wiki? And move out of blogsome?
The only strategy I’ve really seen really work was an interview on Bill O’Reily where Radley Balko would calmly yell “let me finish, let me finish” whenever Bill would try to interrupt him, and then he’d shoot out his talking points. (I’ve seen Christopher Hitchens do this too, and others “you invite me on this show and you talk over whatever I have to say [talking point]”)
To get caught up on having an intellectual “win” over the other commentators is loosing the eye on the prize.
“Mistaking facts for values”: For all their bluster about morality, conservatives actually rarely make an argument that explicitly states their principles. I think there’s two possible reasons for this: 1) They don’t have any principles or 2) Their principles are so obviously distasteful that few people would ever listen if stated explicitly. What they do instead is throw around some half-baked claims that sound like facts. For instance, “Fetuses are humans.” Well, no shit sherlock. They ain’t canines, that’s for sure. But the fact that fetuses are humans only relates to the ethics of abortion if you accept the claim that we can never act in a way that ends the existence of another human, which is not a claim that stands up to examination.* This is why being ‘pro-life’ is a BS claim for most conservatives—it is entirely inconsistent with the rest of their professed values that allow poor people to starve, wage war on innocent children as long as they are brownish, etc.
This form of argumentation goes hand in hand with the smuggling in assumptions Amanda detailed. When they say “moral training mostly happens at home” that’s a rather non-controversial fact. I sure don’t know any liberals that disagree with that fact or want it to be otherwise. But when it’s used in the context of sex-education, stating that fact is supposed to stand in for the values of “children ought to remain ignorant of sex in the way we want them to.”
The tactic for the brain-endowed amongst to combat this kind of argument is to bring it right back to the values. Let them have those kind of non-controversial facts but force them to actually state their values. And then point out how ridiculous those values are then state your own. Let them say “Fetuses are human” and “Moral education happens at home” and then ask them what that means for making actually moral decisions about those facts.
*From my little corner of the universe, philosophical ethics, there’s a classic article by Judith Jarvis Thompson, “A Defense of Abortion” that is the epitome of this strategy.
Amanda, you might be interested in Bronze Dog’s Doggerel Index, which is a very comprehensive list of bad argumentative tactics used by anyone who doesn’t have the truth on their side.
OT: Elinor, can you explain how the poor wouldnt have an adverse financial effect on universal health care? I’m all for universal health care and think some system like what I had in the military would be great but its not wrong to say that the poorest 10% will get more in benefits than they put in and will generally raise the overall cost higher, thats just the way it is. its not a good argument for not doing it though. i usually spin it as free/low cost preventitve health care for the poor will save us more money that how we currently treat the group but the basic argument is not incorrect.
great analysis - I want to be a tv debater someday! and i think your tactics rock
james…
to attept to answer, you are kinda right - the poorest 10% are seen in crises, when it cost about 400,000% to treat, than if they were seen in a prevanative medicine sort of way. not to mention that part of the tone i think elinor was decrying was the tone that “poor people are less deserving” and “poor people are taking away what’s ours”. which is totally fucked up. Braham Lincoln was POOOOOOOOOOOR, and look at what HE did.
James, it’s reasonable to think that in a universal system, where prevention is available to all people, overall costs will go down over time as people are able to pay the penny to prevent to get out of the pound of cure. We can also point out to the nervous ninnies that someone has to pay for E.R. visits from the poor, even if they default themselves on the bills. We’re already paying their bills, so this will save money by preventing them from racking up the bills. Plus, it’ll free up the lines in emergency rooms that are currently clogged up with people that didn’t get treatment earlier, before the condition was an emergency, because they couldn’t afford it. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve sat in E.R. for an hour or more, when it seemed 90% of people getting called in line for me were people with kids who just have colds that took really bad turns for the worse.
Funny, I wrote about this exact same thing three days ago. I’m getting bloody tired of right-wingers who are basically only there to control the discourse and pollute the semantic environment.
Amanda, the next time you borrow one of my posts, a hat tip would be good…
(Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ; you choose.)
jamespi April 5, 2008 at 3:37 pm
OT: Elinor, can you explain how the poor wouldnt have an adverse financial effect on universal health care? ”
That’s like asking:
How can we know giving free public education for all citizen wouldn’t bankrupt the nation?
It won’t. Naturally the structure of public health system will need to be altered. But I think the benefit from prevention alone will boost productivity that much higher.
imagine: what an early cancer prevention will do to a productive wage worker instead of him, going bankrupt unable to pay insurance after the cancer grows out of control.
Most microbial and viral diseases only need to be studied once to solve it. Currently relatively wide range of cancer are studied and showing progress. (eg. within a decade, having cancer is nothing more than going to walmart getting OTC drug)
Remember when flu brings down army and almost destroy a nation?
Does spending time caring and curing polio for everybody bankrupt the health care system?
think about that!
What if, the drug company wants to keep the current system simply because it’s more profitable? (eg. extending patent indefinitely, manipulating insurance/health service price, lobby, etc)
There are main successful tactic? Go on the offensive.
Someone mentioned that many conservative “thinkers” don’t want their statements looked at very carefully because they’re aware a majority of the public would reject them. So, you very helpfully provide the information in an easy to digest form that’s deliberately provocative.
Just as one example:
“Anti-abortion activists want rape victims to go to jail.”
As they sputter in indignation, that’s when you get them to defend their “abortion should be a crime but we won’t mention what the punishment should be” public position. And you keep hammering them on it.
Rinse, wash and repeat for whatever arguments you want.
Since I get the distinct impression that conservative scumbags commentators get their daily marching orders from some central organization (www.karlrove.org??) via (originally fax, now) email, I was wondering if there’s some analogous group that does something similar for the liberal side?
Someone framing the questions in the way we’d prefer.
(Or is it really an emergent phenomena, they way they all suddenly use the same ‘talking points’ (a phrase I detest)?)
“I was wondering if there’s some analogous group that does something similar for the liberal side?”
Wingnuts, almost by definition, worship authority and want to be told what to do.
The Left is too diverse, and anti-authoritarian for that kind of thing to work, IMHO…
TECHNOTE: arggghh! various types of HTML tags that appear in the preview are being ignored.
For instance, in the preview, this entire sentences is ’struckthrough’. I’m pretty sure it won’t be once it appears.
The word ’scumbag’ in my previous comment was supposed to have been struckthrough.
MikeEss, good point, and backed up not only by instinct but social research.
Maybe if we framed it as a resource rather than ‘authority’.
EG:
“Getchyerr neo-con flyswatters HERE!!!”
“The Daily Comeback”
“Smackdown-a-Day”
etc
Well, Rockridge Institute is trying to be such an institution for our side.
Anyway, I watched a lot of TV back in the 03/04 election and I was specifically looking for people on our side who are good at debating on TV. And there was only one who did it well: Elizabeth Edwards.
Sure, the talking heads tend to treat her well (especially now), but still, they asked tough questions about her husband’s run for Presidency. What did she do?
She would always repeat the question, but while doing this she would change the underlying assumptions, i.e., change the question posed with a conservative frame into a question with a liberal frame. Then she would answer her own question. That usually completely derailed the further questioning by Blitzer/Matthews/Scarborough et al.
I am sure some of those interviews are on YouTube and we can study them.
Well, they have an inbred group of talking point generators where they test out this idea and that and see what works best. You have Rush “I’m just an entertainer anyway!” Limbaugh who can float out a bunch without any risk to himself. But really, they just keep swarming until they finally come up with a point that sounds good. Ref: S-CHIP, “Why don’t they try to insure *every single child* before allocating a single dollar more for insuring anyone”?
Just looked up Amy Holmes - not much there…
Found her listing in Washingtonian Mag a ‘fabulous single’
20 Fabulous Singles: Amy Holmes
Share | Print By Garrett M. Graff , Ann Limpert
They’re smart, funny, successful, and available—for now
Amy Holmes, 32
Job: Speechwriter for Senate majority leader Bill Frist Education: BA in economics from Princeton University. Hometown: Seattle. Now lives in DC’s Kalorama. Dream date: I’ve been lucky to go on some whirlwind dates with elaborate travel. But one of my best dates was right here in Washington during the February blizzard. Very romantic. Favorite hangout: Sette is perfect for a casual dinner al fresco. Proudest achievement: Forgiving my ex-boyfriend. Favorite date spot: I just had a very lovely date kayaking on the Potomac. Would you ever go on a blind date? Sure, why not. We’re meeting in a public place. Shortcomings: Let’s leave a little mystery. Finding out is half the fun.
and her Wikipedia entry -
Amy Holmes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Amy Holmes (born Lusaka, Zambia 1973) is a Republican strategist and political contributor for CNN and FOX News Channel. She has also appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher several times. Holmes graduated from Princeton University with a BA in economics in 1994.
Holmes was born in Zambia to an African father and a caucasian American mother.[1] She was raised in her mother’s native Seattle after her parents divorced when she was three.[1] She has been linked romantically to columnist Lloyd Grove and journalist Mickey Kaus. She co-hosted The View in November 2006 and May 2007.
Sadly, she seems to have as much depth as the Rio Grande in mid August.
Eric Rejector of Memes:
Not to be too self-promoting but over at the scienceblogs network we’ve been discussing the methods of denialists and cranks for almost a year now.
Amanda has hit on some pretty common ones but the major five tactics indicating pseudoscience/denialism are conspiracy theories (the non-parsimonious kind), cherry-picking, citing fake experts, moving goalposts, and various fallacies. Come see what we’ve done over the years, you might like us.
(We like Bronze dog’s doggerel too and he’s a frequent commenter)
Eric, Rejector of Memes:
Not to be too self-promoting Eric but I think you’d like our work describing the tactics of denialists and cranks over at the denialism blog.
I will take one major exception with Bill Maher. He’s an anti-vaccine crackpot and borderline germ theory denier who within this very episode basically attacked all of western medicine and made it sounds like doctors are killers. The left has it’s problem with anti-scientific crackpottery too and Maher is a good example of this once he opens his mouth to talk about medicine. When he does he’s just as bad as Coulter or D’Souza or any other crank.
Well, obviously there are costs. However, the article seems to me to suggest that insuring poor people (and training women to be doctors, horrors!) is causing a doctor shortage and there’s no way to get out of it besides taking those people off insurance.
I’m not all that informed on this, but I can think of other possibilities. Perhaps there are qualified people who want to go to medical school and can’t get in, or who have foreign medical degrees and can’t get their credentials recognized. (The government of my home province restricted the number of medical school spots about 15 years ago, IIRC, and now we have — oh yes — a doctor shortage.) Maybe doctors would be willing to work for less money (that $70,000 a year quoted in the article isn’t exactly poverty-line) if they had less debt. Perhaps the government of Massachusetts should have fought harder with the insurance companies to keep costs down, or perhaps for-profit medical insurance isn’t compatible with universal health care.
I’m not saying any of this is simple, but the tone of the article really pissed me off (just as denelian said). There are lots of ways to deal with these crises that don’t involve cutting poor people off from basic health care.
Eric, rejector of memes:
Since I get the distinct impression that conservative scumbags commentators get their daily marching orders from some central organization (www.karlrove.org??) via (originally fax, now) email, I was wondering if there’s some analogous group that does something similar for the liberal side?
In Australia, we call it TEH HIVEMIND