It appears that the jury is still out on the authenticity of this quote and that source.

I do agree of course that Ferguson shouldn’t have claimed that Gore didn’t footnote if he actually did.

This is just one trivial example, but it does domonstrate the manner in which they work. Most people have not read the works of liberals, or heard their actual talks. Conservatives tell bold lies, such as in this case the implication Gore has a book full of false information, boldly lying about the lack of footnotes. (When accused of lying on this, only the American conservative mind might insist this is true, and feel justified in ommitting the fact that he does have end notes.) Most readers will take for granted that the columnist is correct that Gore provides no references for his facts, and may not even realize that Gore’s argument does not depend upon the accuracy of this quotation. They read such columns taking away the message that Gore cannot be believed.

In doing blog posts I’ve found that there are many quotations attributed to historical figures which are not accurate. If true that Lincoln did not really say this, I could forgive Gore the error, especially as he has a reasonable source cited. However, all Ferguson had to do was to actually look at the book to realize his argument was in error. (I wonder if he invented this lie himself, or if someone else passed on the claim and he never bothered to actually read the book he comments on.)

We see the same type of attack all the time. The interent and conservative columns are packed with claims showing inaccuracies in An Inconvenient Truth, but these are typically misquotations of what Gore said followed by a strawman attack. There is room for valid differences of opinion, but instead of expressing these the right concentrates on lying about the liberal message instead. We also went through the 2004 election in which most of the attacks on Kerry had nothing to do with his actual positions, but were based upon twisting what he said. Finally, seeing failures ranging from Iraq to Katrina, the voters in 2006 began to see through the conservative misinformation campaigns.

Michael, during the discussion of the posts on the definition of liberalism you mentioned that you could have written something similar, substituting conservativism for liberalism. The point is that in the United States the differences between liberals and conservatives is often not over great differences in ideology, but matters of accepting reality. Conservative arguments are dominated by falacious assumptions and distortions of the fact.

I may have disagreements with other liberals, but the nature is different than with conservatives. Sure, there are elements of the looney left which are no better than the right. For the most part, liberals can agree over the basic facts and have reasonable differences of opinion–with such differences sometimes coming closer to European conservative views. There is just no common ground for discussion with the right as lies such as those seen in this column come so freely from them.

This is how they typically work.

Yes, I did notice the irony that Ferguson didn’t check his facts either (or that he simply chose to lie of course).

You did good this time.

Let me add to your admirable desire not to smear Mr. Gore, and would that the major pundits of our wholly inadequate press corps shared your honesty and commitment to fairness, this thought; please, don’t miss the irony that in a column calling Gore out for not documenting his arguments in his new book, Mr. Ferguson fails to offer the reader not only the fact that the book does have documentation of sources, something that becomes obvious by merely thumbing through the book, but fails also to note that there is a source for the Lincoln quote, which dates back to the late nineteenth century, and which has only be questioned as authentic in 1999.

Again, thank-you for your honesty.