The Conservative Quest to Eliminate Facts: If the facts are against you, just stop collecting them

[pampango]

The very first post at FactCheck.org referenced that great line from the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion — but not their own facts.”

During the years I spent at FactCheck, I certainly witnessed my share of politicians trying to make up their own facts. And while I wasn’t allowed to say this at the time, it was always pretty clear (to me, anyway), that one side was making up a lot more facts than the other. Republicans have happily embraced half-truths and outright falsehoods. From “death panels” to climate-change denialism to the austerity discussion to Paul Ryan’s budget math, the GOP appears to have embraced a policy of Making Stuff Up.

But now it seems that conservatives’ War on Facts has entered a new phase. If the facts are against you, just stop collecting them. Rep. Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, has introduced a bill that would prevent the federal government from collecting data about the economy.

That’s right. The bill would require that the Census Bureau stop collecting the information that economists use to calculate (among other things) the unemployment rate, the labor force participation rate, housing construction rates, trade deficits, and much more.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-conservative-quest-to-eliminate-facts/

I suppose it is intellectually honest of republicans, in a negative sort of way. If you are going to ignore facts and evidence anyway and just go with "making stuff up", you might as well save the money it takes to actually determine facts and collect evidence in the first place. Plus that way Democrats would have a harder time presenting facts and evidence to counter the fear and emotion that republicans spew out.

[Initech]

1. The trendy thing to do is to compare those facts to the Nazis.

Separation of church and state? Nazi tactic.
ACLU? They're part of a Nazi plot.
ACORN? They're the brown shirts.
The Peace Corps? Some may believe we're on the road to the Hitler youth.

[Wednesdays]

2. K & R

[librechik]

3. if it makes them look bad, they don't want anytone to see it. And facts always do!

[SunSeeker]

4. Yup, the Republicans already banned the feds from studying gun deaths.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. Or make up fake celebrity quotes to support what you want the facts to be.

Don't worry. Everyone will share them on Facebook and they'll soon be accepted as true.

[deutsey]

10. Or take quotes out of context

a la "You didn't build that."

[Tommy_Carcetti]

11. Or Shirley Sherrod.

God Bless the rotting corpse of Andrew Breitbart.

[Diclotican]

6. pampango

pampango

Wow, they really is not hiding it anymore, do they ?.. When the facts is different from what they believe - take away the facts - and let the story spinn...

Diclotican

[pampango]

8. Good to hear from you. Yes, they have gone from using half-truths to

an absence of facts altogether. Fear and emotion have always played a large role in their politics but now it seems they want to get away from using facts at all.

[Diclotican]

14. pampango

pampango

They do have no shame left do they ?... When the facts is different from what they want to have - then they will make it illegal to get the information - so they can lie all the way to the US congress.. Facts tend to be on the liberal side of the isle as we all know...

And it is good to hear from you too - hope you are well there you are

Diclotican

[Berlum]

7. Republicans went off the Honor Road long ago

Republicans show over and over and over that they do not honor truth, integrity, sincerity, or other people.

No wonder no one respects them.

[Enrique]

9. they want to go back to the oral tradition

all knowledge comes from the village elder, e.g. Rush Limbaugh.

[woo me with science]

12. This is the essence of Third Way corporate propaganda, too.

We are constantly exhorted to disbelieve what we see and hear and experience, every single day.

The betrayals come relentlessly, evey single day, one after another after another after another after another. Yet we are exhorted each time to believe that this case is special, an aberration, caused by Very Special Circumstances. It was Republican obstructionism (even when it clearly wasn't), or it was gazillion-dimensional chess with a purpose you could't possibly understand.

Like in the movie, Groundhog Day, we are expected to retain no memory or awareness of the relentless, horrifying pattern unfolding before us, but rather to maintain our Blind Belief in our Corporate Democrats' heartfelt support for the same values and policies we support, even when their actions repeatedly, relentlessly pursue the opposite.

We are told that Republican obstructionism is the problem, when a clear look at the actual betrayals shows the ludicrousness of that claim:

And when the excuses don't hold up anymore, when the list of egregious betrayals speaks for itself, pure denial is used, like a Mantra:

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
Drone murders are Legal, Ethical, and Wise.
Chained CPI is Superlative and Protects the Poor.
Obama put Social Security cuts on the table because he Opposes them.
Drones? What drones? What attack on Occupy?

[Wounded Bear]

13. It's why they cheer when they hear about glaciers melting....

They are a prime source of climate change science data.

Solution to glogal warming? Let the glaciers melt. That way they'll stop hounding us with facts.

[truebluegreen]

15. Yup. Reality has a well-known liberal bias...

so the best thing for a conservative is to stay away from anything resembling facts or knowledge.