If we only allow people with first-hand experience to comment on an event, we deprive ourselves of the wealth of comment, much of it good, which comes from people who study events or write about the human condition from a different position. As a historian, I recognize that I cannot personally observe what happened at an event in the past. However, I can examine the evidence left by the participants, read what other people at the time thought, and try to make an intelligent comment on what took place. Historians and writers constantly work with events they did not personally observe. Shakespeare may not have been in Rome, but knew enough about human nature and the history of Rome to make Julius Caesar an effective play, one that we continue to read.

First hand experience can be very important, but it is also wise to remember that participants often have emotional ties that prevent them from being impartial reporters. This comes back to a point I made earlier regarding presidential actions in war time. If we had investigated the actions of Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR during their lives, we might have treated them differently than we do, having had some time to put their decisions to suspend civil liberties into a larger historical context.

I do not believe that it is necessary for Charles Krauthammer to visit a battle field to write intelligently about the war in Iraq. Klein is welcome to his opinion. If he really believes that one should have first hand experience before writing, I would like to know how much experience Klein has with the subjects he writes on. I don’t know how much experience Klein has with living in a wheel chair, but I suspect it isn’t much. I don’t wish him the misfortune to find out what it is like. I do think Klein’s way of arguing his opinion that first hand experience is the most important way of understanding events was handled in a singularly tactless and hurtful manner. In that sense, Klein shows himself to be a very small man, indeed.

As I noted, regardless of who is making that claim about what, the claim itself is universally used near-exclusively to invalidate and discredit and disqualify any observation or opinion that differs from the orthodoxy of the group or person claiming unique understanding, regardless of actual validity — even if they themselves have no first-hand experience, and are simply supporting the orthodoxy of others. As with the Chicken Hawk meme pushed by the anti-war crowd, the vast bulk of whom have zero military experience.

Also routinely seen with minority-status issues. Even there, the qualifying nuance is often borrowed from generations previous, as if the qualifying emotional nuance was genetically transmitted. Unsurprisingly, that genetic nuance memory is only acceptable if you agree with the orthodoxies of the claimant.

But I stand by my point. It may not have been the best constructed argument, and so perhaps Garland is right to call me out on that, but Klein is saying that without first hand experience, it is easier for ideology to blind you.

I simply disagreed, and thus pointed out that all the priests, popes, bishops, and pastors of the world have no first hand experience with the tenets supposedly taught by Jesus, and yet claim to be able to write about and make proclamations on these things.

On the other hand, a huge number of people had first hand experience on the Iraq War, and still disagreed on how to go about it. Likewise, a huge number of people had first hand experience on detainee interrogations and still disagreed on how to go about it.

So the assertion that first hand experience necessarily gives you the ability to clearly see the truth of a situation is wrong. It may do that but it also may not.

The apologists really hate it when you’re on target.

The thing is that you can keep making assertions every time you are criticized. You are probably perfectly right, and it doesn’t change a thing. This isn’t a case of a subjective complaint used selectively or with bias. This isn’t a case of judging paintings differently depending on the painter, it is a matter of pointing out what sort of wood was used in the frame. When a person happens upon a painting with a mahogany frame and says that the frame is mahogany, his lack of a history of pointing out every mahogany frame he sees doesn’t suddenly make the frame in question turn into sandalwood. Inherently assertions in this thread had the quality of not being backed up; they were framed in mahogany. I point out that quality and I am perfectly accurate. Doesn’t mean that I’m not biased – but my bias doesn’t take away this quality from the assertions. I don’t see many liberals on this site who I can fail to criticize for making generalized statements that lack any serious attempts at foundation, maybe this could explain your point of contention.

“Anyway, if data is what you need to prove the existence of a general pattern of liberals finding excuses to suppress speech they disagree with, I urge you to check out the database of college speech codes at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.”

Link didn’t work, but I checked it out. So apparently you’ve devoted some time to research this – good work. Have you studied the contemporary contentions over free speech in general? Naturally, if you focus on either left-wing encroaching on free speech or only the situation in academe, you are going to be given the impression that they are worse on free speech. I still think your corpus doesn’t lend itself to say x about left-wingers or leftists every time an anecdote crops up. The statement is still too sweeping and heavy to be carried by the examples of college speech codes, sinister and unacceptable thought they may be.

“Liberals pressuring the New York Times and other newspapers to remove all conservative voices from their op-ed pages use justifications that boil down to “they think bad thoughts”.”

The NYT and other newspapers are a part of the market. Of course you can use your free speech to persuade a newspaper to drop a columnist – if left-wingers are better at using their free speech to that effect, so be it. If it was the other way around, so be it. That’s not a constriction of free speech from my point of view. “They think bad thoughts” is probably not an inaccurate summary of their “reasoning”, but the way I see it they are not limiting actual speech, something that can’t be justified anyway.

“You can also review the statements made by many liberals calling for the return of the Orwellian-misnamed “Fairness Doctrine” as a tool to shut down conservative talk radio. ”

*Public* conservative talk radio. Yes, I agree that despite the rationale about there being a limited range of public FM bands, it makes no sense to somehow keep things 50/50. It’s impossible and arbitrary to create those proportions.

“P.S. Let me guess — the examples I provide above aren’t “extensive” enough to be treated as “data”. I saw that evasion coming the first time you made a demand for “extensive data” as a prerequisite to your willingness to deal honestly with a criticism.”

Course they are data. I’m simply pointing out that the scope of the data is not supposed to be dwarfed by the scope of the statement.

The thing is that from the beginning I was objecting not to the idea that left-wingers might be prone to limit speech (the assumption that I was just came out of the blue, which is another observable pattern) but rather questioning Orson’s, Michael’s and Tully’s attempts to sneak in a few lazy blanket jabs.