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Forbes.com has posted an opinion piece by Kerri Toloczko with the damning title “
tice Department Selectively Blocks Mergers By Republican CEOs .” And this is not merely a headline, as Ms. Toloczko summarizes her piece with this sentence: “If money buys favors from the Obama Administration, a lack of it produces the opposite.” She means that the Obama administration’s law enforcement agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the FCC, are biased against Republicans.The article is a lively collection of anti-Obama anecdotes. If you are inclined to believe its thesis, then you will find red meat in its lurid tales of influence.
But, as a piece of political analysis, it stinks. In fact, it’s a sad example of the non-objective journalism that increasingly dominates our culture.
Objectivists stand for individual liberty . But more than that, we stand for objectivity.
About those anecdotes: Ms. Toloczko trots out affecting accounts of a subsidy showered on an unworthy company here, a merger blocked there. In these cases, Democratic donors received benefits, and Republican donors were disadvantaged. Noting that Comcast “CEO Brian Roberts is an Obama golfing buddy whose political giving is 90% Democratic,” she implies that the proposed merger of Comcast with Time-Warner Cable will likely be approved by anti-trust authorities just because of Roberts’ politics and those of other staff.
But three stories do not a statistical analysis make. (Nor do four, as in the more extended version of her argument posted at Frontiers of Freedom ). A few stories just aren’t sufficient evidence of a wide-spread pattern of political discrimination.
Objectivists stand for individual liberty , so we stand against much of what the Obama administration is doing in economic and tax policy. But more than that, we stand for objectivity .
And objectivity is based in marshalling sufficient evidence for general claims . A few anecdotes rarely prove anything.
I’m sure I could find you a story of a strong woman who was a violent murderer. And I’m sure I could identify a weak man who was peaceable. But it would be wrong to infer from those two cases that women are more likely to commit violent crimes than men. They aren’t.
What Ms. Toloczko has not provided is any proof at all that the Justice Department is biased against Republican CEOs.
In our crony-capitalist , war-of-all-against all , I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case, but Ms. Toloczko hasn’t shown that it is.
And by pretending that she has, she has undermined the very objectivity that she claims to favor.
We will win nothing, if in advancing pro-freedom ideas, we destroy the public’s ability to discern truth from falsehood and logic from fallacy. Any President, including President Obama, merits objective scrutiny, and nothing less.
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