The Argument Of Exception

     The Left in this country, and around the world, use what I call the argument of exception to advance their agenda. They combine the argument of exception with the argument of emotion to employ a one-two punch to common sense and liberty. This has been a tactic of the Left for some time, but has been abundantly illustrated in the last four years by the Obama administration. President Obama used the argument of exception to sell his unaffordable care act, and when a vast majority of the public did not succumb to the argument of exception, he rammed it through Congress using bribes, threats and parliamentary tricks. The argument of exception has been used more recently by the gun-grabbing Left in a renewed push for more gun control.
     The argument of exception bases laws and policies, not on what is the normal state of things, but rather on the exceptions that are the outliers. This behavior can most vividly be seen in the way in which Leftists have argued for universal health care, especially over the last 20 years. In poll after poll during that time, 85% or more of poll respondents said they were happy with their current health care plans. But President Obama, and other Democrats before him, displayed the exceptions in the form of those people that, for one reason or another, were not well served by the health care industry. They also vastly overstated the number of people who fell into the exception by counting people who chose not to have health insurance for their own reasons that had nothing to do with any limits of the industry. So in essence, President Obama and the rest of the Left used one of the basic tenets of Marxism, turning the exception into the rule, in order to advance their unpopular agenda to limit personal freedom.
     We are currently in the throws of a debate on gun control that is illustrative of the Lefts use of the argument of exception. The Newtown, Connecticut massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school, and the shameless way in which President Obama and his minions of useful idiots in the media have used it, is a classic example of the argument of exception. As tragic and sickening as the slaughter of innocent children is, the massacre visited upon that community by Adam Lanza is the exception, not the rule. In fact, the hard data shows that gun violence has actually dropped in the last 20 years while private ownership of firearms has dramatically increased. So if a causal relationship existed between guns and gun violence, as the Left would have us believe, gun violence would have increased during that period.
     The Lefts use of the argument of exception is inherently dishonest because it aims, not to solve some pressing issue of society, but to use outlying anomalies to consolidate political power in a central authority that they control. The fuel that stokes the furnace of Leftism is the ill gotten freedoms of the people they are suppose to govern, and the argument of exception is a valuable tool with which they obtain that fuel.