Got Logic?

Greatest Jeneration has a post about the murder of two relatives of a Chicago federal district judge. For background: The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the background of this case, for those of you who are not yet aware of the history between the federal judge and the white supremacists suspected of killing her husband and mother.
I mention the Greatest Jeneration’s post because one of my goals in blogging is to take arms against simplism and ignorance. This post offers me an opportunity to fulfill both of these aims at once. Partisans of every faction are always apt to read into every situation a confirmation of their biases and theories, but one would hope that half a minute’s thought would catch most of these errors. Apparently G.J. didn’t spare those thirty seconds. Her conclusion? The “Liberal Leftist Supremes” who “rule by seeming divine right” encouraged the murder of the judge’s kin. What’s more: “If someone wants to kill someone else in Illinois now, they can use underage killers with even more impunity after yesterday’s SCOTUS decision.”
I trust it will be clear to all readers of all political persuasions that this logic depends critically upon numerous unproven implicit assumptions. First, there is the rather tenuous link between the decision in the juvenile murder case, which is easily disputed: Why, for instance, have the majority of states that already refuse to execute juveniles not seen an upsurge in these sorts of murders? And why is it that the United States still has a much higher murder rate overall than the rest of the industrialized world, the vast majority of which condemn the use of capital punishment? Second, there is the ridiculous belief that the Court is made up of “Liberal Leftist” justices. Ah, yes–Justices Ginsburg and Breyer surely love their weekends on Martha’s Vineyards talking shop with Professor Chomsky and Congressman McKinney. (Liberals, yes; leftists, no.) And this ‘divine right’–yea, verily does this decision represent as great a disregard for human rights and the opinions of mankind as the actions of the Bourbon kings.
It is important, from considerations of ethics and tactics, to restrain one’s words from time to time. I have quoted Keynes’s dictum that “Words ought to be a little wild, for they are assaults of thoughts on the unthinking;” and my constructive critics have noted this tendency. But there is a difference between being wild and simply being unhinged. The latter tends to undermine not only one’s reputation, but one’s position as well.
(Via Michelle Malkin)