Claims and Assertions

I must be missing something.

If you want to make a claim then it's usually a good idea for it to be of the form "John is cruel BECAUSE he tortures puppies."

Now we have your justification for claiming that John is cruel and we can move on to the EVIDENCE that John actually does torture puppies.

The point being is that you have at least established WHY you believe John is cruel. You believe he is cruel because you believe he tortures puppies.

Notice how much more illuminating this is than simply saying "John is cruel." An assertion with no justification is known as an "unsupported assertion."

It's been my experience that Conservatives rarely provide justifications. They simply provide "unsupported assertions."

A perfect example of this was David Horowitz yesterday on the Steve Malzberg radio show where he said "Obama is a dangerous, dangerous evil man" and a "neo-communist" that wants to "take down" the United States." Lots of assertions, but no justifications.

This is one of the reasons I find it hard to take them seriously.

WTF is a "neo-communist" anyway? Interestingly enough it's a new breed of communist that rejects totalitarianism while claiming to remain true to Marx's original concepts.

Given the way income inequality is going, this may not be a bad thing. Of course there's no way of knowing if that's what Horowitz meant because he didn't provide a justification for his assertion!