By the way, suspecting that there has been a little bit of thread-creep here, I just took another look at the title of this thread: "reasons Liberals fail."

The thread title itself commits a logical fallacy known as "begging the question."

Now just what exactly is "begging the question?"

First of all, let me clear up a common misconception. There has been a general misuse of this expression within recent years. Recently, to beg the question has been used to mean "to raise the question", or to indicate that "the question really ought to be asked". For example, "This year's budget deficit is half a trillion dollars. This begs the question:   how are we ever going to balance the budget?" This usage is often sharply criticized by formal logicians, but has nonetheless come into fairly widespread use, not meaning what it was originally intended to mean. To be more precise, it should be "invites the question" or "raises the question".

Okay. The formal usage—in logic—the term "begging the question" refers to a type of fallacy occurring in deductive reasoning in which the proposition to be proved is already assumed, implicitly or explicitly, to be true, in one of the premises. For example, consider the following argument: "Politicians cannot be trusted. Only an untrustworthy person would run for office; the fact that politicians are untrustworthy is proof of this. Therefore politicians cannot be trusted." Such an argument is fallacious, because it relies upon its own proposition (in this case, "politicians are untrustworthy") in order to support its central premise. Essentially, the argument assumes that its central point is already proven, and uses this in support of itself.

Begging the question is also known as petitio principii, and is related to the fallacy known as circular argument, circulus in probando, vicious circle or circular reasoning. As a concept in logic, it was first identified by Aristotle around 350 BCE, in his book, Prior Analytics.

[Just as a point of interest, perhaps:   on a couple of occasions when I have pointed out boo-boos in reasoning and cited the formal logic principles involved, a few folks, both in open forum and in PMs, have objected strenuously to my doing this, and further, have accused me of being pompous and pretentious. My pointing out of the "straw man" rhetorical technique (so patently transparent that it doesn't actually rate the status of a formal fallacy)—which consists, in part, of misquoting someone and then attacking them on the basis of what the attacker says they said rather than what they actually did say—has really upset a couple of people, who, oddly enough, use this technique frequently. Now, I deny pretentious, but I willingly and freely admit to being pompous. I often am. But why anyone who is truly interested in rational discourse should object to someone citing the principles of rigorous logic from time to time for the purpose of keeping things honest causes me to wonder about just how sincere their interest in rational discourse is. To those persons, all I can do is smile sweetly and say, "Kindly observe my elevated middle finger." I shall continue unabated.]

Now, to my main point:

Who sez Liberals have failed?

"Failed" to win an election? Okay. No big deal. The Conservatives have lost a few, too. The pendulum swings. That's the nature of politics. But failed to the extent of folding its arms across its chest and putting a lily in its hand? I don't think so.

The game ain't over, folks. Remember, we have mid-term elections coming up in about a year, and in a couple more years, there is another national election (2008). Since I am fairly active politically, I often receive telephone calls and e-mails from various progressive organizations. There is a lot of energy out there, and the Bush administration has supplied more than enough material for one helluva campaign. And as far as progressive alternatives are concerned, the liberals have got their socks pulled up and are about ready to go.

Our "conservative" confreres had best hunker down, 'cause it's about to hit the fan. This is gonna be fun!!

Don Firth