The Next Step for Liberals Against the War

This post from The Belmont Club may mark the beginning of a new trend.

For 30+ years liberals claimed conservatives wanted welfare reform because they were evil. (Evil in this case involving greed and some lack of empathy and compassion.) Welfare reform showed the liberals were wrong. Welfare was an evil system, effectively encouraging people to disempower themselves.

For 30+ years liberals have claimed conservatives are against Affirmative Action because they are evil. (In this case racist.) There is no body of knowledge about whether or not Affirmative Action helps minorities or not. There is little research, and what research there is remains muffled. (I think Affirmative Action probably does more good than harm, for the record. It would be nice to know, though.)

At some point liberals stopped trying to win these debates and started trying to squelch debate about those subjects. Now, having failed to make a good case against Bush's policies (at least to the American people, since Bush won the election), and having squandered whatever power they have to use argument from authority by amassing a ridiculous record of non-prescience in Iraq-

Iraq will win the war: wrong.
Iraq will cause 50k American deaths: wrong.
Rumsfeld should have started with a 6 month air war: wrong.
It is a quagmire: wrong.
Iraq is not culturally ready for elections: wrong.
It is too soon for elections: wrong.
The elections will fail because of terrorists: wrong.
The elections will fail because Iraqis will think they are not legitimate: wrong.

-liberals are giving up debate, and trying to squelch debate. The new technique:

If you support the War on Terror and you have not volunteered for the military you are a coward and/or hyprocrite.

So you better be quiet if you disagree with us! This is familiar. It reminds me of the You can't talk about abortion unless you're a woman, argument.

Ugh.

Update: Here is another example of liberal squelching of debate.

It is a chicken or egg question, really. Do liberals squelch debate because they are so often wrong, or they so often wrong because they squelch debate?