National Center for Science Education activist gets it wrong again

Well, our old friend Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education, still sore from the beating he took here about the fact that he couldn't competently put together a rudimentary argument, is proving, once again, that he still needs remedial logic instruction.

I had quoted Pat Buchanan on the fact that Obama and Hillary had sat there very serenely as the U. S. was berated by Nicaraguan bully boy Daniel Ortega. The representative of the country, I said, had an obligation to defend it against nonsense like this.

Rosenau's reaction? I'm a "stooge" for a group I have never worked for and a "generally unpleasant person" despite the fact that I've never met the man in my life. But such is the level of rhetoric from Rosenau, who undoubtedly has a lecture somewhere is his repertoire about the evils of hate.

Well, peace, love, and Barack Obama to you too, Josh.

But this isn't all. Rosenau's major argument is that I quoted Pat Buchanan. So, taking up where we left off last November, when we had to try to parse out his tortured logic on the issue of same sex marriage, let's try to disentagle another Rosenauism:

• Pat Buchanan has views on politics that I, Josh Rosenau, don't agree with
• Therefore, Obama and Hillary didn't need to speak up in defense of their countrySee the connection?

Buchanan, says Rosenau, is an "anti-Semite." And what is an anti-Semite? In Rosenau's lexicon (if we can judge from the link he provides), it is apparently a person who disagrees with Israeli foreign policy or positions of the Israeli lobby in Washington. Remember that the next time the Obama administration--like virtually every other presidential administration--takes exception to an Israeli military action.

How much you wanna bet Rosenau doesn't call Obama an anti-Semite?

Buchanan is also, says Rosenau, a "Holocaust denier." His proof for this charge? That Buchanan expressed doubt whether diesel exhaust from a Soviet tank killed prisoners at Treblinka. Buchanan made the argument in a defense of John Demjanjuk, who had been accused, with the help of the Soviet KGB, of being "Ivan the Terrible," the infamous camp guard who killed hundreds of prisoners at the Polish concentration camp. Only trouble, as was discovered during the last days of the Soviet Union, was that he actually wasn't.

Now most people think of a Holocaust denier as, well, someone who denies the Holocaust. Does Buchanan deny the Holocaust? And by that we mean THE Holocaust? The one that involved

Let's examine the second Rosenauism:

• Buchanan doubts whether diesel fumes from a Soviet tank killed prisoners at Treblinka
• Therefore Buchanan does not believe that millions of Jews were killed by Germany in Word War II

You see how this works? Rosenau's logic, that is? You state a fact, follow it with a completely unrelated statement, insert a "therefore," and ... Presto! Instant argument!

But the really ironic thing is that Rosenau's own post, the one in which he accuses Buchanan of being a Holocaust denier, proves that he isn't. How can that be, you ask? Rosenau quotes Buchanan saying, "'Had there been no war there would have been no Holocaust in my judgment."

Um, Josh? Are you reading your own posts? How could Buchanan deny the Holocaust when he obviously believes that the occurrence of WW II allowed it to happen?

Oops.

I don't agree with Buchanan on World War II, but no reasonable person thinks, looking at comments like these, that Buchanan doesn't denies the Holocaust. But then we're not dealing with a reasonable person.

We're dealing with Josh Rosenau.