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The most difficult thing about arguing with liberals is their more, shall we say, nuanced view of the world. For liberals, how they feel about an issue is the only thing that matters. To them, words are simply tools to help them win their case. They don’t have any specific meaning in and of themselves. Words, then, are like facts, malleable, fungible, and not subject to rules of reason or logic.

Take for example the furor which arose back in 2004 when “60 Minutes” revealed documents which proved George W. Bush had lied about his National Guard experience. It didn’t take long for intrepid bloggers to prove the documents were fakes. Undeterred, liberals argued the legitimacy of the documents was immaterial, because they “knew” they were true.

Or take Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW). For years liberals relied on the myth of “settled science” to bludgeon skeptics into submission. Skeptical scientists confronted the choice of going with the flow, or facing professional ruin by asking questions. Then last fall thousands of emails were released showing that the leading AGW advocates manufactured research, falsified data, and actively suppressed all dissenting views.

When confronted with documented evidence of Global Warmingist perfidy, liberals replied that the science didn’t matter. Everybody still knows it is true. One of the last people still wholeheartedly embracing the myth of AGW is President Barack Obama (D-Chi), who in his State of the Union address last month repeated the shibboleth of settled science when he said “there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.”

Obviously, Obama wasn’t paying attention. But then again, not paying attention is the hallmark of liberal disputation. The liberal will make a statement, such as “We can’t afford to fight two wars at the same time.” If you point out that we’re only fighting one war, that the war in Iraq is over, that we won, that having troops stationed in the country doesn’t mean we are at war, or we would still be at war with Germany and Japan,” the more enlightened liberal will say, “Well, it was a war of choice. Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction.” The less enlightened, which is to say more common liberal will chant, “Bush lied, people died.”

The fact that you refuted the assertion underlying the liberal’s original argument is immaterial. He or she will simply bring up a new argument, flinging around more convenient facts and chameleon words. If you disprove the subsequent statement, or point out that the statements have no bearing on the original argument, the liberal will shift ground again. This merry go round will continue until the rational party throws up his hands in frustration and says, “I can’t argue with you.”

At this point the liberal will smirk and say, “That’s because you’re wrong,” thereby winning another argument.

Obama is the poster child of rhetorical contortionists. He won election by posing as a centrist, his mendacity abetted by media minions quick to shut down anyone who questioned their candidate’s ideological pedigree. The past year has seen the steady unraveling of the Emperor’s New Clothes, which culminated with yesterday’s unveiling of Obama’s new health care proposal. Combining the worst of both existing bills, increasing expenses and taxes, and establishing an entirely new regulatory agency, this pastiche of bad ideas came just three days before the much ballyhooed “health care summit,” during which Obama promised to finally listen to Republicans’ ideas.

That the subject was closed before it was opened was immaterial, because Obama didn’t mean it anyway. He had no interest in bipartisanship, rather he sought to give the impression of bipartisanship. Or rather, the impression of seeking bipartisanship. That his new proposal gave the lie to his posturing was immaterial, because he wasn’t paying attention. Those were merely words he spoke, and words have no meaning.

Take another example. Just one day after releasing his new $3.8 trillion budget proposal, featuring an unconscionable, fiscally insane, economy-busting $1.6 trillion deficit, Obama chided the American people that “we have to learn to live within our means.” Those were just words to him. Epic, beggaring deficits? That was so yesterday.

Within days of announcing a commission to help us figure out how to eliminate these irresponsible deficits, as if they simply appeared and weren’t the result of his own policy decisions, the President introduced a new health care proposal destined to dramatically increase already impossibly bloated deficits. The Obama administration looks like nothing more than the glutton in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.”