Form Versus Substance — A Response to Eugene:

In his post below, Eugene asks why I am speechless in reaction to Hewitt’s use of the Party Discipline argument, which, as Eugene notes, is an old type of argument. The reason is that I am reacting to the substance of Hewitt’s position, not its form. I’m not surprised by the logical structure of the argument, but by the chain of causal relationships that Hewitt strings together. Eugene may be right that some readers of Hewitt’s blog believe in that chain — it’s hard to tell, as no one has made this particular argument until Hewitt did this morning — but I’m not sure why that makes the argument any less remarkable.