Sure, I'll answer it right now.
Quote:But, in the absence of evidence showing that they do not care, is it safe to assume that they in fact do care? And why would we make such a silly assumption?
Let's say that I were a proponent of the belief that most Americans do not recognize liberal bias as a problem. I infer you would foist upon me the burden of proving that in fact they do not. But would you be so quick to state that in the absence of evidence showing that Americans do not care, we must make the assumption that they do care? After all, there is no reason to believe that people don't care about something, unless they specifically state that they do not ....
Let's break it down.
The base question of the whole argument is: how do you tell if there is a problem, a concern, that is held by a large portion of our society?
My contention is that in the absence of information proving that any given population
does care about a given problem, the logical conclusion is that they do not.
Not caring is the baseline state that we are working from here; if you are claiming that there is a problem, and that most people agree with you, the burden lies with you to show how this is true.
For example: if you make the claim that the majority of Americans are worried about purple space aliens, it is your responsibility to prove that. The baseline state of society is that they don't have a problem with things, especially incredibly ridiculous, partisan things.
There just isn't empirical data done on
negative conclusions to the same level as
positive ones. I'd have a real hard time showing that there are studies with titles like 'Americans find schools balanced, liberalism OK.' But according to
you, Fox, there is a 'raftload' of data showing the opposite.
Present said data or retract your statement.
Cycloptichorn
On edit: I see that you were also asking a question, Fox, but it still doesn't hold; your argument is faulty.