Sullivan says that I did not “point to a single inaccuracy or example of unfairness” in my post on him yesterday. Indeed, I’m now supposedly “smear[ing]” our poor martyr Sullivan. Inaccuracy: Sullivan claimed that Robert P. George “sees no moral difference” between abortion and the murder of an adult. That’s not true, and I provided evidence that it’s not true.

Unfairness: First, misstating George’s views is itself unfair.

Second, Sullivan insinuated, though with a plausible deniability that he is now attempting to exploit, that George has no objection to killing abortionists. This deniability is, however, growing more implausible. I quoted a speech in which George said that pro-lifers should love and pray, ungrudgingly and without cease, for abortionists. Sullivan, absurdly, refuses to acknowledge that these comments amounted to a disavowal of violence against abortionists. Sullivan is holding on to his cheap insinuation for dear life.

Third: Sullivan suggests that it’s frightening for the president to associate with someone who holds George’s allegedly extreme views on abortion. The views to which Sullivan points are George’s alleged inability to see any differences between abortion and the murder of an adult, and his alleged nonchalance toward the murder of abortionists. Since both views are not in truth George’s, suggesting that it is not respectable to associate with George because of them is unfair.

It is altogether typical of Sullivan’s debating style to attempt to change the subject to an irrelevancy: George’s views about masturbation, of all things. What George is getting at is that we do not need to posit a “right” to masturbation to have good reasons for the government not to concern itself with it: not that you’d have any idea of that from Sullivan’s description.

I’m not totally sure whether Sullivan’s habitual inability to present his opponents’ views correctly is a result of malicious lying, indifference to the truth, incompetence in figuring out the truth, or some combination of these things. Readers need not know the answer to that question to conclude that he is untrustworthy.