–if you’re “an opponent of health reform,” in Kristof’s phrase–then you’re a bad person. That’s the gist of his latest op-ed in the New York Times. Kristof’s goal certainly is not to persuade any conservative opponents of, say, the Baucus legislation that they’re wrong: That would require engaging with either what conservatives actually believe or what the Baucus legislation does, or maybe even both, and that’s not on Kristof’s agenda in this column. Instead his method is to tell a tragic health-care story, claim without evidence that all opponents of the legislation moving through Congress want to keep the status quo in all its particulars, and rest his case. So the goal must be to reinforce liberals in their view that conservatives are resisting this legislation because they are heartless. Mission accomplished.