Glenn Greenwald asserted that Bush supporters consider anyone who fails to pledge blind loyalty to Bush a liberal. Andrew Sullivan approvingly quoted him. Jonah called the quote “objectively inaccurate and stupid.” Jonah continued: “I defy either [Greenwald or Sullivan] to attempt to demonstrate this assertion factually.”

Now Sullivan thinks he has a crushing rejoinder. Soon after Jonah posted his comment, John Podhoretz complained that he was getting some email calling him a liberal for criticizing Cheney over the shooting incident. Jonah’s assertion, Sullivan says, was therefore “objectively inaccurate.”

No, it wasn’t. Only an idiot would have read Jonah to have denied the possibility that any Bush supporter has ever foolishly called a Bush critic a liberal just for criticizing Bush, or would ever do that in the future. Jonah’s assertion wasn’t that this phenomenon never occurred. It was that Greenwald and Sullivan were making a point that was untrue as a generalization. As Jonah wrote in his complaint: “Greenwald and, by extension, Andrew are absolutist and categorical.”

So an email from someone or other, or even three emails, or an entry at some obscure blog, can’t falsify Jonah’s (accurate) point. If Sullivan thinks it does, he’s adopting roughly the same standard of evidence as Podhoretz’s critics.