Bad Analogy

Liberals have been very good at creating analogies that seemingly make their opinions look reasonable while criticizing their opponents. But often, their analogies don't reflect the actual situation.

Norman Ornstein has painted a picture to help him make the case that the Supreme Court's Voting Rights decision was wrong-headed. But it doesn't hold water.

Imagine an intersection with a long history of high-speed car crashes, injuries and fatalities. Authorities put up a traffic light and a speed camera — and the accidents and injuries plummet. A few years later, authorities declare “mission accomplished” and remove the light and speed camera. No surprise, the high-speed crashes and fatalities resume almost immediately.

 A better analogy, one that captures the argument from the Justices, would be an intersection that 40 years ago, was extremely dangerous, so traffic control was added. This development helped the situation. Now, 40 years later, lots of things have changed--cars are safer, people may drive differently, pedestrians may be more careful, but we don't know because those traffic controls are still in place. Now, they want to add a left-turn signal, or take away a crosswalk that isn't used anymore. The neighboring intersections have extremely similar traffic patterns, actually, they're moderately more dangerous than this one, but the city government requires a year-waiting period to consider any changes for this intersection, while that intersection can be repainted over night.

The court has basically said, you can't more carefully scrutinize this one intersection because of its traffic patterns 40 years ago, you must treat every intersection based on today's data.

The Left has a tendency to oversimplify.