Sweet irony

Ben Shapiro probably couldn’t have shown poorer timing with his recent post at CNSNews.com. With this epistle, Shapiro hand-picks several real news stories that descrribe deplorable events or conditions people elsewhere in the world face: A teenage Iranian girl who faces probable gang rape before she is executed, North Korean citizens starving at the draconian hands of their government, for example. And then with the commonest of a priori reasoning, concludes that these news events are evidence of President Obama’s declining influence throughout the world.

Meanwhile, a new Pew Global Attitudes Project was released that shows opinion of the U.S. overseas has improved. In fact, the report concludes that America’s status in the world has “markedly” improved under the Obama administration. This, mind you, would be an example of an a posteriori argument, one that is based on data.

Using Shapiro’s reasoning, one could easily find plenty of examples in the world press to reach the conclusion that the Bush administration’s neo-conservatism led to an increase in America’s stature throughout the world. But then there would be that pesky empirical data that suggests otherwise.