Via Metafilter comes a really cool website called Morgan Spurlock Watch which, in the vein of books like Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, attempts to correct errors in Morgan Spurlock's books, blog, TV show, and film Super Size Me.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a person deliberately manipulates information in order to forward an agenda of his own. Whatever happened to the truth? The author of Morgan Spurlock Watch seems to be a libertarian, no doubt one of the reasons he dislikes Spurlock, who sees capitalism as evil and the government as trustworthy. Nevertheless, this writer does give Spurlock credit when he gets his facts right.

Part of the problem with people who have an agenda is that once they've found information -- any information -- that agrees with their opinions, they use that information as fact, even though there may be other, more credible information that contradicts those facts. Take, for example, Spurlock's repeated citing of the Physicans Committee for Responsible Medicine as a credible source. And it certainly sounds credible. But the author of Morgan Spurlock Watch is more skepticaler:

So what exactly is the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine? They aren't physicans. Less than 5% of the group's membership are actual physicians.

In fact, PCRM is a rather militant animal rights group. Its aim? To end medical research on animals, and to foster public fear of eating cheese and meat with scare campaigns. Through lawsuits, intimidation, and stealth media placement, they're trying to push the vegan lifestyle.

Ouch. We know that Spurlock, as well as his fiancee, Alex, is a vegan. Either he didn't know that PCRM isn't a credible source (probably not true, given that he's a smart guy) or he used information that he knew to be false just because it supported his opinion, not because it was true in the philosophical sense or even in the factually correct one.

Where have we seen that before?

I like libertarians. I often disagree with their politics, but they're estranged enough from "mainstream" politics that they put their own beliefs before trying to institute some kind of social or political change. If libertarians make a mistake, they admit it. And they do their research. They work until they find hard facts, not just people who make themselves up to be experts. This is to be contrasted with social activists like Spurlock, who would like to dump American capitalism altogether, probably along with eating meat. This is his agenda. Neo-cons also have an agenda: they would like to institute an Evangelical Protestant United States empire. Libertarians like things the way they are. All they want is for the government and other private citizens to keep their noses out of peoples' lives. It's hard to pigeonhole libertarians by saying that they're all conservative. Frequently, they're economic conservatives, simply because they don't want a lot of government interference in how they spend their money. But they're social liberals in the sense that they don't want Christian morality-based restrictions on how they live their private lives. They would believe in Roe v. Wade because of a right to privacy, that the government shouldn't be able to meddle in the affairs of private citizens. They would agree with the gay rights movement not because they're especially in favor of specifically rights for homosexuals, but because they don't want the government to tell citizens how they can and cannot live their private lives.

Sometimes libertarians can be crazy, but that's true of anyone, I guess. On average, they're less crazy than neo-cons and communists.