Just that politics is not a field that is amenable to strict rational and intellectual investigation.

How about a metaphor from theology? Think of the Jesuits. Think of the great Catholic scholars, like St Augustine. Think of the Jewish Rabbis and Talmudic scholars, and the Islamic clerics and thinkers, all splitting hairs on the fine theological points of their faiths. All are so proud of and point to their strict, rigorous logic and reason. But what does logic and reason have to do with religion? It doesn't matter how thorough and consistent your knowledge of scripture is, it tells you nothing about the nature of god. Some things must be believed to be seen, and the truth is not in the footnotes.

Stalin was a Socialist. Stalin had a Gulag. Does that logically prove Socialism leads to Gulags? Does that mean any party or nation which claims any level or degree of Socialism must eventually build slave labor camps? Like Holland? Countries all over Europe claim to be Socialist and have no camps, countries with camps claim to despise Socialism (like the US did in WWII.) Does that mean Socialized medicine inevitably leads to slave labor camps? Does that mean anyone who favors Obamacare is either a Communist or a useful idiot?

No, Tom. You cannot use logic and philosophy to prove or disprove the value of a political or economic system. Now you can deliberately and correctly say things like "I had to escape from East Germany because the STASI wanted to arrest me for listening to the BBC on my shortwave radio." But that's a very different kind of statement, one which CAN be verified empirically.

During WWII the Nazis aimed propaganda to our black soldiers by pointing how they were oppressed by Jim Crow laws back home. They may have been right, but I doubt they changed too many minds, or got too many black soldiers to mutiny.

I know where you're coming from, Tom. You're very good at looking through the data sources and building up a case, but you are not working like a scientist. You are working like a lawyer. If you were being paid by the other side, I'm sure you could be just as successful making their case, too. The only difference is a lawyer is perfectly, even cynically aware of the inherent slipperyness of the Truth. He can just as easily work for either side. The same goes for professional marketing types, they are whores who will sleep with anybody.

You never caught on. You think you're really in love.