Category Archives: Things that are false

Trust your feelings

In service of the idea that arguments infect people like viruses, immuno-suppressed Dennis Prager catches some of that David Brooks virus (see here).  Prager, however, manages to get a worse version of Brooksosis acuta:

This latest study cited by David Brooks confirms what conservatives have known for a generation: Moral standards have been replaced by feelings. Of course, those on the left only believe this when an “eminent sociologist” is cited by a writer at a major liberal newspaper.

What is disconcerting about Brooks’s piece is that nowhere in what is an important column does he mention the reason for this disturbing trend: namely, secularism.

The intellectual class and the Left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual.

One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?’”

Aside from actually getting Brooks' article wrong, suggesting that Brooks is a liberal, and claiming that people believe him, Prager has the shallowest understanding of moral philosophy.  One would think that the cure Prager needs is the Euthyphro Problem.  But the passage just before this shows his intellectual ailment to be much worse:

Ever since I attended college I have been convinced that “studies” either confirm what common sense suggests or they are mistaken. I realized this when I was presented study after study showing that boys and girls were not inherently different from one another, and they acted differently only because of sexist upbringings.

Maybe he should go back to college and ask for his money back. 

Let’s pretend you don’t know who I am

Cal Thomas has made the astute observation that Washington suffers from political logjam with budget issues.  What's worse is that partisan bickering has made it so that no one in one party trusts what the other party would propose to solve the problem.

The problem with so much of Washington today is that no Democrat will accept a good idea if it comes from a Republican and, conversely, Republicans will reject any good idea that comes from Democrats.

Okay. That sounds about accurate, but it's usually because they for the most part know what sorts of things the other side will propose.  But let's give him that.  So what's Thomas's plan?  To propose the following exercise:  report about a bold new plan to fix the budget crisis, but keep the author anonymous until we think hard about the plan.

So here's a plan whose author shall remain anonymous until the end of this column in hopes you will read on.

Excellent!  I love party games.  This time around, I'll listen to the plan and then weigh its worth based on the merits of what is contained in the plan.  Not on the basis of who proposes it.  That's, like, unique.  Okay. Let's hear the plan.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, this author contends, "consumes 43 percent of today's federal spending." Most people might agree there is ample evidence the federal government is bloated, overextended and not living within its constitutional bounds, which has caused its dysfunction.

Elevators have weight limits. Put too many people on one and it might not run. The federal government has no "weight limits." Increasing numbers of us worry America may be overweight and in decline. We are mired in debt and government seems incapable of telling anyone "no" or "do for yourself" for fear of a backlash from entitlement addicts.

Oh my goodness.  Not knowing beforehand that the author of this plan is a rich, well-fed Republican makes me ever so much more sick to hear it.  And so, before I got to the bottom of Thomas's column, I tried to make a few guesses about who the author was.  Who'd slash 'entitlement spending,'  not have anything about tax revenue beyond proposing the flat tax, encourage self-sufficiency and not mention anything about safety nets for those who need help, and propose reducing the size of government?   Okay… here were my first three:

Cato Institute

Hoover Foundation

             and

Cal Thomas himself

Make your predictions in the comments.  A hint:  I was wrong.

Unpatriotic

In what's good for the gander news, NRO's Jonah Goldberg thinks that President Obama's rhetoric has turned ugly.  He's using patriotism against Republicans. 

According to his new stump speech, if you oppose his agenda, then you don’t care about America as much as he does.

Well, let's see the line that Goldberg thinks crosses the line.

What is needed is action on the part of Congress, a willingness to put the partisan games aside and say we’re going to do what’s right for the country, not what we think is going to score some political points for the next election. . . . There is nothing that we’re facing that we can’t solve with some spirit of ‘America first.'

Goldberg objects that the 'America First' spirit is supposed to "separate the patriotic from the petty."  But surely this is mild compared to, say, Michele Bachmann saying liberals are unAmerican or even the rest of Goldberg's article, which makes hay about how the President is going on vacation (and so thereby must not be patriotic, either!).  

The point, however, isn't to make the hypocrisy charge here.  The point is to say that Goldberg doesn't defend those charged with pettiness.  He only cries foul at their being called petty.  But surely if there is a group of legislators that are out only to save their hides for the next election rather than making hard choices or getting on with the work of governing, then they need to be called out.  Moreover, it's not the charge of being unpatriotic that I saw in the Obama speech, but the charge of political cynicism.  And it's easy to be a political cynic and be really patriotic.  In fact, those all too often go hand in hand, don't they?

Unnecessary scarequoting

William Murchison, at the American Spectator, is counting off Rick Perry's virtues as a low-tax, pro-growth Presidential candidate.  One of Murchison's lines is that Perry won't regulate industry, especially with environmental restrictions.

Were Perry to become president, the Environmental Protection Agency could forget about lashing coal producers and automobile manufacturers to lofty standards for "pollution reduction."

I assume he's right about the facts, but what exactly is the point of putting the words 'pollution reduction' in scare quotes?  Is it that he thinks that car exhaust or smoke from coal fires count as pollution in name only?  Is it that he thinks that the EPA's standards don't reduce the pollution?  For the life of me, I can't make out what exactly is being communicated with the quote marks.  I'm assuming they are scarequotes – invoking the terms of the other side of the debate to call attention to the fact that they are wrong about some factual matter.  But what is the matter, here?

If it impedes economic growth

I watched the first Republican debates this last Tuesday.  Michele Bachmann, I felt, got the short end of the stick. Even for her coming out party (she declared herself in the race at the debates), she was too often talked over and seemed to get the fewest direct questions. John King spent way too much time asking "Elvis or Cash," "Iphone or Blackberry," "Boxers or Briefs."  Bachmann didn't get a chance to shine. Too bad for fallacy hunters like me.  But when asked what government program she'd cut to reduce the deficit, she did offer up a classic false dilemma (video):

And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America

Short reply: it is part of the government's job to think 20+ years down the road even when you don't.  Too many complain about the government being on people's backs, but, you know, if you have dangerous chemicals that could end up in my drinking water, the government should be on your back like a family of spider monkeys.  Got toxic waste and need to dispose of it? G-man, I hope, has a long, long, long list of forms and so on that you need to fill out and verify before so.  Why?  'Cause nobody (not even the polluters) wants to live in a world of trash.

(N.B., I once had a colleague who confessed that he rooted for the polluters when watching the late 80's cartoon series Captain Planet.  So I will back off my statement that polluters don't want to live in filth.  Apparently, one of them does, or at least doesn't see the comic book justice of having his trash ending up in his bedroom.)

Cal Thomas and the politics of made-for-TV movies

Cal Thomas just finished watching a movie on the Hallmark channel. Yep.  Now, I, too, love me some Hallmark Channel, as they have been known to play old repeats of Columbo on Sundays (my TiVo knows when).  But Thomas watches Hallmark channel for the movies. 

Today, Hallmark's commitment to quality television hasn't change (sic); it even has its own cable channel, which shows films that affirm the values most of us hold dear.

Well, the movie Thomas saw was called "Beyond the Blackboard," which was a movie about a teacher. I know, a teacher.

It's one of those "based on a true story" projects about a young woman (Stacey Bess) who desperately wants to teach, but finds there are no jobs available in her Salt Lake City school district. There is, however, an experimental program and Bess (played by Emily VanCamp), eagerly accepts the job. There's a problem, though. She is to teach homeless children in a rundown warehouse.

Okay, so this is a movie about the good done by a school and its teachers for the least-well-off.  Perhaps it could even be a case for more experimental programs like this to be started.  Perhaps it could be a case for supporting the programs out there right now that need financial backing.  Perhaps it could be a dramatization of how hard teachers work and how they deserve respect.  Alright, now, I don't think I'd like this movie as a movie (I'll admit, I don't like movies unless there are aliens or zombies), but I endorse its values.  Oh, wait, Thomas sees another set of values on offer.

[T]he film could easily veer off into a political diatribe and a call for more government spending on education. It is a tribute to the restraint of the creators that it does not. What it does depict is the power of one person to make a difference in other people's lives, not with government funds, but with the currency of a loving and dedicated heart.

So, I didn't see the movie, but this is weird.  Where Thomas sees the power of a loving heart to do what it can, I, just from what Thomas has said, see the need for government programs.  The poorest of this community don't have access to public education?  What is wrong here?  A capable teacher can't find work in a school district as big as Salt Lake?  Wuh?  And then the other shoe drops.  Thomas quotes the real Stacey Bess approvingly:

[Y]ou don't have to be sophisticated to love somebody, you don't have to have grand skills, you don't have to have a degree, you just have to want to care just a little bit further than what's expected.

Ah, you don't have to have a degree to be a teacher.  You just have to care a lot.  Remind me to go crazy when Thomas complains that teachers don't teach anything in school.

Bully for false dilemmas

Thomas Sowell thinks most of the contemporary rhetoric about school bullying is nonsense.  Empty rhetoric, says he.

There is a lot of talk from many people about bullying in school. The problem is that it is all talk. There is no sign that anybody is going to do anything that is likely to reduce bullying.

The trouble, as Sowell sees it, is that teachers can't decisively respond to bullies in the classroom.  Why is that?  Because the courts are more interested in protecting the rights of the bullies.  And you see, when the courts are all over the teachers, when the government interferes with how discipline in the classroom is handled, nobody can be in charge.  And then there are bullies. 

Might educators abuse their power, if the courts did not step in? Of course they could. Any power exercised by human beings can be abused. But, without the ability to exercise power, there is anarchy.

And so there are two choices: anarchy consequent of judicial meddling to preserve the rights of bullies or . . .  What?

For years, there have been stories in New York and Philadelphia newspapers about black kids beating up Asian classmates. But do not expect anybody to do anything that is likely to put a stop to it.

If these were white kids beating up Hispanic kids, cries of outrage would ring out across the land from the media, the politicians, the churches and civic groups. But it is not politically correct to make a fuss when black kids beat up Asian kids.

I am going to take a shot at what Sowell's suggestion is:  racial profiling for bullying.  Alright, that's crazy.  How about not being worried about the racial politics of identifying violent individuals, regardless of the color of their skin?  That seems plausible, but is that outlawed by the courts?  No.  So that's not a different option. Okay, I don't know what the proposal is. Certainly not about how teachers should run class, now.

Sowell isn't very clear about what he sees as the alternative.  Fine, maybe we can see his alternative in the way he handles a contrast case: 

Britain was once one of the most law-abiding nations on earth. But the reluctance of the left to put some serious punishment on criminals has been carried so far there that only 7 percent of convicted criminals actually spend any time behind bars. Britain has now overtaken the United States in various crime rates.

Ah, so it is the state punishing criminals, but more severely?  How does that have anything to do with teachers in classrooms?  Or bullies?  Now it's about crime rates.  Huh.  Some false dilemmas derive from there being two options posed, but the best third option suppressed.  This false dilemma has one option posed (and rejected), and then no clear alternative offered.  Maybe should be called the 'false whatever-lemma'. 

Now that gets me heated

Christopher Orlet, over at the American Spectator, has a few things to say about what gets him riled up these days.  There aren't many, but two that stand out are:

About the only thing that gets me heated these days is my Bubblespa footbath. (I recommend the model with toe touch control.) That and being told by politicians, professors and anchorwomen how to behave.

No, this is not an ad for footbaths.  At least, I don't think it is. Instead, Orlet is using his  footbath as a way of showing that he's normally calm  —  footbath-excitement is usually tepid.  But being told how to argue breaks that calm.  Even the calm that can be achieved by a footbath.  You see, it's a rhetorical device.  You cast yourself as the minding-your-own-business everyman who loves footbaths, and then you portray yourself as just not being able to stand some imposition on what kind of rhetoric you can use.  How disruptive of our calm lives to be reminded of the importance of civility. 

Again, I'm no great champion of civility.  It is possible to argue well and be mean.  In fact, some matters require that we are mean, especially when the issue is significant and our interlocutors are vicious and in need of shaming.  But there are moral reasons why we must have our defaults set on civility first.  The most important reason is to avoid making the exchange of ideas toxic to the point where even those with good ideas don't want to enter the fray.  In discourse theory we call the outcome of those circumstances "error amplifications" and "hidden profiles" — increased group confidence in erroneous commitments and social pressures against correcting them.  Since we want truth, we've got to make the discussion welcoming.  That's just how it goes, and so the duties of civility must be exercised.

Would Orlet be moved by these sorts of reasons for civiity?  Well, if you sweetened the pot a little:

But men are stubborn animals. We may pretend to be more sensitive … , if it means we might get lucky more often

I see.

Well, what does Orlet think would happen were he to enforce this rule on liberals, too?

Just this morning, I heard someone on NPR say, "We need to really tackle these issues." I was immediately overwhelmed with the desire to sprint down the aisle and clothesline the director of marketing. Unfortunately, she stiff-armed me and rolled on to paydirt, by which I mean the ladies room.

Hm. This is just weird, now.  Golly.  Editors, anyone?

Let's ignore that, for the moment, and see where Orlet sees the requirements of civility leading us:

Since Tucson, editors have been having a "conversation" about banning more words from their newspapers, which pretty soon are going to read like The Poky Little Puppy, containing all 26 politically correct words and no more. . . . [N]ow they have to adopt the language of a tea party. And not The Tea Party either, but a real, doily and lace tea party.

So civil dialogue is like children's literature and tea-party frou-frou.  False analogy, leading to false dilemma.  But given the way that Orlet argues, the alternative might be an improvement.  The Poky Little Puppy isn't on the make with the people he's arguing with, and I don't think you call going to the bathroom 'rolling to paydirt' at a tea party (or in most any company). Maybe some, just a little, civility (that is, civilizing) would be good for Orlet.  But don't tell that to him just yet.  Let him enjoy the footbath.

Taking back political discourse for the nice bigots

James Gannon used to write for the Wall Street Journal.  Now he writes for American Spectator, and he's bringing his insights about public discourse to bear on the rhetoric leading up to the mid-term elections in his recent "Hayseed Rebellion".  He makes some observations about how his side of the debate is being portrayed:

If you believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman, you are a homophobe and a bigot.

Yep, that's right.  If you believe that, you are a homophobe and a bigot.  Where's his problem there?  Be proud of your bigotry, right? (Spoiler alert: Gannon says just that.)

If you believe that the U.S. Constitution means only what it actually says, you are an extremist who ought to be wearing a powdered wig.

Uh, no.  It means that you likely haven't read the Constitution, or that if you have read the Constitution, it's with the radio on,  watching television, while smoking crack.  Seriously, even folks who knew the framers had to read the Federalist Papers to understand what's going on, what's being said, at times.  And then there's stare decisis.  The world's a complicated place, and that means that 18th century legal principles may be relevant, but not perfect fits every time.  Whatever, maybe powdered wigs are in.

If you have misgivings about the morality of abortion, or any doubts about the absolute right of a mother to kill her unborn child, you are a religious fanatic, an anti-feminist, and probably a right-wing Catholic.

OK. I think I get where Gannon's going, now.  He thinks that if he can tell bigots, homophobes, re-enactors of 18th Century legalisms, and religious fanatics that liberals think they are bigots, homophobes, religious fanatics, and general nincompoops, then they'll get mad and act like the bigots, homophobes, fanatics, and nincompoops they are.  And he can do this while noting how generally nice they are, until they've been angered.  Liberals wouldn't like them when they're angry.

And the docile, largely silent majority of ordinary Americans, who don't relish confrontation and controversy, have allowed these institutional forces to have their way in changing American culture. Up to now. . . .

Hey, all you bigots and extremists and homophobes who still believe in all that stuff this country used to stand for — it's time for your Willie Stark moment. It's time to stop being so nice, so naive, so accommodating to the movement that is intent on changing your country radically and permanently. It's time to stand up, speak out, reject the unfair labels being pinned on you and reject the redefinition of everything you care about.

First of all, I can hardly believe that Gannon thinks that the exemplars of this movement are mostly nice.  They are mostly people who think they are nice, but those are often the least nice of all.  Moreover, at this point, who's making these "nice" people angry?  Is it the liberals?  Or is it the blowhards who have been telling them what they believe? 

A quick point on analyzing ad populum arguments to close.  Many are arguments from authority — the authority of crowds.  In this case, this argument is another form of argument from authority, but one less from numbers.  This form of argument is one from persecution conferring authority.  Here's a rough try at the move:

P1: People with identity X are widely persecuted for their views

P2: Persecution is wrong.

C: It is wrong to persecute identity X.

P3: If it is wrong to persecute those with identity X, then X must be right.

C2: X and the views coming with it must be right.

The problem is all with P3, clearly, as there are plenty of stupid views and identities that have been treated shabbily, but that bad treatment hasn't been instrumental to the improvement of the views.  Wiccans, anyone?  So what is the "Hayseed Rebellion" that James Gannon is suggesting?  Not sure, but I have a feeling it involves voting Republican.  That's a good way to let off some steam, you see. 

Of course, they could try to do things that would make the rest of America not think they are homophobes, bigots, racists, and nincompoops.  But that'd be, you know, accommodationist, and they're done being nice, apparently.

The whites of their eyes

I'm all for public debate of even the dumbest stuff–birtherism, etc., has its place somewhere in our public discourse.  But that somewhere really shouldn't be the Washington Post.  Today they publish the incoherent babbling of Dinesh D'Souza on the "anti-Colonialism" of Obama.  

The argument is that Obama is "just like his fathah."  Here's how it begins:

If you want to understand what is going on in the White House today, you have to begin with Barack Obama. No, not that Barack Obama. I mean Barack Obama Sr., the president's father. Obama gets his identity and his ideology from his father. Ironically, the man who was absent for virtually all of Obama's life is precisely the one shaping his values and actions.

How do I know this? Because Obama tells us himself. His autobiography is titled "Dreams From My Father." Notice that the title is not "Dreams of My Father." Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams. He is writing about the dreams that he got from his father.

In his book, Obama writes, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Those who know Obama well say the same thing. His grandmother Sarah Obama told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things — he has taken everything from his father . . . this son is realizing everything the father wanted."

People who have read this book seem to have a very different impression from D'Souza.  But anyway, let's just say that Obama is realizing everything his father ever wanted.  What did his father want, you might wonder?  What does Obama want?  Well, D'Souza continues. 

Some have described the president as being a conventional liberal or even a socialist. But liberals and socialists are typically focused on poverty and social equality; Obama rarely addresses these issues, and when he does so, it is without passion. Pretty much the only time Obama raises his voice is when he is expressing antagonism toward the big, bad corporations and toward those earning more than $250,000 a year. I believe the most compelling explanation of Obama's actions is that he is, just like his father, an anti-colonialist. Anti-colonialism is the idea that the rich countries got rich by looting the poor countries, and that within the rich countries, plutocratic and corporate elites continue to exploit ordinary citizens. 

I'm most impressed by the false sense of even-handedness–Obama's no socialist.  That's critical, because Obama, in D'Souza's world, is just like his father.  What was his father like? 

Consider the article "Problems Facing Our Socialism" that Obama Sr. published in 1965 in the East Africa Journal. Writing in the aftermath of colonialism, the senior Obama advocated socialism as necessary to ensure national autonomy for his country. "The question," he wrote, "is how are we going to remove the disparities in our country, such as the concentration of economic power in Asian and European hands . . .?

"Obama Sr.'s solutions are clear. "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." He proposed that the state seize private land and turn it over to collective cooperatives. He also demanded that the state raise taxes with no upper limit.

Just in case the point is unclear, Obama Sr. insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." Absurd as it seems, the idea of 100 percent taxation has its peculiar logic. It is based on the anti-colonial assumption that the rich have become rich by exploiting and plundering the poor; therefore, whatever the rich have is undeserved and may be legitimately seized.

He was a Socialist.

To reconstruct.  According to D'Souza, Obama was just like his father, a socialist, but Obama is no socialist. 

Doesn't that mean Obama is not like his father?