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Ad Hominem, Ad hominem circumstantial, George Will, Things that are false, Unqualified Authority

Little things

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Earlier this week Paul Krugman wrote about the rhetorical effectiveness of spreading little falsehoods. These little lies, as he called them, get repeated over and over again first by the irresponsible media (Drudge, talk radio, Hannity, and so on), then they work their way up to Howard Kurtz and various other mainstream outlets, who take them or their authors seriously. It’s not of course only a right wing thing–just ask Bob Somerby or Glenn Greenwald. These little falsehoods take various forms. The most obvious is the malicious fabrication (e.g., recent inventions about Nancy Pelosi). Less obvious is the subtle or not so subtle distortion of views you don’t agree with. Those are the little lies George Will tells. Today, for instance, he returns to the theme of global warming (which he insists on calling climate change, despite the propangandistic origin of this phrase). The article is a Summa of all of Will’s recent climatic confusions, so it might take a while. So for today we’ll just comment on this:

>In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a ” serious problem.” Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

What are “opinion-forming institutions”? Are they the kind–like right wing talk radio or the Post editorial page–that endeavor to produce loud and sometimes false opinions about political questions? Or are they the ones (like universities) that produce what sometimes get called, true opinions with a logos–i.e., knowledge–about the world around us? Not all opinion-forming institutions, in other words, are the same; if so, parents can save a lot of money by sending their kids to Rush Limbaugh University. Aside from the sneering stupidity of the remark about the “entertainment-environmental complex” (this from a man, mind you, who takes a science-fiction novel (by a Hollywood producer) about global warming to be scientific evidence on par with the consensus of credentialed climatologists), we’d also wonder what “indoctrinate” (used twice here) means. One usually uses such terms in order to stress the value-laden character of the views being taught. Rarely would one use it to describe the process of informing someone of some other other fact about the world. Some call that “teaching.”

General discussion, Richard Cohen, Things that are false

Criminal

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Richard Cohen, liberal pundit, has examined the evidence and concluded that Monica Goodling is not a criminal:

>In the end, though, some thought has to be given to why Monica Goodling feels obligated to take the Fifth rather than merely telling Congress what happened in the AG’s office. She’s no criminal — but what could happen to her surely is.

That’s not good news for Goodling. For according to Cohen, neither was Scooter Libby:

>No lawyer is going to be thrilled about letting a client testify in today’s political environment. Remember, please, that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was not convicted of the crime that the special prosecutor was appointed to find — who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame — but of lying to a grand jury. In fact, the compulsively compulsive Patrick Fitzgerald not only knew early on who the leaker was but also that no law had been violated. No matter. Fitzgerald valiantly persisted, jailing Judith Miller of the New York Times for refusing to reveal her sources and, in the end, nailing Libby. It was a magnificent victory, proving once again that there is nothing more dangerous to the republic than a special prosecutor with money to spend.

category mistake

Dogmatism

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The fallacy (it’s not really a fallacy) of “there are good arguments on both sides,” which is an affirmative variant of “both sides do bad things. . . ” is emblematic of certain liberal columnists–such as Richard Cohen and E.J. Dionne. Dionne writes:

>It’s true that religious Christians were among those who persecuted Jews. It is also true that religious Christians were among those who rescued Jews from these most un-Christian acts. And it is a sad fact that secular forms of dogmatism have been at least as murderous as the religious kind.

Much of that religious violence against Jews the first sentence speaks about was, by the way, Christian in origin, inspiration, and motivation; so it’s wrong to call them “un-Christian.” Aside from that, it seems hardly correct to speak of Christianity in the first sentence and then religion in general in the second. Dionne continues:

>What’s really bothersome is the suggestion that believers rarely question themselves while atheists ask all the hard questions. But as Novak argued — in one of the best critiques of neo-atheism — in the March 19 issue of National Review, “Questions have been the heart and soul of Judaism and Christianity for millennia.” (These questions get a fair reading in another powerful commentary on neo-atheism by James Wood, himself an atheist, in the Dec. 18 issue of the New Republic.) “Christianity is not about moral arrogance,” Novak insists. “It is about moral realism, and moral humility.” Of course Christians in practice often fail to live up to this elevated definition of their creed. But atheists are capable of their own forms of arrogance. Indeed, if arrogance were the only criterion, the contest could well come out a tie.

And so “the pox on both your houses”: Christians, like the ones in the White House, are supremely arrogant, they attempt to codify ignorance of well established scientific, medical and philosophical practice. But Atheists can be arrogant too. Sure, no question. But Dionne ought to know that atheists do not constitute a large enough party to silence the Christian majority (so you can’t call it a tie). And furthermore, the “questions” at issue are different. Some Christians and many atheists ask the hard questions about knowledge and morality (I’m thinking of Aristotle and Kant, for instance, whose moral theories are not founded on divine command, but I’m sure you can think of others). Everyone seems arrogant in these matters. But we belittle the fundamental importance of intellectual engagement when, like Dionne, we obsess over who gives the appearance of certainty in matters of metaphysics and morals.

Ignoratio Elenchi, V.D.Hanson

Crazy talk

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If I’m not mistaken, the last time we undid a regime it didn’t turn out so well. Never mind, though, the cheerleaders of that fiasco have a new idea:

>It is undeniable that the U.S., without either invading or suffering many casualties, could use its air power to send the Iranian economy and military back to the mullahs’ cherished 7th Century. But there is no need to do so.

>Instead, if the EU would cease all its trade with Iran, and if the West would divest entirely from the country — that is, boycott all companies that do any business with Tehran — the theocracy would face bankruptcy within months.

>Even if further escalation were warranted, we could at some future date enforce a naval blockade of the Iranian coast that alone would determine what goods would be allowed into this outlaw regime.

>But bomb Iran?

>For now, we should try as hard to avoid it as these desperate clerics seem to want it.

Economic sanctions strengthened Saddam’s grip on power, and, invading his country in order to punish him succeeded in eliminating him, but greatly strengthened Iran. The last conclusion one could draw from these indisputable facts is that we should seek further antagonism.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Equivocation, George Will, Red Herring, Suppressed Evidence, Things that are false

Three part invention

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I can only be bothered to come up with three. There are many many more problems with this abysmal piece by George Will today. While it does make sense to adjust gas prices for inflation, the rest of his conclusions show a manifest ignorance about the nature of the energy problem and a reprehensible tendency to ridicule anyone who takes it seriously.

Here’s the first part:

>The next wave of stories about “soaring” gas prices will predictably trigger some politicians’ indignation about oil companies’ profits. The day after Exxon Mobil’s announcement that it earned $39.5 billion in 2006, Hillary Clinton said: “I want to take those profits, and I want to put them into a strategic energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy, alternatives and technologies that will begin to actually move us toward the direction of independence.”

Here’s the second:

>Clinton’s “take” reveals her confiscatory itch. Her clunky “toward the direction of” suggests that she actually knows that independence is as chimerical a goal as Soviet grain production goals were.

The third:

>America produces about one-quarter of the 20.6 million barrels of oil it uses a day. Unfortunately, just as liberals love employees but not employers, they want energy independence but do not want to drill in the “pristine” (read: desolate) Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ( potential yield: 10.4 billion barrels) and are reluctant to countenance drilling offshore.

Read the rest. There’s more.

General discussion, Things that are false

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It’s Holy Week and Pesach, so we can ponder the following:

>March 30, 2007 – A belief in God and an identification with an organized religion are widespread throughout the country, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. Christians far outnumber members of any other faith in the country, with 82 percent of the poll’s respondents identifying themselves as such. Another 5 percent say they follow a non-Christian faith, such as Judaism or Islam. Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.

Contradictions, Formal Fallacies, George Will, Straw Man

Equal rights

There’s a lot to complain about in this confused George Will op-ed. One could point out the limbaughesque caricature of “liberals”:

>Liberals, dolled up in love beads and bell-bottom trousers, have had another bright idea, one as fresh as other 1970s fads. Sens. Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, high-octane liberals all, have asked Congress to improve the Constitution by adding the Women’s Equality Amendment, which, like the Equal Rights Amendment before it, says: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

But I’d rather focus my attention on the following blaring confusion. Since Will can never be bothered to examine any of his opponents’ actual reasons for their views, he just makes them up. So he wonders why someone would need an equal rights amendment when the courts–you heard that right–found them to be a consequence of the 14th Amendment:

>March 1972 was a year after the Supreme Court cited the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment when invalidating a law that involved discrimination on the basis of sex. And March 1972 was 10 months before the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

I’ve lost count of how many columns Will has written undermining that very principle of constitutional interpretation. And he finds the very principle of such litigation–i.e., the kind of litigation that clarifies the proper interpretation of the laws–odious:

>If Kennedy and like-minded legislators think that the condition of American women needs improvements, they should try to legislate them. Instead, they prefer to hope that liberal judges will regard the ERA’s language as a license to legislate. But, then, support for the amendment testifies to the supporters’ lack of confidence in their ability to persuade people to support such policies.

And someone might point out that a constitutional amendment is a form of legislation.

Academics, Stanley Fish, Weak Analogy

Religious life

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Arguing that one cannot study religion academically, Stanley Fish writes:

>The difference between the truth claims of religion and the truth claims of other academic topics lies in the penalty for getting it wrong. A student or a teacher who comes up with the wrong answer to a crucial question in sociology or chemistry might get a bad grade or, at the worst, fail to be promoted. Those are real risks, but they are nothing to the risk of being mistaken about the identity of the one true God and the appropriate ways to worship him (or her). Get that wrong, and you don’t lose your grade or your job, you lose your salvation and get condemned to an eternity in hell.

But Professor Fish has a comparison problem. The penalty for getting questions wrong about religion on a test is a failing grade; the penalty for getting a chemistry question wrong in real life is death.

George Will, Straw Man

De ira

This passage is not without a little irony:

>The politics of disdain — e.g., Howard Dean’s judgment that Republicans are “brain dead” and “a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives” — derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason. The anger directed at Bush today, like that directed at Clinton during his presidency, luxuriates in its own vehemence.

In the first place, we expected the man with the argument (and perhaps that could be his nickname) would not confuse what someone is saying with how he or she says it. One sees this too often, in my estimation. People (of all political stripes) use the terms “bash” or “slam” to describe any kind of disagreement, no matter what the foundation. And so Joe Klein, for instance, cannot distinguish Eric Alterman’s criticism from “personal attacks.” O’Reilly and many of his colleagues portray any criticism as “vicious” and “personal.”

George Will ought to know better. But he doesn’t, he writes (from earlier in the piece):

>There are the tantrums — sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory — of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman’s incessant contempt, Ann Coulter’s equally constant loathing).

Whatever you say about Krugman, he knows the difference between an argument and name calling, and it’s hardly proper to compare him, or any mainstream liberal talking-head, to the purposely theatrical Ann Coulter. As we have argued elsewhere, Krugman is one of the few liberal writers who argues for positions in the same fashion as Will. That is to say, he advances reasons to accept his position, or as is often the case, reasons to reject the conclusions of others. Krugman offers reasons for his contempt. To call it “incessant contempt” is to confuse the passion with which the conclusion drawn with its cogency.

The irony of Will’s lesson in civil discourse, however, consists in his consistent and well-documented failure to exemplify that in his own writing. How often, and this is a rhetorical question, has Will presented any opposition to his view as moronic?