Category Archives: General discussion

Anything else.

David Brooks, General discussion, George Will

The power of ideas

David Brooks, conservative columnist and former Bush sycophant, yesterday:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Gee, who would scorn ideas?  Maybe the David Brooks, court flatterer of Bush's Versailles era [October 2, 2004]:

When John Kerry was asked how he would prevent another attack like 9/11, he reeled off a list of nine concrete policy areas, ranging from intelligence reform to training Iraqi troops, but his answer had no thematic summation. If you glance down a transcript of the debate and you see one set of answers that talks about “logistical capacity” or “a plan that I’ve laid out in four points,” or “a long list” of proposals or “a strict series of things” that need to be done, you know that’s Kerry speaking. [emphasis added] 

Ideas are so boring!  Concrete policy!  Snore.  Contrast this with Bush [following directly from the same October 2, 2004 op-ed]:

If, on the other hand, you see an answer that says, “When we give our word, we will keep our word,” you know that is Bush. When you see someone talking about crying with a war widow, you know that’s Bush.

Bush had no ideas then either, and it seems Brooks knew it.  But then it was a virtue.  Now it obviously isn't.  My only question is why it took Brooks so long to learn this. 

In a related matter, I'm happy to be wrong about the right wing pundit army marching lockstep with their guy, however bad his arguments.  This was true with Bush until just recently.  The only disagreements (uttered sotto voce) were that he was not conservative enough.  Now to the growing chorus of right wing pundits who reject McCain for reasons other than sufficient rightwardness, a group which includes George Will, Kathleen Parker, and to some extent Charles Krauthammer, one can perhaps now definitively add David Brooks.   

bad company, Bloggers, General discussion, Specious allegations of fallacy

Association by guilt

Perhaps some of you might have heard that Barack Obama has been "pallin' around with terrorists," such as William Ayers of the Weather Underground, or that he listened while his minister criticized America, or that some guy from the same city as him is going to go to jail.  Such are the McCain campaign's charges.  You might also notice that these are attempts "guilt by association" (here we call it "bad company"). To many, such a tactic is wrong on its face.  Rather than discuss the substantive policy questions that ought to be driving the current Presidential race, we have to sit through endless stories about who met with whom when where and how.  It certainly is dumb, and it makes all of us dumber.  Here's a well known leftish blogger:

So Palin’s "palling around" accusation is no more true than her boast that she "told congress ‘Thanks, but no thanks’" on the Bridge to Nowhere, or that she had the Alaska Permanent Fund divest from Sudan. But it seems to me that pointing out factual errors gives this line of argument too much credit: guilt by association, even when the association happens to be real, is a silly charge.

It's not a silly charge, however.  Whether the charge is true is certainly important.  As important as that, however, is whether the charge is relevant.  Relevance, in fact, is what makes the difference between a fallacious guilt by association charge and a legitimate one.  It's not, in other words, simply a matter of the form of argument.  The content–who is the associate, how long? how important? etc.,–makes all of the difference.

It turns out, I think, that Palin's charges are false or at best misleading.  Ayers is, in fact, a rather prominent person in Chicago politics–he even pals around with such mainstream figures as Richard M. Daley, our longtime mayor.  Besides, Ayers isn't in jail, and he doesn't seem to be currently a terrorist.  Besides that, he, in his civic role in Chicago politics, "palled" around with Republicans as well.

All of this, of course, makes a huge difference as to the relevance of the charge.  If Sarah Palin, for instance, "palled around" with members of a treasonous secessionist political party, I think that would indeed be relevant.  The same would be true for John McCain.  If he palled around with people who advocated assassination as a policy, or who defrauded thousands of people of their life savings, we might have reason to question his judgment.

So, while whether such charges as these are true matters a good deal.  But it matters just as much whether they have any relevance to stuff that matters.  Sometimes they don't.  

General discussion

It’s pronounced Nuke-You-Ler

15 Comments

Let's consider this an open thread for debate discussion.  

I'd agree with these two that the unwatchable thing for me about the post-debate discussion is the pundits' obsession with what they think people will think.  To do that they have to assume much about what people will think–namely whether people will swoon over the "youbetchyas" and the winks and so forth.  And they generally assume they will.  That means they think you're stupid. 

Other than this general observation, I think I've actually had arguments with people like Sarah Palin.  One can't really have a discussion with someone who can't understand your view, how maliciously distorts her misunderstanding of it, refuses to address any challenges, and considers all criticism to be directed at her and her lovely family (and by extension everyone like her). 

General discussion, George Will, Ruth Marcus, Straw Man

Stand down

A few posts back (and for a couple of posts) I remarked on the tendency of "liberal" pundits to separate themselves from the "liberal" candidate by frequently criticizing him or her, usually for failing to look enough like the conservative candidate.  Yesterday Ruth Marcus provided another excellent example of this–going after one of Obama's campaign lines for "misrepresenting" John McCain's record.  I wouldn't quibble with the criticism, my view is that no one should misrepresent anything.  But there is a question of scale. 

We have on the one hand Obama, in Marcus's world guilty of a straw man for not criticizing the strongest versions of McCain's one-time social security plan (Obama said had McCain had his way, many people would now be in dire straits–when in reality, only had this crisis happened a few years on, would people be in dire straits on account of McCain's plan–oops!).  Obama probably is guilty of that logical offense.  It's an offense nearly too typical, in my estimation, for one even to remark upon.  Candidates thrive by knocking down weak versions of each others' policy positions.  Obama didn't need to do it, however, as his point was independent of the specific facts of the case–in a privatized social security market, he had been saying, this is the sort of thing that could really doom us.  And no doubt he's right about that.

But that's not my point.  Marcus, for some reason, wanted to even the truthiness playing field, where McCain and Palin lie repeatedly and without apparent consequence about nearly everything, and Obama misrepresents McCain's position once.  Marcus bent over backwards for apparent even-handedness.  

To my very great and growing surprise, however, Marcus's righward colleagues, usually lockstep in their defense of their guy, have shown me to be astoundingly and thankfully wrong.  Here, for instance, is George Will:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Ouch. Notice also for a moment the huge difference between Will and Marcus.  Marcus takes Obama to task all of the time (and for the stupidest of reasons–such as he's not "regular" enough); Will, if you look at his recent posts (and search our Will archive) has almost never directly challenged the rightward guy.  He's made, in fact, a rather valient effort in recent days to make McCain's case (arguing, in one instance, that maybe one should not think about the economy, since life has so much else to offer than just money).  

There goes my theory about the right wing pundit corps, my theory of the non-existent left wing pundit corps still stands, for the moment.  

General discussion

Academic beachheads

5 Comments

As a academic and a historian of philosophy, I find these sorts of initiatives baffling:

COLORADO SPRINGS — Acknowledging that 20 years and millions of dollars spent loudly and bitterly attacking the liberal leanings of American campuses have failed to make much of a dent in the way undergraduates are educated, some conservatives have decided to try a new strategy.

They are finding like-minded tenured professors and helping them establish academic beachheads for their ideas.

These initiatives, like the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, Austin, or a project at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, to publish a book of classic texts, are mostly financed by conservative organizations and donors, run by conservative professors. But they have a decidedly nonpartisan and nonideological face.

Their goal is to restore what conservative and other critics see as leading casualties of the campus culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s: the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history.

“These are not ideological courses,” said James Piereson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which created the Veritas Fund for Higher Education to funnel donations to these sorts of projects. The initiatives are only political insofar as they “work against the thrust of programs and courses in gender, race and class studies, and postmodernism in general,” he said.

The programs and centers differ in emphasis, with some concentrating on American democratic and capitalist institutions and others on the Western canon, the great books often derided during the culture wars as the history of “dead white men.” They sponsor colloquia, seminars, courses, visiting lecturers and postdoctoral students. At Brown, the Political Theory Project even put on a play by the capitalist heroine Ayn Rand.

Some, like the effort in Colorado Springs and the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia focus solely on exposing freshmen to classical thinkers. Others favor a return to a more traditional teaching of America’s past, featuring its greatest accomplishments instead of the history of repression and exploitation that had been the trend.

Not surprisingly, such initiatives betray no understanding of how academia actually works.  I have never understood why they can't just try to make arguments for their views.  

General discussion

Good enough for Moses

Concern troll Michael Gerson last week whined about how liberals have made light of Sarah Palin's Pentecostalism.  While's he's right that this might alienate religious people–the very same who brought you all things that are awesome (abolitionism and civil rights) and none of the things that are bad, (like colonialism, slavery, etc.)–whose votes the Democrats need this coming year.

It has been (correctly) pointed out elsewhere that his argument amounts to a straw man.  No one has made fun of Palin's anything (her family, her religion).  No one, that is, who represesents the Obama campaign or the Democratic party.  If Gerson wants to be believed, he ought at least to have the honesty to name someone, someone representative (not Matt Damon) who is guilty of making light of Palin's religion.  Saying "liberals" has a kind of Hannity/O'Reilly/Will kind of falsity about it, as if we're supposed to take his word for it, even though he is in many respects the ultimate partisan hack, as he was the former speechwriter for George W. Bush.

Not finished making stuff up (i.e., lying), Gerson continues sermonizing:

But it is the political effect of these attacks that must have Team McCain shouting and hollering with the joy of a frontier camp meeting. In general, liberal political and media elites demonstrate a religious diversity that runs the spectrum from secularism to liberal Episcopalianism — all the varied shades from violet to blue. Yet they assume their high church or Mencken-like disdain for religious enthusiasm is broadly shared. It was the sociologist Peter Berger who observed, "Puerto Ricans, Jews and Episcopalians each form around 2 percent of the American population. Guess which group does not think of itself as a minority." 

This sounds like one of the perpetual and unfounded screeds about the evils of secularism one might hear at one's church when one goes once in a great while.  It's a gross misrepresentation of liberalism, as Gerson knows, and a gross misrepresentation of secularism, as Gerson ought to know.  Both of those misrepresentations, of course, amount to dishonest portrayals of one's interlocutor.  Such behavior does not advance us on the road to understanding.  

 

 

General discussion, George Will, Lack of Evidence, Plain Bad Arguments, Straw Man

American idle

4 Comments

In the wake of David Brooks's critical piece on Sarah Palin, I was going to point out that perhaps I was wrong about the right wing pundit corps.  Maybe they don't marshal any argument, however foolish, in support of their "guy," whoever their guy is, or however silly his policy prescriptions.  That would have been fun to write, as I enjoy being wrong, despite what people may think.  But then I run across this morning's George Will column.  He's not pro-Palin, but that's not going to stop him from making a pitch for McCain.  Well it's not really a pitch for McCain, since he doesn't mention any of McCain's numerous virtues or policy proposals as a reason to vote for him.

What worries George Will, reputedly some kind of libertarian, about a Democratic Presidency is the possibility of (a) an (unlikely I think) expansion of unionization, (b) universal health care, (c) (unlikely again) laws regarding political speech.  As a rule, one ought to dismiss out of hand Will's characterization of these issues, as he is, unfortunately, a serial straw man constructor.  Perhaps one might find better arguments against those things elsewhere.  What's silly is that these three things pose such a danger to the country and liberty, that Will finds their possible vetoing sufficient reason to vote for McCain.  I mean, as they say, come on you've got to be kidding me.  This is all you have?

Well, in other ironic matters, there's this:

Palin is as bracing as an Arctic breeze and delightfully elicits the condescension of liberals whose enthusiasm for everyday middle-class Americans cannot survive an encounter with one. But the country's romance with her will, as romances do, cool somewhat, and even before November some new fad might distract a nation that loves "American Idol" for the metronomic regularity with which it discovers genius in persons hitherto unsuspected of it.  

"Liberals," of course, are elitists–i.e., not "everyday middle-class Americans."  Don't they, by the way, belong to unions?  Unions like the ones whose expansion this piece claims to offer reason to oppose?  Then of course the irony: George Will, cursing elitism, makes fun not only of what lots of people watch, but of their aesthetic judgments as well.  But perhaps he never cursed elitism.

In a related matter–this is dumbfoundingly hilarious.

General discussion, Sebastian Mallaby, Specious allegations of fallacy, Straw Man

Posts blog posts

7 Comments

I normally don't read the Post's election blog posts primarily because they're blog posts, but this one from Sebastian Mallaby, "Obama's Faulty Logic," caught my eye.  I thought, "perhaps someone has caught Obama in a crazy non sequitur I can talk about here." 

Then I read it and it occured to me that Mallaby thinks logic means something else than I do.  But that's interesting anyway, because I often wonder what people who haven't been teaching it for many years think it is (feel free to comment on that).  When I use the term, I mean something rather specific.  I mean to point out the part of an argument that takes one from one fact to another fact.  This is what logicians call an "inference."  Even though this has to do with the facts in some very important sense, one can isolate the inference and see it as part of a larger pattern, a scheme, or whatever, independent of the particular facts.  To say someone has faulty logic, for me, means he endorses faulty inference patterns or schemes.  

For Mallaby it means something like there's something wrong with the thinking without any specific attempt at a diagnosis.  In this particular case, in fact, he just seems to think Obama has wrongly diagnosed the cause of the current financial crisis.  That's fine–so long as he attempts to prove it (which, to my mind, he doesn't, but that's another matter).  Then Mallaby, swinging about accusations of faulty logic, writes:

The regulation-versus-deregulation rhetoric is appealingly simple, and both parties abuse it. Republicans like to say they will get the economy going by cutting red tape. Democrats like to say that they will make the economy more stable by demanding rational oversight. Neither claim is worth much.

The Republicans fail to acknowledge that the easy economic gains from deregulation were exhausted more than two decades ago, when clearly destructive restrictions on competition in trucking, airlines and so on were scrapped by Carter and Reagan. The Democrats fail to acknowledge that there is a limit to what government oversight can do. Modern financial institutions are so complex that government inspectors are hard pressed to understand their trading strategies. That is why an outfit such as Citigroup, a deposit-taking institution theoretically overseen by multiple government bodies including the Fed, could park billions of dollars of toxic mortgage securities in off-balance-sheet vehicles, with nary a protest from regulators.

Yes, Wall Street's woes reflect greed and reckless borrowing. And yes, some regulatory reform is necessary. But you can't blame the mess on either political party — at least not if you want to remain honest.

It's staggering to say that more rational oversight wouldn't have helped.  But it's silly to say that anyone, even Democrats, would argue that oversight would solve all problems.  That, in fact, is a bit of a George Will style straw man–one which has the liberals demanding that the government will prevent every wrong if it's allowed to.  Obviously some amount of nefarious activity will take place, and unless Obama says that the government will stop every problem, cure every sickness and so on, then Mallaby is making Obama's position more absurd than it needs to be.  

It's fine, in other words, for Mallaby to correct Obama's assertions–that's his job, I think at least.  But accusing him of faulty logic when he's not guilty of it–even in Mallaby's enlarged sense–doesn't help anyone.