Category Archives: Straw Man

Op-Eds and other opinions, Straw Man, Thomas Friedman

Correspondents theory

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It’s hard to have a conversation about the foolishness of ever having started the war in Iraq without running into people who accuse you of not wanting to win. I suppose they (probably purposely) confuse you’re believing you’re right about an unwinnable war with your wishing reality would conform to your beliefs. You–the opposer of the Iraq war–think rather that your belief corresponds in some philosophically uninteresting way with reality–not t’other way round. Such a basic confusion is the only explanation behind Liz Cheney’s guest op-ed in the Washington Post.

More reprehensible than Cheney’s junior high rhetoric is Tom Friedman’s failure to come to grips with the reality of his poor judgment. The people who opposed the Iraq war as a disastrous experiment in nation-building or nation-obliterating had good reasons for their opposition. And they were right. The latter counting most of all. About their view this is what Friedman says in a recent NPR interview:

>FRIEDMAN: Look, I understand people who opposed the war. Some opposed it for military reasons, because they’re against war, some opposed it because they hate George Bush, some opposed it because they didn’t believe Arabs are capable of democracy. I wasn’t in that group. I really believed that finding a different kind of politics in collaboration with people in that region was a really important project.

>ASHBROOK: And do you really believe –

>FRIEDMAN: I’m really sorry. Next time — Next time Ishwar [caller], I promise, I really promise, I’ll be a better liberal. I’ll not in any way support any effort to bring democracy to a country ruled by an oil-backed tyranny. I promise I will never do that again. I promise I’ll be a better liberal. I will view the prospect of Arabs forging a democracy as utterly impossible. They’re incapable of democracy. I agree with you on that now.

>ASHBROOK: You’re going to sarcasm. We can feel you’ve taken your licks on this.

Hasn’t cost him him any of his media credibility however.

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

The difference if makes

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There is much good discussion below on the topic of faith. Go visit it here.

It’s been a while since I posted and I thought I’d ask if anyone thinks the following two comments are different.

this:

>As John Edwards put it most starkly and egregiously in 2004: If John Kerry becomes president, Christopher Reeve will walk again.

And this:

>Christopher Reeve just passed away. And America just lost a great champion for this cause. Somebody who is a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him, who have gone through the tragedy. Well, if we can do the work that we can do in this country — the work we will do when John Kerry is president — people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk. Get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.

How many ways are these different?

General discussion, Straw Man, Suppressed Evidence

So, a Straw Man walks into a bar

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We have frequently pointed out how the desire to be funny is often at odds with the desire for logical rigor. This is nicely illustrated in Michael Kinsley’s opinion piece today in the Washington Post. Kinsley claims that there has been a tendency towards wishful thinking in dealing with the conflict created by the double-dealing Balfour Agreement.

>This tradition continues in the Iraq Study Group report, which declared: “There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts” as a small warm-up for tackling the problem of Iraq.

Rather than critique this proposal directly, Kinsely makes little of it with humor:

>What a good idea! And then we’ll cure cancer, to pave the way for health care reform. Why, of course all of humanity should put down its weapons and learn to live together in harmony and siblinghood — most especially in the Holy Land, birthplace of three great religions (so far). In fact it is downright inexplicable that peace and goodwill have not broken out spontaneously in the Middle East, even though this has never happened anywhere else either.

Of course, if we read the ISG’s sentence they merely claim that the U.S. should make a sustained commitment to this peace. But such an idea is absurd to Kinsley, so he foregoes any attempt to deal with it seriously.

The remainder of Kinsley’s piece involves a somewhat bizarre and forced attempt to deny President Carter’s suggestion that there is an analogy between South Africa’s Apartheid and certain Israeli policies on the basis of technical differences.

If we were to turn Kinsley’s tactic upon him, we might cast his argument as claiming that “Israel and South Africa had different tax codes so how could they be similar?”

See, it’s easy when you don’t think you need to treat the other’s argument seriously.

George Will, Straw Man

Quote-picking

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Last week, George Will demonstrated yet again his contempt for honest discussion. He selectively quoted Jim Webb’s discussion with President Bush in order to make the Senator-elect from Virginia look like a boor. But luckily one can easily double-check the facts and the context. While this quote-picking is primarily a factual question, insofar as it’s an attempt to edit the words of another to weaken their position, it’s a straw man tactic. Consider, then, the following:

>Until June, the school district’s Web site declared that “cultural racism” includes “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,” “having a future time orientation” (planning ahead) and “defining one form of English as standard.” The site also asserted that only whites can be racists, and disparaged assimilation as the “giving up” of one’s culture. After this propaganda provoked outrage, the district, saying it needed to “provide more context to readers” about “institutional racism,” put up a page saying that the district’s intention is to avoid “unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.”

In the first place it’s hard to check this because that content is no longer available. In light of his recent behavior, we cannot presume that Will has been fair or honest in his representation of the content of that page. Since Will’s intention in writing an op-ed ought to be to convince one who disagrees with him rather than inflame the passions of those who share his view, he should engage the substance of the opposition’s view. So he should present a longer unredacted section of text. If space does not permit it, then perhaps he should reconsider the way he makes his case.

Op-Eds and other opinions, Straw Man

Phrasing

Sometimes the way we phrase things matters a lot. Take a look at the following from some Manhattan Institute thinktanker:

>In the heat of this past year’s election debate, Democrats fiercely criticized the Patriot Act and NSA programs that monitor terrorist phone calls and bank transactions. As Democrats now assume the responsibility of governing, Americans should hope that our new Congressional leadership will closely examine the evidence on these important national security measures before taking any hasty legislative action.

Let’s hope in the first place that no one takes any hasty legislative action. And I’ll leave it to the rhetoric people to assess the implication of this otherwise dismal piece that the Democrats are soft on terrorism. But I can’t help myself from applauding this appallingly silly conclusion:

>Simply hoping our government somehow stumbles upon terrorist plotters is not a reliable counter-terrorism strategy. We have to use our law enforcement capacity to go out and look. As the Barot case shows us, the stakes are simply too high.

And who advocates that? Perhaps the same people who can’t be bothered to read the memos with such titles as “Bin Laden Determined to Attack the United States“

Charles Krauthammer, Straw Man

Necessary but not sufficient

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Borat seems to have irked the association of rightward commentators. Both David Brooks and Jonah Goldberg have complained about it (at least Goldberg thought it was funny). Now Krauthammer joins in (and he even cites the acute observation of David Brooks). What gets Krauthammer’s goat is the implicational insult to the rabid evangelical supporter of the nation of Israel (nota bene: by “nation of Israel” we do not mean “Jews”). He writes:

>Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of the film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” revealed his purpose for doing that in a rare out-of-character interview he granted Rolling Stone in part to counter charges that he was promoting anti-Semitism. On the face of it, this would be odd, given that Cohen is himself a Sabbath-observing Jew. His defense is that he is using Borat’s anti-Semitism as a “tool” to expose it in others. And that his Arizona bar stunt revealed if not anti-Semitism, then “indifference” to anti-Semitism. And that, he maintains, was the path to the Holocaust.

But there are two serious problems with Krauthammer’s argument.

First, as I read this claim, I think Cohen is probably suggesting that American indifference to other’s unashamed and virulent racism is a necessary but not a sufficient cause of organized and systematic genocide like the Holocaust. There would have been no Holocaust, perhaps, had so many Germans and Poles and Italians and French and many others not been indifferent. That point seems obvious. He’s hardly claiming, as Krauthammer seems to suggest, that they were the necessary and sufficient cause–that the indifferent brought it about. The indifferent don’t bring anything about. They fail to stop or help others from bringing about. The positive anti-semitism of others is another matter.

The second problem is that Krauthammer is fundamentally confused about who Cohen is criticizing. So from the Arizona bar stunt, Krauthammer reads a criticism of Christian Evangelicals. What they would be doing in a bar is beyond me. But more to the point, it’s not clear that Cohen even criticizes them specifically (if he does, please tell me).

But even if he did, somehow Krauthammer will have to explain that many Christian Evangelicals defend the nation of Israel in order (1) to help bring about the end times; and (2) the unconverted Jews (at the end times) will have no share in paradise. They are merely the means to the salvation of Christians.

Argument Analysis, Ignoratio Elenchi, Plain Bad Arguments, Straw Man

Relativism at the heart of Reason

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Arguments from cultural relativism sometimes strike me as acts of desperation: Unable to argue against a position, one argues that taking any position is irresponsible because others disagree with it. From a certain context-free perspective everything can appear to be arbitrary and unjustifiable. Jacob Sullum exploits this sort of argument in a column in Reason. His dudgeon is raised by the passage in the House of H.R. 503, a bill to “amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit. . . the slaughter of Horses for human consumption and other purposes.”

>Horses are nice. Killing them for food is mean. This is the gist of the argument for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

Or so claims Sullum.

>Congress is on the verge of passing a law aimed at stopping Americans from catering to foreigners’ taste for horse meat. I generally avoid the phrase cultural imperialism, since it’s often used by people who object to the voluntary consumption of American products by non-Americans. But when Americans want to forcibly impose their culinary preferences on people in other countries, it fits pretty well.

Avoiding the phrase “cultural imperialism” seems to have resulted in not understanding it. If not providing for another culture’s culinary preferences is somehow “forcibly imposing culinary preference on people in other countries,” then the notion of “cultural imperialism” seems to collapse into sheer meaninglessness.

>Perhaps they can enlighten me as well: What is the legally relevant distinction between a horse and a cow? Is it aesthetic? Lambs are awfully cute. Is the issue intelligence? Pigs are pretty smart.

This is a very good question that Sullum has almost stumbled upon. In this case, however, the legally significant distinction is that one species has been legally designated as sellable for food for human consumption and the other has not in many States (I believe this to be true. The sale of horse meat was made legal during WWII in some states and made illegal again after the war. Texas and California I believe have made the sale of horse meat illegal). Presumably Sullum would disagree that this distinction is justified, but the question in his text needs to be answered first by some acquaintance with the relevant laws concerning animals. And whether Sullum agrees or not our legal codes regularly distinguish between species and the protections that they are afforded: For example, animals used for agricultural purposes are explicitly excluded from most anti-cruelty legislation.

What Sullum needs to ask is what is the “morally significant distinction” between a horse and a cow? But, if we ask that, we might discover that the “lever” of arbitrariness does not expand the exclusions from animal protection laws, but works in the other direction. If Sullum’s rejection of the arbitrariness of the banning of slaughtering horses for food is generalized, he would be arguing that since some animals can be made to suffer for purposes of medical knowledge and food, all animals can be made to suffer for such purposes. To the contrary, if one holds that some cruelty laws are justified, then there should be no arbitrary exclusions from them—they should cover all animals.

But to return to horses: Sullum’s claim that the protection of horses from slaughter is arbitrary in a country that slaughters other species for food is hard to dispute. But, at the same time it is not particularly telling as an argument against the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, even if provides an easy opportunity to ridicule the bills supporters. That some animals have special places in human lives and so receive special protections from exploitation is in part a compromise we make with our intuitive sense that animals are not mere things. It is undoubtedly arbitrary but in the same way that our preference for the interests of our friends and family over strangers is arbitrary.

If nothing else, proponents will argue, passage of this bill will lessen (in however small a way) the suffering of some animals—and that by itself would make this a good law–which does not seem to be the same thing as arguing:

>Horses are nice. Killing them for food is mean. This is the gist of the argument for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

False Dichotomy, Straw Man, V.D.Hanson

Quo status?

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It’s hard to have a debate when the people who want to participate don’t know what the debate is about. We mentioned this the other week–we took election week off–with Jonah Goldberg’s discussion of the border fence. And again in the past few days the my way or the status quo meme has reappeared:

>Increased border patrol, a 700-mile fence to stop the easiest access routes (something President Bush signed into law two weeks ago), employer sanctions and encouragement of one official language can all help solve the crisis. But once the debate is renewed, congressional reformers will be blitzed by advocates of the failed status quo with a series of false assumptions concerning the issue.

That’s V.D.Hanson, a man quickly becoming a Nonsequitur star. The problem here is that no one seriously advocates the status quo. It’s tiresome to point this out, but take a look at the following:

>Take, for example, the shared self-interest argument–that the benefits to both the U.S. and Mexico of leaving our borders open trumps the need for enforcement of existing laws and outweighs the costs to U.S. taxpayers that result from massive influxes of poor illegal aliens.

Take also for example the argument for turning the elderly into soylent green. “Leaving the borders open” is rather different from “tolerating illegal immigration as it stands.” I don’t think even these cold-hearted people would advocate the current system of institutionalized illegality. And so for the rest.

Jonah Goldberg, Straw Man

Peanut Parents

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Adults never appear in the Peanuts cartoons; one only hears their voices uttering nonsensical noises: waw waw waw waw. Much the same is the case for the adults in any of Jonah Goldberg’s columns. But today this is literally true:

>There are two obvious ways to save the bankrupt liberal talk-radio network Air America: Get Al Franken some new, funny material and hire a Lou Dobbs. I say “a” Lou Dobbs because the CNN host himself is probably too expensive, but his limousine populism is pretty easy to rip off: “Blah, blah, blah. Corporations are out to get you, Washington has sold you out, the fat cats have declared war on the little guy,” and so on.

I’ve asked this before: need we even bother?

Equivocation, False Dichotomy, Robert Kagan, Straw Man

Differences without distinctions

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According to Robert Kagan, the Democrats are the same as Republicans, er “fundamentally”:

>Although [the Democrats] pretend they have a fundamental doctrinal dispute with the Bush administration, their recommendations are less far-reaching. They argue that the United States should generally try to be nicer, employ more “soft power” and be more effective when it employs “hard power.” That may be good advice, but it hardly qualifies as an alternative doctrine.

What’s one reason there isn’t much of a difference?

>Even today leading Democrats who oppose the Iraq war do not oppose the idea of war itself or its utility. They’re not even denouncing a defense budget approaching $500 billion per year.

That’s setting the bar for substantial difference so high that only avowed pacifists will qualify for being the opposition party. At bottom, rhetorical strategy consists in his claiming for the Republicans every foreign policy view short of radical anti-american opposition. This strategy at once demonizes and trivializes sensible opposition to this administrations disasterous policies.