Category Archives: Op-Eds and other opinions

Academics, Straw Man

Twaddle

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Courtesy of Brian Leiter.  Here's noted historian of ancient philosophy (and much else) Jonathan Barnes on Contintental Philosophy:

[M]ost philosophers who belong to the so-called analytical tradition are pretty poor philosophers. (Most academics who do anything are pretty poor at doing it; and philosophy, or so it seems to me, is a subject in which it is peculiarly difficult to do decent stuff. A modestly competent historian may produce a modestly good history book; a modestly competent philosopher has no reason to publish his modest thoughts.)   But there's a big difference between the analyticals and the continentals: what distinguishes the continental tradition is that all its members are pretty hopeless at philosophy. Myself, I've read scarcely a hundred continental pages. I can't see how any rational being could bear to read more; and the only question which the continental tradition raises is sociological or psychological: How are so many apparently intelligent young people charmed into taking the twaddle seriously?

Why bother indeed with straw men, they take so much time to construct, just to knock down in the end.

 

Other problems, Stanley Fish

Lay bare the structure

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Discussions of bias seem to take on a similar pattern.  Aside from the groundless hurling of the "you're biased" accusation, someone will quickly make the claim that "bias" is inevitable and that we all have our own unjustified biases, so why bother.  Here is yet another way, the Stanley Fish way, to deal with questions of bias:

I agree that it is important to have a position on such questions of truth, but the classroom is not the place to work that position out; the classroom is, however, the place to consider the efforts of men and women to work it out in the course of centuries. Steven Brence may or may not be right when he announces that an “untenable” Hobbesian notion of individualism is responsible for “much of contemporary conservative thought.” But “untenable” is not a judgment he should render, although he should make an historical argument about conservative thought’s indebtedness to Hobbes. Save “untenable” for the soapbox.

Sarah asks, what good does academic conversation “do us if it does not put us in a better position to assess current theories and thoughts?” It depends what you mean by assess. If you mean analyze, lay bare the structure of, trace the antecedents of, then well and good. But if it means pronouncing on the great issues of the day — yes we should export democracy to the rest of the world or no we shouldn’t — then what she calls assessing I call preaching.

Sarah touches on what is perhaps the most urgent question one could put to the enterprise of liberal education. What, after all, justifies it? The demand for justification, as I have said in other places, always come from those outside the enterprise. Those inside the enterprise should resist it, because to justify something is to diminish it by implying that its value lies elsewhere. If the question What justifies what you do? won’t go away, the best answer to give is “nothing.”

Now I hate to be the guy who draws the facile conclusion, but isn't "laying bear the structure of" a kind of "pronouncing on"?  I mean, if I say, "this argument has the structure (and say content) of an equivocation," aren't I pronouncing on it?  Or should I not teach logic, because it's biased?

Ad Hominem, Kathleen Parker

Racial interpretations

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Kathleen Parker–yes, the one of blut und boden–wonders:

Can we critique the issues—and the man—without resorting to racial interpretations and recriminations? If McCain wins, can his victory simply be a loss for Democrats—and not a loss specifically for African-Americans?

The answers to those questions will be the measure of whether we have really progressed to the point we claim.

This is not directed at herself of course.  For the other day she wondered whether Obama had enough generational equity to be truly American.  His family had not poured enough into the soil.  She wrote:

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically—and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century—there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

Contributing to the growing unease among yesterday's Americans is the failure of the federal government to deal with illegal Immigration. It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story. 

I can't really see the "issue" in that.

This is because this remark is directed at Democrats.  Can, in other words, Kathleen Parker and her friends say racist things without fear of being called racists. 

This, she thinks, is progress. 

General discussion, Michael Gerson

Pluralisms

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I don't know what Tony Blair's actual views are (He used to be Prime Minister of Britain.  But he isn't any more.  He has converted to Catholicism–something he waited to do until he left office, for to avoid breaking the law), but he inadvisedly let Michael Gerson explain them.  Gerson writes:

But Blair is also critical of an "aggressive secularization," which, he told me, makes it easier to "forget a higher calling than the fulfillment of our own desires." Religious faith, at its best, not only encourages idealism, it provides an explanation and foundation for human rights and dignity, "an inalienable principle, rising above relativism and expediency." This does not "eliminate the painful compromises of political existence," Blair recognizes. But it does mean that "not everything can be considered in a utilitarian way." Blair defends a pluralism without relativism, a tolerance consistent with a belief in religious and moral truth — indeed, a tolerance that arises from within those convictions.

That view–that religious faith "provides an explanation and foundation for human rights" seems to be slightly self-refuting–it suggests that atheists (or for that matter people whose religious views differ from Blair's and Gerson's) cannot explain human rights.  It rejects pluralism at the same time that it purports to embrace it.  We embrace pluralism, one who affirms this view might say, it's just that you're an amoral or an immoral relativist–which has no place in our pluralistic view.

He might say, of course, certain religious doctrines or faiths are not inconsistent with political and moral and religious pluralism.  And that pluralism of the political, moral, and religious variety is not the sole property of any one member of the plural.  He might.  But he didn't.

Kathleen Parker, specious comparisons

Full blooded, check it and see

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The other day we talked about the New York Times public editor's discussion of the factually challenged work of Edward Luttwak.  Courtesy of Eric Alterman's column on Media Matters, we were alerted to the Chicago Tribune public editor's response to the Kathleen Parker column of a couple of weeks ago (which we discussed here).  In brief, the column argued that Obama was not a "full-blooded American."  Many, according to McNulty, wondered why such a column could be published in a major newspaper–rather than say, the Klanly Times.  This is McNulty's response:

Responding first to Nielsen, I wrote that as ridiculous and repugnant as that full-blooded sentiment is to many, if not most, Americans, I would rather see it on the op-ed page so that people can hold it to the light and repudiate the notion rather than deal with it as a whispering campaign.

Remember McCain was the target of whispering in his 2000 primary race against George W. Bush in South Carolina. While McCain traveled with the daughter he and his wife had adopted from Bangladesh, an anonymous telephone smear campaign asked voters whether they would vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

Anyone who believes that the race issue will be dormant in the general election—presuming that Obama is the Democratic candidate—is hiding from reality. It remains a divisive issue and, as Parker noted, some fear that "their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative."

I think it is the news media's responsibility to highlight not just the political stratagems but the attitudes that help create them.

The aim of the Tribune's Commentary page is to display a wide range of subjective opinions, even those some may consider offensive. Printing a column is not the same as sanctioning it.

The same need to speak plainly but objectively is true in the news pages. An article Tuesday by Tribune reporter Rex W. Huppke examined how residents in the rural Kentucky town of Munfordville felt about Obama versus Clinton.

"They won't vote for a black man," Huppke quoted one white Obama supporter talking about his neighbors, "That's all there is to it. They just can't bring themselves to do it."

Another resident explained bluntly why he wouldn't support Obama: "It's his color."

Those statements reflect racist views, but does that mean the news media shouldn't report them?

McNulty draws an analogy between the "news" part of the paper and the "opinion" part–that somehow they have the same goal of "reporting."  He also makes the accompanying claim that the opinions are "subjective" and may be "offensive."  Fair enough.  But the analogy, I think, does not hold. 

The reporting part of the newspaper ought to inform readers of claims of fact–verifiable, one would hope, by the newspaper's fact checkers.  There will of course be editorial decisions to be made–which news stories to report?  What questions will our reporters ask of politicians?  Do we run the R. Kelly story on the front page every day for the next several months?  And so forth. 

There are editorial considerations to be made on the op-ed page as well.  Which opinions form part of the "wide range" of public opinion?  Shall bin Laden be allowed to write a "his turn" column about the Great Satan?  Shall we allow obvious factual distortions and groundless hyperbole just because it falls into a "wide range" of public "opinion"?  Which opinions in the wide spectrum deserve a column of their own?  Many don't.  The editorial judgment, one would presume, determines which opinions fall within the spectrum of reasonable civil discourse.  

Besides, it's obvious that some opinions are better informed than others.   Some opinions are more well grounded in fact and in reason than others.  Parker's was one of those that wasn't.  And it's up to the Tribune editors to know the difference.

One final point.  The alternative to publishing Parker's column is not "a whispering campaign" somehow abetted by the media's silence.  The alternative rather is that Parker's argument is not claimed to represent part of range of reasonable civil discourse.

George Will, Things that are false

I’ve got a fever

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Speaking of facts–I mean whether they matter on the op-ed page–pointing out that someone else has distorted or minimized or ignored inconvenient facts seems to me to be one of the hallmarks of an op-ed since it's one of the key moves in any critical argument.  Perhaps for that reason alone op-ed editors ought to be ever more vigilant for claims such as the following from George Will:

Regarding McCain's "central facts," the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, which helped establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — co-winner, with Al Gore, of the Nobel Peace Prize — says global temperatures have not risen in a decade. So Congress might be arriving late at the save-the-planet party. Better late than never? No. When government, ever eager to expand its grip on the governed and their wealth, manufactures hysteria as an excuse for doing so, then: better never.  

Sounds like the IPCC says the globe isn't warming.  But:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.

That's the IPCC report of 2007.  Will seems to think temperature and climate are the same thing.  They're obviously not.  Can't someone at the Post tell him? 

The rest of his piece seemed a perfectly fine excursus on why some proposed measure to address global warming (cap and trade of carbon emissions) is a bad idea.  It might be.  But not because global warming is a communist hoax.  What communist hoax would use a capitalist system–trading and markets–to undermine capitalism?  But maybe that's just what the communists want us to think.

Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, Appeal to Ignorance, Charles Krauthammer, General discussion, Ignoratio Elenchi, Red Herring, Straw Man

Envirocommunism

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The President of the Czech Republic has helped Charles Krauthammer find the true enemy of freedom.  It's knowledge about the natural world.  This knowledge is especially dangerous if Krauthammer doesn't have the patience, time, or expertise to understand it.  He writes:

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming — infinitely more untested, complex and speculative — is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class — social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies — arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but — even better — in the name of Earth itself.

Such a combination of straw men (the weakest versions of global warming arguments–not to Newsweeks's idea of "debate" about global warming), red herrings (communism, socialism, etc.), ad hominem (arrogant scientists are just trying to rule the world), ad ignorantiam (since we don't know much about the effects of carbon, let's do nothing. . . ), and just plain non sequiturs (Newton's law of motion was "overthrown" so distrust everything short of that) has not been seen for, um, weeks on this page.

Ad Hominem, Ad hominem tu quoque, Op-Eds and other opinions

We can’t have nice things

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Scott McClellan, former White House Press Secretary, has written a book which by all accounts is quite critical of his former boss's handling of the Iraq war, among other things.  Does McClellan have interesting things to say?  Most certainly.  He worked there, after all.  Is he right?  Maybe.  But you can bet on one thing, we're not going to get a lot of enlightened discussion of this from those who run our nation's public discourse.  Here, for instance, is Fox News' Gretchen Carlson:

CARLSON: Scott McClellan better not have any skeletons in his closet. I hope he didn’t do anything that he doesn’t want the world to know about because we all have, and all of his secrets are going to be coming out.

We've already heard a litany of "he's-only-saying-that-because-of-x-y-or-z" remarks.  This one is different in its completely irrelevant reference to things "we all have" in our past.  As my parents used to say, this is why we can't have nice things.

**Courtesy of Think Progress. 

Bad Explanations, Ruth Marcus

Glass ones

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Ruth Marcus has an idea why more women do not get involved in politics, and, surprisingly, punditry.  Considering what Hillary Clinton has had to suffer through (sometimes, someone said on CNN, it's "accurate" to call someone a 'bitch'"), Marcus' answer is surprising.  She writes:

The ambition gap also reflected an underlying, and pronounced, cockiness gap. One-third of men, but just one in five women, rated themselves "very qualified" to hold political office; twice as many women (12 percent) as men (6 percent) considered themselves "not at all qualified." Men were more likely to try for federal office, women for the local school board. Nearly half the women, but fewer than a third of the men, said they did not "have thick enough skin" to run.

Those responses resonated with my own experiences. Becoming a parent tempered my career ambitions in ways I never anticipated. There are jobs I once wanted — jobs I'd be good at, actually — that now I would not pursue.

If the gender tables were turned, would Michelle Obama leave two young daughters at home to run for president? How would voters respond if she did? Would her husband put his career on hold to manage the family?

When the governor of Alaska gave birth the other day to her fifth child, my initial, not-especially-enlightened thought was: How in the world will she manage that? I have just two kids to juggle and no state to run, and I'm dropping balls left and right.

The cockiness gap, too, has parallels in the opinion-writing business. The undeniable underrepresentation of women on op-ed pages has always struck me as more a function of limited supply (women willing to speak out) than inadequate demand (male chauvinist editors). It is intimidating to put your opinions out there, especially in an age of online, highly personal vitriol. It takes a certain unbecoming arrogance to believe you have something valuable to say — even one time, no less week after week.

Sometimes the hardest glass ceilings are the ones women impose, whether knowingly or unconsciously, on ourselves.

Women, I guess, don't like to be called names–that's deep thinking.

Academics, Unclassifiable

Conservative thoughts

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Perhaps this person could be nominated for the Self-Refuting Chair of Logic:

“The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile conservatives to teach on the left-leaning Boulder campus.”

From this affirmative action hire the occupant could rail against university education, intellectualism, and affirmative action.   

**h/t Stanley Fish.