Category Archives: Informal Fallacies

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.

Ad Hominem, Op-Eds and other opinions

Criticizing an icon

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“It’s hard” Deborah Lipstadt writes in today’s Post, “to criticize an icon.” Not really. It’s only hard if you confuse the icon with the icon’s argument, as she has in an abysmal op-ed that adds nothing of substance to the controversy surrounding Jimmy Carter’s recent book about peace in the Middle East, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. The reason this review adds nothing of substance lies in its insistence on ignoring the kinds of things that make claims such as Carter’s wrong, such as errors of fact and errors of reasoning. On the former Ms.Lipstadt writes, “Others can enumerate the many factual errors in this book.”

But it’s easy to criticize this review. Here are two examples.

Lipstadt criticizes Carter for not discussing the Holocaust in his book about Israel and Palestine. But the President who actually attempted to do something about peace in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the President who signed the legislation creating the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., does not need to establish his credibility on Holocaust related questions. Besides, his failure to mention the Holocaust in a book about the current state of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians doesn’t constitute some kind of gross oversight–it represents rather a focus on questions relevant to the treatment of the Palestinians, who were not Nazis in a past life. Whatever current idiocy issues forth from the mouth of Iran’s Prime Minister Ahmadinejad or Hamas or Saddam or whoever is a separate matter from the Nazi Holocaust.

Second, Lipstadt damns Israel with faint praise:

>Carter’s minimization of the Holocaust is compounded by his recent behavior. On MSNBC in December, he described conditions for Palestinians as “one of the worst examples of human rights deprivation” in the world. When the interviewer asked “Worse than Rwanda?” Carter said that he did not want to discuss the “ancient history” of Rwanda.

Well, Rwanda was horrible. So probably no. And that’s a dumb thing to say about Rwanda. But it’s dumbness however colossal doesn’t do anything to excuse Israel. She only makes it worse when she mentions Darfur:

>To give Carter the benefit of the doubt, let’s say that he meant an ongoing crisis. Is the Palestinians’ situation equivalent to Darfur, which our own government has branded genocide?

No, let’s say it’s not equivalent–it’s only half as bad. It’s failure not to be as bad as Darfur doesn’t get Israel off the hook, and it doesn’t meant that Carter is wrong to claim that the policies of the state of Israel violate human rights.

It would be pointless here to go into Lipstadt’s accusations of anti-semitism willing or not against Jimmy Carter for his criticisms of the media. I’ll let Eric Alterman do that for me.

And if you read that, you’ll notice that Alterman doesn’t like the book either–but it least he talks about the book: “to tell you the truth, it’s not much of a book. I looked for a segment I could excerpt on my website and couldn’t find anything that was really worthy. It’s simplistic and homiletic and gives only part of the story most of the time. Jimmy Carter is in some ways a great man, and in almost all ways a good man, but he’s not much of a historian.”

**minor edits for clarity–3:08pm.

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?

George Will, Red Herring

Blogging is said in many ways

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George Will hates blogging. Today he writes:

>Richard Stengel, Time’s managing editor, says, “Thomas Paine was in effect the first blogger” and “Ben Franklin was essentially loading his persona into the MySpace of the 18th century, ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack.’ ” Not exactly.

>Franklin’s extraordinary persona informed what he wrote but was not the subject of what he wrote. Paine was perhaps history’s most consequential pamphleteer. There are expected to be 100 million bloggers worldwide by the middle of 2007, which is why none will be like Franklin or Paine. Both were geniuses; genius is scarce. Both had a revolutionary civic purpose, which they accomplished by amazing exertions. Most bloggers have the private purpose of expressing themselves for their own satisfaction. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is nothing demanding or especially admirable about it, either. They do it successfully because there is nothing singular about it, and each is the judge of his or her own success.

Perhaps Mr.Will does not know that Blogging, like being, is said in many ways. There’s the being of existence, the being of predication, the being of identity and so on. Just because you say something is x, does not mean that that something exists. And only a sophist would claim the meanings of being are fundamentally the same.

Now blogging. In one way, blogging refers to those who blog for themselves, their friends, neighbors, and strangers. It’s certainly a phenomenon worth analysis, but it’s fundamentally different from the other kind of blogging. The other kind of blogging–the one Stengel was talking about to–refers to those who blog with a civic purpose. So, just as you can’t confuse the various senses of “being”; you shouldn’t also confuse the various senses of blogging. You can’t critique “civic bloggers” who post about politics (or in our case, arguments about politics) because other bloggers post pictures of themselves naked, or worse. That would be like criticizing George Will because some other conservative op-ed writers publish uniformed or weakly reasoned opinions in newspapers. And we know that’s wrong.

E.J.Dionne, Hasty Generalization, Plain Bad Arguments

Old, tired, ineffectual

E.J. Dionne, liberal columnist for the Washington Post, writes:

>In 1984 three exit polls pegged Ronald Reagan’s share of the ballots cast by Americans under 30 at between 57 and 60 percent. Reagan-style conservatism seemed fresh, optimistic and innovative. In 2006 voters under 30 gave 60 percent of their votes to Democratic House candidates, according to the shared media exit poll. Conservatism now looks old, tired and ineffectual.

Those two exit polls don’t establish the claim that conservatism is “old, tired and ineffectual.” Sadly, however, these are the only hard facts cited in the piece. The rest is a series of do-you-remember-whens about NASCAR and evangelical Christianity, how once they seemed ascendant, now they seem reactionary–or, old, tired, and ineffectual. Dionne writes:

>Now the chic medium is televised political comedy and the cool commentators are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Even though their political fortunes have certainly changed with the recent elections, lots of people still listen to Rush Limbaugh. And the recent election is a phenomenon far too complex to be handled in such a superficial, E-Network kind of way. Besides, the Reagan election comparison is at best a misleading one–and you can’t place it alongside the most recent midterm election without covering over enormous differences (the current disastrous war, scandals, the Katrina disaster, and so on).

As we constantly say of the conservative political media, at least they argue for their positions. While they may argue badly (as we have documented here), at least the advance reasons for positions, rather than nearly fact-free meta-commentary of the political entertainment complex. That, if anything, is old, tired and ineffectual.

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.

Appeal to Ignorance, Post hoc ergo propter, V.D.Hanson

You’re kidding, right?

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In the years prior to September 11th, how many 9/11-style terror attacks were there? At what frequency? I ask because some continue to suggest that the absence of such attacks in the wake of 9/11 is an achievement:

>For more than three years, partisan opponents of the Bush administration have made two arguments against its conduct of the “global war on terror.”

>First, they’ve argued, the absence of another Sept. 11-like attack has not been the result of anything our government has done, here or overseas. Remember, after conditions in Iraq began to worsen, they began to say we were in even more jeopardy at home than we were five years ago.

Sorry Dr.Hanson, but absence of evidence is not evidence. Though a panicky media and government believed 9/11 was but the first of many attacks, experts suggested otherwise. Besides, terror attacks of the al Qaeda variety have taken place in both London and Madrid. Remember, the terrorists make no distinction among infidels (as we make no distinction among the terrorists and those who harbor them–except when we do).

This argument ought to be put to bed. The editors of the newspaper ought to delete it as they would a dangling participle.